Stephanie Laurens - Tangled Reins

Realising she could not continually pull caps with him, particularly when he was being helpful, she confined herself to a curt nod before whisking herself up the stairs, Witchett trailing behind.

Hazelmere paused for a moment to flick a speck of dust from his sleeve before nodding to Mellow. ‘You may announce me now.’

For this interview Lady Merion had arrayed herself in a gown she knew made her look particularly formidable. Instinct born of experience warned her that there was more to the encounters between the Marquis and her granddaughter than she had been told. She was unsure that Dorothea herself knew the full sum. On the other hand, Hazelmere would certainly be aware of every nuance. She was determined to extract a much more detailed explanation from him before she called Dorothea to attend them. As he strolled elegantly across the room to bow over her hand she fixed him with a basilisk stare which in years past had produced confessions from the most hardened of reprobates.

Hazelmere smiled lazily down at her.

With a jolt she realised that there was a large difference between demanding the reason for a cricket ball landing in her drawing-room from a ten-year-old boy and demanding an accounting of his behaviour from a thirty-one-year-old peer, who, aside from being a leader of the ton, was also one of the most dangerously handsome men in the kingdom. And, she fumed, noting the amused understanding in the hazel eyes, the jackanapes knows it!

Baulked, she motioned him to a seat and reluctantly gave her attention to the next item on her agenda. She waited until he was seated, admiring the way his immaculate morning coat sat across his shoulders. His long muscular thighs were encased in skin-tight buff knee-breeches, and his Hessians shone like the proverbial mirror. She might be old, but she still noticed such things. ‘I understand I must thank you for rescuing my granddaughter, Dorothea, from an unfortunate incident at that inn the other evening.’

One well-manicured hand waved dismissively. ‘Having recognised your granddaughter, even someone with a conscience as faulty as mine could hardly have left her there.’ The gently mocking tone and the laughter in his face robbed this speech of any impropriety.

Accustomed to the subtleties of social conversation, Lady Merion thawed visibly. ‘Very well! But why this meeting?’

‘Unfortunately the crowd from which I extricated Miss Darent contained at least one member of the ton who cannot be trusted to forget the incident.’

‘Dorothea mentioned Tremlow.’

‘Oh, yes. Tremlow was there, and Botherwood and Lords Michaels and Downie. But they are relatively harmless, and, unless I’m much mistaken, would probably not recall the incident unless their memories were jogged, and perhaps not even then. I’m more concerned with Sir Barnaby Ruscombe.’

‘Ugh! That repulsive man! He always dabbles in the most malicious scandalmongering.’ She paused, then eyed the Marquis speculatively. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about him?’

‘Alas, no. Anyone else, quite probably. But not Ruscombe. Scandal is his trade. Still, given that we can invent a plausible tale to account for my having previously met Miss Darent, I can’t see there’s any risk of serious damage to her reputation.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ agreed Lady Merion. ‘But it would be wise to have her here, I think. Ring that bell, if you will.’

‘No need,’ replied Hazelmere, ‘I met her in the park on my way here. She went upstairs to tidy her hair before joining us.’

As if in answer to the comment, Dorothea entered. Languidly rising, Hazelmere acknowledged her curtsy by taking her hand and, after bowing over it, raised it to his lips, his eyes roaming appreciatively over her.

Lady Merion stiffened. Kissing a lady’s hand was not the current practice. What on earth was going on?

Dorothea accepted the salute without a flicker of surprise. Seating herself in a chair on the other side of her grandmother, opposite Hazelmere, she turned an enquiring face to her ladyship.

‘We were just discussing, my dear, what story to adopt to account for Lord Hazelmere recognising you at the inn.’

‘Maybe Miss Darent has a suggestion?’ put in his lordship, hazel eyes gently quizzing Dorothea.

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ she replied smoothly. ‘It would be safest, I imagine, to stick to occurrences no one else could dispute?’ Her delicately arched brows rose as she gazed with unmarred calm into Hazelmere’s eyes.

His expressive lips twitched. ‘That might be wise,’ he murmured.

Dorothea regally inclined her head. ‘For instance, what if, on one of your visits to Lady Moreton, she’d been well enough to be taken for a ride in your curricle-not far, just around the surrounding lanes? I’m sure she would have liked to have done that if she’d been able.’

‘You’re quite right. My great-aunt did bemoan not being well enough for just such an outing as you propose.’

‘Good! Only the outing did occur, and of course you didn’t take your groom with you, did you?’

