by Kate Moore
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter 11
Nanny Ragley’s warning came back to worry Nate as he and Miranda watched the Hartwood gig drive off in front of the Three Horseshoes in Sunley.
The inn’s three stone bays, each with a tall pointed roof, towered over them. Two mail coaches with their distinctive black bodies and red door panels passed in the crowded high street, the guards blowing on their yards of tin, foot travelers scrambling out of the way.
Miranda, who had talked steadily in the gig about Nanny and Mrs. Wellby, now fell silent and took Nate’s arm with unusual docility as they entered the inn. He managed to haul the two cases into the coffee room and find Miranda a seat on a bench under the window.
“I’ll be a few minutes,” he said, more to himself than her. Miranda was a girl men noticed. Already she was drawing glances from strangers. “To get our tickets,” he told her.
She looked very much the lady in one of those short tight jackets women wore over their bosoms. Little dots on her white skirts matched the blue of her hat and her eyes. There was a quality to her clothes to make ordinary fellows like him hesitate to approach her, but if she spoke in that shop-girl accent of hers, there was no telling what insult she might receive.
From the ticket queue, he glanced over his shoulder, ready to dash to her side if any man accosted her. With his mind on Miranda, he had to ask the agent to repeat. There were no seats to be had on the night run of the Radcliffe Rocket until the next day. Nate paid for two seats for the following night and turned back toward Miranda.
He held the tickets in his hand, half elated, half terrified. They could tell Captain Clare what they’d learned about Adam Pickersgill, and now fate had handed him more time with Miranda, but he had to keep her from unwelcome attention until they got on that stage. For all her shrewdness, she was still an innocent.
He crossed the coffee room and sat down beside her on the bench.
“Well?” she said.
“Listen, they don’t have seats for us on the Rocket tonight.” He took the tickets and put them away in a safe pocket.
“We take another coach then.” She smoothed her skirts over her knees.
“We have to stay the night.”
“Here?” She looked aghast.
“No. A smaller inn will be better, but if I’m to protect you—”
“Protect me? From what?”
“Insult. We need a story.”
“We have a story. We’re looking for our lost cousin.”
He shook his head. “We need a story that lets us stay in one room.”
“One room! You don’t mean it. I can’t sleep in a room with you. A lady has her character to think of.”
He put a finger to her lips, silencing her. A gentleman across the room watched them over his newspaper. “So I can protect you,” he said. “One room”— he made a supreme effort to dismiss the images flashing in his brain—“not one bed.”
Miranda’s cheeks turned an interesting shade of pink.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
He wanted to find a less bustling inn, and he wanted to remove her from the too-interested gaze of the man behind the newspaper. Every man’s intentions became suspect because he himself had thoughts he didn’t want to own about spending the night with Miranda. The best thing was to find decent lodgings and keep them both busy about the town, so that they’d fall fast asleep. But first, they had to get their story straight for a landlord. Landlords, Nate thought, were a far more suspicious lot than housekeepers or nannies.
It proved easier to find an inn than to agree on a story. Off the high street next to a sweet shop was a small brick-and-timbered inn with the modest rates Nate thought prudent. He bought Miranda a bag of peppermints and proposed a simple story. They were to be a Mr. and Mrs. Fulton making a trip to London to visit her mother, who’d taken ill.
“Why are we changing our story?” she wanted to know.
“Because we shouldn’t go spreading what we learned to strangers before we report to Captain Clare.”
She frowned and sucked harder on her peppermint. “You think anyone in this country town cares about our lost cousin?”
“People know Lady Penelope disappeared. We don’t want them thinking we know something we don’t.”
“Well, we could change the name of our relation and keep the story.”
He shook his head. She could be so stubborn. “Do you want to go on sitting in your father’s back room, or do you want the club to reopen?”
Her face crumpled, and she looked away from him. He didn’t know what he’d said to upset her. The truth was that she didn’t want to be his wife even in a fiction. He watched the customers go in and out of the sweet shop while he waited for the sting of it to fade.
After the peppermint had turned to chalk on his tongue, she spoke in a small tight voice. “All right then, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” he said. He hauled her up off their bench and hefted their bags.
Then she spoke again. “But,” she said, “you have to wait for me to be in bed, you can’t light any lamps, and you have to sleep on the floor.”
She was still his Miranda.
* * * *
Cassandra and Cordelia Fawkener’s female guests occupied the lilac drawing room after dinner. Lucy had had no word from Harry Clare since they’d parted the afternoon before. Her friends had given her little time to worry about Adam as they helped her prepare for her first London dinner party with a suitable gown and a new way of dressing her hair and a great deal of information about her fellow guests.
