Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) (2 page)

Now he was getting better, physically at least. When would he recover in his mind and heart? And what exactly had happened to him that he could not sleep now, without waking screaming? She turned away from the window and returned to her bed, feeling helpless and old.

• • •

Miss True Becket gazed out of the carriage window with pleasure on the prospect of a bright, late-summer Hampshire day as they rolled steadily along good road between hedgerows and wooded copses. For miles now she had been riveted to the window, fascinated by the difference each mile made to the landscape. The landscape undulated around them, the vast beech “hangers,” as the wooded slopes were called, a complete change from her own home, deep in Cornwall. The most exotic places she had been before now was the village of Polperro on the Cornish coast and the occasional visit to her cousins in Devon.

The dense forests of Hampshire, the clear chalk streams, every pollarded beech and verdant village green were fresh delights to her unjaded eyes. Even if she had to endure the sharp tempers of her cousins, Lady Swinley and her daughter, Arabella, it was worth it. Father would say she should thank God for giving her an opportunity such as this to see the world, or at least more of their own fair, green isle.

And she
was
thankful. The Swinleys were often surprisingly kind to her, especially Arabella, beautiful, blonde, willful Arabella. Despite a selfish streak that True was not blind to, she, at least, was usually affectionate toward her older cousin, a reminder of years gone by when True’s humble home, the vicarage that housed her, her father, and her younger sister, Faithful, had been Arabella’s home, too. Arabella had no sisters, and True stood in that light, like an older sibling.

It did not stop the occasional cutting remark or petulant display of temper, but she thought that Arabella did hold her in genuine affection. If she had not believed that, nothing could have convinced her to be so available to them when they wanted a companion, for she certainly did not do it for Lady Swinley’s convenience. She had never been able to be as fond of her elder cousin as she would have liked. The woman had a coldness about her that chilled any budding feelings of warmth or friendship.

The coachman turned the ancient, lumbering but well-maintained carriage off the road at a stone gate and onto a long, winding lane, following directions given them at their last stop, the Leaping Stag. The innkeeper had dispensed directions to Lea Park along with tea and marvelous biscuits from his wife. True had almost been tempted to creep down to the kitchen to ask the landlady for the recipe, but knew that would gain her a swift and angry reprisal from Cousin—no, her cousin preferred “Lady Swinley”—if she made them late by even a moment. It was not that she feared her cousin, but life was much more pleasant when everyone got along.

The lane broadened, from tree-lined into open parkland. They were laboring uphill, the carriage burdened with four adult women—Lady Swinley, Arabella, True and the maid, Annie—as well as the groom and driver, and a multitude of trunks and bandboxes, satchels and valises strapped to the roof. Lady Swinley did not have the resources for a cart or wagon with the second coachman that would have needed. But their slow pace had its reward as True gazed out the window over a gentle slope of verdant beauty, rolling down into a valley where a sparkling river, a tributary of the Itchen, from True’s research, wound through banks lined by overhanging willows, sturdy oaks and shallow inlets of rushes, full-blown in the late summer sunshine.

True delighted in natural beauty, though she was neither a painter nor a poet. Her enjoyment lay in the soothing rhythms of nature, the cycle of life and the abundance of creation. God’s gift to man, her father always said.

“Tolerable park,” Lady Swinley murmured laconically.

Arabella, her oval face alight with anticipation, glanced at her. “Surely more than tolerable, Mama? It is quite lovely, don’t you think, True?”

“I do! I have never been to Hampshire, but have seen a book of plates, and it is just as I imagined, rolling hills, wooded copses . . . beautiful.”

Arabella smiled. “Wait until you see the house! It is quite spectacular. When we were here last year it was a very wet spring, and so we could not get out much, but Lea Park has enough rooms and nooks and crannies to keep one busy through a month of wet Sundays! I am so glad you could come with us this time, True.” She thrust her arm through her cousin’s and hugged it to her slender body. “If I am engaged before we leave, maybe we can find a beau for you! Some dashing buck who has come to Hampshire for the autumnal hunt!”

True blushed and gazed out the window. “You know I do not look to marry, Bella. I am content to be in your shadow.”