Hazelmere, entering into the spirit of the conversation, promptly replied, ‘I feel sure I’d given Jim permission to relax in the kitchens that day.’

Dorothea nodded approvingly. ‘Driving down the lane, you met my mother, Cynthia Darent, and myself, returning from paying a visit to…oh, Waverley Park, of course.’

‘Your coachman?’

‘I was driving the gig. And what could be more natural than that Lady Moreton and my mother should stop to chat? They were old friends, after all. And Lady Moreton presented you to Mama and me. After talking for a few minutes, we went our separate ways.’

‘When, exactly, did this meeting occur?’ he asked.

‘Well, it would have had to be the summer before last, when both Lady Moreton and Mama were alive.’

‘My congratulations, Miss Darent. We now have a most acceptable tale which accounts for our meeting and the only two witnesses who could say us nay are dead. Very neat.’

‘Yes, but wait one moment!’ interpolated Lady Merion. ‘Why didn’t your mother tell her other friends about this meeting? Surely such a novel encounter would have made an impression in the neighbourhood?’

‘But, Grandmama, you know how scatterbrained Mama was. It would be quite possible for her to have forgotten all about it by the time we’d reached home, particularly if something else occurred to distract her on the way.’

Reminded of her daughter-in-law’s vagueness, Lady Merion grudgingly agreed this was so. ‘Well, then, why did you yourself not tell any of your friends about it?’

Dorothea opened her large green eyes to their fullest extent and, addressing her grandmother, asked, ‘But why would I have done so? I’ve never been in the habit of discussing inconsequential occurrences with anyone.’

Lady Merion held her breath. She could not resist glancing at Hazelmere to see how he was taking being classed as ‘inconsequential’. He appeared to be his usual urbane self, but she thought she caught a glint from those hazel eyes, presently fixed on Dorothea’s face. Be careful, my girl! she mentally adjured her granddaughter.

‘What a wonderfully useful trait, Miss Darent,’ responded Hazelmere, deciding for the moment to ignore provocation. ‘So now we have a believable and totally unexceptionable story to account for our previous meeting. Provided we stick to that, I foresee no difficulty in ignoring the inevitable tales of what happened at the Three Feathers.’ He rose and with effortless grace bent over Lady Merion’s hand. ‘I gather you’ll be attending all the ton crushes this Season?’

‘Oh, yes,’ responded her ladyship, reverting to her normal social manner. ‘We’ll be out around town just as soon as Celestine can clothe these children respectably.’

He crossed to Dorothea’s side and she stood for him to take his leave. Again he raised her hand to his lips. Smiling down at her in a way she found oddly disconcerting, his hazel eyes trapping her own, he said, ‘Then I will hope to further my acquaintance with you, Miss Darent. I do hope you’ll not find me too inconsequential to remember?’ The gently mocking tone was back.

Dorothea returned the provocative hazel glance without apparent concern, and, wide-eyed, remarked, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think I’d forget you now, my lord.’

He only just succeeded in controlling his face but his eyes clearly registered the hit. He paused, looking down into her brilliant green eyes, his own brimful of laughter. Forever a sportsman, he could hardly complain, as he had set himself up for that one. Still, he had not expected her to have the courage to fling that back in his face, and with such ease. With one last enigmatic glance, he turned and, bowing again to the sorely afflicted Lady Merion, bid both ladies a good day and left.

As the door shut behind him Lady Merion turned a gaze equally made up of disbelief and conjecture on her granddaughter. However, ‘Ring for tea, child,’ was all she said.

For the Darent sisters, the Season began in earnest the next day. The morning commenced with a visit from Lady Merion’s hairdresser. The pert Frenchman no sooner clapped eyes on the girls than his loquacious soul knew no bounds. Celestine had insisted on being present, much to everyone’s surprise. It transpired that she had decided to take complete control of the Misses Darents’ appearance. Lady Merion was astonished at her unusual condescension and then even more surprised by the transformation wrought in her elder granddaughter. Wearing the first of Celestine’s creations, delivered expressly for their promenade in the Park later that day, with her lovely dark hair lightly cropped and arranged in a variation of the fashionable Sappho, Dorothea had emerged much as the ugly duckling transformed into a veritable swan. The result, as Celestine confided in a whispered aside to her ladyship, could not be adequately described as beautiful-that was an epithet reserved more correctly for the youthful Cecily. She was attractive, stunning, and trailing a definite aura of sensuality, and the impact of the new Dorothea was unerringly directed at the more mature male. Lady Merion, with Hazelmere in mind, blinked and rapidly realigned her expectations.