by Sheila Walsh
A bellow of rage galvanized her into action. ‘I’ll bring help!’ she vowed, gathering her skirts. Turning round and clinging to the edge of the sill, she began to lower herself backwards out of the window.
There was a crash that made her jump and almost lose her grip. One of the door panels splintered. A hand pushed through and groped around for the obstruction. Captain Austin seized it and hung on grimly.
‘Pandora? For God’s sake answer me! Are you all right?’
‘It’s Robert!’ she cried, her face transfixed. ‘Oh, do please let him in quickly!’
The Captain staggered back attempting to drag the table, but already the pressure against the door was shifting it. Light flared suddenly. The Duke squeezed through to behold his wife doggedly grasping the sill.
‘I can’t get back!’ she gasped.
‘Don’t try.’ Heron was across the room in a stride, lifting her back into the room bodily, crushing her to him so tightly that she could hardly breathe.
‘You’re hurt!’ he exclaimed as he felt her wince.
‘It’s nothing … my hands …’
The candle had singed them and the rough sill had rubbed the sore places red raw. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she insisted as he exclaimed in horror. ‘Just hold me! And tell me ‒ how are you here? Have you killed those awful men? Oh, poor Joss!’ She was laughing and crying and talking all at the same time.
‘Hush. Later,’ he murmured. ‘I will explain all later, when we are out of this place. Oh, my darling intrepid, impetuous love! Another moment and I would have been too late!’
His endearments entranced her so much that the rest hardly registered. ‘Oh, what did you call me?’ she sighed dreamily. ‘Am I really your love? You have never actually said so until now …’
‘That is because, according to Fitz, I am a blockhead,’ he said against her hair.
‘Oh, no!’
‘Not any more,’ he agreed and proceeded to demonstrate his feelings in a way that left no room for doubt.
‘Oh, yes! You really do love me!’
‘Of course I love you! I adore you!’ he said fiercely. ‘If anything had happened to you ‒’
‘Well, it didn’t.’ Pandora emerged rosily from his embrace to find that they were being watched with varying degrees of interest and satisfaction.
‘Josiah!’ she exclaimed, picking out the sergeant’s laconic grin amidst a sea of faces. ‘I was on my way to try and find you.’
‘Then it’s as well we got here when we did, Miss Pandora,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘for you’d never have made it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she protested. ‘I am very resourceful, you know.’
‘We are all well aware of that, my love,’ drawled her husband softly, ‘but you see, that window opens straight on to the river.’
It was September, and Clearwater was dressed in its most glorious autumn colours. The visits to the lake had become much less frequent and were now confined to the children. The Comtesse had improved greatly through the summer but now, tied to her own rooms more and more in spite of Pandora’s efforts to interest her, she was slipping away from them. Pandora’s sadness was tempered by the knowledge that at least they had made her happy for a short while.
They had come back to Clearwater very soon after Pandora’s ordeal, staying in London only until William had witnessed the grand opening of the Jubilee celebrations, with all its attendant excitements. He had been much put out to have missed Pandora’s ‘great adventure’, and Heron was in his black books for several days after the event for not including him in the rescue. But the prospect of another ascent with Mr Oliver coupled with the news that he was to go to Charterhouse in the autumn soon drove all else from his thoughts.
Lady Sarah left town in a great hurry. Rumour had it that she was bound for Vienna where the Peace Congress was shortly to be held, no doubt amid much gaiety and pomp.
The story of her vengeful attack on the Duchess of Heron had leaked out in the way such stories do, though every attempt was made to suppress it.
‘Is it really true, my love?’ Lady Margerson had summoned her carriage to take her to St James’s Square the instant she heard the news, a very natural concern for Pandora mingling in her ample bosom with a desire to know all. ‘Sarah Bingly actually hired a band of thugs to make away with you, and you and Captain Austin were to be taken out to sea and ‒’ the word almost choked her ‘‒ drowned?’
‘So we believe.’
‘Well, I never liked the woman, but that don’t bear thinking of.’ Her ladyship had recourse to her vinaigrette. ‘Only consider … if Robert had not found you when he did!’
