The Outrageous Lady Felsham

It was on the tip of her tongue to remark that they must have been celebrating when she sensed a shadow. It was not so much that his expression changed, as the light went out behind those remarkable blue eyes. He was sad, she realised with a flash of empathy. On instinct she turned and nodded dismissal to the footman who stood silently by the sideboard. If her visitor was experiencing mental discomfort, he did not need an audience for it.

‘It must be so painful to remember all those men who could not be with you last night,’ Bel said quietly. ‘Is it sometimes hard to believe that you are alive and they are not?’

He had raised his glass to his lips as she spoke, but put it down at her words, untouched. Bel thought she caught the hint of a tremor in his hand, then he was in control again. ‘You are the only person I have spoken to who was not there who understands.’ He stared at the glass and at his own fingers wrapped around the stem. She waited, expecting him to say something further, but after a moment he lifted the glass again and drank. A sore spot, then, one to avoid. He was going to have a hard time of it though, once he went out into society again. Everyone would want to lionise another returning Waterloo officer, talk about the battle, demand to know about Wellington, ask about his experiences.

‘We are both going to find our new lives difficult. You have been in the army, I have been in seclusion,’ she observed. ‘Unless you are going back into the army, Lord Dereham?’

‘No. I will go to Horse Guards today and resign my commission. Quite frankly,’ he added with a rueful grin, ‘I am strongly tempted to bolt off to the country and rusticate on my much-neglected estate rather than face certain aspects of London life again.’

‘Town is very quiet just now,’ Bel reassured him. ‘That is why I came up in early June—to replenish my wardrobe and find my feet again without too many invitations. And then I found myself travelling to the Grand Duchy of Maubourg, of all places, for my brother’s wedding.’

‘Indeed? It sounds an adventure. That is an unusual place for your brother to be wed, I must confess.’

‘Not if you are marrying the Dowager Grand Duchess of Maubourg.’ Bel smiled reminiscently. ‘It was just like a fairy tale—or a Gothic novel, if one considers the castle. Quite ridiculously romantic.’

‘I am sorry, I should remember who your brother is, forgive me.’

‘My elder brother is the Duke of Allington. This was my second brother, Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst.’

‘Otherwise known as Jack Ryder! I knew there was something familiar about you—you have the same grey eyes.’

So, Lord Dereham knew Sebastian in his secret persona as spy, investigator and King’s Messenger. It was probably a state secret, but she risked the question. ‘Where did you meet him?’

‘On the morning of the battle.’ There was no need to specify which battle. Bel saw the realisation come over him. ‘Then that very handsome woman in man’s clothing was the Grand Duchess Eva? No wonder your brother looked ready to call me out when I tried a little mild flirtation with her!’

‘Indeed, you were dicing with death, Lord Dereham,’ Bel agreed, amused at the daring of a man who would flirt with any woman under Sebastian’s protection. ‘It is a most incredible story, for he snatched Eva out of Maubourg and back to England in the face of considerable danger.’

‘You are a romantic, then?’ He poured her more lemonade from the cut-glass jug at his elbow and watched her quizzically for her answer. Bel found herself drowning in that deep azure gaze, rather as she might surrender to the sea. He seemed to be luring her on to confess her innermost yearnings, her need to be loved, her wicked curiosity to experience physical delight. And just like the sea, he was dangerous and full of undercurrents. A completely unknown element. Of course she could reveal nothing. Nothing at all.

‘A romantic? I…I hardly know,’ Bel confessed, throwing caution overboard and wilfully ignoring the sensation that she might be heading for the reef without an anchor. ‘I would not have said so a few weeks ago. I would have said I was in favour of a rational choice of marriage partners, of very conventional behaviour and, of course, of judicious attention to society’s norms. And then, when Eva and Sebastian fell in love, I found I would have defied any convention in the world to promote their happiness. I virtually gatecrashed a Carlton House reception, in fact, then kidnapped poor Eva to harangue her for breaking Sebastian’s heart.’

‘Passionate, romantic and daring, then.’ He sounded admiring.

Bel knew she was blushing and could only be grateful that she had dismissed the footman earlier. ‘In the cause of other people’s happiness, Lord Dereham,’ she said, attempting a repressive tone.

