An Escapade and an Engagement

‘And I cannot, in all conscience, just allow you to carry on as you have been doing. Dammit, if anyone else had caught the pair of you together there would have been hell to pay. I have no confidence that if I do not, personally, put a curb on your behaviour you will not carry on sneaking out to meet him in secret. And it must stop. Do you hear me?’

She nodded, her lips pressed hard together on the reflection that there was nothing so infuriating as being ordered to do something she had already decided on doing.

‘Now, it will not be as bad as all that. If you do me one favour I am willing to arrange for you to see your young man, in circumstances which will compromise neither him nor you.’

‘You will do what?’ How could the man be so exasperating? She had been relying on him insisting she give Harry up completely.

‘I will arrange for you two to meet. But only when I, myself, will be your chaperon.’ He half turned towards her again. ‘Now, look. Everyone knows I have only very recently sold out. What could be more natural than for me to be seen about with other military men? Lieutenant Kendell will be accepted into certain situations if he is with me. And I seem to be exactly the sort of man your family would encourage you to mix with. The fact that we are here, riding out together, with only my own servants to chaperon us, is proof of that. It will be quite easy for me to ensure that you may see each other whenever his duties permit. In a properly managed, decorous fashion. Not in this sneaking way in which you have so far engaged.’

She felt ready to explode. The last thing she could do was tell him he had got completely the wrong idea about her and Harry. He had already made her feel stupid and selfish. If she admitted that she had fallen into the relationship in a fit of pique with her grandfather, and was now quite keen to wriggle out of it again, she would never live it down!

She was going to have to appear to agree to his terms. Oh, Lord, and that meant that she would have to meet Harry again and tell him to his face that she did not love him. Could never marry him.

It would be painful. Very painful. But in a way would it not be a fitting punishment for the way she had led Harry on these past months?

Though she still could not understand why on earth Lord Ledbury was so keen to act as a go-between. Just when she had been relying on him to put an end to what was becoming an increasingly untenable situation, he was coming to their aid—as though he had every sympathy for what he assumed was a pair of star-crossed lovers.

‘Why are you doing this?’

He took a deep breath. ‘I am going to ask you to do something for me that means I shall have to take you into my confidence. I am going to trust you to keep what I am about to tell you to yourself. Just as you are trusting me to keep my mouth shut about your continuing relationship with Lieutenant Kendell.’

He was going to trust her with a secret? A great deal of her irritation with him ebbed away. Even if his words did contain that thinly veiled threat about him keeping quiet so long as she kept quiet, nobody had ever reposed any confidence in her upon any matter whatsoever. On the contrary—all her life her male relatives had been drumming it into her that she was completely useless.

‘I want you to help a … a friend of mine.’ He frowned. ‘Perhaps it is best I go back to the beginning. You know I was wounded at Orthez last February?’

‘No.’ But hadn’t he said something about not being able to sleep because his leg troubled him? She looked down at it. Then her eyes flicked to the cane she recalled he’d made use of when he’d limped into Lucy’s ballroom the previous night.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth, feeling really ashamed of all the nasty things she’d thought about him just because he’d looked so grim-faced.

‘Stupidest thing, really,’ he admitted, looking a bit uncomfortable. ‘My horse got shot out from under me, and instead of jumping clear I let the damn thing roll on me. Clumsy. I was pretty well out of it for a while. And then I came to in the field hospital, with Milly defending me like a tigress from surgeons whose sole idea of a cure is to amputate anything that looks the least bit untidy. So, you see, she saved my leg.’

He held up one finger as though keeping score.

‘Then, eventually, I got sent back to England on a transport, while the rest of my regiment pushed across the border into France. Milly’s father, who was the regimental quartermaster, gave his permission for her to come with me as my nurse, thank God, else the fever I contracted would most probably have carried me off.’

He held up another finger.

‘I was weak as a kitten all through last summer. And desperately hard up. But thanks to Milly’s ingenuity and Fred’s skill at foraging—perhaps I should mention Fred is, or was, my batman—I slowly began to recover. And then winter came, and I took an inflammation of the lungs. It looked as though I was done for, but they both stuck with me even though by this time I could not even pay their wages …’

‘But you are a wealthy man!’

‘I am a wealthy man now,’ he corrected her. ‘Before Mortimer died I had to live on my pay. And what with doctors’ bills and so forth …’

‘But surely if you had applied to your family, they would have …?’

‘I have already told you that you are not alone in being disappointed in your male relatives, Lady Jayne. I wrote on several occasions, but never received any reply.’

‘How can that be? Did they not receive your letters? Do you suppose they went astray?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, looking particularly grim. ‘The minute my brother died the family’s man of business came to inform me that I was now Viscount Ledbury—proving that they had known exactly where I was, and how I was circumstanced, all along.’

And they’d left him? Hovering between life and death? Oh, how could they?

‘Would it surprise you to learn that my first reaction on hearing of my older brother’s death was gratitude—for at last I had the means to reward the only two people who had shown any loyalty towards me?’

