He waited for her smile to melt away, then said, “You did not answer my question. Why do you hate me?”
A rush of air slipped through Kate’s lips. She hadn’t expected him to repeat the question. Or at least she’d hoped that he would not. “I do not hate you, my lord,” she replied, choosing her words with great care. “I do not even know you.”
“Knowing is rarely a prerequisite for hating,” he said softly, his eyes settling on hers with lethal steadiness. “Come now, Miss Sheffield, you don’t seem a coward to me. Answer the question.”
Kate held silent for a full minute. It was true, she had not been predisposed to like the man. She certainly wasn’t about to give her blessing to his courtship of Edwina. She didn’t believe for one second that reformed rakes made the best husbands. She wasn’t even sure that a rake could be properly reformed in the first place.
But he might have been able to overcome her preconceptions. He could have been charming and sincere and straightforward, and been able to convince her that the stories about him in Whistledown were an exaggeration, that he was not the worst rogue London had seen since the turn of the century. He might have convinced her that he held to a code of honor, that he was a man of principles and honesty . . .
If he hadn’t gone and compared her to Edwina.
For nothing could have been more obvious a lie. She knew she wasn’t an antidote; her face and form were pleasing enough. But there was simply no way she could be compared to Edwina in this measure and emerge as her equal. Edwina was truly a diamond of the first water, and Kate could never be more than average and unremarkable.
And if this man was saying otherwise, then he had some ulterior motive, because it was obvious he wasn’t blind.
He could have offered her any other empty compliment and she would have accepted it as a gentleman’s polite conversation. She might have even been flattered if his words had struck anywhere close to the truth. But to compare her to Edwina . . .
Kate adored her sister. She truly did. And she knew better than anyone that Edwina’s heart was as beautiful and radiant as her face. She didn’t like to think herself jealous, but still . . . somehow the comparison stung right to the core.
“I do not hate you,” she finally replied. Her eyes were trained on his chin, but she had no patience for cowardice, especially within herself, so she forced herself to meet his gaze when she added, “But I find I cannot like you.”
Something in his eyes told her that he appreciated her stark honesty. “And why is that?” he asked softly.
“May I be frank?”
His lips twitched. “Please do.”
“You are dancing with me right now because you wish to court my sister. This does not bother me,” she hastened to assure him. “I am well used to receiving attentions from Edwina’s suitors.”
Her mind was clearly not on her feet. Anthony pulled his foot out of the way of hers before she could injure him again. He noticed with interest that she was back to referring to them as suitors rather than idiots. “Please continue,” he murmured.
“You are not the sort of man I would wish my sister to marry,” she said simply. Her manner was direct, and her intelligent brown eyes never left his. “You are a rake. You are a rogue. You are, in fact, notorious for being both. I would not allow my sister within ten feet of you.”
“And yet,” he said with a wicked little smile, “I waltzed with her earlier this evening.”
“An act which shall not be repeated, I can assure you.”
“And is it your place to decide Edwina’s fate?”
“Edwina trusts my judgment,” she said primly.
“I see,” he said in what he hoped was his most mysterious manner. “That is very interesting. I thought Edwina was an adult.”
“Edwina is but seventeen years old!”
“And you are so ancient at, what, twenty years of age?”
“Twenty-one,” she bit off.
“Ah, that makes you a veritable expert on men, and husbands in particular. Especially since you have been married yourself, yes?”
“You know I am unwed,” she ground out.
Anthony stifled the urge to smile. Good Lord, but it was fun baiting the elder Miss Sheffield. “I think,” he said, keeping his words slow and deliberate, “that you have found it relatively easy to manage most of the men who have come knocking on your sister’s door. Is that true?”
She kept her stony silence.
“Is it?”
Finally she gave him one curt nod.
“I thought so,” he murmured. “You seem the sort who would.”
