Behind the Scenes

by Jen Turano

  That Harrison was not a gentleman who embraced an enthusiasm for fashion was immediately evident to anyone who took the time to look closely at the man.

  Today Harrison was sporting a tweed riding coat that was frayed at the cuffs, although it did afford the man the proper amount of warmth on what had turned out to be a remarkably chilly end-of-March day. His buff-colored trousers were splattered with mud and had an interesting insert of purple fabric—that did not match any of the colors in his tweed jacket—running down the seams. Granted, given that the trousers were tucked into knee-high boots that hadn’t seen a good polishing in what looked like forever, a person was highly unlikely to notice the lack of matching.

  Harrison’s dark hair, worn far longer than fashion dictated, was tied back with a piece of fabric at the nape of the man’s neck, that fabric having been procured from the very hem of the jacket the man was currently wearing.

  After Harrison had complained about the wind whipping his hair into his eyes, Asher had just been in the process of pulling out a spare neckcloth he had in his pocket, when he’d heard the sound of ripping. Looking up, he’d discovered Harrison going about the business of tying back his hair, completely unperturbed that he’d just ripped the hem from his coat.

  Considering Harrison lacked even the most cursory interest in anything fashionable, and Asher lacked an interest in matters of a nautical nature—which was what consumed Harrison most of the time, since he and his family operated a lucrative shipping business—it was rather surprising they’d even become friends.

  “Honestly, Asher, if I’d known you’d descend into a stupor over me voicing my opinion, I would certainly have refrained from broaching the subject of the Vanderbilt ball.”

  Blinking directly out of his thoughts, Asher smiled. “Forgive me, Harrison. I fear I got distracted by thoughts of your abysmal sense of style and why you’re wearing trousers with purple attached to them. Nevertheless, even though your interesting choice of attire today has clearly caused me to forget all semblance of good manners, I now promise to give you my undivided attention. Although . . . now that I think about it . . .” He glanced at the purple again and quickly averted his gaze. “It might be best if I looked at the lovely scenery Central Park has to offer instead of looking at you.”

  “Won’t that make it next to impossible to give me that undivided attention you just promised?”

  “Well, indeed, but at least I’ll be able to focus on your words, not focus on . . .” Asher gestured to the horror sitting atop a fine horse by the name of Rupert and grinned.

  Harrison returned the grin, that action causing the two young ladies who were passing them on the opposite side of the gravel path, along with their chaperone, to practically fall off their horses as they immediately took to giggling and blatantly gawking Harrison’s way.

  Harrison, as was frequently the case, didn’t appear to notice the ladies, completely oblivious to the idea they found his dark hair, formidable build, pale blue eyes, and hawkish features worthy of gawking and giggles.

  “If you must know, I thought the purple in my trousers added a dash of style.”

  Asher rolled his eyes. “How is it even possible that you and I are friends?”

  “I don’t bore you like most of your society friends, and you don’t bore me since you—even with having grown up with that proverbial silver spoon in your mouth—have an incredibly innovative nature.”

  “I suppose we do rub along quite nicely at that, and I must admit that there’s always been something different about you, Harrison—a moral compass, so to speak, that I’ve always admired. That right there is why you’re one of the few people who know about that silver spoon of mine being practically wrenched out of my mouth years ago.”

  Harrison gave a nod. “I’m certain you know that I’m honored you’ve trusted me with that information, although I’ve always wondered why you chose to tell me about your troubles and not one of your other friends.”

  “You’ve never been a man to put on airs, Harrison. Because of that, I knew you wouldn’t judge me harshly because of my fall from financial grace.”

  “You were little more than a boy when your family lost the majority of their money,” Harrison pointed out.

  “Quite, but . . . society being what it is, I would have been ostracized from my circle of friends if word had gotten around about the loss of most of our fortune. I would have also been judged over that loss as well, and don’t even get me started on what would have happened if society had learned we were meeting our bills by hocking our most valuable possessions.”

  “Which is exactly why I’ve never had an interest in joining your illustrious circles, although I’m not opposed to joining you for a meal here and there at a few of your clubs.” Harrison smiled. “They do seem to serve only the finest dishes at those clubs of yours. But getting back to the conversation at hand, I now find myself curious as to who else knows about what happened to your family or, better yet, what it took for you to rebuild the fortune that was lost.”

  Asher shrugged. “You know the three men I approached to invest in Rutherford & Company, since you’re an investor as well, and”—he tilted his head—“I suppose the only other person to know besides direct family members would be Reverend Orville Drew of Trinity Church.”

  “Why would you have told Reverend Drew?”

  Asher shrugged. “I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Trinity Church sent out notices quite a few years back that they were going to be collecting additional fees in order to maintain all the family-owned pews. Because my family didn’t have enough money to cover those fees, I had to ask Reverend Drew to allow me to pay a little every month until we were able to get a decent price for some of my mother’s jewelry.”

  Frowning, Harrison slowed his horse to a crawl. “Am I to understand that a person can actually buy a pew?”

  “Churches have been putting up pews for auction for years. The more advantageous the position of the pew, the dearer it costs. But if it makes you feel any better, the funds raised from those pews do go toward operating expenses.”

