Carole Mortimer - Regency Christmas Proposals

For Gray to take Amelia into the midst of that arrogant and aristocratic family would be complete madness on his part.

And he did not believe himself to have been driven completely mad as yet …

Amelia knew just from looking at the hard implacability of Gideon’s expression as he turned to face her that she was not going to like what he said next. Any more than she liked the fact that he had moved away from her so abruptly when it had looked as if he might have been going to kiss her …!

‘You really have no one else to stay with?’ he rasped. ‘No other family? Grandparents? Uncles or aunts?’

Perhaps an old family friend, or even just an acquaintance, who might be persuaded into taking responsibility for her? Amelia inwardly finished with a proud straightening of her spine. ‘There is not even an old family dog who might be brought here to keep me company!’ Her eyes flashed.

Lord Grayson’s mouth firmed. ‘There is no need to take that tone, Amelia—’

‘There is every need if I have correctly understood your reluctance for my company!’ Amelia stood up abruptly. ‘But do not be alarmed, sir. I have my own rooms, and if necessary can easily remain in them for the duration of your stay here!’

She looked beautiful as she stared him down so proudly, Gray acknowledged ruefully. Every inch the lady she undoubtedly was. Every inch of her too beautiful and desirable for his own peace of mind.

‘Do not be so melodramatic, Amelia.’ Gray affected a bored tone. ‘The fact that you no longer have a companion here with you is, I admit, a little …inconvenient—’

‘It is not inconvenient to me, sir.’ She gave a determined shake of her head. ‘You can have no idea of the constraints that have been placed upon me since I first entered your brother’s household.’

A reminder, Gray recognised, of his complete lack of thought or understanding for what Amelia’s life might have been these past years. Or what her life had been before that time …

‘Tell me,’ he encouraged huskily. ‘I know nothing of either your mother or your own life before she and Perry were married.’ Gray’s admission caused him some discomfort as he acknowledged that he should have made more of an effort to meet his brother’s wife and stepdaughter. ‘Where did you and your mother live before you came here?’ He moved to sit in one of the pale blue chairs set beside the fire, crossing one leg over the other as he looked up at Amelia enquiringly.

Her shoulders lost some of their stiffness. ‘We had a cottage beside the sea in a small village on the Devonshire coast. My father’s family came from there originally. He was the son of a vicar, but always wanted to be a soldier.’ She gave a rueful smile at that irony.

A cottage set beside the sea in a village on the Devonshire coast …

The complete opposite, Gray acknowledged, to a manor house set alone in the flat and often bleak Bedfordshire countryside.

Amelia gave a shake of her head. ‘My mother was the daughter and only child of the local squire. He died before I was born, so I never knew him, but according to my mother he had high expectations of his only child making an advantageous marriage. He would not even entertain the idea of her marrying the soldier son of the local vicar! My mother and father ran away together, and were married when my mother was but seventeen. It was a happy marriage.’ Her chin rose defensively, as if she expected Gray to challenge the statement.

Which he had no intention of doing. ‘They returned to the village following their marriage …?’

‘Not immediately, no.’ Amelia gave a smile. ‘My mother accompanied my father on his campaigns for a year or more, and I believe it was only decided my mother must return to England once they knew she was expecting a child. Her father—my grandfather—had been killed in a hunting accident several months earlier, unfortunately without there having been any reconciliation between the two of them, which resulted in his leaving all his wealth to a distant cousin or some such.’ She shrugged delicate shoulders. ‘But, having returned alone to England, it was my mother’s wish to live in the village she knew, with people she was familiar with.’

‘That sounds …sensible.’ Gray nodded, having more of an understanding now of where Amelia had come by her indomitable spirit. With a soldier for a father, and a mother who had known and determined her own heart even in the face of parental disapproval, Amelia had been sure to be of similar determination and courage. That same determination and courage that had enabled her to face down an intruder with a pistol the evening before!

Amelia nodded. ‘I am sure that my mother must have missed my father deeply, but it was an idyllic childhood as far as I was concerned. Months when I had my mother completely to myself, followed by weeks of excitement and outings when my father, now a sergeant in his regiment, was able to join us.’

The wistfulness of her expression told Gray just how idyllic, how happy, that childhood had been.

Her chin rose proudly. ‘My father was killed four years ago. At which time his commanding officer, Major Lord Peregrine Grayson—’ she smiled affectionately ‘—wrote to my mother, expressing his deepest sympathy at the loss of such a gallant soldier as he considered my father to be, and promising that he would visit her in person as soon as he was able.’

That sounded like Perry, Gray acknowledged with sad affection, knowing that his brother had been a man who’d felt the loss of each and every man in his own regiment and, once it had been believed the fighting was over, had tried to visit the close relatives of all who had died whilst fighting alongside him during those bloody years of war.

‘Obviously it was a fortuitous visit …?’

Those blue eyes narrowed. ‘I trust you are not implying—’

‘I assure you I am not implying anything, Amelia.’ Gray held up silencing hands. ‘From Perry’s account of things, he and your mother fell in love with each other on sight.’

‘Yes.’ Amelia sighed sadly at the memory of how her mother’s second marriage to Lord Peregrine Grayson had lasted only for a few brief months before her mother was taken ill with influenza and as quickly died.

‘Which brings us back to here and now, and what to do with you.’

Amelia eyed Gideon Grayson warily. ‘What to do with me …?’

He gave an autocratic inclination of his head. ‘It has been suggested to me, as you are nineteen years of age, that come the spring you might like to have a Season in London.’

‘A Season? Really?’ Amelia eyes lit up with excitement at the prospect of going to London. Until she realised exactly what Gideon had said. ‘Been suggested by whom …?’ she prompted suspiciously.

He glanced down to brush a speck of lint from his perfectly tailored pantaloons. ‘An acquaintance.’

What acquaintance? Amelia wondered with a frown. And when and where had Gideon met this acquaintance? Had it been this morning? Or had this already been decided upon, discussed with a third party, before Gideon even came to Steadley Manor? Perhaps—Amelia felt a pained contraction of her chest—with the mistress in London who currently shared Gideon’s bed …?

‘That is the reason I asked a few minutes ago if you had any relatives—older female relatives, obviously—who might act as chaperone during that time,’ Gideon continued coolly.

‘I am sorry, no.’ There was a complete lack of apology in Amelia’s slightly defiant tone.

Gideon had discussed her—what to do with her!—with a third party. As if she were some unasked-for package that had been delivered to his door by mistake. An unasked-for and unwanted package that Gideon Grayson obviously now wished to rid himself of at the earliest opportunity!