Elizabeth Beacon - Regency Rogues - A Winter's Night

‘I can stay here all day if I have to, Eve dear,’ Verity told her. ‘Miss Stainforth has agreed to go and see a dentist at last, so I have all the time in the world to plague you until she is feeling better.’ Verity lounged back on the bed to prove it. ‘I loved it at school, but I’m so glad Papa insisted on hiring Miss Stainforth to teach me instead. Now I can be with you and Aunt Chloe and Uncle Luke all the time when he has to be out of the country and you can’t lie to me at a distance. I can’t see why you treat me like some artless child who must be kept in ignorance of the important things in life, Cousin dear. I preferred you before you made your curtsy to society and became so terribly worldly wise.’

‘No doubt your governess left you plenty to do, Miss Verity, and you ought to be doing it right now,’ Bran said sternly.

‘She was in so much pain she forgot and why should I have my head stuffed with more facts and figures that I shall be expected to forget the moment I set foot in my first ballroom?’

‘Our sex makes up half the world, Verity, and if we were all wilfully ignorant it would fall apart. You should be worrying about the poor lady’s pain and suffering, not gloating over your freedom like some horrid schoolboy let off his lessons,’ Eve tried to scold. Verity looked unimpressed and went on sorting Eve’s sashes.

‘Lady Chloe will find you something useful to do since your poor governess was in too much pain to bother, young lady,’ Bran added with a look at Eve that said her disturbed night was showing on her face.

‘No, don’t bother her at this hour of the morning,’ Eve intervened. Chloe was in the early stages of pregnancy yet again and if this one went like the last two, her stepmother would not be ready to deal with her wayward niece for another hour or two yet. ‘You can take a stroll with me to Green Park among the nursemaids and governesses. I need some fresh air and you will be working too hard this afternoon and poor Miss Stainforth won’t be well enough to accompany you out anyway.’

‘Sourpuss, but I’m not put off that easily. You didn’t answer my question, Eve Winterley. Are you quite sure you didn’t meet the man of your dreams last night?’ Verity asked, being of an age when fairy tales weren’t quite impossible and beckoning womanhood whispered how wonderful if they happened to her.

‘I never had those sorts of dreams, but, no, I did not,’ Eve said firmly, pushing a mental picture of the gruff, wounded and annoyingly unforgettable Mr Carter out of her mind. ‘If Betty comes with us to the park, will you stay and make some of your peppermint tea for Lady Chloe, Bran?’ she asked once Verity was fully occupied with finding her pelisse and muff, then dragging her favourite maid away from her duties as well as the second footman. Verity loved a romance and as Eve refused to live one for her, she must have decided to promote that one instead.

‘Of course I will. You have a good heart under those stubborn ways, haven’t you, my chick?’

Eve eyed her own reflection in the mirror and saw an almost perfect lady of fashion staring back at her. She almost expected a magical image of Mr Carter to peer into the glass behind her and smile mockingly, so she turned away with a sigh. Hadn’t she had just told Verity she didn’t have daydreams and here was the least comfortable hero she had ever encountered intruding into them?

‘I’m too old to be anyone’s chick now,’ she replied to Bran’s question lightly enough before she left the room.

‘You’ll never be too old for that, my love,’ Bran whispered as she watched the almost sisters join up on the wide landing, then go downstairs for their walk. ‘And perhaps I’ve good reason to worry about the dark circles under your eyes and stubborn set to your chin this morning.’

‘Ah, now don’t remind me, I’m determined to recall your name for myself, sir. There now, I knew it would come to me if I thought about it hard enough. You’re Mr Carter, are you not? I dare say you have been calling on my father?’ Miss Winterley’s pleasing contralto voice asked Colm as if they had met at some fashionable soirée.

Damnation, Colm thought darkly; he thought he was safe out here, trying to get some air into his lungs before making his way back to Derneley House. Lord Farenze’s daughter wasn’t as indolent as most of her kind and fate wasn’t on his side this morning either.

‘Good morning, Miss Winterley,’ he managed dourly.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ she replied brightly, as if his failure to sneak past her unnoticed made it a lot better for some reason.

‘We should not linger together in public or private, ma’am,’ he told her in an undertone he hoped he’d pitched too low to carry to the ears of a nearby knot of overgrown schoolgirls giggling over something best known to themselves.

‘We should not linger anywhere, then? You are very unsociable, Mr Carter, and the title ma’am is reserved for ladies with considerably more years in their dish than I have.’

‘Forgive my ignorance, Miss Winterley. It’s as well I have no inclination for high society and it has none for me,’ he said with an odd pang at his exile from the polite world that felt nothing like the burning resentment he had once struggled with.

A Mr Carter had to shape his life around his work, so Colm tried hard not to meet Miss Winterley’s challenging gaze with one of his own and wondered how it would feel to have the wealth and status his father took for granted back right now. Perhaps then he could meet her gaze for gaze and it wouldn’t matter that his father once ran off with her mother. With all that noble blood and nabob wealth at his back Colm Hancourt might have challenged Miss Winterley back and…

No, there was no and…for them and there never would be. Even when he was under his uncle’s roof and being himself again he wouldn’t have much more than a rifle and a tiny annuity. Mr Hancourt worked for his uncle and most of his salary would go on being the Duke of Linaire’s nephew. He must have better clothes and a sturdy horse and anything else could go into a small dowry for his sister. He and Miss Winterley would still not meet as equals and she would probably hate him for who he was when she found out. So he hoped she would tire of such a stiff-necked block and dismiss him before he said something disastrous.

‘You go off into a world of your own at the drop of a hat, don’t you, Mr Carter? That could get you into all sorts of trouble at Derneley House,’ she warned lightly.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Winterley,’ he said. ‘I’ll go about my business and leave you to enjoy the sunshine.’

‘Please don’t go,’ she protested impulsively. ‘My cousin has met some old school friends and is catching up on all she’s missed since they last met.’

The three of them were standing a few yards away, so absorbed in excited conversation they might as well be the only people in the park. ‘I thought your cousins were still in the nursery,’ Colm said, revealing he knew more about her family than he wanted to admit.

‘Uncle James’s various chicks are, but Verity is my stepmama’s niece. I’m surprised you haven’t heard the story yet; it caused a sensation five years ago when my father married Lady Chloe Thessaly and the truth had to come out.’

‘I have spent the last eight years in the army. The sayings and doings of the great and the good passed us by for most of that time.’

‘I suppose you had more important things to think about than gossip and scandal, but you must have been little more than a boy when you took up your commission to have been in the army for so long, Mr Carter.’