Tarnished Amongst the Ton

скачать книгу бесплатно


Please, she thought. And fall in love, for Harriet’s sake. And then she could retreat to the little dower house in the park and spend her time finding items for her shop, for which she would employ a manager. She would be independent, removed enough not to cause a newly respectable, and wealthy, Earl of Fransham any embarrassment and free from the deceits and dangers of her current situation.

It all seemed so simple. Too simple? No, we can do it.

Phyllida managed to maintain her mood of optimism through the short journey home, a cup of tea by her bedchamber fire and the rituals of undressing and hair brushing.

But when she blew out the candle, lay back and shut her eyes, the image against her closed lids was not of a happy bridal couple in a cloud of orange blossom, but Ashe Herriard’s disdainful face as he watched her across the ballroom floor.

Bigoted, arrogant beast, she thought as she punched the pillow. Your opinion isn’t worth losing a wink of sleep over and so I shall tell you if I am ever unfortunate to meet you again.

At five o’clock the next morning Phyllida was not certain how many winks of sleep she had lost, but it was far too many and lost not to constructive thoughts or pleasant half-dreams, but a miserable mixture of embarrassment and desire. She pushed herself up against the piled pillows to peer at the little bedside clock in the dim light. Quarter past five.

It was hopeless to try to get back to sleep. The best she might hope for was to toss restlessly, remembering the heat of Ashe Herriard’s mouth on hers, his long-limbed elegance as he sat on the window seat. It was bad enough to have thoughts like that without entertaining them for a man who despised her for an accident of birth.

Phyllida threw back the covers and got out of bed to look through the gap in the curtains. It was going to be a nice day. If she could not sleep, at least she could get some fresh air and exercise. A walk in Green Park would relax her and put her in a positive frame of mind for the morning.

The water in the ewer was cold, of course, but that did not matter. She scrambled into a plain walking dress and half-boots, tucked her hair into a net, took her bonnet by its ribbons and threw a shawl around her shoulders.

Anna would be stirring soon, making herself breakfast down in the basement kitchen. Her maid liked to start the day well ahead of herself, as she put it. They could have breakfast together and then go out.

Anna was already halfway down the stairs. ‘What are you doing up and about, Miss Phyllida?’

‘Joining you for breakfast. Then I want to go for a walk.’

‘Not by yourself, I’m hoping!’ The maid went to the pump and filled the big kettle. She was in her forties, plain, down to earth and with a past she never spoke of.

‘No, even at this hour someone might see me, I suppose, and that would be a black mark against my impeccable reputation.’ Phyllida lifted half a loaf from the bread crock and looked for the knife.

‘We wouldn’t want to be risking that, now would we?’ Anna enquired sardonically. She had been with Phyllida for six years now, knew about the shop and was not afraid to say what she thought about her mistress’s life.

‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Phyllida agreed, equally straight-faced. ‘So I’ll have a nice brisk walk and you can take a rug and a journal and sit on one of the benches beside the reservoir so the proprieties will be observed.’

It was just after six when they set out, weaving through the grid of streets that would take them into Green Park. Around them the St James’s area was waking up. Maids swept front steps, others, yawning, set out with empty baskets to do the early marketing. Delivery carts were pulling up at the back entrances for the numerous clubs, hells and shops that served this antheap of aristocrats, rakehells, high-class mistresses and respectable households. The sprawl covered the gentle slopes down to the old brick Tudor palace of St James and, beyond it, St James’s Park.

That would be too risky for an early-morning walk, Phyllida knew. Dolly mops and all their sisters of the night would be emerging from their places of business in the shrubberies, along with the occasional guardsman hurrying back to barracks having served a different kind of clientele altogether.

The early riders would make for the long tracks of Hyde Park, leaving Green Park as a quiet backwater until at least nine. ‘You can sit and read while I go past the lodge and the small pond down to Constitution Hill and back,’ Phyllida suggested as they turned up the Queen’s Walk towards Piccadilly. ‘Unless you want to come with me?’

‘You look in the mood for walking out a snit,’ Anna observed. ‘You’ll do that better alone. Who upset you?’

