Regency Collection 2013 Part 1. Louise Allen

success. She had been exceedingly careful to say nothing that might reveal the gap between her dress allowance and those of the Lovell sisters when they questioned her about gowns, she had changed the subject as soon as possible when Penelope had asked about chaise-longues with crocodile legs, and she had entertained her hosts with unexceptional anecdotes about the Duchess of Oldbury’s ball without the slightest reference to challenges or quarrels.

      ‘And did you dance with Jack?’ Penelope demanded.

      ‘Yes, I have done, once or twice,’ Lily conceded. ‘Once only at that ball, but before then at another party. Lord Allerton,’ she added slyly, sliding a glance at him from under her lashes, ‘is a most accomplished dancer.’

      Jack’s mouth twitched slightly. Susan laughed. ‘Is he really? I am not sure I believe you, Miss France. He is all flat feet when he has to dance with us.’

      ‘Dancing with Miss France is a much more inspiring matter than having to take the floor with one’s baby sisters,’ her put-upon brother retorted. ‘An elephant would dance well with Miss France.’

      Lily liked the way Jack was with his family. He was obviously fond of all of them, he put up with his sisters’ teasing with humour and he was clearly a loving and attentive son. This, she found, was not helpful. The discovery that he was a short-tempered domestic tyrant would have made her feel much better.

      ‘Is it still raining?’ Penelope lamented when the meal was over. ‘I thought we could all go for a walk and show Lily the countryside.’

      ‘Miss France, Penelope,’ her mother corrected. ‘Really, our visitor will think you were dragged up with no manners.’

      ‘Please, I would like it if the girls call me Lily, ma’am. It is a pity about the weather, Penelope, for I would love you to show me around. Perhaps you can another day.’

      ‘Why not show Lily the picture gallery, Jack?’ Caroline suggested helpfully. ‘Penny, you and Susan can help me look through the journals Jack brought us and see how we would like our new muslins made up. And then later Lily can tell us whether we will be bang up to the mode or sadly dowdy.’

      Lily would have been more than happy to be curled up looking at the Ladies’ Journal, but to refuse to go with Jack would have looked too pointed. She smiled politely and accompanied him up the main staircase and off down a passage she had not yet seen.

      ‘It is very confusing, I am lost already,’ she remarked as they turned a corner and went up a short flight of steps. That’s right, Lily, prattle away, anything but acknowledge you are alone with him. ‘I expect to have to rise at five in order to arrive at breakfast at a reasonable hour.’

      ‘You will get used to it. For children, of course, it is the most wonderful playground. Mama used to live in dread of one of us vanishing and being found, years later, shut in a mysterious chest or locked in a haunted tower room.’

      ‘She must have disliked Gothic tales then, that sort of thing constantly happens in those,’ Lily observed. ‘I enjoy them, but I am nervous of all these suits of armour. I keep thinking I can see them moving out of the corner of my eye.’ She shivered, less out of any fear of the armour than from being so close to Jack, alone.

      Here, in his own home, he was almost a stranger. It was as though Jack Lovell had retreated from her behind the front of Lord Allerton. ‘Do you think I should have them polished?’

      ‘What? The armour? I have no idea—are they supposed to be?’ Lily went close and regarded one suit on its plinth. It had no rust, but it had dulled to an almost pewter shade.

      ‘I was thinking the Great Hall looked a little worn and wondered how you would transform it, Lily. If the armour was polished, we could set more of it about in there. Suits of armour up the stairs and possibly some arrangements of weapons on the wall. What do you think?’

      Lily regarded him. There was mischief, carefully repressed, in the curve of his mobile mouth and his lashes were lowered over eyes that he knew would betray him. ‘I think that would look like a Great Hall in the medieval style,’ she retorted tartly. ‘As you already have a medieval hall, I can only conclude that you are teasing me by suggesting that you dress it up to be a pastiche of itself.’

      With a flounce of skirts Lily marched off down the corridor. In a way, arguing with Jack felt much more comfortable than when he was being frigidly polite.

      ‘I miss your style of interior decoration, Lily,’ he remarked plaintively, following her.

      ‘No, you do not, Jack Lovell, you miss being able mock it.’ She turned to see where he was and found he was right behind her, trapping her neatly against the wall.

      ‘Did I mock, Lily?’ He was so close she could see the laughter lines at the corner of his eyes, the way his skin was paler where his hair had been ruthlessly cropped, the way the dark flint of his eyes had lightened into the grey of pebbles under water.

      ‘You laughed at my crocodiles,’ she said, breathless.

      ‘Only a little bit,’ he coaxed, resting one hand on the panelled wall, just by her right ear. ‘You have to admit that a chaise-longue with scaly legs is just a trifle amusing, especially when they emerge from under the ruffles on your hem.’

      ‘Very well, I suppose it is.’ Was he going to kiss her, or just tease her all afternoon? And what would she do if he did kiss her? Lily swallowed hard as Jack moved closer, his hand brushing the fabric of her skirts at waist level. She could feel her breathing quickening, her eyelids lowering. He smelt just as she recalled, of—

      ‘Careful, you’ll fall.’ Jack caught her neatly round the waist as the door she had not seen behind her opened to his touch and Lily found herself in a long gallery, lit on one side with tall windows and hung on the other with what looked like hundreds of pictures.

      What a fool, to think that he had been about to kiss her—worse, to want him to. Lily smiled brightly, trying to ignore the all-too-familiar urge to reach out and touch Jack. ‘What a lot of pictures.’

       Inane! Try to think of something intelligent to say, you fool! All these ancestors …

      Jack obviously shared her opinion of her originality. ‘Yes, aren’t there.’ His voice was dry. ‘They are of varying interest, but that is not why I brought you here.’

      ‘No?’ And as it obviously is not to make love to me, or to abjectly beg my pardon for calling me totty-headed—really, that hurts more even than bird-witted!—just why are we here? Lily made a show of studying the nearest canvas. As the rain lashing down outside and the thick cloud rendered the unlit room positively gloomy, she could make out little more than a dead stag.

      ‘No. I want to get to the bottom of exactly what happened about the duel.’

      ‘Why? I told you downstairs.’ Lily tossed her head and moved on to the next picture. Now this was better—a pretty girl in an arbour and a lovely baroque frame, all ormolu curlicues.

      ‘As it concerns my honour, I would like to know exactly what you did and who you told about it.’ Jack was not sounding remotely amused any longer. ‘Just how many people did you approach in your attempt to stop it?’

      ‘I asked Lady Billington’s advice, and she said it would be impossible to stop. And I asked Lord Gledhill—you know about that—and he almost had conniptions and so I asked Doctor Ord. That is all. Satisfied?’ She glared at him over her shoulder, but his face was impossible to read in the gloom.

      ‘No I am not satisfied.’ Jack took several long strides down the gallery, unpleasantly reminiscent of the paces he had taken on the duelling ground. ‘How the devil did you get Ord to take you with him?’

      ‘I tricked him into telling me when and where and then told him I would go in my own carriage if he refused to help me.’

      ‘You are unprincipled, manipulative, domineering …’

      ‘Yes,