Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) by Donna Lea Simpson Read Free Book Online Page A

Whether she was a paid companion or not, she still deserved a say in the affair. He turned and looked down the table, and pointedly said, “Miss Becket, an outing tomorrow to my estate has been proposed. Would the anticipation of such a trip please you?”
    Her cheeks suddenly rosy, the delightful blush that always seemed near flooding her face, she nodded, starting the soft ringlets around her face dancing merrily. “I would consider it a privilege, my lord.”
     
    • • •
     
    True sat staring out the window at the moonlit grounds of Lea Park. It had been a long, tiring day, with traveling, and then the demands of company and dinner, and conversation in the drawing room after dinner. And yet she was wakeful, restless in a way that was not like her.
    A gentle tap at her door, and True called out, “Come in.”
    Arabella swept into the room in her lacy nightrail, wrap, and morocco slippers. “I’m so glad you are still awake, True. I cannot sleep! I feel so agitated, and I don’t know why.”
    True patted the window seat beside her and Bella, as True called her in their private moments, assumed the other corner. Heavy green drapes curtained the window but were pulled back and held in place by gold silk cord. True had not expected to be kept in such splendor, for when she visited Swinley Manor, her cousin—the mother, not the daughter—always made sure that she got the smallest, darkest room that was still on the family floor. But here at Lea Park she was being treated not as a poor relation but as an honored guest. It was a novel and welcome experience.
    It was not that she really minded being often forgotten and seldom considered in people’s plans. Good-humored resignation more accurately reflected her feelings on that matter. It did not affect her firm belief that as one of God’s creatures she was the equal of any man or woman of any rank. That belief was radically different from the Church of England teachings she had grown up with, but she could think for herself, after all. That is why God gave her a brain. But she did understand the way of the world, and in that scheme she was a genteel but poor spinster lady. Which was why Lord Drake’s deliberate asking of her feelings on the proposed trip had touched her so deeply. His was a nobility of the heart, not just of rank, and she had never met his equal, in any sense.
    “Why are you agitated, dear?” True said, resorting to the endearment she had used when Arabella was a little girl, and True her older, wiser cousin. True had a younger sister near Arabella’s age, and the three cousins had spent much time together, though that had not been so for four years or more, ever since Bella’s removal from the vicarage in preparation for her come-out into London society. That debut was delayed a year after Lord Swinley’s death, but Arabella had spent that year of mourning, True had always thought, in being drilled by her mother in all the ways to attract, flirt with and tease gentlemen.
    Frowning, Arabella shed her slippers and tucked her feet up underneath her. “I don’t know. What do you think of Lord Drake, True? Is he not handsome? But he seems so very ferocious sometimes. He almost glares!”
    “You’re not afraid of him, are you?” True could not believe that of her cousin. Bella was up to any rig when she was a child, and True’s younger sister, Faithful, would often have to run for help when their brave cousin got stuck up in a tree, or was being chased by a swarm of bees, or was surrounded in a field by a herd of cattle. It almost seemed impossible that that headstrong, independent child True had loved had become this elegant and sometimes icy young lady, but there were still occasional flashes of the impetuous girl she had been.
    “Nnno,” Bella said, worrying at the skin that edged her thumbnail. When she realized what she was doing, she buried her hands in the frothy lace of her wrap. “I am certainly not afraid of him. He is just so