Ann Lethbridge - Lady Rosabella's Ruse

Lady Keswick waved a beringed hand. ‘Go join your fellow reprobates.’

Summarily dismissed, he joined the party watching the sport on the grass. He didn’t mind being warned off. Indeed, this was where he would find his next source of amusement, not with a woman who eyed him with disapproval even if he had seen a flicker of interest in those extraordinary brown eyes.

‘Stanford,’ Hapton said. ‘I thought you’d gone elsewhere?’ The man sounded less than pleased. He must have his eye on a morsel he feared Garth would steal. Well, that might make things a bit more interesting.

Garth greeted the languid dandy with a handshake and a raised eyebrow. ‘Tracking my movements, old boy?’

‘Hardly,’ the other man said with a glower.

Further along the wall, a woman’s head turned swiftly, her jaw dropping in dismay.

Penelope? His best friend’s wife? His stomach fell away. Dis appointment, disgust, anger, followed each other in swift succession. He closed the distance between them with one long stride. ‘Lady Smythe. What are you doing here?’

Her green gaze beseeched him. ‘I—’

Mrs Mallow, her dark eyes gleaming with malicious delight, looped an arm through Penelope’s. ‘She came with me.’

And that was supposed to make it better? Maria Mallow was the female equivalent of a rake and not above leading a new bride astray. Anger curled tight fingers in his gut, despite his calm expression, as he bowed to the ladies.

Mark would be devastated when he learned of her treachery. And to think, he’d actually felt a twinge of envy for his friend’s obvious happiness when he’d attended their wedding a scant two months before.

Or did he have this all wrong? ‘Is Mark with you?’

Auburn-haired and freckle-faced, her flush was painful to watch. ‘My husband is away on business.’ Anger coloured her tone. It sounded like jealousy to his practised ear.

He frowned. ‘Does he know where you are?’

She stiffened and something like pain darkened her gaze. ‘Mark doesn’t care what I do.’

Had the blush of happiness faded so quickly? He found it hard to believe. Yet here she was, at a house renowned for high jinks among the guests.

Mrs Mallow patted Penelope’s hand. ‘What is sauce for the gander …’ She raised a brow. ‘Surely that is your motto, Forever?’

Forever was a nickname he’d earned years before. He ground his teeth. It was not his motto, though others here would claim it. Hapton, for example. Or Bannerby.

Damn Penelope. The girl was as bad as the rest of these women, but he couldn’t let it go. Pretend it was of no consequence. Damn it all.

In hindsight, his earlier boredom was a hell of a lot more inviting than the prospect of persuading a recalcitrant wife to go home.

Certainly not a role he’d ever played before.

He glanced back at the mysterious Mrs Travenor and caught her frowning gaze and his blood rose to the challenge.

Fiend seize it. Two women under one roof, likely to give him nothing but trouble.

Outwardly composed, inside, Rosabella Cavendish trembled like an aspen. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to think. One glance from those dark, coolly insolent eyes and her heart had drummed so hard and so loud her body shook. Why? He was no different from the rest of Lady Keswick’s male guests. Rakish. Confident. Handsome. All right, perhaps he was more handsome than the rest, with his lean athletic body and saturnine aristocratic features. His smile when he bent over the dog had been heart-stoppingly sweet.

None of that was what had sent her blood pounding in her veins, though. It was the way he had looked at her. Really looked at her. Most of them presumed her a poor widow forced to earn a living as a paid companion and their gazes moved on. He’d looked at her as if he saw her innermost secrets. She had the feeling that for the price of his smile, she’d tell him anything he wanted to know. Clearly the man was downright dangerous.

‘Striking-looking devil, ain’t he?’ Lady Keswick said, watching him shake hands with the men and greet the ladies to their obvious pleasure.

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Rosa said, breathing deeply to settle her heart into its proper rhythm.

‘Don’t look at me with those innocent brown eyes, my dear. You’d have to be dead not to notice Stanford. Be warned, though, he’s an out-and-out rogue. Never settles on one woman when two will do.’

Facing Lady Smythe and Mrs Mallow, his spare elegant form in a dark coat and buff unmentionables a foil for their pastel gowns and fluttering ribbons, she sensed a wildness about him, a hard edge. Rosa’s insides fluttered with what could only be fear.

Sensible terror.

It certainly was not envy of the two beautiful ladies so obviously entranced by his company.

Beside the fashionable lush-figured Mrs Mallow in primrose, Lady Smythe looked ethereal in a gown of pale leaf green, the scalloped hem finely embroidered with flowering vines and her face framed within a leghorn bonnet adorned with a profusion of roses at the crown. The ruffled lace at her throat gave her an air of modesty out of place among Lady Keswick’s flashy company. A pearl among diamonds who, according to Lady Keswick, had been snapped up in her first Season by a man destined for political greatness. Every man at the house had been paying her attention from the moment she had arrived this morning. A woman who already had a husband, too.

A stab of something sharp in her chest stopped her breath. Surely she didn’t envy the young woman her attentive male court? A bunch of rakes and Stanford the worst of them?

The grande dame narrowed her eyes. ‘He seems to have got Lady Smythe all of a fluster. I won’t have him upsetting my guests.’

