The Ardent Lady Amelia (2 page)

Peter sometimes wondered if she took the matter seriously, or if she only undervalued it so he would consider her low-key attitude absurdly harmless. Which he had done until Verwood had called him on it.

Oh, God, he was expecting Verwood any moment and he didn’t want Amelia and Trudy to still be with him when the fellow arrived. Peter had planned to be finished with this business and safely ensconced in the library by nine for the appointed meeting. He shifted restlessly to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of the grandfather clock without seeming to as he tugged down a cuff under the tight-fitting blue coat he wore.

Trudy was awaiting his reply to her remarks (which he couldn’t remember) and Amelia was placidly working on her tatting, seemingly unconcerned. The muted sound of a knock on the front door reached them. “I have work to do in my study,” he said abruptly. “We’ll discuss the matter another time.”

“What is there to discuss?” Trudy asked, offended. “Surely I’ve convinced you it would be most unwise for Amelia to leave London now.”

“Yes, yes. I can see that.” His brown eyes came to rest on Amelia’s gently quizzing face. “There was another matter Amelia and I had to settle, but it will have to wait.”

Even as he hastened to the door connecting the drawing room with the library, Bighton flung open the door from the hall, announcing. “Lord Verwood.” The gentleman who entered stood several inches taller than the butler, and carried himself with the kind of bearing one expected in a military man. He entered the room without hesitation, though a slight limp was apparent in his firm step. Masses of unruly black curls had obviously resisted all efforts to train them into the semblance of a stylish coiffure, or perhaps it was merely that he hadn’t bothered to rearrange them after removing his hat. He wore a blue coat, rather old-fashioned in its cut, and buff pantaloons that strained over his muscular thighs. His neckcloth was tied in a neat but unfashionable manner, as though he had attended to the matter himself, in no patient endeavor to be done with the task.

Altogether not an entirely imposing figure, Amelia decided as she studied the stranger. For he was a stranger to her. She had a very good memory for names and faces, and if she’d seen him at all, previously, it could only have been in a crowd. Certainly he’d never been introduced to her. She couldn’t very well have forgotten his impressive height or the fierceness of his nearly black eyes, or even the suppressed energy that seemed to radiate from him. He didn’t appear the sort of man who would suffer fools gladly, or even run tame at a polite social gathering. A man of action, she thought, not without amusement. A soldier not of the parade-ground variety, but of battle. She wondered how Peter had met him.

“Ah, Verwood,” Peter said, seeming at something of a loss. “I thought we’d meet in the library. Should have told Bighton. Well, never mine. We can go through here.”

If he thought by indicating the door he was going to escape without an introduction, he was sadly out. Trudy was not in the habit of watching young men wander through “her” drawing room without a proper greeting. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, extending her fingers just slightly in the newcomer’s direction.

Verwood’s alert eyes instantly swung toward her and he executed a stiff, if minuscule, bow as Peter mumbled, “Aunt Trudy, Lord Verwood. Verwood, my aunt, Gertrude Harting.” From her seat just opposite Trudy, Amelia watched in fascination as the man’s eyes took in every detail of Trudy’s appearance with the intensity of a beam suddenly loosed from a lantern in the dark. Though his countenance changed not a whit, Amelia had the distinct impression he’d formed an immediate judgment of the older woman, penetrated to some essential core of her, and extracted a definition he would not forget. It was an unnerving observation and she rather hoped Peter wouldn’t bother introducing the dark fellow to her.

But in an instant the black eyes shifted to Amelia, subjecting her to the same sort of scrutiny as Peter reluctantly spoke her name. “Lady Amelia,” he murmured in a voice as deep as a coal pit and about as warm. This was not the manner in which Amelia was used to being treated by gentlemen and she couldn’t help the slight irritation which burgeoned in her bosom. She was aware that one of her brows rose slightly, though she had no control over it, but she couldn’t possibly know that her long, thin nose, which Trudy had so recently called aristocratic, actually twitched.

