by Wilma Counts
He held up a hand. “Hear me out. I went to that house party at Sedwick because my mother nagged me into looking out for my sister. She has also been after me—for years—that it is time I married. I finally agree with her. I went there primarily to propose to you.”
“Oh, Gavin.” She lowered her gaze. “But you did not.”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I saw that there was something in the air between you and Burnes, so I backed off.”
She was quiet, searching for a response.
He went on. “I am not the only one who noticed, by the way. Lady Pearson mentioned it to me.” He paused for a long moment, and still her thoughts were so tangled she could not speak. “So, now that you are back here, back in the old groove, so to speak,” he continued, “the question is—”
“No, Gavin, do not. Please. I beg you,” she said hastily.
He laughed softly. “No, my dear. I was not going to pop that question—not for a while at least. I was about to ask just how much of the real Harriet is London getting these days? You often seem to be decidedly distracted.”
“You, sir, know me too well.” Incongruously, she recalled Miss Pringle’s “brace the shoulders” line; so she did. “I suppose I have been, but I am glad you did not ask me that question, my friend. For that is what you are to me: a most valued friend.”
“As you wish.” He moved closer to put his arm about her shoulders and gave her a very friendly hug.
As they parted, he promised to meet her in the park in the morning.
* * * *
“You shouldna’ ha’ let her go. You should ha’ gone after her.”
Chet’s words the morning Harriet left and repeated only once—when Chet himself left—had rung like faraway cathedral bells in the caverns of Quint’s mind for weeks. At night they rang louder and more persistently. Chet had first uttered those words as he encountered Quint just entering the library after seeing Harriet leave.
“You do not understand, Chet. It is more complicated than that.”
“Only to you stiff-necked English,” Chet said. “That girl loves you—I’m sure of it. And I am damned sure you love her.”
“Leave it, Chet.”
“As you will, Colonel, sir.”
Quint had just sat down at his desk, still unsettled by that conversation, when his mother bustled into the room.
“Thank goodness, that lot are on their way. May we be spared their company in the future.”
He looked up and raised an eyebrow. “You are overlooking the rather significant fact that they are blood relatives of Sedwick’s Seventh Earl, are you not?”
She heaved an exaggerated sigh and sat down heavily in one of the wing chairs. “That scene last night at my ball was beyond enough! I intend to make that Mayfield chit pay dearly for embarrassing me so. By the time I am through, the whole ton is going to know how she is trying to cheat her own nephew out of valuable property. Taking advantage of an innocent child! How could she? She will not be received in any reputable house in all of London!”
Quint sat still for only an instant. Then he dug into an inside pocket of the coat he was wearing, retrieved a small key, and unlocked a desk drawer. He took out a small bundle of mismatched pieces of paper and a ledger book. He walked over to stand towering over his mother.
“You will do no such thing, Mother. And you had damned well better see to it that none of your minions take on such a nefarious task, either.” He might have been dressing down one of his subalterns on the Peninsula.
She looked up at him, her face white with rage, but something in his demeanor tempered the rage with apprehension, if not downright fear. “Do not swear at me,” she said weakly. “I am your mother. ‘Nefarious.’ Indeed.”
“How about ‘malicious,’ then? Or one of your favorites: ‘bad ton’?” He refused to tone down his sarcasm, but his voice became cold and iron-hard as he went on. “If I hear even the faintest whisper of what you have just outlined—from you or anyone else—the tabloids will have a holiday with this information.”
He tossed the small bundle of papers in her lap. He could tell by the way her face went even whiter as she fingered through them that she recognized gambling vouchers she herself had written at London gaming tables. He opened the ledger to a given page and pushed it under her nose.
“You will, of course, recognize the handwriting on many of these entries. Interesting that so many of the vouchers and entries here seem to have materialized after Win’s death and before I returned to England. Now tell me who was taking advantage of a situation.” He snapped the book shut, snatched the papers from her hand, and sat in the opposite chair.
“You do not understand, Quinton, darling.” She was begging. “I was trying to mend matters.”
“And when you got in even deeper, how did you hope to escape?”
“Sir Desmond offered to help if—”
He felt a cold chill of disgust slither through him. “Oh, good God. A London procuress has more honor.”
She started to rise.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “I meant what I said. If there is the faintest whisper of scandal pertaining to Harriet, I will release the truth to the tabloids.”
“You cannot hold me responsible for what others might say.” Her self-righteous tone indicated she had regained some of her bravado.
He stared at her until she looked down at her hands. “You pride yourself on being such a social queen of the ton. Here is your chance to prove just how influential you might, in truth, be. Surely, you have enough presence in your set to squash patently silly rumors before they take hold.”
“You have no sense of family loyalty,” she said petulantly.
“Perhaps. But somehow, I did manage to acquire the basic concept of the meaning of honor, Mother.” He stood and held up the bundle of vouchers. “These were neither mine nor my brother’s.” He locked them and the ledger back in the desk.