‘Not one bit.’

She was only surprised that he was so determined to do his duty by a family that had neglected him so woefully. A family that, by the sound of it, cared as little for him as hers did for her. She found herself wanting to lay her hand upon his sleeve and tell him she understood all about that particular kind of pain. But that would be the very last thing he would want. She knew that for certain because the last thing she wanted was for anyone to discover that she was constantly repressing a keening wail of her own. Why does nobody love me? Or even like me?

‘When I learned that I would have to move into Lavenham House and actively start looking for a wife, I set Milly up in a snug little house in Bedford Place and gave her a generous allowance. I told Fred to stay with her, though I would have preferred to have kept him on as my valet. But, you see, she has no acquaintance in London. I could not just abandon her, after all she has done for me. It is no exaggeration to say I owe her my life. And, no matter how bleak things looked, she always looked on the bright side. She kept our spirits up. It could not have been easy for her, coming to what was to her a foreign country and having to adapt to its ways. And its climate.’

And then there was the fact that when he’d told her he was going to have to leave the army, get married and take up his position in Society, she had burst into tears and told him she was in love with him. Not that he was altogether sure he believed her, but still … He hated the thought that everything he did now must be hurting the only person who had ever said they loved him.

‘I worry about her,’ he admitted. ‘Only last week I went round to see them both and she came running down to the kitchen dressed in an outfit that made her look … tawdry. When she told me how much she’d laid out for the gown I could not believe she’d spent so much and ended up looking so cheap. To be frank, she desperately needs guidance. From a woman of good taste.’

His eyes skimmed her outfit. She was wearing a carriage dress of deep blue, a jaunty little bonnet that framed the natural beauty of her face and chinchilla furs about her shoulders to shield her from the breeze, which was quite brisk that day.

‘I know it will involve a great personal sacrifice for you to spend time with a woman of Milly’s class, but I cannot think of anyone else I would rather she emulate. I cannot imagine you ever choosing anything that did not become you.’

He thought she was a woman of good taste? That was two compliments he had paid her within the space of a few minutes. Two more than she’d ever had in her life, apart from on her looks—which did not count since she hated the fact she resembled her father so closely.

‘I promised her father I would take good care of her, but I find it is not enough to just give her a house and an allowance. I am afraid if I do not find some way to restrain her she will end up becoming … easy prey to men who have no scruples. It was while my valet was shaving me this morning that I thought of you.’

It had suddenly struck him that setting Lady Jayne a task would make her feel as though he was making her pay for allowing her to see Harry—rather than let her suspect he felt compelled to keep an eye on her. Or, more specifically, Kendell.

And she had complained of feeling bored. She would enjoy the sensation of having a little adventure. And this time he could ensure the adventure was harmless.

‘I realized that you would be the perfect person to teach Milly a little about genteel behaviour and style. For you are not so high in the instep that you would look down your nose at Milly and make her feel uncomfortable.’

She’d given her heart to a low-ranking, impoverished soldier, hadn’t she? And she had no qualms about engaging in a spot of deception when it suited her purposes.

‘And I cannot do the thing myself, much as I would wish it, because—well, you must see how it is. Were I still just Major Cathcart nobody would pay any attention. But now I am Lord Ledbury. If I were to escort her to a modiste everyone would think she is my mistress.’

Worst of all, if he relaxed the stance he had taken towards her Milly herself might start to think she was making some headway with him. And he could not encourage her to think she meant any more to him than—well, than Fred did. They had all become very close, living as they had done this past year. They’d become more like friends than master and servants. But you couldn’t be just friends with a woman. Not, at any rate, a woman who said she was in love with you.

‘She … she isn’t your mistress?’

‘If she was, I would be the one to take her shopping, wouldn’t I?’

‘Oh,’ she replied, a little perplexed. It sounded so very odd for a man to go to such lengths to see to a woman’s welfare. Not to let anyone think she was his mistress, which was the natural conclusion to draw. Unless … Suddenly his reference to them having more in common than she might guess, his interrogation of her opinion of marriages between persons of unequal rank, and the way he’d sung Milly’s praises all began to make sense.

Lord Ledbury was in love! With a girl of lowly station. No wonder he had looked so kindly on her own situation. No wonder he had jumped to all the wrong conclusions, too. His head must be so full of doomed love affairs between persons of different ranks that he could see them everywhere.

‘Say no more,’ she said, gently laying her hand upon his arm. Her heart went out to him. No wonder he looked rather cross most of the time. He was the living image of all the tortured, romantic heroes she had ever read about in the books Josie had smuggled in to her.

‘Not surprising you can’t take to reading,’ she had said, ‘if all you have is that rubbishy stuff meant for little children. This is what young ladies of your age enjoy.’

‘Life can be so unfair,’ Lady Jayne said to Lord Ledbury softly, completely forgiving him for every harsh word he had uttered, every criticism he had levelled at her. When a man was in the throes of a painful, thwarted love affair, it was bound to make him a little short-tempered.