Pandora preferred not to dwell on the dread alternative, but knew that Lady Margerson would be content with nothing less than the full account of how Robert had left Lady Sarah’s house in near despair and of how he had then gone to seek out Mr Varley and Sergeant Blakewell, who already had a small army of men out asking questions.
‘Of course the carriage had been hidden, but someone remembered having seen it drive up to the house standing alone at the end of a row, backing on to the river. So they came and broke in.’
‘Fancy! And what of that poor man, Austin? Not but what he brought the misfortune upon himself.’
‘He paid dear,’ said Pandora quickly. ‘But he will recover.’
In the event, Robert had been quite charitable about Captain Austin. But she had been relieved to receive a note from him, apologizing for bringing so much trouble to her, and saying that he was going away to recuperate.
Grimble, too, though his injuries were rather more severe, was improving daily and they had hopes of his eventual recovery.
Now, at a comfortable distance from the events, and in her own little drawing room at Clearwater with Robert’s arm about her and her head resting on his shoulder, she could almost feel sorry for Lady Sarah.
‘After all, she could be sitting here instead of me,’ she reasoned, nestling closer, ‘and to that extent I can perfectly understand her disappointment. Though I never could see why she hated me to the extent of wanting to kill me.’
Heron’s arm tightened. ‘And you never will, my dearest love, because you don’t give a fig for worldly vanities. But to Sarah you were a growing threat. Not only had you, an insignificant nobody, snatched me from under her nose ‒ her assessment, not mine,’ he drawled, dropping a kiss on the top of her head, ‘‒ but she was obliged to watch you bidding to become the rage of London. And, a final blow to her vanity, you possess the priceless gift of youth.’
‘Then I am certainly sorry for her.’
Heron kissed her long and deep. ‘I do love you,’ he murmured.
The door opened to admit William brandishing letters. ‘From America!’ he cried and stopped, eyeing them with disapprobation. ‘Oh, you’re cuddling again!’
‘Um,’ sighed Pandora. ‘You may open the letters if you wish.’
‘Thanks, I will,’ he said, making a silent resolve never to get married. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to stop in a minute,’ he added with relish. ‘I saw nurse on her way down with the children.’
‘Abominable little thatch-gallows!’ admonished the Duke amiably. And then to his wife with a sigh, ‘If this nursery half-hour is to become a regular practice, I believe I must seek refuge elsewhere.’
Pandora sat up, looking flushed, her grey eyes wide and considering with a hint of laughter trembling in their depths. ‘Oh dear, and I had hoped to get you nicely into the habit over the next month or two.’
He sat back, regarding her with dawning realization. ‘You mean …?’
William, in the act of opening Courtney’s letter, came to lean over the back of the sofa. He looked from his sister to Heron and back again. ‘You’re to have a baby!’ he exclaimed. And then, with an awkward smile, ‘Oh, well, I ’spect it won’t be so bad.’ A thought struck him. ‘I say! I shall be an uncle!’
‘William,’ said the Duke. ‘Go away, there’s a good fellow.’
From the author of A Highly Respectable Marriage, another gripping regency romance ‒ The Runaway Bride. Keep reading for a preview of Chapter One and details of where to buy the book.
Chapter One
In the near intolerable heat of an August afternoon two horses galloped across the scorched unyielding turf of the Sussex Downs. The slighter of the two riders, finding a straggling clump of gorse in her path, put her sturdy mare at it and, with the skirt of her brown habit billowing, cleared it with an exuberant ‘Huzza!’
Her laughter floated joyously on the still air and Henry, Viscount Linton, following close on her heels, dabbed at the perspiration beading his brow, very much aware that with the ends of his crisply waving hair already clinging in limp, straw-coloured wisps to his face, he was in imminent danger of losing the fashionable image of which he was so justifiably proud.
‘Enough!’ he cried at last in desperation. ‘Consuelo, you are the most complete hand! I can’t think how you manage to raise so much energy in the abominably enervating heat.’
