Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 48

‘Lord Allerton.’ Lily swallowed the lump in her throat and managed not to squeak. She had last seen him on a damp heath, stripped to the waist with blood pouring down his arm. Now he looked relaxed, well and—surrounded by the thick ancestral walls of his home—formidably unapproachable. He was the same man as he had been in London, yet totally different.

‘What a surprise to see you again so soon, Miss France.’ He gave no indication whether he found the surprise a pleasant one or not, but Lily thought she could guess.

‘Miss France was just telling us about tea.’ Lady Allerton appeared not to notice the atmosphere. ‘Would you care for a cup, Lovell, or shall I ring for coffee?’

‘Neither, thank you, Mama.’ He did not sit down either and Lily could see both his younger sisters beginning to look uncertainly at him. He was waiting for her to explain herself, as well he might.

‘Another cup, Miss France? A biscuit?’

‘No, I thank you, ma’am. I … I must not take any more of your time. I came only to say something to Lord Allerton, then I must go.’

‘Really? But will you not stay with us a while? We would be delighted to have you, and you are so far from home.’

Lily smiled distractedly at her hostess. ‘Thank you, Lady Allerton … but I must say this, and then—’

‘You wish to be alone.’ Lady Allerton got to her feet and gestured to her daughters. ‘Come along, girls, and let Miss France discuss her business.’

‘No! No, please do not go. I should say this in front of all of you.’ Now she had begun the words came more easily. Lily made herself meet Jack’s eyes, even darker now, his eyebrows raised in what seemed to be disdainful query.

‘I came only to apologise—to Lord Allerton for failing to thank him as I should for what he has done for me, and to his family for putting him in such peril.’

‘Peril?’ Lady Allerton half-rose from her chair, but Miss Lovell’s hand on her shoulder pressed her gently back down. Caroline’s gaze was fixed on her brother, but she remained standing quietly.

‘On three—no, four—occasions Lord Allerton has come to my aid. He rescued me when I was escaping the unwanted attentions of a gentleman. He was injured—you can see the scar on his temple—when a mob surrounded my house. He was struck down by that same man even though he was already hurt, and finally, when he called him to account for his behaviour, Lord Allerton was wounded in the arm.’

‘Duelling?’ From the expressions on the faces of at least three of the women in front of her, Lily realised they had not known about the duel. ‘Duelling?’ Lady Allerton repeated. ‘What wound?’

‘A flesh wound in the left upper arm,’ Lily explained, the words tumbling out now. Jack’s brows had drawn together thunderously. So, he had managed to conceal it from them. ‘But that is not all. I was tactless, insensitive, thoughtless.’ There was no denial on his face. She forgot the watching women and began to speak only to Jack. ‘I made things in London much more difficult for you than they might have been. I did not help your search for investors as I might have done. We parted in anger because I was too self-centred to see your point of view. And too spoilt to stand being thwarted.’ She might as well say it all now, humiliate herself thoroughly while she was about it.

‘I was brought up to take responsibility for my mistakes. I do not make many.’ There was a sudden glimmer of humour in his eyes and her heart twisted. ‘Not many, but when I do, I apologise. I went to the Bull and Mouth, but I was too late, you had gone.’

‘You could have written, saved yourself a tedious journey.’ Jack sounded as neutral as if she had been discussing a minor matter of business.

‘That would have been inadequate. You could have been killed.’ Lily turned to Lady Allerton. ‘I did try and stop it—’

‘You did what?’ It seemed she had penetrated Jack’s chilly calm at last.

‘I spoke to Lord Gledhill, and to Doctor Ord, but they both explained that there was nothing I could do. I did think of informing the magistrates, but Lord Gledhill said you would only find another place to fight.’

‘Where did you speak to Lord Gledhill?’ The very quietness of Jack’s tone should have warned her.

‘I went to his lodgings—’

‘You, an unmarried lady, went to a bachelor’s lodgings—without your chaperon, I make no doubt—I wonder why I should trouble to defend your honour when you are so careless of it!’

‘Jack!’ Out of the corner of her eye Lily was aware of Miss Lovell bending to murmur in her mother’s ear. Lady Allerton subsided and her daughter slipped from the room.

‘Well, it was my fault you were fighting, I had to do what I could to stop it!’