‘Will you not call me Ashe?’ He picked up an apple and began to peel it, his attention apparently fixed on the task.

‘Certainly not!’ Bel softened the instinctive response with an explanation. ‘We have not even been introduced, ridiculous though that seems.’

‘I am sure Horace did the honours last night,’ Ashe suggested. ‘He strikes me as a bear of the old school. A stickler for formality and the correct mode.’

‘Even so.’ Bel allowed herself the hint of a smile for his whimsy, but she was not going to be lured into impropriety—her own thoughts were quite sufficiently unseemly as it was. And she was not going to rise to his teasing about her silly rug. Goodness knows what familiarity she might be tempted into if they became any more intimate than they were already.

‘Reynard, then?’ He was not exactly wheedling, but there was something devilishly coaxing about the expression in the blue eyes that were fixed on her face.

‘I should not.’ She hesitated, then, tempted, fell. After all, it was only such a very minor infringement of propriety and who was going to call her to account for it? Only herself. ‘No, why should I be missish! Reynard, then.’

‘Thank you, Lady Belinda.’ The peel curled in an uninterrupted ribbon over his fingers as he slowly used the knife. ‘Now, tell me, why are you such an advocate of passion for other people, but not yourself?’

‘You forget, I am a widow,’ Bel said sharply. That was far too near the knuckle.

‘I apologise for my insensitivity. Yours was a love match, I collect.’ The red peel fell complete on to his plate and formed, to her distracted gaze, a perfect heart.

‘Good heavens, no! I mean—’She glared at him. ‘You have muddled me, Lord…Reynard. Mine was a marriage much like any other, not some…’ She struggled to find the proper, dignified words.

‘Not some irrational, unconventional, injudicious—do I have your list of undesirable attributes correctly?—storm of passion, romance and love, then?’

‘Of course not. What a very unsettling state of affairs that would be, to be sure, to exist in such a turmoil of emotions.’ How wonderful, exciting, thrillingly delicious it sounds. ‘No lasting marriage could be built upon such irrational feelings.’

‘But that is the state true lovers aspire to, is it not? Your brother and his new wife, from what you say, feel these things. It is not all so alarming.’

‘And you would know?’ she enquired, curious. Surely, if there was some blighted romance in his life, he would not speak so lightly; she might safely probe in return.

‘The storms of passion? Yes, I have felt those on occasion. The more tender emotions, no, not yet.’ He quartered the apple and set down his knife, watching her slantwise. ‘Respectable matrons would warn you that I am a rake, Lady Belinda. We are immune to romance, although passion may be a familiar friend.’

‘Are you attempting to alarm me, sir?’ She had never knowingly met a rake before and she was not at all certain she had met one now; Reynard could very well be teasing her. Upon her come-out she had been strictly guarded by her mama, for the daughter of a duke was not to be left prey to the attentions of fortune hunters—or worse—for a moment. On her marriage there had been Henry to direct all her social intercourse and, as he would not dream of frequenting any place likely to attract the dissolute, or even the frivolous and fun-loving, such perilous men had not crossed her path.

‘Not at all. If I was dangerous to you, that would be a foolish tactic for me to adopt.’

‘Or perhaps a very cunning one?’ she suggested, folding her hands demurely in her lap while he cut his apple into smaller segments and ate it, each piece severed by a decisive bite.

‘Lady Belinda, I am too befuddled by last night’s excesses and too bemused by your beauty to manage such clever scheming.’

‘My beauty? Why, I do believe you are flirting with me, Reynard!’ He was. How extraordinary to be flirted with again. She could hardly remember how it had felt and certainly not how to deal with it.

Lord Dereham wiped his fingers on his napkin and dropped it beside his plate. ‘I was attempting to, I did warn you.’ Before she could respond he was on his feet, standing to pull back her chair for her. ‘That was a delicious meal, ma’am; you have heaped coals of fire on my unworthy head with your generous hospitality in the face of my outrageous invasion in the early hours. And now I will remove myself off to Horse Guards and leave you in peace.’

‘I hope your business goes well.’ Bel held out her hand. There went her adventure, her glimpse into the world of excitement, scandal and loose living. And all it had left her were some very disconcerting sensations, which she could only hope would subside once a certain tall blond gentleman removed himself from her sight. Somehow she doubted it. Somehow she knew that Lord Byron’s verse was going to be accompanied by some very vivid pictures from now on.

