As Thomas loosened his grip on the horse’s bridle, he was filled with impotent fury.
“Go and be damned to you!”
Chapter Twenty-five
“We need some help with our luggage, Hobson,” Harry told the Hampden House footman when he opened the door.
Hobson hauled in the heavy trunk. “How long will you be staying, Lady Harry?”
“Indefinitely. You can get Rose’s bag. She’ll be staying indefinitely too.”
Harry removed her cloak and made her way to the kitchen, where she found Mrs. Foster, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Gilbert, the cook, entertaining Riley. “Since I’m back to stay, I’d like a front-door key, Mrs. Foster.”
The two female servants exchanged a speaking glance before the housekeeper took a key off her ring and presented it to Harry.
“I brought Rose with me, so she’ll need her old room back.” Harry glanced at Riley. “I’m surprised they didn’t take you to Ireland with them.”
“Lord and Lady Abercorn trusted their persons to the Great Western Railway line that runs from London to Bristol. They had no need of me this time.”
“Well, I have need of you, Riley. It will be most convenient to have my own carriage and driver, after being transported in shabby hackney cabs by cockeyed drivers.”
The footman came to the kitchen door. “Pardon, Lady Harry, but will the Earl of Lichfield be joining you?”
“No, Hobson, he will not. And if he has the bloody effrontery to show his face, you will inform him that I am not receiving.” She glanced at the footman and, in spite of the width of his shoulders, gravely doubted he could keep Thomas Anson at bay.
Harry filled the kettle and swung it over the kitchen fire to boil. “Since our beds haven’t been slept in for some time, Rose and I will need hot-water bottles.” She sniffed the air with appreciation. “Something smells good. I’ve had no lunch or supper, so you can rustle me up some grub, Mrs. Gilbert.”
A half hour later, Harry sat at the kitchen table finishing off a hearty portion of steak and kidney pie. She hoped the hot food would help to fill the gaping, empty void inside her. When Mrs. Gilbert poured her a cup of tea, Harry turned to Riley. “I warrant it would go down better with a dollop of fine Irish whiskey in it.”
Riley grinned and reached for his flask. “A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.”
When Harry retired to the bedroom she had shared with her sisters, her cheeky bravado fell away. She shoved the stone hot-water bottles between the sheets of two beds. “You might as well stay in here with me tonight.” Then she helped Rose finish unpacking her trunk and hung her clothes in the wardrobe.
When she got into bed, Harry resolved that she would not weep and wail and gnash her teeth. Nor would she cry softly into her pillow. Though the revelation about Thomas had stunned her, she adamantly refused to feel sorry for herself. She knew that the anger that had begun to simmer inside her would banish all self-pity. She was furious that this wasn’t the first breach of trust in their relationship. After the misunderstanding about his father’s will, they had agreed there would be no more secrets between them. How could Thomas do this?
During the next few days, Harry kept busy. In April, the weather turned warm and sunny as she had predicted, and each afternoon Riley took her and Rose for a carriage ride in Hyde Park. She thought about Shugborough every day, and was devastated that her planned visit, which she had been looking forward to for months, was now ruined.
At the end of the week, she began to realize that she was waiting for something. It didn’t take much soul-searching to realize she was waiting for Thomas to come and beg her forgiveness for blatantly deceiving her. Though she had forbidden his entrance to Hampden House, she fully expected him to come and demand that she return to him.
Harry was anticipating a flaming argument and knock-down fight in which she would fling at his head accusations of his towering hypocrisy and vile deception.
When he did not come, she was filled with self-righteous indignation.
Each successive day of April was more beautiful than the previous one, and Harry seethed with frustration that she was stuck in London when she should have been enjoying Shugborough. She laid the blame for this injustice at Thomas Anson’s door.
The dark, dominant, dangerous, and deceitful devil should be horsewhipped!
Harry was filled with restless energy. “Rose, let’s pack up all the clothes that my brothers and sisters have outgrown and deliver them to your family this afternoon.”
