Louise Allen - The Outrageous Lady Felsham

Bel wrinkled her nose in disdain, searching for something to explain her faint praise. ‘I find that blond hair rather obvious.’ The others regarded her as though she had remarked that she was about to become a nun, then turned their collective gaze back on his lordship who was, Bel saw with a sinking heart, making his way over to her.

Sinking heart and racing pulse and fluttering insides would be more accurate, she realised, despairingly cataloguing her physical reaction to Reynard’s approach even as she fought to attain some mental coherence.

‘Lady Belinda, Lady Bradford, Mrs Roper, Mrs Wilson.’ His bow was a masterpiece of graceful restraint. The ladies were bowing and simpering, returning the courtesy with a chorus of murmured greetings. He had scrupulously addressed them in order of precedence, Bel realised, getting her alarm that he had spoken her name first under control. There would be nothing there for the others to pounce and speculate upon.

Then his eyes fell on the rosebuds at her bosom and she saw a gleam come into them. What was it? Had he recognised the flowers he had sent? Perhaps he had just ordered his butler to see to a suitable bouquet and had no idea what had been delivered. His lips parted as though to speak.

‘I must thank you again for calling the other day,’ she said, cutting across Mrs Wilson who had begun to remark on how unexpectedly crowded London was.

Reynard’s eyebrows started to lift and she hurried on. ‘I was so grateful for someone to explain the idiosyncrasies of the plumbing on the first floor. Your agent seemed completely baffled.’ Around her she could sense the amusement of her sophisticated acquaintances. Poor little Belinda, she has this gorgeous man in the house and all he has come about is the plumbing!

‘It was my pleasure.’ His eyebrows had returned to their normal level, but the gleam—the wicked gleam—was more intense as his voice slurred slightly over pleasure. Something wicked in her flickered into being in response and she could tell he had recognised it in her eyes. ‘After all, the shower bath in the dressing room was put in at my insistence, but I fear the plumber had never come across such a thing before and it still works only intermittently.’

There was a flutter of interest. A shower bath was so novel, and the act of discussing bathing with a man so risqué, that the ladies fell to exclaiming and laughing. Reynard stooped to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen from her reticule and murmured, ‘Clever.’

‘You too,’ Bel murmured back.

‘A good team.’ He pressed the scrap of lace-trimmed nonsense into her gloved hand, his fingers closing for a moment around hers, then his attention was back on the others. ‘You were saying that London is very full of society, Mrs Wilson?’

‘Quite amazingly so for July, do you not agree?’ She batted her eyelashes at him. ‘I think it is because all you wonderfully brave officers are coming back home and everyone wants to meet you.’

There it was again, that shutter descending, closing down the animation in Reynard’s startling blue eyes. ‘And all the wonderfully brave men as well,’ Bel said abruptly, remembering something she had read in the newssheet only the other day about the wounded men still straggling back from Belgium. ‘But they are not receiving so much positive attention, are they? After all, scars and missing limbs are not so glamorous shielded only by homespuns as they are beneath a scarlet dress coat.’

There was a collective gasp, but Reynard turned to her, a smile lurking behind his grave countenance. ‘Indeed, that is very true, Lady Belinda. But doubtless society ladies are already rallying to form charitable organisations to help the men and their families, and urging their husbands to find them work.’

‘One can only hope so,’ she responded seriously.

‘If you will excuse me, ladies? I am promised to Lord Telford for a hand of cards.’ Reynard bowed again and left them to turn on Bel in a flurry of indignation.

‘How could you drive him away like that? Honestly, Belinda, the most handsome man in the room comes to talk to us and you start prosing on about plumbing and amputations!’ Annabelle Bradford scolded.

Bel schooled her face to meekness. ‘I am sorry, I did not think.’ Reynard did not want to speak about his experiences, and she was not going to let these featherbrained women torment him with them, not if she could help it. A good team. The words warmed her inside, adding to the strange hollow feeling that she was beginning to recognise as anticipation and the low, pulsing ache that she supposed was desire.

She turned her face resolutely to the opposite end of the room from where the card room door was. ‘Tell me all about the other attractive men you wicked things have in your sights.’ There could not have been a better choice of subject to distract them. In a ruffle of gorgeous plumage the group settled down in their chairs again.

‘Well,’ Therese began conspiratorially, ‘have you met Lord Betteridge? Just back from the Congress, and I swear…’

That had not been so bad, Bel told herself as she was driven home that evening. She had survived meeting Lord Dereham again without betraying herself in front of the sharpest eyes for scandal in town, she had mingled comfortably with any number of old acquaintances and met several congenial new people and she found herself more confident and poised than she had ever been in society before.

Age, she supposed, did have its benefits in bestowing some confidence. One came to realise that not every eye in the room was upon you, that you could make little mistakes without the world coming to an end and there was neither a strict father, nor a critical husband, to remind you constantly how much you needed to improve yourself.

Bel recalled with a smile how last month she had even brazenly broken her last days of mourning and taken herself off to the Prince Regent’s reception for the Grand Duchess Eva with the sole intention of getting her Serene Highness to herself to upbraid her for breaking her brother Sebastian’s heart.

She had cast every tenet of polite behaviour to the winds when she had done that, and, although she suspected her well-intentioned meddling had actually made things worse for a while between the two lovers, she now had a friend for life in her new sister-in-law.

Lucky things, she mused wistfully. How must it feel to have a man look at you the way Sebastian looked at Eva when he thought himself unobserved, his very soul in his eyes?

‘My lady?’ They were home, the groom was holding the door of the carriage for her, and had probably been standing there patiently for some minutes.

‘Thank you, James.’ She gathered up her things and stepped out. Yes, all in all, this evening had been a success and she felt confident about repeating it. Tomorrow night was the Steppingleys’ dancing party, an opportunity, she had been informed by Mrs Steppingley that evening, of giving her daughter and her friends some experience before their come-out next Season. Lady Belinda need not fear a juvenile party, she had been assured, her hostess had invited a mixture of interesting people and there would be cards for those not wishing to dance.

It would be fun to dance again, although she would avoid the waltz, of course, and perhaps meeting all those interesting people she had been promised would help keep her mind off a certain broad-shouldered gentleman with a sinfully tempting curve to his mobile mouth. If only he did not make her feel so wicked.

Philpott glided about in her usual stately fashion, unpinning Bel’s hair, locking away her jewellery, stuffing the tissue paper into the toes of her evening slippers before coming back to unfasten her gown.