Summoner’s smile returned to the good-natured beam it had been when he entered the room. ‘I am glad you have come to your senses. And, of course, I will keep my half of the bargain as well.’
‘On the contrary,’ Ben said, raising his head to stare, unsmiling, into the eyes of his future father-in-law. ‘I will take nothing from you, no matter how willingly it is given. It will not be said that the decisions I’ve made are based on the bribes of a powerful man. I might lose my heart over this. But I mean to keep my honour as my own.’
With that, he turned and left before Summoner could say another word.
Chapter Fifteen
Ben had visited her father. When she and Belle had returned from their morning ride, he had been at the door, collecting his hat and stick from the footman in preparation of leaving. He had greeted them with perfunctory courtesy, a hollow smile and the standard lament that he could not stay longer to have tea with them.
But there was something in the stiffness of his bow that announced he would rather be anywhere than where he was. Though he probably considered himself trapped in a marriage he no longer wanted, there was no sign that he held the bait responsible for his predicament. The smile he gave to Belle in their brief conversation was as near to genuine as he could make it.
In Amy’s opinion, it spoke well of him. No matter what he thought about his future, he would take good care of her sister. But his feelings for her father were clear enough, if one bothered to look. Before he’d left, he’d cast a brief look of undisguised loathing down the hall towards the office. Whatever had been said between them, it had not gone as Ben Lovell had hoped.
Amy was not surprised by the fact. She had warned him on the day before that if the deal had been done, there would be no escape from it. Like all men, everywhere, he had not been willing to take the word of a mere woman on something that would have been painfully obvious had he known Lord Geoffrey Summoner as well as she did.
Now he understood. He hated her father. And though he did not love her, he harboured no ill will towards Belle. But for Amy he seemed to have no feelings at all. He had hardly looked at her, though they’d been standing scant feet apart. Words and his smiles had been tossed in her direction as if he wanted her to think nothing had changed between them. But when she’d tried to catch his eye, he had looked past her, through her, or at anything else but her.
Perhaps yesterday’s torrid interlude had meant nothing to him. Maybe he was embarrassed that it had happened at all. But if she’d been expecting some acknowledgement that it had been more than a moment’s diversion, she was to be disappointed. It was over and they would never speak of it again.
It proved that she had been right all along about men. They thought no further than their own needs, unless forced to do otherwise, as Ben had been by her father. It was all the more annoying that a part of her would always wonder if Ben’s response to her today might have been different had she had allowed him to finish what they’d started.
It was a sign of weak character that she was thinking about that at all. If she had any regrets, they should be that she had not put a stop to things much sooner than she had. What had happened was unchaste, undignified, unladylike...
And wonderful. She sighed.
At the sound Mellie, who had been dozing on the hearth rug of the parlour, looked up and growled at no one in particular.
‘Silly dog,’ said Belle, tossing the last bit of her biscuit to him and setting her tea cup aside.
‘Do not spoil him,’ Amy said, stretching out her foot so she could rub his exposed belly with the toe of her slipper.
‘I still have not taken him to the park to play ball with Guy,’ Belle said, staring out the window as if hoping that the gentleman would appear.
Amy frowned. And there was another fine example of manhood. They must consider themselves fortunate that they had stopped him before he had irretrievably compromised her sister. Though he had been all but underfoot for the entire Season, they had seen no trace of Guy Templeton since the incident at Vauxhall, four days ago. Hopefully, the formal announcement of the engagement would be enough to scare him away permanently.
But none of that made it any easier to explain his absence to Belle. ‘Now that you are to marry Mr Lovell, you will not be able to socialise with other men as you used to.’
‘We are not going to socialise,’ Belle said, looking at her as if Amy was the one who did not understand. ‘We will be playing with Mellie. And it is not other men. It is just with Guy.’
And there was another problem to be corrected. ‘Now that you are engaged, you must go back to calling him Mr Templeton.’
‘But he said I should call him Guy,’ Belle said, clearly confused.
‘Things have changed between you since then,’ Amy said, as gently as possible. ‘Mr Lovell would not like you being so informal with another man.’
‘But Mr Lovell is Mr Templeton’s friend,’ she offered hopefully, sure that this would make a difference.