Lady Ann's Excellent Adventure (A Regency Short Story) by Candice Hern

 

    Lady Ann's Excellent Adventure
A Regency Short Story 
     
    by Candice Hern
     
     
     
    Copyright 2012 by Candice Hern
     
     
     
     
    This is a work of fiction. With the exception of real historical figures and events that may be mentioned, all names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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    Cover art: Detail of "Morning Walking Dress" from Ackermann's Repository of Arts , July 1813. Collection of the author
     
     
     
    LADY ANN'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
     
     
    London, August 1802
     
    The Earl of Evesham grinned like a child with a new toy as he drove the elegant curricle down Park Lane. He'd just picked it up from the carriage maker and was more than pleased with its balance, buoyant spring, and smooth ride, not to mention the gleaming yellow-gold side panels and the tufted black leather seat.
    The earl was not, in general, a man overly concerned with what was fashionable, but he felt singularly pleased to have so up-to-date a sporting vehicle. He understood now why the smaller two-wheeled curricle was starting to overtake the perch phaeton in popularity. It was light, nimble, and sleek as a jungle cat.
    "It's a prime goer, my lord," Parker, his tiger, shouted from the rear seat. "A real downy ride."
    The earl sprung the team down Park Lane as the traffic was light this early in the day, but slowed as he passed the Riding House at the edge of Hyde Park, and turned left onto Mount Street. It was a narrower street lined with rows of elegant houses, so he intended to take a more sedate pace. But an interesting sight caused him to rein in the horses.
    A young woman sat perched in a tree on the other side of a large fenced garden. She appeared to be attempting to make her way over the fence, but her skirts had become caught in a branch. As she twisted and tugged in an effort to free them, she provided the earl with an excellent view of very trim ankles, set off to advantage with the criss-crossed blue ribbons of her slippers, and a bit of shapely leg.
    What an intriguing situation this was, considering the owner of the garden was the man he was appointed to meet the next morning in order to make a formal offer for his daughter. It was a marriage arranged in his boyhood, and he hadn't set eyes on his future bride since she was a small girl. For a brief instant, he wondered if this pretty hoyden could be she? But it was highly unlikely that Lady Ann of Gloucester, daughter of Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and niece to the king, would be perched inelegantly up a tree.
    He certainly hoped not, anyway, as he was committed to the marriage with her and had no wish to marry a girl who behaved with such impropriety. Lady Ann had only just returned from Vienna, where she had been living with her cousin Charlotte, Duchess of Württemberg. But as Charlotte's husband had recently begun to align himself with Bonaparte, both the king and his brother Gloucester thought it best to send for Lady Ann and remove her from imprudent political influences. They wished her to be safely married to a loyal Englishman with ties to the royal family, and so the long-ago arrangement between Gloucester and the Duke of Lancashire, the earl's father, was now to take place.
    A young woman of royal blood, educated in Europe, steeped in protocol by high-stickler cousins at the courts of Denmark and Württemberg would never dream of getting herself up a tree. It must be some other female of the household. Perhaps even a servant, sneaking out to meet her young man.
    The earl could not contain his curiosity, and drove the curricle to a stop beside the overhanging branches of the tree.
    "May I be of assistance, Miss?"
    "Oh."  The girl, who was quite pretty upon closer inspection, looked a bit flustered, glanced down at her