What a Spinster Wants - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,52
heard Owen go to the door and sat herself on the floor of the corridor above, staying close enough to hear what transpired below. If anything happened, if Sir Reginald did not behave appropriately with Amelia, Edith would rush down and give herself up. She could hardly do otherwise.
“Took you long enough to admit me,” Sir Reginald grumbled as he was let in. “Is Lady Edith growing particular as to her guests?” He chuckled at his own words, and Edith could hear the sound of his walking stick hitting the floor in time with his shoes.
Why did that sound so ominous now, rather than the ridiculous charade it always was?
The clicking suddenly stopped, as did the feet.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Miss Amelia Perry,” Edith heard her reply in a calm tone.
“Where is Lady Edith?”
“Not at home.”
Edith could hear his snarl from her position. “I don’t believe you. You would not receive callers if she were not at home.”
“Lady Edith is a generous benefactress, and said I may receive callers without her, so long as Owen was close.”
Edith smiled to herself, imagining how Owen must have looked standing there as a chaperone. She covered her mouth to keep from laughing nervously.
“Your benefactress?” Sir Reginald asked. “How can she be so when she has nothing?”
“She has connections and gentility, sir, which is all I have need of.”
“When will she return?” he demanded.
“I don’t know, sir. She did not say.”
How in the world could Amelia remain so unmoved in the face of this man? So collected, so bold, when she had professed to simply being a silly girl like any other in Society. There was nothing silly in this, and no other woman in Society to compare.
“How long will you be here, then?” Sir Reginald’s voice sounded more irritated than irate, but there was an undertone that had Edith curling into a ball where she sat.
Amelia, however, remained unruffled. “Some time, I should think. As long as Lady Edith allows me to.”
Steps echoed once more. “You will leave this house tomorrow.”
There was no mistaking the venom in his voice now, and Edith pushed to her hands and knees, teeth pressing down painfully into her lip.
She could not believe his audacity. To threaten a young woman with no connection to him? Whose family was influential and popular? Either he did not know of the family, or he did not care.
The first would have been understandable, the second terrifying.
“I will do no such thing,” Amelia insisted in an equally harsh tone. “I have been invited to stay, and stay, I shall. We have a great many things to accomplish together, and I don’t believe any of them include you.”
“Take care, Miss Perry. You don’t wish to make an enemy of me.”
“I have no wish to make an enemy of any man, sir, but that does not mean I do not have them. And you should take care, I think. My uncle is the Earl of Wicklow, Lord Frenway, and unless you have completely mistaken your histories, you will know that means he is one of the most powerful men in Ireland, and a personal friend of the prime minister, whom I am to have tea with tomorrow. Perhaps I should tell him of your visit?”
Edith’s mouth popped open. Amelia had said nothing about influential relatives, and for her to give such a threat, veiled as it was, to Sir Reginald was unfathomable. What he wanted most was to have standing and place in Society, and to risk that was to risk ostracization.
He could not have that, surely.
Sir Reginald’s shoes clipped in the corridor almost immediately. “Good day, Miss Perry. Do forgive my rudeness. I am only disappointed. I beg you to inform Lady Edith of my call, and that I would be pleased to find her at another time more convenient to her.”
Some scuffling was heard, and then the door closed soundly, leaving the house in complete silence for a moment.
Edith raced down the stairs and rounded into the drawing room, looking at Amelia in shock. Her expression was much the same.
“Where did that come from, Amelia?”
“I have no idea,” she whispered.
The two suddenly burst out laughing, nerves and relief blending in hilarity, and were quite insensible.
“Mad as hares, the both of ye,” Owen grumbled. He shook his head and moved back to the door as frantic knocking echoed there.
Edith wiped tears of mirth from her eyes as familiar voices filled the air. Henshaw and Lord Radcliffe appeared in the drawing room, looking as if