Lady Hathaway's House Party Read Free Page A

of that unholy London crew. But she’d wanted a season, and her mama would have wanted it for her. Had always regretted she hadn’t had one herself.
    Still, her mama had done better than Arnold Henderson without benefit of a season, he thought contentedly. Arnold hadn’t been good enough for Belle before she became a duchess; it was odd beyond reason that he was looked upon with favor now. Before Belle went away to the city and became sophisticated she hadn’t looked twice at him, but when she came back two months later she’d changed.
    The wide-eyed hopeful look was gone from her brown eyes. Of course, her rowdy brown curls were tamed down too, and her dress fancier, but that hadn’t been the real change. She’d become different. Colder, indifferent. Donald was only a father, and couldn’t quite put his finger on the change, but it was there and he didn’t like it. She didn’t laugh as much, or sing, or hardly ever run anymore. She used to be a great tomboy, running around the yards like a young colt—but of course he was harking back a few years, when she’d been fourteen or fifteen. He supposed in some vague way that her being a duchess made such behavior ineligible now, but she wasn’t such a stiff, proper little lady when the duke had met her, and fallen in love with her, and married her.
    The man must have jawed the life out of her. Likely that was why she made those oblique remarks about Arnold being easy to live with. Belle wouldn’t like someone always pinching at her. He’d never done it himself, and in the ten years that her mama had been gone, no one else had corrected her much either. He would have been happy to see the old Belle back, but there was no sign of Arnold effecting the change. She was cool and citified with him too. He shook his grizzled head in puzzlement.
    Mr. Henderson’s plain black carriage pulled up to the house, and Belle arose to join him, without waiting for him to enter. She didn’t dash out to meet him, as she used to do with her beaux, but strolled resignedly to the door, as though she were on her way to her execution. “I’ll be home soon, Papa,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Be good.”
    “You be good too,” he adjured playfully.
    “Don’t worry. I will.”
    “Yes, you’re with Arnold,” Sir Donald answered, and there was something akin to regret in his words.
    It was a long drive to Ashbourne. Long enough to occasion a stop for lunch and a change of horses. Arnold, with his usual foresight, had sent a team ahead to await them, and he would pick up this team on the way back. All these plans had been talked over with Belle. It was the sort of conversation they had with each other—mundane, practical, with occasionally little timid attempts at lovemaking. Very timid. So different from Oliver. Never mind, that was what she liked about him, that he was different from her husband.
    Belle found her heart beating a little faster to be going again amongst her London friends. She didn’t know who would be there, but at Lady Hathaway’s house, one did not expect to meet only provincials. Arnold—a cousin of Lady Hathaway’s husband—and she would be the closest thing to country folks, and she was asked herself as Avondale’s wife.
    Now that she was actually on her way, she found herself looking forward to the visit with some pleasure. The winter had been long and very dull, and the spring with all of nature stirring around her had awakened some latent desire to come alive again. Every time she walked in the meadow and saw the trees budding and the flowers opening, she felt this sense of urgency to start living. Just as she had always felt it when she was young. Just as she had felt last year, and what a thrill it had been to be getting to London.
    She had thought she would never feel it again. All the winter long she had dreaded spring, and the memories it must inevitably bring, but now that it was here, and she was getting out of her shell, she