Harlequin Historical July 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: The Duke's Daring Debutante\A Rose for Major Flint\Lord Laughraine's Summer Promise by Ann Lethbridge

Author:Ann Lethbridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Harlequin Historical
Publisher: Harlequin

Chapter Thirteen

‘Miss Tatton, I think it best if you join Lady Thetford,’ Flint said with a wary eye on the red-faced viscount. They’d have a heart seizure on their hands in a moment. ‘I fear we are doing your father’s health no good at all with this exchange.’

Rose sat down on the sofa, folded her hands in her lap and asked her father with commendable, and infuriating, calm, ‘Is it known that I eloped with Gerald?’

‘Fortunately not, which is the one bright spark in this whole sorry mess.’ Her father flung himself down into the nearest chair. He did not ask Adam to sit. ‘At the ball your mama developed a headache. We went to look for you so we could return home but could not find you. The footman in charge of cloaks said you had left an hour earlier and described Haslam. Your mama was...overwrought. That attracted an audience.’ He grimaced. ‘However, she did not say anything indiscreet and I think I passed it off as a bad attack of migraine.

‘I went to find Haslam’s commanding officer, but they had left for Quatre Bras. I assumed he had hidden you in his lodgings, as your note that we found when we returned home said nothing of you leaving with him to the battlefield. When there was no word afterwards we could not understand it, for we were sure you would have tried to discover his fate. We saw his name on the lists, but we had no idea you were not in Brussels and we dared not make any enquiries about him by name. For what it is worth we have put it around that you are in bed with the influenza.’

‘I am very sorry to have caused you so much anxiety, Papa.’ Rose was within a breath of tears, Adam could tell, but she kept her voice steady. He wanted to go and sit beside her, put an arm around her in support, but that risked shattering her control. ‘You see, I thought we could run away to Antwerp, get married, then come back within a day or so. But then Gerald received his orders to march as we left the ball. I was going to be an army wife, so I thought my place was with him.’

‘I never liked that boy,’ Lord Thetford said. ‘He was immature, and too pretty by half. I had told him I would not accept his offer for your hand. What was he thinking of, to take you with him?’

‘He was as green as grass, I would guess,’ Adam said. This at least he could understand after years of dealing with callow youths. ‘He’d been a Hyde Park soldier until this, no doubt. He had probably never seen a battle, had no idea what it would be like. He expected to leave Miss Tatton in a pretty little tent and gallop off to fight. There would be gallantry, glory, the thrill of a cavalry charge. Then he would return to her, bloodied but unbowed, perhaps with a captured eagle to lay at her feet.

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