Heiress in Regency Society: The Defiant Debutante

Alex was returning home after visiting Mr Cathcart, one of his tenant farmers, who was concerned about the large band of gypsies encamped on his land and the recent outbreak of serious poaching in the area. Many a rabbit or a pheasant found its way into a family’s pot, but the offence was more serious when deer were killed on a large scale, the ill-gotten gains sold further afield.

Alex was riding across open country when he heard the report of a gun. Frowning, he reined in his horse sharply and looked in the direction of the woods. Recalling Mr Cathcart’s grievance and determined to get to the bottom of it, he whipped Lancer, his horse, into a burst of speed and set off in the direction of the shot.

In the process of reloading her rifle in the hope of bagging another rabbit, Angelina paused, distracted by the thundering approach of horse’s hooves. Horse and rider emerged out of the trees and came towards her, and, much in the manner she associated with him, Lord Montgomery swung off his still-prancing, powerful black horse. With long, purposeful strides he swooped down on her like Satan in his entire frightening wrath. Angelina beheld a countenance of such black, terrifying menace that she trembled, fear coiling in the pit of her stomach. Never had she encountered such cold, purposeful rage. He took in the dead rabbit on the ground, and, with a look of cold revulsion, his eyes raked over her, riveting on the rifle in her hands.

‘What the devil are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘If you don’t mind, I will take that.’ He held out his hand for the rifle, but Angelina had no intention of parting with her precious possession. Once it had been her only means of protection against hostile predators—both human and animal—when she had made the long trek from Ohio to Boston, and also the means of supplying her and her mother with many a tasty dinner.

‘Mind! But of course I mind,’ she retorted, losing control of her temper. Recklessly and without thinking what she was actually doing, taking a step back she levelled it at Alex’s chest.

Alex’s face darkened even more. ‘Give it to me,’ he said in that infuriatingly same awful voice.

Undismayed Angelina glared at him without removing her hand on the well-worn grip.

‘Angelina, I repeat, give it to me.’

‘No, I won’t,’ she said, trying to ignore the fury her defiance ignited in his features.

‘You little hell cat,’ he said quietly, watching her closely. Almost gently he warned, ‘Before you consider pulling the trigger, pause to consider if killing me is worth hanging for.’

Angelina didn’t flinch. ‘I actually think it would be worth it,’ she hissed, but, seeming to realise the absurdity of her action, she slowly lowered the gun.

‘I’ll break that rifle over your backside if you so much as raise it again.’

Highly incensed by his threat, a feral light gleamed in the depths of Angelina’s eyes. She was like a kitten showing its claws to a full-grown panther. ‘You lay one finger on me,’ she ground out in a low husky voice, ‘and I’ll scratch your eyes out. I swear I will.’

In the face of this dire threat Alex moved towards her and leaned forward deliberately until grey eyes stared into amethyst from little more than a foot apart. His eyes grew hard and flintlike, yet when it came his voice was soft and slow. ‘You dare me?’ Seeing flagging courage and alarm flare in those dark orbs close to his own, reaching out he plucked the rifle from Angelina’s grasp before she knew what he was about. ‘I have never been an abuser of women,’ he said, speaking carefully and distinctly, ‘but if you tempt me enough, I might change my mind. I become very unreasonable when I’m angry.’

Stepping back, he scrutinised the lightweight rifle, with its fine engraved patch box and ripple-grained stock. He recognized it as a Kentucky flintlock rifle, one of the most popular small firearms of the American frontier. It was also ideal for hunting and, Alex thought with annoyance, for use against marauding Indians and irate lords. ‘Yours, is it?’

Rather than let him see she was afraid and refusing to be humbled, she raised her chin and assumed an air of remote indifference. ‘Yes.’

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me.’ Before Angelina could protest he quickly unfastened the cowhorn powder flask from her waist, which, he would see when he looked at it at greater length later, was attractively engraved with designs of maps and ships. He looked down at the rabbit on the ground and then back at her. The blood he saw on her hands repelled him. ‘What a bloodthirsty little wench you are,’ he said in a savage underbreath. ‘I imagine there are other things you enjoy as much as killing rabbits—like cock fighting and badger baiting,’ he accused with scathing sarcasm.

‘I don’t,’ she responded angrily, smarting beneath his hard gaze. He was looking at her like some irritating but harmless insect he wanted to crush beneath the heel of his expensive, glossy black boots. ‘They are cruel sports. Such useless bloodletting utterly repels me. It’s a different matter to kill in order to eat.’

‘I do realise that things are different in America—’

‘Good. Then you must realise that you hunt to kill.’

‘And you are not squeamish?’

‘I was taught not to be. It was a necessary part of my life.’

‘Do you realise I could have you arrested for threatening me at gunpoint—and have you hanged for poaching with a firearm on my land?’

‘Poaching? What do you mean? Considering I was going to take the rabbit to Mrs Hall to put in a pie for your dinner, my lord, I don’t understand what it is you’re complaining about.’