“You might begin, Mother, to control some of the damage that has been done as the rest of your guests leave,” he said and walked out of the room.
The following morning she had made her announcement of Lady Barbara’s extended stay, and Quint conjectured that she had devised yet another scheme, but he felt sure he had shielded Harriet from one of them at least. The Dowager Countess of Sedwick feared scandal involving herself every bit as much as she relished spreading it at the expense of others. Far more, in fact.
* * * *
“Harriet! You will never believe whom I encountered at the Betworths’ just now!” Elizabeth was so anxious to tell her news, she seemed positively flustered as she entered the Hawthorne drawing room. Harriet and her “Nana” had been receiving morning callers, but the last ones had departed just before Elizabeth arrived. Only that morning Harriet had received in the mail Maria’s letter with the worrisome postscript about chicken pox in Sedwick village.
“No, I suppose I won’t unless you tell me, Elizabeth.”
“Lady Margaret!”
“She is here—in London?” Harriet asked.
“For the moment. But only just. She did not even open Sedwick House. She is staying with the Goughs—you may remember Colonel Gough was on Wellington’s staff in Spain.” Harriet and her grandmother exchanged amused glances, for the usually restrained Elizabeth was talking so fast her words were nearly tumbling over each other.
“Mrs. Gough is Lady Margaret’s cousin,” the older lady informed them.
“Yes. Well,” Elizabeth rushed on, “it seems the colonel is to join Wellington again in Vienna and his wife invited Lady Margaret to go with them ‘so she will have some company.’ They are leaving immediately for the continent!”
“Lady Margaret will be in her element in Vienna, what with half London’s elite already there,” Nana observed mildly.
“So she is not at Sedwick Hall,” Harriet mused aloud.
“N-no. Not really,” Harriet said slowly, but she refused to share what she was thinking: Quint will be in that great house with sick children on his hands. Immediately, she braced her shoulders. Do try not to be such a ninny—the Hall employs a staff of over fifty!
A few troubling hours later, telling herself she had not yet made a decision, she nevertheless set Collins to packing and sent a servant to inquire about post chaise transportation to the north. Meanwhile, she would await further word from Sedwick, grabbing up the mail eagerly each morning. So far there had been no word that any of her lot were ill—but, after all, it usually took at least a week for that childhood disease to manifest itself. What to do? If she just appeared at the Hall, would she be allowed to stay?
Five days later, fully packed, but still hesitating, she sat at the piano in the drawing room idly playing whatever tune came to mind. She was interrupted by the Hawthorne butler.
“Miss Harriet, there is a gentleman to see you.”
“Who is it, Thompkins?” she asked, expecting to be handed a visiting card.
Thompkins cleared his throat. “Said he’d rather present himself. Shall I send him away with a flea in his ear?”
“A gentleman?”
“Dressed like one.”
Thinking the visitor might be someone with information about workers’ “corresponding societies”—clubs being formed surreptitiously to fight for workers’ rights about which Harriet was interested in writing—she said, “Show him in, but Thompkins, stay close by.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stood near the piano, waiting, and a few minutes later, the door opened and Quint walked in.
She gasped.
Then she quickly collected herself, curtsied slightly, and said calmly, “Colonel Burnes. This is a surprise.”
What an inadequate word, she thought, as she drank in the sight of him, absolutely unable to tear her eyes away from him. He was dressed fashionably in a dark green coat, a dove-colored waistcoat, dark trousers, and Hessian boots. His neckcloth was tied simply. The green of the coat reflected the almost green of his hazel eyes, which gazed at her steadfastly.
“I was afraid you would refuse me if gave him my name,” he said, nodding toward the door.
“I would never do that,” she said stiffly, visualizing what it would be like to have him hold her again—and quickly hating herself for the vision. She raised her voice slightly. “It is all right, Thompkins.” The door clicked shut.
“Why are you here?” she asked, unable to hide her anxiety. “Are the children all right?”
He smiled faintly. “Yes—and no. Our young people are mostly all right. When I left the Hall, only Elinor, Matilda, and Robert had so far succumbed to a bout of chicken pox that is running rampant in the village. But Sarah and Richard were not feeling at all well.”
“Oh, dear. Maria wrote me about the Powers children.”
“It started with their family,” he said, no longer looking at her directly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Won’t you sit down?” She gestured to a grouping of an overstuffed couch and two chairs. He waited for her to take one of the chairs, then took the other one.
“Half the village children are sick with it—and many adults as well,” he said.
“And the Hall?” she asked.
“As I say, when I left, only three of the children, but that was three days ago. They could all have it by now.” He sounded truly worried. “Moreover, because so many of our servants are relatively young, half of them are already down with it. Those of us who had it as children ourselves are pressed to keep tending them.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she murmured sympathetically.
He twisted in his chair to face her directly, his expression anguished. “Harriet, I am here on a mission of sorts. I have come to ask you—please—to come back to Sedwick Hall with me. Those lovable brats Win and Anne left us have driven me crazy since you’ve gone. Not a day goes by but one or two or more of them ask me, ‘When is Aunt Harriet coming back?’ Elly breaks my heart crying for ‘Auntie Harry’ as we try to get her to stop scratching her poxes. They need you to come back, if only to prove that you will.”
