Courting Lord Dorney

by Sally James

  It was several days before Lady Fulwood found an opportunity of’ calling upon Lady Belstead, and to Bella’s satisfaction no one else but Mrs Ford was present when the footman announced them. Soon she was able to move to sit beside Mrs Ford.

  ‘I heard the story about your change of name in Bath, Miss Trahearne,’ that lady said with a smile, her green eyes twinkling.

  ‘Am I being very much condemned?’ Bella asked frankly.

  ‘By the older and staider people, perhaps,’ Mrs Ford reported, ‘but the younger ones on the whole think it a great lark, and rather admire you for it when they understand the reason.’

  ‘Lord Dorney isn’t old and staid, but he’ll never forgive me,’ Bella said gloomily.

  ‘His background has made him peculiarly sensitive to deception,’ Mrs Ford explained softly. ‘Also, I’m afraid, wary of heiresses. You know his family’s history, of course?’

  ‘I do now, but at the time I couldn’t understand.’

  ‘He’s a very different man from both his father and brother,’ she said slowly.

  Bella stole a glance at her. She was smiling reminiscently, her lips curving so deliciously that Bella’s heart dropped. How could any man not immediately want to kiss them? She was beautiful, kind, and even being helpful to someone she might have regarded as a rival.

  She pulled up her thoughts sharply. How could she possibly rival this lovely woman? Why Lord Dorney had singled her out in Bath remained a mystery. He may have been on the point of offering, but he couldn’t have cared for her or he would not have turned away so easily.

  At that moment more callers arrived, two men superficially so alike they had to be brothers. Both were fair haired, tall and slim, with light blue eyes and aquiline noses. They were in their early thirties, perhaps a year separating them, but the elder one’s face was far more lined, and he walked with a slight limp. His eyes were keen, his glance piercing, while the younger, although smiling in a friendly fashion, had an abstracted, almost vacuous look on his face.

  ‘Major Ross and Mr Frederick Ross,’ the footman intoned.

  Lady Belstead welcomed them warmly, and they were introduced. The Major, who seemed to know Mrs Ford well, greeted her with a pleased smile and a query about her house. Mr Ross, after a vague, but somehow apprehensive smile at everyone else, promptly sat beside Bella and engaged her in a quiet conversation.

  The Major moved on and sat next to Jane, remarking he had met Philip several years ago.

  ‘I came on his ship on my way home from the Peninsula, wounded, I’m afraid,’ he added, indicating his leg. ‘A good officer, the navy could do with more like him,’ he opined. ‘Is he coming on furlough soon?’

  ‘I hope so, he is due for leave, but I’m not sure when,’ Jane replied. ‘He’s been very busy taking troops out to India.’

  Soon afterwards Lady Belstead demanded Jane’s opinion of some swatches of material.

  ‘I can’t decide whether the colours shriek at my hair,’ she said with a laugh. ‘What do you think?’

  The Major turned to Bella, who had been quietly observing the newcomers, and asked how she was enjoying her visit to London. She found him a man of decided opinions, knowledgeable about the situation in India, which she would have expected in a military man, but also about political developments at home.

  ‘You seem to know everyone,’ she commented after he had mentioned a recent conversation with several members of the Government.

  He shrugged. ‘My family connections, of course, and then I make an effort to learn all the latest news whenever I’m in London. The normal gossip of London drawing rooms bores me, I fear, although one has to meet people.’

  ‘Is your brother in the army?’ Bella asked, glancing across at Mr Ross, who had remained close to Mrs Ford, apparently absorbed in their conversation.

  ‘Frederick?’ The Major gave a snort of derision. ‘He thinks himself a poet, of all things. A second Byron. He says he’s writing an epic in verse for the stage. An excuse for being lazy, I fear. I trust you won’t encourage him as Mrs Ford does,’ he added. ‘I haven’t been able to impress on her the folly of letting him imagine people take him seriously. His scribbling will never amount to more than a few vapid couplets and a sonnet or two.’

  Lady Fulwood then rose to go and Bella, disappointed in her desire to meet Lord Dorney, came reluctantly to her feet.

