Miss Armistead Makes Her Choice

  Miss Armistead

  Makes Her Choice

  A Miss Delacourt

  Adventure

  Heidi Ashworth

  Text Copyright © Heidi Ashworth, 2014

  Dunhaven Place Publishing

  Cover design by Laura J Miller

  www.anauthorsart.com

  By the same author:

  Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind

  Miss Delacourt Has Her Day

  Lady Crenshaw’s Christmas

  The Lord Who Sneered and Other Tales: A Regency Holiday Anthology

  A Timeless Romance Anthology: Winter Collection: It Happened Twelfth Night

  To my husband, the triumphant

  participant of all three

  love triangles I experienced

  prior to our marriage.

  Therein lies my inspiration.

  And to Sophie Andrews—she knows why.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter One

  England May 1815

  It was fortuitous that Mr. Colin Lloyd-Jones chose to lift his gaze from the pavement at the very moment a matron emerged from her carriage to recklessly step out into his path. The London season had barely begun and Colin was already the injured party in one too many irrevocable tragedies; a collision with said matron should hardly improve his circumstances.

  “I beg your pardon, Madame,” he said as he thrust his walking stick in the path of his companion, a gorgeously attired young gentleman who, like Colin, was lost in the mental fog of a broken heart. In a graceless but noble action unacknowledged by the matron, the twosome came to an ungainly halt only to be peered at through a pair of thick spectacles in a manner most rude.

  “I must confess,” his companion bemoaned with a minor adjustment to his faultless cravat, “I have never felt quite so much like an exhibit at the Tower Menagerie.”

  Colin had his own thoughts on the subject. However, he was forced to delay his riposte so as to rescue the lady from a nasty fall as she caught her kid boot on the threshold to the milliner’s shop. Once again, she failed to greet the gesture with even so much as a “good day.”

  “Bond is meant to be utterly void of the fair sex for the duration of late afternoon,” Colin observed. “A man has a right to be availed of the opportunity to stroll down the street without women cluttering up the pavement,” he added a bit crossly.

  “To be sure, you are quite correct, mon ami,” Sir Anthony Crenshaw, agreed. “But, pray, do not suggest we eschew Bond Street as thoroughly as we have agreed to obviate the balls and routs of the entire season. We shall be sadly ignorant as to how to place our bets at White’s. How might we hope to know who is the loveliest debutante, or which among them shall prove most popular, as well as most likely to be first betrothed, if we are utterly unenlightened as to who is in town?”

  Colin opened his mouth to reply, but his attention was abruptly borne away by the sight of a young maiden’s face as it appeared at the door of the carriage. She was breathtaking, her heart-shaped face possessed of a pair of large, impossibly green eyes set off by arched brows, black as the hair that curled along her temples.

  “If you have had your fill,” Sir Anthony drawled, “you had best look away. You are utterly defenseless in the face of such beauty.”

  As much as the accusation stung, Colin knew it to be just. Quickly, he averted his eyes; there was no point in avoiding the Marriage Mart with all of its balls and soirees if he were to fall head over heels in love with the first new young lady to town since he broke off his engagement with one Miss Cecily Ponsonby.

  “I had thought you as eager to stave off parson’s mousetrap as I, Tony,” Colin accused, unable to resist the return of tit for tat. “Yet you smile at her as if she were the only girl in England.” He spoke in tones low enough to prevent his words from coming to the ears of the black-haired beauty as she descended from the carriage and rushed past them with a curious look from her vivid green eyes.

  “I am merely considering my bets,” Sir Anthony murmured, as a second young lady, this one possessed of a head of thick, blonde curls very reminiscent of his erstwhile bride-to-be, descended from the carriage to enter the shop. “Besides, I have had years to recover from my heartless wench whilst you have had less than a fortnight.”

  “Perhaps we ought to forswear betting on the outcome of this season as well as the enjoyment of its convivialities, Tony,” Colin suggested as they headed down the street in pursuit of a round of boxing at Gentleman Jackson’s establishment. “We should hardly be expected to get it right whilst avoiding the subject, altogether.”

  Sir Anthony looked his horror. “No balls, no routs, no parties or soirees; what else is there to do, Jonesy, if we cannot, at the very least, bet?”

  Colin brushed aside the tug he felt at his back, the one that insisted he turn about and enter the shop containing the green-eyed beauty under the pretense of purchasing a pair of gloves for his sister. “Why, there is riding, hunting, shooting, gambling, and boxing, naturally,” Colin replied with a gesture that indicated they had arrived at their destination. “However, am I right in thinking you are hesitant to enter?”

  Sir Anthony failed to reply though his glance down the street in the direction of the waiting carriage confirmed Colin’s suspicions. “You only admire her because she puts you in mind of Rebecca,” Colin admonished. “However, I am persuaded she is a finer young lady than Rebecca ever was.”

  “Everyone is a finer young lady than Rebecca ever was,” Sir Anthony replied, “except perhaps your Cecily.”

  “There, now, you needn’t twist the knife in my back,” Colin retorted. “She is not my Cecily. If that scallywag Rogers-Reimann is to be believed, she is presently Trevelin’s difficulty.”

