‘I’m supposed to whilst in London, but do you know how suffocating that is? Never to be alone?’ She shook her head. ‘I won’t make the same mistake again. I knew I should have stuck to the main path or perhaps not come into the park at all, but it just looked so beautiful in the morning light.’
He had thought the very same thing as he’d entered Hyde Park through the main gates.
‘I think those men were on their way home. They smelled as though they’d been drinking all night.’ She gave a little shudder at the memory.
‘They grabbed you?’
‘Yes. Pulled me around a little, tried to...touch me.’ She paused and then looked over at him again. ‘I’m very glad you came by when you did, Mr Ashburton. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.’ Lady Elizabeth gave a little humourless laugh and clasped her delicate hands together in her lap, her knuckles turning white under the pressure. ‘I suppose that sounds pathetic, as if I’ve led a very sheltered life.’
‘Three men attacked you, Lady Elizabeth. I would be worried if that hadn’t scared you.’
‘You were very quick to dispatch them.’
‘They were drunk. I doubt I could have been so effective against three men if they had been sober.’ He was being modest. Josh led a physical life in India; he might be in line to inherit the business very soon but his guardian had insisted he get to know each aspect inside out, which had involved working each of the different jobs for a period of time. His muscles had grown strong under the Indian sun and his reflexes fast as he’d worked the machinery in the workshops. ‘Would you like me to walk you home?’
‘That would be kind, thank you, but not yet. If you have a few minutes to spare?’
He couldn’t think of anywhere else in the world that he wanted to be more right now than on a bench in Hyde Park with Lady Elizabeth.
Beth could still feel her hands shaking every time she relaxed her fists. For a moment, before Mr Ashburton had arrived, she’d thought she was about to be dragged into the undergrowth and taken advantage of. Perhaps the men would have come to their senses before that, but their judgement had been clouded by the alcohol that was making them stagger and she had felt real fear.
In many ways she’d led a very sheltered existence. She could remember trips to London when she was young, always short-lived as her father hadn’t been keen on leaving her sister home alone for too long, but her mother had insisted Annabelle wasn’t to come with them. The trips had stopped when her father had fallen ill, and then a few years later he’d died and most of the properties had gone to a cousin, a male heir. They’d kept the house in Sussex and the London town house, but soon even that had to be sold to pay for upkeep on Birling View. Since then she’d lived a quiet life at home with her mother and sister, untroubled by the outside world.
‘Come take a stroll with me. It is turning into a glorious morning.’ Mr Ashburton stood and offered her his arm. She hesitated for a moment, then stood and placed her hand into the crook of his elbow. ‘I’ve never been in a park like this before,’ he said quietly, ‘with the carefully planned rolling landscape and trees planted to draw the eye.’
Beth followed his gaze and looked out over the park from their vantage point. It was beautiful and as they started to stroll she felt some of the tension she had been carrying start to ease.
‘Actually that must be a lie,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘When I was a child we spent much of our time in London, but do you know I can’t remember a jot of it? I was six when I left, and, although I can remember the people, the places are all a complete blank.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Our parents died. Mother first and Father soon after. Congestion of the chest, so I’m told.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Thank you. It was a long time ago but I do often wonder what life would have been like if they’d survived.’
Beth glanced up at him, marvelling at the easy, open way he spoke. Most of her acquaintances were stiff and formal, even when amongst friends, but Mr Ashburton spoke freely, giving away little parts of himself in the conversation.
‘Why did you go to India?’
‘Whilst Leo stayed here?’
Beth nodded. It was an odd arrangement, the two brothers separated after their parents’ deaths.
‘They struggled to find anyone to look after us. We have no close family, no one young at least. Miss Culpepper is a great-aunt or something of the sort, she’s the closest relative, and then there’s Lord Abbingdon—he was a widower and did not want the burden of someone else’s children.’ He paused for a moment as he led her down to the edge of the Serpentine and chose a path that continued by its edge. ‘In the end Miss Culpepper agreed to take Leo—he’s the eldest, of course, the heir. Luckily for me Mr Usbourne stepped in and offered to take me.’
‘Mr Usbourne was not a relative?’
‘No, a friend of our father’s. He tells me he held back at first because he knew he was off to India, but when no family would take me he and his wife were secretly pleased. They couldn’t have children, and they loved me like a son from the day they picked me up.’
Beth felt a pang of sympathy for the little boy Mr Ashburton had been, orphaned, with only his brother left, and then told no one wanted to take him in.
‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Lady Elizabeth. I’ve had a good life, better than most.
