Lord Hunter's Cinderella Heiress

by Lara Temple

  ‘I’ll try not to do that, then,’ he answered, his smile widening. ‘I don’t have the chance to dance much, either.’

  ‘I would think not, if you are always on the march. Do you have the chance to be in society a great deal?’

  ‘Not a great deal, but for a time my regiment was posted for training near Bath, which I admit I rather enjoyed.’

  ‘I have never been there,’ Rose answered with a sigh. ‘And only once or twice to London. A large town must be delightful!’

  ‘It’s not so terrible,’ he answered, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a most enticing way as he looked at her. ‘But family parties are always the best.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose answered, a bit out of breath as she looked up at him. ‘Indeed they are.’ And this one was turning out to be the best she could ever remember. ‘I do like evenings at home, though Lily says they are dull. A book and a fine fire, a song at the piano.’

  ‘It sounds quite perfect, Miss Parker. Exactly what I would want one day. Some music in the winter evenings, a welcoming fire after a walk in the garden...’

  ‘Exactly so,’ Rose said. For just an instant she had an image in her mind, a picture of herself and the Captain walking down a path arm in arm, the doors of a manor house open behind them to spill out welcoming golden light. Something like what her family had when she was a child, before her father died and they found out it was all a deception, before she realised having her own family, her own secure home, was not to be. But with this man, she could imagine it all, even if it was only for a moment.

  They took their turn once more in the set and Captain St George almost lifted her from her feet as they swirled around, making her laugh again. She actually felt delicate in his strong arms, like a lady in a novel, small and dainty next to her hero. They spun, breathless, and ended in a low bow and curtsy.

  But the dance ended much too soon and she had to let go of his hand. They made their way to the edge of the crowd and Rose glimpsed her mother standing near the open tall windows with Emma Carrington and Charles St George. They were laughing and Rose had to smile to see her mother’s enjoyment. It was all going rather well, better than she could have expected when they set out from their cottage that evening.

  Then she saw the lady standing beside Charles St George, smiling languidly at the mirth of the others. She seemed so beautiful as to be of some other world, even in the elegance of the Barton Park drawing room. Tall and willowy, she looked as if she should be posing as Athena in a draped gown and golden helmet, serenely smiling, above it all.

  In reality, she wore a fashionable gown of blush-coloured silk, her red-gold hair piled high atop her head and fastened with a bandeau of cameos. She slowly waved her painted silk fan, her gaze skimming over the party.

  Next to Rose, Captain St George’s tall figure stiffened. Surprised, she glanced up at him and saw that his smile had faded. The man she had danced with, so easy and kind, had vanished. He looked darkly intent. Full of a night-like desire.

  ‘St George, there you are at last,’ Athena called and something inside of Rose, something soft and summer-like that had bloomed so unexpectedly, faded. She felt suddenly cold inside and she wanted to turn and run, to disappear back into the crowd. Why had she thought even for a moment she could be something besides plain, sensible Rose Parker?

  Captain St George stepped away, not completely, not really, but he definitely withdrew in some ineffable way. He was not quite there any longer.

  The lady glided towards them and took the Captain’s arm in her silk-gloved hand. They looked intently into each other’s eyes and her smile widened. ‘I am terribly sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I do hope you were not too bored. I know you do hate such parties.’

  ‘I am not much for crowds, of course,’ he answered. ‘But Barton Park is different.’

  ‘So I see.’ Her gaze slid to Rose and her smile turned down at the edges. She glanced up and down Rose’s made-over gown and glanced away, obviously finding her to be of not much interest.

  ‘Miss Helen Layton, may I present a cousin of the Bancrofts?’ Captain St George said. ‘Miss Rose Parker. Miss Parker, this is an old friend of my family, Miss Layton.’

  ‘An old friend, my dear St George?’ Miss Layton said with a creamy laugh. ‘Surely more than that. We have known each other since we were veritable babies. Charles says he expects an—well, an interesting announcement at any moment.’