  Sir Anthony raised his looking glass to his eye through which he observed his friend. “Do I detect a reluctance to fully trust the word of said scallywag?”

  “He is hardly the epitome of virtue, I confess,” Colin replied grudgingly. “Still, it is not worth the risk. Her reputation is in tatters, either way, and so would mine be if we were to don leg-shackles. My father, when he heard of it, refused to hear another word. In short, the subject of our marriage was closed. When he informed my stepmother of what had transpired, she locked herself in her room for the better part of a week. As to my sister . . ” Colin added, pausing to consider his words. He was inordinately fond of his sister and did not wish to overstate the case. “My sister has her come-out this year and her marriage prospects would have been sadly reduced should I, in spite of everything, have wed Cecily.”

  “And what of yourself, Jonesy?” Sir Anthony quizzed. “Do you not think it best to have learned the truth before it was too late?”

  “Yes, to be sure! But you know as well as any that to find you are not the one to which your betrothed has given herself is a painful prospect, whether the giving occurred before or after the betrothal was announced in the papers.”

  “You discredit yourself, Jonesy; I was given to understand that the, er, giving, occurred a number of years ago.” Sir Anthony sighed and patted his friend on the back. “Either way, it is a painful prospect, indeed. Is Trevelin to do the right thing by the girl, then?”

  “I should say not,” Colin rasped with a jab of his cane into th
e air. “Worse yet, it is said that her father has disowned her and that she is living on her own with no visible means of support. I hope to God it isn’t true,” he added under his breath.

  “Either way, the fault is to be laid in Trevelin’s dish, not yours. What’s more, the chit passed herself off as unsullied. For all you know, five months after the wedding, you should have been presented with an ‘heir’. Then where should you be?”

  Colin rubbed a hand over his face. “You are right, Tony, no doubting. I only wish her character had been otherwise; either that, or my circumstances. If only I had never fancied myself in love with her,” he ground out.

  “Now, you mustn’t go down that road,” Sir Anthony implored as he took his friend by the shoulders and steered him into Jackson’s. “A few punches in the phiz will clear your head and pain you considerably less.”

  Colin allowed himself to be pressed into a bout though he remained unconvinced it would be in the least beneficial. As such, he was amazed by how much the pain in his face assuaged his aching heart. His mood was most improved, however, by the fist he landed on his friend’s perfect nose. In spite of Sir Anthony’s incipient rage, they quit Jackson’s in perfect amity.

  “Same time tomorrow, then, Tony?” Colin asked.

  “Perhaps we had best make it day after next,” Sir Anthony suggested as he took his nose gingerly between his fingers. “Once this proboscis swells as it is meant to, it will make far too ready a target.”

  “‘Tis swollen already, Tony, just like your head,” Colin quipped as he tipped his hat to his friend and walked briskly down the street. It wasn’t until he reached the milliner’s establishment into which the raven-haired beauty had earlier disappeared that he realized he had forgotten her entirely. Quick as a flash he calculated the likelihood that she would be first betrothed during the course of the Season but owned that he could not give her odds a full one hundred percent without first knowing the depth of her dowry or the ascendency of her ancestors.

  He finally settled on ninety-nine percent, a number that was owed almost entirely to her beauty, in the case she was an orphan of indeterminate parentage. However, he resolved to discover the facts before placing his bet in the book at White’s.

  As he stepped down the street in the direction of home, he suddenly recalled home was now in the other direction as he had, upon his betrothal, quit his father’s establishment in favor of a lease on a townhouse. Miss Cecily Ponsonby had been by his side when the neighborhood was chosen, as well as the house itself, and lastly the furnishings and the decorations. His heart squeezed painfully as he realized she had willingly fitted his house, knowing all the while she was not fit to be his bride.

  Though he would have much preferred to go home and take solace in the company of his sister, he spun on his heel and strode to the new house. Having watched for his master’s approach through the bow front window, the butler swung wide the door for Colin’s entrance. He felt he ought to have been gratified by the obsequious actions of this new and scarcely tried servant, but there was room for no other feeling in Colin’s soul but regret.

  He whipped off his hat and gloves, dropped them into the butler’s hands, and moved swiftly into the ground floor library to throw himself into his seat by the fire. The wing backed chair was one of a pair in a floral pattern chosen by Cecily, and he was filled with remorse that he had allowed a woman to choose the decor for a room as sacred as his private sanctum. He entirely regretted the chairs, the too-fussy drapes at the bank of windows, and the carved carpet adorned with birds bearing fanciful, impossibly long tails. Most of all he regretted that he had fallen in love with Cecily; that he had ever laid eyes on her; that he yet lived.

  A quarter of an hour passed in a state of deep despondency until, finally, he decided he was too young for such bitterness and too ravenous to die. He rang the bell for the butler whom he instructed to serve supper on a tray brought to the library as he was in no mood to take his meal in the dining room. It was currently adorned with lavender wallpaper hung all around with landscapes of flower gardens and it never failed to make him bilious. The very thought led him to assign the making of plans to redecorate the entire house his first order of business on the morrow.

