Free Slightly Scandalous by Mary Balogh Page A

entertainment. All to be enjoyed in the congenial company of one's peers."
    "We took the carriage to Sydney Gardens yesterday afternoon and strolled there for all of an hour," Miss Hester Darwin said. "It was wonderful exercise in delightfully picturesque surroundings. Have you seen the park, Lady Freyja?"
    Her brother cleared his throat, her cousin, Sir Leonard Eston, picked an invisible speck of lint from one of his sleeves, her sister flushed scarlet, and Miss Hester Darwin clapped a hand to her mouth too late as everyone remembered what had resulted from Lady Freyja's solitary foray into Sydney Gardens.
    Joshua grinned. "I do believe Lady Freyja has, Miss Darwin," he said. "So have I."
    "Exercise!" Lady Freyja exclaimed. "People come to Bath for their health, and for the sake of their health they stroll in the Pump Room and they stroll on the Crescent and they stroll in the park. It is a word that should be struck from the English language-strolling. If I do not walk somewhere soon, or-better yet-ride somewhere where there is space to move, I may well end up in a Bath chair, being wheeled from place to place and sipping on Bath water."
    Her audience chose to react to her words as if she had uttered something enormously witty. The gentlemen laughed; the ladies tittered.
    "You must certainly be rescued from the Bath water," Joshua said. "Come riding with me tomorrow, Lady Freyja. We will seek out the hills and the open spaces beyond the confines of the city."
    "It sounds like heaven," she said, looking at him with approval for perhaps the first time. "I will gladly come."
    "But not alone, Lady Freyja," Willett said hastily. "It would be somewhat scandalous, I fear. Perhaps we can make up a riding party. I would certainly join it. Would you, Miss Holt-Barron?"
    "Oh, I would too," Miss Fanny Darwin cried. "I enjoy nothing better than a ride, provided the pace is not too fast or the distance too far. Gerald, you must come too, and you, Leonard, and then Mama can have no objection to allowing Hester and me to join the party."
    Joshua's glance locked with Lady Freyja's. He could sense the grimace she kept from her face. He grinned at her and winked.
    He was pleased to see her nostrils flare with indignation.
    Perhaps, he thought hopefully, tomorrow would be more amusing than the past few days had been.
     
     
    CHAPTER V
     
     
    Neither Freyja nor Charlotte had her own horse with her in Bath, but they were able to hire some for the day. Freyja sent back the first horse that was brought around to the house with the message that she had been riding since she was in leading strings and had never felt any inclination to bounce along on a tired old hack that looked to be lame in all four legs. The second mount met with her approval even though Lady Holt-Barron thought it high-spirited enough to need a man's firm hand on the reins and begged Freyja to ride very carefully.
    "Whatever would I say to the duke, Lady Freyja," she asked rhetorically, "if you were carried home with a broken neck?"
    Freyja and Charlotte rode side by side down steep Gay Street in the direction of the Abbey, outside which they had agreed to meet the other six members of the riding party. It was a glorious day, warm enough for summer but with more freshness in the air.
    "If we have to amble along once we have left Bath behind at the horse equivalent of a stroll, Charlotte," Freyja said, "I shall have a tantrum. Will the Misses Darwin be so mean-spirited?"
    "I fear they will," Charlotte said with a chuckle. "We are not all neck-or-nothing riders like you, Freyja. Will the Earl of Willett find some time alone with you today, do you suppose? He has been very determined during the past few days. He must be very close to making a declaration."
    "Oh, dear," Freyja said. She had encouraged him rather, simply because she had wanted to discourage the Marquess of Hallmere, who had been deliberately amusing himself at her expense and who seemed to know exactly how to make