Juliet Landon - Regency Rumours

She was not ready for the taunt, nor could she pretend not to know exactly what he meant. Angrily, she pushed herself out of his arms and, if he had not held her, she would have fallen into the hedge. ‘Let go of me!’ she snarled. ‘I should have expected a man like you to take advantage of a lady in such a manner, Lord Elyot. Please leave me.’

He did, but not without having the last word. ‘I think, my lady, that you should not be the one to be complaining about taking advantage. That was to even the score, nothing more. Your servant, ma’am.’

She had little choice but to watch him march briskly away towards the house, knowing that he would find his way out as easily as he’d found his way in.

Planting tulip bulbs was as good a way as any of dissipating anger, though this time it was only partly effective, even after Amelie had lectured the polished copper bulbs on being fortunate enough to have everything they needed, that they had nothing to complain of, not even a lack of companionship. It was the missing element in her own life that no talking-to would be able to reverse.

Signifying everything she had lacked in her marriage, Lord Elyot’s kiss had brought home to her for the second time how little attention she paid to her own physical needs, perhaps deliberately. His hands on her body, his desirous eyes, his deeply moving voice, his authoritative manner that both riled and fascinated her. Josiah had had other sterling qualities, but this was the first time a man had aroused in her such intensely disturbing emotions, combining dislike and fear with a yearning to be near him. He would never know, she told the fecund bulbs, what his kiss had meant to her and, though he had detected a lack of practice, he would surely put it down to her two years of widowhood without taking into account the two bleak years that had gone before. Her despair was for what she had missed, for what she had just been allowed to see, and for what she would never taste again, for by now his enquiries must be nearing some kind of conclusion.

It would mean little to him, of course, one way or the other. His sort made a game of such minor diversions, of teasing respectable women before leaving them to pick up the broken pieces. Twisting the old dry roots from the base of a bulb, she allowed indignation to take the place of sorrow. ‘Well, not me, my lord,’ she growled. ‘I know exactly what to expect from you any day now.’

That same day, Amelie’s obliging young footman, Henry, carried a note to a certain Mr Ruben Hurst at Number 9 King Street from where the mail-coach departed for London three times daily. So intent on his mission was Henry that he failed to notice Lord Seton Rayne resting there on his way home from delivering Miss Chester safely back at Paradise Road. Nor did Henry notice that he was being overheard asking for Mr Hurst, or being told that Mr Hurst had already taken the mail-coach half an hour earlier. Tucking the note back into his waistcoat pocket, Henry was observed leaving the postingoffice, whistling.

As Lord Rayne had been asked by his brother, Lord Elyot, to keep his eyes peeled for anything havey-cavey, he thought the incident worth reporting, though this he was unable to do until after his brother’s long consultation with Todd, the coachman who had just returned to Sheen Court from his visit to the north.

After helping to plant tulips without noticing her aunt’s unusual preoccupation with the task, Caterina went to her room to write her weekly epistle to her father and brother in Buxton. She followed this with a more chatty account of her doings to Sara, her younger sister.

Dearest Sara,

It has been such a week I cannot begin to tell you, but you recall saying how I must find someone with a perch phaeton and that nothing less will do? Well, I have, dear sister. Yes, just imagine your dear Cat bouncing along beside the handsomest gallant with shining top-boots and an hauteur such as you never saw. A marqess’s son, no less. We went to see his sister and her darling puppies today. She has children too. And we’ve been to a dance, a local affair where the men didn’t wear gloves, but good fun with more militia than one could dance with. So very dashing. My escort? Well, yes, I suppose I may befalling in love, which I could not tell to Father.

Oh, how I wish you could be here. Write to me soon. I have my French lesson next. Aunt Amelie lets me read to her from the Journal des Dames et de Modes and I am also reading The Mysteries of Udolpho at last and I have a new bonnet with strawberries on, and Aunt Amelie is getting a new seamstress called Millie. I am to learn how to ride side-saddle tomorrow.

Your ever loving sister who misses you. Cat.

Post Script, take good care of Father and Harry, won’t you? Aunt Amelie’s house is prettier than ours, but smaller. I’m learning to play the harp.

Lady Chester’s new house on Paradise Road was known only as Number Eighteen. Found for her by her agent, then extended and renovated to conform to Amelie’s requirements before her move, it had been on the same site in one form or another for close on three hundred years, growing and evolving through each new style, now more like a mansion than the original timbered cottage. From the road, the white stone façade was elegantly four-storied, the front door with a beautiful fanlight above and accessed by a paved bridge across the basement yard known as ‘the area'.

Through the large double gates along the adjoining wall, the land surrounding the house was more extensive than one might think. Here was not only a sizeable formal garden, a hothouse, kitchen gardens and an orchard, but also a square courtyard surrounded by the kitchen buildings, the servants’ quarters, offices and stores and, beyond all that, the coach house and stables.

In the Peak District of Derbyshire, Amelie’s previous existence had been countrified on a larger scale than this, her entertaining both lavish and frequent in accordance with her husband’s status. At Chester Hall she had tended the preserving of plums and the drying of apple rings, she had pickled walnuts and helped to lay down spare eggs in ash, store the pears, pot the beef and concoct lemon wine using brandy smuggled through Scarborough and Whitby. She had fish on her table from her own ponds and streams, her own ducks and geese, vegetables and fruit enough to send up to the Manchester house and, best of all, she had her own blooms to draw and paint. There was very little that Sir Josiah had denied her—intended, they both knew, to make up for what she could not have.

Being offered her niece’s company for the next phase of her life had required some consideration, but whereas it meant accepting a responsibility she had not anticipated, the diversions had so far been entertaining, even satisfying. Caterina was good company, eager to learn, intelligent, well-mannered and, thank heaven, possesssed of a natural grace that was easy to clothe. The new riding habit she had worn that morning fitted her shapely young figure like a dream, already attracting some admiration from the men and envy from the women.

They had gone riding in the park well before breakfast to avoid meeting certain acquaintances, and a party of young officers from the local militia at Kew had hung around them to stare and to vie for her attention. But Caterina had acquitted herself well and had even managed a comfortable trot attached to the head groom’s leading rein. Fortunately, they had not met anyone disagreeable to Amelie, who had already begun to reap the benefits of having attended the ball, for now there were several waves and smiles and calls of, ‘Good morning to you, Lady Chester.’