“What?” He blinked several times to clear the vision of that night from his head.
“You seem stunned. You had never heard this rumor before? About Miss Burrowes?” His friend looked at him askance.
“No, never. When I left for Italy she had just come out. My father wrote to me that she had become betrothed to Lord Carrington shortly after I left, and I inquired about her no more.” And some time later finally made peace with his heart. “When I returned a little over two years later, I had no cause to ask after her, assuming that she had married. Only last night did I discover that the gentleman had died before they could do so.”
“I suppose the scandal had died down by the time you returned, but it was on everyone’s tongues for months.” Haversham stared frankly at him. “And now she has returned to Society. I wonder why?”
“She is to be married to a Mr. Burke from Derbyshire, it seems.”
“Then perhaps they are testing the waters of respectability.” Haversham nodded. “Such a marriage might help repair her reputation.”
“That seems likely.” And would explain much about last night. The embrace he’d interrupted, Burke’s overly affectionate treatment of Miss Burrowes, and her lack of affection for him. An arranged marriage to help bring her back into Society. “Though why now, after all these years, is a mystery.”
“And one we will simply have to ponder until the gossips inform us, as they most assuredly will.” His friend laughed, drained his glass, and rose. “I’ll wager—or rather I would wager had I the funds—that this instant there is an on-dit in some news sheet about her presence at Lady Hamilton’s last night. I wonder the lady would even invite her.”
“That I can shed some light on.” Nathan rose as well. “Lady Hamilton is her aunt. I remember Miss Burrowes telling me that all those years ago. Perhaps she is trying to assist the woman on her way back to respectability.”
“Better she than you or I. Nothing good can come of such a scheme. Getting embroiled in such unpleasantness would be disastrous to one’s own reputation, I’m certain.” Haversham looked at Nathan and stopped dead. “You haven’t…Ainsley, tell me you didn’t get ensnared in this business somehow?”
“I’m taking Miss Burrowes for a ride in my curricle this afternoon.” He tried to mitigate the defiance in his voice, but not much. It had occurred to Nathan that he might be, in part, responsible for Miss Burrowes’s downfall.
“Are you mad, Ainsley?” The anguish on the earl’s face spoke of genuine concern for him. “For God’s sake, cry off. Plead illness or business that cannot wait. Do not allow your name to be linked to this woman’s. Mark my words, you will either be pulled down with her or you will quash her hopes for a chance at respectability.”
“Do you think she did it, Haversham?” The question had been eating a hole in his heart ever since the revelation. “Do you think she allowed herself to be ruined because she was in love with the man?”
His question brought his friend up short. Haversham’s lips drew in, his brows down in a scowl. “As I do not know the lady well, I cannot hazard a guess. She and Carrington were, as I said earlier, very affectionate in their address in public. How that resolved itself in private, only she knows. But it matters not what I think, or what you think, or, God help us, what the truth of the matter actually is. Because Society has decreed she is guilty, and unless that opinion can be changed, she may as well be.”
CHAPTER FOUR
After a night spent tossing and turning and a morning filled with growing dread, Amelia had regretfully dressed in her best blue carriage gown, trimmed with rosettes of the same color, and a matching bonnet and taken up her station in one of the chairs in the downstairs receiving room of the townhouse her father had taken for the Season. She hoped the small amount of Pear’s Almond Bloom she had applied to her face helped hide her haggard look. It would not do for Lord Ainsley to believe her drooping appearance was due to sleeplessness caused by him. Even if it were true.
There had been so much upheaval last evening she had lain awake going over every moment until the wee hours. First there had been Mr. Burke’s introduction and subsequent kiss in the library. Then Lord Ainsley’s startling appearance. Who would have thought he would materialize after such a long time, at the very worst moment, and then offer to take her driving as though his absence during the last ten years had never occurred? But the worst had been Mr. Burke’s reaction to the outing with Lord Ainsley. Mamma had calmed him down, apparently, but he had protested loudly and long on the way home, until Amelia was left at her doorstep with a terrible headache.
