“Allow me,” her savior offered.
Henrietta regarded him doubtfully. Despite his swift action in saving her from a nasty fall, he did not look to be a terribly safe person. On the other hand, he was dressed with the quiet elegance of wealth and taste, and he was neither young nor silly, being surely well into his thirties. Deep “crow’s feet” were etched around his eyes. A man who laughed a lot or worried a lot. Either seemed to bode well for the pup.
Reaching her decision, she held the dog out to him.
He swept it up carelessly, and the puppy bit his finger. “What name shall I give the doorman?”
“Maybury,” she said. “I’m Henrietta Maybury. And if such information will help him be kind to the pup, please tell him my father, Lord Overton, is with me. Sir, thank you for everything!” She fled back upstairs and made it back to her own box just as everyone else began spilling out of theirs.
“Where have you been?” Thomasina hissed at her. “I told Mama you were still in the passage, but you weren’t. Did you meet someone?”
“Actually yes,” Henrietta said, laughter bubbling up. “But not in the way you mean. I found a puppy and it is clearly neglected and hungry, so I’ve arranged to collect it from the doorman as we leave.”
Thomasina blinked. “You’re mad. Mama is still celebrating life without Spring.”
“I think she secretly finds it a little dull without Spring.”
“You mean you do.”
“Yes, and so does Eliza. And the boys who will be home for summer soon. Besides, this little creature is nothing like Spring. It is quite timid and shows no signs of insanity.”
“Yet, if it’s as hungry as you say, it won’t have the energy.” Thomasina nodded toward their parents. “How are you planning to talk them into it?”
“Face to face, they’re bound to love it. And if they don’t…” She smiled. “You and Dunstan could always take it, just until I wear them down.”
“Take what?” Dunstan demanded, moving closer to them in order to make way for the gentlemen who had just entered the box to pay their respects to Lady Overton. One of them was Lord Rudd, who’d become quite a persistent admirer of Henrietta’s.
“Oh, Henrie has discovered a stray puppy in the theater of all unlikely places.” Thomasina broke off as she recognized one of their guests, and lowered her voice once more. “Why, it’s Lord Rudd again. I think you have made a conquest, Henrie.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Henrie airily.
“It would be an excellent match. And quite a triumph, for so far he’s avoided all the lures cast out to him.”
“Well, I have no intention of luring him,” Henrie stated.
Her sister frowned. “You’re beginning to sound like Charlotte.”
“Why is that bad?” Henri shot back.
“It isn’t,” Thomasina said wryly. “She never lured anyone in her life and yet she is a duchess.”
Henrietta had once entered fully into her parents’ plans to save the family fortune by settlements gained through their daughters’ brilliant marriages. However, in the last few weeks, she had begun to find herself irritated by such talk and, even more unexpectedly, bored with the whirl of her first London season. It all seemed a trifle pointless when Charlotte’s marriage and the generosity of her husband had restored the family finances already. Henrietta now had a respectable dowry to attract a husband, and yet somehow that had taken all the fun out of everything. How much better to be married for love rather than one’s dowry.
She fanned herself a little too energetically.
“It is somewhat stuffy in here,” Lord Rudd remarked, sitting in the vacant seat beside her. “How do you do, Miss Maybury?”
“My lord. Do you want the truth or the polite answer?”
He smiled faintly. “That bad?”
“Oh, London is so stifling in the summer, but I am glad to say we are leaving next week.”
“For Brighton, perhaps?”
“No, for Audley Park.”
“I am desolated,” Rudd said in the somewhat intriguing way he had, so that you didn’t quite know if he was serious or not. “For I have been commanded to Brighton by Prinny. I had hoped that I might at least have the pleasure of seeing you there.”
“We might go for a day or two, for we’re not so far away.”
Rudd smiled. “I have rarely met a debutante with such little enthusiasm for the social scene.”
“I bore easily,” Henrietta said.
“Then I must strive to be much more interesting.”
She laughed, for in truth, he was already more interesting than most. Although still in his twenties, his air was one of elegant world-weariness, which quite suited Henrietta’s mood these days. He also had a bit of a reputation as a rake and had been disappointing hopeful mamas for years by failing to be enchanted enough by their lovely daughters to marry any of them. In short, he presented a challenge, although what she would do with the prize, she wasn’t quite sure.
Neither of her older sisters had tamed a rake, although neither of their husbands, she suspected, had been precisely angelic either. So at least if she married Rudd, she would have that triumph. On the other hand, her imagination baulked at the prospect of being his wife. She could not quite envision their married life. Besides, how much fun would it actually be, being bored together at balls without even the diversion of flirtation left to them?
The future seemed just as dull at the present and she felt rather flat. Until her wandering gaze drifted again over the stunning lady in puce. A gentleman sat down beside her, causing Henrietta’s heart to give a pleasant little lurch. It was him again. The man who had saved her, and who she had thought must be leaving the theatre. As though sensing her gaze, he turned from the puce lady and glanced over to her. A smile flitted across his face and he inclined his head as though telling her his task was complete and the pup was in the care of the doorman. She nodded her thanks with a quick smile in return.
