Marie-Louise Hall - Rake's Reform

“He is coming!” Janey’s face lit up. “When?”

“Oh, in a week or two, I think Papa said,” Annabel replied carelessly still admiring herself in the glass.

“A week or two!” The brief flare of hope she had felt died instantly. A week and all would be over for Jem. No doubt the promise had been forgotten as soon as made. So now what was she to do?

“Yes, but whatever has Jonathan Lindsay to do with you?” Annabel asked, suddenly curious as she turned to look at Jane. “You have gone quite pale.”

“Nothing, I met him in Burton’s Lane a few days ago,” she said tersely, Mr Cobbett’s Register fluttering unnoticed from the lap of her lavender muslin gown as she got to her feet. “That’s all.”

“That’s all!” Annabel’s blue eyes widened in exaggerated despair. “You meet the most handsome man in England in Burton’s Lane and you did not say a word to anyone!”

“I did not think him so very handsome,” Janey said, not entirely truthfully. “He was a little too much of the dandy for my taste.”

“Not handsome!” Annabel groaned and flounced down upon a sofa. “When he is so dark, so rugged—and that profile! Why, he could be Miss Austen’s Darcy in the flesh.”

“That is not how I see him,” Janey said, half to herself, as an unexpected image of his face, chiselled, and hard, lightened only by the slant of his mouth and brows, and the lazy amusement in the cool blue eyes, came instantly into her mind. Oh, no, she thought, Mr Lindsay was definitely no Mr Darcy. He was far too incorrect—far too dangerous in every sense.

She doubted he was afraid of breaking conventions, or anything else for that matter. In fact, strip him of his dandified clothes and put him in a suit of buckskins and he would not have been so out of place among the backwoodsmen among whom she had grown up. Whether or not someone would survive on the frontier was the yardstick by which she always found herself assessing people; in Mr Lindsay’s case, she found her answer was a surprising “yes”.

“It’s so unfair that you had to meet him in Burton’s Lane instead of me,” Annabel complained as she toyed with one of the flounces on her gown. “You should have invited him back here. Do you have any idea of how hard I tried for an introduction when I was in Town last Season?” Then her sullen round face brightened. “Mama will not possibly be able to refuse to allow us to be introduced now he is to be a neighbour.”

“Your mother would not allow you to be introduced to him? Why ever not?” Janey asked, curious in spite of herself. The son of an Earl, even if he were the younger could usually do no wrong in the eyes of Mrs Filmore.

“Because of his reputation, ninny,” Annabel explained patiently, as if she were speaking to a child. “He is the greatest rake and gambler in England; at least, that is what Miss Roberts told Mama. She said that there were a dozen husbands with cause to call him out, if duelling had not been banned, and another twenty wives who would willingly give their spouses cause to do the same.

“And she told me that he quite broke Araminta Howard’s heart—and very nearly her reputation. Miss Roberts says he cares for nothing but his pleasure—” Annabel’s lips parted upon the word and she gave a little shiver.

“I can scarcely believe that of the man who made the speech that was printed in the paper,” Janey said, feeling a peculiar distaste about hearing of Jonathan Lindsay’s apparently numerous amours.

“The speech about the poor!” Annabel gave a shriek of laughter as her brother entered the room, and came to lounge sullenly against the mantle. “Piers! Piers! Jane admires the speech Jonathan Lindsay made on behalf of the poor.”

“Then, once he has settled in, we must be sure to call so she can congratulate him in person,” Piers drawled, an unpleasant smile on his rather too-plump mouth. “I am sure he will be delighted with her admiration.”

“Oh we must—we must—” Annabel spluttered into helpless incoherent laughter.

With a resigned sigh, Janey bent to pick up the Register and made to leave.

“Where are you going, dear coz?” Piers stepped in front of her.

“Somewhere a little quieter,” Janey said, staring back into Piers’s rather bulbous pale blue eyes. “Will you stand aside, please?”

“Papa wants you in the library,” Piers answered without moving. “He is none too happy about the food you’ve been doling out in the village. Quite choleric, in fact, says he won’t have the estate’s money wasted upon the undeserving poor who do no work.”

“And yet he does not mind keeping you in funds,” Janey said mildly.

“I am not poor,” Piers said frostily, his heavy features taking on an expression of hauteur.

“Undeserving was the adjective I had in mind.” Janey smiled. “Now let me pass, if you please. Perhaps you can convey my apologies to your father? I have other more pressing matters to attend to this morning.”

“Like reading this insurrectionist rubbish!” Piers snatched the Register from her, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the fire.

“How dare you!” Janey hissed. “That was mine, you had no right—”

“I had every right, dear coz,” Piers sneered, catching her arm as she went to turn away. “You know Papa will not have that paper in the house. And now you are coming to the library, as Papa wishes.”

“Let go of me!” Janey said warningly.

“No.”

“Very well.” Janey brought her knee sharply upwards in a manoeuvre which no well-brought-up young English lady would have known.

There were definitely some advantages in a frontier upbringing, she thought, as she saw Piers’s eyes bulge, and he crumpled into a groaning heap upon the floor.

“Jane! What have you done? You have killed him!” Annabel flew to her cursing brother’s side.

“I fear not,” Janey said unrepentantly. She picked up her shawl from the window-seat and turned for the door, a smile upon her lips. A smile that froze as she found herself looking over her guardian’s shoulder, straight into Jonathan Lindsay’s blue eyes.

How long he had been there, what he thought of her after the scene he had just witnessed, were of no consequence for the moment in which their gazes locked. She only knew that she felt a ridiculous surge of happiness that he had not forgotten his promise to her. He had come.

“Jane!” Mr Filmore, who had seemed transfixed, apart from the trembling of his moustache, finally found his voice in a tone of thunderous disapproval. “I cannot think what you have to smile about! Brawling like some tavern slut! Has the money your grandfather spent upon your education, the effort Mrs Filmore has expended, counted for nothing?”

Janey made no answer, but stood, head held high, her gaze fixed upon a point somewhere over the rather short Mr Filmore’s head. She had a very good idea of how the conversation would progress. Mr Filmore never lost an opportunity to remind her of her failings, her lack of gratitude for the belated, but expensive, education lavished upon her by her grandfather.

Or the fact that she had been discovered, at the age of fifteen, living in a boarding house in the care of a woman who thought little of hiring herself out along with the beds, a woman who taught her the very useful manoeuvre she had just tried out on Piers. And upon receipt of that information, Jonathan Lindsay would no doubt decide to discontinue their acquaintance at the earliest opportunity, she thought, her happiness evaporating into a sudden bleak emptiness.

“Have you ever had the misfortune to witness such behaviour before, Mr Lindsay? I should wager you have not!” Somewhat to Janey’s surprise, Mr Filmore turned to address his visitor before berating her further.