Stephanie Laurens: Tangled Reins

Released, Dorothea opened the gate and made good her escape.

She hurried through the garden, for once unconscious of the heady scents rising from the rioting flowers. The long shadows cast by the ancient roof of the Grange fell across the path, heralding the end of the day. She stopped in the garden hall; the coolness of the dim, stone-flagged room brought relief to her burning cheeks. The clattering steps of the housemaid sounded in the passageway. Moving to the door, she called her in.

‘Take these berries to Cook, please, Doris. And after that you can lay out the meadowsweet on the drying racks.’ With a wave of her hand she indicated the wooden frames covered with tightly stretched muslin lying on the bench along one side of the room.

As an afterthought, she added, ‘And please tell my aunt I’ve gone to lie on my bed until dinner. I think I must have a touch of the sun.’ More accurately, a touch of the Marquis of Hazelmere! she thought furiously. Successfully negotiating the passageway and stairs undetected, she closed her bedchamber door and sank on to the window-seat.

Gazing over the now deeply shadowed garden, she struggled to bring some order to a mind still seething. Ridiculous! She had left the Grange a serenely confident twenty-two-year-old, entirely secure in her independent world. Yet here she was, a scant hour later, feeling, she suspected, as Cecily might if the Squire’s son had made eyes at her! It was not as if she had never been kissed before. It shouldn’t make the slightest difference who was doing the kissing. The fact that it had made a great deal of difference exacerbated a temper already tried by a pair of hazel eyes. A pair of all too perceptive hazel eyes. She spent the next ten minutes reading herself a determined lecture on the inadvisability of forming an attachment for a rake.

Fortified, she forced herself to consider the matter in a more reasoning light. Undoubtedly she should feel outraged, ready to decry the Marquis as a licentious scoundrel. Yet, despite her irritation, she was too honest not to admit that her inappropriate attire was partly to blame. Moreover, she suspected that the response of a young lady on finding herself in the arms of the Marquis of Hazelmere should have been quite different from the way she had behaved. In her defence, she felt it should be noted that had she swooned in his arms he would have had little choice but to wait with her until she recovered. Then the situation would have been, if anything, worse. By following this train of thought, she convinced herself there had been nothing particularly reprehensible about the proceedings after Lord Hazelmere had released her. In fact, he had proved a valuable informant on the subject of her grandmother.

What continued to bother her were the events preceding her release from that far too familiar embrace. Her fingers strayed to her lips, which, despite his expertise, were slightly bruised. The memory of his hard body against hers was still a physical sensation. The clock on the landing struck the quarter-hour. She determinedly put her thoughts on the afternoon’s events aside, resolutely consigning the Marquis and all his works to the remotest corner of her mind. Nothing was more certain than that he would forget all about her by tomorrow.

Changing out of her old gown and into the freshly pressed sprigged muslin laid out for the warm evening, she gauged her chances of unwittingly running into him again. Well versed in the ways of the local gentry, she knew it would be all but impossible for him to meet her socially in the country. And, by his own admission, he was not in the habit of remaining over-long at Moreton Park. She told herself she was relieved. To make doubly sure her relief remained undisturbed, she resolved that, in future, she would ensure that her reluctant sister joined her on her rambles.

Picking up a brush, she attacked her long tresses vigorously before winding them up in a simple knot. She glanced quickly at her reflection in the mirror perched on her tallboy. Satisfied she had dealt sufficiently with the potential ramifications of the advent of the Marquis of Hazelmere into her life, she went downstairs to her dinner.

A fortnight later, returning to Hazelmere House, his mansion in Cavendish Square, situated almost directly opposite Merion House, the Marquis found a large pile of letters and invitations awaiting him. Sorting through them, he strolled into his library. Extracting an envelope of a particularly virulent shade of purple from the bundle, he held it at arm’s length to escape the cloying perfume emanating from it and groped for his quizzing glass. Recognising the flowery script of his latest mistress, a dazzling creature abundantly well endowed for her station in life, his black brows drew together. He opened the letter and scanned the few lines within. The black brows rose. A smile of a kind Dorothea Darent would not have recognised twisted the mobile lips. Throwing both letter and envelope into the fire, he turned to his desk.

The footman who answered the summons of the library bell ten minutes later found his master fixing his seal to a letter. Glancing up as the door opened, Hazelmere waved the envelope to cool the wax, then held it out. ‘Deliver this by hand immediately.’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

Watching the retreating back of the footman, Hazelmere considered the probable reception of his politely savage missive. Thus ended yet another affaire . Stretching his long legs to the fire, he fell to considering the constantly changing parade of his high-flying mistresses. While providing the ton with a stream of on-dits , he felt that the inevitability of the game was beginning to bore him. After more than ten years on the town, there were few fashionable vices he had not sampled and the pattern of his activities was becoming wearyingly predictable.

Thinking again of the discarded Cerise, he compared her ripe beauty with that of the green-eyed girl whose face had proved disturbingly haunting. His dissatisfaction with his present lot stemmed in large part from that encounter in Moreton Park woods. Entirely his own fault, of course.

Marc St John Ralton Henry, at thirty-one years of age the fifth Marquis of Hazelmere and one of the wealthiest peers of the realm, let his mind wander back to the first time he had heard Miss Darent’s name, during a conversation he had had with his great-aunt the night before she died. A remarkably forthright old lady, she had fixed him with a steely look and embarked on an inquisition as to his marital intentions. This had been prefaced by the remark, ‘I know your mother won’t mention this, so I’m takin’ advantage of the fact that, as I’m dying, you can’t very well tell me to go to the devil!’

Appreciative of the ploy and having admitted he had no present plans in the matter, he had settled down to listen with good grace to the subsequent dissertation, something he would not have done had it been anyone else.

‘Can’t say I blame you for not wanting to marry any of these namby-pamby misses presented every year,’ she’d snorted derisively. ‘Can’t abide such ninny-hammers myself! But why not look to wider fields? There’s plenty of suitable chits who for one reason or another have never made it to London.’

Catching sight of his sceptical face, she had continued, ‘Oh, you needn’t think that just because they’re country misses they couldn’t handle life in the ton. There’s Dorothea Darent, for one. Young, beautiful, well dowered and as well born as yourself. The only reason she hasn’t been presented is that she’s spent the last six years running her widowed mother’s household. Cynthia Darent should be kicked for not bringing her out years ago!’ Here Great-Aunt Etta had paused, musing on the sins of the late Lady Darent. ‘Well, it’s too late for that now, ‘cause she’s dead.’