The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ be sailing under sealed orders, Lady Chloe, so I really don’t know.’

      ‘How exciting,’ Eve said with stars in her eyes, as if she dreamt of sailing the seven seas in a state of constant adventure and upheaval.

      ‘Not really,’ Revereux argued with an indifference to the idea Luke must remember to thank him for later. ‘Apart from the danger and upset of a storm and the rush and alarm of battle, life at sea is sadly tedious and the men dread serving on the Caribbean station because of the yellow fever and the like. I hope we’re not bound there, Miss Winterley, for I can’t like the place for all its warmth and natural beauty.’

      ‘Is it so beautiful, then?’

      ‘Aye, and rich and devilish hot at times and the sugar plantations are worked by unlucky slaves I don’t blame in the least for feeling rebellious and running away whenever they get the chance.’

      ‘Oh,’ Eve said, looking a little downcast. ‘I’m sure I should as well and I’m very glad Papa has no business interests there after all. Will you not tell us how you found out about Verity and tracked her down and rescued her from her wicked uncles though, Mr Revereux? It sounds a very dashing tale and quite fit for one of Mrs Radcliffe’s novels.’

      ‘I dare say it was nothing of the sort and anyway it is a story that can wait, love, if the Captain wants to tell his private affairs to such a curious miss at all, that is,’ Luke intervened before the poor man felt obliged to recount his ill-fated love story between entrées.

      ‘Indeed, and dining en famille is a treat that can easily be withdrawn from young ladies not yet out.’ Chloe reinforced his warning with a stern eye on Verity and both girls rolled their eyes at the unreasonable nature of parents, then behaved like a pair of unlikely angels.

      * * *

      ‘Would you like to take a brandy or shall we join the ladies and be sociable over the teacups, Revereux?’ Luke asked at the end of the meal and thought he saw the man pale at the idea of returning to Culdrose’s stern rule before he had to.

      ‘I’d best avoid brandy for the time being. I don’t want to risk lurching about like a drunkard until I’ve got my land legs again.’

      ‘Then I’ll bring my glass to the drawing room, if you ladies don’t object?’

      ‘I think we might bear that much dissipation calmly enough,’ Chloe said.

      Luke grinned, knowing he’d never find her company tedious if they lived to be a hundred, when she gave him a look that warned him she knew he was up to something and was in two minds about putting a stop to it.

      At last Oakham and his acolytes were dismissed and Miss Yorke, Eve’s governess, excused herself to write to her elderly parents. It was very close to Verity’s bed time, but Luke was glad Chloe didn’t send her away. This tale needed to be told and arrangements about her contact with her father and where she would live made before the man went back to sea.

      ‘I think the time has come to tell your story, Revereux. I hope you won’t mind doing so in front of Eve and myself, since I’ll soon be Verity’s uncle by marriage?’

      ‘Neatly put,’ Revereux said with a challenging look in those sharp blue eyes of his that said he would be no pushover if his ideas didn’t chime with theirs.

      ‘Why, thank you,’ Luke said with an ironic bow.

      ‘I will try to emulate you,’ Revereux said with a sigh, then watched the fire and seemed to be staring into a past full of mixed blessings. ‘I took a bullet in my side at the Battle of the Nile. I was eventually given shore leave to recuperate with my maternal grandfather, a minister of the Scottish church, since even the Admiralty decided they didn’t want me back until I had some flesh on my bones.’

      ‘Your poor mother must have been beside herself with worry,’ Chloe said.

      ‘She has one son in the navy and two in the army and often says the one who gives her the most worry is my brother Henry, who stayed at home and followed in his grandfather’s footsteps. A practical female, my darling mother,’ he said with a rueful smile that said a lot about his affection for her.

      ‘I hope we’ll have the chance to meet her one day,’ Luke put in, to remind them time was wasting and Cully would be down to bear her patient off to bed again very soon.

      ‘So do I, but to return to my tale, I was feeling better and growing restless and bored, as young fools of eighteen often do when they don’t have enough to do. Then, one day I met a young lady walking the hills on her own and sadly lost. Not that she minded being so, she told me, since as she didn’t know where she was, she hoped nobody else would either. When I pointed out that I now knew, she had a fit of the giggles and admitted I was right. I fell in love with her on the spot.’ Revereux smiled broadly at nothing at all and even Luke couldn’t help but sympathise.

      If only he was heart-whole and still innocent when he’d first laid eyes on Lady Daphne’s sister, he’d have done exactly the same. Deep down he probably had, he realised now, then refused to admit it to either of them for a whole decade; which made him more of a fool than Revereux, so he could hardly blame him for diving head first into love with a very different Thessaly twin.

      ‘After that she used to get lost whenever her aunt took her eyes off her long enough for her to get away from Hamming House and I haunted the hills and moors around my grandfather’s manse like a lost soul, hoping she would and I could meet up with her. Apparently her aunt had a splendid marriage planned for her and the vast settlements on offer that would set her family back on the road to riches. Daphne told me most of her family could go hang, but she was worried about what would happen to you when we wed and frustrated their whole rotten scheme, Lady Chloe. Her only regret was that our marriage would part her from you.’

      ‘You were married?’ Chloe said incredulously.

      ‘I loved her far too much to risk leaving her unwed and with child once I was considered fit for service again and sent back to sea.’

      ‘Then how did she end up in that state and alone anyway?’ she demanded fiercely.

      Luke thought her magnificent as she defended her sister ten years after her death. Looking away to distract himself from the heady thought of the day after tomorrow he’d been forced to compromise on for their wedding, Luke saw his daughter and Verity were listening to Revereux’s tale of star-crossed lovers with round-eyed fascination. Perhaps he should send them to bed? No, the last thing he wanted was either of them thinking a runaway marriage sounded deeply romantic, so far better for them to stay and realise the pain and sorrow that impulsive wedding had caused Lady Daphne and her impulsive young lover, as well as Verity and Chloe.

      ‘I didn’t know she had done so until I cornered your younger brother one night when he had drunk nearly enough brandy to sink a man o’ war and threatened to beat the story out of him if he didn’t tell it of his own accord.’ He paused and sent his daughter and Eve a dubious look and obviously reached the same conclusion Luke had done and decided they ought to hear the sad end of his grand love affair after all. ‘I owed him that much for standing by while his brother and the thugs he’d hired beat me within a hair’s breadth of my life, then had me carried south and put aboard the next ship leaving for the East Indies.

      ‘Imagine how I felt when I finally came back to my full senses and found out I was halfway to Java with the captain and all the ship’s company to convince СКАЧАТЬ