Courting Lord Dorney (16 page)

 * * * *

In the few free hours between what to Jane seemed a constant round of shopping, morning calls, evening parties and sessions with the dressmaker, Bella found time to go with Jackson to inspect and buy a lively chestnut mare for herself and a grey gelding for Jane. She rose early and persuaded Jackson to give her driving lessons in the Park before many people were abroad.

‘I drove a gig round the lanes at home in Lancashire,’ she explained, ‘but our pony was old and fat couldn’t have bolted if he’d wanted to. I imagine driving in all this traffic in the streets, and in the Park, is a little more difficult.’

‘Yes, Miss Bella, it is,’ Jackson said, and Bella ignored the grin he tried to hide.

To her delight she proved an apt pupil, and was eager to purchase an elegant curricle and a matched pair of black Welsh cobs to pull it. The horse she was using was sprightly, far more so than the pony she was used to,  but she was ashamed to be seen in the carriage he pulled, which she considered to be no better than a country gig, She was highly indignant when Jackson, supported by Lady Fulwood’s coachman, Masters, tried to deter her from buying a pair, for she had dreams of exciting awe and admiration as she handled them successfully.

Masters, as a result of a private consultation with Lady Fulwood, persuaded her she needed more practice first, and borrowed a frisky pair and a curricle from a friend, the groom of a noted whip presently out of town. After a lively and inconclusive tussle with them Bella conceded she would merely look foolish if she could not control a pair. Meekly she agreed she needed more experience before emulating the most famous whips of the day, promising herself that as soon as she felt confident she would acquire the showiest pair in London.

It was several days before Lady Fulwood found an opportunity of’ calling upon Lady Belstead, and to Bella’s satisfaction no one else but Mrs Ford was present when the footman announced them. Soon she was able to move to sit beside Mrs Ford.

‘I heard the story about your change of name in Bath, Miss Trahearne,’ that lady said with a smile, her green eyes twinkling.

‘Am I being very much condemned?’ Bella asked frankly.

‘By the older and staider people, perhaps,’ Mrs Ford reported, ‘but the younger ones on the whole think it a great lark, and rather admire you for it when they understand the reason.’

‘Lord Dorney isn’t old and staid, but he’ll never forgive me,’ Bella said gloomily.

‘His background has made him peculiarly sensitive to deception,’ Mrs Ford explained softly. ‘Also, I’m afraid, wary of heiresses. You know his family’s history, of course?’

‘I do now, but at the time I couldn’t understand.’

‘He’s a very different man from both his father and brother,’ she said slowly.

Bella stole a glance at her. She was smiling reminiscently, her lips curving so deliciously that Bella’s heart dropped. How could any man not immediately want to kiss them? She was beautiful, kind, and even being helpful to someone she might have regarded as a rival.

She pulled up her thoughts sharply. How could she possibly rival this lovely woman? Why Lord Dorney had singled her out in Bath remained a mystery. He may have been on the point of offering, but he couldn’t have cared for her or he would not have turned away so easily.

At that moment more callers arrived, two men superficially so alike they had to be brothers. Both were fair haired, tall and slim, with light blue eyes and aquiline noses. They were in their early thirties, perhaps a year separating them, but the elder one’s face was far more lined, and he walked with a slight limp. His eyes were keen, his glance piercing, while the younger, although smiling in a friendly fashion, had an abstracted, almost vacuous look on his face.

‘Major Ross and Mr Frederick Ross,’ the footman intoned.

Lady Belstead welcomed them warmly, and they were introduced. The Major, who seemed to know Mrs Ford well, greeted her with a pleased smile and a query about her house. Mr Ross, after a vague, but somehow apprehensive smile at everyone else, promptly sat beside Bella and engaged her in a quiet conversation.

The Major moved on and sat next to Jane, remarking he had met Philip several years ago.

‘I came on his ship on my way home from the Peninsula, wounded, I’m afraid,’ he added, indicating his leg. ‘A good officer, the navy could do with more like him,’ he opined. ‘Is he coming on furlough soon?’

‘I hope so, he is due for leave, but I’m not sure when,’ Jane replied. ‘He’s been very busy taking troops out to India.’

Soon afterwards Lady Belstead demanded Jane’s opinion of some swatches of material.