  He hadn’t long to further reflect on his woes before the door was opened by the butler, the promised dinner tray conspicuously absent.

  “If you presume you might cajole me into repairing to the dining room, you are quite mistaken,” Colin began, but was robbed of further speech when the butler stepped aside to reveal the very young lady with the jet black hair and emerald green eyes he had first seen on Bond Street not two hours since. He stared at her in some astonishment and fancied that her answering surprise was as artful as was the way she twisted her hands about in her muff.

  “Sir, you must beg my pardon for I knew not what else to do. My mother would have had me march down Bond Street to seek help and it already well into the afternoon. I fear I should have been assumed a woman of questionable morals were I seen on the street at such a time.” With a sweep of long, black lashes, she trained her gaze at the floor. “I must ask pardon for my mother. She has been in India for so long, she has forgotten the ways of London.”

  As the girl’s voice trailed into silence Colin had but one thought: no woman could be as fair of face and form as she and be possessed of such upright sensibilities. He knew it was the pain of Cecily’s betrayal that hardened his heart but he felt powerless to allow his opinion to soften towards the young lady at his door.

  “And you have remembered what your mother has not?” he queried as he rose warily to his feet.

  “I have been in England more recently,” she replied, looking up to squarely meet his gaze. “I enjoyed my come-out in London four years ago under the auspices of my aunt.”

  “Ah.” He picked up a branch of candles and held them up so as to better inspect his visitor. Surely, if this girl had had a London season, she should have been quickly snaffled. Yet he detected no telling lump under her glove to signify a wedding band and there was a decided lack of lace cap under the smart bonnet she wore. “What help, then, do you seek Miss . . ?”

  “Miss Armistead.” She regarded him steadily from her inconceivably green eyes. “My father is John Armistead of the East India Company.”

  Colin caught his breath before it hissed out between his teeth. “Daughter of a nabob are you?” he suggested, though he hardly dared think it to be true. Beautiful, good and rich? Such a possibility required too much of his trust.

  “Perhaps I might explain,” the butler intoned. “One of their team has thrown a shoe in the road just in front of the house.”

  This time Colin felt his astonishment in full. Did she think him fool enough to believe that a second encounter in as many hours was naught but coincidence? That she and her mother had followed him home after spying on him through the window of the milliner’s was blatant. What they wanted of him, he had no idea, but he had been used by a woman once too often, already. “Could not the groom have walked the horse to a stables?” he asked, far too tersely to be deemed polite.

  The girl’s face crumpled a bit, but she quickly regained command of herself. “He was most willing to do so but Mama refused to allow him to desert her. When I parted from Miss Hale—my friend who has come to London with us from Bengal—she was suffering from a fit of the vapors and Mama, who feels London to be a very wicked place indeed, was not far from it.”

  Colin made no reply. Instead, he held the candles even higher to peer into her eyes as if in search of a truth she refused to utter.

  “Sir!” the girl insisted. “There are two women suffering palpitations in the road before your very door and you trouble me with questions. Is it not enough to know that three females are in need of your protection?”

  “Yes, of course,” Colin acknowledged, his feelings a distressing muddle of doubt and shame. “Evans, have the boot boy take the horse in hand and invite Mrs. Armistead and . . Miss Hale, is it?” he asked
with a questioning look for Miss Armistead who stood with such an admirable lack of temerity in his library. She nodded and he continued. “Ah! Invite them to come and join us here by the fire until the horse is properly shod.” He waved a hand at one of the wing chairs to indicate that she should be seated.

  “Thank you,” she said as she moved to the chair with a grace that was not in the least diminished by her haste. He felt, once again, shamed as he realized how he had forced her to stand in the chill draft of the doorway far too long.

  “Pray tell, by whose fire do I warm myself?” she inquired.

  “I do beg your pardon, Miss Armistead,” he replied, feeling thoroughly humbled for the third time in far too short a space of time. “I am Mr. Colin Lloyd-Jones, not to be confused with Mr. Lloyd-Jones, my father.” He knew he ought to say more, but he hadn’t the least idea what that should be. His thoughts were divided upon the subjects of her admirable poise and how the flames reflected in her glossy black curls, all the while wholly aware that these were topics of conversation to be avoided at all costs.

  “I pray I do not in any way inconvenience Mrs. Lloyd-Jones,” Miss Armistead ventured as she peeled off her gloves and raised her hands to the fire. When he did not immediately answer, she turned to bestow on him a smile, one which ignited her entire countenance with an even greater beauty.

  As he replaced the candelabra and took up a seat across from her, he wondered yet again how such a diamond of the first water had not been spoken for during her London season or how he had failed to notice her at the time. Worse, he couldn’t begin to fathom what fearful occurrence prevented her from making a sparkling match long since. Her desperation was clearly evident in the way she had pounded on his door in the dusk of evening in an overt attempt to scheme her way into marriage with him. Now she was asking, oh so delicately, if there were a Mrs. Lloyd-Jones. The whole of it was utterly mystifying.

  “Sir, I beg your pardon,” she murmured, her eyes wide with what looked to be apprehension. “I am persuaded I have misspoken. Pray, forgive my impudence.”