‘No, you did not!’ They were both furious now. Lily found she was on her feet, her palm itching to slap him. His face was so white that the faded bruises of his fight with Lord Dovercourt were starkly visible. ‘And I suppose you were there, on Hampstead Heath? Which idiot did you persuade to take you? If it was Gledhill, I swear I am going straight back down to London to call him out!’

‘It was Doctor Ord. Don’t you dare bully the poor man—he is twice your age.’

‘Poor man? I imagine he must be senile to have allowed such a thing. Of all the bird-witted, brazen-faced things to have done—’

‘Jack!’

‘I am sorry, Mama.’ He sounded anything but sorry, despite lowering his voice. ‘But what a totty-headed—’

‘You,’ Lily pronounced with awful dignity, gathering up her reticule, ‘are the rudest, most stubborn, most prideful man I have ever met. Lady Allerton, I apologise for being the cause of your son putting himself in the way of harm, and I am deeply thankful for your sake that nothing worse came of it. Thank you for your hospitality. If your butler could please summon my carriage, I will leave you.’

‘Oh, but you are staying, are you not, Miss France?’ It was Miss Lovell, coming back into the room without showing the slightest consciousness that she was stepping into the eye of a storm. ‘I sent your carriage back to Newcastle quite five minutes ago. They have brought in your luggage. I thought the White Bedchamber, Mama?’ She smiled round at her stony-faced brother, her younger sisters, both wide-eyed with horrified excitement, her astonished mother, and hesitated when she got to Lily.

‘Is something wrong, Miss France?’

‘I am staying with my agent, Mr Lovington and his wife, in Newcastle.’

‘But all your luggage was in the carriage, and your maid said you had stayed at the Queen’s Head last night and had paid your shot this morning.’

‘I was intending to call upon Mr Lovington as soon as I returned to Newcastle today,’ Lily explained with as much calm as she could muster.

‘Taking him unawares?’ Jack observed. ‘Very wise.’ Lily tried to ignore him.

‘Perhaps a servant could be sent after the carriage, Lady Allerton? I regret appearing ungracious, but as you have no doubt become aware in the last few minutes, it would be highly unsuitable for me to stay here a moment longer.’

‘But there are no horses available,’ Caroline interjected. ‘I am so sorry, Miss France, but the carriage team is down at the Home Farm, er … ploughing. And the smith is here attending to the shoes on all the saddle horses—none of them are fit to be ridden for at least two hours, he always starts by removing all the old shoes. And by the time a rider caught up with your carriage it would be back in Newcastle.’ She hesitated, a look of doubt on her face. ‘Oh, dear, and I have no idea where they will have gone. Does the coachman have your agent’s address?’

‘No,’ Lily said between clenched teeth. ‘Presumably he will go to a livery stable. And no doubt there are numerous such establishments in Newcastle.’

‘Dozens.’ After a long, cool, look at his sister, Jack had strolled away to lean one arm on the massive carved overmantel.

‘And it is coming on to rain now,’ Caroline added. ‘Never mind, it can all be sorted out tomorrow, I am sure. Will you not come up and see your chamber, Miss France?’

Lily looked around the room, receiving no help from either Jack’s expressionless face or his amiably smiling family.

‘Please, do indulge us and stay, Miss France.’ It was hard to resist a direct request from Lady Allerton. ‘My two eldest children appear between them to have placed you in an uncomfortable situation, but I beg that you will not consider it. I would very much welcome your company for as many days as you are able to spare—it would give us great pleasure to hear all the news from London. Lovell has done his best, but his eye for the latest mode in bonnets is not perhaps the sharpest, and his ear for gossip is positively non-existent.’

All the women started as a sudden vicious burst of rain hit the windows. The room darkened. Lily knew that to insist on sending a servant on horseback into Newcastle to hunt up a carriage at an unknown livery yard in this weather was quite impossible. ‘Thank you, Lady Allerton. I would be delighted. You are most kind.’

Miss Lovell opened the door and stood waiting. Yielding to the inevitable, Lily followed her out into the Great Hall, wondering how much she had heard of that furious exchange with Jack. His family appeared to take the situation with amazing calm; gloomily Lily decided this must be a sign of their superior breeding and that her own outburst would have damned her utterly in Lady Allerton’s opinion, however polite the countess was being.

‘Now, you must not worry if you get lost,’ Miss Lovell was saying cheerfully as she led the way up the great stone staircase past several more suits of armour and a vast, almost black, oil painting. ‘All our guests do. Just tug a bell pull or keep going down whatever stairs you come to. Sooner or later everything ends up back in the Great Hall.’

