The Persuasive Love of a Libertine

by Jane Lark

  He sighed as he studied the names on the gateways. Awdry’s House. Seymour Place. The names were familiar. But then Seend was a potential stop between Bath and London and quieter than Devizes or Marlborough, a gentleman’s sanctuary.

  Seend Hill House. The Smithfields. It was not as big as some others were, yet it was grand enough, there was an inward gateway and an outward gateway, both with open cast iron gates, and behind the gates a semi-circular gravel drive and a pale stone house with a dozen windows on its front and a large portico. The portico was a half circle, with a naked, trumpeting cherub on its top, and two supporting pillars dressed with sprouting palm leaves.

  It was very parochial, though, more like a mockery of London’s grand architecture than a match for it. But, regardless, Smithfield had succeeded in blending his home with the wealthy houses about his.

  Harry stopped the horse, then swung his leg across its rump, slid off the saddle, and dropped to the ground. No groom came. He wondered if he should have taken his horse to be stabled at an inn. Perhaps Smithfield did not have a stable?

  Harry walked towards the door, leading the horse. He left the reins long and hanging loosely as he stepped beneath the portico, imagining himself knocking. The door opened before he did.

  “Sir…” The man bowed in the moment after he enquired what the hell Harry was doing here, in a single word.

  Did no one ever call here?

  Or perhaps no one on a horse…

  Harry lifted his hand which held the reins, a gesture that implied, pray what do I do with my horse?

  “You are here to…” The man prompted.

  “To call upon Miss Smithfield. Is she at home?”

  “She is, sir. And you are?”

  “Mr Webster. I met the family in London, I am well known to them.” Too well known perhaps, but surely they would not refuse him merely because of his acquaintance with Peter when he had come so far.

  “Perhaps you would care to walk you horse about to the stable, and I will inform Miss Smithfield you are here, sir.”

  “And might I ask, where is the stable?”

  “Along the road at the inn, sir.”

  He was not supposed to have brought the horse with him then. After the door had shut, he laughed, then turned away. He had a lot to learn about rural ways.

  When he returned, as he stepped beneath the portico, the door opened once again before he could knock.

  “Come in, sir.”

  The hall was not overly large, but it was broad and square, and a staircase spiralled upward on either side.

  “Sir.” The man held out his hand to take Harry’s hat, which Harry suddenly realised he had been gripping overly hard while the other side of the brim had been beating a fast rhythm against his thigh. He handed it over. “Your gloves, sir?”

  He stripped them off and passed them over too, then lifted a hand and ran his fingers through his hair. His hand fell as the man turned to lead Harry onward, towards a door that was left ajar.

  “Harry.” Emily stood.

  “Mr Webster.”

  It was only Emily and her mother in the room. Mrs Smithfield looked pleased to see him, but Emily… she looked shocked and… mortified. Her gaze fell to the level of his boots as she turned as pink as a ripe raspberry.

  He walked across the room and took hold of her hands, which had hovered at her middle. Sweetheart. The word whispered through his head unbidden. “Miss Smithfield,” he stated, then swallowed. Lies began to slip from his tongue. “I was on my way to Bath, and stopped for the night in Devizes. I could not travel on without calling upon you to…” To what? Persuade you to marry me.

  “It is very kind of you to remember us Mr Webster. I will ring for tea.” Her mother walked past them, crossing the room.

  Emily’s hands pulled free from Harry’s.

  She was still blushing.

  “I am sorry,” she said in barely more than a whisper, without looking up from his boots.

  “For what?” he answered in a quiet voice so that her mother would not hear. “What on earth can you have to be sorry for? You have not done one single thing wrong.”

  Her gaze finally lifted and her brown eyes looked directly into his. Her eyes…

  It was her eyes particularly that had drawn his admiration in town. She had large, radiant brown eyes, and they gleamed with the brightness of polished mahogany when she had the courage to look up, which in town had been rare. But it was the fact that the sight of her eyes had to be earned that had made them more remarkable.

  That fragility in her nature pulled at the masculine core in him, urging him to protect her.

  She had needed protecting from his friend, though. He should have stepped in more firmly from the moment Peter had begun to court her. Yet Peter had what Harry did not—money and a title. Harry would not have held Emily back from those things.

  But now…

  Emily turned away from him and walked over to a French door that looked out to the rear of the house onto a lawned garden.

  “How long are you staying in Devizes? Would you care to join us for dinner later? You would be most welcome.”

  He looked at Emily’s mother. Yes. He would care to join them for dinner. It was what he’d hoped, to become a family friend. That would allow him unrestricted access to Emily. He nodded and smiled. “I can easily stay one more night, and that would be very kind, thank you.”

  When the tea arrived, Emily was asked to pour. As she did so the pot shook.

  He smiled at her when she handed him a cup, trying to ease her discomfort. He had not wished to discompose her. He wanted to make her feel better.

  But the sight of her. Her dear face. She was a tiny, petite, woman with an understated, pure prettiness. From the moment he’d first met her he’d wished to wrap his arms about her, hold her tight—and kiss her.

  He smiled more broadly at his imaginings.

