Regency Scoundrels And Scandals. Louise Allen

the butter dish on the table. It was the hand of a fighting man, a strong man, and she could not help but contrast it with Henry’s white, soft and carefully manicured digits.

      ‘You have not been back in England long?’ She tried to imagine that she was presiding over a vicarage luncheon party and not to remember his mischievous twinkle as she had remarked that a small adventure was not unwelcome. ‘Your agent led me to understand that you were with the army in Belgium.’

      ‘I arrived the night before last from Ostend and reached London late yesterday afternoon.’

      ‘Then no wonder you felt so…unwell yesterday. You must have been exhausted. The Channel crossing alone, I am sure, must be wearisome.’

      ‘You are kind to find an excuse for me.’ His smile really was very charming. Bel found herself smiling back. Seduced into smiling. He was dangerous. ‘But I have none, in truth. I went out to join fellow officers and we talked and drank—with the result you saw.’

      It was on the tip of her tongue to remark that they must have been celebrating when she sensed a shadow. It was not so much that his expression changed, as the light went out behind those remarkable blue eyes. He was sad, she realised with a flash of empathy. On instinct she turned and nodded dismissal to the footman who stood silently by the sideboard. If her visitor was experiencing mental discomfort, he did not need an audience for it.

      ‘It must be so painful to remember all those men who could not be with you last night,’ Bel said quietly. ‘Is it sometimes hard to believe that you are alive and they are not?’

      He had raised his glass to his lips as she spoke, but put it down at her words, untouched. Bel thought she caught the hint of a tremor in his hand, then he was in control again. ‘You are the only person I have spoken to who was not there who understands.’ He stared at the glass and at his own fingers wrapped around the stem. She waited, expecting him to say something further, but after a moment he lifted the glass again and drank. A sore spot, then, one to avoid. He was going to have a hard time of it though, once he went out into society again. Everyone would want to lionise another returning Waterloo officer, talk about the battle, demand to know about Wellington, ask about his experiences.

      ‘We are both going to find our new lives difficult. You have been in the army, I have been in seclusion,’ she observed. ‘Unless you are going back into the army, Lord Dereham?’

      ‘No. I will go to Horse Guards today and resign my commission. Quite frankly,’ he added with a rueful grin, ‘I am strongly tempted to bolt off to the country and rusticate on my much-neglected estate rather than face certain aspects of London life again.’

      ‘Town is very quiet just now,’ Bel reassured him. ‘That is why I came up in early June—to replenish my wardrobe and find my feet again without too many invitations. And then I found myself travelling to the Grand Duchy of Maubourg, of all places, for my brother’s wedding.’

      ‘Indeed? It sounds an adventure. That is an unusual place for your brother to be wed, I must confess.’

      ‘Not if you are marrying the Dowager Grand Duchess of Maubourg.’ Bel smiled reminiscently. ‘It was just like a fairy tale—or a Gothic novel, if one considers the castle. Quite ridiculously romantic.’

      ‘I am sorry, I should remember who your brother is, forgive me.’

      ‘My elder brother is the Duke of Allington. This was my second brother, Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst.’

      ‘Otherwise known as Jack Ryder! I knew there was something familiar about you—you have the same grey eyes.’

      So, Lord Dereham knew Sebastian in his secret persona as spy, investigator and King’s Messenger. It was probably a state secret, but she risked the question. ‘Where did you meet him?’

      ‘On the morning of the battle.’ There was no need to specify which battle. Bel saw the realisation come over him. ‘Then that very handsome woman in man’s clothing was the Grand Duchess Eva? No wonder your brother looked ready to call me out when I tried a little mild flirtation with her!’

      ‘Indeed, you were dicing with death, Lord Dereham,’ Bel agreed, amused at the daring of a man who would flirt with any woman under Sebastian’s protection. ‘It is a most incredible story, for he snatched Eva out of Maubourg and back to England in the face of considerable danger.’

      ‘You are a romantic, then?’ He poured her more lemonade from the cut-glass jug at his elbow and watched her quizzically for her answer. Bel found herself drowning in that deep azure gaze, rather as she might surrender to the sea. He seemed to be luring her on to confess her innermost yearnings, her need to be loved, her wicked curiosity to experience physical delight. And just like the sea, he was dangerous and full of undercurrents. A completely unknown element. Of course she could reveal nothing. Nothing at all.

      ‘A romantic? I…I hardly know,’ Bel confessed, throwing caution overboard and wilfully ignoring the sensation that she might be heading for the reef without an anchor. ‘I would not have said so a few weeks ago. I would have said I was in favour of a rational choice of marriage partners, of very conventional behaviour and, of course, of judicious attention to society’s norms. And then, when Eva and Sebastian fell in love, I found I would have defied any convention in the world to promote their happiness. I virtually gatecrashed a Carlton House reception, in fact, then kidnapped poor Eva to harangue her for breaking Sebastian’s heart.’

      ‘Passionate, romantic and daring, then.’ He sounded admiring.

      Bel knew she was blushing and could only be grateful that she had dismissed the footman earlier. ‘In the cause of other people’s happiness, Lord Dereham,’ she said, attempting a repressive tone.

      ‘Will you not call me Ashe?’ He picked up an apple and began to peel it, his attention apparently fixed on the task.

      ‘Certainly not!’ Bel softened the instinctive response with an explanation. ‘We have not even been introduced, ridiculous though that seems.’

      ‘I am sure Horace did the honours last night,’ Ashe suggested. ‘He strikes me as a bear of the old school. A stickler for formality and the correct mode.’

      ‘Even so.’ Bel allowed herself the hint of a smile for his whimsy, but she was not going to be lured into impropriety—her own thoughts were quite sufficiently unseemly as it was. And she was not going to rise to his teasing about her silly rug. Goodness knows what familiarity she might be tempted into if they became any more intimate than they were already.

      ‘Reynard, then?’ He was not exactly wheedling, but there was something devilishly coaxing about the expression in the blue eyes that were fixed on her face.

      ‘I should not.’ She hesitated, then, tempted, fell. After all, it was only such a very minor infringement of propriety and who was going to call her to account for it? Only herself. ‘No, why should I be missish! Reynard, then.’

      ‘Thank you, Lady Belinda.’ The peel curled in an uninterrupted ribbon over his fingers as he slowly used the knife. ‘Now, tell me, why are you such an advocate of passion for other people, but not yourself?’

      ‘You forget, I am a widow,’ Bel said sharply. That was far too near the knuckle.

      ‘I apologise for my insensitivity. Yours was a love match, I collect.’ The red peel fell complete on to his plate and formed, to her distracted gaze, a perfect heart.

      ‘Good heavens, no! I mean—’She glared at him. ‘You have muddled me, Lord…Reynard. Mine was a marriage much like any other, not some…’ She struggled to find the proper, dignified words.

      ‘Not some irrational, unconventional, injudicious—do I have your list of undesirable attributes correctly?—storm of passion, romance and love, then?’

      ‘Of course not. What a very unsettling state of affairs that would be, to be sure, to exist in such a turmoil of emotions.’ How wonderful, exciting, thrillingly delicious it sounds. ‘No lasting marriage could be built upon such irrational