Free Like None Other by Caroline Linden Page B

the top of her golden brown curls to the tips of her slippers, Lady Bowen was dazzling in the morning sun, and simply perfect in Phin’s eyes. No matter how many times he cracked his head on the too-short doorway at the end of the hall or stubbed his toe on the narrow tread where the stairs turned, he wouldn’t have sold the house for any amount of money.
    With the calculation of an admiral, he had set out to learn all he could about his beautiful neighbour. Lady Bowen was the widow of a baronet, a much older man who died of a weak heart. She was too genteel to say anything against her stepson, but her maid was not, and Phin’s man Godfrey had gotten every last scrap of gossip about the new baronet. Tight with money and critical of his stepmother, Sir William Bowen had not wanted her to leave Sussex. The maid was of the opinion that the Baronet had thought to keep her under his thumb as an unpaid housekeeper and hold on to her widow’s jointure. Phin was heartily glad the man was an ogre, for it kept Lady Bowen in London, right next door to him. He liked her humour. He admired her optimistic spirit. He loved the sound of her voice and the way her hair would escape her bonnet and curl madly around her temples when she worked in the garden and he wanted to get her into his bed like he had never wanted anything else in his life.
    He had known that last bit since the moment she stood on his front steps and smiled up at him with those velvet brown eyes, but he had waited these last five months to be sure he liked the rest of her. He needed to choose the right approach. If she were one sort of lady, it might be only an affair. If she were another sort, he might do well to run the other way immediately, no matter how badly he wanted to have her. But everything about Lady Bowen indicated she was another sort of lady entirely, and somewhat to Phin’s surprise, he was rather pleased when he realized it. She wasn’t the sort a man trifled with, or the sort who squeezed a man by the ballocks for fun; she was the sort a man fell in love with and married.
    That was all well and good by Phineas, except that he didn’t know how to court a woman. He had flirted with many and had had a few agreeable affairs, but never had he approached a woman with such serious intent. It was daunting. Every time they talked in the garden, divided by a brick wall that came to his head, he wished he could see her face to know if she really were as interested as she sounded, or if she listened out of politeness. Even as he fell a little bit more every time he spoke to Lady Bowen, he felt less and less sure of what she thought of him.
    Did she really want to know about hurricanes, he wondered now, or was it just an extension of that dreadful polite conversation about the weather? He tried his best to make his accounts of life at sea interesting, and left out all the bad parts. But he was describing a storm that had killed five members of his crew and broken his mizzenmast, and left them run aground on a sandbar for a week before they could coax their wounded ship into port. Twice he found himself straying into unpleasant details, and had to stop abruptly. The last thing he wanted to do was to shock and alarm her. If only he could see her face . . .
    Then and there, Phineas decided it was time to stop talking over a garden wall. He would have to call on Lady Bowen and discover her true feelings, and what – if any – chance he had.
     

 

     
     

    Three
     
    Emma never enjoyed her mother’s visits.
    Mrs Hayton arrived late that morning, just as Emma finished cleaning the parlour. She was hot and dusty when her mother appeared in the parlour door, looking as cool and dignified as ever.
    “Dusting, Emma dear?” she asked with a trace of disdain.
    “Yes, Mother. Someone must dust, and Jane is busy upstairs airing the beds.”
    “You need more servants.”
    “I have all the servants I need.” Emma pulled off her cap and grimaced as dust settled on