“That would be grand, Lady Harry.”
“You look in the clothespress, and I’ll go up to the nursery.”
In the next half hour, Harry made three trips from the nursery, her arms piled with outgrown garments. “Whew, this is hot work. I’ll get Hobson to find us some bags.” When she and Rose were done packing, they had five bagfuls.
“I’ll just go down to the kitchen and ask Mrs. Gilbert what food we can take.”
When Harry explained they were going to visit Rose’s family in Soho, the cook suggested she take the ham. “We had it last night for dinner, but there’s still so much left on the bone, we’ll be eating it for a sennight.”
“Good idea. Wrap it up, and I’ll take the loaves you baked yesterday, and some of those turnips from Campden Hill. We’ll never eat a whole bushel.”
Riley slowed down the carriage when they got to Soho’s cobbled streets. He turned into Broad Street and stopped just down from the corner because it was filled with playing children and barking dogs. “I don’t dare leave the horses, Lady Harry. These young buggers will spook my cattle if I so much as turn my back.”
“That’s all right, Riley. Rose and I can manage. We’ll just carry one at a time.”
Harry took the ham and the loaves, while Rose lifted the basket of turnips. When they went into the house, Mrs. Ferguson greeted the pair as if they were angels of mercy, and Rose’s sisters and brothers surrounded them, dancing with joy.
When the ham was unwrapped, their eyes were like saucers, and they sat down at the table ready to sample the huge smoked hindquarter of pig. Harry handed Mrs. Ferguson a package of tea, knowing such a luxury would be a rare treat. She smiled with satisfaction when Rose’s mother immediately put the kettle on to boil.
“We’ve brought some clothes too,” Harry announced, and the youngsters shouted hooray and clapped their hands. “Rose, why don’t you sit down and visit with your family? I can manage the bags.”
She walked down the street to the carriage, lifted out one of the bags of clothing, and carried it back to the Fergusons’ house. Harry repeated the exercise and by the time she struggled down the street with the fifth bag, she was both hot and out of wind.
Rose took the bag from Harry. “Sit down, my lady; you’re exhausted.”
She took Rose’s chair. “No, I’m just hot . . . and thirsty.”
“Billy, fetch Lady Harriet a cup of water.” Mrs. Ferguson smiled at her guest. “He’s just brought it fresh from the pump. It’s nice and cold.”
Young Billy brought the water and Harry took a few gulps. “Thank you. That’s better. I shouldn’t complain—I’m glad the weather has turned warm.”
After a short visit, Rose bade her family good-bye. “Riley is waiting for us down the street. We shouldn’t keep the horses standing any longer.” She kissed her mother and sisters. Billy walked to the carriage with them so he could look at the horses.
Harry felt a small sense of accomplishment. It was good to think of others. Her problems paled in comparison with those of the less fortunate. She promised herself that the visits to Broad Street would be more frequent from now on.
Thomas paced across his bedchamber with a restlessness and anger he couldn’t quell. The anger was directed at himself, of course. I should have given up the lease on Hazard House before we were married. That way Harry wouldn’t have found out about it. Now it is too late for anything but regrets. She knows the dark secret I was so careful to conceal, and I
doubt she will ever forgive me.
Thomas had been extremely busy in the past week. As he had surmised, Solange had jumped at the chance to take over Hazard House and run the business herself. Simon Kendall had arranged to take Thomas’s name off the lease of the house on Half Moon Street, and register it in the name of Solange Samson. Thomas had also called in all the markers owed to him, and done an audit of the books, so Solange would have a clean slate to start her business.
He had held a meeting with the people he employed at Hazard House from the porter and the barman to the croupiers and the maintenance staff. Some refused to have a female boss, but most were amenable to staying on at the Half Moon Street gaming house.
