Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion. Louise Allen

carriage for the next three days you are very much mistaken,’ she retorted. ‘And I am quite certain that the last thing you want is a former employer joining you on your bride trip.’

      The newly married couple blushed.

      ‘Besides, it is not as if I shall be travelling alone. I have employed a woman to act as escort and chaperon.’

      Fenella and Monsieur Le Brun both glanced across the inn yard at the nondescript wisp of a woman Amethyst had hired from an agency not two days earlier.

      ‘She doesn’t look as if she will provide you with much company, though,’ said Fenella with an anxious frown.

      ‘Believe me, I shall not pine for conversation after that last trip with the two French maids jabbering away incessantly like a pair of magpies. Peace and quiet will suit me very well.’

      ‘Ma chère, Mademoiselle Dalby has clearly made up her mind. Have you ever been able to sway her, once she has done so?’

      With one arm round Fenella’s waist, and Sophie’s little hand clasped in his own, Monsieur Le Brun firmly ushered his new little family into the coach that stood waiting for them.

      A swell of resentment surged through Amethyst as she boarded her own carriage. If it wasn’t for him, they would all be going home together. She would still be smarting from losing Nathan, but at least she would have...

      She shook her head, angry at herself. When had it ever done her any good relying on others? She was stronger than this.

      She consoled herself, for the first few miles of her own journey, with visions of Monsieur Le Brun’s discomfort, shut up with a child whose reaction to the bouncing and swaying of their coach was going to be inevitable. Served him right for breaking up her happy home!

      Except...Fenella loved him. And if he felt anything like she did about those two, he wouldn’t be finding it a trial. Caring for each other was part of being a family.

      Or it should be. It was what she’d always wanted, deep down. She knew herself so much better since being with Nathan. He’d let her express her opinions, rather than trying to form them, and the more she’d done so, the more she understood what she really thought and felt about everything.

      And she’d seen that, all her life, she had just wanted to have somebody love her. It was what had made her strive so hard to please both her parents, and then her aunt.

      And what had made her fall into Nathan’s bed. It hadn’t been just adventure she craved. It wasn’t just about rebelling and proving that a woman could do anything a man could do. She’d wanted him to love her. Yet when he’d claimed he did, she hadn’t been able to believe it. Why should he love her? Nobody else ever had. They’d made her believe there was something intrinsically unlovable about her. And so she’d pretended she didn’t care. Hardened herself against hurt. Pushed people away before they had a chance to make so much as the slightest dent in her defences.

      But it did hurt, knowing that Nathan didn’t love her, any more than anyone else ever had.

      She slumped into the squabs, that grey pall making the mere act of breathing feel like an effort.

      England was such a damp and dreary place. People scuttled about, heads bowed into the drizzle, as though they were the nation that had just been defeated, rather than the French.

      Or was it just the air of defeat hanging over Amethyst that made the rest of the world look so bleak?

      The woman she’d hired from an agency to lend her respectability on the journey very soon gave up attempting to converse with her taciturn employer. And no doubt gave thanks, reflected Amethyst on one of the stops to change horses, that her employment was only temporary.

      * * *

      Amethyst gave her a generous tip when at last they reached their destination.

      ‘I hope your return trip is more pleasant,’ she said to the startled woman. ‘It couldn’t have been very comfortable for you, having to travel so far with an employer who had only roused from her depression to make acid remarks about the deficiencies of any stray male unfortunate enough to cross her path,’ she said self-deprecatingly.

      ‘I...I don’t like men any more than you, madam,’ said the woman, with just the hint of a sympathetic smile, before dropping a curtsy and scuttling off towards the town square and the coaching inn where she would rest overnight before taking the stage back to London the next morning. Amethyst half-wished she was going with her. She had to brace herself before walking up the path to Aunt Georgie’s front door. After the glorious freedom she’d known on her travels, setting foot inside the house would be rather like putting on a stiffly starched collar. The minute she crossed the threshold, she got the urge to fling open all the windows. Only, since it was raining, all it would achieve would be to make her cold, as well as depressed.

      ‘There is a fire in the morning room, Miss Dalby,’ said her butler, a long-suffering individual she’d inherited from her aunt along with the house.

      ‘Thank you, Adams,’ she said, suddenly wondering why he’d borne the brunt of her aunt’s displeasure for so many years. He wasn’t paid much more than the average for his position. ‘But I would rather take tea in the study.’

      ‘Of course. I had the fire lit in there, too, thinking you might like to cast your eye over the correspondence awaiting you.’

      ‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ she said with real gratitude. ‘Thank you.’

      He dipped his head in a kind of truncated bow, swiftly, but not before Amethyst had caught a startled look on his face. Good grief, had she really been so lacking in manners towards the man that a mere ‘thank you’ could surprise him?

      She went to the study while Adams made his stately way in the other direction to see to the tea things. There was quite a pile of correspondence piled up on her desk. Hours’ worth of work.

      She sighed and went to the window, which looked out over her garden. She hadn’t come in here because she was keen to put her nose back to the grindstone. It was just that she’d made this room her own, since Aunt Georgie’s death. She’d moved the desk so she could see out over the gardens by merely lifting her head. She’d had the walls painted a light, creamy colour, pretty new curtains hung and even put up some watercolours she’d purchased herself, whereas she hadn’t got round to doing anything about the gloom that pervaded the morning room. And she’d got the strangest feeling that the room would disapprove of her jaunt to the Continent. That it would gloat at her, too. What good had it done her to go abroad? The solid, heavy furniture would imply. Or buying new clothes, and going dancing and taking a lover? She’d still ended up having to come back alone. More alone than before, since even Fenella had abandoned her. Fenella, the nearest thing to a friend she’d ever had.

      And yet...all those ledgers lining the shelves and the correspondence stacked neatly on the desk reminded her that her life still had some purpose. Within those reports lay the livelihood of hundreds of workers. The decisions she made regarding them would affect the prosperity of swathes of Lancashire and the Midlands.

      It was probably coincidence that at that moment the sun managed to break through the heavy pall of cloud hanging over the scenery, making the damp shrubbery glisten as though covered with hundreds of tiny jewels. At that exact same moment Amethyst saw a ray of light of her own.

      Towards the end of her aunt’s life she’d begun to liken her to a dragon, zealously guarding her hoard. She’d accumulated great piles of money simply for the sake of having it. But it had never made her happy. On the contrary, she’d grown increasingly fearful that someone would find out about it, then try to steal it from her, one way or another.

      She turned round and stared at the piles of paperwork lying on her desk. She didn’t need to follow blindly in Aunt Georgie’s footsteps. She didn’t need to carry on amassing more and more wealth, for its own sake. She might remain a spinster, secretly running a vast financial empire, but she could do it in her own way. She’d already made a start, she realised, by expanding