CHAPTER TWENTY
“Even in her own carriage, a young lady should be reserved, her attitude always modest, easy and unaffected.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
“Hanover,” Hugh snapped to the coachman. “And make it brisk.”
The hackney lurched into motion while he seethed.
Not a moment ago, Amelia had sauntered from the Prince’s gambling hell with dishevelled chignon and buttons unfastened at her throat.Threebuttons.
“Well?” he all but snarled.
Amelia settled into the opposite squabs. Night had now fallen and the dim lantern flickered with the movement of the carriage. “Your mood seems rather…agitated.”
He was not agitated. He was roiling like a molten pit of Hades.
“I cannot believe,” he growled, “that you…you…cavorted with that terse, surly, sly-booted, crabby, numb-skulled…”
“Oh, come now, Hugh.” She tutted. “I’ll give you the rest but not numb-skulled. He’s most intelligent.”
“Seedy, squalid, hell-bound, rum-faced…”
“And quite handsome if you look beyond the pitiless eyes.”
“Perverse, raddled, immoral, mutton mongering…”
“And Prince has never been a mutton monger. He didn’t so much as lay a finger on me.”
“Unscrupulous, hugger-mugger…” Hugh paused as her last words penetrated his ire. “What?”
“He didn’t touch me. I ruffled my hair and undid another button purely to see your reaction.”
Hugh inhaled so deeply he swore he could smell the sea. “You malapert of a minx. I should take you over my knee.” That threat did him no good whatsoever and Hugh folded his arms. The thought of the Prince laying a finger on Amelia had induced a green rage of possessiveness that he never knew lay within him. “Did you get the information, then?”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “No debts or bargains or deals. I count myself as a friend to him, although I’m not sure it’s reciprocated.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have listened?” Her lashes lowered. “So keen were you to protect me.”
With a grunt, Hugh unfolded his arms. “Would you be so good as to share the information he gave you?”
Amelia did so, which led Hugh to recall the lavender-scented cloaked lady in The Bowl so long ago. Had that been Lady Twyford? Shemustbe their Lady T. But was Sir Edmund complicit in all this?
At last, they were getting somewhere, and he tapped his boot, impatient to continue but also burning with the need to ask…
“So tell me how it is, for Lucifer’s sake, that you count the Prince as a…friend?”
“How long have we till Hanover?”
He peered out the window. The streetlamps had been lit, casting the pavement to blots of yellow, but he could discern the carriage was halfway down Regent Street, a mile or so from the Square, but this was London so there was bound to be unfinished cobbleworks…
“A fair while.”
“In that case…” She clasped her hands. “When I was seventeen, a mere two years older than Phoebe, my mama came home one night from the theatre, full of joy but with a headache. The next day, it had worsened. The doctor came and bled her. She became feverish. He bled her again. And then…” Amelia swallowed. “She just…died. No warning. No time to prepare. The doctor thought it some form of brain fever.”