“Of course I will go back with you,” she said. “In fact, I am already packed. We can leave tomorrow morning, if you wish.”
“You will? You are? We can?” He was clearly dumbfounded.
She explained about Maria’s letter and her premonition of just those events that had transpired. “I-I just was not sure of my reception if I showed up unannounced,” she ended lamely.
“Oh, my God. Harriet.” He stood, pulled her to her feet, and buried his face against her neck. She drank in the scent of him. His voice was muffled against her skin. “It is not only the children. I am here for me too. I have missed you every hour of every day since you left.”
She did not answer him; she merely moved her face for a better angle to kiss him. Their arms tightened around each other and it was long, deep, utterly satisfying kiss of homecoming.
He raised his head to say, “I do love you, you know.”
“I do now,” she said with a laugh. “And I love you too. So now what? Seems to me we’ve already taken the next step.”
“Now we marry and live happily ever after—is that not what Snow White and her prince did?”
“Such things occur much easier in fairy tales, I think. In fact, as I consider it, my returning to the Hall with you is fraught with difficulties.” She nudged him toward the couch where they sat very close, arms entwined.
“My mother is off to the Continent,” he said.
“I know, but ton gossips are still right here in England too. I cannot bring down a sordid scandal for Phillip and Maria and the others to live with. You must go back to them. I shall come when my grandparents or Charles and Elizabeth can join me.”
“No. We shall leave tomorrow as you suggested.” He withdrew from an inner pocket of his coat a piece of paper and handed it to her. “I stopped at Doctors Commons before coming here.”
“A special license? My heavens! You were sure of me, were you not?”
“No, my love,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “Just very, very hopeful—and trying desperately to anticipate any difficulties in the way of what I wanted—and what I want most is you. Forever.”
“Did no one ever teach you to be careful what you wish for, my dearest?” she asked between a series of kisses and caresses that were growing more and more heated.
“May I ask just what is going on here?”
The voice of her grandmother from the open doorway abruptly interrupted. However, Harriet detected laughter beneath the show of shock.
Quint jumped up. “I can explain, Lady Hawthorne. Truly I can.”
“I should hope so, young man,” the old lady said, continuing her pretense of shock. “Would you not agree, dear?” She stepped aside to allow her husband entrance.
“Must I call him out, my dear?” the old man asked his wife very seriously.
“I wanted only this,” Quint said, embarrassed.
Harriet was embarrassed too, but she could not help laughing. “Nana. Poppy. Do stop. Quint and I are going to be married.”
“After that display, I should hope so,” her grandfather said.
“About time,” her grandmother said. “Took you long enough to come to your senses.”
They were married the next morning in that same drawing room. Three days and two blissful nights later, they arrived at Sedwick Hall and began to deal with the happily short-lived chaos of a great manor house turned into a temporary hospital.
Epilogue
“Did I not tell ye, lass, it would come out all right?”
/> Chet Gibbons had finally managed to return to Sedwick Hall as he had promised nearly a year after his sister dragged him off to the Highlands to make amends with his family. He had stopped by earlier in the year, but only briefly, as he was on his way then to join Wellington’s forces gathering in Belgium to deal finally with one Napoleon Bonaparte. That task accomplished, Chet was back again. He and Harriet were riding together on a beautiful autumn morning as Quint rode ahead, forcing his stallion to keep to the pace of ponies ridden by the twins and Sarah.
“That you did,” she said, “but, believe me, it was not easy.”
“He’s a proud man,” Chet said. “Has all these English ideas about money and all.”
“That was not much of an issue with us. Although English law gives a husband control of all a wife’s money and property, Quint would have readily allowed me control of mine. In fact, he told me he wanted nothing to do with it.”
“Would have? But did not?”
She smiled. “We worked it out. I continue to harangue the government about its abuse of children working in mines and the sordid conditions in workhouses while he uses my fortune to rescue Sedwick—which he is well on the way to doing. He loves all that numbers stuff and nonsense. I hate it. Eventually, Sedwick will be profitable enough to pay us back.”
“So—young Phillip comes out all right in the end.”
“And so will we.”
“And you got Lady Margaret to return to the dower house. Good girl! That must have taken some doing.”
Harriet laughed heartily. “I did not touch that one! Quint moved her back while she was in Vienna, then wrote to tell her what he had done—oh, and, incidentally, that he and I were married. What I would not have given to have been a fly on the wall when she read that letter!”
“So many changes here in just a few months’ time,” Chet said. “Phillip told me—before he and Maria left for school—what a time he had persuading you and Quint to take over the chambers of the earl and countess.”
“Both Quint and I felt that would be presumptuous, but Phillip just insisted—said as long as we were doing the jobs, why not? He all but threw a tantrum over it! Said he would take over later when he comes home with a countess and needs that much room.”