  ‘May I call on you? We could drive in the Park if your hostess permits,’ the Major suggested, bending low over Bella’s hand, and she nodded permission.

  ‘A conquest, my dear,’ Lady Fulwood said dryly as they walked the few yards to their own house. ‘An old family, not a great deal of money, but enough to maintain two houses and permit Frederick to play at being a poet.’

  ‘Isn’t he any good? His brother was far from complimentary.’

  ‘He published a slim volume last year which was well received, I believe, but I know nothing about poetry. I enjoy the theatre, better than ballet or the opera, I fear, and I like to read a good novel when I have leisure. But I rarely read poetry, unless it’s something everyone enthuses about, like Childe Harold. One has to read that, of course.’

  ‘I liked Lady Belstead,’ Jane changed the subject. ‘She asked me to call again to advise her on some dress patterns.’

  ‘A compliment to your good taste, my dear. Is that chaise driving away from my house, do you think? It seems we’ve just missed a visitor.’

  But when, instead of the butler, the footman opened the door to them and eyed them in some dismay until he recognized them, a scene of confusion met their eyes. In the narrow were two trunks, the maids were carrying some small items of luggage upstairs, and the butler was sharply directing a rather bemused boot boy to pick up the other end of a trunk and mind the table, or he’d find himself in trouble.

  ‘Goodness, Simpkins, who’s arrived with all this luggage?’ Lady Fulwood demanded, but before the harassed butler could reply the visitor appeared from the morning room at the back of the house, where he seemed to have taken refuge.

  ‘It really isn’t a great deal of luggage, Lady F.,’ he said with a laugh. ‘You’re not going to send me away, or deprive me of any of my very essential clothes, I trust? Not the action of the loving godmother I know you are!’

  ‘Richard! Welcome, dear boy. I knew you were in town.’

  ‘Yes, I spent a few days with Sir Daniel, but he’s been sent on a mission to Paris.’

  ‘You’re here now. I must make you known to my other guests. Jane dear, my godson, Richard, Lord Dorney. I sent him to call on you the last time he was in Lancashire, Jane. I hope he obeyed me? Richard, Lady Hodder and Miss Trahearne.’

  Bemused, Jane shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. In Lancashire? When did you call on me?’

  ‘Lady Hodder? Another change of name! But I understood you were Mrs Grant? I called when you were out, I’m afraid, and left the book.’

  ‘I was. Mrs Grant, I mean. Philip had only inherited the title a few months before. I wondered who had left the book. Bates - that’s my butler - had forgotten your name.’

  ‘We met in Bath, not Lancashire, Lady F,’ he said quietly, ‘although I wasn’t aware that Lady Hodder and Miss Trahearne were intending to visit you.’

  He bowed briefly to Bella, standing rigidly beside her hostess, then smiled bleakly at Jane. She, looking up into the narrowed eyes, their expression hard, shivered. How could Bella maintain she loved such a stern man?

  For an endless moment Bella thought he was about to order the butler, half way up the stairs by now and still admonishing the boot boy in frantic anguished undertones to be careful, to bring his luggage down again. Instead, after a searching gaze at Jane he shrugged slightly.

  ‘It seems we are to be fellow guests,’ he said calmly. ‘I trust we can forget our differences and behave with circumspection.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Bella managed to reply. What did he expect? Her to fling herself into his arms with cries of rapture, or run screaming in terror fro
m the house? She would show him! She’d be calm, dignified, and never mention Bath.

  Chapter 10

  Lady Fulwood had planned to take Jane and Bella to the theatre that evening, which meant dining early. Lord Dorney begged her not to change her arrangements, saying he could perfectly well dine at his club.

  Bella had no notion what the play was about, for she spent the entire evening speculating on how this latest turn of events could affect her. Would being in the same house as Lord Dorney help her own plans?

  Waking early after a restless night she found herself the first to arrive in the breakfast room. Abstractedly she helped herself to bacon and kidneys, then sat without eating, crumbling pellets of bread on her plate.

  She jumped nervously when the door opened and Lord Dorney appeared. He bowed stiffly, and after a short pause during which she could see he was having an intense inward struggle, filled his plate and took a seat opposite Bella.

