Captain Durant's Countess(6)

“Went home, she did. Called a hack for her myself. If I was you, I’d go visit her with a peace offering right quick.”

“Thank you, Mick. I shall do that immediately. Lady Trilby, shall we leave?”

In what passed for a sprint in so large a man, Mick made it to the front door before they did and held it open. “Good afternoon, Captain Durant. Good afternoon, Lady Trilby.”

Reyn took a left turn at the sidewalk.

“Mivart’s is in the other direction,” Lady Kelby objected.

“I know that. We’re giving Mick some misdirection. He may seem as if he’s been hit in the head too many times, but he’s very shrewd. Did he see your face?”

“Oh. Oh dear.”

“I take it that’s a yes. We’ll just have to hope my little bribe was sufficient. Patsy will be more difficult to silence, but leave her to me.” Reyn patted Maris’s arm confidently, hoping his words were true.

“Do you have a paddle in your pocket to persuade her?”

“Lady Kelby, you have a very prurient mind. I trust my natural charms are sufficient to assuage Mrs. Rumford.”

Maris sniffed as they passed gated front gardens with pruned boxwood and urns of hardy pansies. The neighborhood was lovely, if one liked bland and orderly—with the exception of the Reining Monarchs in its midst, of course.

Reyn looked around. “Is it not a lovely day?”

“I am not going to waste my time discussing the weather with you, Captain Durant.”

Ha. That was his usual reaction to such talk, was it not? Conversations about the weather put him to sleep, unless he was on patrol in Halifax, where it paid to wear some extra layers and complain accordingly. “How are we to get to know each other better, Lady Kelby?”

“I don’t wish to know you.”

Her kiss told him otherwise. “If I agree to your husband’s plan— and that’s a big, Mt. Olympus–sized if—it will be easier if we are friends.”

“Friends!” Maris stopped dead on the street and dropped his arm. The tiny flowers stitched across the lace covering her face made it difficult to see her expression, but Reyn could well imagine it. “If you do change your mind, I would expect nothing but an efficient effort on your part. No friendship would be necessary.”

“You have the oddest idea of coupling, Lady Kelby. I’m not a dancing bear to be brought into the circus ring to perform and then put back in its cage.”

“No one called you any sort of animal! You will be well compensated. You already have been, may I remind you. You’ll have food and lodging and anything you like, within reason. But not my friendship.”

She was not making the venture any more enticing. Reyn would not have minded a little flattery or flirting, two things which Lady Kelby seemed incapable of.

“How do you expect to explain my presence at Kelby Hall?”

Maris resumed walking, her stride nearly as long as his. She was not some mincing debutante.

He pictured her racing down the long, straight avenue that led to Kelby Hall, wavy brown hair flying behind her. She probably always kept it pinned back, though. Everything about her was pinned, tight, buttoned.

He could change that.

If she let him.

“My husband will say you are a fellow antiquities enthusiast, come to help me catalogue what’s stored in crates in the attics. His father and grandfather—in fact, all the Earls of Kelby—were avid collectors, although not the scholar Henry is. If it wasn’t Etruscan, Henry had no interest in it. But now he’s curious. He would like to know exactly what’s up there before he dies. All you need do is be found with some notebooks and a pair of spectacles and dust in your hair and people will presume you’re an expert.”

It was Reyn’s turn to stop walking. “You’re joking. You expect me to catalogue that junk?” He could hardly think of anything more horrifying, unless he was asked to unwrap a mummy. There might even be one in some box stored in the attic.

“I shall be doing the actual cataloguing. I would never expect a man such as yourself to appreciate ancient history and civilizations. But it will give us an excuse to be together. No one will bother us while we’re working.”

“Why, Lady Kelby. Are you proposing to compromise me in broad daylight?”

“My eyes will be closed, Captain Durant. I expect you to close yours, too.”





