by M C Beaton
Mrs. Budley and Miss Tonks had gone to watch the troops drilling in Hyde Park. The heat was suffocating and brassy, but both were in high good humour, for a captain had twirled his moustaches at Mrs. Budley and Miss Tonks felt sure that the friend with him had eyed her in such a speaking way.
“Was it pleasant, being married?” asked Miss Tonks after the crowds had started to disperse and both, reluctant to return, had decided to go for a walk by the Serpentine.
“Oh, so very pleasant,” said Mrs. Budley. “Mr. Budley was so gay and charming and we never seemed to have any worries, apart, that is, from not having children. I would dearly have liked children. But, yes, it was wonderful to have a gentleman to escort one everywhere and not have to worry any more about doing one’s duty to one’s family. I was very sad when my parents died, but not too sad, for I had Mr. Budley to look after me. It is probably just as well I did not know about the debts that were mounting up. Mr. Budley used to laugh when the bills came in and tell me not to bother my head about them.”
“I would have liked to marry,” said Miss Tonks wistfully. “I made such a silly mistake with Mr. Blessop, my sister’s husband. I was so sure he was courting me. And Mama and Papa were sure of it as well. He always stood up with me twice at balls and only once with Honoria, my sister. And then … and then … one ball he did not dance with me at all. He did not look at me. And the next thing I knew, he was engaged to Honoria.”
Mrs. Budley, who had heard reports of Honoria Blessop from Sir Philip, wondered if perhaps Miss Tonks was not so silly after all, that Mr. Blessop had really been courting her, but the poisonous Honoria had done something to spoil things.
She squeezed Miss Tonks’s hand and said, “We have not a bad life now. We do not have to work as servants any more either, although Sir Philip says it is good for business if we appear to work.”
“Yes, I feel so safe,” said Miss Tonks, “now that we are all a family, so to speak. But sometimes, I have my old dreams back, dreams where I am getting married. So ridiculous of me!”
“Not ridiculous at all,” said little Mrs. Budley and thought of that army captain and heaved a wistful sigh.
The Duke of Rowcester was driving Miss Simms home from the Park after having taken her to see the review. Miss Simms had been just as she ought, hanging on his every word in a flattering way and looking fresh and young and extremely beautiful. He tried to persuade himself that his feeling of boredom was caused by the heat and had nothing at all to do with a longing to see a pair of bright-green eyes again.
He escorted Miss Simms to her doorstep, refused an offer of refreshment, bowed over her hand and said several flattering nothings, and then, once she had gone in, climbed back into his open carriage and sat idly with the reins in his hands, staring down the street and experiencing a reluctance to go anywhere or do anything. He was expected at a ball that evening, had accepted the invitation, had assured Miss Simms that, yes, he would be honoured to dance with her. So what he should be doing was urging his carriage homeward for a bath, change of clothes and dinner.
And yet … and yet … he could not somehow let Harriet James continue the rest of her life thinking he was too ashamed of her to introduce her to his mother. She should not have run away. She should have stayed to hear his explanation. She was a rude hurly-burly female whose descent into trade had stripped her of the elegance of manner he expected in any female. Why should he suffer while she went about her sordid duties, as righteous as any Puritan? What would she say if she knew he had been on the brink of proposing marriage? Yes, what would she say to that?
But he had not thought seriously of proposing marriage until that evening. His heart began to lighten. It was all so very simple. But then—his spirits plunged again—what if she should refuse him? For the first time in his life he had come across a female who was not impressed by his title or rank.
On the other hand, he had no intention of going through life wondering what she would have said. Dammit, he would ask her, and if she rejected him, then he would return to the country and remain a bachelor. He was tired of London anyway.
With a set face, he told his horses to “walk on” and drove in the direction of Bond Street.
Harriet was sitting at the dressing-table in the narrow attic room she shared with Miss Tonks and Mrs. Budley, trying out a new hair-style. If he called at the hotel, if he had the nerve to call, then he must see her at her uncaring and fashionable best. She had tried frizzing her hair in the latest fashion but it looked a mess, and with a sigh she brushed the frizz out as best she could and twirled the curling tongs into her thick tresses until she had enough curls to sweep up in a Roman style.
Then she smelled smoke and looked anxiously at the curling tongs and then at her hair, worried that she might have singed it. There was no smoke rising from her head—and yet, the smell was growing stronger.
She rose, sniffing, and then realized there was smoke creeping in long grey snakes from under the door. With a gasp she tried to open the door and found it locked fast.
Fighting down panic, she opened the window and leaned out. The street far below seemed to swim before her eyes. She grasped the sill firmly with both hands and screamed, “HELP!” but her voice was drowned in the clamour of bells and commerce from the busy street below.
Sir Philip ambled into the hotel to find the servants huddled at the foot of the stairs. He smelled the smoke immediately.
“Fire,” said the porter. “Gurt fire on the top floor.”
“Ring the fire-bell, get everyone out,” shouted Sir Philip. “Run to the Sun Insurance and get the engine,” he added, forgetting in his fear that he had not paid them. He scuttled up the stairs, his hand to his heart, and near the top reeled back before the intensity of the fire.