If Lord Verwood considered this an extraordinary circumstance, he gave no indication of it. His bow to her was, if possible, even slighter than that to Gertrude, but there was no apparent disrespect in it. One so stiff, after all, might fall over were he to incline himself too far, Amelia decided.

“Verwood,” Trudy was saying, her brow wrinkled with thought. “I remember a Vernon in Hampshire, but no Verwoods. And he was a baronet, if I’m not mistaken. What part of the country are you from, Lord Verwood?”

“Derbyshire.”

Trudy had expected a little more information than that, but she was undaunted. “And you still have a home there, do you?”

“To the best of my knowledge.”

If he had said it with a twinkle in his eyes, Amelia might have warmed to him, but no, his face and those unnerving black eyes were as politely cool as ever. Trudy persisted. “Have you family there?”

“No.”

“Ah, then they’re here with you in London,” Trudy surmised in the face of his unwillingness to be more forthcoming.

“No.”

Which left her knowing precisely nothing. He might have family (a wife) who weren’t either in Derbyshire or in London, or he might have no family (a wife) at all.

“Do you plan a long stay in London?”

“I haven’t any idea, as yet.”

“Have you a house here?”

“Yes.”

“In South Street,” Peter offered, to propitiate her bursting curiosity.

Trudy sat back a little in her chair, nodding as though satisfied. “There are some acceptable houses in South Street. For myself, I like the squares, but not everyone can live on one of them. South Street has the advantage of being so close to the park,” she added kindly.

“There is that.”

“Do you ride?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Verwood stood at his ease, never shifting his eyes from Trudy to any other member of the small group. He looked as though he were prepared to withstand her inquisitive assault for hours, unperturbed. Amelia refused to join the questioning, or even to make some inoffensive remark.

From where she sat she could observe the rugged strength of his sun-browned face, the broad set of his shoulders. Definitely a military man, she decided. Probably wounded, accounting for the limp. A few years in the army could have roughed his polish, though she personally doubted that he’d ever had any. She’d seldom run into a man with less-agreeable manners, though one couldn’t exactly fault him for impoliteness. She didn’t observe brusqueness very often in her circles. Perhaps that’s why she’d never seen him before.

“The Candovers are from Derbyshire,” Aunt Trudy remarked. “I imagine you know them.”

“Yes.”

“Well, splendid. Then we’ll probably see you at their ball next week.”

Verwood’s eyes for the first time left Trudy’s to swing questioningly at Peter, who shrugged and said, “My sister and aunt aren’t planning on leaving town after all.”

“I should think not!” Trudy cried. “In the middle of the season! I never heard anything so totty-headed. This is precisely the perfect time to
be
in London.” She smiled graciously at Verwood. “So we’ll no doubt see you at the Candovers’ next week.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Peter had had quite enough of the cross-examination, and felt a little more had been revealed than he could have wished. “I hope you’ll excuse us, Aunt Trudy, but Lord Verwood has called on a business matter and I shouldn’t like to keep him longer than necessary.

“Why, of course, dear boy. I wouldn’t think of intruding on such a subject. You might take him into the library.”

Amelia grinned at her brother’s exasperation, but he merely pursed his lips in response. Lord Verwood followed him to the door before turning to bid the ladies a pleasant evening.

“Rather a strange man,” Trudy confided when they’d gone.

Amelia continued to stare at the closed door. “Very strange indeed,” she agreed.

Chapter 2

There was a toasty fire burning in her room when Lady Amelia arrived there an hour later. Her brother was still closeted with Lord Verwood, and Aunt Trudy had agreed an early night would be good for them. Sundays were invariably enervating, with very little activity outside the house after church.

Lady Amelia couldn’t very well stroll about the area with Trudy, since Trudy never strolled. And she didn’t like to take a footman away from the house because most of the servants had the day off. Occasionally there was a ride in the park, if Peter was free, but he’d been away all day today, only returning in the evening.