Now it fell to Lucy’s lot to sit on a pretty velvet settee in conversation with a Miss Sophia Throckmorton, a round-faced girl with enormous dark eyes, an equally impressive bosom, and a gown of such a deep gold it reminded Lucy of Mrs. Vell’s best mustard. Miss Throckmorton needed no encouragement to talk. In the quarter hour they’d spent on the settee, Lucy had learned everything she wished to know and more about the girl’s aspiration to snare a handsome, titled husband during the coming Season.
“I would not come to a party of such...persons except that our dear hostesses know so very many single men,” she confided with a hand on Lucy’s. “One must never neglect an opportunity to be seen by those who will praise one’s beauty to others.”
Lucy was far from certain that Cordelia or Cassandra would praise a girl who looked like a mustard pot, but she held her tongue. She had a suspicion that her friends liked to create a bit of drama at their parties. Nothing else in Lucy’s view could quite explain the evening’s mix of guests, a fiery MP who had his doubts about the creation of a Metropolitan Police Force, a young baron with radical political leanings, a couple who appeared to be frostily observing a public unity they were far from feeling, and all their dear friends from the Back Bench Lending Library.
The table had been lovely, the food delicious, and the service so attentive as to be nearly invisible, but Lucy had noted an almost gleeful exchange of glances between the two sisters whenever their guests grew heated or the MP thumped the table and made the ivory-handled knives bounce. She had heard Cassandra remark to Cordelia, “If we can’t have the Duchess of Richmond’s luck, we must make our own.”
For a time Lucy had enjoyed watching her fellow guests, but now under the steady barrage of Miss Throckmorton’s self-disclosure, she began to feel what a long day it had been and to wish that the captain had not disappointed her. She had been mistaken in trusting both his promise and his apparent interest in her. A womanly mistake her husband hunter’s guide said was not uncommon. Now she was as tired as she had ever been after a day on her feet at the inn. She straightened her spine and suppressed a threatening yawn as the drawing room door opened.
Lucy glanced at the door with the happy thought that the gentlemen would join them, the tea tray would soo
n follow, and bed could not be far behind. But only one gentleman entered the room, Harry Clare, looking startlingly handsome in fashionable black evening wear. He crossed the room to offer his hostesses a brief word and bow, and then, in his direct manner, he came straight to Lucy. She could not look away. Beside her Miss Throckmorton took up an ivory fan and plied it vigorously.
Harry bowed. “Miss Holbrook, I have a message for you from our mutual friend.”
“Oh, how is he? How did you leave him?”
“He’s very well. He’s with an old friend of mine. They have an understanding already.”
“Thank you,” she said. She felt the weight of the day’s worry slip away, and her heart or her vanity, she could not be sure which, whispered that he was interested after all. “Oh,” she said. “May I introduce you? Miss Throckmorton, Captain the Honorable Harry Clare.”
One brow went up.
“You see,” Lucy said, “I’ve learned something about you today.” Cassandra and Cordelia had explained that the captain was the second son of an earl. Without the uniform he seemed a different man from the one who had helped her yesterday.
He bowed again and took Miss Throckmorton’s hand briefly.
For a moment no one spoke. With an effort Lucy kept her seat. She wanted to rise and walk apart with the captain in defiance of all that was polite and rational.
“How was your first day in London?” he asked.
“Long,” she said.
“Found a husband yet?” he asked.
“Miss Throckmorton and I were just speaking of every young woman’s obligation to look for one,” she said.
“I’m sure your hostesses will do their best to put you in the way of eligible men.”
Miss Throckmorton intervened. “Miss Holbrook is most advantageously situated here with such friends to help her.”
Lucy felt the awkwardness of their situation. She wanted to ask much more about Adam, and about him, Harry Clare, without Miss Throckmorton’s curious gaze. The door to the drawing room opened again, and the other gentlemen entered. Suddenly, everyone was talking and moving. Harry Clare was going to walk away, caught up in the general air of change in the room.
“You’ve put aside your uniform, Captain,” she ventured.
“I’m not always at war,” he said.
Another of the guests came up to him at that moment. Lucy had met her earlier, a woman near sixty. Harry turned and offered her a grin and quick kiss on the cheek. “Aunt Louisa.”
“You scapegrace,” she said. “You don’t get around me so easily. You’ve been avoiding your aunts for far too long. Now that I’ve tracked you down, you must tell me about yourself. Out of uniform, at last, I see.”
He offered his arm to the older woman. “You’ve met Miss Holbrook and Miss Throckmorton?”
She nodded. “Come, tell me if what I hear about your brother is true.” His aunt linked her arm in his as they walked away.
“Younger son,” said Miss Throckmorton.
“What?” asked Lucy. Her conversation with Harry Clare had ended before it had really begun. The vexed question of his interest in her remained.
“He’s only a younger son,” Miss Throckmorton repeated. “It’s terrible when they’re handsome like that, but a woman who wants to be secure of a comfortable position really can’t be swayed by a man’s appearance.”
“Of course not,” Lucy said.