‘It is a wonderful building.’ Lily tried to catch glimpses of the rain-swept grounds outside through narrow lancet windows set deep into the walls.

‘It is,’ Caroline agreed, flipping aside a tapestry to reveal a door. ‘I had better tie this back or you will never find it again. We all adore it, even though it is draughty and inconvenient and far too big. And one turret fell down at the time my father inherited the title. Mind you, it needs structural work all the time, never mind the turret, so goodness knows if Jack could ever manage to get round to rebuilding that on top of everything else. He says running Allerton is like standing in front of a fire throwing on five-pound notes,’ she added cheerfully.

‘Oh.’ Lily followed through the door and up a winding wooden staircase with carved beasts on the finials. And if I had not blundered so tactlessly …

‘Jack is talking about doing some redecoration, though.’ Caroline opened a door at the end of the corridor. ‘I believe he got some ideas in London. He was telling us about a house with crocodiles and how it was decorated in the Egyptian style, but I think that can only be a joke. Now, what do you think of this room?’

‘Lovely.’ Lily pushed the hurtful thought that Jack had been laughing about her to the back of her mind. ‘It is just like a princess’s room from a fairy tale.’

‘That is what I always feel.’ Miss Lovell seemed pleased with her response. ‘When I was little, I would climb up into this window seat and watch for my handsome prince to come.’

Lily walked across the room and joined her. The window was cut deep into the thick stone walls and a seat had been formed in the embrasure, heaped with tapestry cushions and framed by brocade curtains, once white, now aged into a deep cream. The bed was draped in the same brocade and the walls had been simply plastered and whitewashed.

As she looked round Janet bustled out of a side door, her arms full of underwear, and a maid was on her hands and knees setting a fire. ‘We have to light fires most months,’ Miss Lovell explained. ‘Thank you, Susan.’ The maid gathered up her brushes and bobbed a curtsy. Janet tactfully vanished back into what Lily assumed was a dressing room and pulled the door shut.

‘Is my brother being very difficult, Miss France?’ Lily stiffened, then realised she could not resist the wicked twinkle in the eyes that were so like Jack’s.

‘Very, but I’m afraid we have both been,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I am so sorry to have shocked Lady Allerton by telling her about the duel; I had assumed that everyone would know about it because of Jack’s wound.’

‘He hid it very well from everyone but me. Stubborn creature,’ his loving sister pronounced fondly.

‘Oh, isn’t he!’ Lily clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Miss Lovell, I am so sorry. I should never have said that.’

‘Nonsense. And please will you not call me Caroline? Do you want to wash or rest? Because if not, do come to my room and tell me all about it.’

Lily let herself be borne off along more confusing corridors and settled on a chaise in Caroline’s room. ‘Now, I must know everything! Has Jack been absolutely impossible?’

‘It is just as much my fault, I suppose, although that is difficult to remember when he is being … stubborn,’ Lily said with some feeling, trying to decide what she could safely tell her new friend. ‘I was engaged to be married to a baron. My family particularly wanted me to marry into the aristocracy. We are trade, of course,’ she added baldly, just in case Caroline was in any doubt.

‘Yes, you said. Tea. You are lucky to be able to escape all the boring ladylike things and use your brain.’

‘Only one is expected to do all the boring ladylike things as well—like catching an eligible husband. Anyway, I made a dreadful mistake with the one I chose. I knew he wanted my money, that went without saying, but I did not expect him to be such a … he expected me to sleep with him before we were married,’ she said baldly.

‘And you did not want to?’ Caroline did not appear unduly shocked, more curious.

‘I thought I would have to. But when it came to it I could not bring myself to do it, and I ran away and Ja … Lord Allerton rescued me. But I didn’t know he was an earl then, and I told him about wanting to marry a titled gentleman, and he still didn’t tell me who he was. And I tried to persuade my trustees to invest in the mine, but they wouldn’t and he was furious and we had the most dreadful row. And still he fought the men who had been insulting me. Which was dreadful.’

‘I should think it was,’ Caroline agreed warmly. ‘Bad enough that he had gained your confidence when he was deceiving you about who he was, but then to put you under an obligation when all you wanted was to be furious with him—that is such a typically male thing to do.’

