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Chapter Ten
Deo, seeing Emily turn white as a sheet, clasped her arm in alarm.
“Miss Grenfell,” the dandified fellow Kendrick had brought to The Castle with him said with a bow. “What a surprise to see you here.”
“This is my wife, the Countess of Pendrell,” growled Deo.
The other man changed color. “Really? I had no notion. This must have happened very quickly.” His lips compressed into a thin line. “Now I understand why your parents said you were indisposed when I came to call!”
Emily didn’t seem to have a reply to that, but Deo didn’t give her a chance in any case, saying peremptorily, “I believe my wife has a touch of the sun. If you will excuse us.” And he swept her off upstairs. When they reached the top of the first flight, he picked her up and carried her the rest of the way. She looked so pale he was afraid she was going to faint again, and he didn’t want her tumbling down the stairs and hurting herself.
“Deo, I can walk,” she protested.
He ignored that and, pushing open the door to the sitting room, he strode in, taking her through to the bedroom, where he laid her down on the bed. Seizing her hat, he tossed it aside, and felt her forehead.
“Do you have a headache?”
“No.”
“You must be dehydrated,” he said. Fetching a glass and pouring her some water from the jug, he offered it to her, helping her to sit up, so she could drink it.
She drank and lay back against the banked pillows.
“Better?” he asked, frowning at her.
“Yes, thank you. I don’t have sunstroke.”
“Then what made you go so white?”
“You recall that there was a gentleman my parents were trying to force me to marry?”
He nodded.
“It was Lord Bidenden.”
“That dandified prig?” he said, revolted.
“Is he? A dandy, I mean? I just thought he cared more for his clothes than anything else.”
“That is the definition of a dandy,” he said shortly. “Why was your mother so set on you marrying him?”
“Apart from the fact that I hadn’t had any other offers? He is the eldest son of the Marquess of Malmsbury,” she said with a sigh.
“Well, I’m glad you had the sense to reject him.” Deo paced away from the bed, unaccountably agitated. Turning back, he barked, “Did he force his attentions on you, behave inappropriately?”
She flinched a little, and he cursed his bad temper.
“No, not really. Mama left us alone and he kissed my hand and my wrist here.” She held her hand out palm up and indicated the soft skin of her inner wrist, and Deo was outraged at the notion of this man touching her with such intimacy.
She went on. “When he proposed, he tried to kiss me. I elbowed him in the ribs and trod on his instep.”
A powerful desire to hit Bidenden in the face for daring to touch her possessed him; and a flare of pride made him smile at her spirit.
“But Mama came back before he could do anything else.”
“Hmph,” he grunted. “Why did you refuse him?”
“Because I knew he was only interested in my fortune, for all his protestations to the contrary. He kept telling me that I was very pretty and he”—she paused, blushing an adorable pink—“that he desired me,” she finished on a low note. “I knew he must be dissembling. I’m not pretty or desirable.”