Lady Smythe did indeed look a little panicked, the colour in her cheeks a bright flag. Perhaps she wasn’t so charmed by the rake after all.

Despite the gossip, Lady Keswick ensured nothing happened under her roof that both parties didn’t want. It was a point of honour with the hostess to the wickeder element of the ton . As she’d earlier explained, a woman needed some freedom in her life. Freedom without consequences for widows and women who had married for convenience. Women like Lady Smythe, Rosa assumed.

Her heart ached for the delicate-looking lady. A marriage without love was no marriage at all, her mother had always said.

‘Bah!’ Lady Keswick pronounced. ‘Stanford’s trouble. Has been since he arrived on the town. No girl, decent or otherwise, is safe once he has her in his sights. Take my advice, Rose, keep well clear of him. You are far too innocent for a man of his ilk.’

Did innocence show on one’s face? She hoped not or her game would be up.

A cry went up from the watchers. The race must be over.

‘Who won?’ Lady Keswick asked. ‘I had five guineas on my gardeners.’

The men on the balcony doubled up with laughter. Jeers rang out across the lawn. ‘I think your money is safe,’ Rosa said.

‘Go and see, child.’

With a swift intake of breath, Rosa left her shadowy corner, edged around the laughing group, mentally shaking her head at her cowardice as she made for the stone railing far from Lord Stanford.

On the grass, Mr Fitzwilliam and Lord Bannerby were collapsed in a heap two-thirds of the way down the course, while the gardeners, at the finish line, toasted them with mugs of ale and huge grins.

‘Did you win?’ a low dark voice said in her ear.

She jumped, heat flashing through her, and turned to find Lord Stanford smiling down at her. His gaze flicked from her head to her feet the way it had when they were introduced. As she had then, she felt exposed, vulnerable.

Fortunately, her skin didn’t blush pink the way most pale English ladies did. He couldn’t possibly know of the quickening of her heart or the sudden clench in her belly. She backed up until the carved-stone rail pressed against the small of her back.

Dark as the devil, out here in the sun his eyes were obsidian, his cheekbones and jaw carved in hard angular lines, his hair a shade darker than chocolate. But darkest of all was his aura of danger.

No wonder Lady Smythe’s eyes turned his way the moment she thought he wasn’t watching.

‘I do not gamble,’ she said. How self-righteous she sounded. How priggish in this company that denied itself nothing. Yet it was the truth. She had no money for frivolities. ‘Lady Keswick has an interest in the outcome.’

He leaned one elbow on the rail, effectively cutting her off from the rest of the company. Deliberate? Naturally. He was a man who did nothing without a purpose. What purpose could he have with respect to her? A tremor ran through her frame. Fear. Excitement. She quelled the rush of sensation and presented a calm expression. ‘If you would excuse me?’ She moved to step around him.

He shifted and blocked her path. ‘I would excuse you anything at all,’ he said with a dark smile. ‘What is your offence?’

‘I say, Stanford,’ called Mr Phillips, a man so pale he looked as if he had never stepped in the sun, pale eyes, pale thinning hair, pale skin. ‘They are setting up the butts. Time to make good on your boast.’

The crowd on the balcony were drifting down the steps at the far end, heading for the lawn.

A flicker of emotion passed over his face. Annoyance at the interruption? Before he could say more, Rosa ducked around him and hurried to Lady Keswick’s side, her heart beating far faster than she wanted to admit. ‘You win, my lady.’ Her voice sounded breathless as if she’d run a mile. She drew in a steadying breath. ‘The gardeners were indeed too much of a match for the gentlemen.’

‘Fifty guineas isn’t a bad profit for indolence,’ Lady Keswick said with twinkling eyes. ‘Hapton is a fool with his money. Tell Jonas to see that the lads get a shilling each for their effort. Will you join the guests at the butts?’

‘I have no skill with a bow and prefer to watch from up here. Would you like to move closer to the balcony for a better view?’

Lady Keswick reached out and patted her hand. ‘You are a good girl, Rose. And you have talent. By summer’s end I am sure I can find you a place in the opera.’

The end of the summer might be too late. Triggs was beginning to press for his money.

Rosa pushed the old lady towards the terrace wall. ‘Has no one replied?’

‘Have patience. They are busy people. One of them will come through, I am sure.’

It was their agreement. Rosa would help entertain the guests over the next few weeks, and Lady Keswick would help her find a role in an opera company.

Only things were not going quite as she’d planned. The money she was earning as a companion was not enough for her urgent needs. It was beginning to look as if she might need to find something more lucrative. A role in an opera seemed as if it might be her best option.

To date, though, there had been no one interested in hiring an unknown singer, in spite of Lady Keswick’s unqualified praise.

Hopefully, Rosa wouldn’t need to fall back on her talent. Hopefully, she would find what she needed tonight and all her worries would be solved.

‘I am grateful for your help.’

‘Pshaw,’ the old lady said as she looked down at the company gathered on the lawn. ‘Did I tell you I was considered the best female archer in all of Sussex in my girlhood?’

Many times. ‘How did that come about?’ Rosa opened her parasol, shading them both from the afternoon sun.

‘It was in seventy-eight,’ Lady Keswick mused. Then scrunched up her face. ‘Or was it seventy-nine? No matter. Keswick was present, you know. He always said that was the day he learned about love …’