The hail jolted them from their absorption.
It emanated from a young, dark-haired gentleman, clearly of the first stare, who, together with his similarly well-turned-out companion, was perched on
the driving seat of a swan-necked phaeton, approaching at a clipping pace. Jack reined his horses to the side of the track; the elegant equipage executed a neat turn and came to a swooping stop beside them.
“Been searching for you forever,” the young gentleman declared, his eyes, also deeply blue, passing from Jack to Sophie. He smiled with cheery good-humour. “Dashed if I’d thought to find you here!”
Glancing up at her escort’s face, Sophie saw a whimsical smile soften his hard features.
“Gerald.” Jack nodded to his brother, his knowledgeable gaze roving over the finer points of the pair of high-bred horses harnessed between the long shafts of the phaeton, itself spanking new if its gleaming paintwork was to be believed. “Where’d you get this rig?”
“The phaeton’s fresh out of old Smithers’s workshop. The nags are Hardcastle’s. He’ll let me have them for a tithe their true value—five hundred the pair. The phaeton’ll be full price, though, and you know what Smithers is like.”
Brows lifting, Jack nodded. With a deft twirl of his wrist, he looped his reins and offered them to Sophie. “Will you do me the honour, my dear?”
Scrambling to hide her surprise, greatly pleased for she well knew that few gentlemen would entrust their horses to a mere female, Sophie graciously nodded and took the reins. With a reassuring smile, Jack climbed down. The horses shifted slightly; determined to keep them in line, Sophie kept her eyes firmly on them, her brow furrowing in concentration.
Hiding his grin, Jack paced slowly around Gerald’s carriage and horses, his blue eyes shrewdly assessing. Gerald and his friend watched with bated breath, their eagerness barely suppressed. Then, rejoining Sophie and retaking possession of the reins with a warm smile, Jack nodded at his brother. “Not a bad set-up.”
Gerald grinned delightedly.
“But allow me to make you known to Miss Winterton.” Jack paused to allow Gerald to bow, lithely graceful. “My youngest brother, Gerald Lester.”
Having had time to note the similarity between Jack and the youthful gentleman, also dark-haired, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, but without the heavy musculature that characterized her escort’s more mature frame, Sophie showed no surprise.
While his brother introduced Lord Somerby, his companion, Jack cast a last glance over the phaeton and pair. His lips quirked. Turning to Gerald, he smoothly said, “And now you’ll have to excuse us. I’m overdue to return Miss Winterton to her home.”
“Jack!” Gerald’s pained exclamation was heartfelt. “Dash it all—don’t tease. May I have them or not?”
Jack chuckled. “You may. But make sure you get an account from Smithers. Drop by this evening and I’ll give you a draft.” Although it was his own money Gerald would be spending, as his trustee until his twenty-fifth birthday, Jack had to approve all his youngest brother’s transactions.
Gerald’s smile was ecstatic. “I’ll be around at seven.” With an insouciant wave of his whip, he touched his horses’ ears. As the phaeton disappeared along the avenue, his gay carolling rolled back to them.
Smiling at Jack’s exuberance, a sort of boundless joie de vivre, Sophie glanced up at her companion.
As if sensing her regard, Jack’s smile, distant as he contemplated his brother’s delight, refocused on her face. “And now, I fear, I really should return you to Mount Street, my dear.”
So saying, he whipped up his horses; they took the turn into the main avenue in style. As they bowled along, a stylish matron chatting idly with an acquaintance in her carriage, glanced up, then waved them down. Jack politely drew in beside the lady’s barouche.
“Sophia, my dear!” Lady Osbaldestone beamed at her. “I take it your aunt has finally arrived in town?”
“Indeed, ma’am.” Sophie leant from the curricle to shake her ladyship’s hand. “We’ll be here for the Season.”
“And a good thing, too! It’s entirely more than time you were amongst us again.” Her ladyship’s eyes gleamed with a fervour to which Sophie was innured.
Jack was not so fortunate. He exchanged nods with Lady Osbaldestone, wryly resigned to being ignored for at least the next ten minutes. Lady Osbaldestone’s lack of concern in finding a young lady with whom she clearly claimed more than a passing acquaintance alone in his presence registered—and made his inner smile even more wry. There had been a time, not so very far distant, when she would not have been so sanguine. However, over the past year, his acknowledged search for a wife had gained him, if not immunity from all suspicion, then at least a certain acceptance amongst the grandes dames. He suspected they viewed him as a leopard who, at least temporarily, had changed his spots.
That much, he was willing to concede, might be true. Nevertheless, the underlying temperament remained.
As he heard her ladyship’s plans for Sophie’s future unfurl, his instincts rose to shake his complacency.
He waited until they had, at last, parted from his ladyship and were once more rolling towards the gates before saying, “Lady Osbaldestone seems quite determined to see you well wed.”
Totally unconcerned by her ladyship’s grand schemes, which had even stretched as far as the Duke of Huntington, Sophie smiled gaily. “Indeed. They are all of them busy hatching schemes.”
“All of them?”
There was something in his flat tones that made her glance up but her companion’s expression was inscrutable. Light-hearted still, even light-headed, the aftermath, no doubt, of an uninterrupted hour of his company, Sophie grinned. “All of my mother’s old friends,” she explained. “They all look upon me as a motherless chick—one and all, they’re determined to see me ‘properly established’.” She uttered the last words in a passable imitation of Lady Osbaldestone’s haughty accents.