Lady Madeline's Folly Read Free Page A

the opposite sex.
    She smiled with satisfaction. “Do have a seat, Mr. Aldred, and let us become acquainted. Such a pity we cousins grow up with never a peek at each other. It is always interesting to meet grown cousins for the first time, isn’t it?”
    “Not always so interesting as on this occasion,” he replied with a gallant smile, as he accompanied her to the settee. He waited till she had arranged her skirts before joining her.
    “Would you care for some coffee?” she asked. “I can see by your cheeks, and hear from that howling wind, that it is deuced cold out.”
    She judged correctly that the fleeting rise of his brow was caused by her using the word deuced. She enjoyed to shock provincial friends with her city expressions.
    “Thank you. That would be lovely. The fire looks tempting. Would you mind if I go to warm my hands?”
    “Not at all. We’ll sit closer to it, shall we?” She purposely walked a pace behind him, to observe him from the back. The shoulders were a little too padded, the waist nipped in more tightly than was fashionable. The hair too was cut shorter than that being worn by the urban bucks.
    These details were not only acceptable but welcome. There was no point in having a protégé if she could not help him, point out the little improvements, add the refining touches. Already it had darted into her mind that he would make an interesting protégé. The boots, she was happy to see, were unexceptionable. Much could be judged by a man’s boots.
    “Papa tells me you are putting up with a friend,” she went on, in a spirit of conversational small talk that hid her rampant interest in him. “Would I be likely to know him?” She sat on one fireside chair, Henry on the other facing it.
    “So he tells me,” Aldred replied. “Taffy Barker, a friend from my university days. He says all of London knows Lady Madeline, and admires her.” There was a glint of a smile in his eyes, a hint of admiration. He looked around the room as he finished his speech. The room too pleased him. It matched the woman—elegant, rich, good taste. He had learned that the correct method of proceeding was not to mention these things, however. To draw attention to them would imply a lack of familiarity. “How cozy this is,” he said when he had finished his examination of the spacious chamber.
    “Yes, we hardly use the larger rooms once the cold weather hits us. Taffy Barker, you say.” Unexceptionable! To hear too that her cousin had been to university was encouraging. “That would be Oxford then, if I am not mistaken?”
    “Yes, we were at Christ Church together a few years ago, and have kept up the acquaintance since, mostly through correspondence, but Taffy has also been to my home to visit me. It was his idea that I come to London.”
    “Is it to be more than a visit?” she queried, already knowing it was so.
    “Yes, I am looking for a position. I am only a younger son, you must know, but I did not come here asking for help. I came to pay my family’s respects to you and your father. Lord Fordwich is out, I take it?”
    “Papa will not likely be home at all today. The prince regent has come back to town, you see.”
    “Oh,” he answered blankly. “Your father is a good friend of the prince, is he?”
    “Good God, no! Especially not at this time!”
    “What is special about this time?” he asked.
    Before long, Mr. Aldred was hearing about the likelihood of the prince unseating the Tory party, and putting a Whig government in to rule instead.
    “You seem very much interested in politics,” he mentioned after a little talk.
    “We live, eat, breathe, and sleep politics in this house, Cousin,” she admitted readily. “But enough talk of me. What sort of work will you be looking for?”
    “It is embarrassing to admit that after my years of university, I have not the least notion,” he confessed. “I would have been wiser perhaps to have taken Holy Orders, or studied for some profession—the