Love Stories of Enchanting Ladies: A Historical Regency Romance Collection

by Bridget Barton

  The ring soared past Marilyn and landed softly on the grass beyond. The little girl looked at it solemnly, then back at Lydia.

  “I wish my papa had a lake like yours.”

  “Nonsense,” Lydia said, feeling the heat of a blush creep into her face. “It’s not so fine, and there’s no need now that you live nearby. You can come to mine any time you like.”

  Marilyn’s smile warmed at once. “That would be lovely.” She picked the ring up and spun it twice around one of her play sticks. “What is the winning in a game like this, I wonder?”

  “I suppose you win if you keep it from touching the ground.”

  “But who wins, exactly?” the new playmate pressed on with the first hint of a mischievous smile. “Both of us, and that’s so dreadfully politic.”

  Lydia wasn’t sure what ‘dreadfully politic’ meant, but she felt the first real twinge of kinship with the girl standing across from her.

  “Would you like to play something else? We could join the boys’ game.”

  “Or we could all together play a round of seek and find.”

  Lydia smiled broadly and called across the yard at her brother, “Gregory! We’ve a new game to play!”

  The boys looked up from their lawn bowls in surprise, then, shrugging, jogged together towards the girls. Gregory reached them first, closely followed by the long-legged Anthony, his best friend. Plump, sweet Will from the parish nearby brought up the rear, panting for air and sweating something fierce.

  “What have we done to be graced with the princess’s attention?” Anthony said, speaking first as he always did in the trio. He was nearing twelve years of age and had a fine shock of dark hair and flashing brown eyes. “You sure you can tear yourself away from your fascinating sport? It’s hard work, keeping a little ribbon in the air.”

  Lydia flushed with frustration as she always did in her brother’s best friend’s presence. She found him an annoyance at best and spent much of her time avoiding him.

  “See if you can do any better,” she said, holding out the sticks to him with an air of restrained dignity. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  Gregory laughed and took the ring instead, spinning it once on his finger and then sending it spinning away across the lawn.

  “Gregory!” Lydia exclaimed.

  “Come now, little sis, you know Mama wouldn’t stand for a pair of boys playing the game of graces. I’m just trying to stick to propriety.” He switched his voice into a perfect imitation of their mother’s prim and proper tones. “’Lydia,’” he shrilled, “’you mustn’t shout or encourage improper play.’”

  Lydia smiled despite herself. “Well, we’ve an idea for proper play. How about a round of seek and find?”

  “Who will hide first?” Will asked, still panting heavily. “Could I stand and count?”

  “I’ll hide,” Lydia said with a bright smile.

  “You?” Anthony leaned forward, peering at her as though she were a specimen in his butterfly collection. “No, you haven’t the skill for such a task. Besides, all that brown hair will get tangled in the brambles and if we don’t find you, you’ll have to spend all night outside with the wild animals.”

  Lydia took a step forward, a familiar annoyance surging into anger, but Gregory stuck his arm out and laughed the drama off as he always did. “Come now, I’ll hide. Give me a count of thirty and then if you find me, you have to hide with me until the others do.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “All right, but don’t pick a tiny place in the garden like you did last time. I still feel like I have spiders in my hair –” catching Anthony’s mocking gaze she snapped her lips shut and kept the rest of the story to herself.

  Everyone came into a circle, grabbing hands and closing their eyes while Gregory took off away from the group. The estate had numerous places to hide – the lake was there, and the trees, and he could even beeline for the stables if he had a mind to. Lydia held Marilyn’s thin, cool hand in one of her own, and felt Anthony seize the other with his usual playful force.

  They began to count, and at each number Anthony squeezed a fraction tighter. Lydia bit her lip to keep from giving Anthony the satisfaction of her crying out in alarm, but as soon as the count ended, she jerked her hand back and bestowed him with a withering glare. He pretended not to notice, taking off in the direction of the orchard.

  Marilyn headed towards the stables, and Lydia split off towards the lake, all three leaving poor Will in the dust. It was hard to run in her skirts, and Lydia hiked them up nearly to her knees, hopeful that her mother and her guests wouldn’t be paying attention. The wind felt good in her hair, and her legs pumped away in pursuit of Gregory. When she came out of the open lawn and into the first copse of trees she slowed, peeking around the broad trunks to be sure her brother wasn’t hidden there. He was nowhere to be found.

  Lydia checked under bushes and inside hollows, eventually deciding to swing by the orchard on the way to the lake. As she passed beneath the mature apple and peach trees, hidden by their greening boughs, she felt something hard fall on her head and looked up in surprise. There, silent in the tree limbs above, sat Gregory and Anthony.

  “What’s this?” Gregory hissed. “You dropped that on purpose.”

