Gallant Waif by Anne Gracie (the alpha prince and his bride full story free .txt) 📗

Jack groaned and clenched his fist. There was a snap as his glass shattered in his hand. Francis sat up, exclaiming at the blood dripping from Jack’s fingers. Jack waved him aside impatiently.

“Going to London,” he said. “Can’t leave her to think that— Oh, shut up, Francis, what’s a damned scratch? I’m off to London in the morning. Are you coming with me or not?”

“Oh, absolutely, old man, absolutely.”

Chapter Sixteen

Your young protégée seems to be doin’ rather well, Maudie.”

“Thank you, Gussie,” replied Lady Cahill. “I couldn’t be more pleased with her if she was my own daughter.”

Lady Cahill and several of her cronies were doing what they called “taking tea and cakes’. The tea trolley was laden with dainty cakes and elegant little savouries. Steam curled languidly from the spout of the teapot, and each lady sipped delicately from a fine eggshell-thin teacup. The sherry decanter was half empty.

“Charmin’ gel, quite charmin’.” The speaker, wearing an enormous feathered turban, reached for a fourth crab-and-asparagus patty.

Lady Cahill beamed. Kate had taken to her new life like a duck to water, hadn’t put a foot wrong. Lady Cahill had, at first, been rather anxious lest Kate reveal herself as a true scholar’s daughter—it would be fatal for her to gain a reputation as a bluestocking.

However, to Lady Cahill’s pleased surprise, Kate had proved to be almost as delightfully ignorant as any anxious sponsor would wish her protégée to be. She seemed to take more pleasure in a visit to the Pantheon Bazaar or Astley’s Amphitheatre than she did in an afternoon at the British Museum or a viewing of the archaeological sensation, Lord Elgin’s Marbles. She knew nothing of famous thinkers, writers or philosophers. Her conversation was not weighted with dull pronouncements from weighty tomes, and she was in no danger of frightening gentlemen by spouting screeds of poetry at them. It seemed that the only topics on which Kate was knowledgeable were horses and the Peninsular War—and since the ton was full of horse-mad military gentlemen that was not held to be a disadvantage.

Lady Cahill basked in her protégée’s praise.

“A sensible, well-bred, pretty-behaved gel, Maudie. Poor Maria would have been delighted to see how charmingly her daughter has turned out.”

The others nodded.

Kate’s success was only to be expected, Lady Cahill told herself complacently. Kate was a sociable girl, and a sympathetic listener. Moreover, a life of ordering her father’s household and her experience of having had to adapt to extraordinary conditions had given her an indefinable air of assurance, taken by many to be a sign of good breeding.

And, from having spent most of her life in male company from all walks of life, she was neither shy nor coy nor odiously missish with the London gentlemen she met. She seemed to listen as happily to the dull military pronouncements of an elderly general as to the stammering confidences of a young man in his first season or the practised compliments of a rake.

Lady Cahill’s granddaughter, Amelia, had introduced Kate to her more dashing set, made up largely of young fashionable matrons. They had noted her elegant, modish appearance, her mischievous sense of humour, her quick wit and her complete lack of interest in their husbands, and pronounced her to be a sweet and charming girl.

*   *    *

“Very popular with the soldier laddies,” said one elderly lady waspishly, holding out her teacup to be refilled.

“And you know why, Ginny Holton, so you need not sneer!” snapped Lady Courtney. “You know perfectly well what that dear sweet girl did for my Gilbert.”

The others nodded. Lady Courtney’s grandson, Gilbert, had barely set a foot outside his home, until Miss Farleigh had teased him into going about in society with her, apparently oblivious of the awkwardness of his missing arm and the ominous black eyepatch.

“Told him he looked like a wonderfully sinister pirate and that it would help protect her from unwanted attention.” Lady Courtney wiped her eyes.

“And then she told him that he must not blame her if they were mobbed by young ladies because he looked quite disgustingly romantic, and, while she knew him to be odiously stuffy, other girls were not as discriminating as she… And he laughed—my boy actually laughed—and consented to take her out. He hasn’t looked back since.”

“Yes, shame on you, Ginny,” agreed another elderly lady. “If Maudie’s Kate is popular with military gentlemen, it is not to be wondered at. You are only being uncharitable because your Chloe is without even a sniff of an offer! A pity to be sure, but no reason to snipe at others!”

It was true. Kate’s unselfconscious attention to the wounded had done her no disservice in the eyes of the more fortunate of the military. The polite world soon noted that little Miss Farleigh had a court of large, protective gentlemen, led by Mr Lennox, and Sir Toby Fenwick and other military types, who seemed equally delighted to fetch her a glass of ratafia, escort her to the opera, take her driving in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour or depress the pretensions of any too assiduous suitors.

There were many of these, as word of her inheritance had leaked out. She was being courted by several gazetted fortune hunters, as well as men of substance and position.

Lady Cahill sat back in her chair as the talk turned to more general topics. She was almost satisfied. One factor, however, was missing from the equation. She hoped he would bestir himself soon and get himself to London before Kate was snapped up by some fashionable fribble who didn’t deserve her.

“What do you think of this, miss?” The maid held an elegant spray of artificial flowers to Kate’s hair and looked enquiringly at her new mistress in the mirror.

Kate stared. She almost didn’t recognise herself. Her hair had been cropped in the latest style and feathered curls clustered round her face, doing amazing things to her appearance, things Kate would never have dreamed possible. For the first time in her