He came down again just as Lady Fortescue, Colonel Sandhurst, Miss Tonks, and Mrs. Budley all came in together, having met at the top of the street.
“Fire,” he said, “in the attics.”
The guests who had come back to the hotel to change for dinner were scurrying out into the street while servants carried their belongings.
“Please God the fire engine will be here soon,” said Lady Fortescue. “Where is Harriet?”
“My lady, Miss James was up in her room,” said a housemaid.
All of them who had meant to try to save such valuables as they could from downstairs backed out into the street and looked up.
There was Harriet’s white and anxious face staring down at them.
The porter came running up. “Sun Insurance won’t come, m’lady. Says they weren’t paid.”
Lady Fortescue turned and looked at Sir Philip. “Murderer,” she said. “You have murdered Harriet James by your theft.”
A crowd was gathering, avid faces looking up.
The duke saw the fire from the top of the street, and tossing a coin to a boy and telling him to hold his horses, he jumped from his carriage and ran towards the hotel, buffeting people aside.
He saw the faces staring up and looked up himself.
Harriet!
For one dizzy moment the street spun about him and then he tore off his boots and coat, tossed aside his hat and forced his way to the hotel. Seizing the drain-pipe, he began to climb.
“God in thy mercy, hear my prayer,” sobbed Sir Philip. Harriet had momentarily vanished from the window. She threw the jugs of water from the wash-stand at the now smouldering door and then returned to look down, to see if there could possibly be any way of escape.
And then the late sun slanted through the jumbled roofs onto the golden head of the duke. She held her breath. He was climbing like a cat, smoothly and effortlessly. The servants from Limmer’s Hotel and the servants from The Poor Relation had formed a chain and were passing along buckets of water, men taking it in turns to dart up the hotel stairs to try to douse the inferno.
Harriet watched, her hand to her mouth. The duke leaned over from the drain-pipe and grasped the attic sill. “You must slide down my back. Mis
s James, and then hold on tightly round my neck and pray this drain-pipe can hold us both.”
She forced herself to stay calm, not to grab wildly at him. She climbed out backwards and slid over the human ladder he formed down his back and then seized him tightly about the neck.
He found finger-holds in some crumbling masonry and worked his way along a ridge to the drain-pipe and then, oh, so slowly, he began to make his way down. Above them came a great crackling roar as the roof fell in and sparks and flaming chunks of wood fell past their heads.
Down, ever downward he went, dreading all the time that the drain-pipe would be torn from its moorings by the sheer weight of both their bodies. He did not once look down. Harriet had her eyes tightly closed. He was on his knees on the pavement before a wild cheer from the watchers told him they were safe.
He stood up and then clasped Harriet close to him, kissing her hair and then her nose and then her mouth.
“Come away! Come away!” screamed Sir Philip, “or the whole building might fall on you.”
The duke swept Harriet up in his arms and carried her to the other side of the road, where Lady Fortescue, supported by Colonel Sandhurst, was standing. Miss Tonks and Mrs. Budley were very still and white, each of them glad Harriet was saved, but now terrified of the future.
The duke gently placed Harriet beside them and said, “I must get more men organized to help with the fire.” In a daze, Harriet watched him go. She should have been thinking about what would happen to her in the future, but the only clear thought in the turmoil of her mind was to wonder whether he had noticed her new hair-style.
The chaos slowly began to melt away several hours later. The fire had been put out, but the top two stories of the hotel had been burnt, and guards hired by the duke were posted outside the hotel to stop any looting. Trailing into the hotel, Lady Fortescue looked wretchedly about her. She tried to tell herself that it was a miracle that no one had been killed and that she should be feeling only gratitude. Even her servants, John and Betty, had been out when the fire started. Their guests had moved out to other hotels and inns. The thick smoke had crept down from the burnt upper floors and soiled everything. But at least they still had all the furniture for most of the bedrooms, the dining-room, hall, and coffee room, and the kitchen was completely untouched.
Their money was intact in the office safe, which Sir Philip, with superhuman strength, had dragged out into the street, saving, as Lady Fortescue acidly put it, that which was dearest to his heart.
The duke was standing in his shirt-sleeves and stockinged feet, someone in the crowd having made off with his hat, coat, and boots.
“What are we to do?” asked Miss Tonks helplessly. “Where are we to go?”
“We have no guests now,” said Harriet. “We can stay in the hotel bedrooms which are still intact. But, oh dear, it will be hard to get money from our guests, and what we do have will need to pay off the servants. Then how can we ever afford the repairs?”
“All of you come home with me,” said the duke. “The guards will make sure nothing is stolen, except you had better take the money out of the safe. We will discuss what to do over supper. Betty and John have said they will also stay on guard.”
The poor relations had only the clothes they stood up in. All of them had lost little mementoes that they treasured: Harriet, two miniatures of her dead parents; Mrs. Budley, letters from her husband; Miss Tonks, a pressed flower from Mr. Blessop and a portrait of her father; Sir Philip, all his recently bought finery, including the new wig, which he would never wear now; Lady Fortescue, miniatures of her dead children; and the colonel, his medals, which were no doubt a melted mess somewhere in the wreckage.
