Free Courting Lord Dorney by Sally James

scornfully.
    ‘How else is one to know what goes on?’ Jane asked, and Bella shrugged.
    She was puzzled too. She’d laid many plans for bringing herself to Lord Dorney’s attention, but needed none of them. He’d paid her marked attentions from the start and she could not imagine why. Surely it could not be because she had threatened Mary’s would-be abductors with her pistol, or argued with Mr Kershaw? Most men would be disgusted with her, call her conduct unladylike.
    ‘Why does he seek me out?’ she asked now. ‘I’m not at all pretty like Mama was. Papa adored her, and no wonder if that portrait is a true likeness. I must have been a severe disappointment to him.’
    She’d always taken it for granted her father must have regretted her very different appearance.
    ‘I’d have thought he might be grateful not to have a constant reminder of his loss by having a daughter who resembled her too closely,’ Jane said thoughtfully. ‘There can be different types of beauty.’
    ‘I’m too small and too fat!’
    ‘Some men might be tired of fashionable slender beanpoles.’ 
    Bella grinned. ‘They don’t show many signs of it.’
    ‘Well, your face lights up when you’re animated, when you are passionate about urchins or stray animals,’ Jane said with feeling. ‘He must have noticed and liked that. He seems to have a serious, thoughtful disposition.’
    ‘I just enjoy talking with him,’ Bella said slowly. ‘We talk of so many interesting things.’
    Jane was cautious. ‘You must not count on it coming to anything, Bella,’ she warned now.
    Bella smiled airily. ‘We’ll see,’ she replied. Her hopes were too fresh and her fears too deep for casual discussion even with her cousin. In quiet moments she was already well aware of the bleak desolation which she would suffer if Lord Dorney lost interest in her. Firmly she dismissed her fears and concentrated on making ready for the excursion Lord Dorney had planned for two days hence.
    * * * *
    Lord Dorney was confused. No girl had disturbed his serenity as Bella Collins did. He’d vowed never to marry, when he had seen the calamitous result of his brother Robert’s venture into matrimony. He didn’t need an heir, he had Alexander who would inherit the title. Yet here he was, lingering in Bath days after he could have left for London, and giving the gossips something to talk about by his attentions to Bella. He’d talked to Alex, met his Felicity, and though he thought them both too young, could find no other reason for objecting to the alliance. He should leave now, but somehow he couldn’t make the effort.
    However much he told himself that not all women were as rapacious, or as immoral as Selina, doubts remained. He did not wish to risk it, even if he were attracted to a woman. When he’d first met Selina, just before he’d enlisted and gone out to join Wellington in Spain, he’d thought her a pretty, and sensible young woman, whose behaviour had been unaffected, despite the fortune she would inherit from her wealthy father. That this fortune came from trade might be sneered at by some of the high sticklers in Society, but Robert had not cared, saying that Selina had been educated at a very good school for the daughters of gentlemen, and was prettily behaved. She would know how to go on as his wife.
    ‘Besides,’ Robert had said with a laugh, ‘the money will restore Dorney Court. And it needs it.’
    It certainly had. Their father had cared little for his ancestral home, and under his stewardship the land had been neglected and the house had fallen, if not into outright ruin, into the beginnings of it. The roof had leaked, some of the windows were broken, many of the rooms had been shut up, the curtains were falling into rags, and the place had been run with far too few servants. The estate cottages and farms were in even worse condition.
    The moment he and Selina had married, Robert had set about bringing the house back to its former state.