“That is an odd connection for an ambitious young lady,” Rudd remarked beside her.
“It isn’t a connection at all,” she retorted, “but a matter of common civility. The gentleman has done me a service.”
“Hush, Miss Maybury,” Rudd mocked. “A fashionable lady should never admit to such a service, for your knight is no gentleman.”
Intrigued, she turned back to Rudd. “Then who is he?”
“Some banker’s son,” Rudd said with contempt. “An encroaching cit.”
Henrietta was conscious of disappointment. It was snobbish, of course, but she did not wish to have been saved and helped by a cit. It lacked distinction. And while she could laugh at herself for such feelings, they had been bred into her and they remained.
“And the fabulous lady in puce?” she asked, deciding to be amused.
“I really have no idea. One doesn’t know such people.”
“Of course, one does not,” she mocked Rudd, and inspired a fresh spark of interest in his jaded eyes.
All the same, when the interminable play finally finished and she stood up to leave, she pretended not to see the banker’s bow and followed her family outside.
*
Sydney Cromarty, grandson of a successful and well-known banker, had indeed intended to leave the theater after depositing the skinny pup with a none-too-happy doorman. An innocent young debutante, however lovely, was really of no interest to him on any level. And while he had no objections to preventing her tumble downstairs, or transferring care of the cur on his way out, he had no reason and less intention to pursue her.
But something about her expression—far more than her mere youthful beauty—had attracted his attention while she sat in the box opposite. And nothing about her subsequent impulsive and slightly bizarre behavior for a young lady of fashion had lessened that interest. He was curious, and in a way that was quite safe, for she was far too young and naïve to inspire amorous pursuit. And so, he found himself returning to the box—which, in any case, he had paid for.
“I believe I will watch the end of the play,” he said to Mrs. Jenkins. He had only invited them to secure the deal for his new ship and now that it was done, he had nothing more to do in London. Tomorrow or the day after, he would ride back to Sussex.
In the meantime, he discreetly observed the Maybury girl, and the somewhat possessive gentleman who sat by her side. Whoever he was, he clearly whispered poison in her ear, for she refused to look at him as she left.
Cromarty only smiled cynically. The girl’s snobbery hurt him no more than anyone else’s. He’d been immune through constant exposure since he was fourteen years old. And when he’d finally run away from school when he was sixteen, it had had nothing to do with his schoolmates and everything to do with him.
Still, he wished her well enough to linger in the shadows outside the theater as the carriages pulled up and swallowed the members of the ton, taking them back from the dangers of Covent Garden to more salubrious neighborhoods in Mayfair.
The Maybury girl emerged with another young lady who had been in her box—her sister perhaps, for they shared the same shade of shining chestnut hair. Henrietta darted to the various doormen until she received the pup whom she held up with delight for her sister to admire. The sister laughed and dragged her back to her parents. Cromarty realized he knew Lord Overton slightly. He was partial to decent French brandy and disliked to let a little thing like war get in his way.
Overton’s voice said clearly, “Oh for the love of—”
“No, Henrie,” Lady Overton said firmly and then, after the pup was brought closer to her and Henrietta wheedled, she threw up her arms and got into the carriage. Henrietta followed with the pup, though she paused to grin over her shoulder at her sister.
Cromarty turned and walked away.
He contemplated calling on his mistress to make up their quarrel in the most delicious ways he could imagine. But in the end, he had little enthusiasm for it. She had grown too capricious and her undoubted pleasures were no longer worth the inconvenience. Their relationship would remain over. He looked forward instead to a good night’s sleep at Claridge’s Hotel, where he often stayed to avoid his old family home off Hanover Square. And then a swift return to Sussex and the sea.
I’m getting old and staid…
However, when he entered the hotel, it was to be greeted with the news that a gentleman called Mr. Godfrey awaited him in his rooms. Irritated that they had let the solicitor in at all, he scowled and hurried upstairs.
Godfrey, as usual, had helped himself to a glass of brandy as he waited. It wasn’t the brandy Cromarty grudged him.
“What do you want?” Cromarty greeted him as he sprang to his feet.
“I was sent by your grandfather to impart important information,” Godfrey said with dignity. “And issue an invitation.”
“An invitation to go to the devil? I accepted long since. What is the rest of it?”
“Sir, I regret to inform you that your cousin, Jeremy, is dead.”
Cromarty shrugged. “My grandfather is mistaking me for someone who cares. I never met the late Jeremy, and his death is of no importance to me.”
“Actually, it is,” Godfrey said sharply. “Of considerable moment, in fact. He was your grandfather’s heir.”
“I still can’t care,” Cromarty said, pouring himself a glass of brandy. “To Jeremy, whoever he was.” He raised his glass and drank.
Godfrey pursed his lips at such flippancy. “He was the man whose death makes you your grandfather’s heir.”
That got his attention. He lowered the glass, frowning. “No. There is another cousin, isn’t there? About to spawn, too, last I heard.”
“Sadly, the child was a girl. Perhaps the disappointment aided Mr. Adrian’s departure from this life a year ago. Even more sadly, you are now the nearest living male heir.”