She glared at him with such intensity that it was all he could do to keep from laughing. If he weren’t dancing, he probably would have stroked his chin in an affectation of deep thought. But since his hands were otherwise engaged, he had to settle for a ponderous tilt of his head, combined with an arch raise of his eyebrows. “But I also think,” he added, “that you made a grave mistake when you thought to manage me.”
Kate’s lips were set in a grim, straight line, but she managed to say, “I do not seek to manage you, Lord Bridgerton. I only seek to keep you away from my sister.”
“Which just goes to show, Miss Sheffield, how very little you know of men. At least of the rakish, roguish variety.” He leaned in closer, letting his hot breath brush against her cheek.
She shivered. He’d known she’d shiver.
He smiled wickedly. “There is very little we relish more than a challenge.”
The music drew to a close, leaving them standing in the middle of the ballroom floor, facing one another. Anthony took her arm, but before he led her back to the perimeter of the room, he put his lips very close to her ear and whispered, “And you, Miss Sheffield, have issued to me a most delicious challenge.”
Kate stepped on his foot. Hard. Enough to make him let out a small, decidedly unrakish, unroguish squeak.
When he glared at her, though, she just shrugged and said, “It was my only defense.”
His eyes darkened. “You, Miss Sheffield, are a menace.”
“And you, Lord Bridgerton, need thicker boots.”
His grasp tightened on her arm. “Before I return you to the sanctuary of the chaperones and spinsters, there is one thing we need to make clear.”
Kate held her breath. She did not like the hard tone of his voice.
“I am going to court your sister. And should I decide that she will make a suitable Lady Bridgerton, I will make her my wife.”
Kate whipped her head up to face him, fire flashing in her eyes. “And I suppose, then, that you think it is your place to decide Edwina’s fate. Do not forget, my lord, that even if you decide she will make a suitable”—she sneered the word—“Lady Bridgerton, she might choose otherwise.”
He looked down at her with the confidence of a male who is never crossed. “Should I decide to ask Edwina, she will not say no.”
“Are you trying to tell me that no woman has ever been able to resist you?”
He did not answer, just raised one supercilious brow and let her draw her own conclusions.
Kate wrenched her arm free and strode back to her stepmother, shaking with fury, resentment, and not a little bit of fear.
Because she had an awful feeling that he did not lie. And if he really did turn out to be irresistible . . .
Kate shuddered. She and Edwina were going to be in big, big trouble.
The next afternoon was like any following a major ball. The Sheffields’ drawing room was filled to bursting with flower bouquets, each one accompanied by a crisp white card bearing the name, “Edwina Sheffield.”
A simple “Miss Sheffield” would have sufficed, Kate thought with a grimace, but she supposed one couldn’t really fault Edwina’s suitors for wanting to make certain the flowers went to the correct Miss Sheffield.
Not that anyone was likely to make a mistake on that measure. Floral arrangements generally went to Edwina. In fact, there was nothing general about it; every bouquet that had arrived at the Sheffield residence in the last month had gone to Edwina.
Kate liked to think she had the last laugh, however. Most of the flowers made Edwina sneeze, so they tended to end up in Kate’s chamber, anyway.
“You beautiful thing,” she said, lovingly fingering a fine orchid. “I think you belong right on my bedstand. And you”—she leaned forward and sniffed at a bouquet of perfect white roses—“you will look smashing on my dressing table.”
“Do you always talk to flowers?”
Kate whirled around at the sound of a deep male voice. Good heavens, it was Lord Bridgerton, looking sinfully handsome in a blue morning coat. What the devil was he doing here?
No sense in not asking.
“What the dev—” She caught herself just in time. She would not let this man reduce her to cursing aloud, no matter how often she did it in her head. “What are you doing here?”
He raised a brow as he adjusted the huge bouquet of flowers he had tucked under his arm. Pink roses, she noted. Perfect buds. They were lovely. Simple and elegant. Exactly the sort of thing she’d choose for herself.
“I believe it’s customary for suitors to call upon young women, yes?” he murmured. “Or did I misplace my etiquette book?”
