Free Amanda Scott by Lady Escapade

half past seven.”
    Diana groaned. “I’ve rarely been up before midday in months, Simon. Surely we needn’t leave before ten.”
    “You were asleep before midnight, my girl, and you have managed to be up before, early enough for the occasional hunt breakfast at half past nine.”
    “Oh, Simon, you know perfectly well that whenever breakfast is ordered for half past nine, the servants know better than to set anything out before ten or even eleven o’clock, and the hunt scarcely ever begins before noon even in the most well-appointed houses, no matter what good intentions everyone expresses the night before.”
    He chuckled, admitting the truth of her words. “But that doesn’t matter today, Diana mine. I nearly wore that team out yesterday, and I’ve no wish to injure any of them, so today we travel by easy stages.”
    “You could hire a team in Marlborough and send someone back for yours later,” she pointed out.
    “I could, if I wished to do so. If this were spring or summer, I’d even have my own cattle stabled there with my own lads to look after them. But it is winter, and I’ve no great opinion of the stables, even at the Castle, and I’ve no one to leave with them. We’ve plenty of time to travel slowly if we get an early start. So, up you get. I’ve already rung for a maid.”
    Diana sighed. Behold the master, she thought. But now that she was wide awake, she had no real objection of getting up and getting dressed. She noticed that Simon was already fully clothed and decided he had been up for an hour or more. He wore his buckskins again and the dark brown jacket, but they had been brushed and pressed, and his topboots seemed none the worse for their smudging but were as glossy as ever. His shirt and neckcloth were fresh, both snowy white and the latter neatly tied, although Rory, who was more of a dandy than his twin, would no doubt have scorned its simple arrangement.
    Simon wore no jewelry other than his carved gold signet ring, refusing to adopt the prevailing fashion for wearing a number of rings, fobs, and jeweled stickpins scattered about one’s person. He even refused to carry a snuffbox, saying that he thought the habit a filthy one.
    Once, when Diana had acquired a snuffbox of her own from Friberg and Tryer’s and had cajoled Lord Petersham, the acknowledged snuff expert of the polite world, who was actually said to possess a different snuffbox for each day of the year, into mixing a recipe for her called Lady Andover’s Sort, Simon had promptly pitched the lot of it onto the nearest fire.
    Since she had privately practiced the delicate art of taking snuff for untold hours until she knew she could carry it off with flair no matter who was watching her, Diana had been properly incensed to have her first public attempt so ignominiously spoilt by her domineering husband. That the stench caused by Simon’s precipitous action had called everyone’s attention to them both had not helped the matter, and the row that erupted between them on that occasion still rated among their friends as one of their most fiery efforts.
    With a reminder to make all speed, Simon left the room as soon as the maid arrived to help Diana dress. Since the girl had overheard his curt command, Diana was tempted to dawdle just to teach him that he should not issue his orders to her so peremptorily in front of mere servants, but she knew his temper to be uncertain, and she had no wish to initiate a further dispute beneath her brother’s roof. Thus it was that she joined the others in the morning room some moments before her appointed time.
    Breakfast was soon over and farewells said, and by ten o’clock the Warrington chaise, followed by Ned Tredegar in charge of Diana’s horse, was bowling along through the streets of Devises. Two hours later, they were driven into the yard of the Castle and Ball, the lovely sixteenth-century inn in central Marlborough where the Marlborough Highroad intersected with the main