This was an analysis that had not previously occurred to Lily, but she could not but agree with it. She was warming to Jack’s sister. ‘You should not sympathise with me,’ she said penitently. ‘I almost got him killed, and he came away from London with no investors.’

‘Do not blame yourself Lily. Jack has borrowed from the bank after all, so that is fine, and he wasn’t killed, so there is no need to worry over what might have been.’

Lily bit her lip. He had borrowed from the bank, presumably with the mine itself as security. Which meant that, unlike a limited partnership with an investor where each would bear their own losses, Jack would lose the entire mine if he could not repay the debt.

For a moment the notion of approaching the bank to buy up the debt seemed the obvious solution. Then she pulled herself up. Jack would hate that and she would end up blundering in and hurting his pride, just as she had before. He had made a decision—she owed it to him not to interfere.

‘Lily?’

‘Yes? I do beg your pardon, my mind wandered for a moment.’

‘Lily, would you be very kind and set aside your dislike of Jack enough to stay with us for at least a week? You see, Mama has been rather low and it would do her so much good to have a visitor. London gossip and news would be just the thing—I would so much appreciate it.’

Dislike Jack? If only that were the problem! How can I live in the same house—castle—as him without betraying how much I love him? But I have wronged Lady Allerton and her daughters, and I could have been the cause of him being killed, so how can I refuse to do what I can for his mother?

If it was possible to wring one’s hands mentally, Lily realised she was doing it now. ‘If Lady Allerton truly would like me to stay, of course, I would be delighted. But I feel it is a dreadful imposition—after all, I arrive unannounced, Jack and I have a flaming … I mean, Lord Allerton and I have a disagreement in front of the entire family—whatever must she think of me?’

‘That you have been much provoked by her son, and providentially kidnapped by her daughter.’ Caroline chuckled. ‘Now, shall we see if luncheon is ready?’

Jack retreated to the study, away from Penny’s wide-eyed interest and his mother and Susan’s equally intolerable pose of finding nothing whatever to remark upon, other than that it was a charming diversion to have a house guest. Braced for reproaches about duelling, to say nothing of his unflattering exchange of insults with Lily, he came up against the sweet face of good breeding and a ladylike refusal to acknowledge unpleasantness.

He wanted Lily, he realised. He wanted her so much it hurt. He wanted to apologise to her for the thoughts that had gone through his mind after the first incredulous pleasure of realising she really was standing on his threshold. For one, unforgivable moment he assumed she had decided to pursue him—and his title. Then he had seen her face as she had launched into her apology, seen the effort it took to confess her shortcomings in front of an audience of strangers and seen too the dismay when she realised she was stranded at the castle.

That was not feigned. No, Lily had decided she had an apology to make and with typical single-mindedness had set out to do it properly. Of course, being Lily, she had also combined it neatly with a business trip and a holiday, but that practical streak was one of the things he loved about her.

More pressing was the problem of how to exist under the same roof with Lily without either strangling or ravishing her. Both were appealing, neither were acceptable. Jack glanced at the clock. Time for luncheon. To stay put was uncomfortably like sulking, to go out meant making anodyne conversation with a woman who wished him five hundred miles away.

‘There you are! Stop skulking in here and come and have luncheon or Lily will think you are trying to avoid her.’ Caroline was looking pleased with herself.

‘I am,’ Jack growled, then remembered a grievance. ‘And what on earth was that nonsense about the carriage team? Ploughing? At this time of year? It’s a damn good thing Lily hasn’t the slightest idea about country life. And the very idea that I would put my carriage horses to the plough in any case is ridiculous.’

‘Lily doesn’t know that.’ Caro kept a strategic distance between them. ‘And for all she knows, you are positively cow-handed and drive a team that may as well be plough horses.’

‘You’re on first-name terms now, are you?’ Reluctantly Jack got to his feet and prepared to follow his sister. ‘Best friends, I suppose?’

‘Of course.’ Caro smiled demurely. ‘We have been exchanging confidences. Now, what have I said to make you blush, I wonder?’ she added wickedly and danced ahead into the dining room before he could seize her wrist and demand to know what she meant by confidences. Surely Lily would never tell anyone … No, impossible. Caro was simply teasing. He realised he was sweating slightly and his heart was beating faster for reasons that had got nothing whatsoever to do with his provoking sister and everything to do with Lily and secrets.