Tangled Reins

by Stephanie Laurens

  As the Comte could have predicted, it was not many minutes before Hazelmere materialised at her elbow. Immediately noticing her drawn face, he forebore to ask what the matter was, instead suggesting to Lady Merion that they could with impunity leave the ball, as the Prince had retired. Her ladyship, disliking the tone of the entertainment, readily agreed. As Fanshawe and Cecily reappeared at that moment, it only remained to find Ferdie before they could leave. This was easily accomplished, and the party departed Carlton House.

  Seated opposite Dorothea in the carriage, Hazelmere desperately sought for a clue to what had so agitated her. Tony had told him that she had danced with one of the French diplomatic staff, a man of questionable standing. But it seemed unlikely that anything he could have said would have so overset her. He sensed that under her outward calm she was close to tears, but he had no idea why. Knowing he would get no chance to ask her directly, and so could not comfort her, only added to his frustration.

  The carriage drew up outside Merion House and the ladies were escorted within. Ferdie left on foot and, sending the carriage on, Hazelmere and Fanshawe walked across the square. For more than half the distance Fanshawe kept up a rapturous monologue on the delights of love. He had made good use of Dorothea’s advice, borrowing some of Hazelmere’s arrogance to lend it weight, and it had been most successful.

  Realising that Hazelmere was not responding and catching sight of his friend’s serious face, Fanshawe exclaimed, ‘Don’t tell me you two have fallen out?’

  Hazelmere grinned at the tone. ‘To be perfectly truthful, I don’t know whether we have or not.’

  ‘Great heavens! You’re worse than us!’

  ‘Unfortunately true.’

  ‘Well,’ continued Fanshawe, ‘why don’t you just use Dorothea’s advice on herself?’

  ‘I have been reliably informed that firm handling will not work with the elder Miss Darent,’ replied Hazelmere with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Which means very likely it will,’ rejoined Fanshawe, still in exuberant vein.

  ‘As a matter of fact, you speak more truly than you know,’ returned Hazelmere as they parted on the steps of Hazelmere House.

  Not as observant as Hazelmere, neither Lady Merion nor Cecily noticed the strained look in Dorothea’s eyes. Her ladyship retired to bed with a headache, and Cecily was so bubbling over with her own happiness that for once her sister’s pallor escaped her sharp eyes. To Dorothea’s relief, she was able to retire to her bed without having to answer any difficult questions.

  She lay staring at the window for what felt like hours. Her heart would not accept what her mind knew to be fact. While Hazelmere had been dancing attendance on her, making her lose her heart with his easy address and gentle caresses and those wicked hazel eyes, he had been simultaneously enjoying a far more illicit relationship with the beautiful Lady Walford. And what was more, she thought, wallowing in misery, that meant he was not in love with her at all.

  It had taken her a long time to sort it out, but now, at last, she had it clear: Hazelmere had to marry, so he had decided she would do. Not the icily uncomfortable Miss Buntton, but a naïve country miss, not at home in the ton, someone who would be a sweet, conformable, entirely acceptable and totally manipulable wife, providing him with heirs and presiding over his household while he continued as he always had, enjoying the more exotic delights provided by the likes of Lady Walford. And, most likely, her apparent indifference was the lure that had drawn his eye. She was a challenge and a convenient conquest, all rolled into one.

  For the first time since she had come to London she thought longingly of the Grange, where life had been so much simpler. No having to deal with imperious peers with beautiful mistresses who made one fall in love with them for entirely selfish reasons. It was close to dawn before she finally drifted into troubled sleep.

  On entering his house, Hazelmere went into the library and, pouring himself a large brandy, settled down to stare into the dying fire.