Miss Throckmorton sighed and gave herself a little shake. “They say his brother, Richard, has ruined the estate entirely.”
Lucy now felt she must change her seat or be subjected to Miss Throckmorton’s assessment of Harry Clare’s finances. With the arrival of the tea tray, she seized her opportunity. “Shall we have some tea?”
A little movement, a few words spoken to other guests, and the business of securing her own cup of tea freed her from Miss Throckmorton. When she dared to look around for her former companion, she spotted her engaged in conversation with Harry Clare and his aunt.
* * * *
Nate clung to a pot of ale in the small taproom as long as he dared. Any longer and the landlord would doubt the story of a young husband accompanying his worried wife to London to care for her ailing mother. Any longer and his imagining of Miranda’s preparations for bed would overheat his brain.
He had a bit of experience of women, none of it satisfying. Once in his Bread Street youth he’d admired an older girl named Eliza. He had watched her pass from a brief bold prettiness to coarse misery under the necessity of pleasing hard-fisted men. It was the way of Bread Street. The grand ladies he’d met since that time hardly moved him. They were as aloof and indifferent to men such as he as stars in the sky. Only Miranda combined the plucky cheek of those Bread Street girls before they became women and the haughty elegance of a true lady. She made him witless, and he needed his wits about him to finish the captain’s job.
He said goodnight to the landlord, took a candle, and made his way up the stairs to the room at the back of the inn. Earlier when he and Miranda had put their cases on the bench at the foot of the bed, he’d been pleased by the clean and simple comfort of the place. A rag rug covered a large portion of the floor. A painted clothes press and old chest of drawers with a speckled mirror stood against the wall, with a chair and low table near the hearth opposite. The bed looked roomy, and the patchwork counterpane was clean.
In the light of day from two small high windows on either side of the bed the room seemed spacious enough. There was a screen in the corner for privacy.
Only now, as he tried the door, did he recognize how impossible it would be to ignore the presence of another person.
Miranda had locked it as he’d instructed. He knocked. “It’s me,” he said. “Open the door.”
“No lamps,” she reminded him.
He waited, listening to her movements. The key turned, the door opened, and he stuck his foot in at once.
“You’ve got a candle,” she cried, smacking the door against his boot.
“Get back in bed. I’ll wait.”
She let go of the door, and he heard her dash across the room and scramble into bed.
He pushed the door open and turned toward the dresser, keeping his back to the bed. When he set the candle down, his shadowy image filled the speckled mirror. The room smelled of her, of tooth powder, lemon soap, and almond cream. He smelled of ale. He took a steadying breath of air that was full of Miranda.
What he had to do was simple. He’d done it a thousand times. There was no reason that a girl lying in a bed looking at the ceiling should make him feel clumsy and disconnected from his hands. He rehearsed the moves in his mind. Boots, jacket, neckerchief, waistcoat. Even when he removed them, he’d still be decently clothed.
“I hung some of your things in the clothes press,” she said.
His stomach took a mad dive at the thought of her touching his clothes.
“Thank you,” he said. He turned and opened the press, briefly losing his intention in the lavender scent of her gowns. His brain managed to summon the thought—Boot jack. He brushed aside her muslin skirts, found the jack, and removed his boots.
“How are your feet?” he asked.
“I’ve ruined a pair of fine cotton stockings,” she said.
“We can look for a shop tomorrow. Did you leave me a pillow on the bench?”
“Yes. And a blanket.”
He took a deep breath and shed his jacket, neckcloth, and waistcoat in quick succession, then stood for a moment, his hands full of wool and linen, and his head full of nothing.
“There’s a hook in the press for your coat,” she said.
He made his hands put away the clothes, then turned to the bench for the pillow and blanket. He tossed the pillow onto the rug and pulled the blanket around his shoulders. Leaning over to blow out the candle, he caught a glimpse of her eyes w
atching him in the mirror. He blew out the candle. The room went dark, and he stretched out on the cold, hard floor.
Above him the bedclothes made silky sliding noises that unsettled him and left his body on edge. He lay still and waited for his heart to stop racing and his blood to slow in his veins. He wanted to try some deep breaths, but she’d hear him. He had not slept in a room with another person since his days at Bredsell’s School.
“What happened to Lady Penelope do you think?” her voice sounded small and lost.
He didn’t say what he thought. “If she were in one of your stories, what would happen to her?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “in a story?” She was silent for a minute. “In a story, she would find her husband and save him from the villains who’d imprisoned him, and she’d smuggle him out of France, and they’d live in a castle in Italy until it was safe to return.”
“I like it,” he said. He would not quarrel with a happy ending.
“But you don’t think it happened that way? Do you think Adam Pickersgill took the child?”
“No.” All he’d seen of the old man was kindness and confusion. He doubted Adam Pickersgill had ever hurt a soul.
