The Secret Mistress (6 page)

But she was not a delicate female.

Cousin Rosalie had not said exactly when she would arrive to supervise while Betty got Angeline all decked out in her court finery, but it would probably be ten o’clock at the very earliest. That gave her almost three hours to kick her heels. Or to …

Her hair would get damp.

Not if she wore her oldest—and still her favorite—riding hat. Besides, damp hair dried quickly.

Her complexion would turn rosy.

She would look vibrantly healthy among all the wilting lilies who would also be making their come-out. It never hurt to stand out from the crowd. And the worst of the shine would have faded from her nose and cheeks before she needed to leave the house again.

Marsh would refuse to saddle a horse for her without Tresham’s consent. No, he would not. Not if she behaved as if it had all been planned yesterday, and
—what
? Had his grace not
informed
Marsh about it and instructed him to have a mount ready for her? How very odd!

No harm would be done. What could she be expected to do alone for three whole hours, after all—
at least
three? She would only get more nervous thinking about her curtsy and the tricky maneuver of backing out of the queen’s presence without tripping over the train of her gown. Not that the possibility had struck her until this very moment. But now that it
had
, it would consume her mind and her nerves for every idle moment until she was safely out of the royal presence.

What better way to distract her mind and her nerves than to go for a morning ride? She would take a groom with her. She was not so lost to all conduct that she would go tearing in pursuit of Tresham without proper chaperonage. Besides, Marsh would never allow her to set one horse’s hoof beyond the stable doors unless there was someone trustworthy with her.

Tresham would not mind if she joined him on his ride.

Well, he probably would, but he was not her
father
. He was only her guardian, and he had not exerted himself greatly so far to be a vigilant one—except that he had surrounded her with governesses and servants from the moment he became duke at the age of seventeen. And except that he had given vent to a minor volcanic eruption when he had discovered at that inn that the Reverend Coombes had abandoned her and that none of the four grooms or footmen from Acton had been in sight when she rushed downstairs to greet him and that Betty had still been half asleep up in her room. Now
he had imposed Rosalie on her. Not that Rosalie was a great imposition.

He would not scold her today, would he? Not in public, anyway. Or in private. Not today. This was her very special day, perhaps
the
most special of her whole life, and he would not wish to upset her.

And if she stood here any longer holding this rather garrulous mental debate with herself, she thought, straightening up and closing the window, it would be too late to go, and now that she had conceived the idea of taking a morning ride in order to relax her nerves, she could not possibly do without it.

Well, perhaps she
could
. But she
would
not.

She strode off in the direction of her dressing room.

T
HIS WAS THE
day, Edward thought as he woke up—and wished he could simply fall back to sleep.

There was his maiden speech to deliver in the Upper House. It had been written and rewritten and then written again. It had been practiced and repracticed and practiced again. And just last night—and every night for the last two weeks—he had been assailed by terror at the conviction that it was utter rubbish and he would be laughed out of the House and expelled from the ranks of the nobility.

He was not usually given to vivid, ridiculous imaginings.

And then tonight there was the Tresham ball and the set he was to dance with Lady Angeline Dudley. It was only a
dance
, he had tried to convince himself. But it was the opening set of her come-out ball, and every eye in the ballroom—virtually every eye in the
ton
, in other words—would be fixed upon them. His only hope, a faint one, was that most of those eyes would be directed exclusively at
her
. She was, after all, the most eligible young lady on the market this year and most people would be getting their first look at her.

However, he would think of the ball and that particular dance later.

He went out for an early morning ride in the park despite the
inclemency of the weather—it was cloudy and chilly, and a light but persistent drizzle kept everything and everyone uncomfortably damp. If one waited for clement weather in England, though, one might find oneself riding for brief spells once or twice a fortnight if one were fortunate. Besides, he had made arrangements to meet two of his oldest and closest friends and he would not let them down, supposing that
they
braved the drizzle and the chill, that was.

They both did.

Edward’s stomach was feeling rather queasy, and he was tired after a night of what he might have thought had been sleepless if there were not the memory of bizarre dreams, all of which had proceeded along the same general lines. In one he had begun his speech in the House of Lords with a flourish until he had faltered at the realization that he had forgotten to put on any clothes before leaving home. In another, he had got up to speak, opened his mouth, noted the respectful attention with which all his fellow peers were regarding him, and realized that he had forgotten to bring either his notes or his memory with him.

“Damnation,” Sir George Headley said as they rode through the park together. “I counted upon the Row being deserted this morning. I need a good gallop to blow away the fumes of too much imbibing last night. It is a good thing my brother can turn twenty-one only once in his life.”

Rotten Row was indeed surprisingly crowded with riders, some of them ambling along on their mounts, others moving at a brisker canter, some few flying along at a more reckless gallop—reckless because the grass was slippery with moisture and any bare patches of earth were slick with mud.

“We might as well take a turn up and down anyway,” Ambrose Paulson said from Edward’s other side. He grinned as they rode onto the Row. “Ed is looking rather green about the gills and in dire need of air and exercise, even though
you
were the one doing the drinking, George. But he has a maiden speech to deliver. I wish we might hear it.”

“No, you do not,” Edward assured them both. “Doubtless
everyone in the House will be snoring before I reach the second paragraph.”

