The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ was an adulterer when he’d abandoned a seventeen-year-old girl to carry his bastard alone? If so, the damned rogue would have left no trace of himself in Daphne Thessaly’s life, except the unarguable fact of his child and who could prove one way or the other who her father was on the strength of hearsay and rumours? If Chloe didn’t get the truth from her sister, it couldn’t be uncovered when Lady Daphne Thessaly was ten years in her grave.

      ‘What if I can’t do it?’ he barked at Poulson when he came to a halt.

      ‘What if you cannot do what, my lord?’

      Luke sought a reason for that confusion and found it in the challenge he’d offered to Virginia’s will and her damnable scheming.

      ‘This ludicrous quest I’ve been given,’ he snapped impatiently.

      ‘Oh, that’s simple enough. Then you must inform Lady Chloe you are not willing to carry out your task and she will subtract a quarter of the sum put aside to purchase a manor and estate for Mr James Winterley at the end of the twelve months, if enough of you complete your quests, and forward it to the Prince Regent.’

      ‘That’s devilish,’ he ground out, Virginia was giving with one hand and taking away with the other.

      ‘Perhaps the word ingenious describes it better, my lord.’

      ‘However you look at it, my great-aunt has me tied up so tight I’m surprised I’m not screaming. I’d give a great deal to see my brother decently occupied and financially independent of me. Happy is probably beyond him, but at least he deserves a chance to prove me wrong. James won’t accept a penny from me to set himself up in a new life, but such a bequest could change his life.’

      ‘Mr Winterley might surprise himself and everyone else if he had the means to do so,’ Mr Poulson suggested as if he thought there were hidden depths to one of the most notorious rakes of the ton as well as Tom Mantaigne. The lawyer shook his head as that idea played through it and he realised how much looking it demanded. ‘If he was better occupied, it would divert his resentment from your inheritance of the family lands and titles.’

      ‘What a fine prospect you do dangle before me,’ Luke said, wondering why James’s dislike still hurt after all these years of mutual distrust, ‘but it still begs the question whether I can do what Virginia asked me to.’

      ‘Lady Virginia had more faith in you than you do in yourself, Lord Farenze.’

      ‘I assume you don’t know what she asked, unless you managed to undo this letter and reseal it without leaving a single trace, Poulson, so pray don’t imagine you understand the task she set me until I come back and admit it can’t be done.’

      ‘I’m sure you won’t do that, Lord Farenze,’ the lawyer said with a smile Luke didn’t trust one bit.

      The man eyed the legal documents he’d been working on to transfer the estate and various other pieces of property to their new owners, as if he could imagine nothing finer than burying himself in wheretofors and howsoevers until dinnertime and Luke sighed impatiently, then left him to it.

      * * *

      By the time Chloe left the library it was nearly dinner time and she was soon caught up in the rush and urgency when Cook burned her hand and the cook maid dropped a pint of cream on the kitchen floor. She felt a sadly neglectful mother by the time the family and their guests were all served and the kitchen was calm again and she was free to make her way upstairs to spend a few minutes with her daughter.

      ‘There you are, Mama,’ Verity exclaimed, looking up from the much-crossed and amended first attempt at an essay her headteacher had set her. ‘I was never more pleased to see you in my life,’ she admitted with a quaintly adult shrug and mischief in her bright blue eyes.

      ‘Because I am an exceptionally wonderful mother, or because you need help with whatever fiendish task Miss Thibett set you this time, my love?’

      ‘Both, of course,’ Verity said and Chloe wondered if her father had been a charmer as well—if so, it seemed little wonder poor Daphne had found him irresistible.

      ‘What have you been afflicted with, then?’

      ‘It’s geography, Mama,’ Verity said tragically, as if she had been asked to visit Hades and report on the scenery.

      ‘Oh, dear me, that’s certainly not your best subject,’ Chloe sympathised and wished she had more than a scratch education. ‘There must be some clue in one of Lady Virginia’s books or on one of the globes.’

      ‘I can’t find the Silk Road on a globe,’ Verity said with a pout that told Chloe she hadn’t tried very hard.

      It was a trait that reminded Chloe of Daphne and, whilst she would always defend her sister fiercely if anyone else criticised her, she refused to let Verity grow up with the same belief she only needed to cry or bat her eyelashes to get unpleasant tasks done for her.

      ‘Then you will find it in the new atlas Lady Virginia purchased last year for times like this. Once you have a list of the countries it passes through you can look up the history and trade it carries in the books the last Lord Farenze collected about the more exotic corners of the world. You should be grateful to have such knowledge at your fingertips so you can answer your headmistress’s questions when you return to school next week.’

      ‘Oh, Mama, must I?’

      ‘Yes, Verity, you must.’

      ‘I thought you might help me. It would be so much more interesting than wading through a lot of dry-as-dust philosophising about the savage ways of peoples those dreary old travellers considered less civilised than their own kind on my own.’

      ‘You must have been looking in the wrong ones. Find a book by someone who loved exploring new places and meeting new people and read what he has to say instead of some person who probably never went to the places he wrote about. There must be writings like that in such a collection. Lady Virginia’s husband doesn’t sound the sort of man who was happy to be bored witless every time he picked up a book.’

      ‘Then I must plough through every book in the library to find out a few facts that will satisfy Miss Thibett I didn’t idle my time away this week?’

      Chloe was tempted to snap an easy reply and go back to her housekeeping accounts. She knew an unsaid question about where her daughter now fitted into the world lay under her Verity’s fit of the sullens and she must set aside her not-very-tempting household accounts to deal with it.

      ‘You need an occupation, my love. Miss Thibett is a wise woman who knows far more about life than you do and she knows Lady Virginia stood in the place of a family for both of us. That is why she let you come home to say farewell to her ladyship. I was wrong to try to shield you from the pain of loss, my love, and your headmistress was right to let you grieve for the person who meant so much to you.’

      Suddenly her daughter wasn’t a young lady, or the mischievous urchin who had torn about on her pony and worried her mama with daring exploits until Lady Virginia offered to send her to school. Chloe tried not to let her own tears flow as Verity turned into her arms to be comforted.

      ‘I miss her so much, Mama,’ she wailed and wept at long last.

      ‘I know you do, my darling,’ Chloe whispered into the springing gold curls making their escape bid from СКАЧАТЬ