Seeking a Reatreat from the Ton
Meredith's Tender Awakening: Chapter 2.2
“Will you be going to your club m’lord?” The Marquess of Davenport’s butler wore a spotless uniform and a powdered wig.
“Not straightaway Jevons,” the Marquess looked up from his paperwork.
He had withdrawn to his study after breakfast, attending to some overdue correspondence. Now his eyes wandered to the vista of greens and blue outside the window. He was positively itching for some fresh air and exercise. Something about the previous evening’s gathering had him bouncing with surplus energy.
“Have the stables saddle my horse,” he instructed Jevons, who bowed and left the room. “The dusty streets of London can wait awhile,” the Marquess mused, unfolding from the chair to stretch his back and his cramped fingers. “I feel as twitchy as a wagtail,” he laughed.
Then he blottied the ink on his most recent letter and pushed it inside an envelope, which he added to several others on a silver salver, for a footman to despatch forthwith. He strode out of the room, calling for his valet to help him dress more suitably for a ride.
His horse, Artemis, was equally eager as Lord Davenport to be active; stamping his feet and tossing his head as his girth was tightened. A gentle breeze tickled the horse’s ears and played with his mane as the Marquess mounted. Then with the gentlest squeeze of his knees, the two were off. The horse’s hooves clattered out of the courtyard and gained purchase on the softer turf as they crossed the paddock and beyond. Artemis required little urging by the Marquess, both were delighted to shake off their confines and flex their muscles.
The sky was such a piercing blue, that Lord Davenport’s heart squeezed in appreciation of its clarity. A beautiful color for a gown, he thought as he moved with the horse, opening up from a canter to a gallop. Delight bubbled from within as he and Artemis moved as one, clearing low hedges they ate up the miles.
The Marquess headed for his favorite spot, a lake overhung with weeping willows and ash trees. A place he’d often dismounted to while away time looking back at his home and the surrounding grounds. It was a majestic view, encompassing fields of swaying crops and the rooves of his tenants’ houses which made up the nearby hamlet. The view evoked pride and loneliness simultaneously. It was a house for a large family, a dynasty, but now only he and his sister Francesca remained.
She had lectured himself at breakfast, with a scolding letter she’d sent from France.
You’ve pleased yourself with travels abroad and secret dalliances with unavailable women for long enough, (there’s no need to deny it or shield me, I am a woman of the world). But the time is right to find yourself a wife.
You should choose a companion with whom you could share your life.
For the Marquess this meant an intelligent person with whom to discuss his ideas and talk honestly. Francesca was insistent she needed enough mettle not to be cowed, rather to temper his stubborn nature.
Was he stubborn? His Lordship supposed his sister had only his best interests at heart. He’d admit to being competitive and driven, which is why he found so many of the young ladies who were out this season insipid. That one last night in the lemon-coloured dress, for instance, she had looked as if she might cry just because he didn’t have time to speak to her.
Not Miss Meredith Millais, though. He considered her a girl with spirit. During their discourse about dueling at Lady Abindon’s soiree, her eyes had sparkled as much as her intelligence. He’d watched her across the dinner table, as she charmed a retired navy captain on one side of her and gently drew the host’s shy brother-in-law into conversation after dinner.
Lord Davenport's attention landed on the tiny flowers that ran riot through the grass where Artemis was grazing, noticing that they were blue. The exact cerulean blue of the gown worn by Meredith last night, he recalled admiring it when they had danced. He plucked a long stem of grass, with a feathery, seeded head and trailed it through his fingers; his mind much occupied by new and pleasing thoughts.
Meredith’s Tender Awakening is currently being serialized on my Ream account : The Shake a Tailfeather tier. A new chapter is published each Monday