Courting Lord Dorney by Sally James Read Free Book Online Page A

have urgent business in London! Now, when am I going to meet Felicity?
    ‘In a day or so, I hope. She is away with an elderly aunt at the moment, but she and her sister, Lady Andrews, will be returning home soon. Their parents are dead, and she lives with Lady Andrews in Lansdowne Road. I wanted you to meet her before I declared myself.’
    Lord Dorney grinned. ‘You don’t need my permission. But if I don’t approve? Will you abandon her?’
    ‘No! Of course not! Oh, Richard, you know I want your approval, but I don’t need your permission!’
    ‘They for your sake I hope I find her as attractive as you clearly do.’
    * * * *
    Bella stood behind the curtains of the drawing room staring at the retreating back of the exceedingly handsome Richard Yates.
    ‘How attractive he is!’ she said to Jane. ‘There was no one nearly so good-looking at Harrogate. Did you see the way his hair curled over his ears? And his eyes, the lashes were as long as a girl’s. And his mouth was so well-shaped!’ She sighed. ‘He doesn’t need padding on his shoulders! Not like some of the fops I met in Harrogate. I wonder if he’s married?’
    ‘Bella!’ Jane was shocked. ‘You surely can’t imagine you’ve fallen in love with the first presentable man you meet?’
    ‘He’s not the first presentable man I’ve met,’ Bella argued. ‘There were some even more handsome in Harrogate, even if I didn’t like them. And I didn’t say I’d fallen in love with him. I only wondered if he was married.’
    ‘Then you must have been considering him as a husband, and I thought you wanted to marry for love?’ Jane countered swiftly.
    ‘Well, of course I’m considering every reasonable man as a husband,’ Bella changed tack slightly. ‘That’s why we came to Bath. It would be a ridiculous waste of time and effort getting to know someone who was already married, or falling in love with them.’
    ‘Yes, but one doesn’t normally talk about it quite so frankly!’
    ‘That’s a great deal of time wasted too, hinting and pretending not to be interested, when really it’s all most girls and their mamas ever do think about.’
    Jane abandoned the argument. Much as she often deplored her young cousin’s outspoken views, when she stopped to consider the matter she had to acknowledge Bella spoke a good deal of sense, and it was only the conventions of society which made such frankness unacceptable.
    ‘He’ll almost certainly be in the Pump Room tomorrow morning,’ Bella said slowly, ‘and we’ll soon discover all about him. It was a pity he wouldn’t come in. And fortunate Lizy took a fancy to the dog.’
    ‘Yes, she’ll soon have him looking sleek and fit, she and Mrs Dawes won’t be mean with the scraps. And then what will you do with him?’
    Bella looked speculatively at her. Jane knew that look and took a deep breath, ready to reject Bella’s next plan.
    ‘Perhaps Mrs Dawes knows someone who wants a dog,’ Bella said, but without much hope.
    ‘Lizy asked her, and she doesn’t,’ Jane squashed that hope.
    ‘Oh. Well, we’ll be here for some weeks,’ Bella said in a dismissive tone.
    ‘And the dog will get more attached to you. What will happen when I have to go to London and you go home?’
    ‘I can’t take him back to Trahearne House. Papa’s old Blackie won’t permit any other animal in the house,’ Bella said slowly. ‘Jane, you ought to have a dog. Don’t you think he’d be company for you, while Philip’s away?’
    ‘No, I don’t!’ Jane spoke with unusual determination. ‘I already have those two cats you saved from drowning, because Blackie practically ate one of them. You’d have liked me to have little Jed, and I almost had to take the terrier you found in the woods, the one with a broken paw, who’d been caught in a trap, except that he was run over by a chaise.’
    ‘Poor little thing! That wretched coachman was driving too fast and the poor lame animal couldn’t get out of the way in