Regency Innocents Read Online Free PDF Page A

man of Lord Walton’s reputation, ‘I suppose she is quite a captivating little thing, in her way. Jolly amusing. She certainly has a gift for mimicry that almost had me giving myself away! Had to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to choke down the laughter when she aped your voice!’
    The Earl stared at him. Captivating? Until this morning he had barely looked at her. Like a little wren, she hid in the background as much as she could. And when he had looked he had seen nothing to recommend her. She had a beak of a nose, set above lips that were too thin for their width, and a sharp little chin. Her hair was a mid-brown, without a hint of a curl to render it interesting. Her eyes, though …
    Before this morning she had kept them demurely lowered whenever he glanced in her direction. But today he had seen a vibrancy burning in their dark depths that had tugged a grudging response from him.
    â€˜What she may or may not be is largely irrelevant,’ he said coldly. ‘What just might prompt me to take her to wife is that in so doing I shall put Du Mauriac’s nose out of joint.’
    Conningsby laughed nervously. ‘Surely you can’t wish to marry a woman just so that some other fellow cannot have her?’
    The Earl returned his look with a coldness of purpose that chilled him. ‘She does not expect me to like her very much. You heard what she said. She will not even be surprisedif I come to detest her so heartily that I beat her. All she wants is the opportunity to escape from an intolerable position. Don’t you think I should oblige her?’
    â€˜Well, I …’ Conningsby ran his finger round his collar, his face growing red.
    â€˜Come, now, you cannot expect me to stand by and permit her father to marry her off to that butcher, can you? She does not deserve such a fate.’
    No, Conningsby thought, she does not. But then, would marriage to a man who only wanted revenge on her former suitor, a man without an ounce of fondness for her, be any less painful to her in the long run?
    Heloise gripped her charcoal and bent her head over her sketchpad, blotting out the noise of her mother’s sobs as she focussed on her drawing. She had achieved nothing. Nothing. She had braved the streets, and the insults of those soldiers, then endured the Earl’s mockery, for nothing. Oh, why, she thought resentfully, had she ever thought she might be able to influence the intractable Earl one way or another? And how could she ever have felt sorry for him? Her fingers worked furiously, making angry slashes across the page. He had coaxed her most secret thoughts from her, let her hope he was feeling some shred of sympathy, and then spurned her. The only good thing about this morning’s excursion was that nobody had noticed she had taken it, she reflected, finding some satisfaction in creating a most unflattering caricature of the Earl of Walton in the guise of a sleekly cruel tabby cat. She could not have borne it if anyone had found out where she had been. It had been bad enough when her
maman
had laid the blame for Felice’s elopement at her door—as though she had ever had the least influence with her headstrong and pampered little sister!
    With a few deft strokes Heloise added a timorous little mouse below the grinning mouth of the tabby cat, then set to work fashioning a pair of large paws. Folly—sheer folly! To walk into that man’s lair and prostrate herself as she had!
    There was a knock on the front door.
    Madame Bergeron blew her nose before wailing, ‘We are not receiving visitors today. I cannot endure any more. They will all come, you mark my words, to mock at us …’
    Heloise rose to her feet to relay the information to their manservant before he had a chance to open the door. Since her seat was by the window, where she could get the most light for her sketching, she had a clear view of their front step.
    â€˜It is the Earl!’ she