The Ardent Lady Amelia Read Free Page B

acknowledged it to him or not,she did rather fancy herself useful in gathering information, and she had no intention of giving up her quietly adventurous life. There were things she heard that he wasn’t likely to hear, things that might have, and indeed on occasion had had, some bearing on England’s struggles with the French. Granted, she had uncovered no nefarious plots which would have undone her country, but she had been able to obtain tidbits of information that had proved useful.
    The way in which she obtained this information was not precisely as simple as she’d let on to Peter. But then, he wouldn’t have approved of her slightly unorthodox methods, so it was better he didn’t know. True, inevitably the gentlemen in question were decidedly foxed when they let their tongues run away with them, but they needed a little encouragement in the right direction. After all, they were more inclined to spout amorous bits of nonsense than details of renewed French preparations for an invasion.
    And one couldn’t just come out and ask if they happened to know anything about Napoleon’s plans. It was necessary to have them in the proper mood, and then show a great deal of bravado about how Napoleon would never dare to attack the English on their own soil, to get a rise out of someone. Most of the men she’d gotten in the proper mood hadn’t known the first thing about a French invasion, or anything else, for that matter.
    Lady Amelia stopped in front of the looking glass above her dressing table and considered her reflection for a moment. Her hair was dressed simply for a quiet Sunday at home, with none of the elaborate curls and falls she allowed Bridget to arrange when she was going out for the evening. Still, the honey-colored tresses looked perfectly acceptable, pulled back softly and arranged in a knot on the crown of her head. She released the pins and returned them to the red lacquer box on the table, letting her hair escape down over her shoulders. Loose, it looked even softer, brushing gently against her rosy cheeks, curling toward the hollow of her throat.
    Her mother’s hair had been much the same color. Amelia dropped to the velvet-covered stool and picked up the framed miniature that always sat facing her on the table. There was no miniature of her father, but a three-quarter-length portrait of him in the gallery, a copy of the one at Margrave, beside a matching one of his wife.
    Amelia could see other resemblances between herself and her mother, but she had inherited her father’s determined chin and ruddy coloring. Lady Welsford had been delicate, in her person and in her health. Amelia might have looked more like her if she hadn’t been so tall and sturdy. The violet eyes were the same, and the finely molded lips, but the configuration of the face was wholly different. Instead of her mother’s fragile beauty, Amelia had a more robust, wholesome appearance, which was perhaps no less striking, but it would never call forth the same sort of protective response the world at large had felt for Lady Welsford.
    Only they hadn’t been able to protect her. Not in the end. Amelia set down the miniature and picked up a hairbrush, drawing it vigorously though her long hair again and again. Sometimes it took total concentration to blot out the memory of her last view of her mother and father, both waving quite cheerfully from the other carriage. She could remember her own anxiety as she allowed Peter to assist her back into their carriage for the hurried drive to Calais. He had assured her, over and over, that their parents would be close behind them and that there was no reason to suspect any problem just because they were out of sight.
    It was a frantic time, especially so for a seventeen-year-old girl who had expected a pleasure trip to Paris with her family, and ended up alone with her brother on the packet boat back to England. She had insisted that they wait for the earl and countess, but he had said,