Read Online All I Want Is You by Elizabeth Anthony - Free Book Online Page B

department.’
    I blushed, and she laughed. ‘Oh, child, some men are worth bedding and some aren’t. Shall we say they can…
vary
in their attributes? Charlwood would have made a perfect old-style duke, I’d have provided him with the obligatory heir or two, but then, my God, I’d have escaped back to London, leaving him to his hunting, fishing and shooting.’
    She put her arm round my shoulders, pulling me closer on the small settee. ‘But – Ash,’ she went on dreamily. ‘I want him all right.’
    My mouth was dry.
Ash
. ‘You’ve met him, my lady?’
    ‘Oh, I met him briefly a few years ago, in London.’ Her lip curled as if at some private joke, and her smooth palm was suddenly cool and silky on my poor work-chapped hands. I clenched my fingers; she unfurled them and frowned. ‘Such pretty hands,’ she muttered. ‘Such pretty hands.’
    I was silent, but I remember that my heart was pounding, and the pink dress suddenly felt too tight and too hot.
    Then she said, as if breaking a spell, ‘Well. You’d better put on your hideous maid’s outfit again, little Sophie. And remember, I trust you not to breathe a single word about what I say to you, what I tell you. Do you understand?’
    And so I became Lady Beatrice’s maid.
    Margaret took me under her wing, her dark eyes gleaming whenever she looked at me, the scar on her cheek always giving her narrow face a slightly sinister appearance. ‘You and I, Sophie,’ she said softly, ‘we’re to share a bedroom.’
    I felt a quick spasm of fear that must have shown, because she laughed a little then showed me the room. It led off my lady’s private quarters, and in it were two narrow iron beds, a dressing table and a shared wardrobe. That first night I hardly slept, but to my relief Margaret didn’t try to touch me again. It was as if she’d forgotten that we were intimate, but I could never forget – I jumped if her hand so much as brushed mine. Yet my blood surged with excitement, because I saw in all this my chance to leave the Hall at last.
London,
Lady Beatrice had said.
Some day you must come to London with me, Sophie.
    Sometimes I saw Lady Beatrice watching me, when I was sewing in her sitting room or helping Margaret to adjust one of her beautiful gowns. I kept my eyes down, I spoke only when spoken to, but was aware of her, always. And I absorbed every detail of those exquisite garments; the styles and the adornments she chose.
    Skirts were getting shorter every season for the fashionable; Lady Beatrice wore hers with the most exquisite silk stockings and, instead of heavy corsets, she dressed herself in the kind of undergarments she’d let me try on: soft chemises and brassieres made of silk or satin in shades of cream and light caramel. I adored her clothes. I believed that even I could be beautiful in such garments.
    She said nothing more of Lord Ashley to me. Meanwhile other guests arrived and left, as was the wayin these grand houses; and in the early autumn the Duke hosted an important meeting, to which politicians from London and even New York came.
    Mr Peters, in his haughty way, told the staff it was something to do with the huge war debt that Britain owed to the American government.
    ‘Why not meet in London?’ asked Betsey.
    ‘Because,’ said Mr Peters importantly, ‘these people realise that they will get far more privacy here at the Hall than they ever would in London.’
    Indeed the guests had their privacy, and they were also entertained on a sumptuous scale. Every day there were outings, every night there were vast banquets of twenty courses or more, and I gathered from Margaret that Lady Beatrice was in great demand because of her beauty and her sharp wit. She was friendly with a pale-haired, pale-eyed man called Lord Sydhurst, whom the footmen detested because he was so extremely arrogant. ‘Lord Sydhurst,’ pronounced Robert, ‘likes to talk of his important work in the war. Which means, of course, that he sat on his