Arabella patted her blonde ringlets and smirked. “I am speaking of after I am engaged and can no longer be an object of flirtation, silly! I shall be very cold to any gentlemen who visit and say,
‘La, my lord, you must not look at me as your flirt. Rather gaze upon my cousin. Is she not sweet, in a prim, vicar’s-wife kind of way?’
I shall turn them all over to you.”

True tried to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Arabella was spoilt by all the attention she had had over the last three London Seasons. She had turned from a sweet young girl into a hardened flirt, and it took away some of the attraction of her vivacity, in True’s mind. But apparently the gentlemen found her as irresistible as ever, and that was all that counted in both mother and daughter’s eyes. She decided a change of subject was warranted. “Is all this land Lord Drake’s?”

Arabella’s mother finally found the conversation of some interest and turned her gaze toward True. “His father’s, the Earl of Leathorne. But Drake will one day own it. For the time he has a pretty little estate not too far from here, I have been told.” Lady Swinley’s sources went deep into the nobility, and she had cultivated, over Arabella’s three London Seasons, acquaintances in every noble house of the realm. She likely knew Lord Drake’s income down to a farthing.

Her green eyes wide, Arabella said, “Lady Drake . . . I shall like being called that, Mama.”

“And you will be an enchanting viscountess, my dear. You will be an even more remarkable countess one day; you shall be Lady Leathorne.”

“Not too soon, I hope,” Arabella said. Her smile was natural and unforced as she added, “I very much like Lord and Lady Leathorne.”

“Jessica is one of my oldest and dearest friends,” Lady Swinley said, with satisfaction. “And I have long thought this match to be the happiest outcome for my darling daughter. It will serve to make everyone happy.” She sat up straight and peered out the window. “Look! There is the house!”

True’s gaze flew back to the window and her mouth dropped open in an unladylike manner. Lea Park was lovely, majestically rising above the parkland in a series of terraced gardens that led the eye up to the house—if one could call it by such a homely name—its mellow gray walls turned golden by the angle of the afternoon sun. From the four stories of the main section of the house, a conservatory, with high roman-arched windows, stretched out to the left side, and a rounded library wing stretched out to the right. Formal gardens flanked the terraces and square boxwood hedges lined the walkways.

Lady Swinley and Arabella had already looked back down to gather their reticules and various accouterments, but then they had seen Lea Park before, and as recently as the year before when they had made an extended visit there. True had no such preparation, and she gazed in awe at the lovely home she was to spend at least a fortnight, and very likely a month or more in.

The carriage swung around a long approach that coquettishly turned away from the house before submitting and finally turning once more to bring the carriage up to the front portico that stretched over marble steps. The huge front doors swung open, and two footmen descended the stairs as Lady Swinley’s groom leaped from his seat to put the step down for the ladies.

Annie saw to the baggage, while Lady Swinley regally sailed up the steps, followed by Arabella and an abashed True. She had never met a countess, nor an earl. Would they be dreadfully condescending? Lady Swinley was just the widow of a baron, and she could be terribly intimidating at times, cousin or no cousin!

A butler ushered them in, led them through a cavernous hall and reception room to an equally enormous saloon, and announced them. “Lady Swinley, the Honorable Miss Arabella Swinley and . . . and Miss . . .” He waited for the name to be supplied to him.

Lady Swinley swept forward without giving it, but True didn’t mind. In this one case she wanted to remain anonymous for just a while, until she got over her awe. It would not do to look like a moonling with these people, her hosts for a lengthy visit.

Like a formal portrait, Lord and Lady Leathorne sat in matching chairs at one end of the magnificent blue and white saloon. They stood as one, as Lady Swinley and Arabella approached them. Lord Leathorne was a plump, peevish-looking man with sparse hair swept back from a high-domed forehead. True thought he looked worried, but she could not fathom why a gentleman with everything in life would look worried.

Lady Leathorne was plump, too, but her erect carriage and uptilted chin hinted at pride and something else . . . defensiveness? True hung back and observed, as she was wont to do, not willing to interfere in the reunion of old friends. She drifted over to a painted screen near the fireplace and gazed out of the high-arched windows at the terraced gardens filled with late-blooming flowers, taking a moment to compose herself. This house was so very grand! She had visited her cousins at their home of course, in Devon, but Swinley Manor—the title had lapsed with the death of the baron four years before, and so the home was still Lady Swinley’s—was smaller, a dark granite manse that did not compare to this enormous, bright . . . palace! To her it was a palace.

