A Most Unconventional Courtship. Louise AllenЧитать онлайн книгу.

      By the afternoon of the next day Chance was feeling not the slightest inclination to go anywhere. The Lord High Commissioner had announced that he must be accommodated within the Residency so that his personal physician could attend upon him, and as a result Roberts the footman had assisted him to a comfortable wicker chair in the shaded cloister of the inner courtyard.

      With a footrest, a pile of cushions, a table at his side for journals and refreshments, a walking stick and a bell, Chance allowed himself to sink into unfamiliar indolence. He lazily considered that he probably resembled nothing so much as a valetudinarian colonel taking the spa waters at some resort, but really could not summon the energy to care.

      Doctor Pyke assured him it was simply the after-effects of a blow to the head. Chance thought it more likely to be the reaction to a halt to his travels for the first time in months. His every need was being taken care of, there were no decisions to be made, no unfamiliar cities or uncertain modes of transport to be negotiated, no servants to hire.

      He had set out four months previously, suddenly restless at the realisation that, with the war with France at last over, this was the moment to travel before doing his duty, finding a suitable wife and settling down. Not that he had been leading a life of irresponsibility and excess. Chance was used to hearing himself described by his various fond female relatives as a paragon of domestic virtues, an ideal son and a wonderful brother.

      The praise amused him, but he would have thought less of himself if he led them to believe anything different. A gentleman could manage his private life discreetly, and he had a duty to his womenfolk to care for them. He turned over the closely crossed page of one of the letters that had been awaiting him when he arrived.

      Mr Tarleton is proving ideal, as I knew he would, you having chosen him. Such a tower of strength over every matter small or large! And he has explained the correspondence from the estates and sat with me when Mr Crisp came with those papers about the sale of the pasture…His mother continued with her praises of the secretary he had appointed before he set out on his tour, in addition to the battery of advisors and agents at her beck and call.

      Chance did not expect Lady Blakeney to concern herself with, let alone understand, the business of the estate, nor that she, or his three sisters, should have to trouble themselves with anything beyond their domestic sphere. That was as it should be and he would never have left if he had any doubts about the arrangements.

      I do hope that you are looking after yourself (three times underlined) and wearing wool next to the skin at all times. Also that you are avoiding foreign food—he was not quite sure how she expected him to accomplish that—and the dreadful temptations and lures that one hears these foreign cities place before English travellers. Chance grinned. He could recognise a sharp wherever he met one—and between Paris, Marseilles, Rome and Naples he had met plenty—and he had admired, but resisted, the lures thrown out to him by an exotic assortment of barques of frailty.

      He was well aware that his family regarded him as immune from the dreadful things they heard about in London society: and that too was right and proper. It simply meant that one enjoyed oneself with discretion and without excess; ladies did not have to know about such matters.

      He read to the end, noted that his own letters were reaching home in an order wildly different from that he had sent them in, and lay back, brooding on the news that Lucinda, his middle sister, aged seventeen, was apparently becoming attached to young Lakenheath. His mother found that worrying. Chance, beyond wondering why Lucy inevitably fell in love with unsuitable young men who fancied themselves as poets, was less concerned. It wouldn’t last, not beyond Lucy encountering the formidable Dowager Lady Lakenheath. He decided against offering any advice to his mother on the subject.

      Which left him with nothing to think about but his own affairs, which honesty forced him to acknowledge he had been avoiding doing for twenty-four hours. Specifically Alessa. Not that anyone would consider that she was his affair. Thank goodness. He tried to put some feeling into that pious conclusion and failed. But to his mind she was very much unfinished business, and he was damned if he knew what to do about her.

      She had saved him from the consequences of his own recklessness, looked after him—and in return he had insulted her about as badly as it was possible to insult a lady. But she presented herself not as a lady, but as an herb woman who took in washing. Which meant she should be treated with the courtesy due to all her sex and recompensed financially.

      Chance shifted without thinking, swore at the pain, and forced himself to confront the problem. Alessa was a mystery, and, whoever she was, she was certainly not simply a Corfiot widow running a couple of business ventures to support her children. She was English. Put her into a fashionable gown, suppress her independence of speech and she could pass, very convincingly, in society. However, she had ended up in the back streets of this town, she did not belong here and something ought to be done about it.

      He shifted position again, almost welcoming the warning stab from his ankle as an antidote to the almost equally uncomfortable stab of lust that thinking about Alessa provoked. Lust and liking. The soft pad of footsteps approaching the courtyard came as a timely distraction, then he saw the sway of black skirts in the shade of the arcade opposite the one under which he was sitting, the crisp white of a full-sleeved blouse catching the sunlight, the tall, graceful figure carrying a laden basket. ‘Alessa.’

      He spoke as she vanished through a door without glancing in his direction, and he realised he had pitched his voice as though speaking to himself, as though she was a dream.