“They will all thank you afterward for providing them with a good chance to rest,” George said, and all three of them chuckled.

Edward breathed in lungfuls of fresh air and ignored the discomfort of water droplets clinging to his face. He began to relax a little, and they rode in companionable silence for several minutes while he mentally rehearsed his speech yet again.

It was George who broke the silence.

“Good Lord,” he said suddenly, bringing his horse to a near halt and forcing his two friends to prance about on either side of him while they slowed their own mounts, “what the devil is
that
?”

That
, Edward saw when he followed the direction of his friend’s gaze down the Row, was a woman. At first, though only for the merest moment, he thought she was surely a courtesan. She was cantering toward a group of young men, all sunny smiles, while a groom shadowed her a little distance behind. What other sort of lady would be out alone at this hour and in weather like this, after all?

The answer to his unspoken question came to him during that merest moment.

The
same
sort of lady as one who would stand alone in a public taproom, posed provocatively in a clinging bright pink muslin dress as she gazed through a window, oblivious to the effect she was having upon two males standing behind her.

Not just the same
sort
of lady, of course.

The very same one, in fact.

Edward watched, appalled, as she rode into the midst of the group of young men, none of whom he knew, talking volubly as she went. He did not hear the first few words, but then her voice became more audible.

“… must have decided to go somewhere else, the provoking man. I was about to turn about and go back home when I spotted
you
. I was never so glad of anything in my life. But you must absolutely
promise
not to say a word, Ferdie. He would doubtless cut up nasty though it would be grossly unfair. How was I to know he was
not coming here? This is where
everyone
comes to ride. I will ride with you and your friends instead. You will not mind, will you?”

She bestowed the dazzle of her smile upon the group at large. As Edward and his friends rode on by, Edward with his face averted lest she see and recognize him, there was a chorus of enthusiastic assent from the young men.

It would seem, then, that her indiscreet behavior at the Rose and Crown was nothing unusual. How well did she know any of those men? She certainly had not arrived with any of them. And
someone
, it seemed, would be annoyed if he knew she was here alone. As well he might be, whoever he was, poor devil.

Well,
this
time, Edward decided firmly, he was not going to get involved. If she did not know how to behave, and clearly she did not, it was not his concern—even if she did look slender and lithe and very much as though she might have been born in a saddle. And even if when she smiled she made one forget that it was not a bright, sunny morning.

He felt rather hot and ruffled, he realized. What if she had seen him? She might have recognized him and hailed him. It would have been a ghastly breach of etiquette.

“That,”
Ambrose said, having refrained from answering George’s question until they had moved past and out of earshot, “is a riding hat. At least, I assume it is since it is on the lady’s head. And if it were a bird’s nest, it would be infinitely more tidy, would it not?”

He and George snorted with mirth.

“A hat,” George said. “I do believe you are right, Ambie. Perhaps it would not be such a monstrosity if it were dry.”

Edward had hardly noticed the hat the lady wore. But he was about to be given a second chance to observe it. There was the sudden thunder of hooves from behind them, and before they could move to one side or take any other defensive action, five horses and riders went galloping past at full tilt, spraying water and mud indiscriminately in all directions, except over themselves. And then a sixth a decent interval behind the others—the groom.

Second in line was the only lady who had braved the weather this morning, whooping with joyful abandon and laughing with wild glee, just as if she had never in her life heard of feminine decorum—as perhaps she had not.

Her hat, glorious in its profusion of multicolored feathers culled from birds long deceased, bounced on her head in time with her movements and somehow stayed on.

It was perhaps the hat, Edward thought belatedly, that had caused him to mistake her at first for a courtesan.

He glanced down at his mud-spattered buff riding breeches and black boots—both new just last week and immaculately clean this morning. He flicked one gloved finger over his cheek to dislodge something wet that clung there.

“Who is she?” he asked, though he was not sure he wanted to know.

But neither of his friends had seen her before.

Edward really did not want to risk coming face-to-face with her, whoever she was.

“It is time I returned home to get ready for the House,” he said.

His stomach answered with a return of the slight queasiness. He turned his mount to leave Rotten Row.

A whooping laugh blew past behind him together with a flying horse and rider. She was galloping back up the Row, Edward presumed without looking around to confirm his guess. It sounded as if she was leading the pack this time.

He felt more spatters of mud pelting against the back of his coat.

And then he sensed something and was unwise enough to turn his head.

She had stopped her horse. She had done it so abruptly, it seemed, that it was rearing up. But she brought it under control with an ease that could only have been born of long practice. Her companions were thundering off into the distance, apart from the groom, who was altogether more vigilant.

Her eyes were fixed upon Edward, wide with recognition. Her lips were parting in a smile.

Oh, Lord!

At any moment now she was going to hail him, and there was enough of a distance between them that at least a dozen other riders,
including his friends
, were bound to hear.

Edward inclined his head curtly to her, touched his whip to the brim of his hat, and rode away.

She did not call after him.

Devil take it, she was in London. He was bound to run into her again, he supposed. Perhaps even this evening. Perhaps she would be at that infernal Tresham ball.

He frowned. This was
not
a day destined to bring him any pleasure. It had already started badly.