  An interesting announcement? Surely, Rose thought, that could only mean one thing. Captain St George and Miss Layton were a couple. She felt even colder, more foolish.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Layton,’ she managed to say in a calm, steady voice.

  ‘I think I just met your mother, Miss Parker,’ Miss Layton said. She wafted her fan towards Rose’s mother, who was still chatting with Emma and Charles St George. ‘She says you live in a cottage nearby. How absolutely charming that sounds. Like Wordsworth, with roses round the door and sheep on the hills.’

  Rose laughed, thinking of their smoking chimney and the vegetables she tried to grow in the kitchen garden mud, her chickens pecking around them. ‘Something of the sort, I suppose, Miss Layton.’

  ‘We must find something just the same when you get back from this silliness in Sicily,’ Miss Layton said, her fingers curling around his sleeve.

  He only gave her a tight smile and Rose could feel her cheeks turning warm as she longed even more to flee the whole uncomfortable scene.

  ‘Rose! Rose!’ she suddenly heard Lily cry and Rose had never been so relieved to see her sister. Rose spun around, away from the sight of the handsome Captain St George and the lovely Miss Layton, away from the foolish feelings that had come over her only moments ago.

  Lily was running towards her, her face shining with happiness, utterly unconcerned with the impropriety of calling out and running at a ball. Mr Hewlitt followed her, just as glowing. Together they hurried towards Rose’s mother, who was watching them avidly.

  ‘Mrs Parker,’ he said, trying so very hard to be solemn that it almost made Rose laugh. ‘May I have the privilege of speaking to you for a moment? I know such things are not usually done at a dance...’

  ‘Please, just follow me,’ Emma said. ‘You can use the library. It will surely be quiet there for a moment.’

  As they hurried away, Lily held out her hand to Rose to display a small pearl ring. ‘Oh, Rose! Isn’t it the loveliest?’

  Rose smiled, but she was afraid she might also start crying as well. The happiness of that moment, of her sister’s dreams coming true just as her own fledgling, girlish ideas were nipped in the bud, was almost overwhelming. But she did the only thing she knew how to do. She laughed and hugged her sister tight.

  ‘The loveliest, Lily. I know you will be so very happy.’

  Over her sister’s shoulder as Lily hugged her back, Rose glimpsed Captain St George, withdrawing to a quiet corner with his brother and Miss Layton. He gave her a small smile and it was so sad, so full of commiseration and understanding, that Rose nearly burst into tears. How perfect that one dance had been! Rose liked her life, her independence, but just for that moment she seemed to glimpse, far in the distance, the glimmer of something—more. A real home.

  Miss Layton whispered something in the Captain’s ear and the two of them turned away together, beautiful and perfect, leaving Rose in her ordinary world once more.

  Oh, well, she thought, laughing at herself just a bit. Ordinary life was not so very bad after all.

  ‘You will be a lovely bride, Lily dearest,’ she said, squeezing her sister a little tighter before she let her go.

  ‘And then it will be your turn, Rose, I vow it,’ Lily said. ‘I will find you someone just as handsome and sweet as my own Hewlitt.’

  Rose closed her eyes, and saw, in the darkness of her mind, far away from the colour a
nd noise of the party, Captain St George’s all too brief smile. ‘Oh, Lily. I don’t think that would even be possible.’

  * * *

  The carriage was blessedly shadowed and silent as it jolted away from the lights of Barton Park and slid into the night. Harry leaned his head back against the leather cushions and closed his eyes, letting all the wondrous quiet wash over him.

  Silence had become a precious commodity to him in the last few years. In Spain, and then at Waterloo, noise had been ever-present. The cacophony of military camps, drumbeats and shouted orders, and drunken laughter at night as men tried to forget their fears and loneliness around campfires. The explosion of shot and shell, the screams of people and horses as they fell, the sobbing afterward. No—quiet had no place in war.

  Nor, it seemed, in a world after the war. Harry had returned to England thinking he was coming home to a world of green and rain and peace, the world he dreamed of in canvas tents at night. It had taken him years to return, but he had always been determined he would.

