A Lady without a Lord (The Penningtons Book 3)

by Bliss Bennet

  “Please, no,” Harry whispered, her gaze transfixed by her disheveled father.

  Mr. Atherton’s forgetfulness. His frequent airs of abstraction. His fears of hiring a clerk, and Harry’s taking over his duties without his knowledge. The missing money—suddenly, finally, it all fell into place.

  Mr. Atherton was losing his wits.

  And Harry knew. Had known, and had been doing her best to hide it from him.

  The muscles in his jaw clenched. He had trusted her, and this was how she repaid him? By keeping such a secret from him?

  His mouth opened, recrimination burning like acid on his tongue. But Harry no longer stood beside him. No, she had raced across the room to stand in front of her father, arms crossed, legs spread wide. To protect Atherton, as if she were the parent, and he the child gone astray.

  He caught his breath at the defiance and fear and sheer vulnerability warring on her face. Yes, she had kept a secret from him, one that had dire implications for his finances. But her intention had not been to harm him. It had been to keep the father she loved safe.

  Was it not time for someone to step up and help her shoulder the burden?

  “Mr. Atherton, I would have summoned you if it had been a matter of business. But Mr. Thrapson is here on a social call.” Theo placed a hand around his steward’s sodden shoulders, steering him back toward the door. “Why do you return to your cottage and get yourself out of these wet clothes. We do not want you catching your death, now, do we?”

  Harry scooted to the man’s other side. “Yes, Father, let me walk you home. Mrs. Dawber has sent over one of her delicious pork pies for supper. And I could make us a warm carrot pudding—”

  “See here, Saybrook,” Thrapson interrupted. “If you will not call for the magistrate, at least question Atherton yourself about the discrepancies in the deposits.”

  Atherton jerked free of Theo’s restraining arm, his lack expression turning sharp. “Discrepancies? What discrepancies?”

  “A simple matter of hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds you have listed in these account books as having been deposited at my bank, but that we have no record of ever having received.”

  “What?” Atherton strode over to the library table and glared at the banker. “Has that rackapelt of a clerk of yours been cribbing from the Saybrook accounts?”

  “My clerk, a rackapelt? Why, Symonds has been with me since the bank opened, and has always proved worthy of trust. Can you say the same for yours, Atherton?”

  “My father no longer employs a clerk.” Harry wrapped tight fingers about her father’s arm. “I am happy to do all the transcribing and letter-writing he requires.”

  “But no man would ask his daughter to transport large sums to a bank. And Symonds would have informed me if a lady had ever come calling.”

  “What do you take me for, a fool?” Atherton glared at the banker. “I would not send a woman haring off to Lincoln with the estate income tucked in her reticule. Mr. Mather has been kind enough to carry my deposits to the bank for me of late.”

  Haviland started. “Me? I think you must be mistaken, sir.”

  “No.” Atherton shook his head. “Mather takes the Saybrook funds to the bank.”

  “Haviland?” Theo asked.

  Haviland blinked behind his spectacles. “Well, yes, Saybrook. Once, I did take a deposit to the bank on Mr. Atherton’s behalf, when I had business in Lincoln, and Mr. Atherton was suffering from a bad head cold. But that was more than two years ago, and I’ve not done it again since.”

  “But Mather always takes the funds to the bank.” Atherton shook his fist. “Mather always takes them!”

  “Truly, sir, I don’t know what you—”

  “Liar! You damned, bloody liar!”

  “Atherton.” Theo grasped the man’s arm. “Calm yourself, please.”

  But the steward paid Theo no heed, jerking free of his restraining hand. “Tell them the truth, you filthy, lying cur!”

  “Father, no!” Harry cried as her father launched himself at Haviland.

  Theo rushed into the melee, trying to grab hold of Atherton’s arms before the man could do any real damage. His steward’s wits may have been waning, but his strength certainly wasn’t, and he proved surprisingly hard to contain. After ducking several of the man’s flailing fists, at last Theo got two arms wrapped around his torso and yanked, hard.

  “Father, please, stop this!”

  “No, damn you, no!”

  He’d heard the smack of fists against flesh in town often enough during his many visits to Gentleman Jackson’s boxing salon. But the sound had never been followed by such a high, feminine cry.