For answer, Consuelo Vasquez wrinkled her nose at him. It was a delightful nose, short and straight, flaring slightly above a wilfully curving mouth.
‘But then, mi Enrique, it is clear to me that you have never experienced Bilbao in the height of summer, for if you had you would not find this present weather so intemperate.’
‘Maybe,’ admitted the young man, unconvinced. ‘But it ain’t something I’d care to hazard money on. Anyway, I decree that we stop and rest for a while. See, there is a dew pond set in the shelter of that coppice yonder.’
Without waiting for answer, he urged his mount towards the welcoming shade where he dismounted and turned to lift his companion down. Her waist was so tiny that his hands all but encompassed it as he swung her to the ground. Eyes as black and bright as ripe sloes looked wickedly aslant at him from under winged brows.
‘It is well, I think, that Señora Diaz is prostrate with one of her bad headaches. She would be scandalized to know that I am riding with you … alone!’
‘It would seem that your duenna suffers from a permanent state of the megrims. I have scarcely laid eyes on her in the two months you have been with Lady Covington.’
‘Poor Señora Diaz ‒ she does not care for England. The customs are strange to her, and the food makes her ill.’ Consuelo flopped down without regard for her beautiful velvet skirt and leaned back on her hands, watching him. ‘Only two months! It does not seem possible. I can scarcely remember a time when I did not know you.’
Henry, returning from watering and tethering the horses, found his blood stirring in his veins. He wondered if she knew how much allure was conveyed in that graceful unstudied pose. He had set out quite cynically to engage her affections and had succeeded with an ease that would have flattered his ego more had he not been aware that, unworldly as she was, she was ripe to be awakened.
What he had not expected was that he would enjoy the experience so much. It hardly seemed possible that this was the same girl who had arrived in London in June with her duenna ‒ shy, repressed and at first disbelieving of the freedom permitted to English girls of her age. It had been amusing to draw her out, to play the romantic and watch the dawning of youthful adoration, to encourage her to throw off the inhibitions that prompted her to see all pleasure as a black sin. Soon she had blossomed beyond belief ‒ sometimes a wayward innocent, sometimes incredibly mature for her years ‒ a beautiful, tantalizing creature ‒ and possessed of an immensely rich father withal!
He crouched down and tipped the delicately pointed face up to him. ‘And I,’ he said, ‘can scarcely bear to contemplate a future without you.’
Consuelo put up a hand swiftly to cover his. ‘It will not happen, querido,’ she told him confidently.
Moving her skirt aside, she patted the ground beside her and was amused when he spread a large silk handkerchief on the space before committing his spotless buff breeches to the turf. She teased him often about his concern with his dress, but oh, how she admired his handsomeness and his elegance!
‘Have I not said?’ she continued when he was comfortably settled beside her. ‘I mean to remain here in England so that we may be married.’
‘You have said it, my lovely Consuelo,’ sighed his lordship. ‘But you are not free to choose, and if you were, what have I to offer you except my name? If you were not so absurdly young ‒’
‘I am seventeen ‒ almost eighteen years! In Spain that is not so young …’
But she fell silent none the less, remembering that she should by now be back home in Bilbao, to be married on her birthday to the hateful Don Miguel Alfonso de Aranches, who was very old ‒ almost as old as her father ‒ and wore corsets that creaked when he bowed. She had not seen Don Miguel since their betrothal when she was fifteen, and had resolutely put from her all thought of him and the faintly clammy touch of his fingers as he raised her chin to rake her with his snake-like eyes.
Until now. In these last weeks she had been forced to compare the fate intended for her with the almost unimaginable bliss of spending the rest of her life with Enrique. There was only one choice open to her.
Lord Linton observed the sudden pensive frown. ‘I am right, am I not, dearest? And there’s the rub, for every time I see a carriage approaching the house, I fear that it will be your father come to carry you back to Spain.’
Consuelo’s profile took on an imperious tilt. ‘It will not be so, I promise you. My father will by now have received my letter, and Lord Covington has also written on our behalf. He thinks very well of Lord Covington who was some kind of diplomat in Spain many years ago. They became friends, which is why my father permitted me to make this visit when my lord so kindly suggested it.