So today she was determined to tell Lord Ainsley, in no uncertain terms, that she would not jeopardize her possible future with Mr. Burke, just in order to satisfy his curiosity about her. That was all it must be. Although she remembered their budding romance all those years ago did not mean he did, certainly not when he had left without a word to her. She had been devastated waiting day after day for him to arrive at the townhouse to speak to her father about a formal courtship. Night after night she’d searched each entertainment for him, until finally she’d overheard two gentlemen talking about Lord Ainsley and learned that he’d left for Italy the previous week.
Somehow she’d gotten through that horrible evening, although once she’d returned home she’d cried until dawn.
Never again would she cry over this man. She’d send him off with a large flea in his ear this very afternoon, marry Mr. Burke and be content with her lot. Hopefully her life would be better than it had been so far, if she worked at pleasing her husband. Not the marriage she’d imagined she’d have all those years ago, but still she’d be a wife and respectable again.
The front door opening brought her up out of the chair, her stomach quivering. A murmur of voices in the corridor, and her mouth went dry as if she’d swallowed cotton. She clutched the strings of her reticule, steeling herself.
Their butler appeared in the doorway. “Lord Ainsley, miss.”
Suddenly the butler was gone and he was there, tall and handsome as ever. Dressed impeccably in pale trousers and an excellently cut walnut brown coat, wide at the shoulders and impossibly narrow at the waist, his lordship could have stepped out of a bandbox.
“Miss Burrowes, good afternoon.” He smiled and bowed, his gaze taking her in from top to toe.
“Good afternoon, my lord.” Hoping he couldn’t see her trembling, she curtsied and nodded toward the door. “Shall we go? I am certain you have more pressing things to attend to this afternoon than an outing with me.”
“None that I can think of.” His gray eyes twinkled as he offered his arm. “But I will take the hint. Let us be off.”
After handing her into his curricle, a sleek black and yellow vehicle, pulled by a matched pair of greys, he jumped aboard and took the ribbons with very sure hands.
“Are they always this tiny?” The vehicle seemed too small to carry the both of them. Perched on the seat with the top back and no sides to hold her in, Amelia expected to be ejected from the carriage as soon as they hit a rut or bump in the road. She clutched what little of the side there was in a death grip.
“This is the standard size for a curricle, Miss Burrowes.” The wretch smiled as he started the team. “I believe I detect a lack of confidence in my ability to drive this rig.”
“Oh, dear.” Amelia gritted her teeth as they turned the corner at a trot. She clung to the side as best she could, but even the slight speed made her dizzy. “It is not my lack of confidence in your driving, my lord, but my lack of faith in my ability to stay in my seat.”
“You have never ridden in a curricle before?” He chuckled and mentally she cursed him.
“Never.” And never again once they returned home.
“Then I am delighted to be the one to introduce you to the pleasures of a brisk ride.” He grinned at her as they sped through the gates of Hyde Park. As soon as they rolled onto the sand and dirt bridle path, he did something with the ribbons and the horses picked u
p their pace.
The grass, trees, and flowers along the path became a colorful blur as Amelia held onto her bonnet with one hand and the curricle with the other. The wind rushed over her face, which actually felt exquisite. Still, she feared they would come to mischief any second.
After an interminable time, he slowed the horses again, this time to a sedate walk, and turned to her. “Did you enjoy your first curricle ride, then, Miss Burrowes?”
On the tip of her tongue to tell him it had been horrible, thank you very much, she glanced at him and stopped, arrested by the hopeful look on his face. He really hoped to have pleased her. Something inside her shifted, and she smiled back at him. “It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, my lord.”
“I wanted to come here before the fashionable hour just so we could take the path at a good clip. One cannot do that when so many people are about.”
Amelia glanced around and true enough, only a handful of walkers and one gentleman on horseback were in evidence. Fewer people to recognize her as well. Had that also been on Lord Ainsley’s mind?