Alex stared at her, anger emanating from every pore. With deliberate cruelty he carefully enunciated each vicious word. ‘I don’t want you killing rabbits for me, or anything else for that matter. If it were not for the fact that you are a foreigner and can plead ignorance, it would be necessary to reprimand you very severely.’ Turning to his horse, he fastened her rifle and powder flask to the saddle. ‘Come, walk with me back to the house.’ When Angelina made a move to do just that he looked down at the rabbit and then at her. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? Now you’ve killed the wretched animal you might as well bring it with you.’

He frowned when Angelina bent to pick it up and suddenly produced a thin-bladed knife from the top of her boot. His silver eyes glittered and his mouth curled up at the corners, those sleek black brows snapping together. ‘Don’t you dare attempt to gut or skin it,’ he hissed, his voice icy and vibrating with anger.

‘Why? What will you do?’ she taunted, glowering at him.

He met the angry daggers that came hurtling at him from that glower. ‘I’m liable to choke you to death with my bare hands. We have servants to do that.’ He paused, holding out his hand palm up. ‘I’ll take that too.’

Tempted to inflict the same treatment on him as she would have inflicted on the rabbit, reluctantly Angelina handed him the knife. To her consternation and fury, all of a sudden she felt infuriatingly close to tears. ‘I can always get another.’

‘I forbid it,’ he snapped.

‘My skinning technique is excellent.’

‘I don’t doubt that for one moment—which is why I’ve confiscated your knife.’ He examined the weapon. ‘A nasty weapon for a young woman. I’d rather see it locked away than one day find it stuck in my back.’

‘If I wanted to dispose of you I would not stab you in the back. I would find some other means.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d poison your food.’

‘Would you indeed? In that case I shall have to be very careful what I eat when you’re around. Now come along. You’d best take the rabbit to Mrs Hall.’ Turning his back, he took the horse’s bridle and walked away.

Angelina was absolutely furious when she saw he had an infuriatingly smug and supremely confident expression on his face, as if he had won that particular round. In fact, she was so incensed that she was tempted to fly after him to do physical violence. Casting her eyes down at the rabbit and picking it up by its hind legs, through a silvery blur of angry tears she glared at his back as he set off through the trees. ‘Wait,’ she called out. Alex turned and looked back at her. Clamping her mouth shut, she stalked towards him, thrusting the rabbit into his hands and feeling a tremendous surge of satisfaction when blood spattered his light grey riding breeches and marked his immaculate black coat and kid gloves.

‘What an arrogant, conceited beast you are, Alex Montgomery,’ she spat, so angry that she didn’t notice that she’d addressed him by his Christian name. ‘You take the rabbit to Mrs Hall—and I hope that when you eat it it chokes you. I’m going for a walk.’

Brushing past him, she marched back down the path to the edge of the wood, and Alex won a private battle not to smile at her retreating, indignant figure.

After returning Lancer to the stables and handing the rabbit to one of the stable lads, instructing him to take it to Mrs Hall with Miss Hamilton’s compliments, Alex returned to the house and locked Angelina’s crude weapons in a cabinet in the gun room. Then, after changing his blood-spattered clothes, he went into his office and tried immersing himself in his work, but his concentration wavered and he found his eyes constantly straying to the windows, looking for Angelina’s slender form returning to the house.

When his fury had finally diminished to a safe level after an hour or more, and there was still no sign of her, making sure she had not slipped into the house by a back entrance, he went to look for her.

He was thoughtful when he walked in the direction Angelina had taken when she’d left him. He could hardly believe that she had gone out into the woods to shoot rabbits, or that she had aimed the rifle at him, but with that wilful, fiery temperament of hers, he imagined she did do things spontaneously. Only Angelina would have done such a thing and then dared to confront him so magnificently.

A reluctant smile touched his lips when he remembered her standing valiantly against him. She had looked so heartbreakingly young, with those mutinous dark eyes flashing fire and the dead rabbit at her feet, seeing nothing wrong in what she’d done—and, to be fair to her, she could not be blamed. Obviously no one had told her it was a crime to shoot rabbits in England.

She had told him she’d killed the animal for him, and to his surprise he found himself chuckling. She was truly amazing. Of all the women in the world, not one of them would have offered him such a simple, primitive gift, and he had spoiled it for her. He had seen the hurt in her eyes, and it had wrung his heart. If he hadn’t been so damned furious he would have given her the applause she deserved for the clean and accurate shot that had killed the rabbit outright.

He had long considered her the most infuriatingly exasperating woman he had ever met, believing her to be a scheming little opportunist, driven by nothing but her own ambition. It seemed he was wrong about her—very wrong—and he bore the heavy load of self-recrimination for the accusations he had heaped on her. His loyalty to his uncle had clouded his judgement, and it had been wrong of him to condemn her out of hand.

Angelina was sitting beside a brook, her arms hugging her knees to her chest. Her hurt and humiliating sickness had not lessened.

‘I can see,’ drawled a deep, amused voice, ‘that with an expression like that on your face you must be thinking of me.’

Angelina’s head swung round in surprise. Her eyes and brain recognised his presence, but her emotions were bemused by anger and damaged pride and were slow to follow. Alex had crept up on her with the stealth of an Indian, and was idly leaning against a large oak, his arms folded across his chest watching her. Angry at the intrusion, she let her scowl deepen.

‘You’re right. I was.’

‘Don’t tell me. You are plotting some new way to antagonise me or how best to murder me.’