Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

“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.

ANGELINE’S PRESENTATION TO the queen had passed without incident. There had been no embarrassing encounters with the train of her gown, and she had met and chatted with other young ladies who were also making their come-out this year. She had high hopes of making friends of some of them.

She had never had a close friend, which seemed like an abject admission to make, even to herself, though she had never felt dreadfully deprived. Her two brothers had been her playmates—and her adored heroes—when she was a child. When she was a girl, she had known all her neighbors at Acton, including those of her own age, and had been on amiable terms with all of them. But of course they all stood slightly in awe of her because she was the daughter and later the sister of the Duke of Tresham, with the result that she had never had a bosom bow, someone with whom to chat and giggle and in whom to confide all the deepest, darkest secrets of her young heart.

Now, among her peers, perhaps she would find such young friends.

And beaux.

All the men in the vicinity of Acton, from the age of fifteen to eighty, were far too much in awe of her. Perhaps they all knew Tresham’s reputation too well and chose to safeguard their teeth rather than appear too friendly toward his sister.

Oh, she was glad, glad, glad that she was here in London at last, that she had made her curtsy to the queen, and that she was dressing for her come-out ball. She could hardly contain her exuberance.

She was already dressed, in fact, and Betty had just put the finishing touches to her very elaborate coiffure. She would not have thought it possible to arrange so many curls and ringlets on her head in such a pleasing arrangement. And she was confident that they would remain where they were. She shook her head gingerly and experimentally, but they did not cascade down about her shoulders. There was, of course, a whole arsenal of pins hidden away under them.