  He pushed a no-longer struggling Atherton out of his way and dropped to his knees beside a figure lying prone on the library carpet. Not Haviland, the target of Atherton’s ire.

  Harry.

  Even as Theo reached for her, though, Harry blinked, then scrambled upright. “I’m all right,” she insisted, pressing the pads of her fingers against a welt on her cheek. “Father, I’m all right. It was just an accident.”

  “That was no accident, Miss Atherton.” Thrapson frowned as he straightened a cravat that must have been rumpled during the tussle.

  “Harriot?” Mr. Atherton blinked, a look of confusion replacing his former aggressive snarl. “Saybrook? What is the matter?”

  “He struck you, Harriot.” Haviland’s voice, usually so level, shook with emotion. “He struck his own daughter.”

  “But he did not intend—”

  “Surely you see the need for a magistrate now, Saybrook,” Thrapson interrupted. “Even if you don’t wish to bring charges against Atherton for financial malfeasance, you cannot allow him to run mad about the parish. A man who accuses and attacks the innocent must be restrained.”

  Harry rushed to her father’s side. “No! Please, my father means no harm. Haviland, tell them!”

  But her old friend just shook his head. “A little forgetfulness is one thing, Harriot. But attacking his own daughter? You must see this cannot go on any longer.”

  “Indeed,” the banker agreed. “I believe Dr. Willis, who treated the late king, maintains an asylum for the insane near Stamford. Shall we send and ask for his advice?”

  And this was how he would help her shoulder her burden? By putting that look of fear in her hazel eyes?

  “Enough.” Theo carved a hand through the air. “Thrapson, you go too far.”

  “But Saybrook—”

  “No. I will see to Mr. Atherton. You speak to your own clerk. Perhaps he might shed light on just who has been bringing the estate deposits to your bank, since you seem to have no idea yourself.”

  “But Saybrook—” Thrapson sputtered.

  “Enough, I say. Parsons, please help Miss Atherton settle her father upstairs, in the blue room. And then send for Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Atherton’s fall is still troubling him.”

  Harry nodded in silent agreement, then took her father’s arm and led him toward the door.

  “But his problems began long before his fall,” Haviland murmured in a voice too low to reach Harry.

  “Mad as a March hare,” Thrapson added with a snort.

  Theo turned on the two men. “I would be very careful, gentlemen, before I offered any further insult to the man who will soon be my father-in-law.”

  Harry’s head jerked over her shoulder, her eyes wide with shock. But before she could utter a word in response, Parson pulled the library door shut between them.

  Theo crumpled Mr. Thrapson’s hastily penned note and tossed it to the library floor, where it tumbled until it came to rest in a ray of bright morning light. The driving rain had finally stopped, but the welcome change in the weather did not bring with it any similarly glad tidings of his missing money miraculously recovered. Not that Theo had really expected Thrapson’s clerk to admit that he’d been stealing, or to confirm Atherton’s wild assertion that Haviland, of all people, had conveyed the Saybrook monies to the bank. But after spendi
ng yesterday evening helping Harry settle her confused, restless father in one of the bedrooms upstairs, reassuring them he’d not allow any harm to come to either, could he not be excused for hoping Thrapson’s interrogation of his clerk might have produced a quick and simple solution to this ever-growing tangle?

  Instead of the clerk’s confirmation, in writing, that with one exception, Mr. Atherton himself delivered each deposit to the bank. Theo kicked at the crumbled note, cursing under his breath.

  “My lord? You wished to speak with Mr. Baldwin?” Parsons bowed in the apothecary, then shut the door.

  Theo leaned against the front of his desk, hips pressing tight against his hands. “How is he, Baldwin?”

  “Tsk, tsk.” The apothecary shook his head, his bald pate glowing in the morning sun. “I do wish Miss Atherton had thought fit to confide in me earlier about her father’s sad condition. Not at all the thing, to keep such vital information from a man’s medical advisor, no, not the thing at all.”

  “So his current confusion is not the result of his fall?”

  “I do not believe so. Miss Atherton admits that her father experienced bouts of distraction and mental perturbation even before the accident, although none so extreme as this latest one.”

  Hell and the devil. And she’d told no one, protecting her father from his own failures. Something his own father had never done for him.

