Regency Collection 2013 Part 1. Louise Allen

      As she looked round Janet bustled out of a side door, her arms full of underwear, and a maid was on her hands and knees setting a fire. ‘We have to light fires most months,’ Miss Lovell explained. ‘Thank you, Susan.’ The maid gathered up her brushes and bobbed a curtsy. Janet tactfully vanished back into what Lily assumed was a dressing room and pulled the door shut.

      ‘Is my brother being very difficult, Miss France?’ Lily stiffened, then realised she could not resist the wicked twinkle in the eyes that were so like Jack’s.

      ‘Very, but I’m afraid we have both been,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I am so sorry to have shocked Lady Allerton by telling her about the duel; I had assumed that everyone would know about it because of Jack’s wound.’

      ‘He hid it very well from everyone but me. Stubborn creature,’ his loving sister pronounced fondly.

      ‘Oh, isn’t he!’ Lily clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Miss Lovell, I am so sorry. I should never have said that.’

      ‘Nonsense. And please will you not call me Caroline? Do you want to wash or rest? Because if not, do come to my room and tell me all about it.’

      Lily let herself be borne off along more confusing corridors and settled on a chaise in Caroline’s room. ‘Now, I must know everything! Has Jack been absolutely impossible?’

      ‘It is just as much my fault, I suppose, although that is difficult to remember when he is being … stubborn,’ Lily said with some feeling, trying to decide what she could safely tell her new friend. ‘I was engaged to be married to a baron. My family particularly wanted me to marry into the aristocracy. We are trade, of course,’ she added baldly, just in case Caroline was in any doubt.

      ‘Yes, you said. Tea. You are lucky to be able to escape all the boring ladylike things and use your brain.’

      ‘Only one is expected to do all the boring ladylike things as well—like catching an eligible husband. Anyway, I made a dreadful mistake with the one I chose. I knew he wanted my money, that went without saying, but I did not expect him to be such a … he expected me to sleep with him before we were married,’ she said baldly.

      ‘And you did not want to?’ Caroline did not appear unduly shocked, more curious.

      ‘I thought I would have to. But when it came to it I could not bring myself to do it, and I ran away and Ja … Lord Allerton rescued me. But I didn’t know he was an earl then, and I told him about wanting to marry a titled gentleman, and he still didn’t tell me who he was. And I tried to persuade my trustees to invest in the mine, but they wouldn’t and he was furious and we had the most dreadful row. And still he fought the men who had been insulting me. Which was dreadful.’

      ‘I should think it was,’ Caroline agreed warmly. ‘Bad enough that he had gained your confidence when he was deceiving you about who he was, but then to put you under an obligation when all you wanted was to be furious with him—that is such a typically male thing to do.’

      This was an analysis that had not previously occurred to Lily, but she could not but agree with it. She was warming to Jack’s sister. ‘You should not sympathise with me,’ she said penitently. ‘I almost got him killed, and he came away from London with no investors.’

      ‘Do not blame yourself Lily. Jack has borrowed from the bank after all, so that is fine, and he wasn’t killed, so there is no need to worry over what might have been.’

      Lily bit her lip. He had borrowed from the bank, presumably with the mine itself as security. Which meant that, unlike a limited partnership with an investor where each would bear their own losses, Jack would lose the entire mine if he could not repay the debt.

      For a moment the notion of approaching the bank to buy up the debt seemed the obvious solution. Then she pulled herself up. Jack would hate that and she would end up blundering in and hurting his pride, just as she had before. He had made a decision—she owed it to him not to interfere.

      ‘Lily?’

      ‘Yes? I do beg your pardon, my mind wandered for a moment.’

      ‘Lily, would you be very kind and set aside your dislike of Jack enough to stay with us for at least a week? You see, Mama has been rather low and it would do her so much good to have a visitor. London gossip and news would be just the thing—I would so much appreciate it.’

       Dislike Jack? If only that were the problem! How can I live in the same house—castle—as him without betraying how much I love him? But I have wronged Lady Allerton and her daughters, and I could have been the cause of him being killed, so how can I refuse to do what I can for his mother?

      If it was possible to wring one’s hands mentally, Lily realised she was doing it now. ‘If Lady Allerton truly would like me to stay, of course, I would be delighted. But I feel it is a dreadful imposition—after all, I arrive unannounced, Jack and I have a flaming … I mean, Lord Allerton and I have a disagreement in front of the entire family—whatever must she think of me?’

      ‘That you have been much provoked by her son, and providentially kidnapped by her daughter.’ Caroline chuckled. ‘Now, shall we see if luncheon is ready?’

      Jack retreated to the study, away from Penny’s wide-eyed interest and his mother and Susan’s equally intolerable pose of finding nothing whatever to remark upon, other than that it was a charming diversion to have a house guest. Braced for reproaches about duelling, to say nothing of his unflattering exchange of insults with Lily, he came up against the sweet face of good breeding and a ladylike refusal to acknowledge unpleasantness.

      He wanted Lily, he realised. He wanted her so much it hurt. He wanted to apologise to her for the thoughts that had gone through his mind after the first incredulous pleasure of realising she really was standing on his threshold. For one, unforgivable moment he assumed she had decided to pursue him—and his title. Then he had seen her face as she had launched into her apology, seen the effort it took to confess her shortcomings in front of an audience of strangers and seen too the dismay when she realised she was stranded at the castle.

      That was not feigned. No, Lily had decided she had an apology to make and with typical single-mindedness had set out to do it properly. Of course, being Lily, she had also combined it neatly with a business trip and a holiday, but that practical streak was one of the things he loved about her.

      More pressing was the problem of how to exist under the same roof with Lily without either strangling or ravishing her. Both were appealing, neither were acceptable. Jack glanced at the clock. Time for luncheon. To stay put was uncomfortably like sulking, to go out meant making anodyne conversation with a woman who wished him five hundred miles away.

      ‘There you are! Stop skulking in here and come and have luncheon or Lily will think you are trying to avoid her.’ Caroline was looking pleased with herself.

      ‘I am,’ Jack growled, then remembered a grievance. ‘And what on earth was that nonsense about the carriage team? Ploughing? At this time of year? It’s a damn good thing Lily hasn’t the slightest idea about country life. And the very idea that I would put my carriage horses to the plough in any case is ridiculous.’

      ‘Lily doesn’t know that.’ Caro kept a strategic distance between them. ‘And for all she knows, you are positively cow-handed and drive a team that may as well be plough horses.’

      ‘You’re on first-name terms now, are you?’ Reluctantly Jack got to his feet and prepared to follow his sister. ‘Best friends, I suppose?’

      ‘Of course.’ Caro smiled demurely. ‘We have been exchanging confidences. Now, what have I said to make you blush, I wonder?’ she added wickedly and danced ahead into the dining room before he could seize her wrist and demand to know what she meant by confidences. Surely Lily would never tell anyone … No, impossible. Caro was simply teasing. He realised he was sweating slightly and his heart was beating faster for reasons that had got nothing whatsoever to do with his provoking sister and everything to do with Lily and