  But it was not like that at all once he returned to London. There were parties all the time, dinners and teas and dances, with everyone clamouring for tales of the glorious heroics of war. He could hardly tell them the truth of it all, of the mud and blood and dying, so he said little at all. Charming social conversation had always been Charles’s forte, not his.

  Yet his silence only seemed to make him more sought out. Made more invitations arrive at his lodgings, more ladies want to sit beside him in drawing rooms or ride in the park. ‘Like a corsair warrior in a poem,’ he had once heard a lady whisper to her friend as they watched him at a musicale.

  The memory made him laugh all over again. Him—a poetic corsair. If only they knew. He was just a rough army man, riding behind the drum, ever since he was a lad with his first commission. An army man with dreams of being a country farmer one day, of sitting by his own hearth after a day of watching his fields ripen and his sheep grow fat. A house where there was quiet all the time, except perhaps for a toddler’s giggle or the sound of a lady playing at her pianoforte.

  It was a dream that would have to be postponed again, at least for a time. His regiment had called on him once more, to go to sun-baked Sicily this time to put down a rebellion. There was only time for this one visit home, to his father’s house at Hilltop Grange near Barton Park.

  He hadn’t wanted to go to the party at Barton. Yet more noise, more clamour, more stares. But Jane and Emma Bancroft were old neighbours, kind people, and he let Charles persuade him to attend. Now he was rather glad he had.

  He closed his eyes and there he saw something most unexpected—the face of Miss Rose Parker. She had the sweetest smile he could remember ever seeing and even dancing, which he normally loathed, was a pleasure when he talked to her. She seemed almost like no lady, no person, he had ever met before. So calm, so serene—she made the very air seem to sigh with relief around her.

  After so long in the rough world of war, he had almost given up ever glimpsing pure sweetness in anything again. Yet there it was, in Rose Parker’s smile.

  Until Helen appeared. Helen—one of his oldest friends, the daughter of his late mother’s best friend, a lady of such beauty she was called in London The Incomparable. The lady everyone had always expected he would marry.

  ‘How changeable you are tonight, Harry,’ Charles said. ‘Laughing, then scowling—one hardly knows what to expect next.’

  Harry opened his eyes to study his brother, who lolled on the opposite seat. His golden hair gleamed in the moonlight from the open window, the perfect aquiline features that had always made him their late mother’s copy, her darling, were outlined like a classical cameo. Charles was the perfect Apollo wherever he went to Harry’s Hephaestus, always laughing and easy-tempered, making everyone around him feel easy as well. But now that the party was behind him, even Charles looked almost—sad, as he had rather often since Harry returned to England. Harry couldn’t help but wonder what was plaguing his brother.

  Perhaps it was because Charles had been left all those years to deal with Hilltop and their father while Harry was at war. And their father was not a kind man at the best of times. The house that had been their mother’s pride, the glowing name she had loved, had been tarnished by him.

  ‘I laugh because the party went better than I could have expected,’ he said.

  ‘Ha!’ Charles answered. ‘So you see I was right to make you attend. The Bancroft girls are always kindness itself.’

  ‘They are hardly girls now, are they? Jane a countess, Emma a widow.’

  ‘Poor Emma. Remember when Mother made us go to the children’s tea parties at Barton and we all ended up climbing trees instead?’ Charles said with a laugh. ‘Father was never happy at all when we came home with our best new coats torn and muddy. He said Mother was raising monkeys.’

  ‘And the switches would come out.’ The switches so often came out with their father, especially after their mother died. ‘But it was always worth it to visit Barton Park.’

  ‘Wasn’t it, though? Like a different world.’

  Harry nodded. A different world. He thought of Miss Parker’s tales of searching for lost Royalist treasures there at Barton and wondered why they had never crossed paths as children. What would it have been like if they had?

  ‘La belle Helen was in fine looks tonight,’ Charles said. ‘If only we had a thousand ships that needed to be launched...’

