Regency Scoundrels And Scandals. Louise Allen

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       Chapter Seven

      ‘Did you have a pleasant nap, my lady?’ Philpott placed a cup of tea by the bedside and went to draw back the curtains at the window, letting in the late afternoon sunshine.

      ‘No, not really,’ Bel said vaguely, pushing her hair back out of her eyes. Philpott, studying her with professional frankness, sniffed.

      ‘You will have bags under your eyes, my lady, if you do not get some sleep. London life does not appear to suit you. You look as though you did not get a wink last night either. You are quite pale.’ She leaned closer, frowning, convincing Bel that she must look such a hag that Ashe would retreat in alarm after one look at her.

      ‘Yes, there are smudges under your eyes, my lady, even if there are no bags. Yet.’ The dresser turned away, leaving her mistress to digest this ominous lecture, and began to tidy the dressing table. ‘Once a lady reaches a certain age, she has to take extra care,’ she added. ‘In my last position, try what I might, I could not persuade my lady to use Denmark Lotion. And look what happened.’

      ‘What did happen?’ Bel slid her arms into her wrapper and got up. Perhaps if she got dressed and had a walk before dinner, she could manage a short sleep after it.

      ‘Crows’ feet,’ Philpott confided bleakly.

      Bel sat on the dressing-table stool and regarded herself in the mirror. Even if the ultimate horror of crows’ feet had not yet arrived, she certainly looked like a woman short of sleep. And that was hardly the way to appear to a sophisticated, experienced gentleman who was used, she had no doubt, to lovely, assured and vibrant lovers. Not to inexperienced ones who were too nervous to sleep and consequently were wan and heavy-eyed. To say nothing of utterly ignorant on the subject of pleasuring a man in bed.

      The thought of pleasuring Ashe in bed, whatever it involved, had Bel closing her eyes with a breathless sigh of anticipation. Then she opened them again and stared at her pale reflection.

      She tried to find consolation in the glossiness of her hair, which she had washed that morning. Philpott began to style it again and Bel was seized with a new worry. How should she dress to receive Ashe? Would he expect her to be in evening dress and for them to have a conversation first? Or would he expect her to be in bed? Or up, but en négligé? How on earth was one supposed to know these things? Bel worried, distractedly buffing her nails. There ought to be a book on the subject. Perhaps there was, and she was too ignorant to know how to find it. Poor Lord Dereham.

      Ashe slid the key carefully into the lock and eased the back door open. The night was quiet, moonless, and here, at the rear of the house, almost totally dark. As he had passed the front façade on to Half Moon Street he had seen the candlelight flickering through a gap in Belinda’s bedchamber curtains. She was awake and waiting for him.

      His lips curved in a smile of pleasurable anticipation, unclouded by nothing more than two glasses of claret with his dinner. He had returned to his chambers for a shave and to check there was no last-minute message cancelling their rendezvous and now he was conscious of the steady pulse of his blood, of a certain tightness low in his belly and the slight, pleasurable, frisson of nerves.

      He expected it before battle, welcomed it to keep him sharp and alert. It amused him to feel it now, before the start of a new affaire. It was novel, that feeling in these circumstances, but then Belinda was different somehow. He had never been a careless or thoughtless lover, he reassured himself as he made his way unerringly through the familiar house. But this was important to get right.

      He paused halfway up the stairs, frowning into the darkness. Why was that? Then he shrugged. The lady was not going to thank him for keeping her waiting while he brooded on the philosophy of relationships. As soundlessly as he had moved operating behind enemy lines Ashe drifted upstairs, turned right on to the landing and scratched lightly on the door panel.

      She opened the door to him on to a room lit by a candelabrum on a side table and another by the bedside. As he stepped inside, Bel closed the door and moved wordlessly to stand by the table. It looked as though she had been sitting there reading.

      The flickering light struck rich reflections off her unbound hair, as though amber had been threaded through its brown length. Ashe wanted to lift it, run his fingers through it. All in good time. Patience: she is worth it. ‘Lady Belinda.’

      ‘My friends call me Bel,’ she confided, her voice husky with nerves.

      ‘Bel.’ He tried it and smiled, pleased with the sound on his tongue. A small word, but sweet and rounded, like her. ‘Lovely. It suits you.’ She was wearing a long robe of amber silk tied with ribbons that fluttered as she moved. Under it he could see a nightgown in a deeper hue. With her hair heavy on her shoulders and her bare toes peeping out, she was the woman he remembered from that first night.

      Only he did not recall her being this pale, nor her eyes looking so enormous in the oval of her face. Last night, at the dance, she had not seemed so fragile. ‘Are you all right, Bel?’ He moved to come to her and stopped, his toe stubbing against something. He looked down. Malevolent green-glass eyes glinted up from a massive furry head. His toes were against a set of savage teeth. That ridiculous bear again. ‘Good evening, Horace,’ he said, sidestepping the thing.

      Bel СКАЧАТЬ