“There is an offshoot of the path up ahead. I thought we might stop a moment.” He steered the willing horses toward a smaller opening in the trees and suddenly they were inside a bower of greenery, quite secluded, where he slowed the horses until they stopped.
Her pulse raced. Why had he brought her here? Had he finally heard the stories the ton whispered about her and think he could take advantage of her lack of reputation? The memory of their kiss beneath the cherry tree surfaced and her resolve suddenly faltered. Would she indeed allow him the liberty again?
“Miss Burrowes, first I would like to apologize most abjectly for the way I treated you, going away without a word all those years ago.”
Of all the things she’d imagined he’d say today while tossing and turning last night, that one had not even remotely crossed her mind. She blinked, not quite knowing how to respond. “Thank you, my lord. I do appreciate that, even though it was quite a long time ago.” She sighed. “A lifetime ago it seems.”
“Indeed it does seem that way.” He gazed ahead, pointedly not looking at her. “I want to tell you what happened.” Suddenly his piercing gaze was trained on her, the sorrow there almost a palpable thing.
She drew back, unsure if she wanted to listen to an explanation that brought so much pain to him. Still, if he needed atonement, she would hear him.
“You said you remember that evening underneath the cherry tree?”
Nodding, she looked away. Although time had dimmed the pain of his defection, that kiss still lingered bright in her memory.
“I promised you I would speak to your father about a formal courtship and I had every intention of doing so the next day. So that night when I arrived at home, I sought out my father to apprise him of my intentions toward you.” Lord Ainsley’s cheerful countenance had grown grim, his mouth drawn, the skin under his eyes suddenly darkened. “Unfortunately, he was not particularly enthusiastic about the news. His reasons had nothing to do with you, my dear, but to do with me. My age, specifically. I was only twenty-one that summer, an age, he told me, when I should be off seeing the world, experiencing new places, new ideas, steeping myself in the ancient cultures of foreign lands. Not leg-shackled to a lady I’d only just met.”
Teeth clenched to hold her tongue, Amelia sat with hands clasped in her lap, fuming. His father had been the one to sunder their budding affection for one another. Had he not done so, what might her life have been like these past ten years? “I see.”
Lord Ainsley closed his eyes and clenched his fists. “I should have argued more stringently for the courtship, but again, I was young and in the habit of taking my father’s advice.” He opened stormy gray eyes to gaze on her. “I wish to God I had not, but I did. We set off the very next morning for Portsmouth to arrange passage on a ship to Italy, to commence the Grand Tour I had always wished to take. I asked to send you a letter, explaining what had happened and asking you to wait for me, but Father wouldn’t hear of it. He said a clean break would be best, that I couldn’t expect you to wait years for me to return.”
“In that, I believe he was correct, my lord.” Much as she’d have liked to refute it, she could not. While she would have been content to wait two or more years for Lord Ainsley to return, her parents certainly would not have. They’d expected her to make a good match that first Season.
He shook his head sadly. “I set sail with the image of your face in my mind, determined to write to you when I first made port. However, the ship was delayed, becalmed off the Canary Islands, so when I arrived in Rome I was met with a letter from my father that had come more swiftly overland. In it he mentioned your betrothal to Lord Carrington.” Lord Ainsley sat straighter on the seat, shifting the ribbons from one hand to the other. “I sent up a prayer for your happiness and turned my thoughts to enjoying the Tour, although for the first month at least I was miserable company for the group of fellows I joined.”
“I see.” If not for his father’s misplaced meddling, this man might have been her husband all these years.
“Last night I learned you did not marry after all, and today,” he paused, his lips going quite white, “I heard about the circumstances that followed your betrothed’s death.”
Oh, God, he did know. Somehow, with all his solicitous behavior toward her today, she’d believed he hadn’t learned of her shame. What did it matter, after all? She raised her head and stared him in the eyes. “And having learned about the gossip that ruined my reputation, I suppose you wish to revile me as well?”
