Tangled Reins (Regencies 1)

When he had decided to wait until later in the Season before asking for Dorothea’s hand he had not envisaged the current tangle of their affairs. He still had no clue what had gone wrong tonight and had no right to ask for an explanation. And, while previously she might have given him one, tonight she had realised how public he had made their relationship. She had not been pleased. God only knew what she would say if she learned that an announcement of their marriage was considered imminent! He grinned as he imagined her fury. Still, he could not regret his manipulation. After his behaviour in Moreton Park woods and at that blasted inn she would never have believed he was meek and malleable. If he had let her have her head in the matter of choosing her own husband she would undoubtedly have landed herself with some boring slowtop, too dimwitted to exercise any control over her. And she certainly needed someone to control her, to watch over her, to care for and cherish her—he shuddered to think what trouble she would have landed herself in had he not been there, time and again, to rescue her. Half the time she had not even recognised danger when she saw it. Such as in him.

That still surprised him. She certainly recognised the danger in Peterborough and Walsingham. But never, from that first moment in Moreton Park woods when he’d held her and kissed her as she’d never been kissed before, had she shown the slightest consciousness of danger in his company. Another one of her odd quirks, but one for which he was profoundly thankful.

He suspected that her dislike of his authoritarian ways stemmed from her habit of getting her own way in most things and of being able to manipulate people like Cecily, Lady Merion and Ferdie into doing much as she wished. Her refusal to attempt to wring from him the explanation for his presence at Merion House earlier in the evening suggested that she recognised the futility in cajoling or trying to manipulate him. Which was just as well. He had no intention of ever allowing her to do so. Still, he thought, a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, he had no objection to her trying.

With a sigh he doggedly drew his mind back to his present problems. She had withdrawn from him and while, in normal circumstances, he would not have doubted his ability to bring her around, there were too many unexplained incidents occurring for him to feel easy. He glanced towards his desk, where the two mysterious notes lay in a drawer. There was someone else playing this hand and as yet he did not know who it was.

There was only one possible course of action. His steward on his Leicestershire estate was begging for his attendance. In travelling there, he would pass through Northamptonshire, not far from Darent Hall. Rapidly reviewing his engagements, he remembered a luncheon on the morrow. Very well, he would leave later in the day for Leicestershire and call in on horrible Herbert on the way back. Then, he supposed, he really should tell his mother, which meant an evening spent at Hazelmere. Seven days in all. He would be back in London by Tuesday next.

He did not like to leave her, but as he had no idea if any further attempt on her would be made, it would be wiser to solve the potential problem by marrying her as soon as possible. Abducting the Marchioness of Hazelmere would be a far more difficult task than abducting Miss Darent. In fact, he would make sure it was entirely impossible. He tossed off the last of the brandy and went to bed.

Comfortably settled between his silken sheets, he listened to Murgatroyd’s footsteps die away down the hall. Their interlude in the Richmond House orangery had left no room for doubt of her feelings for him. And in her subsequent actions she had, albeit unwittingly, confirmed his hopes. She loved him. Beneath his frustration, that knowledge ran like a heady pulse, a constant source of joy and wonder. And from it had been born the patience to see the game through, to let her have her Season of independence before he claimed her. Aside from any other consideration, he had enjoyed her spirited resistance, her attempts, becoming less and less successful with time, to conceal her response to him. He sighed. For good or ill, her time had run out. Tuesday next would see the end of the game. And the start of so much more.

He stretched, co

nscious of the tenseness lying just beneath the surface. He should never have kissed her. Now every time he saw her he was shaken by an urgent desire to do it again. And every time he gave way to the impulse he was increasingly aware of an even more urgent desire to take her to bed. The warmth of her hair, her smooth skin, the sweetness of her lips and, more than anything else, those tantalising green eyes had all become so strongly evocative that, for the first time in his considerable experience, his desire was no longer subject to his control. Aside from anything else, marrying her soon would end the torture. He slid himself into a more comfortable position and, thinking of emerald eyes, lost touch with reality.

Chapter Eleven

Next morning Lady Merion remained in bed, unwell after the stuffy atmosphere of Carlton House. Dorothea, unrefreshed by her troubled sleep, went to enquire after her health. Her ladyship immediately noticed the dark rings under her granddaughter’s large eyes and insisted she remain in bed for the rest of the morning. Sure that if she rode in the Park this morning she would meet Hazelmere, and feeling that normal conversation with him was as yet beyond her, Dorothea agreed.

