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СКАЧАТЬ calls she should make, business she should attend to, but she could not concentrate on a single thing other than the image of Ashe, nakedly magnificent—

      ‘Ouch!’ The pained voice was familiar.

      She found herself almost nose to nose with her Cousin Elinor, who had been browsing through a stack of small classical prints. Elinor’s right foot was under Bel’s left. She hastily removed it and apologised for her abstraction.

      ‘I have decided to create a print room in my small closet,’ Elinor explained, once they had finished apologising to each other for not looking where they were going. ‘I think I have enough now. Do you?’ She regarded a pile of prints doubtfully.

      ‘How big is the room? I would take a few more if I were you. And you will need borders,’ Bel pointed out, wrenching her mind away from erotic thoughts. ‘I did the same thing at Felsham Hall and bought everything here. They sell borders by the yard.’ She picked up the top print, discovered it was a scantily clad Roman athlete with a physique almost as good as Ashe’s and hastily returned it to the pile. Ashe did not have a fig leaf.

      Elinor had found a shop assistant while Bel was recovering her composure and he returned with a selection of borders for the ladies to chose from. ‘You look very well, Cousin.’ Elinor glanced up from fitting a length of black-and-white paper against a print of the Forum. ‘Excited,’ she added, rejecting that border and trying another.

      ‘I do? Oh.’ Bel bit her lip; she had no idea that her inner state would be obvious. ‘How?’

      ‘Your colour is better and—I do not know quite how to describe it—you are glowing somehow.’ Elinor put her head on one side and frowned at her cousin.

      ‘It’s the lovely weather, and I am enjoying being back in London. I did a lot of shopping this morning.’ Although shopping was not a reason for excitement that Elinor would recognise.

      ‘I wish I could have come with you.’ Unaware she had startled her cousin, Elinor made a decision on the borders and handed her choice to the assistant.

      ‘Really?’ Thank goodness, her cousin was taking an interest in clothes at last.

      ‘Yes, I need some stout walking shoes, some large handkerchiefs and tooth powder,’ Elinor said prosaically, dashing Bel’s hopes of fashionable frivolity. ‘Mama is meeting me with the carriage—would you care for a lift home?’

      Bel sat on one of the stools at the green-draped counter. ‘No, thank you, I will walk, I need the exercise.’ If truth were told, she was more than a little stiff from last night’s exertions and would have welcomed the ride, but the thought of enduring Aunt Louisa’s close scrutiny was too alarming. If Elinor could tell something was changed, Aunt Louisa most certainly could.

      She walked out with Elinor, the porter hastening behind with the packed prints. Sure enough, drawn up at the kerb side in front of the shop, was Aunt Louisa’s carriage with the top down, and there, walking towards her along the pavement, a willowy lady on his arm, was Ashe.

      ‘Belinda!’ Aunt Louisa.

      ‘Lady Belinda.’ Ashe. ‘Miss Ravenhurst.’

      ‘Lord Dereham.’ That was Elinor. Her mama, startled by the novelty of her daughter addressing a man in the street, turned with majestic slowness and raised her eyeglass. Ashe bowed gracefully.

      ‘Lady James, Lady Belinda, Miss Ravenhurst.’ Ashe raised his hat. ‘Are you acquainted with Lady Pamela Darlington?’

      ‘No, I am not. Good afternoon, Lady Pamela.’ Bel shook hands with a politeness she was far from feeling. What she did feel, shockingly, was the urge to push Lady Pamela into the nearby horse trough. The pink clouds of happiness vanished.

      ‘Ha! I remember you.’ Aunt Louisa was regarding the very lovely young woman severely.

      Bel found she could not speak. Lady Pamela was pretty, beautifully dressed, totally confident. She shook hands with Lady James without showing any alarm at her ferocious scowl, smiled at Elinor and Bel and chatted pleasantly while, all the time, keeping her hand firmly on Ashe’s arm. From time to time she glanced up at him with a proprietorial little smile that widened as he smiled back. He had all the hallmarks of a man receiving the attentions of a lovely woman, damn him, Bel thought savagely, smiling until her cheeks ached. Behind Lady Pamela stood a maid and a footman laden with packages.

      Bel did not know where to look. She did not dare meet Ashe’s eye, terrified of showing some emotion her aunt could read. With her insides churning with what she had not the slightest difficulty in recognising as violent and quite unreasonable jealousy, she did not want to look at Lady Pamela and all the time she knew that simply by standing there, dumbstruck and awkward, she risked making herself conspicuous.

      ‘We have been purchasing prints for a print room,’ she said suddenly, into a lull in the conversation. Lady Pamela smoothed an invisible thread off Ashe’s sleeve with a little pout of concentration on her face. Bel gritted her teeth.

      ‘How very artistic of you, Lady Belinda,’ Ashe remarked, the first words he had addressed to her since his greeting.

      ‘Miss Ravenhurst is the artistic one, my lord, I am merely helping her choose some images,’ Bel replied, her lips stiff. She made herself meet his eyes. There was not the slightest sign in his expression of anything other than good-mannered interest in what she was saying. How could that be? Bel had felt it would be obvious to everyone who passed—let alone her aunt—that the two of them were lovers; she felt as though it must be emblazoned across her face. But no one seemed in any way suspicious and all Aunt Louisa’s attention appeared to be focused upon Lady Pamela and Ashe.

      And just what was he doing with the lovely Lady Pamela? Why were they smiling at each other like that? Pamela was hanging on to his arm in a manner that was positively clinging and Ashe was doing nothing to distance himself. He seemed to know her well. Very well.

      ‘Belinda!’ She jumped. Aunt Louisa was gesturing to the open carriage door and the groom waiting patiently beside it.

      ‘No, thank you, Aunt, I will walk back, I have my maid with me.’

      ‘Join us, Lady Belinda,’ Ashe suggested, proffering his other arm. Lady Pamela’s smiling lips compressed into a thin line. ‘We are going to Hatchard’s bookshop, so I imagine our ways lie together.’

      ‘Thank you, no, my lord,’ she said coolly. ‘I have more than enough foolish romance to be going on with, just at the present, without buying any to read.’ She bowed slightly to Lady Pamela, smiled at her relatives and set off briskly westwards.

      ‘My lady?’ Millie scurried to keep up. ‘Are you all right, my lady?’

      ‘Yes, of course I am.’ Bel blew her nose fiercely but slowed her pace for the girl’s shorter legs. The smoke and the dust must have got into her eyes, there was no other explanation for the way they were watering.

      How could Ashe be so…? She wrestled for the word. Deceitful. That was it, horrid as it was. He had told her he had no attachments, no commitments, yet there he was, strolling along, giving every indication that he was on the very best of terms with one of the most eligible young ladies in the Marriage Mart. And that was a highly risky thing to be doing if a man was not serious. It led to gossip at best and to interviews with enraged fathers at worst.

      If she had known he was on the look-out СКАЧАТЬ