‘Lady Belinda.’ He shook her hand, his cool fingers not remaining for a fraction longer than was strictly proper. It was most disappointing, although doubtless the best thing, considering Hedges was hovering attentively in the background.

‘Your hat and gloves, my lord. I found them upon the chest on the landing.’

The door closed behind Reynard and Bel found herself standing in the hallway, gazing rather blankly at the back of it. The sound of Hedges clearing his throat brought to herself with a start.

‘I hope his lordship remembered to return his back-door key to you, my lady. I understand from Mrs Hedges that that was how he obtained entry last night.

‘His key? Oh, yes. Of course,’ Bel said brightly. ‘Please ask James to be ready to accompany me to Hatchard’s in fifteen minutes, Hedges, and send Philpott to my room directly.’

As she climbed the stairs, Bel realised that she had just lied to her butler without hesitation. Without, in fact, the slightest qualm. Of course Lord Dereham had not given her back the key. Had he forgotten it, as she had done up to the moment the butler asked about it, or was he deliberately keeping it? And was he really a dangerous rake, or was he just teasing her? Whatever it was that was fluttering inside her it was not fear, but it was a decidedly unsettling feeling.

Ashe walked briskly away from Lady Belinda’s front door, reached Piccadilly, raised his hand to summon a hackney carriage and then, abruptly changing his mind, strode diagonally across the crowded road and into Green Park by the Reservoir Gate.

He needed, he found, space to think—which surprised him, for he had thought he had the next few days clearly planned out in his head. Horse Guards to resign his commission, then back to the Albany to settle in comfortably. There was the town house to check out for Mama, shopping to be done to fit himself out as a civilian gentleman once again, and letters to write. He had intended to stay in London for at least a fortnight before venturing west to Hertfordshire and Coppergate, his country estate.

He had been home on leave a mere six weeks ago, shortly before the battle. His family knew he was safe, where he was and that he had business which would keep him in London for a week or so. That would give him time to get accustomed to his new circumstances, allow him to mentally rehearse the stories he was prepared to tell his family about his experiences. If he told them the truth about the great battle, they would be appalled; he needed some distance from his recent past and space to create the comfortable fictions in order to shield them.

At Coppergate he would interview his estate manager, sort out his affairs and come back to town as soon as he decently could. Ashe loved his family, had missed them while he was away, but in the country he felt purposeless, empty and restless. Why, he had no idea. He enjoyed country sports, he was deeply attached to the estate and the strange old house at the heart of it. And there was certainly plenty he could be doing there, as his steward would tactfully hint.

And now, unexpectedly, he felt the same way here. It must be the hangover. He strolled around the perimeter of the Reservoir amidst the small groups of gossiping ladies with servants patient at their heels, the nursemaids and shrieking children and the occasional elderly gentleman, chin on chest, deep in scholarly thought as he walked off his luncheon.

The fresh air finished the work of Hedges’s potion and a good lunch on his headache, but it did not cure his restlessness. Ashe struck off away from the water and headed for St James’s Park, abandoning the idea of taking a hackney. He found he was avoiding thinking about last night, about Lady Belinda and about his reaction to her. He made himself do so.

It was a relief to realise that he had behaved with at least some restraint, although the feelings of a respectable lady on finding a drunken, amorous officer in her bedchamber defied his imagination, even if he had confined his assault on her person to falling full length upon her, licking her ear and then falling asleep for hours. He grimaced at himself. Even! He had treated Lady Belinda like a lightskirt and he was fortunate she was not even now summoning an outraged brother to demand satisfaction.

The dangerous Mr Ryder was safely out of the country, and the duke was where he always was, reclusive on his northern estates. Ashe wrestled with the conundrum of whether honourable behaviour required that he write to the duke, account for himself and make assurances about his behaviour, or rest upon the lady’s remarkable forbearance. He decided, with relief, that he was under no such obligation to frankness. Nothing irretrievable had, after all, occurred.

Lady Belinda did seem to have forgiven him. Her straitlaced late husband could hardly have given her much cause to become used to gentlemen overindulging, so he supposed she must simply be a very understanding woman.

