A Summer to Remember by Mary Balogh Page A

later and summoned his tiger, who was walking the horses about the square. Breaching the formidable defenses of Miss Lauren Edgeworth was going to be a challenge worthy of his best efforts. He must hope, perhaps, that all her relatives and friends would come to his assistance by persistently warning her against him and attempting to shield her from him—the idiots.
    But for a while at least later in the afternoon he would have her all to himself.
     
    Lauren sat straight-backed beside Viscount Ravensberg, holding her parasol over her head with both hands to shield her complexion from the harmful rays of the sun. She was unaccustomed to riding in a sporting curricle, and she felt very far above the ground and alarmingly unsafe. But it would be unladylike to show a lack of trust in the skill of the gentleman plying the ribbons by clinging to the rail beside her.
    The gloved hands that held the ribbons were slim. They were also demonstrably capable of controlling his high-spirited and perfectly matched pair of grays. His legs, encased in tight, biscuit-colored pantaloons and supple, highly polished Hessian boots, were slender but shapely and well muscled in all the right places.
    Shocked at the direction her thoughts had taken, Lauren flexed her hands on the handle of her parasol and looked determinedly away from him as he turned his team with effortless skill between the gateposts into the park. It was the fashionable hour, the time of day when the
beau monde
turned out in large numbers to parade on horseback, on foot, and in a variety of different carriages, intent upon seeing and being seen, upon imparting and ingesting all the latest gossip.
    Lauren was about to provide them with a new topic, if Wilma was to be believed. She had raised a number of eyebrows by consenting to waltz with the infamous Viscount Ravensberg last evening. Yet now, just the day after, she had agreed to drive with him in the park. In a sporting vehicle, no less. Without a maid. Wilma had quite untruthfully declared herself speechless and had called upon Joseph, Lord Sutton, and Elizabeth to talk sense into Lauren. Only Lord Sutton had complied with her request. Miss Edgeworth must invent some indisposition and send down her regrets when Viscount Ravensberg came to fetch her, he had advised. She would not, after all, he was certain, wish to put her spotless reputation in jeopardy simply because she was too courteous to give a rogue the cut direct.
    “If anyone has anything to say on the subject of Lauren’s reputation,” the Duke of Portfrey had said with languid hauteur, directing his quizzing glass at Wilma’s betrothed, “he may address himself to me.”
    Lauren’s lips quirked with unexpected amusement at the memory. But really, would she be here now if everyone had left her alone to make her own response to Lord Ravensberg’s invitation? She had never thought of herself as a willfully stubborn person.
Was
she? Certainly she had avoided the parade in the park since her arrival in London. But there was no need to continue to do so. She had faced the
ton
last evening. And it was unexceptionable to drive out in public places with a gentleman who had been properly presented to her, even if he was a notorious rake.
    “Well, Miss Edgeworth.” Having negotiated the tricky turn into the park, the viscount turned his head to look at her. “We seem to have exhausted the topic of the weather.”
    Lauren twirled her parasol. She
had
been unmannerly enough to allow their conversation to lapse. She wondered briefly if he had practiced that particular look before a glass until he had perfected it—that laughter-filled expression that started in his eyes and sometimes did not even reach his mouth to become a proper smile. It was quite disconcerting and interfered considerably with her thought processes. It was one of those things that made a rake appealing to women, she supposed.
    “Your father is the Earl of Redfield, my lord?” she asked.
    “I am