‘I can’t decide whether the colours shriek at my hair,’ she said with a laugh. ‘What do you think?’

The Major turned to Bella, who had been quietly observing the newcomers, and asked how she was enjoying her visit to London. She found him a man of decided opinions, knowledgeable about the situation in India, which she would have expected in a military man, but also about political developments at home.

‘You seem to know everyone,’ she commented after he had mentioned a recent conversation with several members of the Government.

He shrugged. ‘My family connections, of course, and then I make an effort to learn all the latest news whenever I’m in London. The normal gossip of London drawing rooms bores me, I fear, although one has to meet people.’

‘Is your brother in the army?’ Bella asked, glancing across at Mr Ross, who had remained close to Mrs Ford, apparently absorbed in their conversation.

‘Frederick?’ The Major gave a snort of derision. ‘He thinks himself a poet, of all things. A second Byron. He says he’s writing an epic in verse for the stage. An excuse for being lazy, I fear. I trust you won’t encourage him as Mrs Ford does,’ he added. ‘I haven’t been able to impress on her the folly of letting him imagine people take him seriously. His scribbling will never amount to more than a few vapid couplets and a sonnet or two.’

Lady Fulwood then rose to go and Bella, disappointed in her desire to meet Lord Dorney, came reluctantly to her feet.

‘May I call on you? We could drive in the Park if your hostess permits,’ the Major suggested, bending low over Bella’s hand, and she nodded permission.

‘A conquest, my dear,’ Lady Fulwood said dryly as they walked the few yards to their own house. ‘An old family, not a great deal of money, but enough to maintain two houses and permit Frederick to play at being a poet.’

‘Isn’t he any good? His brother was far from complimentary.’

‘He published a slim volume last year which was well received, I believe, but I know nothing about poetry. I enjoy the theatre, better than ballet or the opera, I fear, and I like to read a good novel when I have leisure. But I rarely read poetry, unless it’s something everyone enthuses about, like
Childe Harold.
One has to read that, of course.’

‘I liked Lady Belstead,’ Jane changed the subject. ‘She asked me to call again to advise her on some dress patterns.’

‘A compliment to your good taste, my dear. Is that chaise driving away from my house, do you think? It seems we’ve just missed a visitor.’

But when, instead of the butler, the footman opened the door to them and eyed them in some dismay until he recognized them, a scene of confusion met their eyes. In the narrow were two trunks, the maids were carrying some small items of luggage upstairs, and the butler was sharply directing a rather bemused boot boy to pick up the other end of a trunk and mind the table, or he’d find himself in trouble.

‘Goodness, Simpkins, who’s arrived with all this luggage?’ Lady Fulwood demanded, but before the harassed butler could reply the visitor appeared from the morning room at the back of the house, where he seemed to have taken refuge.

‘It really isn’t a great deal of luggage, Lady F.,’ he said with a laugh. ‘You’re not going to send me away, or deprive me of any of my very essential clothes, I trust? Not the action of the loving godmother I know you are!’

‘Richard! Welcome, dear boy. I knew you were in town.’

‘Yes, I spent a few days with Sir Daniel, but he’s been sent on a mission to Paris.’

‘You’re here now. I must make you known to my other guests. Jane dear, my godson, Richard, Lord Dorney. I sent him to call on you the last time he was in Lancashire, Jane. I hope he obeyed me? Richard, Lady Hodder and Miss Trahearne.’

Bemused, Jane shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. In Lancashire? When did you call on me?’

‘Lady Hodder? Another change of name! But I understood you were Mrs Grant? I called when you were out, I’m afraid, and left the book.’

‘I was. Mrs Grant, I mean. Philip had only inherited the title a few months before. I wondered who had left the book. Bates - that’s my butler - had forgotten your name.’

‘We met in Bath, not Lancashire, Lady F,’ he said quietly, ‘although I wasn’t aware that Lady Hodder and Miss Trahearne were intending to visit you.’

He bowed briefly to Bella, standing rigidly beside her hostess, then smiled bleakly at Jane. She, looking up into the narrowed eyes, their expression hard, shivered. How could Bella maintain she loved such a stern man?

For an endless moment Bella thought he was about to order the butler, half way up the stairs by now and still admonishing the boot boy in frantic anguished undertones to be careful, to bring his luggage down again. Instead, after a searching gaze at Jane he shrugged slightly.