  Anthony shrugged innocently, and then motioned for Lydia to climb up beside them. She struggled to reach the first tree limb, but Gregory and Anthony each took one of her hands and hauled her up. She put her back against the trunk and braced her legs.

  “I’m surprised you found us,” Anthony whispered at last, when they’d determined Will and Marilyn were both out of earshot.

  “She had help,” Gregory sniffed.

  “Did not,” Lydia snapped. “I would have looked up eventually.”

  “Look –” Gregory pointed toward the great house, “– Mama and Papa are walking down with the guests. You’d best stay quiet Lydia, for Mama would have a fit if she saw you in a tree.”

  Lydia knew he was right, and she didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d chosen that hiding place because he thought she wouldn’t risk climbing up with him. She peered up at her brother in silent disdain, catching sight of Anthony as she did so. He winked at her solemnly.

  “’Tis no matter. Stay quiet and they won’t see us,” Lydia said.

  Anthony nodded seriously. “Oh, I’ll stay quiet, but I won’t count on you to hold your tongue. Women are always prattling on so.”

  Lydia frowned and tried to ignore the older boy. He was a daily frustration – the only son of a nobleman and the eventual heir to Rosebury Park. When he wasn’t playing an exclusive game with Gregory, he was baiting her into trouble. She never learnt.

  Just then, as the slender and well-tailored figures of the adults cut very near their tree-top perch, Anthony leaned down very low and whispered into Lydia’s ear, “Best close your eyes, lassie. That green might blend in with the trees, but you’ve got that brown spot in the left one and they’d be sure to spot their own deformed princess from a mile away.”

  Stinging with the insult, Lydia rose up in anger, tottering on the tree limb, and grabbed hard for Anthony’s lapels. He tried to shake her off, but her hold was good, and when she tumbled backwards to the ground he followed, landing heavily beside her. They weren’t far off the ground, but the blow still knocked the wind out of Lydia’s lungs and by the time she’d gasped for air again, Anthony had risen to his knees with flashing eyes.

  “Brat!” he cried out, heedless of the shocked adults nearby. “Where do you get off attacking me?”

  A thousand insults rushed through Lydia’s mind, but she stuck to the tried and true method of communicating she’d learnt from Gregory at a young age and merely lunged toward Anthony, catching him across the shoulders and taking him by surprise again. He hurled her off, and she rolled back for a moment, bent on attacking again when she felt strong arms hauling her up by the waist and setting her aside.

  It was Father, his face grim, and Mama loomed beside.

  “Lydi
a, how could you?”

  Lydia’s mother was a pretty, pale little thing, but she held a firm line of discipline when it came to matters of grace and propriety. Lydia knew with a sinking feeling that retribution would be swift.

  “He started it,” she began lamely.

  “There is never an excuse for such reckless and inappropriate behaviour. You are a lady, and if you insist on behaving like an animal our guests will be forced to think you are one. Climbing a tree? Fighting with children? What has got into you?”

  Lydia hung her head in shame, feeling the eyes of the other parents like needles on her conscience.

  Anthony’s father stepped forward too, laying his hand on his son’s shoulder. “And don’t you think you’re getting off easy, son. You are the son of a gentleman, and a gentleman you must be at all times. You must behave kindly towards ladies –”

  “She is not a lady,” Anthony said darkly, staring up furiously at his opponent. “Look at her.”

  Lydia looked down and saw the tear in her muslin, the grass stain on the white fabric, the bright scratch across her forearm, and the rumpled ribbon at her waist. He was right. She bit her lip, the fury still simmering below the surface. Here was a miserable boy if she ever knew one, and for the rest of her life she would detest him with every fibre of her being.

  Chapter 1

  Sunlight poured in over the vase of wildflowers set upon the sill in Lydia’s room, highlighting the pale lilacs and the drooping boughs of honeysuckle that spilled like water from their crystal container. Lydia, now a blooming young woman of nineteen, stood and turned the vase ever so slightly before sitting once again before her easel.

  It was afternoon light, the very best kind for this sort of composition, but she knew it would only last another half an hour before she was forced to work from her imagination only. She snapped open her paint box with ready fingers, dipped some ultramarine pigment from one of the small bowls, and mixed it with a pale ochre and a few drops of clear water.

  Lydia wondered, sometimes, which she preferred most out of the painting process. Was it the magnificence of seeing a figure come to life on paper, or was it simply the everyday motions of mixing yellow and blue and finding an earthy green emerge on the pallet?

  The door to the solar opened and in walked her mama, Lady Holden, arrayed in dark purple silk with a wimple settled atop her greying curls. Lydia rose at once, setting the paintbrush aside with a curtsey.

