Tallie's Knight

TALLIE’S
KNIGHT

By

Anne
Gracie

A Regency delight!

Historical Romance

UK 2. 99 IRE3. 55

ISBN 0263822982

MILLS BOON

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered…"

Dazed, Tallie stood there, listening to herself being
married to The Icicle. And a very bad- tempered Icicle he was too. He was
positively glaring at her. Of course, he did have reason to be a little cross,
but it wasn't as if she had meant to hit him on the nose, after all.

Mind you, she thought dejectedly, he seemed always to be
furious about something—mainly with her. Towards others he invariably remained
cool, polite and, in a chilly sort of fashion, charming. But not with Tallie.
It didn't augur at all well for the future.

Anne Gracie
was
born in Australia but spent her youth on the move, living in Scotland,
Malaysia, Greece and different parts of Australia before escaping her parents
and settling down. Her love of the Regency period began at the age of eleven,
when she braved the adult library to borrow a Georgette Heyer novel, firmly
convinced she would, at any moment, be ignominiously ejected and sent back to
the children's library in disgrace. She wasn't. Anne lives in Melbourne, in a
small wooden house which she will one day renovate.

Recent
titles by the same author:

GALLANT WAIF

Anne Gracie

MILLS BOON

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the
imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing
the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual
known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

All Rights Reserved.

MILLS & BOON and MILLS & BOON with the Rose Device are
registered trademarks of the publisher.

First published in Great Britain 2000

Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,

Richmond, Surrey TW9 JSR

Anne Gracie 2000 ISBN

Set in Times Roman 10 on'll pt.

Printed and bound in Spain by Litografia Roses S. A. "
Barcelona

TABLE OF CONTENTS

About
Author

Copyrights

Prologue

Chapter
One

Chapter
Two

Chapter
Three

Chapter
Four

Chapter
Five

Chapter
Six

Chapter
Seven

Chapter
Eight

Chapter
Nine

Chapter
Ten

Chapter
Eleven

Chapter
Twelve

Chapter
Thirteen

Chapter
Fourteen

Chapter
Fifteen

Chapter
Sixteen

Chapter
Seventeen

Epilogue

Yorkshire, February 1803

“My lord, I… I am
sure that Mr. Freddie—”

“Mr. Freddie—” Lord d’Arenville’s
disapproving voice interrupted the maidservant. She flushed, smoothing her
hands nervously down her starched white apron.

“Er… Reverend
Winstanley, I mean, sir. He won’t keep you waiting long, sir, “tis just that—”

“There is no need to
explain,” Lord d’Arenville coldly informed her. “I’ve no doubt Reverend
Winstanley will come as soon as he is able. I shall wait.” His hard grey gaze
came to rest on a nearby water colour.

It was a clear
dismissal. The maid backed hurriedly out of the parlour, turned and almost ran
down the corridor.

Magnus, Lord d’Arenville,
glanced around the room, observing its inelegant proportions and the worn and
shabby furniture. A single poky window allowed an inadequate amount of light
into the room. He strolled over to it, looked out and frowned. The window
overlooked the graveyard, providing the occupants of the house with a
depressing prospect of mortality.

Lord, how unutterably
dreary, Magnus thought, seating himself on a worn, uncomfortable settee. Did
all vicars live this way? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be certain, not
having lived the sort of life that brought him into intimacy with the clergy.
Quite the contrary, in fact. And had not his oldest friend, Freddie Winstanley,
donned the ecclesiastical dog collar, Magnus would be languishing in blissful
ignorance still. Magnus sighed. Bored, stale and unaccountably restless, he’d
decided on the spur of the moment to drive all the ways up to
Yorkshire
to visit Freddie, whom he’d not seen for years.

And now, having
arrived, he was wondering if he’d done the right thing, calling unannounced at
the cramped and shabby vicarage.

A faint giggle
interrupted his musings. Magnus frowned and looked around. There was no one in
sight. The giggle came again. Magnus frowned. He did not care to be made fun
of.

“Who is there?”

“Huwwo, man.” The
voice came, slightly muffled, from a slight bulge in the curtains. As he
looked, the curtains parted and a mischievous little face peeked out at him.

Magnus blinked. It
was a child, a very small child —a female, he decided after a moment. He’d
never actually met a child this size before, and though he was wholly unacquainted
with infant fashions it seemed to him that the child looked more female than
otherwise. It had dark curly hair and big brown pansy eyes. And it was
certainly looking at him in that acquisitive way that so many females had.

He glanced towards
the doorway, hoping someone would come and fetch the child back to where it
belonged.

“Huwwo, man,” the
moppet repeated sternly.