It was the nights without Harry that Thomas found almost unendurable. The endless hours crawled by, and often in the middle of the night it felt as if time had stopped completely. A half dozen times he had sat down at his desk to pen a letter to Harry explaining his reasons for opening a gaming house, but each time he’d crumpled it up. What he put down on paper sounded like futile, even pathetic, excuses and he was convinced he could make a better case if he could talk to her face-to-face. Yet still he hesitated to go and explain himself. She will think me nothing more than a hypocrite and a liar.
As he stood at the window, trying to suppress the ache in his heart, he thought back over the years that had brought him to this pass. By the time he was twelve, Thomas had learned all there was to know about cards, dice, betting on horses, and games of chance at his father’s sporting estate of Ranton. He had also learned to defend himself against the beatings his father administered in the drunken rages brought on by Lichfield’s losses.
As Thomas grew older, he came to despise gambling and all it stood for. He was seventeen when his father’s profligate excesses brought about his financial collapse.
During the years Thomas was at Oxford, he had vowed that once he finished university and came of age, he would do everything in his power to restore Shugborough Hall. But the years from twenty-one to twenty-five had clearly shown him that the task he had set for himself was impossible to achieve without money.
Thomas then decided to try for a seat in Parliament. He campaigned hard and became the Whig member for Lichfield, and then he worked even harder for his constituents. Though he enjoyed representing his own people, he soon realized the money he earned as a member was nowhere near enough to restore Shugborough in the way he had always dreamed. He augmented his income by selling fine art, and by authenticating paintings, but even the commissions from Whitfield Cox fell far short of what he needed.
Three years ago, when his father became ill, Thomas’s resolve hardened. He knew gambling was the only way he could make the kind of money it would take to refurbish Shugborough. It was the means to an end. And to Thomas, at this point in his quest, the end justified the means. Running a gaming house could be a profitable enterprise, especially if it was run as a business and the man who made the bets was not addicted. The odds were always in favor of the house. It had not damaged his reputation among the nobility because he had kept it secret. Though running a gaming house clashed with his stern morals, he resolutely ignored his conscience.
With cold calculation, resolve, and determination, he leased the Mayfair house on Half Moon Street, talked Solange into coming to work for him, and set up the fashionable establishment with a private room for wealthy nobles who had a secret addiction to gambling. At long last, Thomas was able to start buying back Shugborough’s treasures.
He thought about Marlborough. How bloody ironic that the duke’s losses over the past fortnight were greater than the price he was asking for the centaurs.
Thomas drew the velvet curtains across the window and turned to face the empty room. What the hellfire is the point of restoring Shugborough if I don’t have Harry to share it with me?
“I see no reason why I should stay in London, when I am longing to be at Shugborough. I don’t need Thomas Anson’s permission to travel to Staffordshire and visit my beloved house. When I married the decadent devil, he endowed me with all his worldly goods.”
“Shall I pack your trunk, Lady Harry?”
“Yes, and pack your things too, Rose. I’ll ask Riley to have the coach ready first thing in the morning.” It had been three days since they had visited the Fergusons, and Harry was at loose ends at Hampden House with her family away in Ireland. The only antidote to thinking about her husband and cataloguing her grievances against the dark devil was to keep busy. She also told herself it would be a good idea to put distance between them. Then when he came to beg her pardon and ask her on bended knee to forgive him, the Knave of Clubs would find that the bird had flown.
Harry took the books from her bedside table and put them in the bottom of her trunk. Rose brought her afternoon tea up to the bedchamber and Harry insisted they share it. They put their empty cups back on the tray, and then with Rose’s help, she began to pack all the clothes she had brought from St. James’s Square.
Suddenly without warning, Harry realized she was going to be sick. She bolted for the bathroom, hung her head over the lavatory, and threw up the tea. When her retching stopped, she sat back on her heels, and took a shuddering breath.
Oh, no, this cannot be happening. My timing is impossible. The minute I am estranged from my husband and we are living apart, Fate steps in to give me a child.
Harry tied back her hair, washed her face, and returned to the bedchamber to search for the powdered bistort and mint she’d bought at the apothecary. She found it in her reticule and hurried back to the bathroom to mix a dose. “He recommended a half teaspoon.”