The duke drove Harriet and Lady Fortescue, while the rest followed in a couple of hacks.
When Harriet saw the magnificence of the duke’s town house, she thought ruefully that it was no wonder the duke should consider them all so low and disgraceful. Here were great wealth, well-trained servants, and large graceful rooms, all walled away from the vulgar of London.
An efficient housekeeper took them up to their rooms, informing them that dinner would be served in an hour.
Harriet sat listlessly by the window of her room, which overlooked the high wall that had originally been built, when Park Lane was humble Tyburn Way, to keep the crowds going to the hangings out of sight.
For one delirious moment when he had kissed her, she thought she had come home, that he loved her and meant to marry her. But how could such as she be a duchess?
There came a light scratching at the door and then it swung open. The duke stood there. He had changed into evening dress, formal black and white embellished with diamonds.
“Miss James,” he said, “I have a proposition to put to you.”
“Not that,” said Harriet brokenly and covered her face with her hands and wept.
Chapter Eight
‘Tis still my maxim, that there is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.
—GEORGE FARQUHAR
Several strides and he was before her. He knelt down on one knee and gently drew her hands from her face. He took out a handkerchief and dried her tears. “I am a clumsy oaf,” he said huskily. “I want you to do me the very great honour of becoming my wife.”
Harriet looked at him, amazed. “But you cannot … it is not possible … your position, your rank!”
“Damn them all. Think, Harriet, sweet Harriet, we can be married here by special license and quit the town. It wearies me. All you have to do is say yes.”
“But … why?”
“Because I love you with all my heart and soul.”
“Oh.” That “oh” was long drawn out, a mixture of rapture and pure relief. “Yes,” said Harriet shyly.
He stood up and took her hands in his and drew her to her feet. He kissed her gently on the forehead, determined to show her his respect for her, but the siren of the bathtub rose wickedly in his mind and in a few moments both were lost in a passionate kiss of blinding intensity.
At last Harriet broke free and said raggedly, “I am all smoky and my gown is soiled. I have not washed and the others will be waiting for us.”
“A few moments,” he said reluctantly, “and then we will meet again in the drawing-room.”
“My love,” Harriet looked up at him. “Why were you so ashamed of me meeting your mother?”
He laughed. “As soon as our engagement is announced in the newspapers, you will meet my mother and you may be able to understand that I was ashamed of her. Hardly a worthy thought for a son, but Mama is a trifle eccentric. She and her friends would have promptly attached themselves to us for the rest of the evening and I wanted you all to myself!”
The poor relations looked up as he entered the drawing-room. They were all white with strain and fatigue. Sir Philip was sitting apart from the others, like the very pariah that Lady Fortescue had just told him he was. Footmen came in bearing decanters.
“Where is Miss James?” asked Lady Fortescue.
“Miss James will be with us presently,” said the duke.
“I am grateful to you, nephew, for all your kindness and efforts on our behalf,” said Lady Fortescue, “but I must remind you that Colonel Sandhurst and myself consider ourselves Miss James’s guardians and now that she is under your roof, I must beg you—”
“Miss James has just done me the honour of promising me her hand in marriage,” said the duke.
Miss Tonks burst into emotional tears, Mrs. Budley wept quietly, and even the colonel wiped away a tear.
“It’s a celebration,” said the duke gently, “not a wake.”
Sir Philip brightened. Harriet would warn them if the duke ever noticed that necklace was a fake. He wouldn’t tell her what the piece of jewellery was … not yet, not when she was in the first flush of romance.
Harriet came in and they dried their tears and clustered around her.
“As a wedding present,” said the duke with his arm around Harriet
, “I shall pay for the repairs to your hotel and the wages of your servants until such time as you can start up in business again.”
Before the duke’s marriage announcement, both Miss Tonks and Mrs. Budley might have found the courage to suggest that instead of paying for the repairs to the hotel, that he present them with the money instead so that they could go off somewhere and live quietly. But Harriet was to marry a duke. Neither the stigma of trade nor her lack of dowry nor her age had spoiled her chances of happiness. Such happiness could be theirs, they thought, blind for once to Harriet’s beauty.
The first shadow fell on Harriet’s happiness when they were seated at supper. “I’m sorry about the fire insurance,” said Sir Philip, “but why did you not escape while there was still time to get down the stairs, Miss James? Were you asleep?”
Harriet looked at him in surprise and then said slowly, “The shock of it all drove one main fact out of my head. The door was locked.”
“Are you sure?” demanded the colonel.
“Oh, yes, I wrenched and tugged at that door and it was locked fast.”
“Who would do such a thing?” cried Lady Fortescue.
“That French chef, for one,” said the colonel. “You never told us where you found Despard, Sir Philip.”
Before Sir Philip could answer, Harriet said, “I do not think Despard could have had a hand in it because he was frantic in his efforts to save as much of our furniture as he could. He pleaded with me to try to save his job. He appeared worried to death.
“Perhaps it was Lady Stanton,” Harriet went on. She turned to the duke. “Do you remember at Vauxhall how she swore to get even—or rather, she said something about us being sorry we had ever crossed her?”