  Harrison’s frown deepened. “Are certain promises ever alluded to with the purchase of these pews, such as a special place in heaven for those with enough funds to support a church in such a way?”

  “My grandfather Rutherford is the one who originally bought our family pew, so I can’t speak with any authority on what might or might not have been promised. But in defense of the practice, the church has managed to make attendance more regular. Owning a pew is a rather expensive endeavor, and one does enjoy getting one’s worth out of such an expense.”

  “I suppose that would encourage attendance.”

  “Indeed,” Asher said as another group of ladies rode past them, smiling and fluttering their lashes before they galloped off ahead, turning every now and again to smile back at Asher and Harrison. “But getting back to our original conversation, weren’t you about to disclose one of your less than frequent opinions to me before we got distracted by your nonexistent fashion sense, buying pews, and the somewhat tarnished silver spoon I once had in my mouth?”

  Harrison blinked. “I’d forgotten all about sharing my opinion with you.” He clicked his tongue and urged his horse off the gravel path and onto a dirt path, gesturing with a hand for Asher to follow him.

  Winding through the trees, Harrison brought his horse to a stop underneath a tree that had yet to bud and climbed down from the saddle.

  Doing the same a moment later, Asher joined his friend by the trunk of the tree and arched a brow.

  Harrison smiled. “I didn’t want to be overheard by any of the young ladies who keep passing by us.”

  “You’ve noticed them?”

  “They’d be difficult to miss. However, since I believe it does both of us good to vacate our respected businesses every now and again, I’m not willing to give up our rides, even with the annoying attention you draw.” Harrison folded his arms over his chest and looked rather disgu
sted. “You could at least try being less charming, though. That might encourage the ladies to give us a wider berth, and perhaps if you stopped grooming yourself so well, and letting your hair get a bit mussed, well . . . that might make you less noticeable.”

  “I don’t believe I’m the one responsible for drawing the attention.”

  “Because so many society ladies hold an interest in a man who grew up on the docks,” Harrison muttered before he waved away Asher’s protest. “I’m not ashamed of my upbringing, Asher, so there’s no need to look so concerned. But getting back to that opinion of mine. I—”

  “I think I’d rather discuss the delusion you seem to be clinging to—the one where you’re not the gentleman drawing all of the lady interest, and . . .”

  “The opinion I’ve been trying to share with you,” Harrison began in an overly loud voice, drowning out whatever else Asher might have been about to say, “is this. . . .” He paused, nodded in clear approval when Asher stopped trying to talk, and continued. “I’ve been considering what you disclosed to me regarding what transpired at the Vanderbilt ball, and I’ve decided that where you made the gravest mistake in regard to Miss Permilia Griswold was when you laughed.”

  “In my defense, Harrison, I thought she was simply perpetuating a bit of a lark.”

  “Forgive me, Asher, for you know I’m not always knowledgeable concerning the rules of gentlemanly behavior, but I’m somewhat certain that laughing at a lady, especially when said lady is not laughing with you, might be at the top of a what-not-to-do list.”

  Asher leaned back against the trunk of the tree. “You’re quite right, Harrison, and I do realize that I shouldn’t have laughed. But it never crossed my mind that she was serious. If you’ll recall, she stumbled up to our table—shoeless, at that—and announced, in an overly dramatic tone, that she’d been made privy to a plot that concerned the murder of . . . me.”

  Harrison cocked a dark brow Asher’s way. “I’ve never known plots of murder to be a source of amusement.”

  Cocking a brow of his own right back, Asher tilted his head. “You don’t honestly believe she was telling the truth about that, do you?”

  “You’ve never led me to believe in the conversations we’ve had regarding Miss Permilia Griswold that she’s a woman prone to exaggeration, so . . . yes, I do believe she was telling the truth.”

  “There is absolutely no reason for anyone to want to murder me. I’m a simple merchant.”

  “There’s nothing simple about you, Asher,” Harrison returned. “And far be it from me to point out the obvious, but I can think of a long list of people who might want to do you in.”

  “I can’t think of a single one. Well, except perhaps for Permilia, since she is incredibly put out with me at the moment. But other than her, I can think of no one who would want to kill me.”

  “You’ve made a habit out of luring the very best salesladies away from the leading stores in this city. That right there has earned you at least a dozen enemies.”

  “The owners of those other stores are more than welcome to lure their old employees right back. They simply need to offer them a competitive wage.”

  “It is well known that you’re paying your employees a higher wage than anyone else out there.”

  “Which is simply good business.”

  “Others don’t see it that way. They see it as your setting far too high a standard for all workers in the city, and that, my friend, is exactly why you may very well have been marked for death.”

  “I think Permilia’s sense of the dramatic is rubbing off on you, because—”

  The rest of what Asher had been about to say got lost when an honest-to-goodness arrow whizzed past his ear and firmly lodged in the trunk of the tree he was leaning against.

  For a second he simply stared at the arrow, before he turned and looked at Harrison.

  “On my word, I didn’t realize we’d traveled close to the archery range, but . . . someone is certainly a bad shot since—”

  Another arrow struck the tree, a mere foot above his head.

