An Escapade and an Engagement by Annie Burrows

‘Can you get an invitation to Lord
Lambourne’s masquerade ball next week?’
    ‘I dare say I could. And everyone will be in costume anyway, so
the hosts won’t know if I’m someone they’ve invited or not if I tag on to
another party. It will be perfect. You are a clever girl…’
    Lady Jayne cringed. Harry was the only man who had ever given
her such unstinting praise. How she wished she could return his regard.
    Seeing her pained look, he became all solicitude. ‘It will be
difficult for you, though, escaping from your dragon of a chaperone, will it
not?’
    Actually, she did not think it would be as hard as all that.
They had already discussed the event at some length. They both knew that her
grandfather would never approve of her attending such an event. But Lady Penrose
had admitted that she thought it was a pity, since it was just the sort of thing
for a girl of her age.
    ‘I shall contrive something,’ she said, biting back her impulse
to defend Lady Penrose from the slur on her character. ‘Don’t I always?’ To her
shame. She really had to stop going behind her chaperone’s back.
    And she would!
    Once she had freed herself from Harry.
    ‘Yes!’ Harry hissed in triumph, seizing her hand and giving it
a squeeze. ‘I shall count the hours until we can be together again. Truly
together…’
    Lord Ledbury saw the proprietorial way Lieutenant Kendell
grasped Lady Jayne’s hand and wanted to knock the bounder’s teeth down his
throat.
    He broke off the conversation in which he’d been engaged quite
rudely and strode across the box. He had no idea what the young man had been
saying, but he could see he was making Lady Jayne uncomfortable. And, even
though he knew she would resent his interference, he could not stand by one
second longer, doing nothing.
    ‘Have a care,’ he growled at Harry. ‘You ought not to be
standing so close. Are you trying to draw attention to yourselves? Do you want
Lady Penrose to suspect you might be the very man Lady Jayne was sent to London
to avoid?’
    Harry flushed, and let go of her hand.
    ‘Miss Brigstock,’ he said, beckoning Milly over. ‘The
performance is about to begin. Do take this seat next to your friend.’
    Harry glared at him, but could hardly object to his host
ordering the seating arrangements—particularly not when he was only just
supposed to have been introduced to Lady Jayne. With bad grace, he took a seat
behind the girls. And Lady Penrose herself sat beside him.
    It was a good seating arrangement from Lord Ledbury’s point of
view. Milly soon took Lady Jayne’s mind off her own woes by mercilessly making
fun of the actors on the stage, who were very far from being the most talented
he’d ever watched. Before long, Lady Jayne was giggling behind her fan.
    He had never seen her looking so carefree.
    That was when he understood why Lady Jayne had taken to Milly
so quickly. Her parentage was irrelevant. They were both about the same age. And
Milly had brought sunshine into her life.
    He was just congratulating himself for being indirectly
responsible for chasing away the shadows that her entanglement with Kendell had
cast over her, when Milly did something that made his blood run cold.

Chapter Five
    S he laughed. That was all. But Milly had
the most infectious laugh he’d ever heard. It was what had drawn him to her in
the first place. What had drawn many of the younger officers to her father’s
billet.
    Anyone who’d ever heard that laugh would never forget it. They
would take a second look at the shapely and assured young woman at Lady Jayne’s
side and perceive beneath the Town bronze the ragged girl with the dirty face
who’d been the regiment’s darling.
    A shiver of foreboding went down his spine. Even though most of
the men who might have recognised Milly had already been deployed, she could
still pose a threat to Lady Jayne’s reputation. It would only take one of the
more curious amongst the idlers loafing around the