She had been embarrassed, though, he mused, kicking at daisies in the cropped grass as he walked. It was not as though she was one of those dashing widows who would greet the unexpected arrival of a man in their bedroom with opportunistic enthusiasm. Which was a good thing, he thought with a self-deprecating grin; he had been far too drunk to have performed to any lady’s satisfaction, let alone his own.

Lady Belinda had been tolerant, sensible and pragmatic, he concluded, which was more than he deserved. The thought struck him like a punch in the gut that if she had chosen to be difficult she could, very easily, put him in a position where he would have had to marry her. And marriage was absolutely not in his plans. Not for another five years or so, by which time his mother’s gentle nagging would become strident and she would cease merely hinting that Cousin Adrian would make a terrible viscount and order him to do something about the succession before his thirty-sixth birthday dawned.

He had almost succeeded in coaxing Lady Belinda into flirting, which had been agreeable. Ashe began to feel better. Flirting with pretty women was a cliché for the returning warrior, but it was certainly a good way to keep your mind off blood, death and destruction. Ashe returned the sentry’s salute and ran up the steps into Horse Guards. Perhaps civilian life in London, even out of Season, would not be so bad after all.

Chapter Four

Bel too, was contemplating her sojourn in London with rather more attention than she had previously given it. She had moved simply to assert to herself and her in-laws that she was an independent woman about to start a new life. Her lovely little house was a gem, she was enjoying the walks and the shopping and now she began to wonder if perhaps there was not some social life she could comfortably indulge in.

The fact that the extremely attractive Lord Dereham might form part of that social life was undeniably an incentive. Bel found she was gazing sightlessly at a row of the very latest sensation novels, plucked a volume off the shelf at random and went to sit in one of the velvet chairs Hatchard’s thoughtfully provided for their browsing customers.

In place of her vague, innocent and completely uninformed dreams of a lover, of passion and excitement, her night-time visitor had presented her with a flesh-and-blood model of perfection. And some valuable, if highly disturbing, practical information about the male animal. Daydreaming about Ashe Reynard would doubtless be frustrating but…delicious. She flicked over the pages and read at random.

Alfonso, tell me I am yours, do not betray me to the dark evil of my uncle’s plans! Amarantia pleaded, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. Her lover strained her to his breast, his heart beating in tumultuous acknowledgement of her…

Bel gave a little shiver of anticipation and forced herself to consider the realities. She might see Reynard again. He might flirt with her. She might learn to flirt in return. That was, of course, as far as it could go. Actually taking a lover was a fantasy, for she would never dare to go any further than mild flirtation and he showed no sign of wanting to do so, in any case. Why should he? London was full of sprightly and sophisticated feminine company and Lord Dereham no doubt knew exactly where to find it.

No, it was just a game for her to play in the sleepless night hours. A fantasy. Lord Dereham was never again going to strain her to his breast, his heart beating hard against hers as it had last night. She sighed.

‘Belinda!’

Bel gave a guilty start and dropped her book. The spine bent alarmingly. She would have to buy it now. ‘Aunt Louisa!’ Lady James Ravenhurst was fixing her with a disapproving stare over the top of the lorgnette she was holding up. ‘And Cousin Elinor. How delightful to see you both.’ She got to her feet, feeling like a gawky schoolgirl as Elinor retrieved the novel from the floor.

‘The Venetian Tower,’ she read from the spine. ‘Is that a work of architecture, Cousin Belinda?’

‘Er…no.’ Bel almost snatched it back. ‘Just a novel I was wondering about buying.’ Aunt Louisa seemed about to deliver a diatribe on the evils of novel reading. Bel hurried on, knowing she was prattling. ‘I had no idea you were both in London.’

‘As The Corsican Monster chose to escape from Elba at precisely the moment I had intended leaving on a study tour of French Romanesque cathedrals, my plans for the entire year have been thrown into disarray,’ her aunt replied irritably. Her expression indicated that Bonaparte must add upsetting her travel arrangements to the list of his deliberate infamies. ‘I had plans for a book on the subject.’