“No, Miss Burrowes.” The hard planes of his face made him seem distant and unapproachable. “I wish to hear your side of the story.”
* * * *
From the way her eyes widened, Nathan supposed that request had been unexpected. Had anyone ever asked for her explanation of the events surrounding her betrothal and the aftermath of Carrington’s death? Gossip and rumors were often no more than that, but just as capable of ruining a lady’s or gentleman’s reputation as the truth, if the on-dits had been correct. He’d like to hear it from the lady herself. He owed her that. If he had stayed in England and married her, none of that unpleasantness would have occurred. Even more important, he wanted to retain the untarnished memory of their brief time together. He’d believed her a true lady then; he wanted to believe it now as well. “Please tell me if the rumors are true.”
“You are bold, my lord.” A steely blue-eyed gaze pierced him. “Why should I tell you anything, as it does not concern you in the least?”
“I think it does concern me, Miss Burrowes.” Grasping her hand, he clasped it between both of his, the sudden warmth of it assailing his senses. “It concerns me that you may have been reviled all these years unjustly due to my folly. I beg you, please tell me what happened.”
Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. “It matters very little what truth you tell. The ton will believe what it will.”
“But I will judge for myself what I believe is true, if you will tell me.” He wanted the rumors to be false. Wanted it badly. So he could believe in her still.
For a long moment he doubted she would tell him anything. The sullen look on her face spoke of her distress, then she dragged her gaze away from him.
“When you did not appear again that Season, I was angry and hurt. I had believed you honorable and had even fancied myself a little in love with you. So when I found you were gone, with no word as to why, I was determined to forget you, to get on with my Season and finding a man who would care for me. Lord Carrington and I were introduced a week or so after you disappeared. He was tall and handsome, had some wit in his conversation, and was very attentive to me from the beginning of our acquaintance. It took almost no time for me to believe myself in love with him, so when he duly proposed I accepted him.” A ghost of a smile played across her lips. “He was a good man and we seemed to suit tolerably well. The wedding date was set and we continued to appear together at
entertainments, for all the world like a happy couple.”
The story so far had been as Nathan had expected. Her last words, however, pricked his interest. “You seemed like a happy couple, yet you were not?”
“You know the prevailing thoughts on how a proper young lady should act, do you not, my lord?” She arched an eyebrow. “I’m certain you also are aware that many betrothed couples consider themselves married from the time the proposal is accepted.” Pink deepened the roses already on her cheeks. “Lord Carrington was one of those proponents. He begged me to…surrender myself to him before the nuptials were spoken, but I refused. We were to be married in a matter of weeks, as soon as the banns could be read. I told him we could surely wait that long.”
“But…?” Nathan’s heart hurt as though it had been caught in the teeth of a vise.
Her fierce frown took him aback. “There is no ‘but,’ my lord. I did not acquiesce to his demand, no matter what people may have said. We quarreled over it almost every time we met or wrote, until I wished for my wedding day just to make the arguments stop.”
“No gentleman should have put you though such anguish.” Nathan’s opinion of Carrington, not good to begin with, plummeted. “One ‘no’ from you should have been sufficient.”
Her sad little smile tore at his heart. “I am not surprised to hear you say that, my lord. I daresay things would have been quite different if the gentleman in question had been you.”
By God, but that was true. From the depths of his heart he wished for the thousandth time he had never listened to his father, had instead married this beautiful woman and lived a contented life all these years. Wishes, however, would never make that come true.
“When Jonathan…Lord Carrington fell ill, we assumed it was a trifling sickness. But the nagging cough became pneumonia, the doctor said. I journeyed with my mother to Bedfordshire, to his home seat where he’d gone when the sickness began to worsen.” Unable to hide her agitation, Miss Burke fell to pulling at the strings of her purse. “We kept praying he would recover, and for a while he did rally. That is when Mamma suggested we have the wedding go forward, by special license. Lord Carrington agreed, for he believed he would recover, but wanted me to be provided for in the event of his death.”
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