Lady of the Lock by Bancroft Blair

Author:Bancroft, Blair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical romance, regency romance, canals, jane austen style, blair bancroft, narrowboats
Publisher: Blair Bancroft

“Papa! What have you done?” In her head Mandy was screaming, but the words were no more than a whisper as her father stopped a few feet short of her, the other men drifting away like smoke from a campfire.

“It was necessary.”

“No-o!”

“Come inside, Amanda. If we must have this argument, let it not be in front of all and sundry.” John Merriwether lifted the tent flap and stood back. With a soft huff, Mandy followed him inside. “Sit,” he commanded, but did not join her, electing to loom large above her in uncharacteristic dominance.

“Why?” The word emerged as a wail, adding to her humiliation.

“Amanda, if he truly cared for you, he would have ridden through the lot of us.”

“You were an army!”

“Amanda . . .” John sighed and folded himself into one of the camp chairs. “Two years ago you were both so young . . . I still thought of you as a child. The friendship seemed harmless. But no one—not even a father blindly absorbed in building a canal—could miss how you pined when Carewe called his cub away. Which he surely did. You know it, I know it, everyone around us knows it.”

Humiliation overrode Mandy’s fury, forcing her spirit into a dark hole inside her. Of course everyone knew her deepest, darkest secret. How could it be otherwise? She had worn the willow for the Marquess of Montsale as prominently as a knight displayed his lady’s colors.

“But Montsale’s return, his invitation to dinner, the two of you returning to the ease of past friendship as if two years had not passed . . . as if he had not swooped into Bath and spirited his brother away—”

“Papa!”

“And after that contrary display, he dares invite you for a solitary ramble in Savernake Forest. I think not!”

“Papa, you cannot think—”

“I can and do, Amanda Grace. You know quite well he cannot marry you. But with you so obviously wearing your heart on your sleeve, what is he to think but that you are ripe for an offer of carte blanche.”

“Papa, stop!” Hunched down in her chair, Mandy clapped her hands to her ears.

Except for a single hiccuping sob, silence reigned.

“I am truly sorry,” John said at last. “I like him. Though I cannot grant that he cares for you as much as you care for him, Montsale is far better than most of his kind. He is a worthy landlord and will make a splendid duke. But you have to know he is not for you, my dear. I am merely attempting to keep pain from becoming tragedy.”

Mandy lowered her hands, steepling them in front of her face. “Yes, I know, Papa, but it was just a ride, one little ride.”

John sighed. “My dear innocent, the Savernake is not Hyde Park. Who knows what empty cottage or secluded glade lurks there. I could not risk it.”

At twelve, fourteen, even sixteen, a girl might be brought to admit she has suffered a youthful infatuation. But at eighteen Mandy’s steadfast affection could only be termed a disaster.

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