Cromarty stared at him. Then he laughed and poured himself another brandy. “No, I’m not. Tell him to get one of his by-blows legitimized if he has to, for I’m having nothing to do with any of ’em. Good night, Godfrey. Close the door on your way out.”
Chapter Two
If Henrietta imagined that returning home to Audley Park would ease her restless discontent, she quickly found she was mistaken. The family had spent so little time here when she was growing up that it simply felt like another place to stay. A pleasant place admittedly, now that some of the necessary repairs and redecoration had been completed, largely thanks to Charlotte’s husband the duke. But Henrietta, who had so longed to grow up, now found the constrictions placed on a young lady in London were not much relaxed in the country.
When Thomasina and Charlotte were at home, it was different. The three of them often went off together without supervision. But now that there were enough servants, she was told to take a maid to go wild strawberry picking, and not to go out of the grounds when she walked Minnie. Minnie—short for miniature—was the stray puppy adopted at Covent Garden, so named after closer acquaintance had proved her to be a female of the species.
Perhaps it was boredom that so often turned her thoughts toward the banker’s son who had stopped her falling down the theater stairs. He was different, not at all part of her social circle, so it was probably inevitable he should intrigue her, though she could not account for the butterflies which soared in her stomach at the sight of him.
She had been very aware of those butterflies when she had glimpsed him again the day after the theater. She and Thomasina had been in a closed carriage with Minnie, on their way to the Green Park for a morning walk, and they had been forced to halt just in front of Claridge’s while various trunks and bags were loaded onto a coach. And there, on the front steps, though keeping out of the way of the passing luggage, had stood her savior.
Her heart had given a funny little lurch, and the butterflies had taken flight. Unseen, she had watched him talk and laugh with another man as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He had a wonderful, natural laugh that transformed his rather harsh face, adding impossibly to his attraction. It made her smile, breathlessly, even inside the carriage. Then a servant had brought his saddled horse, and he’d mounted unaided, reining in the restive, spirited animal with apparent ease. He’d stretched down to shake hands with his friend and ridden off without ever noticing her.
“Ah, at last!” Thomasina had exclaimed as they were able to move forward.
Henrietta had only peered backward out of the window to catch a last glimpse of her savior’s retreating back. She couldn’t understand her strange excitement but she had liked it.
It had come back to her over the next few days, too, in fainter and fainter echoes, whenever she’d thought of him. Probably because he was forbidden. After all, she might as well flirt with a footman as a banker. Not that she wished to flirt with either, or at least she didn’t think she did. It just added to her general dissatisfaction.
On the third morning of their return to Audley Park, Henrietta simply lost patience with her constrictions and, aiding her young sister Eliza to evade her governess, she put the puppy on the leash and took them both for a long walk toward Seldon Manor. In the spring, they had often met the younger Laceys at the stream which formed the boundary between the two estates, and Henrietta was eager for distracting company. Eliza was a sweet child, if a mischievous one when her twin brother was home. Without him, she tended to wilt into isolated silence. This worried the whole family, though no one had any clear idea what to do about it.
“So, do you like your new governess?” Henrietta asked her as they walked in the sunshine.
“Miss Milsom. I’m beginning to. She doesn’t shout. And she tells jokes she thinks no one understands.”
Henrietta smiled. “But you do?”
“Do you think I should tell her?”
Henrietta considered. “I think you should smile if it’s a funny joke. Or even laugh if it’s really funny.”
“You don’t think she’d be angry?”
“I don’t think anyone’s angry if
you laugh at their jokes. I must make a point of cultivating your Miss Milsom.”
“Horry will like her, too.”
Since the twins generally liked the same people, Henrietta didn’t doubt it.
“Are you going to be married, as well?” Eliza asked after a long silence.
Henrietta paused to let Minnie sniff the gnarled old roots of a tree. “Not yet. One day, I suppose.” She glanced at her sister. “Do you miss Tommie and Charlie?”
“Charlie said she would never marry. Everyone said that.”
“Yes, but then she met his grace. Did Mama tell you, we’re all going to stay with them in August? Unless they come here.”
“Will Tommie come, too?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Eliza nodded. “Can I hold the leash?”
Henrietta passed the leash, and when Eliza began to run with the pup, she ran, too.
*
They were sitting on the bank of the stream eating the morsels of ham and bread supplied by Cook, when Matthew and Almeria Lacey rode up on horseback, greeting them with surprised delight.
“We heard you were home, but we did not expect to see you so soon,” Almeria explained as they joined them on the bank. “Mama said you would need time to settle in before we called.”
“Grown-ups always need time for everything,” Eliza remarked.
“Are we not grown up?” Matthew teased.
“No,” Eliza said, tearing off a tiny morsel of ham for Minnie.
Henrietta watched the pup jump for it. “I used to think when I was grown-up, I could do whatever I wished, but in fact, we’re more hemmed in than ever. Or at least,” she added with a quick glance at Matthew, “women are.”
“Only because you choose to be. You may go where you like if you are just prepared to risk a few frowns.”
Almeria laughed. “There would be rather more than a few frowns if Henrietta and I walked into the taproom of the Hart Inn, for instance!”
The Unmarriageable Collection (Books 1–3) Page 45