  Harry frowned at the reminder of Helen and her elegant face flashed in his mind, erasing Miss Parker’s gentle smile. The weight of expectation, the weight of what had been and what was expected in the future, fell once again. ‘Helen has always been lovely.’

  ‘Did Miss Lily Parker’s sweet little engagement not inspire you, Harry? No ring for Helen’s pretty finger yet?’

  Harry wasn’t sure he liked something in Charles’s tone, something dark and hard beneath his smile. ‘Helen knows this is no time for an engagement. I am to re-join my regiment soon and I would not tie her down to someone like myself.’

  ‘You may think that, but does she? The betting books in the London clubs were full of speculation about when she would snap you into the parson’s mousetrap. Everyone’s expected it since we were children.’

  Harry frowned as he stared out the window, at the summer moon shining on the silent hedgerows. ‘You have picked up some ridiculous slang in those clubs of yours, Charlie.’

  ‘Well, a man has to find distractions, you know. Hilltop Grange is not exactly a haven of merriment. And everyone says you and Helen were made for each other. Any man would give his right arm to be in your position.’

  Something in his brother’s voice caught Harry’s strict attention, something sharp and jagged that was quite unlike Charles. He swung around to face him, but Charles’s face was hidden in the shadows.

  ‘Made for each other?’ Harry said. Perhaps it was so—they had been friends for so long, bound by the long ties of their families, by their mothers’ wishes. He had thought of her when he was gone, dreamed of her, carried her miniature with him to inspire him. She was like a dream, just as all that green English quiet had been a reason to come home.

  And by Jove but she was beautiful. The most beautiful lady in London, just as all those silly, betting-book dandies declared. For some reason, though, she seemed to prefer Harry to all those other men, at least for now.

  But would Helen ever like that farm life he so envisioned? The quiet evenings, the small community? He was not at all sure. Perhaps that was what really held him back now.

  Again he saw Miss Parker’s sweet smile, felt her gentle touch on his hand, but he pushed such thoughts away.

  ‘She agrees we should wait until I can resign my commission and we can see what happens next,’ he said.

  Charles shook his head, frowning. ‘You should be careful, then, Harry. While
you are gone on your adventures, someone else could easily pluck up such a prize. They do say that the Duke of Hamley, now that his time of mourning is at an end, seeks a new duchess.’

  Harry laughed. Duchess—now there was a role that would suit Helen well. ‘No one would make a better duchess than Helen.’

  Charles was silent for a long, tense moment. ‘I would never have taken you for a fool, Harry.’

  Before Harry could answer, their carriage turned through the gates of Hilltop Grange and jolted up the winding old drive, past the overgrown forest that had once been a manicured garden under the careful eye of their mother.

  Now, Hilltop looked nothing like the golden welcome of Barton Park, which had seemed to float above the night like a cloud of light. Hilltop had no light at all, save the glow of one lamp in the window of the library. Harry knew that once daylight came, the overgrown ivy on the grey stone walls, the crumbling chimneys, the covered windows, would all be too apparent. He felt again that deep pang of sadness, of guilt for following a different duty.

  But that one light meant their father was still awake, or more likely fallen asleep next to his empty brandy bottle. He seldom left the library now.

  ‘Our great inheritance,’ Charles said, his tone quiet and bitter.

  Harry gave a grim nod. ‘I am sorry, Charles. I should have been here all along.’

  Charles glanced at him, his expression startled. ‘Oh, no, Harry, never. You are doing what you have to—your duty to King and Country as you are called to do. No one has been more dutiful than you, ever since we were children.’

  He thought again of what their home had once been, what it was now. ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Well, I do. Whatever I face here with Father is as nothing compared to whatever you have faced all these years. Besides, I’m seldom here at Hilltop at all these days.’ He grinned and that strange, solemn, thoughtful Charles vanished. The rakish, fun-loving young man everyone knew was back. ‘London is much more diverting. Why would a man ever live anywhere else?’