Free The Ardent Lady Amelia by Laura Matthews

Why, the fellow must be as large as a prizefighter, and was, in addition, more handsome than most of the actors one saw at Drury Lane. He looked like a soldier in that elegant Welsford livery, not like a common chore-runner.
    Verwood’s imagination seemed to be turning more lurid by the moment, and he brought himself back to reality with a stern effort. “She’s your sister, Peter,” he said. “I’m sure you know how to keep a rein on her.”
    Not wanting to confess that he’d never had the slightest idea how to do such a thing with the ardent Amelia, Peter merely shrugged and said, “She’s a very level-headed girl, Alexander, for all her enthusiasms. Very generous, too, you know.”
    Though Peter referred to her charity, Verwood had other sorts of visions of generosity and carefully repressed a shudder. A time would come, he feared, when he would have to be more blunt with Peter about Lady Amelia’s indiscretions. However, when he brought up the matter, he wanted to have a little more information, so he determined on a course of continuing to watch the young lady. Delay, he realized, might be hazardous in her case, but he was not a man given to acting on misguided impulse. He moved, when he did, with the proper grounding, and with considerable force.
     
    The party of four drove to the Stratfords’ in thoughtful silence, broken occasionally by a civil remark from one or the other of those in the carriage. Trudy, who had not been consulted on the viscount’s accompanying them, was a little put out with her nephew, though she did her best not to show it. Amelia’s mind was wholly occupied with the emergency at the Carsons’, but she had long since trained herself to disguise this sort of concern, knowing precisely what was expected of her at an evening entertainment. One more ball would be no more difficult to manage than any other facet of her very social life.
    The Stratfords lived on Portman Square in a magnificent house notable for its towerlike domed staircase and an ingeniously designed group of rooms planned en suite and carefully contrasted in shape, character, and proportion. The decoration of them consisted in the slimmest of pilaster orders supporting a minimal entablature and almost no cornice under the restrained riches of an Adams ceiling. Pastel colors of green, beige, and pink provided a mute background for the swirl of guests clothed in their finest gowns and magnificently cut coats. Everything was understated elegance, a refreshing change from some of the overly ornamented houses in which Amelia found herself.
    The guests, too, were the cream of the ton. The Stratfords had no need to prove their social prominence by inviting everyone in London, for the inevitable “crush.” Their festivities were always well-attended but the list of guests was never so long as to make the rooms crowded or uncomfortable. Amelia had always admired this flaunting of social convention, though she supposed it might merely indicate an overweening pride on their part, an implicit declaration that they refused to associate with less than the best people.
    Which was why she was surprised to see M. Chartier at the gathering. There was, in her mind, question enough about whether Lord Verwood would have been there if he hadn’t accompanied them. Had he actually received an invitation, or had Peter accepted the invitation for them, indicating that Verwood was Amelia’s escort? An interesting speculation, and one which Amelia might have mentally pursued if she hadn’t been so struck with M. Chartier’s presence. She was astonished that the Stratfords even knew him, let alone invited him to their ball.
    For M. Chartier claimed no title, though half the Frenchmen in London seemed to do so without much cause. He was new on the scene, and not above suspicion, in Amelia’s eyes. In London one didn’t question a man’s loyalties simply because he was French, of course. The French aristocracy certainly had little good to