Page 69 of Not Quite a Lady
He could see the calculation plain on her face: to pursue the matter and risk a breach between them, or to yield when she felt so passionately that she was right.
He loved her for caring and wished her anywhere but here. Eventually, when he had come to terms with the loss, he could consider it more rationally. Now, all he wanted was to never have to think about Lily France again.
The sound of the heavy knocker thudding on oak had both of them turning towards the door.
‘Who on earth can that be?’ Caro puzzled. ‘It is scarcely half past ten. Who could be calling?’
‘Your suitor come to place his case before me?’ Jack teased, seeing an opportunity to get his own back.
But the voice at the front door was not that of the respectable Mr Willoughby with his slight Northumberland burr. It was female, decidedly Southern, clear and carrying.
‘No, I have come to see his lordship, not Lady Allerton. His lordship is not expecting me. My card.’
Caroline swung round to stare at him. ‘Is that–?
‘Lily.’It cannot be. I am dreaming. I must be.
Jack felt his fists clench and as they did so his biceps contracted, sending a stab of pain through his wounded arm. Oh no, this was no dream. This was real.
‘Jack.’ Caroline was tugging urgently at his sleeve. ‘Jack – you didn’t…there wasn’t anything which might have made her realise shehadto come...was there?’
His sister was blushing hotly and as her meaning sank in Jack felt his own colour rise too, guiltily.
Oh God yes, in my dreams. But not in fact. Not, thank God, in reality.
‘No,’ he replied bluntly, not even trying to pretend he misunderstood her.
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ Caroline flapped a hand in front of her hot face and opened the door. ‘Grimswade, his lordship is in the study.’
Lily looked around the great hall with its soaring beamed roof and tried not to gape like a yokel. Allerton Castle should not have been a shock – after all, she had seen the print of it.
But from the outside it just seemed unreal, something froma story book. It was only when the great oak doors had swung open to reveal a lugubrious butler and she had forced her shaking legs over the threshold, that it all ceased to be a fantasy and became hideously real.
Every morning on the journey following that evening in Stamford she had woken, determined to put the doubts and fears of the night before behind her and press on to do what she had set out for.
Now, surrounded by the faded evidence of generations of pride and ancestry every word of her carefully dignified speech fled.
‘I will ascertain whether Lady Allerton is at home, madam. Whom may I say is calling?’
The butler’s livery was ancient, the carpet he was standing on threadbare, but he regarded her with the air, she was convinced, of a man who could spot a cit at one hundred yards.
‘No, I have come to see his lordship, not Lady Allerton. His lordship is not expecting me. My card.’
She produced the rectangle of pasteboard from her reticule, suddenly seeing it for the over-ornate piece of design it was. Too much gilt edging, too fancy a script.
The butler managed not to sneer at it as he laid it on a silver salver. The centre bore an engraved crest, elusive from years of polishing. ‘If you will wait in…’
‘Grimswade, his lordship is in the study.’
Lily turned and saw a tall, slender young woman emerge from a door between two massive pieces of tapestry. She was plainly dressed, but she had a style which gave the gown its own elegance. As she moved into the light Lily was aware of a pleasing, heart-shaped face, dark hair and a pair of familiar deep grey eyes.
‘You have come to see my brother? I am Caroline Lovell, Lord Allerton’s sister. Refreshments in the front parlour please,Grimswade.’
Lily found herself swept into a room at least three times the size of anything she would have thought to describe by such a homely term asparlour.
‘Will you not sit down, Miss France? It is Miss France, is it not?’
‘Yes.’