The minute she drank it, she knew it would come back up. Strangely, she experienced no nausea; her stomach simply ejected the bistort as it had the tea. Harry wrapped protective arms about her midsection as a painful cramp in her belly almost cut her in half. Her cry of anguish brought Rose.
“Lady Harry, you’re ill. You must have eaten something bad.”
Harry got up from her knees and sat down on the lavatory just in time. “Get me a bowl, Rose. I’m going to be sick again.”
True to her word, Harry vomited the minute Rose held the bowl in front of her.
“It’s just water. . . . It looks like rice water, Lady Harry.”
“I have water coming out both ends, Rose,” she managed between gasps of pain. “I feel so ill. You’d better send Hobson for the doctor.”
Rose flew down two sets of stairs until she reached the kitchen, where the servants were having early supper. “Lady Harry is spewing her guts up, and she has the flux too! She’s bad—she wants Hobson to fetch the doctor.”
The footman went out immediately to summon the Abercorns’ physician. Mrs. Foster and the cook rushed upstairs to aid Lady Harriet. They found her rolling on the floor in agony.
“Please . . . please,” Harry said weakly, “lift me up. It’s happening again.”
The housekeeper and the cook picked her up and sat her on the toilet. Harry pointed at the bowl, and Mrs. Gilbert held it in front of her barely in time to catch more rice water. Cook handed the bowl to Rose to empty, but one glance told her Harry was pale as a ghost and so weak that she could no longer sit upright unaided.
Rose was alarmed. She’d seen this sort of ailment before. A year ago in Soho, the poor souls who caught this contagion had died. Her family had been saved because they moved to Aunt Lizzy’s in St. Giles until people stopped dying. She ran back downstairs.
“Riley, Riley, can you ready the coach? We must go and tell Lord Lichfield that his wife is poorly. If we don’t take him the news, and something bad happens to Harry, our lives won’t be worth tuppence. Lady Harry is his whole life.”
“That’s a sensible suggestion, Rose. If aught happens to her while the Abercorns are in Ireland, the family will never forgive us. I’ll put the horses in the shafts.”
Rose banged on the door at St. James’s Square, and when Norton opened it, she ran past him, asking over her shoulder if his lordship wa
s at home.
“You’ll find him in the library. Is aught amiss, young Rose?”
“Yes, Norton, I’m afraid there is.” She tapped on the library door, but didn’t wait for Thomas to answer. “My lord, my lord, your wife has come down with a terrible contagion. Riley’s got the coach outside. Will you come, sir?”
Thomas dropped the pen he was holding, and came around his desk. “Of course I’ll come.” His black brows drew together with concern. “What sort of contagion?”
“She’s rolling about in agony. She can’t keep anything down and she’s got the flux.”
“Has a doctor been summoned?” Thomas flung on his coat.
“Hobson went to get a doctor while Riley brought me here.”
“There’s a physician called Hardcastle, lives in St. James’s Place. He’s often called on by the royal family.” Thomas gave Riley the address, and when he alighted from the coach and banged on the door, he had already thought of persuasive words that would compel the physician to accompany him.
Hardcastle was just finishing his dinner when his butler announced the Earl of Lichfield. He came out to the reception hall, where Thomas stood waiting.
“My wife is the eldest daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, Prince Albert’s groom of the stole. She has contracted a contagion and I would be most grateful for your help. The Abercorns undoubtedly have their own worthy physician, but they are away in Ireland at the moment.”
“All right, Lichfield, I’ll come.” His butler helped him into his caped greatcoat and handed him his black leather physician’s case.
Thomas climbed in the coach after Hardcastle and pulled the door shut.
“I believe the Abercorns live by Hyde Park?”
“Yes. Hampden House is on Green Street.”
“Two days ago there was an outbreak of cholera in Soho, but that is a world apart from Green Street.”
The Dark Earl Page 33