She felt restless from the lack of exercise and paced up and down her room. The air was still too chilly to open a window and let in a refreshing breeze. If the Shiptons had been able to join them for a quiet dinner, the day wouldn’t have passed so slowly, but Clarissa had contracted some trifling illness and refused to stir so far as the three houses that separated their two domiciles. It was one of Clarissa’s few faults, this over-enthusiasm for pampering herself with any slight indisposition, and Amelia tried to take it in her stride. There were times, however, when it proved the greatest nuisance. One’s friends should be more considerate, she thought ruefully.

The absence of entertainment was not, of course, the only thing she had on her mind. Peter’s odd pronouncements, and his odd friend, were far more pressing to her at the moment than a small disappointment of company. Whether she acknowledged it to him or not,
she did rather fancy herself useful in gathering information, and she had no intention of giving up her quietly adventurous life. There were things she heard that he wasn’t likely to hear, things that might have, and indeed on occasion
had
had, some bearing on England’s struggles with the French. Granted, she had uncovered no nefarious plots which would have undone her country, but she had been able to obtain tidbits of information that had proved useful.

The way in which she obtained this information was not precisely as simple as she’d let on to Peter. But then, he wouldn’t have approved of her slightly unorthodox methods, so it was better he didn’t know. True, inevitably the gentlemen in question were decidedly foxed when they let their tongues run away with them, but they needed a little encouragement in the right direction. After all, they were more inclined to spout amorous bits of nonsense than details of renewed French preparations for an invasion.

And one couldn’t just come out and ask if they happened to know anything about Napoleon’s plans. It was necessary to have them in the proper mood, and then show a great deal of bravado about how Napoleon would never dare to attack the English on their own soil, to get a rise out of someone. Most of the men she’d gotten in the proper mood hadn’t known the first thing about a French invasion, or anything else, for that matter.

Lady Amelia stopped in front of the looking glass above her dressing table and considered her reflection for a moment. Her hair was dressed simply for a quiet Sunday at home, with none of the elaborate curls and falls she allowed Bridget to arrange when she was going out for the evening. Still, the honey-colored tresses looked perfectly acceptable, pulled back softly and arranged in a knot on the crown of her head. She released the pins and returned them to the red lacquer box on the table, letting her hair escape down over her shoulders. Loose, it looked even softer, brushing gently against her rosy cheeks, curling toward the hollow of her throat.

Her mother’s hair had been much the same color. Amelia dropped to the velvet-covered stool and picked up the framed miniature that always sat facing her on the table. There was no miniature of her father, but a three-quarter-length portrait of him in the gallery, a copy of the one at Margrave, beside a matching one of his wife.

Amelia could see other resemblances between herself and her mother, but she had inherited her father’s determined chin and ruddy coloring. Lady Welsford had been delicate, in her person and in her health. Amelia might have looked more like her if she hadn’t been so tall and sturdy. The violet eyes were the same, and the finely molded lips, but the configuration of the face was wholly different. Instead of her mother’s fragile beauty, Amelia had a more robust, wholesome appearance, which was perhaps no less striking, but it would never call forth the same sort of protective response the world at large had felt for Lady Welsford.

Only they hadn’t been able to protect her. Not in the end. Amelia set down the miniature and picked up a hairbrush, drawing it vigorously though her long hair again and again. Sometimes it took total concentration to blot out the memory of her last view of her mother and father, both waving quite cheerfully from the other carriage. She could remember her own anxiety as she allowed Peter to assist her back into their carriage for the hurried drive to Calais. He had assured her, over and over, that their parents would be close behind them and that there was no reason to suspect any problem just because they were out of sight.

It was a frantic time, especially so for a seventeen-year-old girl who had expected a pleasure trip to Paris with her family, and ended up alone with her brother on the packet boat back to England. She had insisted that they wait for the earl and countess, but he had said, “They’ll get the next packet, Amelia. Father told me not to wait for them if they weren’t here on time.”

There was so much commotion, so much tenseness among their fellow passengers, that Amelia could barely sit still during the rough passage. And then they had waited at an English inn for the next packet, which didn’t come. Hours and hours they waited, Peter going out frequently for any news he could glean, finally returning to tell her, “Napoleon has ordered the arrest of all British travelers in France. We were the last packet to make it out safely.”