“Isabella!” Lady Leathorne’s greeting to her old friend was one of heartfelt welcome. Lord Leathorne hovered behind his wife, looking like he did not quite know what to do.

“Jessica!” Lady Swinley’s face was wreathed in a genuine smile as they exchanged brief hugs. Finally the plans she had made for her daughter in the cradle, a brilliant match with an old and monied house, looked to bear fruit. The two older ladies, bosom bows from their long-ago London Season, embraced. They all settled down to a happy reunion, but still True held back, staying in the shadows, not willing to thrust herself on the notice of the gathering. She had been plagued with shyness as a child, and still struggled with that affliction on meeting new people for the first time.

The door to the saloon opened again, and she was conscious of a swirl of movement behind her. She turned and a shaft of brilliant sunshine pierced the gloom of the farthest reaches of the room. Through it, from out of the darkness, came a young Galahad, a tall gentleman with a tumble of tawny, unruly hair swept back from a high white brow. He leaned on a cane and limped, favoring his left leg as the sunlight danced across golden streaks in his hair and lit up his golden eyes. True took in a deep breath. He was gorgeous, dressed in pale biscuit-colored pantaloons and a coat of dove gray. This
must
be Lord Drake.

He made his way across the expanse of marble floor as Lady Swinley and Arabella turned to greet him. Arabella blushed—with only a swift, frowning glance at the cane—showing a becoming sensibility for a girl who had come to Lea Park to be matched to the heir. True, unable to resist the magnetic pull of Lord Drake, was drawn across the floor too, toward the grouping of elegant lords and ladies.

Lady Leathorne spoke. “Drake, you remember Lady Swinley, and of course her lovely daughter, the Honorable Miss Arabella Swinley? They were visiting on your last leave, when that French upstart was first incarcerated.”

Lord Drake bowed before the ladies. “Of course I remember, Mama. How could I forget?”

“I’m sorry,” Lady Leathorne said, glancing at True and then turning to her friend. “I am afraid I did not catch your companion’s name?”

Lady Swinley looked startled for a moment, then noticed True hovering just at the fringe of the group. “True? Oh, yes, of course. Lord Drake, may I introduce my cousin?”

Chapter Two

“Miss Truelove Beckons.”

Drake, who had been barely listening and had turned automatically at some gesture Lady Swinley made toward her young cousin, was riveted. Miss Truelove Beckons! He smiled and gazed into eyes the color of periwinkle. Startled into gallantry, he said, “What a lovely name for a
lovely
lady! Miss Truelove Beckons.”

Rising from a kiss laid on her gloved hand, he watched, fascinated, as a deep rose flush flooded her pale, softly rounded cheeks and a sweep of dark lashes veiled her eyes. My, but she was a pretty maiden, he thought, suddenly reminded by the color of her eyes of a dell near the woods, carpeted in periwinkle in the spring. She was not richly garbed as Miss Swinley was, but neat and sweet in a pale blue day dress of some soft, clingy material. And her brown hair under her unfashionable bonnet looked like spun glass, soft as a catkin, probably. His fingers itched with a reprehensible and uncharacteristic urge to reach out and touch one drooping curl, to see if it could possibly be as soft as it looked.

“Not Beckons, my lord.” Arabella tittered politely behind one slender gloved hand. “Her name is Miss Truelove
Becket!”

Lord Leathorne let out a great shout of laughter and slapped his breeches-clad knees. “What a looby you are, m’boy! Nobody would name their gel Truelove, if their last name was Beckons! Like a written invitation, dontcha know!”

Lady Leathorne drew her son to her side with an affectionate glance and a maternal hug. “Understandable mistake; just an error in hearing.”

“Too much cannon fire, dontcha know,” Lord Leathorne added, with a smirk and a wink. “Frenchies fractured his eardrums! Ha!”

Lady Leathorne glared at him. “That is not true, Leathorne! His hearing is just fine.”