Regency Collection 2013 Part 1. Louise Allen

the bandages? I applied them more to prevent Miss France glimpsing the extent of the bruising than for any other reason; it looks most alarming, but no doubt you are used to that.’

      ‘You have noticed some scars? I imagine you will have cautioned Miss France about me as a result?’ Jack said it amiably and the doctor responded in kind.

      ‘I did. I have known Miss France for many years and have a concern for her welfare.’

      ‘I own a coal mine. I have been involved in a few accidents, and in the collapse of a gallery that caused most of the more dramatic marks on my back.’

      ‘Well, you have a hard head, sir. I see no problem with you getting up, provided you take things easy and rest.’ The doctor glanced at the pile of paper on the bed. ‘And do less reading.’

      ‘I will promise anything if you will tell the young man on guard outside my door to bring me my breeches.’

      Getting washed, shaved and dressed was more of an ordeal than Jack would have admitted. Somehow the prospect of taking things easy for a day or so was less onerous than it had seemed when he was trapped in his bed.

      At last Percy hefted his portmanteaux and led the way out of the bedchamber. Braced for further Egyptian assaults on his nerves, Jack found himself blinking in what he assumed was supposed to be a passage in an Indian palace. The stuccoed arches and inlaid marble gave way abruptly to gilded Classical columns as the corridor opened out on to the landing. He stopped to study the junction between the two, trying to decide whether such a clash of styles could possibly be deliberate.

      Percy put down the bags and came back. ‘Are you all right, sir? Not feeling dizzy?’

      Yes was the honest answer, but not because of the state of his head. ‘I was just interested in the different styles of decoration,’ he said mildly.

      ‘Yes, sir. Miss France got as far as here with this—Indian it is, or Mr Fakenham says, Chinese—and then when they reached the landing she changed her mind and said it all had to be redone like that with columns and things.’ He lowered his voice, ‘And there are all the statues, in the nude, sir! But Mrs Herrick said she wouldn’t have them in the house, however much Miss France said they were art so it didn’t count, them not having so much as a fig leaf on, and they’re all in the stables, wrapped up.’

      Savouring the thought of the ranks of modestly draped nymphs and gods filling the stables, Jack followed Percy down the sweep of the double staircase. A middle-aged woman in pelisse and bonnet was just drawing off her gloves at the foot. For a moment Jack failed to recognise her, then she glanced up and he remembered her all too well. Quite what did one say to a respectable matron before whom you had, however inadvertently, revealed all?

      ‘Good morning, ma’am.’

      ‘Good morning, Mr Lovell. Dressed at last, I see.’

      ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Could that possibly be a satirical glint in her eyes?

      ‘Percy, wait over there.’ She waited until the young man was out of earshot, then smiled. Jack did not make the mistake of interpreting it as a warm gesture. ‘Mr Lovell. I may faint when confronted by strange young men in a state of undress, but I am not a conventional chaperon. In fact, I am a very poor one by any usual standards; I leave all that to Lady Billington. I am a vulgar woman, Mr Lovell, the daughter of a master weaver and the wife of a mill owner, and I would do my niece no favours in society by being seen with her.’

      He opened his mouth to make some demur, but she waved him into silence. ‘I love my niece, who is an intelligent, headstrong girl. At the moment she is also a very hurt and fragile one—and believe me, sir, should another man do anything to upset her further he would find that I can still recall how to use a pair of nap-cutting shears, even if they are a bit rusty.’ The chilly smile did not waver. ‘Good day, Mr Lovell.’

      Fighting the instinctive urge to place his hands protectively over his groin, Jack followed Percy out into the back garden and down the path to a gate in the wall. Gradually a grin spread over his face; vulgar Lily and her aunt might be, but they were refreshingly willing to say exactly what they thought. He decided he could grow to like it.

      ‘What are you doing?’ Lily demanded. The footmen looked guilty, Jack had that expression she was beginning to recognise. Determined, he would no doubt describe it as. Or resolute. Mulish, stubborn and pig-headed were the politest of her words for it. ‘This is a lovely carpet. It is a very masculine carpet. It usually lies in the study and all my trustees consider it most handsome. Why are you having it rolled up? And what is wrong with those lamps?’

      ‘It is indeed a magnificent carpet,’ Jack agreed. ‘Far too fine for me; I would be forgetting and walking on it in my boots half the time. Or dropping my breakfast. I am not used to such splendour, Miss France.’

      Lily pushed the rolled-up carpet open with her foot. Jack hooked a toe under the edge and flipped it back. The footmen sat on their heels and both gazed tactfully out of the window with the air of men who wished they were anywhere else but where they were.

      She glared at Jack across their heads. He was standing there with his arms crossed, one foot on the end of the roll, showing every sign of being prepared to wait there all day if need be. Brangling in front of the servants was out of the question. She would have to give way with good grace. She just wished he did not look like a sahib who had shot a tiger and was posing with his foot on its head—it made her want to giggle.

      ‘Take those lamps and fetch some plain branched candlesticks,’ she said tightly to the men, ‘and bring the old carpet that we took out of the housekeeper’s room for Mr Lovell’s approval.’

      Lily waited until she could see them in the garden before she swung back to confront him. She found her arms were crossed, her hands gripping her elbows as though to hold in her irritation. Nobody thwarted what she, Lily France, wanted: not in her own house!

      ‘It is nothing to do with your boots, is it? You find my taste vulgar and will not live with it, even for a week or so.’ She kicked the roll hard so that it shot from under his foot and opened up to reveal ornate medallions on a dark red ground. ‘You see? Lovely. It is copied from Roman wall paintings.’

      ‘My taste runs to plainer, older things,’ Jack admitted with a shrug. ‘It all depends what you are used to, and what you can afford. You can afford to indulge your taste to buy the very latest and finest. That is your right. I believe I have the right to worry that I will spill ink on it and tread dirt into it. I had no wish to trouble you personally in the matter.’

      ‘You are very tactful,’ Lily retorted bitterly. ‘But I know what you are thinking. They all say it, mostly behind my back: I have no old things that I have inherited, so that makes me inferior. I have to buy my silver and my furniture new, which seems to be some sort of crime against good taste. Why should I have to put up with old-fashioned, faded, worn, shabby things just because they are old?’

      Before, she had just found this attitude inexplicable, too foolish for it to hurt. Now, believing she saw the same sort of rejection in Jack’s expression, she wanted to cry. And who was he to judge? He might sound like a gentleman, but society would be just as harsh to the mine owner, however careful his schooling, as they were to the merchant’s daughter. More so; she had money, he did not.

      ‘They must have to buy new things some time,’ she muttered. ‘Every thousand years or so things must wear out or get broken.’

      Jack snorted with laughter and dropped to one knee to re-roll the carpet. ‘Much more frequently than that, Lily. Do you think all these titled families came over with the Conqueror? Virtually none of them did. Most of them began their climb up the ladder in Henry’s reign—all those lovely monastic lands to buy their place at court with. Then there was another lot ennobled after the Restoration. I’ll bet they were all scrambling to buy the latest in wall hangings and silver then.’

      ‘Truly?’ Lily stood and regarded his bent head as Jack tied the cords round the roll.

      ‘Truly.’ He looked up