0425272095 (R) Read Online Free
Author: Jessica Peterson
hands and rubbed the palms together. “Well, then. As much as I’d love to stay and chat up old Brunhilde, we must be off.”
Two
Mayfair, London
Late Spring 1812
F ragrant in the best—and worst—of ways, Hyde Park was just as Lady Caroline Townshend, Dowager Countess of Berry, remembered it: achingly lovely, poignantly familiar.
The springtime sun threw the park’s multicolored charms into stunning relief. Blooms perfumed the warm breeze and almost (though not quite) masked the more earthy smells of manure and mud. The meadows and hedgerows were so violently green her eyes watered; the day’s dying light streamed through the gaps in the trees and pooled in honey-hued stillness beneath their branches.
For a moment Caroline closed her eyes and inhaled the sensations of this place. She hadn’t been back in over a decade; last time she frequented the park she was seventeen, in town for her first—and last—season. She’d been so lost then, so lonely.
And now she was lost again.
Her throat tightened at the rush of memories from that year. In the space of a single summer she’d fallen in love once andmarried twice; how young she was then, how unprepared for the crushing pleasures and disappointments of womanhood! Even now, so many years later, thinking about him— she could not bear to put a name to her longing—made her heart swell with something so forceful it took her breath away.
Caroline swallowed, hard. She could not cry. She would not cry, not here, not in Hyde Park, and during the fashionable hour at that; though she was a widow, and thus entitled to live as eccentrically as she wished, spreading gossip was always preferable to being its subject.
And so Caroline did not cry; she tripped instead.
“Heavens, Caroline, do mind your step. That’s the third time today!” With a sigh her brother, William, Earl of Harclay, drew her upright by the elbow. Nodding apologetically at a nearby matron, he said, “I’ve half a mind to put you in a pram so that our fellow pedestrians might be spared injury. I thought you’d grown out of your awkwardness.”
Caroline untangled her foot from her skirts. “No such luck, I’m afraid, but it does make our strolls much more exciting, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. Let’s sit.”
Caroline kept her arm tucked into the crook of his elbow as they sat on a bench set into a hedge of boxwood. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed William, his clever smiles, the way the skin at the edges of his dark eyes creased when he laughed. She’d forgotten how safe he made her feel. How welcome.
Besides, the attention he received from his admirers—they were like bees, swarming, buzzing, out for the kill—was worth the exhausting, muddy ride down to London. Caroline had never before seen a woman deliberately drop her beaded reticule into a gentleman’s lap, only to retrieve it practically with her teeth.
“Ah, Lady Bonham,” William had said. “We must give her credit for trying, however misguided her efforts.”
Grinning at the memory, Caroline looked out over the lawn before them. A dozen children skittered across the emerald expanse.
“But heavens, aren’t they darling,” she said, winking at a dark-haired baby burrowed into his nursemaid’s neck. Even as Caroline smiled, longing gripped her heart and squeezed.
“They’re everywhere ,” William said, and pulled up the edge of his coat at the approaching twins who’d somehow managed to escape their mother’s lap.
Caroline caught each of the children by the arm and handed them back to their mother. “They don’t bite, you know. Unlike a certain person of our mutual acquaintance.”
“That was merely a phase, dear sister, and lasted only a month or two besides.”
She grinned. “I was fourteen the last time you bit me. Here, you can see the mark on my arm—”
William waved her away, laughing. “If I had known you’d come all the way to London merely to torment me with tales of
Two
Mayfair, London
Late Spring 1812
F ragrant in the best—and worst—of ways, Hyde Park was just as Lady Caroline Townshend, Dowager Countess of Berry, remembered it: achingly lovely, poignantly familiar.
The springtime sun threw the park’s multicolored charms into stunning relief. Blooms perfumed the warm breeze and almost (though not quite) masked the more earthy smells of manure and mud. The meadows and hedgerows were so violently green her eyes watered; the day’s dying light streamed through the gaps in the trees and pooled in honey-hued stillness beneath their branches.
For a moment Caroline closed her eyes and inhaled the sensations of this place. She hadn’t been back in over a decade; last time she frequented the park she was seventeen, in town for her first—and last—season. She’d been so lost then, so lonely.
And now she was lost again.
Her throat tightened at the rush of memories from that year. In the space of a single summer she’d fallen in love once andmarried twice; how young she was then, how unprepared for the crushing pleasures and disappointments of womanhood! Even now, so many years later, thinking about him— she could not bear to put a name to her longing—made her heart swell with something so forceful it took her breath away.
Caroline swallowed, hard. She could not cry. She would not cry, not here, not in Hyde Park, and during the fashionable hour at that; though she was a widow, and thus entitled to live as eccentrically as she wished, spreading gossip was always preferable to being its subject.
And so Caroline did not cry; she tripped instead.
“Heavens, Caroline, do mind your step. That’s the third time today!” With a sigh her brother, William, Earl of Harclay, drew her upright by the elbow. Nodding apologetically at a nearby matron, he said, “I’ve half a mind to put you in a pram so that our fellow pedestrians might be spared injury. I thought you’d grown out of your awkwardness.”
Caroline untangled her foot from her skirts. “No such luck, I’m afraid, but it does make our strolls much more exciting, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. Let’s sit.”
Caroline kept her arm tucked into the crook of his elbow as they sat on a bench set into a hedge of boxwood. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed William, his clever smiles, the way the skin at the edges of his dark eyes creased when he laughed. She’d forgotten how safe he made her feel. How welcome.
Besides, the attention he received from his admirers—they were like bees, swarming, buzzing, out for the kill—was worth the exhausting, muddy ride down to London. Caroline had never before seen a woman deliberately drop her beaded reticule into a gentleman’s lap, only to retrieve it practically with her teeth.
“Ah, Lady Bonham,” William had said. “We must give her credit for trying, however misguided her efforts.”
Grinning at the memory, Caroline looked out over the lawn before them. A dozen children skittered across the emerald expanse.
“But heavens, aren’t they darling,” she said, winking at a dark-haired baby burrowed into his nursemaid’s neck. Even as Caroline smiled, longing gripped her heart and squeezed.
“They’re everywhere ,” William said, and pulled up the edge of his coat at the approaching twins who’d somehow managed to escape their mother’s lap.
Caroline caught each of the children by the arm and handed them back to their mother. “They don’t bite, you know. Unlike a certain person of our mutual acquaintance.”
“That was merely a phase, dear sister, and lasted only a month or two besides.”
She grinned. “I was fourteen the last time you bit me. Here, you can see the mark on my arm—”
William waved her away, laughing. “If I had known you’d come all the way to London merely to torment me with tales of
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