  ‘I’m so sorry Rags upset the horses the other morning,’ she said breathlessly, and he frowned, for the moment forgetting that episode. ‘He wriggled out of his collar, you see,’ she tried to explain.

  ‘You’ve no business keeping an undisciplined dog in London,’ Lord Dorney said sternly.

  ‘I know, but no one else wanted him, and I could hardly turn him loose again in Bath!’ Bella responded indignantly, her unwonted meekness rapidly retreating in the face of this lack of reason.

  ‘You could have gone back to the country.’

  ‘What? Why the devil should I?’ she demanded, forgetting to use ladylike language in her fury. ‘I have as much right here in London as you do, my lord!’ she exclaimed angrily.

  ‘Forgive me, I meant only that you could have taken him to your own home, since there must be people able to care for him. What you do otherwise is of course none of my business.’

  Bella contemplated appealing to him then, but he looked so grim that, abandoning her by now cold breakfast, she cravenly escaped. As a result she fumed impotently until evening, when for once they had no engagements and were to dine at home.

  * * * *

  She took especial care over her appearance as she dressed for dinner, choosing one of her new gowns in a particularly delicate shade of primrose, and driving Mary to distraction the number of times she changed her mind over details such as the slippers she wanted, or the style of her hair.

  Conversation at dinner was rather strained. Lady Fulwood appeared to notice nothing amiss, but although Jane did her best to respond naturally, Lord Dorney’s remarks were brief and Bella’s virtually nonexistent.

  ‘I saw your cousin Alexander’s betrothal announced in the Times this morning,’ Lady Fulwood said suddenly. ‘Who is she? Has she any money?’

  ‘A competence, it matches his own, which I always feel is the ideal situation,’ he replied, with a glance at Bella. ‘She lives in Bath. A mere chit, but of unexceptional family. She’ll do for him, she has looks and is compliant, but without too many brains or opinions of her own. She’s very young, but Alexander maintains he knows his mind and he’s in no mood to delay. They plan to marry as soon as it can be arranged.’

  For a while they discussed this, and then there was an awkward pause. Lady Fulwood broke it.

  ‘I’m told Bella’s shaping up admirably as a whip, in Masters’ opinion. Why don’t you drive out with her, Richard, and give her some instruction? You’ve always been one of the best whips in London.’

  He looked aghast, but Lady Fulwood was looking expectantly at him. Making the best of it he turned to Bella and smiled stiffly.

  ‘I should be delighted, Miss Trahearne.’

  ‘Good, you can go tomorrow morning, both of you are early risers,’ Lady Fulwood said complacently.

  Bella sharply bit back the excuses she’d been about to make. Here was a heaven-sent opportunity of having him to herself, in a situation where they could talk, she could explain her motives more clearly, and perhaps they might iron out the differences between them. Why, then, had she been about to tell him he wasn’t obliged to carry out Lady Fulwood’s imperious commands. Was she afraid of him?

  She eyed him curiously as he turned to talk with his godmother, and tried to disentangle her confused emotions. Seeing him again had evoked all the longing she’d experienced in Bath. From the very first moment of their meeting she had known she loved him. It wasn’t his looks, for although he was handsome she had met other men equally attractive in face and figure.

  Her later knowledge of him, his kindness, their ability, once, to talk of anything they wished, might have explained a gradual falling in love. Those were characteristics not immediately apparent, yet she had known instantly he was the only man for her. When he had kissed her she had momentarily forgotten their disagreements and surrendered to a state of sheer bliss, natural and inevitable. Had he not felt the same? Why had he kissed her? Did men normally kiss women they were angry with?

  She shook her head in bewilderment. She loved him, and if she were entirely truthful she was a little afraid too. She, Rosabella Trahearne, who had never before admitted to fear, was now experiencing it. Then a thought struck her. It was not fear of him, but fear of hurting him, fear for him, that produced in her this unaccustomed sensibility.

  Lost in contemplation of this phenomenon, she did not at first respond when Lord Dorney spoke to her later in the drawing room.

