Читать книгу Marriage Made in Shame - Sophia James - Страница 11

Chapter Five

Adelaide had tried to like Frederick Lovelace, the Earl of Berrick, but in truth he was both boring and vain, two vices that added together led to the third one of shallowness.

‘A titled aristocrat no less,’ her uncle had proclaimed after noticing Berrick’s interest at their last meeting, a lilt in his voice and pride in his step. ‘I thought Richard Williams a catch, but here is a man of ten thousand pounds a year, my dear, and a country home that is the envy of all who see it.’

As the earl in question regaled her with myriad facts about horse racing, however, Adelaide struggled to feign an interest.

Eventually he came to the end of his soliloquy and stopped. ‘Do you enjoy horses, Miss Ashfield?’ he queried, finally mindful of the fact that he had not asked one question that pertained to her as yet.

‘No. I generally try to stay well away from them, my lord.’ She saw the resulting frown of Lady Harcourt and her uncle as he began to speak.

‘My niece rides, of course, though the tutor I employed to teach the finer points found her timid. Perhaps you might take a turn together in Hyde Park if it suited you. I think she simply needs more practice at the sport to become proficient at it.

‘Indeed, if you were going there by any chance today, perhaps we could meet, Miss Ashfield? I should be more than willing to help in your equestrian education.’

Her uncle looked pleased and nodded with pride. ‘Well, now that you mention it we were intending to take a turn around the park.’

Adelaide did not deign to answer, but her pulse began to race. Please God that her uncle would not promise Berrick her company.

‘Perhaps my niece and I could meet you there around five?’

Short of refusing outright Adelaide could say nothing. At least her uncle would be with her, but it was just this sort of ridiculousness that had put her off coming to London right from the beginning.

‘I shall be there at five, then. Lord Penbury, Miss Ashfield.’ Taking her hand as everyone stood, Berrick bowed across it, his head barely reaching the top of her brow and a growing bald patch clearly visible.

When he was gone her uncle finished the last of the brandy in his glass and turned towards her.

‘A well brought-up young man, I think, Adelaide. A man who might suit you well with his wide interests and great fortune. At least we would know it is not your money that he is after for he is well endowed with his own.’

Adelaide listened with horror. ‘You promised you would allow me the choice of a husband should I come for the Season, Uncle. I should not wish to be told who is the right one to choose and who is not.’

‘That might all be very well, my love, but Frederick Lovelace is a good man from a sterling family and it behoves me as your uncle to offer the advice so that you are aware he’d make a remarkable connection.’

‘He may be a good man, Uncle, but he is not the good man for me.’

Alec Ashfield turned and for the first time ever Adelaide saw real anger come into his eyes. ‘Then find one, my dear. Find a man who can be all that you need and want and I will give you my blessing.’

Lady Harcourt stood as tension filled the room about them.

‘I am sure she will, Alec. It may just take a little time for your niece to realise the honour the Earl of Berrick accords her, but let us hope this meeting you have organised goes somewhere towards the fact.’

Adelaide took her leave, feeling like screaming all the way up to her room on the second floor. She should never have agreed to come to London in the first place, she knew that now. She should have stayed at Sherborne and dug her feet in, refusing to be budged by any argument presented, because this was the result of it all. This coercion and well-meaning forcefulness.

When a tear welled up and fell over one cheek she angrily wiped it away.

She had not always needed to explain things to her old aunts, the fact that she was resigned to a productive spinsterhood simply accepted. An option the same as the one they themselves had taken and nary a second of regret for it, either.

The day suddenly felt heavy and difficult and now there was the further worry of a ride in a few hours in Hyde Park with a suitor who had a lot more hope than she knew was warranted. Could she feign sickness and simply miss it? She shook her head.

No, she would meet the Earl of Berrick with her uncle and tell him herself that she was not interested in marrying him or anybody at all. Hopefully that would be the end of it.

* * *

The ride began badly as Lord Berrick took her hand and pressed his lips to her skin, an action so reminiscent of her skirmish with Mr Friar that she found herself snatching her fingers back and standing there speechless. All around her others watched, the eyes of the ton upon them.

‘I have looked forward to this, Miss Ashfield. I hope you will allow me to help you mount.’

When he placed his hands beneath the stirrup of the horse Adelaide thanked him. At least up on her steed he would be out of touch, so to speak, and she might be able to relax just a little.

She and her uncle had dismounted as soon as they had got inside the gates and now her uncle had elected to stay and wait whilst she took a turn about Rotten Row. This was a tactical manoeuvre, probably, and one that gave Frederick Lovelace some time alone with her.

