No, that won’t do. Hetta stopped herself in mid-stammer as words failed her. She refused to let him take words away from her, even if he wasn’t here to sneer at her. An ill-mannered, bad-tempered, unshaven and arrogant apology for a gentleman would not turn her back into the silenced little mouse she’d nearly become under her grandmother’s roof when Papa had sent her back to England after her mother had died and he didn’t seem to know what else to do with his only child.
Back then the Dowager Lady Porter was determined to turn her skinny, suntanned and rebellious grandchild into a meek and mild young lady who did as she was told without questioning why. Why on earth Hetta’s father thought a stay under his mother’s roof for Hetta and his grandson would work this time, she had no idea. It was a disaster last time and, after enduring two years of being forever in the wrong, Hetta had been desperate enough to elope with the first man who had asked her to in order to avoid spending one more day under her rigid and forever disapproving grandparent’s roof. This time she had a bright and rather rebellious seven-year-old son with her as well and felt no more inclination for polite society than she had last time she had to live with the Dowager Lady Porter. Sir Hadrian Porter had made the arrangement behind Hetta’s back, though, leaving her no chance to refuse and stay on the other side of the Channel while he was in England.
He didn’t even tell her about his plans to keep her out of the way this time until France was fading from view and it was too late for her to refuse to cooperate with them. If only he hadn’t been so devious about it, she and Toby could have found refuge from the relentless heat of midsummer on the Normandy coast and let the polite world pass them by, again. But her father had other ideas and Hetta was very suspicious about them now she was actually in England and the pall of drizzle, stilted manners and her dread of being forced into an empty society marriage was on her once more.
How she cursed the promise her father had wrung out of her that she would agree to be sent somewhere safe with her son whenever Sir Hadrian thought they could be in danger from one of the secret villains he pursued for his country. This time he had invoked the promise to get her to agree to go somewhere she did not want to be even more than usual. She ground her teeth at the memory of making such a blasted promise when she had finally managed to track her father down after her husband, Brandon Champion, had died and her son was a mere babe in arms. With all the failed romance and blighted hope behind her, Hetta was desperate for the old life she’d lived with her wandering parents until her mother died and had been so desperate to escape England she’d rashly made the promise Papa demanded of her as a condition of her staying with him at all. He had held her to it ever since.
Of course, Toby was a wondrous gift from those wretched years and he made every minute of it seem worthwhile. But even though Hetta felt horror at the very idea of being sent back to England, her father knew she would never break her promise to him. Her word was her bond as surely as any gentleman’s and she knew Papa’s trade was a dangerous one, but she was growing very weary of being bent to his will when he chose. It was time to settle into a life of her own making somewhere, she decided, and with a sidelong look at Toby she knew it must still revolve around his needs. He was old enough for school now and she would have to settle for this dull and rainy land at least in term time. He would probably be his grandfather’s heir one day, if Sir Hadrian didn’t make an April and December marriage and beget a direct heir, so Toby would have to learn to be an English gentleman whether either of them liked it or not. To do that he had to go to school here and she would have to live here as well, at least for most of the year. The prospect didn’t please her, but neither did the idea of leaving her son at school and travelling the world without him. Somehow or another this trip to England had to be the start of a new life for both of them.
Anyway, never mind all that now. Brought back to the present moment, Hetta refused to let Magnus Haile’s hurtful words make her lose control of her words for the first time since Toby was born. If that was the sort of gentlemen she was likely to meet here she wished herself in France more than ever. Never mind the sea. She would brave it again right now to avoid ever having to meet him again. Probably.
‘Mama, he said he’d smack me himself if he ever heard of me pulling another stunt like that,’ Toby told her as he ran towards her as if sensing her fury with the stranger might outdo her anger with him if he worked at it hard enough.
‘Good. If you truly ran under a horse’s hooves as he said you did then you should be beaten to make sure you never do it again,’ she said briskly and gave him a hard stare to say And stop right there if you’re thinking of denying it.