‘It seems we are to be fellow guests,’ he said calmly. ‘I trust we can forget our differences and behave with circumspection.’

‘Indeed,’ Bella managed to reply. What did he expect? Her to fling herself into his arms with cries of rapture, or run screaming in terror from the house? She would show him! She’d be calm, dignified, and never mention Bath.

Chapter 10

Lady Fulwood had planned to take Jane and Bella to the theatre that evening, which meant dining early. Lord Dorney begged her not to change her arrangements, saying he could perfectly well dine at his club.

Bella had no notion what the play was about, for she spent the entire evening speculating on how this latest turn of events could affect her. Would being in the same house as Lord Dorney help her own plans?

Waking early after a restless night she found herself the first to arrive in the breakfast room. Abstractedly she helped herself to bacon and kidneys, then sat without eating, crumbling pellets of bread on her plate.

She jumped nervously when the door opened and Lord Dorney appeared. He bowed stiffly, and after a short pause during which she could see he was having an intense inward struggle, filled his plate and took a seat opposite Bella.

‘I’m so sorry Rags upset the horses the other morning,’ she said breathlessly, and he frowned, for the moment forgetting that episode. ‘He wriggled out of his collar, you see,’ she tried to explain.

‘You’ve no business keeping an undisciplined dog in London,’ Lord Dorney said sternly.

‘I know, but no one else wanted him, and I could hardly turn him loose again in Bath!’ Bella responded indignantly, her unwonted meekness rapidly retreating in the face of this lack of reason.

‘You could have gone back to the country.’

‘What? Why the devil should I?’ she demanded, forgetting to use ladylike language in her fury. ‘I have as much right here in London as you do, my lord!’ she exclaimed angrily.

‘Forgive me, I meant only that you could have taken him to your own home, since there must be people able to care for him. What you do otherwise is of course none of my business.’

Bella contemplated appealing to him then, but he looked so grim that, abandoning her by now cold breakfast, she cravenly escaped. As a result she fumed impotently until evening, when for once they had no engagements and were to dine at home.

* * * *

She took especial care over her appearance as she dressed for dinner, choosing one of her new gowns in a particularly delicate shade of primrose, and driving Mary to distraction the number of times she changed her mind over details such as the slippers she wanted, or the style of her hair.

Conversation at dinner was rather strained. Lady Fulwood appeared to notice nothing amiss, but although Jane did her best to respond naturally, Lord Dorney’s remarks were brief and Bella’s virtually nonexistent.

‘I saw your cousin Alexander’s betrothal announced in the
Times
this morning,’ Lady Fulwood said suddenly. ‘Who is she? Has she any money?’

‘A competence, it matches his own, which I always feel is the ideal situation,’ he replied, with a glance at Bella. ‘She lives in Bath. A mere chit, but of unexceptional family. She’ll do for him, she has looks and is compliant, but without too many brains or opinions of her own. She’s very young, but Alexander maintains he knows his mind and he’s in no mood to delay. They plan to marry as soon as it can be arranged.’

For a while they discussed this, and then there was an awkward pause. Lady Fulwood broke it.

‘I’m told Bella’s shaping up admirably as a whip, in Masters’ opinion. Why don’t you drive out with her, Richard, and give her some instruction? You’ve always been one of the best whips in London.’

He looked aghast, but Lady Fulwood was looking expectantly at him. Making the best of it he turned to Bella and smiled stiffly.

‘I should be delighted, Miss Trahearne.’

‘Good, you can go tomorrow morning, both of you are early risers,’ Lady Fulwood said complacently.

Bella sharply bit back the excuses she’d been about to make. Here was a heaven-sent opportunity of having him to herself, in a situation where they could talk, she could explain her motives more clearly, and perhaps they might iron out the differences between them. Why, then, had she been about to tell him he wasn’t obliged to carry out Lady Fulwood’s imperious commands. Was she afraid of him?

She eyed him curiously as he turned to talk with his godmother, and tried to disentangle her confused emotions. Seeing him again had evoked all the longing she’d experienced in Bath. From the very first moment of their meeting she had known she loved him. It wasn’t his looks, for although he was handsome she had met other men equally attractive in face and figure.