‘Oh, just some wretched lordling newly arrived in town and shocked to the core to discover he’s been flirting all unwittingly with a baseborn woman.’

‘More fool he. You shouldn’t let him upset you.’ There was nothing to say to that, but Anna seemed to read plenty into Phyllida’s silence. ‘I suppose you were liking him up to then.’

‘Well enough.’ She shrugged.

‘Handsome, is he?’

‘Oh, to die for and well he knows it.’ And he had seemed kind. He had a sense of humour, he loved his sister, he was eminently eligible. If she had not been who she was, then this morning she would have woken hoping for a bouquet from him by luncheon. What would it be like to be courted by a man like that, to hope for a proposal of marriage, to look forward to a future of happiness and children?

‘A good brisk walk, then, and some stones to kick instead of his foolish head.’ Anna surveyed the benches. ‘That one will do me, right in the sun.’

‘Thank you, Anna.’ The maid’s brisk common sense shook her out of her self-indulgent wonderings. ‘If you get chilled, come and meet me.’

She waved and set off diagonally along the path towards the Queen’s House on the far side of the Park. The early sunlight glinted off the white stone in the distance and the standard hung limp against the flagstaff in the still air. Phyllida breathed in the scents of green things breaking their winter sleep to thrust through the earth. That was better. When she was fully awake, feeling strong and resolved, then the weakening dreams could be shut safely away.

Rooks wheeled up from the high trees where they were building nests, jackdaws tumbled like acrobats through the air, courting or playing. Ahead of her the magpies had found something that had died during the night, a rat or a rabbit, she supposed, eyeing their squabbles with distaste as they fought for unsavoury scraps. She would have to detour off the path to avoid the mess.

As though a stone had been thrown into the midst of them the birds erupted up into the air, flapping and screeching at something that landed right next to their prize. For a second she thought it must be a bird of prey, then it turned its grey head and huge black beak in her direction, assessing her with intelligent eyes.

‘Lucifer!’ Surely the city had not been invaded by these grey-hooded crows? It stopped sidling up to the food and began to hop towards her. ‘No, go away! I don’t want you, you horrible bird. Shoo!’

As she spoke she heard the thud of hooves on turf coming up fast behind. The big bay horse thundered past, then circled and slowed as its rider reined it in and brought it back towards her at a walk. ‘Lucifer, come here.’ The crow flapped up to perch on the rider’s shoulder, sending the horse skittering with nerves. The man on its back controlled it one-handed and lifted his hat to her with the other.

‘Miss Hurst. I apologise for Lucifer, but he seems to like you.’

Of course, it had to be Lord Clere.

Chapter Five

Phyllida looked from bird to master. ‘The liking is not mutual, I assure you.’ Why couldn’t Lord Clere ride in Hyde Park like everyone else? Why couldn’t he ride with the fashionable crowd in the afternoon? Why couldn’t he leave the country altogether?

‘I imagine the dislike applies to me as well,’ he said. ‘May I walk with you?’

‘I can hardly stop you. This is a public park.’ It was ungracious and she did not much care. Phyllida started walking again, the crow flapped down to claim its prize on the grass and Ashe Herriard swung out of the saddle.

‘Is it? Public, I mean? I assumed it was, but there are no other riders. I was beginning to wonder if I had broken some dire rule of etiquette.’ He did not sound as though he cared a toss for such rules.

‘The fashionable place to ride is Hyde Park,’ she informed him. ‘Even at this time of day those who wish for some solitude and a long gallop go there, leaving walkers in peace. I suggest you try it.’ Now.

He did not take the hint, but strolled beside her at a perfectly respectable distance, whip tucked under one elbow, the horse’s reins in the other hand. She could not have been more aware of him if he had taken her arm. What did he want? Probably, Phyllida thought, bracing herself, he was going to make some insulting suggestion now that he knew about her birth. He had kissed her by the river, flirted in the ballroom. What would the next thing be?

‘Hyde Park was where I was going, but on the map this looked a more pleasant route than finding my way through the streets. I did not hope to see you.’

‘Why should you?’ Phyllida enquired with a touch of acid.

‘To apologise.’