  When he had decided to wait until later in the Season before asking for Dorothea’s hand he had not envisaged the current tangle of their affairs. He still had no clue what had gone wrong tonight and had no right to ask for an explanation. And, while previously she might have given him one, tonight she had realised how public he had made their relationship. She had not been pleased. God only knew what she would say if she learned that an announcement of their marriage was considered imminent! He grinned as he imagined her fury. Still, he could not regret his manipulation. After his behaviour in Moreton Park woods and at that blasted inn she would never have believed he was meek and malleable. If he had let her have her head in the matter of choosing her own husband she would undoubtedly have landed herself with some boring slowtop, too dimwitted to exercise any control over her. And she certainly needed someone to control her, to watch over her, to care for and cherish her—he shuddered to think what trouble she would have landed herself in had he not been there, time and again, to rescue her. Half the time she had not even recognised danger when she saw it. Such as in him.

  That still surprised him. She certainly recognised the danger in Peterborough and Walsingham. But never, from that first moment in Moreton Park woods when he’d held her and kissed her as she’d never been kissed before, had she shown the slightest consciousness of danger in his company. Another one of her odd quirks, but one for which he was profoundly thankful.

  He suspected that her dislike of his authoritarian ways stemmed from her habit of getting her own way in most things and of being able to manipulate people like Cecily, Lady Merion and Ferdie into doing much as she wished. Her refusal to attempt to wring from him the explanation for his presence at Merion House earlier in the evening suggested that she recognised the futility in cajoling or trying to manipulate him. Which was just as well. He had no intention of ever allowing her to do so. Still, he thought, a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, he had no objection to her trying.

  With a sigh he doggedly drew his mind back to his present problems. She had withdrawn from him and while, in normal circumstances, he would not have doubted his ability to bring her around, there were too many unexplained incidents occurring for him to feel easy. He glanced towards his desk, where the two mysterious notes lay in a drawer. There was someone else playing this hand and as yet he did not know who it was.

  There was only one possible course of action. His steward on his Leicestershire estate was begging for his attendance. In travelling there, he would pass through Northamptonshire, not far from Darent Hall. Rapidly reviewing his engagements, he remembered a luncheon on the morrow. Very well, he would leave later in the day for Leicestershire and call in on horrible Herbert on the way back. Then, he supposed, he really should tell his mother, which meant an evening spent at Hazelmere. Seven days in all. He would be back in London by Tuesday next.

  He did not like to leave her, but as he had no idea if any further attempt on her would be made, it would be wiser to solve the potential problem by marrying her as soon as possible. Abducting the Marchioness of Hazelmere would be a far more difficult task than abducting Miss Darent. In fact, he would make sure it was entirely impossible. He tossed off the last of the brandy and went to bed.

  Comfortably settled between his silken sheets, he listened to Murgatroyd’s footsteps die away down the hall. Their interlude in the Richmond House orangery had left no room for doubt of her feelings for him. And in her subsequent actions she had, albeit unwittingly, confirmed his hopes. She loved him. Beneath his frustration, that knowledge ran like a heady pulse, a constant source of joy and wonder. And from it had been born the patience to see the game through, to let her have her Season of independence before he claimed her. Aside from any other consideration, he had enjoyed her spirited resistance, her attempts, becoming less and less successful with time, to conceal her response to him. He sighed. For good or ill, her time had run out. Tuesday next would see the end of the game. And the start of so much more.

  He stretched, co
nscious of the tenseness lying just beneath the surface. He should never have kissed her. Now every time he saw her he was shaken by an urgent desire to do it again. And every time he gave way to the impulse he was increasingly aware of an even more urgent desire to take her to bed. The warmth of her hair, her smooth skin, the sweetness of her lips and, more than anything else, those tantalising green eyes had all become so strongly evocative that, for the first time in his considerable experience, his desire was no longer subject to his control. Aside from anything else, marrying her soon would end the torture. He slid himself into a more comfortable position and, thinking of emerald eyes, lost touch with reality.

  Chapter Eleven

  Next morning Lady Merion remained in bed, unwell after the stuffy atmosphere of Carlton House. Dorothea, unrefreshed by her troubled sleep, went to enquire after her health. Her ladyship immediately noticed the dark rings under her granddaughter’s large eyes and insisted she remain in bed for the rest of the morning. Sure that if she rode in the Park this morning she would meet Hazelmere, and feeling that normal conversation with him was as yet beyond her, Dorothea agreed.

