Rising from the bench before the dressing table, she picked up the lamp resting on the corner and carried it over to the small desk, with its four spindly legs, near the window. The draperies were pulled aside so she could scratch pen over paper, while periodically gazing out on the meadows through which she’d frolicked as a child.
After settling into the chair, she pulled a blank piece of foolscap from the stack before her, dipped her favorite pen in the inkwell, and then applied ink to paper.
My Secret Desires, Vol. II
Chapter One
TheGentleman Returns
Chapter 4
April 1870
Regina was a fool, a right fool, for having any hope at all the Earl of Knightly would keep his word to approach her in Hyde Park and, in so doing, slay all her misgivings and doubts about her father’s efforts to forge her a place within Society. Yet, there she was with her lady’s maid and confidante, Millie, in tow, promenading over the green as though she hadn’t just managed to survive—barely—the most uncomfortable afternoon.
Three gentlemen—the second son of a viscount, the third son of an earl, and the fifth son of a duke—had called upon her at different times and sat in the front parlor, their posture erect as they sipped tea, while Mrs. Dorsett, the woman her father had hired to serve as her chaperone, sat in a corner, the clacking of her rapidly moving knitting needles competing with the ticking of the large standing clock nestled against one wall.
It was a wonder Regina hadn’t lost her mind and run screaming from the residence.
She’d tried to be the proper and perfect hostess,to demonstrate her ability to come across as genteel, even under the most trying of circumstances.
Would you care for tea?
Yes, please.
Sugar?
Two lumps. Three lumps. Five lumps.
Did you enjoy the ball?
Quite. Immeasurably. Enormously.
Lovely weather today.
Indeed.
No April showers.
Silence.
They’d all been so frightfully serious and so remarkably dull. Not a smile among them. Nor much conversation either. And she imagined the meals they would share—should she marry one of them—being equally quiet, with one-word answers to any of her inquiries. She’d welcomed the escape from the residence, although enough land surrounded it that she could have walked—or run—for ages without meeting a soul. She was a glutton for punishment to come to the park. She’d received a few nods of acknowledgment but for the most part she’d been ignored.
“Where did this Lord Knightly state he would meet you?” Millie asked now.
“He didn’t. He merely said he’d find me.”
“He does realize how large Hyde Park is, does he not?”
Raising her wrist in order to check the time, she nudged the edge of her glove aside and lifted the floral covering of her wristlet watch, a gift from her father on her sixteenth birthday. “We’re a little early.He still has fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t show, well, we’ve spent a lovely hour walking about.” And being stared at.
“Is he as handsome as the gossip rags say?”
“Handsomer.” Dark brown hair that reminded her of the sable lining the inside of her favorite pelisse, brushed into a fashionable style that revealed his ears. His side whiskers were narrow and ventured no farther than the tips of his lobes. She much preferred his neatness to the mutton chops her father sported, which actually did resemble a cut of meat and she found terribly unsightly. Especially as he also had a heavy mustache joining the two sides, rather like a bridge across his face. But Arthur Pendragon—no, Arthur Pennington—didn’t need any sort of embellishments because his facial features had been sculpted by the gods and it would have been a sin for any of them to have been hidden beneath swaths of hair.
“Why, Miss Regina, I do believe you’re smitten. You barely said two words about him when I was readying you for bed last night following your ball, but now to hear that sigh in your voice—”
“There is no sigh in my voice. I’m not so foolish as to fall so quickly.”
