Nicola Cornick - The Notorious Lord

Rachel raised her chin. She did not care to have Cory make fun of her reading tastes. ‘So? It is a charming book. I dare say that you have not read any Minervas, Cory, so you do not know what you are talking about.’

Cory inclined his head. ‘There you have me. I do not. I beg your pardon. They are probably excellent publications.’

‘You are suspiciously quick to retract your views. Either you are humouring me or else you are still secretly laughing at me!’

Cory raised a hand in mock surrender. ‘Acquit me, Rae. I would not laugh at you. What is the plot of The Enchantress? ’

Rachel shot him a mistrustful look, certain that he was still funning her. ‘It is a most edifying tale,’ she said. ‘The hero, Sir Philip Desormeaux, has just put an advertisement in the newspaper in order to find himself a wife.’

‘A most practical gentleman.’ Cory quirked his brows. ‘No doubt you approve of such a sensible approach to matrimony?’

‘Naturally,’ Rachel said. ‘I have a lowering feeling, however, that he will succumb to romance in the end.’

Cory grinned. ‘Is that what gentlemen generally do?’

‘In fiction, certainly.’ Rachel said. ‘In real life, I doubt it.’

‘Yet you advocate sense over sensibility yourself?’

‘Of course.’ Rachel said. ‘Romance is like travel.’

‘Exciting, daring, and dangerous?’

‘Uncomfortable, inconvenient and hopefully of short duration,’ Rachel said. ‘Good day to you, Cory.’

His laughter followed her as she went out of the stable and into the bright sun of mid-morning. Already the heat was building and the white doves sought the shadow of the clock tower. Rachel, who intended to walk the couple of miles from Midwinter Royal House to Saltires, went to fetch her parasol. In the hallway her mother’s packing boxes were still half-full and Rose, the only housemaid who had agreed to take the job, was laboriously polishing the banisters, wheezing as she worked.

Rachel went up the wide staircase, turned right where it branched, and entered the second door on her left. Midwinter Royal was only a small house and she had chosen for her own a bedroom on the west side with a view across Midwinter Common to the forest beyond. She had given her parents the biggest bedchamber on the south side of the house, for although Rachel knew that they would not have noticed if they had been sleeping in a trench, she wished them to be comfortable. They had a view across their beloved burial mounds to the river, the Winter Race, beyond.

Rachel’s room was bright and full of sunshine. The curtains rippled in the breeze from the open window. She went across and extracted her parasol from the white-painted wardrobe in the corner. All of her belongings had been stacked away neatly upon arrival. Nothing spoiled the pristine neatness of her bed, for although she had to share a maid with Lady Odell, she would never have countenanced leaving her clothes draped about the room as her mother did.

It was as she was closing the wardrobe door that she turned and caught sight of Cory Newlyn strolling down the path that cut through the shrubberies towards the fields at the back. He had his hands in the pockets of his disreputable jacket and he was whistling under his breath. As Rachel watched, he took off his battered old hat and thrust his hand through his fair hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Then he looked up at her window, saw her watching and raised one hand in casual greeting. The sun was on his upturned face as he smiled at her.

Rachel stepped back from the window suddenly. It was odd but she felt as though she had been caught in the act like a peeping Tom. Yet surely there was nothing wrong in looking out of her own bedroom window…

When she dared to look again, Cory had disappeared around the corner of the house. With a small sigh, Rachel tied the blue ribbons of her wide-brimmed straw hat under her chin, donned her light spencer and checked in the mirror that she looked neat and tidy. She did. Her russet-brown hair was braided ruthlessly to subdue the curl in it and there was not a thread out of place on her pale blue promenade dress.

She picked up her parasol and hurried down the stairs. Cory had disturbed her morning in more ways than one. Now she was going to be late, and in a strange way, it felt as though it was all Cory’s fault.

Rachel was halfway along the dusty road that led from Midwinter Royal to Saltires when she was overtaken by a gig containing two ladies. The pony was travelling at a lively trot and stirred up quite a cloud of dust in its wake, and the gig’s passenger, turning and seeing Rachel struggling on the grass verge, put out a hand and urged the driver to stop. When Rachel caught them up, she recognised two of the other members of the Midwinter reading group, the Honourable Mrs Deborah Stratton and her sister, Olivia, Lady Marney. Deborah Stratton leaned over and addressed her in the friendliest of terms.

‘Miss Odell! I am so sorry-we did not see you there! May we take you up with us? I assume that you are going to Saltires?’

Rachel looked at the gig’s narrow seat rather dubiously. Lady Marney, who was driving, had not seconded her younger sister’s invitation and Rachel felt a little awkward. She did not wish to force herself on their company.

‘I am not certain that there is room-’ Rachel began, but Deborah Stratton cheerfully overrode her.

‘Of course there is! Move up and make room for Miss Odell, Liv,’ she added, turning to her sister and suiting actions to words by huddling up on the gig’s seat. ‘It is only a mile or so further, at any rate. We shall all be as fine as ninepence up here.’

Rachel found her hand grasped in Mrs Stratton’s own, surprisingly strong one, and without further ado joined her on the cushioned seat.

‘Good morning, Lady Marney,’ she said, nodding to Olivia. ‘This is very kind of you.’

‘A pleasure, Miss Odell,’ Olivia said, although her voice lacked the warmth of her sister’s. She turned her attention back to the pony and the gig lurched forward again.

Deborah Stratton gave Rachel an encouraging smile. When Rachel had first been introduced to the sisters at the reading group the previous week, she had been struck as much by the differences as by the similarities between them, and the same feeling was reinforced now. Both girls were slender with corn-coloured hair and blue eyes, but Olivia’s face was grave in repose and held little animation. Deborah, in contrast, seemed almost to burst out of her skin with vitality. Rachel had liked her immediately and the two of them had fallen into conversation very easily and were now in the way to becoming firm friends. With Olivia, though, matters were different. Rachel thought that it might take some time to get to know Lady Marney.

‘I hope that you are settled in at Midwinter Royal House, Miss Odell,’ Deborah said now with a friendly smile. ‘It is barely three weeks, is it not? I always find that it takes time to accustom oneself to a new place.’

Rachel agreed. ‘I hope,’ she added, ‘that my parents will permit me to become settled in the Midwinter villages. We are forever on the move, you know.’

Deborah’s face lit up. ‘Of course! Your father is the prodigiously famous antiquary Sir Arthur Odell, is he not? We are most impressed to have such eminent neighbours.’

‘Impressed and not a little excited to discover what he will dig up,’ Lady Marney added unexpectedly. She gave Rachel a shy, sideways smile, taking her eyes off the road for a second. ‘No doubt it is all old hat for you, Miss Odell, but we have never experienced an excavation in the Midwinter villages before, though everyone has been wondering what is in those mounds for time over mind.’