  He longed for a moment to do that now, but when he had barely walked through the door was not the time to seek a liaison. He needed to gain her family’s trust first, then he might begin his assault to win Emily.

  With that intent, he contributed to a pleasant conversation for no more than London society’s allotted time for polite calls, and left their house within the half-hour. Yet he left with the agreement that he would return at five to join the family for dinner.

  Harry rode back into Devizes satisfied he could have done no more. By the end of the half-hour, Emily had been smiling at him, her gaze lifting sporadically to look at him.

  His aim, now, was during their dinner, firstly to make Emily laugh, to lift her out of her current misery, and secondly to find some excuse to remain in Devizes.

  Part Four

  Emily leant on the windowsill in her room and looked down at the drive, and then along the street. She could not see Harry coming. He was late.

  Would he come?

  Of course he would, he had travelled all the way to Devizes.

  There…

  She spotted a carriage and watched it draw closer.

  Her heart quickened its pace. Was it him?

  When she had first seen him here, embarrassment had swallowed her whole, but he’d smiled and chatted, and been relentlessly Harry, and so by the time he’d left she had felt entirely herself again.

  Harry had always made her smile. He’d continually jested with her when they’d danced and spoken in the ballrooms in London. He knew how to make her laugh, and she was more than willing to feel like laughing. She had been miserable for so many days.

  The carriage turned across the road onto the crescent drive in front of the house.

  It was him! He had hired a closed carriage for the evening.

  Emily turned, already smiling, and hurried out of the room. By the time she walked downstairs, Harry was walking through the door.

  “Hello,” she said as she stepped from the last step. He was handing over his hat to Mills, the butler.

  He looked over and smiled at her, in a very anim
ated and Harry way. “Hello, Miss Smithfield.”

  Many of the men she had met and danced with in town had favoured a blank expression that hid their feelings as they’d offered her a pleasant, heartless smile; even Peter had been like that. She had never really known what Peter had thought of her. But Harry… A sudden desire swept over her, to walk forward and wrap her arms about his neck, she was so pleased to see a happy face.

  “Mr Webster, do come through.” Emily’s mother walked out of the drawing room.

  Harry turned and bowed to her. “Mrs Smithfield, thank you.”

  His evening coat was a dark blue, and his necktie, black, while his waistcoat was grey. They fit very well. He looked extremely handsome. She smiled to herself at the thought.

  It would make Harry laugh.

  She should tell him when she could.

  Her mother had already turned to go back into the drawing room when Emily neared Harry, and behind her mother’s back, he grasped a hold of her hand and lifted it, tilting it down, so he might kiss the skin on her wrist above her lace glove.

  She bit her lip against a laugh. He had always done that.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he whispered.

  She smiled again as he let her hand go. His next phrase in the past had always been do not marry Peter, marry me. He did not say that today. But it had only been a jest, to make her laugh.

  He had been kind to her when she’d had very few people she might call a friend in town. But really, he was Peter’s friend, not hers.

  Why had he really called here? She wished she might speak with him alone to ask. As they were not alone she walked beside him, silent, following her mother.

  When they entered the parlour she glanced at Harry, and he threw her the cockiest smile. She could not resist smiling back as his look swept her sad thoughts aside.

  For whatever reason he had come and she was glad, even though she had previously resigned herself to casting aside all of Peter’s friends.

  They sat opposite one another while they ate. He spoke mostly with her parents, asking her father numerous questions about the material factory her father owned.

  Harry’s interest acquired him an invitation to the factory the next day.

  She could not imagine Harry walking about it, being told every tiny detail of how the looms worked, or even sitting in her father’s office as the looms ran, making a racket, the metal frames hammering away at the pace of the cogs which moved them, while the machines which printed the patterns on the muslin thumped down.

  She and her mother removed to the drawing room after dinner, leaving Harry chatting animatedly to her father.

  When she sat down in the parlour, her mother asked, “Do you know Mr Webster’s family?”

  “No, Mama. I have never asked about them.”

  The questions continued. “Where is he from?”

  “He lives in London.”

  “And you know nothing more of him?”

  “No, Mama.”

  “Might Lady Framlington?”

  “I am sure Lord Framlington would know Mr Webster’s full history, but I shall not ask Mary to ask him, because I do not wish to know it.” And besides her mother could quite possibly discover it by looking in The Peerage.

  Emily would not look, though. Harry may be very good company but that was all a man like Harry was good for.

  “He is a charming young gentleman,” her mother said.

  “Yes.” He was charming. But she would not fall for charm again. Peter had been utterly charming to her while sharing his bed with an actress. Charm had very little value, she had learned her lesson there.

  Her mother smiled and Emily could see the shine of a wedding ring in her eyes. Her mother’s look would be snuffed out. If Emily ever had the courage to think of marriage again it would not be to a man like Harry.

  She had been silly to believe that Peter was interested in her. She had not compared to him in wealth or birth and in the end, he had chosen his mistress above her—his mistress had at least matched him in beauty.

  But Mary had warned Emily from the moment Emily had met these men, that she was going to introduce her to men Mary’s father disapproved of, and after her elopement, she had told Emily to be cautious because Drew’s friends were devious.