“I meant,” Kate growled, “how did you get in? No one alerted me to your arrival.”
He cocked his head toward the hall. “The usual manner. I knocked on your front door.”
Kate’s look of irritation at his sarcasm did not prevent him from continuing with, “Amazingly enough, your butler answered. Then I gave him my card, he took a look at it, and showed me to the drawing room. Much as I’d like to claim some sort of devious, underhanded subterfuge,” he continued, maintaining a rather impressively supercilious tone, “it was actually quite aboveboard and straightforward.”
“Infernal butler,” Kate muttered. “He’s supposed to see if we’re ‘at home’ before showing you in.”
“Maybe he had previous instructions that you would be ‘at home’ for me under any circumstances.”
She bristled. “I gave him no such instructions.”
“No,” Lord Bridgerton said with a chuckle, “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“And I know Edwina didn’t.”
He smiled. “Perhaps your mother?”
Of course. “Mary,” she groaned, a world of accusation in the single word.
“You call her by her given name?” he asked politely.
She nodded. “She’s actually my stepmother. Although she’s really all I know. She married my father when I was but three. I don’t know why I still call her Mary.” She gave her head a little shake as her shoulders lifted into a perplexed shrug. “I just do.”
His brown eyes remained fixed on her face, and she realized she’d just let this man—her nemesis, really—into a small corner of her life. She felt the words “I’m sorry” bubbling on her tongue—a reflexive reaction, she supposed, for having spoken too freely. But she didn’t want to apologize to this man for anything, so instead she just said, “Edwina is out, I’m afraid, so your visit was for nothing.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he replied. He grasped the bouquet of flowers—which had been tucked under his right arm—with his other hand, and as he brought it forward Kate saw that it was not one massive bouquet, but three smaller ones.
“This,” he said, putting one of the bouquets down on a side table, “is for Edwina. And this”—he did the same with the second—“is for your mother.”
He was left with a single bouquet. Kate stood frozen with shock, unable to take her eyes off the perfect pink blooms. She knew what he had to be about, that the only reason he’d included her in the gesture was to impress Edwina, but blast it, no one had ever brought her flowers before, and she hadn’t known until that very moment how badly she’d wanted someone to do so.
“These,” he said finally, holding out the final arrangement of pink roses, “are for you.”
“Thank you,” she said hesitantly, taking them into her arms. “They’re lovely.” She leaned down to sniff them, sighing with pleasure at the thick scent. Glancing back up, she added, “It was very thoughtful of you to think of Mary and me.”
He nodded graciously. “It was my pleasure. I must confess, a suitor for my sister’s hand once did the same for my mother, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her more delighted.”
“Your mother or your sister?”
He smiled at her pert question. “Both.”
“And what happened to this suitor?” Kate asked.
Anthony’s grin turned devilish in the extreme. “He married my sister.”
“Hmmph. Don’t think history is likely to repeat itself. But—” Kate coughed, not particularly wanting to be honest with him but quite incapable of doing anything otherwise. “But the flowers are truly lovely, and—and it was a lovely gesture on your part.” She swallowed. This wasn’t easy for her. “And I do appreciate them.”
He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes positively melting. “A kind sentence,” he mused. “And directed at me, no less. There now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
Kate went from bending lovingly over the flowers to standing uncomfortably straight in an instant. “You do seem to have a knack for saying the exact wrong thing.”
“Only where you’re concerned, my dear Miss Sheffield. Other women, I assure you, hang on my every word.”
“So I’ve read,” she muttered.
His eyes lit up. “Is that where you’ve developed your opinions of me? Of course! The estimable Lady Whistle-down. I should have known. Lud, I’d like to strangle the woman.”
“I find her rather intelligent and quite on the mark,” Kate said primly.
“You would,” he returned.
“Lord Bridgerton,” Kate ground out, “I’m sure you did not come calling to insult me. May I leave a message for Edwina for you?”
“I think not. I don’t particularly trust that it would reach her unadulterated.”