At least the track was busy. With only a small difficulty she could get around the whole thing without having to converse with him to a great extent save to tell him of her desire to remain unattached.

Adelaide had never been proficient at managing a horse and here amongst many other steeds her stallion seemed nervy and difficult. At Northbridge she seldom rode, preferring instead to walk the short distances between the manor and the village. In London it seemed everybody was an expert, the tooling precise and accomplished.

Taking in a breath, she tried to hide a building fear. She had heard it mentioned more than once that horses could tell if their rider was afraid and acted accordingly. From the prancing of the horse beneath her she was sure he must understand her frame of mind completely. It obviously felt a certain attraction for the filly the Earl of Berrick rode, as it constantly veered to one side to get closer.

Just what she needed, she thought to herself, and, jamming her hand about the reins, made a supreme effort to keep them apart. At that moment when she looked up she stared straight into the laughing molten glance of Lord Wesley.

‘Miss Ashfield.’ He tipped his hat to her. The animal he rode was huge and black. A mount she imagined one would ride into battle, the arrogant stance of its head marking it out as different from all the others in the park.

Like horse, like owner, she found herself thinking uncharitably, though his presence seemed to have had the effect of making Lord Berrick back off a bit and for that she was glad. Two more turns and she could reasonably call it a day. If she managed one with Lord Wesley then all the better.

‘I see you are as proficient at riding as you are at dancing the waltz.’

She could not help but smile. ‘You have not yet seen me paint a watercolour or stitch a tapestry. I am even worse at those most necessary of feminine skills.’

When he laughed the sound burrowed down into the marrow of her bones, making her warmer than she had been.

‘What are you good at, then?’ he asked.

‘Healing,’ she returned. ‘I run a clinic at Northbridge and people come for miles to get my ointments and tinctures. I have a garden, you see, and my aunts taught me many things about—’

She stopped as she saw his surprise and wondered if such skills would be deemed appropriate by the lords and ladies of society.

‘Like Asclepius?’ he returned and she shook her head.

‘Well, I cannot restore the dead to the living as he did, my lord, but then neither do I wish to be smote with Zeus’s thunder.’

‘It might be argued accepting gold for raising the dead was hardly good form. Someone had to stop it.’

Adelaide was astonished. It was seldom she had met anyone, apart from her aged aunts, with a solid memory for the complicated names and deeds of the Grecian legends. A scholar, then, and a man who hid such learning? Today the sun had brought out the colour in his hair to a variety of shades of light brown, red and gold. When he wiped back the unruly hair on his forehead, she saw that the knuckles on his left hand were bruised and split. From the contretemps with Friar?

Adelaide glanced about to see that Lord Berrick was not too close before she mentioned them. ‘I could give you salve for your fingers if you wanted it.’

As an answer to that he merely jammed his hand into his pocket and she pushed back her spectacles with a sigh.

‘Why do you wear them?’ He did not sound happy.

‘The spectacles?’ She couldn’t quite understand what he meant.

‘The glass in them is plain. Poor eyesight normally requires the fashioning of a lens for improved vision.’

She gave back her own question. ‘Do you keep hawks, my lord?’

‘No. Why?’ He shifted on his horse in order to watch her better.

‘I think you would hold an affinity with a bird who notices all that is around him even as he pretends nonchalance.’

With a gentlemanly tilt of his head Gabriel Hughes dropped back; a slight tug on the leather and he was gone, Lovelace replacing him.

‘Is it not just the most appealing time of day, Miss Ashfield, and might I also say that you ride magnificently.’

As Adelaide swallowed back mirth she also resisted the strong impulse to turn around and look for the enigmatic Earl of Wesley.

* * *

Gabriel watched her trot on with the popinjay Lovelace chattering beside her and thought he should simply turn for the gate and leave. But something made him stay. Her uncertainty with the horse, he was to think later, or the unguarded way she had looked at him when she had offered her salve.

The shout came from close by, reverberating as a young man called his friend. Any other day such a sound might not have mattered, but with Adelaide holding her reins so tightly her horse took umbrage and reared. She had no hope at all in managing it.

Berrick simply stepped his horse to the side and watched, uncertain as to what he could do.

Gabriel was off his mount in a second and strode towards her frightened animal, reaching out for the dangling reins as he told Adelaide Ashfield to hold on any way that she could. Frightened blue eyes turned to him, but the message seemed to be getting across as she crouched down on the back of the stallion and grabbed large handfuls of mane in her fists.

Within a moment he had gentled the horse, and when it had settled enough for Gabriel to move around to the side, he reached up to the terrified rider.