  Mary had since discovered a happy ending, and all of her cold, harsh warnings had melted away like the winter snow. Only for Emily, there was no happy ending; instead, there had been humiliation.

  The door opened. She looked up as her father and then Harry walked into the room. Harry smiled at her.

  “Would you like tea?” she offered them both.

  “Yes, please, my dear,” her father responded.

  “Yes, indeed,” Harry agreed.

  She poured a cup for her father first; he accepted it and then went over to sit beside her mother. Harry accepted his cup and then sat beside Emily.

  He opened a conversation immediately. “Your father has been explaining to me what I shall see at the factory tomorrow. I am led to believe the sight of the looms working is a splendour to behold.”

  He had always had a way of bowling through her shyness, as though her shyness was the jack to be knocked out of the way with a smashing shot. She smiled at him. “If the noise and the dust do not cast a shadow upon the day. The looms do rather make a racket when they are all running at once, with all the metal machines thumping away, and printing machines too.”

  “I think I shall find the environment stirring. I have never been inside a factory.”

  No, Peter and his friends had spent their days idling in gentlemen’s clubs, not in places of industry.

  “You will be bored.”

  His saucer was balanced in the grip of one hand, while his other hand lifted the teacup to sip from it. Twice now she had watched him drink from a teacup; in town she would not have even been able to imagine him in a parlour.

  “I shall not be bored, because after I have looked about the factory I will hire a curricle, and come out to collect you, and take you driving. So while I walk about the factory I shall be thinking of my reward for finding a reason to stay one more day.”

  She shook her head at him, in a playful way, reflecting the manner in which he was speaking to her. “Of course, that would be if I accepted your invitation to go out for a ride in a curricle. And as yet, you have not asked me, and I have not accepted.”

  His smile twisted with a wry look before he answered, “Then I am asking you. Will you come out driving with me tomorrow afternoon, Miss Smithfield?”

  The cheerfulness she felt inside when she spoke to him, lifted the pitch of her voice when she replied, “I think I shall accept, Mr Webster.”

  His smile broke wider. “I am so glad.” He turned to set his cup and saucer down on a table behind him. “And now, it is a lovely warm evening outside. Would you care to walk about the garden before it becomes dark?” He did not then await her answer but looked at her mother and father. “Would you mind if I take Miss Smithfield outside for a walk about the lawn? The evening is so beautiful, it seems a shame to waste such weather.”

  “Of course,” her mother answered. “We can see you through the window.”

  Emily put her cup and saucer down beside the teapot, then stood as Harry stood. He lifted his arm. Her parents continued their conversation.

  Emily lay her hand on his arm and they walked over to the French doors together. His arm slipped from beneath her hand and he opened the door, then encouraged her to walk out ahead of him. He closed the door behind them.

  Emily looked back and smiled at her mother through the glass of the French doors. Her mother sat sideways on the sofa, facing the garden, looking out at the large rectangular lawn area.

  Harry lifted his arm once more. Her hand shook a little as she lay it on his arm and embarrassment washed over her. She could not look up at him suddenly, and she knew that the colour was rising in her skin.

  “So, what shall we discuss? What an idiot my former friend is?” Harry
asked, taking a croquet hammer to her shyness.

  Her head turned. She faced a look of sympathy in his dark blue eyes. In looks, as well as temperament, he was nothing like Peter. Harry was blond, with eyes the colour of slate. “He must still be your friend. You cannot have cast him aside for me.”

  They had begun walking at a slow pace.

  “Why may I not have? He treated you abominably. Every time I think of him I wish to hit him.”

  Emily swallowed against the swell of emotion in her throat. “Have you seen him?”

  “The reprobate… No. And I do not wish to. Besides, he has skulked off and gone into hiding at his country home.”

  With her… The words slipped through Emily’s thoughts.

  Harry’s hand lay over hers that rested on his arm, as they walked on and his gaze grew in its level of sympathy.

  She looked at the garden ahead. “Why are you here, Harry?” She did not want to be reminded of Peter.

  “I am truly sorry, Emily. I am appalled by how badly Peter treated you and I have come to make amends. I am here to cheer you.”

  She looked at him again. “Perhaps I am perfectly happy and do not need cheering.”

  “Are you?”

  Oh, he had such a blunt way of speaking, it simply swept aside any possibility of reservation, although she did sense herself blush—because, of course, she was not happy. She was angry, and with herself as much as Peter.

  His hand patted hers that lay beneath his on her arm. “I am here to cheer you,” he repeated.

  “For tonight.” She smiled.

  “And tomorrow afternoon,” he added.

  “And then…”

  “We shall see how much cheering you require.”

  Her smile lifted a little; he had always cheered her when she was in his company.

  “Drew told me that you have ceased writing to Mary.”

  There was that sense of heat in her skin, of blushing. “Drew is Peter’s friend, it would place Mary in an awkward position.”

  “She does not think so, neither does Drew. They seem to think they might invite you to visit them and tell Peter to stay away. Which is what he deserves.”