‘Romanesque? Indeed?’ What on earth did that mean? Surely nothing to do with the Romans? They did not build cathedrals. Or did they? Aunt Louisa was a fearsome bluestocking and her turn for scholarship had become an obsession after the death of Lord James ten years previously. ‘How fascinating,’ Bel added hastily and untruthfully. ‘And you are in town to buy gowns?’ After one glance at Cousin Elinor’s drab grey excuse for a walking dress, that was the only possible explanation.

‘Gowns? Certainly not.’ Lady James trained her eyeglass on the surrounding shelves. ‘I am here to buy books. Our expedition will have to be postponed until next year, so I will continue my researches here. Elinor, find where they have moved the architecture volumes to. I cannot comprehend why they keep moving sections around, so inconsiderate. You have the list?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ Elinor responded colourlessly. ‘Britton’s Cathedral Antiquities of England in five parts and Parkyns’s Monastic and Baronial Remains. Two volumes.’ She drifted off, clutching her notebook. Bel frowned after her. She could never quite fathom her cousin. Elinor, drab and always at the beck and call of her mother, was only two years younger than Bel. At twenty-four she was firmly on the shelf and certain to remain there, yet she neither seemed exactly resigned to this fate, nor distressed by it. She simply appeared detached. What was going on behind those meekly lowered eyes and obedient murmurs? Bel wondered.

‘Belinda.’

‘Yes, Aunt Louisa?’ Bel reminded herself that she was a grown-up woman, a widow who was independent of her family, and she had no need to react to her formidable relative as she had when she was a shy girl at her come-out. It did not help much, especially when one had a guilty conscience.

‘I hear you have purchased a London house of your own. What is wrong with Cambourn House, might I ask?’

What business it was of hers Bel could not say, but she schooled her expression to a pleasant smile. ‘Why, Lord Felsham has it now.’

‘I trust your late husband’s cousin does not forbid you the use of it!’ Lady James clutched her furled parasol aggressively.

‘Certainly not, Aunt. I just do not choose to be beholden to him by asking to borrow it.’ The new Lord Felsham was a pleasant enough nonentity, but his wife was a sharp-tongued shrew and the less Bel had to do with them, the happier she was.

‘Then you have engaged a respectable companion, I trust?’

Bel moved further back towards the theology section, away from any interested ears browsing amidst the novels. ‘I have a mature dresser and a most respectable married couple managing the house.’ And what would you have said if you could have seen me last night, I wonder? The thought of the formidable Lady James beating a drunken Lord Dereham over the head with her parasol while he lay slumped on the scantily clad body of her niece almost provoked Bel into an unseemly fit of the giggles. She had the sudden wish that she could share the image with Reynard. He would laugh, those startling eyes creasing with amusement. His laugh, she just knew, would be deep and rich and wholehearted. ‘I am very well looked after, Aunt, I assure you.’

Elinor drifted back, an elderly shop assistant with his arms full of octavo volumes at her heels. ‘I have them all, Mama. I do like that gown, Cousin Belinda. Such a pretty colour.’

‘Thank you. I must say, I am rather pleased with it myself; it is from Mrs Bell in Charlotte Street. Have you visited her?’

Lady James ran a disapproving eye over the leaf-green skirts and the deep brown pelisse with golden brown frogging. ‘A most impractical colour, in my opinion. Well, get along, man, and have those wrapped, I do not have all day! Come, Elinor. And you, Niece—you find yourself some respectable chaperonage, and quickly. Such independence from so young a gel! I do not know what the world is coming to.’

‘Good afternoon, Aunt,’ Bel said to her retreating back, exchanging a fleeting smile with her cousin as she hurried in the wake of her mother. Lord! She did hope that Aunt Louisa retained her fixed distaste for social occasions and did not decide it was her duty to supervise her widowed niece’s visits now that she was in London.

The afternoon post had brought another flurry of invitation cards. It seemed, Bel mused, as she spread them out on her desk, that she was not the only person remaining in London well into July this year. Perhaps the attraction of the officers returning from the Continent had something to do with it.

She took out her appointments book, turning the pages that had remained virtually pristine for the past eighteen months, and studied the invitations that had arrived in the past few days. Her return to town after the Maubourg wedding had been mentioned in the society pages of several journals and it seemed her acquaintances had not forgotten her now her mourning period was over.