That brought her to a halt. ‘Apologise?’ It was the last thing she expected him to do. She stared up at him and he met her eyes straight on, his own green and shadowed by thick black lashes. Even in the conventional uniform of a gentleman—riding dress, severe neckcloth, smart beaver hat—he seemed faintly exotic and disturbing. But more disturbing was the expression on his face. He was not teasing her, or mocking her. She could have dealt with that, but he appeared quite serious.

‘For my rudeness last night. I have no excuse. I had just discovered who your brother is, so I was confused by your lack of a title, then I was surprised when Lady Malling explained. Your smile caught me in the middle of those emotions with my thoughts… unsorted.’

‘Do you have to sort your thoughts, my lord?’ It was such a direct explanation with no attempt to excuse himself that Phyllida felt herself thawing a trifle. Dangerous. Little alarm bells were jangling along her nerves. He cannot be anything to you and you do not want him to be, either.

‘My brain feels like a desk that has been ransacked by burglars,’ he admitted and her mouth twitched despite everything. ‘Or one where all the files have been overstuffed and have burst. I am still, even after three months at sea, having to remember to think in English all the time. There are all the rules of etiquette that are different enough to European society in Calcutta to be decidedly confusing and so removed from my great-uncle’s court where I have spent the past few years that they might be from a different planet.

‘Then there is all the family stuff to learn, the estate, the… But never mind that, it sounds as though I am excusing myself after all and that was not my intention.’

‘You did not want to come back, did you?’ Phyllida asked. It was not a lack of intellectual capacity to cope with all those things that she heard in his voice, but the irritation of a man who did not want to be bothered by them, yet was making himself care. How interesting. Most of London society assumed that there was no greater delight and privilege than to be part of it and absorbed in every petty detail.

‘The only one for whom England is back is my father. For my mother and sister it is as strange as it is for me. But I offended you and I apologise.’

‘You are forgiven.’ And he was, she realised. It had not just been good manners that made her say it. Why? Because you have beautiful green eyes? Because you have been honest with me? Because I am deluding myself? ‘So, what do you intend to do with yourself now, Lord Clere?’

‘We will stay in London for the Season and see my sister launched. We all need to outfit ourselves, the town house must be resurrected from fifteen years of neglect. I must learn to be a viscount, the heir and an English gentleman. Dancing lessons,’ he added grimly, surprising a laugh from her.

At some point they had veered from the path towards the Queen’s House. Phyllida looked round and found they had reached the edge of the park close to the point where Constitution Hill met the Knightsbridge Road. ‘You cross here to Hyde Park.’ She pointed. ‘That is the Knightsbridge Turnpike.’

‘Then Tattersalls is near here. I was intending to find it after I had ridden.’ He whistled. The big crow flapped up and perched on the fence, eyeing her bonnet trimmings with malevolent intent.

‘That is not something a young lady knows about, my lord.’ She attempted to look demure. ‘But, yes, it is just around the corner behind St George’s Hospital.’

‘Thank you.’ Ashe swung himself up into the saddle, all long legs, tight breeches, exquisite control. ‘I hope we will meet again, Miss Hurst. Now we know each other better.’

The stuff of every maiden’s dreams. Phyllida suppressed a wince at her choice of words and lifted a hand in farewell as he took the horse out into the traffic and across to the other park. Ashe had been surprised and taken aback at what he had discovered about her and confessed as much, she thought as she made her way back to Anna. It was honest of him to admit it so freely.

And yet, thinking about it without his distracting presence looming over her, she had the uneasy feeling there was more than that in the blank look he had sent her last night, if only she could put her finger on it. He had apologised with disarming frankness, but he had not told her the whole truth. It would be as well to be wary of Lord Clere, however decorative and amusing he might be. Now we know each other better.

That had been a stroke of luck. Ashe turned his hired hack’s head towards what he guessed was the famous Rotten Row and pressed the horse into a canter. He had not wanted to enquire about the Hursts’ address and risk drawing attention to his interest in Phyllida, nor had he wanted to disconcert her by turning up in her shop. This encounter had been ideal, without even a passer-by as witness if she had done what he deserved and cut him dead in her turn.