Page 3 of Romancing the Rifleman
It had been three years since she’d heard it, because he’d been away fighting with his regiment.
But that insouciant drawl belonged to her friends Lucy and Isabella’s older brother, Harrington Astley.She was sure of it.
Behind the curtain, she scarcely dared to breathe.Because shelikedHarrington Astley.Three years ago, she had arrived in London at the end of the Season, meaning that she’d only had a handful of conversations with him before the time had come to return to her brother’s country house in Cornwall.By the time the following Season had started, he had left London to join his regiment.
But those few conversations had been excellent ones.She remembered him as being handsome, charming, and wickedly funny.
A lump rose in her throat.Thanks to her arm, she was quite used to people whispering about her behind her back.She had thick skin because otherwise, she would not have survived.Cumberworth and Blachford had earned her ire by speaking about her in such disrespectful terms.But she was not broken up about it.
Yet she found that if Harrington Astley were to agree, were to join in their mockery, that would wound her in a way few men had the capacity to do.
She held her breath as Cumberworth confirmed that she had identified his voice correctly.“What the devil are you doing here, Astley?”
Chapter2
What the devil are you doing here, Astley?
It was the very question Harrington had been asking himself.
He’d spent the past six months on a deployment to Germany with his regiment, the 95thRifles.They had been part of a force tasked with reclaiming the king’s ancestral homeland of Hanover.It had started off well enough.Napoleon had been busy farther south dealing with Austria, so they marched right in, along with their Swedish and Russian allies.They’d proceeded to sit there, freezing their arses off, all through Christmas.
But then, they’d learned that Napoleon had crushed the Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz.Their Russian allies had promptly retreated home to lick their wounds.Meanwhile, it turned out Prussia had betrayed them all weeks ago, signing a secret treaty with France.The prize Napoleon had dangled before the Prussians was, of course, the electorate belonging to his enemy, the King of England—Hanover.
With no allies left standing but the Swedes, they’d had no choice but to flee back to the North Sea with the French dogging their heels.Harrington’s regiment had been tasked with performing a rearguard duty, an exhausting combination of obstructing their pursuers and fleeing for their lives.
His men had done a damn good job of it, if he said so himself.There had been vanishingly few casualties during the long retreat.Then they’d packed themselves onto ships and fled back to England.The exercise had been utterly pointless, but at least it had not resulted in a great loss of life.
And then last week, some bigwig over at Horse Guards had requested he come up to London to receive a special assignment, so here he was, at this fancy party.It was disorienting to be here, sipping champagne and dancing a cotillion, when mere weeks ago, he’d been covered in mud and had bullets whizzing past his head.
But his family had been overjoyed to see him.That part had been nice.He’d spent most of the evening in the billiards room with his brother, Edward, and his friends Henry Greville and Peter Ferguson.Henry was a father now, if you could countenance it.He was married to Harrington’s sister, Caro, who’d given birth to a baby girl late last year.They’d named her Georgiana after Caro and Harrington’s mother.
He’d been heading back to the billiards room after a trip to the necessary when he heard voices coming from Lord Richford’s library.He’d naturally stopped to eavesdrop, and that was when he heard it.
“I still say you should set your sights on Lady Lucy.I mean, what about…?You know.Herarm?”
That got Harrington’s attention, first, because his sister happened to be a Lady Lucy, and precisely the sort of young lady men set their sights on—sweet, pretty, and rich.
It took a few seconds for the rest of the sentence to sink in.Lucy’s particular friend, Lady Diana Latimer, had been born missing a hand.
Lucy and Diana were surely the pair of young ladies under discussion.
Quietly, he stole up to the door, pressing his ear against a wooden panel.
“I don’t give a damn about her arm,” someone else replied.“The real problem is that she’s such a bitch.”
What the devil?First off, that wasn’t the sort of thing one said about a lady.
But it wasn’t even right.Diana Latimer wasn’t a bitch.To be sure, she didn’t suffer fools, and it was more than apparent that these were a couple of clowns.If they’d fared poorly with Lady Diana, Harrington was fairly certain it was their own damn fault.
The first man spoke again.“But what about that brother of hers?He’s a damned good fencer.And he seems like the type who wouldn’t hesitate to run you through.”
He wasn’t wrong.Lady Diana’s older brother, Marcus, the Duke of Trevissick, was very much the running-you-through sort, and he was fiercely overprotective where his little sister was concerned.
He also happened to hate Harrington with a rare fervor, although that was neither here nor there.Considering how many schoolboy pranks Harrington had pulled on the duke during their days at Eton, it was a wonder he hadn’t been run through by Marcus Latimer years ago.
The other idiot spoke again.“You have to be careful in how you do it.The trick is to avoid the arms, face, and any other place someone might see a bruise.”
“But won’t she just tell him?”his companion asked.