Magnus raised an
eyebrow. Clearly he was expected to answer. How the devil did one address
children anyway?

“How do you do?” he
said after a moment.

At that, she smiled,
and launched herself towards him in an unsteady rush. Horrified, Magnus froze.
Contrary to all his expectations she crossed the room without coming to grief,
landing at his knee.

Grinning up at him,
she clutched his immaculate buckskins in two damp, chubby fists. Magnus
flinched. His valet would have a fit. The child’s hands were certain to be
grubby. And sticky. Magnus might know nothing at all about children, but he was
somehow sure about that.

“Up, man.” The moppet
held up her arms in clear expectation of being picked up.

Magnus frowned down
at her, trusting that his hitherto unchallenged ability to rid himself of
unwanted feminine attention would be just as effective on this diminutive
specimen.

The moppet frowned back
at him.

Magnus allowed his
frown to deepen to a glare.

The moppet glared
back.

“Up, man,” she
repeated, thumping a tiny fist on his knee.

Magnus cast a hunted
glance towards the doorway, still quite appallingly empty.

The small sticky fist
tugged his arm.

“Up!” she demanded
again.

“No, thank you,” said
Magnus in his most freezingly polite voice. Lord, would no one come and rescue
him?

The big eyes widened
and the small rosebud mouth drooped. The lower lip trembled, displaying to
Magnus’s jaundiced eye all the unmistakable signs of a female about to burst
into noisy, blackmailing tears. They certainly started young. No wonder they
were so good at it by the time they grew up.

The little face
crumpled.

Oh, Lord, thought
Magnus despairingly. There was no help for it —he would have to pick her up.
Gingerly he reached out, lifting her carefully by the waist until she was at
eye-level with him. Her little feet dangled and she regarded him solemnly.

She reached out a
pair of chubby, dimpled arms.

“Cudd’w!”

Again, her demand was
unmistakable. Cautiously he brought her closer, until suddenly she wrapped her
arms around his neck in a strong little grip that surprised him. In seconds she
had herself comfortably ensconced on his lap, leaning back against one of his
arms, busily ruining his neck cloth. It had only taken him half an hour to
achieve its perfection, Magnus told himself wryly.

She chattered to him non-stop
in a confiding flow, a mixture of English and incomprehensible gibberish,
pausing every now and then to ask what sounded like a question. Magnus found
himself replying.

Lord, if anyone saw
him now, he would never live it down. But he had no choice —he didn’t want to
see that little face crumple again.

Once she stopped in
the middle of what seemed an especially involved tale and looked up at him,
scrutinising his face in a most particular fashion. Magnus felt faintly
apprehensive, wondering what she might do. She reached up and traced the long,
vertical groove in his right cheek with a small, soft finger.

“What’s dis?”

He didn’t know what
to say. A wrinkle? A crease? A long dimple? No one had ever before had the
temerity to refer to it.

“Er… it’s my cheek.”

She traced the groove
once more, thoughtfully, then took his chin in one hand, turned his head, and
traced the matching line down his other cheek. Then carefully, solemnly, she
traced both at the same time. She stared at him for a moment, then, smiling,
returned to her story, reaching up every now and then to trace a tiny finger
down the crease in his cheek.

Gradually her steady
chatter dwindled and the curly little head began to nod. Abruptly she yawned
and snuggled herself more firmly into the crook of his arms.

“Nigh-nigh,” she
murmured, and suddenly he felt the small body relax totally against him.

She was asleep. Sound
asleep —right there in his arms.

For a moment Magnus
froze, wondering what to do, then slowly he began to breathe again. He knew
himself to be a powerful man —both physically and in worldly terms— but never
in his life had he been entrusted with the warm weight of a sleeping child. It
was an awesome responsibility.

He sat there frozen
for some twenty minutes, until a faint commotion sounded in the hall. A pretty
young woman glanced in, a harried expression on her face. Freddie’s wife. Joan.
Jane. Or was it Jenny?

Magnus was fairly
sure he recognised her from the wedding. She opened her mouth to speak, and
then saw the small sleeping figure in his arms.

“Oh, thank heavens!”
she exclaimed. “We’ve been looking everywhere for her.”

She turned and called
to someone in the hallway.

“Martha, run and tell
Mr. Freddie that we’ve found her.” She turned back to Magnus. “I’m so sorry,
Lord d’Arenville. We thought she’d got out into the garden and we’ve all been
outside searching. Has she been a shocking nuisance?”

Magnus bethought
himself of his ruined neck cloth and his no longer immaculate buckskins. His
arm had a cramp from being unable to move and he had a nasty suspicion that
there was a damp spot on his coat from where the little moppet had nuzzled his
sleeve as she slept.