Lord Rannulf laughed softly. “Is the prospective bride cowering beneath my feet?” he asked. “I have lived at Lindsey Hall most of my life and have been embarrassed in just this way so many times one would think I would have learned by now to search beneath the gallery before unbuttoning my lips. Accept my apologies, ma’am. My quarrel is with Kit, not you.”
Lauren stepped away from the screen and looked upward. He was leaning nonchalantly on the balustrade, a great giant of a man with thick, unruly fair hair and strong, handsome features. He put her powerfully in mind of Viking warriors she had read about in her history books.
“Your apology is accepted, my lord,” she said. “It is always shocking, is it not, to be overheard being spiteful by the very person concerned? Especially when one reflects upon the fact that one does not know that person at all—has not even met her, in fact. But there are none of us who cannot benefit from lessons in discretion and kindness.”
He grinned appreciatively down at her. “Present me, Kit,” he commanded. “I do believe I have just been dealt a withering setdown by a lady who is going to remember in a moment that it is unladylike to address any remark to a gentleman to whom she has not been properly introduced.”
“Meet Lord Rannulf Bedwyn, Lauren,” Kit said, “who would not recognize good manners if they reared up and punched him in the nose. The Honorable Miss Edgeworth, Ralf. To whom you owe an apology.”
The giant continued to grin at her. “A beauty, by gad,” he said. “The Friday-faced remark was quite unjustified, ma’am, and would not have been uttered if I had set eyes on you first. My humblest, most abject apologies. But it would appear the master of Lindsey Hall is about to grant you an audience. Or, I suppose, to have you informed that he is from home. Which is it, Fleming?”
The butler ignored him. “Follow me, my lord,” he instructed Kit, bowing deferentially and turning to lead the way across the hall in the opposite direction from the gallery.
Lauren could hear Lord Rannulf’s soft chuckle as she took Kit’s arm. A very dangerous gentleman indeed, she thought. Kit had described him as a hellion—and all his brothers and sisters too.
One would not have guessed it from the scene that met her eyes in the drawing room. It was a huge, long room, and all its occupants were gathered at the far end of it. All were silent and absolutely still as Kit and Lauren progressed along the length of the room. Deliberately so, Lauren guessed. The size and splendor of the room itself seemed designed to awe guests, to reduce them to size and at the same time to a quivering mass of humble subservience. The tableau presented by its occupants was intended to complete the process. But Lauren was made of stern stuff. She looked about her instead of directing her eyes downward to the Persian carpet beneath her feet, as she suspected she was meant to do.
The Duke of Bewcastle—the man standing before the fireplace in the end wall must surely be he—was tall, forbiddingly dark, thin-lipped, and unmistakably haughty. There was no hint of a smile in his hooded eyes, no sign of welcome in his demeanor. A thin young girl, as dark in coloring as the duke, sat stiff and unsmiling to one side of him beside an older lady in black. At the duke’s other side, one ringed hand resting on the back of a sofa, stood a slender, dark young man, whose resemblance to the duke was unmistakable though he was extremely handsome and did have an expression on his face—one of cold mockery. It was matched by the lady who sat on the sofa. Lauren knew immediately that she must be looking at Lady Freyja Bedwyn, even though this first glance was a shock. Despite Kit’s warning about the family, she had somehow pictured a pale, pretty, timid, abject creature, who was powerless before the will of her brother.
Lady Freyja Bedwyn was wearing riding clothes, including boots, in the middle of the afternoon and in the drawing room. She was not at all pretty or dainty or softly feminine in demeanor. She wore her fair hair in a mass of loose, unruly curls about her shoulders and halfway down her back. She sat with one leg crossed over the other in a shockingly unladylike posture and was swinging the dangling foot while looking Lauren over from head to toe with narrow-eyed thoroughness.
Their progress down the room took only a few seconds, Lauren supposed. It seemed to take five minutes at the very least. His grace inclined his head when they were close.
“Ravensberg,” he said. His voice was soft and quite arctic in tone.
“Bewcastle?” Kit replied with his usual good humor. He might even, Lauren realized suddenly, be enjoying this reception his neighbors and erstwhile friends had obviously orchestrated for his discomfort. “I have the pleasure of presenting my betrothed, the Honorable Miss Lauren Edgeworth of Newbury Abbey. His grace, the Duke of Bewcastle, Lauren.”
Lauren found herself being regarded from a pair of keen, heavy-lidded silver eyes that had her thinking of wolves. A matter of association, perhaps? Had Kit not said that his given name was Wulfric?
“Miss Edgeworth,” he said in the same courteous, arctic tone as she curtsied. “May I present Lady Freyja Bedwyn, Lady Morgan with her governess, Miss Cowper, and Lord Alleyne.”
Yes, she had correctly identified Lady Freyja, Lauren saw as she curtsied to each of them and Lord Alleyne Bedwyn bowed to her, his eyes doing to her what his sister’s had just done, except that this time she felt as if garments were being stripped away with the progress of his eyes.
“We have come on an errand from my mother. She requests that all of you attend my grandmother’s birthday celebrations,” Kit said cheerfully. “Though we would be happy to have you put in an appearance any time before then too. A houseful of family guests will be arriving tomorrow, and we already have with us the Dowager Countess of Kilbourne and Lady Muir, her daughter.”
“Lady Redfield is kind,” his grace said. “Miss Edgeworth, have a seat. Miss Cowper, see to it that the tea tray is brought up.”
The governess got to her feet, curtsied without lifting her eyes to her employer, and hurried from the room.
Lauren took the chair indicated.
“Kilbourne,” Lady Freyja said, frowning, one long-nailed forefinger against her chin. “There is a familiarity. Ah, yes. Did not the present countess appear at Newbury under rather spectacular circumstances to prevent the earl from making a bigamous marriage?”
“In the nick of time, Free, I understand,” Lord Alleyne said with languid hauteur. “The wedding service had begun. The bride was already blushing.”
“Ah, yes, I remember now,” Lady Freyja said—and then looked arrested. “But the abandoned bride . . . Not you, Miss Edgeworth?” Malice gleamed in her eyes.
“You have been quite correctly informed in the matter,” Lauren said.
“But how unpardonably rude of me inadvertently to have reminded you of such a humiliation,” Lady Freyja said, still nonchalantly swinging her booted foot. “Do forgive me.”
It was just such mockery as this that Lauren had feared when she went to London. This was the first time she had actually to face it. “There is nothing to forgive,” she said. “We all speak rather too hastily on occasion.” She smiled and turned her attention to the duke. “I had time to admire the oak screen in the hall below, your grace. The carvings are remarkably well preserved. Are they original?”
For fifteen minutes, almost until the moment when they could decently take their leave, Lauren skillfully led the conversation, focusing it upon impersonal topics in which they could all participate, refusing to be cowed by the deliberate reluctance of the Bedwyns to allow the chilled atmosphere to warm by a single degree.
“Do you ride, Miss Edgeworth?” Lady Freyja asked suddenly in the very middle of a discussion on the merits of spending at least a part of the year in town.
“Of course,” Lauren said.
“To hounds?”
“No, I have never done so.”
“But you consider yourself an accomplished horsewoman?”