She knew her son far too well not to know when he was lying. However furious Magnus Haile made her with his last contemptuous look, she was still not going to fall for any of her son’s clever tricks.
‘I saw a puppy,’ Toby said sulkily, as if of course that explained why he’d darted across a road just as a high-nosed aristocrat was cantering down it.
‘Well, it won’t be the last one you see in England, so you had best get used to the sight if you want me to think you deserve a dog of your own one day.’
‘I want one now,’ Toby insisted.
‘I wanted an angel boy for a son and a house in France where we could stay all summer without a care in the world, but instead I got you and the next place we need to be on your grandpapa’s list. Life is hard, my son.’
‘Why can’t we have a dog?’
‘Because a dog needs a home and we move around so much the poor beast would never know if it was coming or going.’
‘Then we should stop moving around and make a home for it.’
‘You would be bored within a week, Toby, and I would end up looking after the animal. Now that’s enough of the whole subject, unless you would like me to spank you instead?’
‘No,’ Toby said, eyeing her warily.
‘Then accept the fact your hen-witted conduct makes it less likely I will agree to what you want instead of the other way about and stop trying to look like a waif. I am a wonderfully kind and patient mother and, luckily for you, there is far too much for me to do right now to see that you get your just deserts. We must find our carriage and get to London so Grandpapa can start work. I doubt even you will be bored for long in such a great bustling place as London, although I would quite like you to be right now, so you should spare me a few moments to repent your stupidity in diving under a moving horse when you are nearly eight years of age and quite old enough to know better. You are supposed to be bright, are you not?’
‘What good is one of Grandpapa’s mysteries without a dog to help us track down the criminal?’ her son muttered disgustedly and carefully ignored her question, as if intelligence had nothing to do with his longing for a pet.
Hetta silently gave him full marks for determination, although her headache wished he would accept defeat and be a good, quiet boy for once. Other women did seem blessed with adoring little angels for offspring, though, and sometimes they made her son seem a little devil in comparison.
And how boring such perfectly behaved little cherubs must be to live with, her inner rebel whispered.
She wished it would be quiet and go away while she got on with her headache and a nice cup of tea in a peaceful and preferably darkened room, but that was never going to happen, was it? No, now she must find Papa and get him and her son to London, then hope for a rest when they got there.
‘Where has your grandpapa got off to now?’ she asked, smoothing Toby’s wildly curling mop like the doting mother he certainly didn’t want her to be. She chuckled when he shrugged her off and made a wry face. ‘Find him for me and I might try to forget you put ten years on my life with your latest duel with death, my son, but first promise me never to do anything so stupid again.’
‘I promise,’ he muttered with a fine show of reluctance, so she wouldn’t think it was too easy.
‘The man scared me when he shouted, but I suppose he was right,’ he admitted at last.
Progress indeed, Hetta decided as Toby scampered off to do as he was bid for once and she organised the transfer of their luggage to the inn where a fast carriage would be waiting to whisk them up to London. At last Sir Hadrian emerged from a ship’s chandler’s shop with a neatly wrapped package in his hands and Toby at his heels like a well-trained sheepdog. Sir Hadrian Porter looked vaguely about him as if he might have forgotten something, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. His smile when he saw his daughter was genuine, but Hetta did wonder for a moment if he was even capable of the sort of love she had longed for so badly when her mama died and he sent her back to his own mother like an unwanted parcel. Perhaps it was time she made an independent life for herself and Toby? But even though she had loved so many of the places they’d visited over the last seven years, none of them felt quite like home. She sighed at the drizzle now soaking determinedly through her cloak and put it aside as a problem for another day—this one had quite enough trouble in it to be going on with.
