The Lady Confesses

Nathaniel regarded her beneath hooded lids. At a little over five feet tall, her slender figure shown to advantage in the plain blue gown, with her ebony curls arranged in a simple if fashionable style, and her face one of delicate beauty—fine dark brows, deep blue eyes, a tiny nose above a perfect bow of a mouth—Miss Betsy Thompson somehow did not have the looks, or indeed the voice, of a paid companion to a lady of wealth and quality.

And how would he know what one of those should look like? Nathaniel mused self-derisively.

Yes, Miss Betsy Thompson was in possession of a rare and tempting beauty, and the refinement of her voice spoke of an education, but for all Nathaniel knew of such things that could merely be because she was the daughter of an impoverished gentleman or clergyman, in need of employment to support herself until some equally impoverished young gentleman took her as his wife, before then producing a houseful of even more impoverished children to continue the cycle!

Incarcerated in Devon, and so robbed of rakish entertainment as well as all news of London society—his aunt had refused to even allow Nathaniel to read the newspapers this past eight days in case he ‘became overset’ by anything printed in them!—Nathaniel had only thought to provide himself with a diversion from his increasing boredom when he’d attempted to kiss his aunt’s young companion. Certainly he had not intended engaging in a verbal exchange during which this outspoken young woman had dared to insult one of his closest and dearest friends.

He had no doubts that Gabriel would have simply laughed off such an insult, used as he was to the sideways glances of the gentlemen of the ton and the gossip behind the raised fans of their wives and daughters—along with their surreptitious and hypocritical lust for his dark and dangerous good looks. Nathaniel had never been able to dismiss those slights to his friend so easily, and never ceased to feel enraged by them.

Especially as he knew that gossip to be wholly untrue.

His mouth thinned now as he looked at Betsy Thompson beneath hooded lids. ‘The apology alone would have sufficed,’ he rasped. ‘Now, is there not some other service which you need to be busy performing for my aunt? Surely you have completed this one to the best of your ability.’

And been found wanting, Elizabeth acknowledged irritably, very aware that the laughingly flirtatious man who had tried to kiss her a few minutes ago had completely disappeared to be replaced by a gentleman who was now every inch the wealthy and powerful Earl of Osbourne, with vast estates in Kent and Suffolk, as well as a beautiful town house in London.

She gave a brief inclination of her head. ‘I believe it is time for Hector’s afternoon walk.’

‘Ah, yes.’ The earl gave a hard, mocking smile. ‘I have noticed, with my aunt’s cousin Letitia already in residence, you are more companion to my aunt’s dog than to my aunt herself.’

Yet another insult, no matter how smoothly it was delivered, Elizabeth recognised with a frown. Unfortunately, experience had shown her that with no references it was almost impossible to find employment in London. Indeed, Elizabeth had only succeeded in securing her present position in Mrs Wilson’s household because of her heroic rescue of that lady’s pampered and much-loved Scottish Terrier, after he had slipped his lead in a London park one afternoon and run amok.

As such, Elizabeth needed to maintain her employment with Mrs Wilson if she did not wish to return to Shoreley Park and that dubious offer of marriage from Lord Faulkner. A fate Elizabeth still considered— despite now knowing of that gentleman’s roguish good looks—to be more painful than death itself.

Lord Faulkner could not know it, but Elizabeth was actually doing him a great service by not accepting his proposal; she was the daughter most likened to her mother in looks, and as such had always been viewed with suspicion by neighbouring matrons of sons of marriageable age, in the fear, no doubt, that she might be like her mother in other ways …

Her chin rose proudly. ‘I really do sincerely apologise for any offence I may have given, my lord.’

Somehow Nathaniel doubted that very much. He had easily seen the battle taking place within Miss Betsy Thompson’s beautiful head as she wrestled with the knowledge that she considered herself to be in the right of it, whilst at the same time totally aware that she was speaking to the favourite nephew—in fact, the only nephew—of her employer.

Indeed, that inner battle had been so transparent he might have laughed aloud if he were not still feeling so disgruntled with her on Gabriel’s behalf.

After all, he had earlier attempted to steal a kiss from this young woman for his own enjoyment. And the fact that Nathaniel had received his injuries from paid thugs as he’d left a gambling club owned by yet another of his disreputable friends was not in the least flattering to his own reputation …

He viewed Betsy Thompson through narrowed lids. ‘You have not been a paid employee for very long, have you?’

A delicate blush coloured those ivory cheeks. ‘What makes you say that, my lord?’

The mere fact that she was daring to question him like this, an earl and the nephew of her employer, was reason enough! ‘You do not appear to know your place.’

Those blue eyes sparkled with what he knew without doubt to be a fierce temper. ‘My place, my lord?’

Had he ever had another conversation like this one? Nathaniel mused ruefully. Somehow he doubted it. ‘I believe it is the usual practice to show a little more … respect, when addressing one’s elders and betters,’ he drawled with deliberate provocation; after all, the blue of this young lady’s eyes did look particularly fine when she was in a temper!

Considering Nathaniel Thorne was a mere eight, or possibly nine years, her senior, Elizabeth did not consider him in the least ‘her elder’. And as Lady Elizabeth Copeland, the daughter of an earl, neither was he ‘her better’.

Except she was not Lady Elizabeth Copeland at this moment in time, was she? And she had no idea when she would become so again. Or, indeed, if she ever would …

Leaving her home had been a purely impulsive act on her part, a response to Caroline’s identical response to Lord Faulkner’s proposal two days earlier. Those two days had been spent in a fruitless search of the local area for the missing Caroline and had resulted in the other two sisters assuming that she had likely fled all the way to London.

