The Bad Baron's Daughter by Laura London

Author:Laura London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Romance / Historical / General, Fiction / Historical, Fiction / Romance / Erotica, Fiction / Romance / Historical / Regency
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The battered traveling coach thundered west, carrying Katie past the stately homes of Mayfair, past a corner of Hyde Park, then through the cozy suburbs. The carriage had been rented, that much was obvious from the small brass plaque on the door informing the rider that he was privileged to enjoy a sound equipage from the livery of Bentworth and Bentworth. That these worthies had never traveled in their own carriage was evident; otherwise, they would not have categorized its ride as a privilege. The thing rolled like a rock. There was nothing served, either, by trying to lean back against the seats to relax; the musty sawdust cushions had all the comforts of a Calvinist church pew. At one particularly hard lurch, one of the bolsters rolled to the floor and Katie could see, on the now uncovered wooden side of the carriage, where some previous disgruntled traveler had scrawled an obscenity with the tip of a penknife.

Farms rolled by Katie’s window in a glumping shaken procession, then a dainty whitewashed hamlet with window boxes bright with calliopsis and baskets o’ gold. From time to time Katie caught a glimpse of her cousin as he rode beside the coach on his goose-rumped mare, his heavy features settled in a sullen frown.

The afternoon’s pleasant sunlight had faded into a damp dusk and a frisky draft swirled around the carriage floor, nipping casually at Katie’s ankles. She fastened her sable-collared cloak more tightly against the chill.

After perhaps another mile, they turned onto a rutty dirt road and Katie was attacked by a cloud of dust. The dull orange of the setting sun flickered intermittently in and out through the trunks of the tangled copse through which they passed. The unhappy combination of the coach’s jostling and an acute melancholia that Katie couldn’t seem to shake off had produced an uneasy throb in her interior that she recognized as nausea. It was with gratitude that she felt the carriage take a last turn and stop its swaying. Katie roused to see a barren yard, and a long low flint stone hunting lodge with a red-tiled roof, surrounded by a border of halfhearted violets. A dead elm loomed over the house from the rear, framing the scene with twisted, shadow-casting limbs.

There was a decrepit hitching rack near the lodge’s door where a pinch-kneed piebald gelding stood cropping dispassionately at a tuft of dry hay. Guy secured his mare beside the gelding and Katie heard the jiggling of coin as Guy paid the coachman. The door opened and Guy handed Katie down. An owl hooted in the copse while the turning of the carriage wheels faded in the distance.

A leonine door knocker garnished the lodge’s front door, but rust had transformed its snarl into a rather disappointing grimace. Guy smacked the knocker impatiently, muttering to himself. The door opened and a dark frame appeared silently, silhouetted against the flickering candlelight from a wax-fouled candelabrum projecting from the inside wall.

“Ah, good evening, Chilworthy,” said Ivo Guy in a satisfied tone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.