The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle. Elizabeth Beacon

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СКАЧАТЬ far too respectable to be a left-handed connection. Not that he’d sink so low as to install his pregnant mistress at the Castle before Roxanne had quit it, she decided with weary resignation.

      ‘Pray forgive me, Miss Courland, I’m Mrs Robert Besford of Westmeade Manor, but please call me Caro. My husband and Sir Charles have been friends since they were unappealing brats in short coats, so I barged in, since I couldn’t wait any longer to make your acquaintance.’

      Roxanne could see no reason why a boyhood friendship between this lady’s husband and Charles Afforde should make her and Mrs Besford friends, too, but found it impossible to snub the vivacious young woman or refuse the warm understanding in Caro’s golden-brown gaze.

      ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs Besford,’ she said, holding out her hand in greeting and having it firmly shaken by one that looked too small and slender to contain such strength and resolution.

      ‘Caro,’ her new friend insisted and Roxanne smiled back.

      ‘Then I must be Roxanne, Caro, for I gave up being Rosie when my brother insisted on calling me Rosie-Posie long after I grew up.’

      ‘Gentlemen can be so effortlessly maddening, can’t they?’ Caro replied.

      ‘My apologies, Caro,’ Sir Charles said, looking uncomfortable, ‘I’d no idea you’d arrive so close on my heels. I’ll make sure my groom has seen to your horses, as Miss Courland’s men are busy, if you’ll excuse me?’

      ‘Gladly. Pray go and soothe Rob’s anxiety about me by discussing where you’re going to acquire the bloodstock you intend on breeding,’ Mrs Besford said with an airy wave and, to Roxanne’s surprise, he meekly did as he was bid.

      ‘He thinks he has to humour me,’ Caroline told her with a conspiratorial smile. ‘Especially since he woke my household last night by shouting something incomprehensible at the top of his voice in his sleep. According to my husband, many men have nightmares after taking part in battles or skirmishes, but goodness knows what set Charles off in the midst of the Kent countryside in peacetime. His manservant managed to calm him down without waking him and the rest of us went back to sleep, but Charles is mortified this morning and I’m taking shameless advantage. I’ll soon be kept busy at home with this new baby and my little daughter, so I exploited his guilty conscience when he tried to leave me behind this morning. I think Rob’s still fighting off the vapours after dreading every bump and bend we travelled over on my behalf,’ Caro confided. ‘I dare say he almost wishes himself back at Waterloo, the poor man, but I’m bored with being treated like spun glass and thought you might welcome some support, even if I’m of precious little use.’

      ‘I was beginning to wonder if I’d get out of here without turning into a watering pot, or throwing something fragile and irreplaceable at Sir Charles, so you’re very welcome, I assure you.’

      ‘You seem too strong to give way to your emotions like that, Roxanne, but I know how hard it is to stay serene in such trying circumstances,’ Caro said, and Roxanne saw a fleeting shadow of some remembered sadness cloud her guest’s unusual eyes.

      It was scouted the instant Robert Besford appeared, a worried look on his handsome face. Roxanne thought Caro was blooming, but since he evidently cared a great deal for his wife, Mr Besford’s anxiety was rather touching.

      ‘Good morning,’ he said with a graceful bow, while his startlingly green eyes ran over his wife as if taking an inventory.

      Caro rolled her eyes and tried to look stern, before laughing and shaking her head at him, ‘This is Miss Courland, Rob,’ she admonished.

      ‘I know. We’ve met before, haven’t we, Miss Courland?’ he replied with a rueful smile of apology for his distracted state.

      ‘Good morning, Colonel Besford,’ she replied with a smile, for who could resist the Besfords’ evident delight in each other?

      ‘I’m colonel no longer, not even in my brevet rank as staff officer, now I’ve sold out,’ he told her cheerfully enough.

      ‘Or so he says,’ Caro added darkly and Roxanne laughed at the look the Honourable Robert turned on his wife.

      ‘And no order of mine was ever knowingly obeyed by my wife,’ he told Roxanne ruefully and ducked dextrously as a cushion flew past his left ear and thudded harmlessly against the oak panelling.

      ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Caro said, hand over her mouth and her eyes dancing. ‘It’s become a habit,’ she admitted, and Roxanne decided she’d enjoy local society if it offered such lively company, after all.

      ‘I’ll make sure I take a suit of armour with me to Mulberry House,’ she replied solemnly, and they were all laughing when Charles entered the room.

      He was enchanted by this light-hearted and laughing Roxanne Courland. He’d turned her world upside down and behaved like a bad-tempered bear this morning, so no wonder he’d not seen her so until now, but suddenly he knew she’d break his heart if he let her and felt the breath stall in his chest as he saw her as she ought to be, if her family had cherished and adored her, instead of leaving her alone to brave the world. He acquitted Sir Granger of deliberate cruelty, but to raise her as mistress here, when she could only be second-in-command at her brother’s whim, was unthinkingly callous.

      Roxanne must at least taste the life of a single young woman of birth and fortune before he wed her, but it’d have to be a mere bite, as this need dragging at him insistently wouldn’t be ignored for long. He imagined her beautifully gowned and coiffured and decided he was about to let himself in for the most tortuous few weeks of his life. Stepping forwards, he watched the mischief leave her darkest brown eyes and her merry smile die. There was time to alter that state of affairs, he reassured himself. Perhaps she’d look favourably on his suit if he made her mistress here again. Highly unlikely she’d wed ever him for himself, now, and wasn’t that just as well?

      ‘I asked for refreshments to be served here, if you don’t object, Miss Courland?’ he said.

      ‘I’ve no right to object, Sir Charles,’ she replied.

      ‘A lady always has rights,’ he argued. She had rights, and obligations—common politeness being one of them.

      ‘How nice for us,’ she replied stubbornly.

      ‘It must be,’ he replied, and she glared at him before embarking on a discussion about babies with Caro designed to exclude sane gentlemen, except that his friend Rob seemed to find it as fascinating as they did.

      He’d never be that much of a fool about his wife and children, Charles assured himself. He’d be an interested and even a fond father, especially as his own sire had consigned him to his formidable grandmother’s care without a backward look at an early age. Charles’s lips twisted in a sardonic smile as he recalled a day when the father he had yearned for came home at last. Louis Afforde had fainted at the sight of him, coming round to murmur artistically, ‘The boy is too like her—my one, my only, my dear departed love. He offends my eyes and grieves my suffering heart.’

      Louis, an aspiring poet, promptly went straight back to London and his current ‘only’ love and left his son with an aversion to romantic love and a gap in his young life where his remaining parent should have been. Packed off to live with his grandparents at the age of six, Charles swore he’d never fall in love, whatever love might be. Eyeing Rob now doting over the wife he’d once professed to hate, he decided he still didn’t know what it СКАЧАТЬ