An Unconventional Countess (Regency Belles of Bath 1)

‘Yes, first thing in the morning.’

‘Every morning?’

‘Six days a week.’

‘That sounds tiring.’

‘I like to keep busy.’ She lifted her chin even higher, though with an air of defiance that suggested the words were more of a stock answer than the truth.

‘It still sounds tiring.’

‘It’s just how things are. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we didn’t expect or choose, but that we can’t walk away from, either.’ A small frown puckered her brow as if she were afraid she’d just said too much. ‘But I do miss my father a great deal. He called us una squadra perfetta.’

‘A perfect team?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes widened with obvious surprise. ‘You speak Italian?’

‘I’m a sailor. In the navy, it helps to learn a little of every language, although I’m not sure I’d get very far in conversation. You’re fluent, I presume?’

‘Especially about biscuits. My father always made a point of speaking Italian to my brother and me so we grew up learning two languages at once.’

‘Ho bisogno di una corda?’

She stared at him blankly for a few seconds. ‘You need some rope?’

‘Not at this precise moment, but that’s the kind of subject I can talk about. Or if you prefer, Dove posso comprare dieci bottiglie di vino rosso?’

‘Where can you buy ten bottles of red wine?’

‘For the Captain’s table, just as important as rope.’ He smiled and picked up his teacup again, regarding her quizzically as he drank. She was still as prickly as a hedgehog, though under the circumstances he couldn’t particularly blame her. Given the way her parents had been ostracised by society, the details of which his grandmother had expounded to him earlier, he could understand her dislike of the aristocracy, too. She’d made her prejudice abundantly obvious, yet here she was, drinking tea with a baron and a baroness in one of the grandest houses in the city. It had to feel strange.

‘I say.’ The Baron crossed the room to settle himself in an armchair beside them. ‘I’m afraid that my wife’s trying to get your mother riding again, my dear.’

‘Riding?’ Miss Fortini echoed as if she didn’t know what the word meant.

‘Yes, she was quite an accomplished horsewoman in her day, so I’ve been told. Repeatedly. I ought to have known that was the reason Georgiana remembered her. It’s usually something to do with horses. Those creatures are the bane of my life.’

‘My mother rides?’

‘Well, of course she rides!’ the Baroness answered, though bellowed would have been a more fitting description. ‘Show me a lady who doesn’t!’

‘That doesn’t mean all of them enjoy it,’ Samuel cut in.

‘Nonsense. If they don’t enjoy it, then they’re not doing it properly. What about you, Miss Fortini? Do you enjoy it?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried.’

‘You’ve never—’ For arguably the first time in her life, his grandmother appeared to be at a loss for words. ‘But how on earth is that possible?’

‘Quite easily when you don’t own a horse.’

‘But how do you go anywhere?’

‘I have two perfectly good feet.’

‘Then how do you travel longer distances?’

‘We don’t.’ It was Mrs Fortini who spoke this time. ‘I’m afraid that we haven’t travelled a great deal at all. My husband always wanted to take us to Italy, to show us where he grew up and introduce us to the rest of his family, but unfortunately our circumstances never allowed it.’