The Diamond Key by Barbara Metzger

Author:Barbara Metzger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781610847032
Publisher: Belgrave House/Regency Reads
Published: 2012-09-24T22:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 16

“You came! Oh, Wynn, you came!” Bette, Lady Lynbrook threw herself into Wynn’s arms and proceeded to rumple his last decent shirt. Her face was buried so deeply in his chest he could not even get a good look at her, to see if his old playmate had changed much in the six years since he had been gone. She sure as Hades had not changed from the overwrought and overemotional little baggage she had always been.

“Give over, Bette. I wrote and said I would come.”

She sniffled into his striped waistcoat. “That was weeks ago.”

“It was days. And I am here now, so stop crying and tell me how you have been. Your letters were so tear-stained I could barely make out the words.” He had given up at the third mention of the word “marriage.”

“Oh, Wynn, things have been so awful here. You cannot imagine.”

He looked around at the elegant luxury of Lynbrook House, glad he had left Homer in Kensington, and no, he could not imagine what had her so agitated, not after the places he had been forced to call home. From the cushiony softness in his arms, he knew she had been getting enough to eat. Ample food and shelter would have seemed like paradise to him, some days of his travels. “Why don’t you sit and tell me.”

She finally released him, leading the way to a sunny breakfast parlor, where she called for tea and cakes.

While they waited for the servants to finish laying out the light repast, Wynn had time for a good look at Bette, who was the younger dowager Lady Lynbrook, since her deceased husband’s mother still lived, and the current baron had a Lady Lynbrook of his own.

Bette used to be Bette Dodge when he spent his summer holidays at his friend Troy’s home in the Lake District, the eldest daughter of a prosperous family. Her parents had the neighboring estate, and the three youngsters spent many hours together. Bette was not permitted to accompany the boys when they went shooting or fishing or swimming, of course, but there were long hikes and sketching expeditions, and merry games in her family’s parlor, all things Wynn had not known at his own house. He took every invitation offered to vacation at Troy Campe’s, and his own parents never cared enough to miss him.

Bette and Troy had known each other since the cradle, and both they and Wynn assumed the two would wed one day. But Bette’s parents had higher ambitions than the squire’s second son, who was meant for a career in the army. They promised her to Frederick, Lord Lynbrook, a rum go, but a baron. Bette acquired a title. Troy acquired his colors, and Wynn set out to acquire town bronze.

Then came Lynbrook’s drunken rages, the duel, and Ciudad Rodrigo. All of their lives had changed.

Some few years away from her thirtieth birthday—but more years past her twentieth—Bette was still a fetching little buttercup, although Wynn suspected some of the blond color came from a bottle.

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