The Secret Mistress by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online Page B

by, Edward with his face averted lest she see and recognize him, there was a chorus of enthusiastic assent from the young men.
    It would seem, then, that her indiscreet behavior at the Rose and Crown was nothing unusual. How well did she know any of those men? She certainly had not arrived with any of them. And
someone
, it seemed, would be annoyed if he knew she was here alone. As well he might be, whoever he was, poor devil.
    Well,
this
time, Edward decided firmly, he was not going to get involved. If she did not know how to behave, and clearly she did not, it was not his concern—even if she did look slender and lithe and very much as though she might have been born in a saddle. And even if when she smiled she made one forget that it was not a bright, sunny morning.
    He felt rather hot and ruffled, he realized. What if she had seen him? She might have recognized him and hailed him. It would have been a ghastly breach of etiquette.
    “That,”
Ambrose said, having refrained from answering George’s question until they had moved past and out of earshot, “is a riding hat. At least, I assume it is since it is on the lady’s head. And if it were a bird’s nest, it would be infinitely more tidy, would it not?”
    He and George snorted with mirth.
    “A hat,” George said. “I do believe you are right, Ambie. Perhaps it would not be such a monstrosity if it were dry.”
    Edward had hardly noticed the hat the lady wore. But he was about to be given a second chance to observe it. There was the sudden thunder of hooves from behind them, and before they could move to one side or take any other defensive action, five horses and riders went galloping past at full tilt, spraying water and mud indiscriminately in all directions, except over themselves. And then a sixth a decent interval behind the others—the groom.
    Second in line was the only lady who had braved the weather this morning, whooping with joyful abandon and laughing with wild glee, just as if she had never in her life heard of feminine decorum—as perhaps she had not.
    Her hat, glorious in its profusion of multicolored feathers culled from birds long deceased, bounced on her head in time with her movements and somehow stayed on.
    It was perhaps the hat, Edward thought belatedly, that had caused him to mistake her at first for a courtesan.
    He glanced down at his mud-spattered buff riding breeches and black boots—both new just last week and immaculately clean this morning. He flicked one gloved finger over his cheek to dislodge something wet that clung there.
    “Who is she?” he asked, though he was not sure he wanted to know.
    But neither of his friends had seen her before.
    Edward really did not want to risk coming face-to-face with her, whoever she was.
    “It is time I returned home to get ready for the House,” he said.
    His stomach answered with a return of the slight queasiness. He turned his mount to leave Rotten Row.
    A whooping laugh blew past behind him together with a flying horse and rider. She was galloping back up the Row, Edward presumed without looking around to confirm his guess. It sounded as if she was leading the pack this time.
    He felt more spatters of mud pelting against the back of his coat.
    And then he sensed something and was unwise enough to turn his head.
    She had stopped her horse. She had done it so abruptly, it seemed, that it was rearing up. But she brought it under control with an ease that could only have been born of long practice. Her companions were thundering off into the distance, apart from the groom, who was altogether more vigilant.
    Her eyes were fixed upon Edward, wide with recognition. Her lips were parting in a smile.
    Oh, Lord!
    At any moment now she was going to hail him, and there was enough of a distance between them that at least a dozen other riders,
including his friends
, were bound to hear.
    Edward inclined his head curtly to her, touched his whip to the brim of his hat, and rode away.
    She did not call