  ‘I am promised to friends all day tomorrow, but on the following morning I am free. Shall I give you this driving lesson Lady Fulwood thinks I’m fit to administer?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh. Yes. That is, if you’d rather not - ‘ she stammered, and mentally kicked herself for her ineptitude. She didn’t wish to give him an excuse to evade her, she’d already disposed of that impulse.

  Fortunately he cut her short. ‘I did agree,’ he stated. ‘Do you wish to drive he horse you’re used to? It would be best, I think. Best also if we go early, before there are too many people about.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me not to upset you?’ Bella demanded, stung out of her abashed mood. ‘Or is it rather that you don’t wish to be seen with me?’

  He eyed her enigmatically, and she felt the colour rising in her cheeks.

  ‘What possible reason could there be for that, my dear Miss Trahearne?’

  She dropped her eyes, clenching her hands so that the knuckles grew white.

  ‘You know perfectly well,’ she muttered, so quietly that he had to bend forward to catch the whisper.

  ‘Oh, you mean that unfortunate episode in Bath? But Miss Collins never was, and you are an entirely new creature, are you not, Miss Trahearne? How could our being seen together have any effect on either of us?’

  * * * *

  Lord Dorney had already eaten when Bella came down two days later, and she was told he was in his room. She had dressed carefully in a wine-red pelisse and jaunty, military style hat for her driving lesson. She had a cravat frothing with lace about her neck, and after gulping a cup of chocolate and toying with a thin slice of bread and butter decided she could not eat anything. She wandered out into the hall and was pulling on serviceable leather gauntlets when he descended the stairs.

  He smiled briefly and coldly at her. ‘Shall we go? I see you’re ready.’

  Masters had brought the small carriage to the front door, and after Lord Dorney assisted Bella into it and leapt in after her, the groom handed the reins to him.

  ‘Will you need me, my Lord?’

  ‘No, thank you. He doesn’t look as though I’d be unable to control him.’

  Bella stifled a giggle. She was having difficulty in preventing herself from trembling with nervousness.

  ‘He’s inclined to pull to the left,’ Masters warned as he stood away from the horse’s head, and Lord Dorney nodded his thanks as he set off towards the Park.

  For the next hour, as Lord Dorney instructed, demonstrated, criticized, and very occasionally praised Bella’s handling of the ribbons, she had no leisure to think of anything but her drivi
ng. He was an excellent tutor, explaining what he wanted and why in clear, unambiguous terms, and when she failed to get it right the first time, analysing what had gone wrong. She almost always corrected her mistakes at the second attempt, and by the end of the hour felt as though she had made immense strides.

  ‘I think that’s enough for one day,’ he said at length, when they had once again reached the far side of the Park. Bella turned impetuously towards him.

  ‘Oh, but - ‘ she began, and then paused.

  ‘But what?’

  He was smiling down at her in quite a friendly fashion, and Bella plucked up her courage.

  ‘I hoped we could talk,’ she said diffidently.

  ‘Oh?’ was the unpromising response, and he took the reins and turned the carriage to point towards home.

  ‘I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean any serious deception,’ she began. ‘In Bath, I mean. It’s just that I was so angry at being courted for my money rather than myself,’ she finished with a rush.

  ‘I understand how you felt, even if I disapprove of your actions,’ he said, with a chill in his voice that made Bella shiver. ‘I too must apologize for my intemperate response. Perhaps you’ve been told my family history?’

  ‘Yes, and I do understand now why you felt as you did,’ she said, a note of eagerness in her voice. ‘Please, now we’ve both apologized, may we continue - friends?’

  ‘It would be churlish not to behave as such, particularly since we are guests in the same house,’ he replied after a brief pause. ‘I believe we can do so amicably. Was it your fear, Miss Trahearne, that I would cut you and cause comment?’

  ‘No it wasn’t!’ she burst out angrily. ‘You know very well what I meant! I thought, in Bath, we truly cared for one another! I hoped that silly misunderstanding could be cleared up! I wanted - ‘

  ‘Yes, Miss Trahearne, what was it you wanted of me?’

  ‘To start again,’ she managed. ‘But matters are not the same as I thought they were.’