  Cecily was undisturbed by the change in plans, as she had arranged to go driving with Fanshawe that afternoon. She wrote to Ferdie to cancel their morning engagement and, at Dorothea’s suggestion, asked him to escort her sister for a ride that afternoon.

  When the afternoon came Ferdie and Dorothea duly set off for the Park. Ferdie, not generally observant, noticed that Dorothea was not her normal self. Thinking to distract her, he rattled on about the Carlton House ball and the Prince Regent’s set, and anything else that came into his head. Understanding his benign impulse, Dorothea tried to put on a happier face and to ignore the fact that he, too, seemed to consider her virtually betrothed to Hazelmere.

  They had entered the Park and were ambling along the grass verge of the carriageway when, glancing ahead, she suddenly stopped. Breathlessly she cut into Ferdie’s description of Lady Hanover’s new wig. ‘Ferdie, I want to gallop over to those trees. I think there are freesias growing there.’

  Precipitately she set the bay mare cantering towards a stand of oak to their left. Ferdie, taken by surprise, turned his own horse to follow. As he did so his gaze alighted on an approaching carriage. It was Hazelmere’s curricle, the Marquis driving his greys with Helen Walford beside him. The brief glimpse of his cousin’s face before his horse moved off was quite sufficient to tell Ferdie that Hazelmere had seen Dorothea’s sudden departure. The appalling fact that Dorothea had knowingly cut his cousin in the middle of the Park dawned on a horrified Ferdie.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded as he came up with her by the trees. ‘That was Hazelmere!’

  ‘Yes, I know, Ferdie,’ replied Dorothea, contrite as she realised that he was really distressed.

  ‘Well, I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re up to,’ he continued, ‘but I can tell you that cutting people like Hazelmere in the middle of the Park is not the thing at all!’

  ‘Yes, Ferdie. I’d like to go home now, please.’

  ‘I should dashed well think so!’ he exclaimed, knowing that Hazelmere would shortly be following them.

  On the way back to Cavendish Square Ferdie tried to impress upon Dorothea the magnitude of her sin. Not knowing what had caused her to behave in such an extraordinary way, he felt that if he could induce her to behave with something like contrition when she shortly faced his cousin she might stand a better chance of surviving the ordeal. Ferdie knew, as few others did, that, while Hazelmere appeared to have the easiest of tempers, this was a fiction. The Marquis of Hazelmere had a very definite temper; he just did not lose it often.

  Ferdie did not know that Dorothea was already acquainted with Hazelmere’s temper. Seeing him driving his greys with the lovely Lady Walford by his side, she simply could not bear to stay and politely exchange pleasantries with them. Although she knew she had behaved badly and Hazelmere had every right to be angry, she, too, was decidedly aggrieved and was almost looking forward to an interview with his lordship. Luckily Ferdie had no idea of her thoughts—that anyone could look forward to an interview with Hazelmere in a rage was far too bizarre a concept for him to have understood.

  Reaching Merion House, Ferdie escorted her indoors, past the interested Mellow and into the drawing-room. There he got a glimmer of the underlying story. Dorothea, pacing about the room like a caged tigress, seemed to the distracted Ferdie to be more incensed than contrite.

  ‘How dare he approach me while driving that woman?’ she finally burst out.

  Ferdie stared. ‘What’s wrong with driving Helen Walford?’ he asked, fearing that her reason must be slipping.

  ‘But surely you know? She’s his mistress!’

  ‘What?’ Ferdie positively goggled. ‘No! You’ve got that wrong! Very sure she’s not Marc’s mistress.’

  Remembering his connection with Hazelmere, Dorothea paid no attention to him, convinced that he would take his cousin’s side in any argument.

  An imperious knock fell on the street door. Ferdie, glancing out of the window, saw Hazelmere’s curricle standing outside.

  Seeing Dorothea pointedly move away from the carriageway, Hazelmere was thunderstruck. What the devil was she about, behaving like that to him? Too well attuned to his whereabouts to allow his entirely understandable rage to be evident, it was nevertheless some minutes before he could trust his voice to ask Helen Walford, ‘My dear Helen, do you mind if I return you to your friends? I’m departing for Leicestershire shortly and I believe I’ve some unfinished business to attend to.’