  “Mama, what a pleasure. How was your walk?”

  “Quite lovely, as always Lydia.” Lady Holden came to her side and peered at the initial lines of the painting with a critical eye. “I like that you are choosing such decorous subject matter, Lydia. It is both appropriate and enchanting.”

  “You know what our dear Reverend Fordyce says,” Lydia smiled coyly. “It is up to the fine young ladies of our time to repair the rent fabric of society by pursuing once again our most graceful and appealing list of accomplishments.”

  “I know you mean mischief when you begin to quote Fordyce’s Sermons,” Lady Holden said curtly, sinking into a chair and watching her daughter apply her attention once again to the canvas. “Although you really should read it more often than you do. I saw just yesterday a passage marked regarding the frugality and simplicity with which a girl should approach her own wardrobe. We may have wealth and title, Lydia, but it’s a mark of grace for a woman even in such a state to avoid gratuitous distinguishing finery.”

  Lydia thought of the parcel of paintings hidden under her side table and felt a familiar pang of guilt. She was secretly proud of the figures and styles drawn in that secret stash, but she knew the great Reverend Fordyce would never have approved.

  “Of course, Mama,” she said demurely. “But surely you don’t hold the Sermons as applicable in every situation, for surely tonight at the ball you would not have me go without so much as a ribbon to my credit? For is it not Fordyce himself who says a lady should never be an intellectual threat to her husband? If he will not leave us wit as an ally, surely finery is the only weapon left to our disposal?”

  Lydia hid a smile as she watched her mother wrestle with this new idea. It was a delight to tease Lady Holden about the social morays of the day, which seemed to Lydia to crumble at the slightest intellectual examination. But outside the safety of the sunlit solar Lydia was always more reticent to push back against society.

  “You speak quite frankly now, Lydia, but you must grow more serious about your prospects at some point. Accomplishments and shy smiles are not enough to win an eligible gentleman if you are too afraid to put yourself forward as a suitable alternative to the other ladies of the county. You have a good title, and your face is not poor to look upon.”

  “With attractions such as those, how could anyone not desire my hand?” Lydia asked wryly, dipping her brush back into the ultramarine and drawing a slender slash of colour along the underside of a painted leaf. “I’m sorry for teasing, Mama. You know I understand my place.”

  “I’m glad of the ball tonight. You keep to yourself far too much for a girl your age, and I think it surprising you haven’t had more suitors.” Lady Holden fanned herself quickly. “Are you having tea drawn up, dear?”

  “No, Mama. The maid will be here soon to tend to my wardrobe, and I thought there would not be time.”

  “Quite right, quite right. Well, I will leave you to your flowers for the time being.”

  Lydia watched her mother go with mixed feelings. She loved the woman as a daughter ought, but as each year passed, she found it harder to connect with her mother’s frantic concern about the marriageable status of her only daughter.

  Such anxiety had not been bestowed upon Gregory, who walked through life with his head high and his honourable title to comfort him. But while Gregory seemed to bring Lord and Lady Holden nothing but pride, Lydia always felt her parents were looking at the clock when in her presence, desperate to see her situation provided for and her future secure.

  She looked to the door and, seeing that the maid had not yet arrived, went to her dressing table and pulled out the brown canvas parcel of paintings. She untied the string and looked at each drawing with quiet delight. There was: a jewel-green gown with high-waisted perfection and an angular shawl cut down the side; a riding habit with sharp lines and a towering colour; and there at the bottom a simple muslin day dress with a borrowed inspiration from Paris. She went on, touching each new design with loving fingers as though they were her children, carefully created and cared for, each as treasured as the last.

  “What would Fordyce have to say about this vanity?” she said out loud.

  “He would say they are quite fine, Miss.”

  Lydia turned with a start, catching sight of the maid curtseying and then closing the door firmly behind her.

  “Bess. You startled me.”

  Lydia fumbled to put the paintings back in order and tied the string around the canvas as hurriedly as possible. She slipped the parcel beneath the table and looked up guiltily at the little blonde maid, who she’d known since childhood.

  “It’s okay, My Lady.” Bess curtseyed again, then smiled gently. “You know I’ve seen them before, and I think they’re truly lovely. You should show them to your mother, or to the tailor in town. Your gown for Lady Marilyn’s ball is a picture but think how much finer it would be if you’d asked for that neckline that’s so popular across the Channel.”

  Lydia blushed and stood.

  “Bess, you know I don’t think them good enough to share with anybody but myself. They are child’s play – mere doll things I’ve not yet grown out of. I wish I had talents like the lovely Miss Parson from a county over or even Marilyn. Singing and playing the pianoforte are so much more conducive to social functions. I could hardly parade my figures and designs at my mother’s card table for county approval.”