LITMIR.BIZ

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led her to a sporting curricle whose paintwork gleamed golden in the wintry sunshine. A wizened groom was holding the heads of two magnificent matched bays.

      ‘Oh, Rick.’ Imogen sighed, taking his arm, and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, after he had settled her on the bench seat and tucked a rug over her knees. ‘I am so glad you have come back.’ The groom sprang up behind and the horses shot forward, giving her the excuse to clutch his arm tighter. ‘I was half afraid, after the reception you got yesterday, that my aunt had scared you off.’

      Rick gave a contemptuous snort, which the horses interpreted as a signal to go a bit faster. Imogen kept a firm hold of his arm while he brought them back to a pace more suited to the traffic they were negotiating.

      Then he said with mock severity, ‘I have held raw recruits steady in the face of an approaching column. Do you think a frosty reception from a lady of a certain age could rout me? No, I just decided upon a tactical retreat. It went against the grain to leave you when you were so terribly upset. But I know your aunt has the power to banish me from your life permanently, should I truly offend her. Couldn’t risk that! Thought it best to regroup.’

      ‘You did so brilliantly,’ she said, giving his arm an affectionate squeeze. Then she remembered she was supposed to be behaving with extreme propriety at all times, and straightened up guiltily, looking about her to see if there was anyone who might have recognized who she was and start tattling.

      ‘I say, Midge, do you get scolded like that all the time? Just for hugging a fellow?’

      Imogen coloured up. ‘I cannot go about hugging gentlemen, Rick. Have you forgotten what tales my father’s family spread about my mother?’

      ‘Pompous toad, the man who took the title after your father,’ growled Rick. ‘Has done his damnedest to erase the association your father brought to the name by being exceptionally priggish. And as for slandering your mother all over town—don’t know how he thought he could get away with that! Why, anyone who ever met her would know it was ridiculous! Amanda have affairs!’ He snorted again, in spite of the effect it had on the horses before. ‘A beautiful woman married off to a dry old stick like my father might have been excused for looking for a bit of excitement elsewhere, but there was never any such thing, and well you know it!’

      ‘Yes, but that is just it,’ she countered. ‘Very few people ever did meet her after she married Hugh. She never showed her face in Society again. It left Baron Framlingham free to say whatever he liked.’

      Rick frowned, either because he was at a loss to know what to say or because he was concentrating on getting through the park gates.

      Once they were safely bowling along the broad carriageway and there was no further risk to the gleaming paintwork, Imogen continued in a subdued voice, ‘There is no escaping the truth, though, that she did take a lover.’

      ‘Only the one!’ he retorted, as though that made it acceptable. And then, hot in defence of the woman who had mothered him throughout his formative years, ‘And only because your father drove her to it by making her so miserable! My father never blamed her for any of it. Said she would have done better to have married the Earl of Leybourne in the first place. Courted her at one time, so he told me. Why didn’t she marry him? After all, she must have carried a torch for him for years, if she…’

      He petered out, with the look of a man who had just realized he was engaging in a rather improper conversation with an innocent young female.

      ‘My father swept her off her feet,’ replied Imogen dryly. ‘Not only did it satisfy his sense of mischief to win her from a man of higher rank, he had his eye on her fortune. Then again, he hoped marrying into such a respectable family might hoodwink certain people into believing he would reform. But of course, he did no such thing. Mama said—’ And then she realized it was not at all the thing to repeat any of the stories her mother had told her. They had been delivered as a warning, when Amanda knew she was not going to live long enough to steer her daughter through the shoals of the Marriage Mart herself.

      ‘He was a shocking rake,’ was all Imogen could bring herself to say. ‘Very indiscreet.’

      At that moment, they passed a barouche carrying a group of particularly haughty matrons, whose eyes widened to see her riding in a sporting curricle—with a dashing military man as her only escort.

      ‘People watch me with their beady little eyes—’ she indicated the retreating vehicle with a wave of her hand ‘—just hoping to see some signs of flightiness in me. With my mother branded as some kind of temptress who lured two noblemen to their doom, and my father notorious for his legions of mistresses, it is hardly surprising people expect the worst of me. Aunt Herriard has to be extremely strict with me, Rick. To make sure nobody has even the slightest reason to say I am tarred with the same brush.’

      ‘I am amazed she let you come out with me this afternoon, then,’ he said wryly.

      ‘I was not sure, until the moment we saw you draw up in this rig, that she might not think better of it, either!’ Imogen laughed. ‘But it hit exactly the right note. Wherever did you get it?’

      ‘Oh, I borrowed it off Monty. You remember Monty?’

      ‘Remember Monty! Of course I do!’

      Rick had not been on active service for long before Monty’s name began to crop up in his correspondence to Midge. It turned out that whenever a packet of mail arrived for the officers, they tended to share news from home with each other. Right from the first, she had scattered little sketches throughout her text, to illustrate the events she was describing. The pictures of the butcher chasing a recalcitrant pig through several paragraphs before meeting its inevitable fate beneath her signature had proved a particular hit. After that, everyone in Rick’s unit began to look forward to his receiving letters from his dear little Midge. Especially Monty, who never seemed to receive any mail of his own at all.

      Appalled to learn that a young man who was serving his country had no support from his family, Midge had begun to include short messages specifically for him. And he had returned his own personal greetings.

      ‘He is in town?’ she said, half turning to him.

      From the very first, her heart had gone out to the lonely young lieutenant, serving alongside her brother. Fancy being in a strange country, fighting battles, and nobody from home writing to him!

      Later, as she had got to know him better through Rick’s accounts of his exploits, she began to think there was no finer or braver officer than Lieutenant Monty, saving her own dear Rick, of course. She was genuinely pleased for him when he got made up to captain and asked Rick to tell him so. In his turn, he had sent her, via Rick, his condolences when first her mother and then her stepfather had died.

      But then, not long after making major, he had sold out. And for the past few months, she had heard no news of him at all.

      ‘Yes, he is in town, and a good job too. Entirely thanks to him we are enjoying this outing. Told me exactly how to turn your aunt up sweet—you know, sending round a note, applying in writing for permission to take you out—oh, how to do everything in form! Capital fellow, Monty!’

      ‘I do wish I could meet him—’ she sighed ‘—though I don’t suppose Uncle Herriard will think him a suitable person for me to associate with. Not if he is one of your friends.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Rick darted her a sideways look. ‘He comes from a very respectable family. And he has money. Dash it, you must be able to tell that at least from the pair harnessed to this rig!’

      She observed the paces of the high-stepping matched bays for several minutes before venturing, ‘I don’t suppose he will be anything like I have imagined him anyway. I am bound to be disappointed.’

      He had probably run to fat now that he was not on active service. Not that she would hold that against him. No, she would prefer him not to be as handsome as she had always imagined him. Handsome men, her mother had warned her over and over again, were not to be trusted.

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