Cecily was undisturbed by the change in plans, as she had arranged to go driving with Fanshawe that afternoon. She wrote to Ferdie to cancel their morning engagement and, at Dorothea’s suggestion, asked him to escort her sister for a ride that afternoon.

When the afternoon came Ferdie and Dorothea duly set off for the Park. Ferdie, not generally observant, noticed that Dorothea was not her normal self. Thinking to distract her, he rattled on about the Carlton House ball and the Prince Regent’s set, and anything else that came into his head. Understanding his benign impulse, Dorothea tried to put on a happier face and to ignore the fact that he, too, seemed to consider her virtually betrothed to Hazelmere.

They had entered the Park and were ambling along the grass verge of the carriageway when, glancing ahead, she suddenly stopped. Breathlessly she cut into Ferdie’s description of Lady Hanover’s new wig. ‘Ferdie, I want to gallop over to those trees. I think there are freesias growing there.’

Precipitately she set the bay mare cantering towards a stand of oak to their left. Ferdie, taken by surprise, turned his own horse to follow. As he did so his gaze alighted on an approaching carriage. It was Hazelmere’s curricle, the Marquis driving his greys with Helen Walford beside him. The brief glimpse of his cousin’s face before his horse moved off was quite sufficient to tell Ferdie that Hazelmere had seen Dorothea’s sudden departure. The appalling fact that Dorothea had knowingly cut his cousin in the middle of the Park dawned on a horrified Ferdie.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded as he came up with her by the trees. ‘That was Hazelmere!’

‘Yes, I know, Ferdie,’ replied Dorothea, contrite as she realised that he was really distressed.

‘Well, I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re up to,’ he continued, ‘but I can tell you that cutting people like Hazelmere in the middle of the Park is not the thing at all!’

‘Yes, Ferdie. I’d like to go home now, please.’

‘I should dashed well think so!’ he exclaimed, knowing that Hazelmere would shortly be following them.

On the way back to Cavendish Square Ferdie tried to impress upon Dorothea the magnitude of her sin. Not knowing what had caused her to behave in such an extraordinary way, he felt that if he could induce her to behave with something like contrition when she shortly faced his cousin she might stand a better chance of surviving the ordeal. Ferdie knew, as few others did, that, while Hazelmere appeared to have the easiest of tempers, this was a fiction. The Marquis of Hazelmere had a very definite temper; he just did not lose it often.

Ferdie did not know that Dorothea was already acquainted with Hazelmere’s temper. Seeing him driving his greys with the lovely Lady Walford by his side, she simply could not bear to stay and politely exchange pleasantries with them. Although she knew she had behaved badly and Hazelmere had every right to be angry, she, too, was decidedly aggrieved and was almost looking forward to an interview with his lordship. Luckily Ferdie had no idea of her thoughts—that anyone could look forward to an interview with Hazelmere in a rage was far too bizarre a concept for him to have understood.

Reaching Merion House, Ferdie escorted her indoors, past the interested Mellow and into the drawing-room. There he got a glimmer of the underlying story. Dorothea, pacing about the room like a caged tigress, seemed to the distracted Ferdie to be more incensed than contrite.

‘How dare he approach me while driving that woman?’ she finally burst out.

Ferdie stared. ‘What’s wrong with driving Helen Walford?’ he asked, fearing that her reason must be slipping.

‘But surely you know? She’s his mistress!’

‘What?’ Ferdie positively goggled. ‘No! You’ve got that wrong! Very sure she’s not Marc’s mistress.’

Remembering his connection with Hazelmere, Dorothea paid no attention to him, convinced that he would take his cousin’s side in any argument.

An imperious knock fell on the street door. Ferdie, glancing out of the window, saw Hazelmere’s curricle standing outside.

Seeing Dorothea pointedly move away from the carriageway, Hazelmere was thunderstruck. What the devil was she about, behaving like that to him? Too well attuned to his whereabouts to allow his entirely understandable rage to be evident, it was nevertheless some minutes before he could trust his voice to ask Helen Walford, ‘My dear Helen, do you mind if I return you to your friends? I’m departing for Leicestershire shortly and I believe I’ve some unfinished business to attend to.’