Amanda Scott by Madcap Marchioness Page B

ma’am—” She could say no more, for the front doors were open wide, their guests on the point of entering the hall. Adriana hurried forward, her hands held out in welcome. “Sally … my lord, how very kind of you to visit us so soon.”
    “Well, my goodness me, what else could we do?” demanded the slender, brown-haired young lady who swept forward to fling her arms about Adriana. “You were so rude and ungracious as to refuse our invitation to spend your wedding n—”
    “Now, Sally,” interrupted Chalford calmly, having come from the great hall, behind Adriana, “you know better than that. May I present my aunt, Lady Henrietta Blackburn. Aunt Hetta, this is Lady Villiers.” He stepped past them then and clapped the viscount on the shoulder, adding, “And her husband. Villiers, well met. Welcome to Thunderhill.”
    “Passable little cottage you’ve got here, Chalford,” said the viscount gravely. “A touch of paint and a new shingle here and about, and it ought to be snug enough for the pair of you. Humbug country, though, man. Can’t expect guests during the hunting season, any more than we expect them at Prospect Lodge. You’ll have to come to us at Osterley Park, or better yet, spend a month with me at Middleton Stony. I’ll show you sport.”
    “And show me a clean pair of heels,” retorted Chalford, laughing. He looked at the others. “No finer seat in the hunting field than Villiers’. He shows them all the way.”
    “Oh, goodness me, yes,” chirped Sally. “George looks simply like a god or something when he’s on a horse. You never saw his equal for sport. Why, everyone says so, don’t they, George?”
    The viscount beamed at her, then looked at the others as though he were inviting them to beam at her, too. “It would scarcely become me to agree with you, my dear, particularly when Chalford is like to know, if his lady does not, that I overturned us in my curricle, most ignominiously, not two weeks ago.”
    “Gracious,” exclaimed Lady Hetta, “I hope you weren’t hurt.”
    “Bruised but not broken,” Villiers assured her.
    “’Tis nearer three weeks ago,” Sally said, “and you did not overturn us.” She glanced from one to another of her audience. “It was the most awful thing, for we were thrown out. The pole broke, and if George had not been quick to turn us against a post when the horses bolted, we might have been killed.”
    “As it was,” Villiers said dryly, “the force of our meeting with the post caused us to fly out of the curricle like a pair of damned birds. Do you mean to entertain us right here, Chalford, or does this hovel of yours have another room?”
    Adriana’s amused gaze collided with that of the young third footman, who looked scandalized. Chuckling, she glanced at Sally, whose dark-brown eyes were alight with laughter, and said, “I think we had better repair to the great hall, don’t you?”
    “Goodness me, does this place actually boast a great hall?”
    “Now, Sally,” Chalford said, “you know it must. It’s got a keep, too, like any decent castle ought to have.”
    “Oh!” exclaimed Lady Hetta, suddenly looking from Lord to Lady Villiers in dismay. “Joshua, what if—?” She broke off, staring at her nephew helplessly.
    He looked back, bewildered, and Adriana, not knowing what to make of the pair of them, leapt into the breach. “There are owls living in the keep,” she said. “Some of them have the most amusing names.”
    Chalford choked, looked again at his aunt, and then burst into laughter. “You must come and meet them after supper,” he said. “One of them”—he grinned at Villiers—“is named after your illustrious mama.”

5
    L ORD AND LADY VILLIERS planned to stay only three nights at Thunderhill, because, as Sally confided to Adriana, his lordship’s parents expected to descend upon them at Prospect Lodge the week following the Prince of Wales’s birthday. “For George’s birthday is that Monday, you