London …

All three of the Copeland girls had always wished for, and repeatedly been denied by their father, so much as a single visit to England’s capital, let alone the Season that might have secured a marriage for any or all of them, on the basis, no doubt, that Marcus Copeland had considered the temptations to be found there to be responsible for his wife’s abandonment of her family.

Whatever his rationale for the decision, Caroline and Elizabeth especially had longed to experience some of those ‘temptations’ for themselves; Diana, the eldest sister at one and twenty, had always been the more reserved of the three, taking her responsibilities as mistress of Shoreley Park and surrogate mother to her two younger sisters very seriously indeed.

And so first Caroline, and then Elizabeth, had left the only home they had ever known for the excitement that London represented. Elizabeth could not speak for Caroline, of course, having had neither sight nor word of her sister’s whereabouts since reaching the city, but she had quickly realised that the excitements of town only applied to the wealthy and titled members of London society, and that the paid companion she had been forced by circumstances to become was merely a lowly employee at the mercy of the whims and fancies of her employer, with very few glimpses of the world she had so longed to inhabit.

Elizabeth had also had plenty of time in which to realise how much she missed her sisters, how alone she felt without the two of them to laugh and gossip with. To realise how, being the youngest sister, Caroline and Diana had been her companions for all of her nineteen years.

Indeed, Elizabeth had missed them so much that, on the day she had effected the recapture of Hector after he had made his escape from Mrs Wilson in the park, she had briefly, foolishly, thought she had seen Caroline seated as a passenger of the most fashionable coach travelling in the park that day.

It was nonsense, of course, a ridiculous notion only confirmed by Elizabeth’s glimpse of the gentleman easily controlling the pair of perfect but highly strung greys in front of that gleaming carriage. An aristocratic gentleman whose arrogant good looks were made to look dangerous by the scar that ran down the left side of his face. The rakish sort of gentleman none of the Copeland sisters had ever, or would ever, be acquainted with.

Nevertheless, that brief encounter had served to emphasise how deeply she wished to be with her sisters again. Unfortunately, Elizabeth—and no doubt Caroline, too—had realised since arriving in London that, when she’d left Hampshire so suddenly she had given no consideration as to how she was ever to learn when or if Lord Faulkner had quit Shoreley Park, thereby making it safe for her to return to her home.

Until a remedy to that situation occurred to her, it was very necessary that she retain her current position in Mrs Wilson’s household—something she would not be able to do if she ran foul of that lady’s much-loved nephew. ‘I apologise again, my lord, for any—any misunderstandings,’ she said stiff ly, ‘but I am sure that your aunt will be pleased to hear how much better you are feeling this afternoon.’

‘Indeed?’ Nathaniel eyed her closely. ‘And what else do you intend telling my dear aunt about this afternoon?’

She looked pained at the accusation in his tone. ‘Why, nothing else, my lord.’

‘You do not consider I owe you an apology for my own behaviour just now?’ He looked across at her shrewdly.

Delicate colour warmed her cheeks as she avoided meeting his gaze. ‘I would much rather forget the incident ever happened, my lord.’ She looked slightly flustered. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, Hector will be waiting for his walk.’ She swept him a polite curtsy.

Nathaniel watched beneath hooded lids as Betsy left his bedchamber, knowing a slight disappointment in her response to his deliberate challenge; instead of a return of that temper he had been expecting—hoping for—the light of battle had seemed to fade from those clear blue eyes as she once again assumed the mantle of the young and demure companion of his aunt’s dog.

Assumed, because Nathaniel had serious doubts that Miss Betsy Thompson had ever been born to such a subservient role …

Chapter Two

‘I have decided, as you are obviously feeling so much better—’ Mrs Wilson bestowed a warm smile of approval upon her nephew as he stood somewhat stiffly beside the fireplace in the drawing room prior to dinner ‘—to arrange a small dinner party. For … three days hence, I believe,’ she announced with satisfaction.

‘Aunt—’

‘As I said, it will be but a small group. Only twenty or so of my closest neighbours,’ she added persuasively.

Elizabeth, having entered the drawing room in time to hear this announcement, looked at Nathaniel beneath lowered lashes as she curtsied before moving to the back of the room to sit demurely on the chaise beside Letitia Grant, feeling slightly breathless at how handsome the earl looked in his black evening clothes and snowy white linen, the candlelight casting a golden sheen over his fashionably styled hair and lightly tanned features.

She had instantly seen how his warm mahogany eyes had briefly flared with alarm at his aunt’s announcement, before that emotion was as quickly masked by a look of cool uninterest. Elizabeth easily guessed the reason for that mask!

Mrs Wilson, a widowed and still attractive lady in her early-forties, had made it clear she had no interest in remarrying herself, instead preferring to turn her considerable attention to finding her nephew a countess. Indeed, she had already been full of the news, when she’d returned in her carriage earlier, that there were at least three young and attractive ladies in the neighbourhood who were up to the task and might meet her nephew’s critical approval.

She considered, she had stated firmly, that at the age of eight and twenty it was past time that her nephew gave up his bachelor life and produced an heir; as he had no mother to guide him, it was her duty to see the woman he chose as his countess and mother of his children was entirely suitable for that role, whether or not the earl had any inclinations in that direction himself.

Nathaniel Thorne’s now guarded expression would seem to indicate that he most certainly did not!

After their earlier altercation, Elizabeth could not help but feel a little inward pleasure at the earl’s obvious discomfort; Mrs Wilson, once set on a course of action, was rarely, if ever, thwarted. Elizabeth’s own presence here was proof of that!