A Lady of Expectations and Other Stories (Regencies 6)

Horatio nodded. “Rawling’s Cottage, I expect.” With bland calm, he picked up the carving implements and fell to carving the roast which had, that moment, been ceremonially placed before him.

To Sophie’s relief, the healthy appetites of the younger Webbs thrust her adventure temporarily from their minds.

Dinner was followed by a noisy game of Speculation, after which, feeling positively exhausted, mentally and physically, Sophie took herself off to bed. She had expected to find time, in the quiet of her chamber, to review the afternoon’s happenings—not the stirring events her cousins had described, but the far more unnerving moments she had spent alone with Jack Lester, a rescued damsel with her knight. Indeed, with her inner peace in disarray, she climbed the stairs determined to place the episode in proper perspective.

Instead, she fell deeply asleep, her dreams haunted by a pair of midnight-blue eyes.

* * *

THE FOLLOWING MORNING was filled to overflowing with the first of the tasks needed to be completed to allow them to remove to the capital at the end of the week as planned. Lucilla had the entire event organized, down to the last bottle of elderflower lotion needed to preserve their complexions against any breeze that might be encountered while being driven in gentlemen’s curricles in the Park.

Excused from the first round of packing for a light luncheon, both Sophie and Clarissa were commanded to appear before the family’s seamstress for a final fitting of the walking gowns, morning gowns, chemises and petticoats they had all agreed could be perfectly adequately supplied from home. The rest of their wardrobes, Lucilla had declared, must come from Bruton Street. As, after four years’ absence from London, none of the gowns Sophie currently possessed could be considered presentable, she was as much in need of the modistes as Clarissa. Even Lucilla had murmured her intention of taking advantage of their time in the capital to refurbish her own extensive wardrobe.

It was midafternoon before Sophie was free. She had barely had time to wander down to the front hall before the younger Webbs found her. With the single-mindedness of the young, they claimed her for their accustomed ride. With an inward sigh, Sophie surveyed the bright faces upturned to hers, eyes glowing, eager to be off. “Very well,” she said. “But I think we’ll take a groom with us today. Jeremy, please tell John he’s to accompany us. I’ll get Clarissa and meet you at the stables.”

To her relief, none of them commented on her departure from their established norm. Jeremy merely nodded, and all three departed with alacrity.

Glancing down at her morning gown, Sophie turned and started back up the stairs, refusing to dwell on what had prompted her caution, reflecting instead that, given that her aunt relied on her to ensure her cousins were exposed to no untoward occurrences, it was the least she should do.

When she appeared at the stables, Clarissa in tow, Old Arthur, the head groom, raised a questioning brow at her. Pulling on her gloves, Sophie nodded a greeting. “I’ll take Amber out today. She hasn’t had a run for some time, I believe.”

Arthur blinked. Then, with a shrug which

stated louder than words that it was not his place to question the vagaries of his betters, he went to fetch the mare. To Sophie’s surprise, Clarissa, busy mounting her own high-bred chestnut, refrained from questioning her choice. Amber was as close to docile as any horse in the Webb stables. Taking her cue from her cousin, Sophie steadfastly ignored the niggling little voice which harped in her ear. Her choice of mount had nothing to do with Mr. Lester—and even less with that gentleman’s too strongly stated opinions.

The tenor of his comments, both before and after dragging her from the Sheik’s back, had stunned her. She had not before encountered such arrogantly high-handed behaviour, but she was quite certain what she thought of it. Yet her lingering reaction to the entire episode was equivocal, ambivalent, no help at all in restoring her equanimity.

Setting placid Amber to the task of catching up with the boys and Amy, already well ahead, Sophie frowned.

Until yesterday, she had been inclined to suspect Jack Lester of harbouring some romantic interest in her. Her conscience stirred, and Sophie blushed delicately. Irritated, she forced herself to face the truth: she had started to hope that he did. But his reactions yesterday afternoon had given her pause; whatever it was that had stared at her from the depths of his dark blue eyes—some deeply felt emotion that had disturbed his sophisticated veneer and wreaked havoc on her calm—it was not that gentle thing called love.

Sophie acknowledged the fact with a grimace as, with a wave and a whooping “halloo,” Clarissa shot past. Twitching the reins, Sophie urged Amber into the rolling gait which, with her, passed for a gallop. Clarissa, meanwhile, drew steadily ahead.

Trapped in her thoughts, Sophie barely noticed. Love, as she understood it, was a gentle emotion, built on kindness, consideration and affection. Soft glances and sweet smiles was her vision of love, and all she had seen, between her uncle and aunt and her mother and father, had bolstered that image. Love was calm, serene, bringing a sense of peace in its wake.

What she had seen in Jack Lester’s eyes had certainly not been peaceful.

As the moment lived again in her mind, Sophie shivered. What was it she had stirred in him? And how did he really view her?

* * *

HER FIRST QUESTION, had she but known it, was also exercising Jack’s mind, and had been ever since he had returned from Webb Park the afternoon before. As soon as his uncharacteristically violent emotions had eased their grip on his sanity, he had been aghast. Where had such intense impulses sprung from?

Now, with the afternoon bright beyond the windows, he restlessly paced the parlour of Rawling’s Cottage, inwardly still wrestling with the revelations of the previous day. He was deeply shocked, not least by the all but ungovernable strength of the emotion that had risen up when he had seen Sophie’s slender figure, fragile against the grey’s heaving back, disappear in the direction of the woods and possible death.

And he was shaken by what the rational part of his brain informed him such feelings foretold.

He had innocently supposed that courting the woman he had chosen as his wife would be a mild process in which his emotions remained firmly under his control while he endeavoured, through the skill of his address, to engage hers. A stranger, as he now realized, to love, he had imagined that, in the structured society to which they belonged, such matters would follow some neatly prescribed course, after which they could both relax, secure in the knowledge of each other’s affections.

Obviously, he had misjudged the matter.

A vague memory that his brother-in-law had not surrendered to love without a fight glimmered at the back of his mind. Given Jason’s undoubted conversion, and his equally undoubted acumen, Jack had always wondered what had made him hesitate—on the brink, as it were.

Now he knew.

Emotions such as he had felt yesterday were dangerous.

They boded fair to being strong enough to overset his reason and control his life.