Regency Collection 2013 Part 1. Louise Allen

fortune too, eh?’ His chuckle was coarse and Lily stiffened.

      ‘I am sure you mean well, my lord, but the tone of your conversation—’

      ‘Don’t get on your high horse with me, Lily my pretty. Vulgar little fillies like you can’t afford to take that line if they want to find themselves a lord. And that is what you want, isn’t it?’

      ‘How dare you!’ Lily tried to tug her hand free and found herself pulled back against his chest.

      ‘Stop being so coy, you silly little jade. Do you think you are going to find a husband from the ton now? I suppose you could at that, with all your money. Someone—me, for instance—might be willing to take Randall’s leavings.’

      Lily jerked back her hand and tried to slap him, but he buried his face in her neck and began to kiss her with wet lips. It was even worse than Adrian’s advances. Nauseated, Lily lifted her knee and brought it home hard in his groin, watching with satisfaction as Dovercourt fell back, groaning and clutching himself.

      ‘I neither know, not care, what you might be willing to take, my lord,’ she informed him. ‘But I am not willing to take the leavings of every drab and whore in London.’

      Buoyed up with the satisfaction of seeing him incapable of answering, let alone standing up to follow her, Lily swept down the loggia and came slap up against a woman who stepped out of the shadows to intercept her.

      ‘That was silly, Lily.’ Lady Angela giggled at the puerile rhyme. ‘Silly Lily,’ she repeated. ‘You are making too many enemies—give up and go away. Move to an unfashionable watering place, like Bath. You’ll find some broken-down, poxed old lord there who will marry you. He’ll die soon enough and you’ll have that precious title you are so desperate to purchase. He won’t give you children, but then, that will keep your tradesman taint out of good bloodlines.’

      Only the greatest effort at self-control she had ever managed kept Lily from slapping the sneering face. ‘Better perhaps to make some old man’s last years happy and then be a very rich dowager than to dwindle into a sour old maid as you will, Angela dear,’ she retorted. ‘I doubt if I will ever be so desperate that I will have to entertain myself by forging hundreds of letters to tradesmen just to score a trivial point.’

      The expression that flashed across Lady Angela’s face was enough to convince Lily that she was, indeed, the hoaxer—and that, if she had ever doubted it, she had an enemy for life.

      Before the other woman could retaliate, or Lord Dover-court recover himself, Lily slipped out of the door and back into the crowded room. Lady Billington was with the chaperons and, heads together with Mrs Westworth, did not notice her charge until Lily gave her skirts an urgent tug.

      ‘Lady Billington!’

      ‘Lily? My goodness, you look a complete romp—what have you been doing?’

      ‘Fighting off Lord Dovercourt,’ Lily whispered back. ‘Lady Billington, please may we go? I feel positively sick.’

      With a murmured excuse about migraines, Lady Billington steered Lily towards the door. Mercifully Lady Troughton had just mounted the dais to introduce Signora Tendesci and all heads were turned to watch.

      ‘What on earth have you been about?’ Lady Billington scolded as their carriage finally rolled away from the Troughtons’ front door.

      ‘Nothing! The beastly man cornered me in the loggia and slobbered all over my neck and made the most disgusting suggestions—until I … I freed myself.’

      ‘It is worse than I thought,’ her companion pronounced. ‘Even the least stuffy of the other chaperons are tutting about the scene outside your house, and they do not seem to know what to make of the end of your engagement. The only mercy appears to be that no one has heard anything to suggest actual impropriety.

      ‘There is nothing for it—you must take a house at one of the watering places and retire there for several months until all the fuss dies down and society finds something else to chatter about. Then perhaps you can reappear at Brighton during the summer.’

      ‘But I will seem to be running away, as though I have something to hide, or be ashamed of. And none of it is my fault—other than being foolish enough to trust that man in the first place.’ Lily stared mutinously at the drawn blinds of the carriage.

      ‘The woman is always at fault,’ Lady Billington said cynically. ‘Better a strategic retreat than be seen to be forced out.’

      Jack pushed the slipping bandage up for perhaps the sixth time that evening. His head ached. He leaned back in his chair, pulled the bandage off his head and untied the leather thong that held his hair back. ‘That’s better.’ He got up, stretched and strolled across to look at himself in the incongruously large Venetian mirror that hung at one end of the room.

      To have his hair cut while he was in London—or not? He was inclined against it, simply out of a stubborn instinct not to join the herd and follow fashion. Jack lifted the candlestick in one hand and pushed back the hair from his temple with the other. The area around the wound was spectacularly bruised now, a palate of purple, red and yellow—and the cut itself would leave a scar.

      Fortunate I have no beauty to lose. Not like that pretty boy Randall. Jack grinned at his reflection and went to tidy up his papers. He had things as well organised as he could hope for now, except for factoring in whatever he could learn about the new atmospheric pumps. He had updated his costings, redrawn his maps, learned from the comments of the potential investors who had rejected him so far. An early night, then tomorrow make contact with the remaining names on his list and see how many would be prepared to give him appointments.

      And how many of the great and the good—and the less great, but wealthy—would be willing to spare some time to plain Mr Lovell and his schemes? Was he right to follow his instincts, and his pride, and try to sell this on its merits alone or should he come clean and use what might be a weapon if only his pride would stomach it?

      Jack straightened and went over to the window, blowing out the candle as he went. Below, in the garden, someone was moving about—he could hear the crunch of gravel underfoot. A housebreaker? They carried no lantern, but they seemed to be making no attempt to hide themselves either. Then, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom outside, he saw it was a woman, her long cloak brushing the ground behind her as she paced up and down.

      Mrs Herrick? No, this figure moved with a youthful grace. Lily, then. But she should be frittering the evening away at that reception or dance or rout or whatever it was she said she was attending. Still, he shrugged, it was her garden, she could do what she wanted in it. Jack half-turned, then looked back. Something indefinable about the pacing figure said unhappiness to him. Unhappiness and indecision.

      He should leave her to her private thoughts. Then he recalled how his sisters sometimes welcomed his shoulder to cry on when they would not share their troubles with anyone else, even with their mama. She could always tell him to go away if she did not want his company. Pulling on his coat, he opened the door and went softly down the staircase to the garden. He paused in the shadow of the wall, not wanting to alarm her, certain he had made no noise, but she swung round, the heavy cloak swirling around her and the sudden flash of white skirts showing beneath it like sea foam in moonlight. Then she was still again, a dark column amidst the shadows of the arbour. ‘Jack?’

      ‘Yes. I did not mean to startle you. I wondered if perhaps something was wrong.’

      Lily laughed shortly. ‘You might say so.’

      ‘The party was not a success?’ he persisted, coming closer, still uncertain whether she welcomed his presence or not.

      ‘I was … I was snubbed. Some people I thought were old friends cut me dead. I had a horrible encounter with Lady Angela and … and when I went out into the loggia to be alone someone followed me and tried to kiss me and made disgusting suggestions. He implied that Adrian and I had … had …’ She spun round until her back was to Jack and her voice was muffled as she added vehemently, ‘And