  Lady Walford was well acquainted with Hazelmere’s temper, as she had often, in her childhood, been the cause of it. Looking into the hazel eyes, normally warm and amused, and finding them as cold and cloudy as agate, she merely smiled her agreement. She hoped Miss Darent had more backbone than the normal run of débutantes, for she was undoubtedly in for a most uncomfortable interview. The fact that Hazelmere was head over heels in love with her would not, as might be supposed, help her at all. Like all the Henrys, he possessed an unexpected puritanical streak which would lead him to demand of his wife-to-be a far higher standard of conduct than he might tolerate in less favoured ladies. Consequently she feared that his Dorothea was in for a particularly torrid time.

  Having set Lady Walford down amid her friends, Hazelmere drove immediately to Merion House. Arriving there, without a word he threw the reins of his curricle to a bright-faced urchin and strode up the steps to the door.

  Admitted to the house by an intrigued Mellow, he merely asked, in a deceptively gentle voice, ‘Where is Miss Darent, Mellow?’

  ‘In the drawing-room, my lord.’

  ‘Thank you. You need not announce me.’

  He strolled across the hall and opened the drawing-room door. Setting eyes on Ferdie, he smiled in a way that made Ferdie decide to do whatever he wished. Holding the door open, Hazelmere said, ‘I believe you were leaving, Ferdie.’

  There was no doubt about the command, but Ferdie, recognising the hardness in the hazel eyes, was having second thoughts about the wisdom of leaving these two together. But as he glanced at Dorothea his decision was unexpectedly taken out of his hands. ‘Goodbye, Ferdie,’ she said.

  So Ferdie went. He discarded the idea of telling his cousin that Dorothea seemed to think Helen Walford was his mistress. In his opinion, if anyone was going to talk to Hazelmere about his mistresses it had better be Dorothea herself. Hearing the drawing-room door shut with a click behind him, he decided it might be wise to inform Lady Merion of the reason for, and the likely outcome of, the interview being presently conducted in her drawing-room.

  Returning to the hall some five minutes later, having explained the situation as fully as he could to Lady Merion upstairs, he found the drawing-room door still shut. Viewing this with misgiving, he departed for his lodgings.

  After shutting the door behind Ferdie, Hazelmere moved into the room. ‘Very wise of you, my
dear. There’s no need for Ferdie to get caught up in this.’

  He paused to strip off his driving gloves and cast them on a side-table. One glance at Dorothea, standing beside one of the wing chairs by the fireplace, her hand clutching its back, informed him that she was every bit as angry as he was. He had no idea why, but the knowledge served to make him rein in his temper sufficiently to ask, in a relatively calm voice, ‘Do you think you could possibly explain to me why you cut me in the Park?’

  Despite the calmness, the undertones succeeded in igniting her smouldering temper. ‘How dare you approach me while driving that woman?’

  Looking into her furious green eyes, Hazelmere felt, like Ferdie before him, that he had lost the thread of the conversation. ‘Helen?’ he asked, mystified.

  ‘Your mistress!’ she replied scathingly.

  ‘My what?’ The words came like a whiplash, and Dorothea winced. Even angrier than before, Hazelmere moved to within a few feet of her, everything about him radiating barely leashed fury. Eyes narrowed, he asked, his voice deceptively soft, ‘Who told you Helen Walford was my mistress?’

  ‘I don’t think that need concern you—’

  ‘You mistake,’ he broke in. ‘It concerns me because Helen Walford has never been, is not and never will be my mistress. So who, my credulous Miss Darent, told you she was?’

  Looking into the stormy hazel eyes, Dorothea knew she was hearing the truth. ‘The Comte de Vanée,’ she finally replied.

  ‘A man of little importance,’ he said dismissively. ‘It may interest you to know that I have known Helen Walford since she was three. However,’ he continued, moving forward so that he was standing directly beside her, forcing her to turn from the chair that up until then had been between them, ‘that aside, you have still not explained why, regardless of what you might have thought, you presumed to censure me in such a public manner.’