Chapter 3


Reyn had a difficult evening. Patsy Rumford had not been fobbed off with a few cuddles and kisses, and he was ever so glad to see her husband return early from his club before being forced to go further. She may have been wanton at the society, but she was a dutiful wife at home. How she explained his visit to her husband he had no idea, but likely she would find her movements restricted in the future.

It would be something else she’d resent him for. Reyn was not convinced she’d keep her mouth shut about Lady Kelby, even if he’d promised her unlimited punishment and pleasure at a later date.

Worse, Lady Kelby had tattled on him. He’d come home to a tersely worded note from Mr. Ramsey on London List stationery, who urged him to keep his commitment to the Kelbys. It did not take a genius to read between the neatly printed lines. He had threatened to reveal Reyn’s recent coronation as a Monarch in one of his wretched gossip columns—not that anyone but his sister Ginny would care.

Reyn was already sorry he’d joined the society, for it had done nothing but make him feel a bit ridiculous, whacking at women—and some men—like a mad villain from one of the demented gothic Courtesan Court novels Ginny liked to read. If he hadn’t been at such loose ends . . . but there was a solution to all that. He could go to Kelby Hall and impersonate a bloody classics professor.

The Kelbys were collectively insane. While they may both be experts in Etruscan civilization, they knew nothing about Reynold Durant in the nineteenth century. He would never be able to pull off such a deception. Apart from his youth, there was his ignorance to deal with and his inability to examine anything for any length of time before he lost interest. The idea of being trapped in an attic with the Countess of Kelby and remnants of ancient dead people’s things collected by somewhat more recently dead people held absolutely no allure.

She had told him he was not really expected to do any scholarly work, so there must be a couch or an old feather mattress she planned on using for sexual activity, however. Reyn wondered how many times a day she would expect him to service her. It gave him something to contemplate as he drifted off to sleep.

He woke up the next morning—not that he’d slept very long or very well—almost convinced to do as hired, or at least go to Kelby Hall for a day or two and see where that led him, though he was a little annoyed with Ramsey. He didn’t like thinking of him and Lady Kelby conspiring against him like two strict schoolteachers with a naughty boy in their charge. He wasn’t even all that naughty, when one examined all the facts.

Blast. That was what came of trying to adjust to civilian life without adequate income or occupation. Throw poor Ginny into the mix and he had been between a rock and a very hard place.

He had plenty of time to ride out Richmond to see his sister before he made his final decision. Ginny wouldn’t judge him, not that he’d tell her what he’d been up to lately. She still thought of him as a hero, and he didn’t want to disabuse her of that preposterous notion, particularly on the front page of The London List. What he’d done on the Belgian battlefield five years ago was steeped so deep in the mists of time he could barely remember it. He may have won his captaincy as a result, but his career had been distinctly downhill from there.

He’d managed to hang on to his old charger Phantom through thick and thin, and Reyn walked to the stables where the horse was housed. After a few words with the groom, he found his horse waiting, long nose poked over the stall. The gelding seemed pleased to see him, whickering and tossing his coarse gray mane in greeting. Reyn pulled an apple from his coat pocket and watched while Phantom enthusiastically chomped down on it. The horse didn’t have a care in the world. He was warm and fed and dry, no longer evading bullets or sabers.

Not faced with a moral dilemma, either.

Reyn dealt with the tack himself and wended through London’s morning traffic. The December day was bright and clear, with just enough nip in the air to make the ride to Richmond pleasurable.

It was not long before he came to Ginny’s cottage. A few very late roses climbed bravely up the lattice by the door. The house was altogether charming, much nicer than anywhere Ginny had lived in a long time. Their parents’ financial circumstances meant that year by year their accommodations were reduced in size and restricted by neighborhood.

When Reyn had come back to London from Canada, he’d found his little sister pale and coughing her head off, living above a butcher shop belonging to their old cook’s brother. He’d done what he could, moving her to better lodgings along with Mrs. Clark the cook. Thanks to the Earl of Kelby, the cottage and the extra servants were a vast improvement.