  Both he and Harrison dropped to the ground as arrow number three came hurtling out of a grove of trees, this time missing the tree and whizzing right on by.

  Rolling to the right to avoid Vagabond’s hooves—the arrows seemingly having spooked not only his but Harrison’s horse as well—Asher crawled his way to the back side of the tree, finding Harrison already there, wiping blood from his cheek with the sleeve of his tweed coat.

  “Were you hit?” Asher asked, peering around the trunk to make certain they weren’t about to get ambushed.

  “Piece of flying bark,” Harrison muttered before he dug into his jacket pocket, producing a small pistol a second later. Cocking it, he sent Asher a smile. “You might want to begin composing a suitable apology since it does seem as if Miss Griswold was not being at all overly dramatic about your impending demise.”

  “We have no proof as of yet that someone is currently trying to do me in. As I mentioned, we might simply be too close to the archery range.”

  “It’s on the other side of Central Park, past the pond.”

  “Oh yes, quite right, but Central Park is also known to be a prime spot for robbers to lurk. Perhaps someone took notice of your unusual trousers and has decided they simply had to part you from them.”

  “Now you’re just being obstinate.” Harrison peered around the trunk before he blew out a breath. “The horses just bolted through those trees.”

  “So much for making a fast getaway.” Asher dug a hand into his jacket pocket, hoping to find something that could be used as a weapon. Pulling out a bag of sweets he’d been sent to sample for the confectionery shop he’d recently added to his first floor, he set it on the ground and tried again. A moment later he shook his head in disgust as he looked over the contents he’d pulled out—a gentleman’s cufflink he’d found on the floor of the men’s jewelry department, a necktie, a bottle of cologne he’d been meaning to sample, and a powder puff one of his salesladies had handed him, trying to convince him that offering beauty products in a visible part of the store would be an enormous profit maker.

  He couldn’t help but think it was a sad state of affairs that he had not a single item that could be used as a weapon, unless he could get close enough to the arrow-shooting criminal to blind him by dousing him with the cologne.

  “Is that a . . . powder puff?”

  Asher stuffed the puff, along with the candy and the necktie, back into his pocket. “I was hoping I’d have something more useful stashed away.”

  “If that was a bag of candy you just stuck in your pocket, it could be useful.”

  Fishing the bag back out again, he handed it over to Harrison. “Useful how?”

  Harrison pulled open the string, dumped a handful of the sweets into his hand, and promptly began munching on them. Swallowing, he caught Asher’s eye. “I’m starving, and I can’t concentrate when I’m starving.”

  “Which I can certainly understand, but I don’t actually believe this is the proper time for a snack,” Asher returned. “If you’ve forgotten, someone is still out there, leveling arrows at us.”

  “Well, yes, that is true, but if they were going to continue attacking us, they’d have already made their move. I’d say they are lying in wait.” Harrison returned his attention to the bag of sweets. “I must say, these are beyond delicious. Just the right amount of orange and cream flavoring, but I do wonder how the maker achieved that?”

  Asher ignored the question. “How do you know they have switched to lying in wait?”

  “I grew up on the streets. I know things.” Harrison popped another sweet into his mouth and let out a moan. “Oh, these are divine.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when I meet with the producer of the sweets next week, but getting back to the dilemma at hand, should we make a run for it?”

  “Not unless you want a backside filled with arrows. I would bet good money the person shooting at us is still ou
t there, just biding his time.”

  “So we’re to just sit here and . . .” Asher stopped speaking, frowning when he heard the clear sound of wheels rumbling over the ground. Peering around the tree, he saw what looked to be a milk wagon approaching, and approaching fast. Pulling back, he held out his hand. “May I borrow the pistol?”

  “If memory serves me correctly, you’re not a very good shot.”

  “The only time you’ve ever seen me shoot is when we participated in that fox hunt over on Long Island, but I happen to like foxes, so I missed on purpose.”

  “You almost shot Mr. Beaumont instead.”

  “That’s a risk gentlemen must take when they foolishly decide to set hounds and men after helpless foxes.”

  “Is that why you don’t offer furs in your store?”

  “While this is a fascinating discussion, Harrison, we are being approached by what I would consider a threat, so . . . may I have your pistol?”

  “If you can’t shoot a fox, you’re certainly not going to be able to shoot a person, so . . .”

  The next second, Asher was left with only Harrison’s backside for company as his friend crawled around the tree, apparently in order to aim the pistol at the wagon still trundling their way.

  “I shall be quite cross if you shoot me, sir, especially since Miss Cadwalader and I have gone to the very great bother of coming to rescue you,” a voice rang out, a voice that sounded, interestingly enough, as if it might just belong to Permilia.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Aiming the delivery wagon she’d borrowed from Mrs. Davenport toward the spot where Asher and another gentleman were pinned down, Permilia pulled back on the reins, slowing their speed but not bringing the wagon to a complete stop. Hoping the height of the milk compartment that made up the body of the wagon would be high enough to provide the gentlemen with much-needed cover, she gestured in what she thought was a fairly self-explanatory way for them to run and join her.