Chapter Three
If there was a lovely cool room with fresh sheets and a kindly breeze fluttering through it to be had in London, Hetta certainly hadn’t found it, she decided wearily, as the shabby old carriage rumbled along for a few steps, then ground to a halt again. She was being pushed from pillar to post in this confounded country yet again and the headache she’d come ashore with in Dover was still plaguing her three days on. Two days ago, her grandmother had declared she could not and would not endure her great-grandson’s presence in her usually quiet and stately home in Grosvenor Square a moment longer. Henrietta must send the ungovernable brat to school straight away, even if most of them were closed for the summer, or take him away. So Hetta had gone to crumbling old Carrowe House to ask her father for advice on finding suitable lodgings, and the new Earl of Carrowe’s sister, Lady Aline Haile, insisted they stay there while she found somewhere.
Then Toby managed to find a way up on to the roofs of the decayed old mansion and Lord Carrowe had been so furious with him they’d had to leave that house as well, so here they were, back on the road again. The traffic was stubbornly blocked on the way to their next temporary lodging for the night. Most businessmen still in London now summer had finally arrived seemed to be fleeing the city for the villages around it to spend time with their family. She promised herself she would find somewhere cool and clean and suitable for a longer stay as soon as she had her breath back and got a decent night’s sleep. She could use the few days Lord Carrowe had offered them at his mother’s nearly restored house to regroup and decide what to do next.
‘I’m glad we had to leave Carrowe House, Mama. It was boring there when Lady Aline left for Worthing. It would be so much better if she stayed with us.’
‘Not for her,’ Hetta said as she wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead and wished she was enjoying a summer by the seaside as well as her new friend—at least there was one Haile she would like to meet again. ‘Lady Aline’s mama and twin sisters are in Worthing for the summer and who would not prefer to be by the sea on a day like this?’ she said with a gesture at the shouting, overheated drivers and unnerved horses outside the small windows of the ramshackle hackney.
‘Lord Carrowe is very stuffy. I don’t see how I could have harmed his roof when it was already full of holes.’
‘You could have gone through one of them or fallen off altogether, or been snatched up by one of your grandfather’s foes while you wandered around such a half-empty and insecure place heedless of any danger. I try not to be forever scolding and picking at you, but really, Toby—must you do everything you should not simply because someone forbade it?’
Toby eyed his mama and seemed to consider the question seriously. ‘Probably,’ he admitted at last. ‘How else can I find out why I’m not supposed to do it?’
‘Ask. Get a rational explanation and listen for once, because right now I have trouble believing you have any brains and never mind being clever.’
‘Lord Carrowe didn’t give me any reasons at all, let alone a rational one,’ Toby pointed out with his usual ruthless logic and carefully ignored her slight.
He was right. The gentleman had lost his impressive Haile temper and ordered them to his mother’s house in Hampstead for the night so he could wash his hands of them with a clear conscience. There was something to be said for being the daughter of Sir Hadrian Porter, the King’s discreet and coolly efficient roving agent, when even an earl didn’t dare risk his wrath and put his daughter and grandson out on the street. It was her father’s job to keep his country’s diplomats and spies safe when the usual threats and dangers they faced became too acute to ignore. Lord Carrowe didn’t know the full extent of her father’s powers, but he knew enough to be careful, Hetta recalled with a frown. She shivered as she remembered the wary and brooding feel of poor, half-ruinous old Carrowe House during the day and the creaks and moans of the crumbling old mansion during the night, not much chance of her sleeping for long amid all the Gothic brooding and unease of an old house where murder stole in and out without anybody knowing how.
‘Hmm, perhaps you’re right,’ she admitted, ‘but now I have the impossible task of finding somewhere for us to stay where you won’t cause chaos before we hardly have our feet over the threshold, my son. You are seven and three-quarters, Toby, but at this rate you won’t live to see eight and I am tired of all these accidents you keep falling into.’
‘The rat wasn’t an accident,’ Toby muttered mutinously.
‘I know,’ she said dourly.