‘So you see,’ she laid a slim gloved hand on his arm, ‘by now it must be quite clear to him that my whole life is here with you. He cannot then force me into this marriage which is so utterly repugnant to me!’ Consuelo’s English had improved vastly during her stay and she delighted to use long words.
‘I hope you are right.’
‘Of course I am right,’ she declared, confident once more. ‘You will see. We are indeed fortunate to have Lord and Lady Covington for our allies, are we not? Only consider, querido ‒ if you had not been Lady Covington’s very good friend, we might never have known one another!’
So diverted was she by this happy thought that she did not observe the telltale colour that crept into his face. Abruptly he sprang to his feet.
‘Come.’ He held out his hands. ‘We had better be on our way.’ His tawny eyes did not quite meet hers. ‘Don’t want to take unwarranted advantage of our hosts.’
They were within sight of Covington Manor when Consuelo lifted a hand to mark the progress along the curving driveway of a gig drawn by a sedate brown horse. ‘See ‒ my lady Covington has a visitor.’
She turned her mount in the direction of the approaching gig, impelled by curiosity and a little by fear. For all her much-vaunted confidence she did not wish for a confrontation with her father. He was not slow to anger, and when roused he could be truly formidable.
Henry laid a restraining hand on her bridle, and as she turned to look at him: ‘Do you suppose ‒?’ he began.
‘No,’ she assured him. ‘I am quite certain that my father would never travel in so insignificant a carriage.’
They both watched in silence as the gig drew to a halt before the imposing west front of the manor house with its four fine Corinthian columns. The figure that descended and ran up the steps was clearly that of a younger man.
‘There! Did I not say?’ Consuelo was triumphant in her relief. The horses were set in motion once more, the path leading them between high yew hedges that masked the house from their view. When it came once more into sight, the gig had gone. She. sighed. ‘Quite clearly it was a person of no account.’
Lady Covington was alone in the yellow drawing room when her butler, Hepwort
h, announced to her that there was a gentleman below seeking audience with his lordship. First instincts favoured sending the visitor packing. Her husband could never be found when he was wanted, and she had no desire to entertain one of his dull cronies.
Verena Covington was filled with ennui. She was in that wearisome lull between the departure of one group of guests and the arrival of the next. Like the selfish, beautiful woman she was, she very quickly became bored without an audience to shower her with compliments, regale her with the latest scandals and generally relieve the tedium of the days between one London Season and the next ‒ and in this, Consuelo Vasquez and Henry Linton were less than useless, having become quite tiresomely engrossed in one another. But for the debilitating heat, she might have contemplated driving into Brighton.
She sighed and asked with an air of indifference, ‘What kind of a gentleman, Hepworth? Do we know him?’
‘I think not, my lady.’ The butler looked vaguely disdainful. ‘A seafaring gentleman, I would hazard.’
A gleam of interest flickered momentarily in her sleepy green eyes. ‘Really? A contemporary of his lordship’s, would you say? An acquaintance from the late war, perhaps, though I am not aware that my husband had any particular friends in the Navy.’
Hepworth cleared his throat. ‘Begging your pardon, my lady, but I don’t think … that is to say, I would not presume to class Captain Bannion as a contemporary of his lordship’s … not in any way, if you follow me. The captain is a younger gentleman ‒ very purposeful. Most insistent, in fact.’
Lady Covington’s silken lashes veiled her expression as she put up a limp hand to cover a yawn. She stretched herself languidly.
‘Well, I suppose I had better see him. You may show him up, Hepworth ‒ and send someone to find Lord Covington. They might try the gamekeeper’s cottage. I believe he spoke of calling there.’
As the door closed behind the butler, she rose and crossed the room to stand before one of the three pier glasses which ornamented the spaces between the windows. Her reflection showed also the white and gold furnishings ‒ a perfect setting, it could not be denied, for a woman once dubbed by the Prince Regent ‘an Aphrodite among women’. That was some years ago, it was true, but her looks were, if anything, better than ever now.
