The Return of Lord Conistone. Lucy Ashford

But for her to throw herself away on Bryant….

      Something inside him twisted like a knife as he remembered the Verena he’d known. She’d been young and beautiful, and full of hope and, yes, love, for him. And he’d thought, this is the one.

      But now, she hated him. And, by God, it was as well.

       Chapter Three

      Swiftly Verena, up in her bedchamber, pulled on an old cotton shift instead of the silk chemise, and then over it a shabby print gown, which did an excellent job of disguising her full breasts and narrow waist. Not even Lucas could accuse her of playing the whore in this.

      She pulled it up viciously high at the neck, then, turning to her looking-glass, began to tug a comb through her rippling chestnut curls, which were damp from the rain. She stopped and gazed at herself. Her eyes were still bright with emotion, her skin still tingled from Lucas’s insultingly casual caress.

      Meu amor. My love. That was what he had once breathed to her. One of his many damnable lies.

      She pulled on a shawl and hurried to knock on the door of a nearby room. No answer—but she thought she heard the sound of sobbing. ‘Deb. Deb? It’s me—Verena’. She pushed the door open, and saw her sister sitting on the edge of the bed, her head bowed. When Deb looked up, her blue eyes were brimming with tears.

      Verena quickly shut the door. ‘Oh, Deb!’ she cried, and rushed to embrace her, but Deb shrank away.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?’ she whispered. ‘I will not, I will not face him!’

      Dear God. Had her sister observed that insult of a caress? ‘Did you—did you see him out there?’

      ‘No, but Izzy told me! She saw him and his friend Captain Stewart riding up the drive, and was full of it…’.

      Be grateful for small mercies. Verena drew a deep breath and sat down beside her. It had been the final blow—almost laughable, really, were it not so cruel—to find out that less than one year ago Lucas had tried his luck with Deb also. What fair game her family must have seemed.

      ‘Deb, listen to me,’ she urged. ‘Lord Conistone is leaving. He only called here because he was on his way to Stancliffe Manor’.

      ‘You mean—’ Deb shivered ‘—he said nothing about me?’

      ‘Nothing at all’. Verena sighed. ‘Look, he will have gone already. Deb, you must forget him. You must be strong’. And so must I.

      ‘Oh, Verena’. Deborah flung herself into her arms, in a fresh storm of weeping.

      And Verena did her best—an almost impossible task—to soothe her, then left her sister at last, returning to her own room to endure fresh heartbreak herself as she remembered how nearly two years ago she herself was fool enough to fall in love with Lucas, Lord Conistone.

      In the early August of 1808, all of Hampshire was deluged by heavy rainfall, and the harvests were ruined. Verena’s father had gone away again on his travels—from which, in fact, he was never to return—and Verena, young as she was, found that their tenants and villagers were coming to her for help, since their mother, Lady Frances, could do nothing but bewail their troubles.

      Verena had been supposed to be preparing for her come-out the following Season. The dressmaker had even completed part of her new wardrobe, of which the silk chemise was a sad relic. But instead of looking forward to parties and balls, she had found herself having to discuss their woeful finances with Mr Mayhew, her father’s attorney.

      With Mr Mayhew’s help that summer she had dug deeper into the dwindling family coffers to save the home farm—save the estate, in fact; during discussions with the estate’s tenant farmers, she struggled to comprehend all the talk of crop rotation, winter fodder and seasonal plantings.

      She still dreamed of going to London, with its theatres and fashionable parties. When her father returned, she told herself, everything would be as it should be once more! The last week of August seemed to echo her optimism, with days suddenly full of sunshine. Though Verena, riding back on an old pony from a meeting with some of the tenant farmers to discuss, of all things, the virtues of planting turnips as a fodder crop, knew that her return to Wycherley would be greeted by her mother with near hysterics.

      ‘Verena! You have been riding about the countryside like—a farmer’s wife! Oh, if any of our neighbours should see you!’

      It was hot, it was beautiful outdoors, and the larks were singing above the meadows. And so, in a sudden impulse of rebellion, Verena had jumped off her pony near a haystack and let it amble towards some grass. Then, after pulling a crisp red apple and two books from her saddle bag, she sat with her back against the sweet-smelling hay.

      With her spectacles perched at the end of her nose, she started on Miss Bonamy’s Young Lady’s Guide to Etiquette, a parting gift from a former extremely dull governess that her mother was always urging her to read. She tackled the first few pages. A young lady never rides out without a chaperon. A young lady always dresses demurely and protects her complexion from the sun.

      ‘Oh, fiddle!’ Verena had cried, and flung Miss Bonamy’s tome at the hayrick, turning instead, with almost equal lack of enthusiasm, to the treatise on agriculture that David, her brother-in-law, had lent her.

      It was actually not as boring as she’d expected. She read through it, frowning at first, then with growing interest, until—

      ‘Oh!’

      He was riding towards her along the track, and the sound of his horse’s hooves had made her start.

      Lucas, Viscount Conistone. Of course, as she grew up she’d seen him from afar. Dreamed about him from afar, like her sisters, like most of the girls in the entire county, no doubt. She’d even met him occasionally, because her father had been a friend of his grandfather, the old Earl, and the Earl was her godfather. She dropped the treatise on turnips and dragged herself to her feet, snatching off her spectacles, pushing back her tumbled hair; then she just said, with utter gladness, ‘You’re safe! I was so afraid!’

      He’d dismounted, and stood lightly holding his big horse’s reins, smiling down at her. He would be—yes, twenty-four years old, four years older than she was. He was hatless, and his thick black hair, a shade too long for fashion, framed a striking, aristocratic face that was tanned now by the sun. He wore just a loose cream shirt—no coat, in this heat—riding breeches and dusty leather boots.

      ‘Very much alive,’ he agreed heartily. ‘Did you hear news to the contrary, Miss Sheldon?’

      She coloured. ‘They said you’d gone overseas, with the army. And I heard there were some terrible battles…’.

      That was when he told her he was untouchable, and the bullets just flew past him. She wasn’t going to tell him that every time she read the news sheets, or overheard talk of the war, she thought of him.

      ‘I did not know you were coming home,’ she said simply.

      He’d smiled down at her again. Since she’d last seen him—it was at a gathering of local families at Stancliffe Manor several years ago—he’d changed, become wider-shouldered, leaner, yet more powerful. His face, always handsome, was more angular, his features more defined. And there was something—some shadow—in his dark grey eyes that she was sure had not been there before. A soldier now. He would have lost friends in battles, she thought. He would have killed men.

      Lucas said lightly, ‘Even my grandfather didn’t know I was returning till I turned up on his doorstep yesterday. I was intending to call on you all at Wycherley, but I’m glad to find you on your own’.

      It means nothing, he means nothing, don’t be foolish….. She suddenly remembered, and her heart sank. She said, ‘You must