‘And you didn’t want to stay at the Dowager Lady Porter’s London residence either, Mama,’ he pointed out slyly, imitating her grandmother’s stiff and disapproving butler’s hushed reverence for the place.
‘No, but I would rather we had somewhere to go to next before it became impossible to stay another moment, and I would prefer it if my grandmother was still speaking to me as well.’
‘Why? You didn’t like her either and we would never have met Lady Aline if we stayed at stuffy Porter House with Great-Grandmama frowning at us all the time and looking down her nose at you. I’m glad I found the poor rat in a trap and let it go in her horrid drawing room when she had her horrible friends to tea. She did nothing but blame you for everything from the moment we got inside her stuffy old house and I never want to see her again. You can’t live there when I go to school, Mama. You would hate it and so would I.’
Hetta met her son’s bright blue eyes and managed a wobbly smile to reassure him she didn’t hold that particular piece of mischief against him and a sceptical lift of her brows to let him know she could fight her own battles, thank you. Toby was offering her something nobody had since her own mother died: unconditional love and real concern for her feelings. ‘Her visitors will spread the story of your misdeeds and I don’t want the world to think you a monster, love, even if you are one.’
Toby seemed immensely cheered by the notion and Hetta didn’t have the heart to berate him for his sins again. She blinked hard at the unfamiliarity of being protected by her own son. Nobody had truly worried about how she felt about the world since her mother died. Her father made sure she was physically safe, then went on with his own life. And her late husband had been a prime example of April when he’d wooed her, December when they’d wed. She winced at the memory of Bran shouting in his cups that she’d ruined his life. At least she’d still had enough spirit left to argue he’d reneged on every promise he made to love and cherish her for life if she would elope with him. Even now she flinched at how desolate she’d felt when he staggered to his feet and glared down at her, challenging her with his superior height and strength to blame him for using his looks and charm to bend a lonely schoolroom miss to his will, even if he had done exactly that. He didn’t meet her eyes and carry on with the lie, but belched and slammed out of the house with a lewd comm
ent about finding a woman with some go in her instead of a useless little milksop who still cried for her mother. At least she had faced him down. It hurt to know he’d wed her because he thought her father and grandmother would relent and advance his career once their marriage was a fait accompli. She was seventeen to his two and twenty when they’d wed over the anvil.
Her father had never laid a hand on her in anger, but he seemed to think she was too grown up to need him to tell her he loved her, even when he sent her back to England after his wife died. Hetta was sure he had loved her mother in a vague this woman fills the gap in my life so comfortably I must love her sort of fashion, and he probably loved his daughter as well, but he had no idea of how to comfort a grieving child when he was feeling bereft himself. He was so relieved to leave her with his mother and bury himself in work again that he’d ignored all her letters pleading to be allowed to join him on his travels and escape the constant criticism and disapproval of her grandmother and the stiff-necked governess hired especially to teach her to be the perfect English gentlewoman so she could attract a stern English gentleman one day. No wonder she had spent most of her time at Porter House fantasising about being adored by a dashing hero out of a Gothic romance. Lieutenant Champion had looked like the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but appearances were deceptive.
She had been even more lonely in the neat little cottage in Lyme Regis Brandon had bought to store his wife in. Once he realised none of his plans would bear fruit he tried to live almost as freely as if he’d never met and married her. Bran would come home, slake the lust of however many weeks he had spent at sea without a woman on her, then walk away whistling to find the knowing and flirtatious sort of women he preferred to his wife. Never again, she swore to herself as she shook off those uncomfortable memories. Never again would a man woo her, then walk away as if she was nothing. If not for his Admiralty masters’ raised eyebrows Bran would have left her in Lyme that day and never gone back and she would not have Toby. She would not undo a day of her failed romance if it meant losing her son, so she had best forget the past and live for now. The fleeting picture of a man as mighty and passionate as Magnus Haile desperate to share life with her was folly and she consigned that to outer darkness as well.
A Rake to the Rescue Page 3