  “If he were an older man,” Baldwin continued, “I would say he is suffering from the natural decay of mind that afflicts all who live a long life. But at only four and fifty?” The apothecary lifted his hands up and then let them fall. “I have no experience of such a thing.”

  “We should consult a physician, then?”

  Baldwin sighed. “My lord, you’d best consult a doctor familiar with treating the mad.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Harry? May I come in?”

  A large cat brushed past Theo’s boots as he pushed wide the half-opened door of Saybrook Cottage. He heard no answer to his call, but footsteps on the wooden floor above told him Parsons had been right to direct him here after he’d finished with Baldwin. They needed to make some decisions, he and Harry, and soon, before idle gossip began to spread. Would she trust him enough, though, to accept his help?

  He took off his hat and gloves and set them on the entrance hall table, then followed the cat as it jumped up the stairs two at a bound.

  He found her in her father’s room, filling a well-used valise that lay open on the bed. When she caught sight of him, she offered a polite nod, as if willing him to overlook the purpling bruise adorning her cheek. But the red, pinched look about her eyes, and her trembling lips—damn it, she must have been crying.

  With a muttered curse, he strode across the room and took her in his arms.

  She did not sob, or even cry out, but a deep shudder wracked her entire frame before she laid her head against his chest. For a long moment, she rested there, still as a shipwrecked mariner washed up at last upon a distant shore. He exhaled and inhaled slowly, willing the cadence of her breathing to match his, willing her mind to calm. Willing her to accept the help he could offer.

  He bit back his protest as she gave herself a shake and drew free of his embrace. Without meeting his eyes, she returned to her packing, her mouth set in a determinedly cheerful smile.

  “I thought if I surrounded him with some of his things from home, familiar things, it might help bring my father back to a sense of himself.” She took up a shirt, folding it neatly before placing it in the case. “But only a few. We will not trespass upon your privacy for long.”

  “Harry.”

  “And we certainly will not be bringing you, Sir Puss,” she said, pushing aside the cat that had jumped up on the bed. “Father does not approve of felines in the house.”

  He laid a stilling hand on her arm. “Harry, please. We need to talk.”

  About the rash words he’d tossed out to silence Haviland and Thrapson yesterday afternoon, to throw their attention away from poor Atherton and draw it to himself. The words which Harriot Atherton, bless her sympathetic heart, had not instantly denied.

  But nor had she confirmed them, either. And he wanted her to agree, wanted her assurance she would allow the power of his position and his name to keep her and her father safe. Wanted it with a fierceness he could scarcely explain, even to himself.

  She lowered her head for just a moment, then raised those hazel eyes to his. But when she spoke, her words had nothing to do with his impetuous declaration of the day before. “I will repay you. Not all at once, but I do have a few baubles from my aunt I can sell, and my mother’s betrothal ring—”

  “Harry, no. There is no need. The fault was not yours, and neither will be the recompense.”

  “But I should have known,” she cried. “And I did know, in some small part of my heart. I saw that his wits were failing. But he is such a proud man, and would so hate to have anyone think him weak—”

  “And no one did, not for the longest while. Because you took such good care, care of the estate and care of him. But now that I know, too, won’t you allow me to help you bear the burden?”

  Her lips flattened. “Bear the burden? By sending him to gaol, or to a madhouse, as you did your uncle?”

  “What? I’ve no uncle in any madhouse.”

  “But I heard—is your father’s brother not in an asylum? Placed there at your bidding?”

  Theo snorted. “Uncle Christopher? Hardly. The old man’s body may not be sound, but his mind is as sharp as a knife. He holds court with his former soldiers almost every day in his rooms in London, and is never loath to chastise or upbraid me, even though I am head of the family. What made you think he was in a madhouse?”

  “Someone must have said . . .” Harry trailed off, biting her lip.

  “Well, someone was wrong.” He tried not to feel bitter that she would believe such a thing of him. “And I would hardly prosecute a man for thievery who had no intention of harming me and mine.”

  “What will you say about the missing money?”

  “Why, I will say nothing at all.”

  “But what of Haviland? And Mr. Thrapson—”

  “Haviland knows how to be discreet. And Thrapson, he only requires assurance that the bank will not be held accountable, and that your father will no longer be involved with the finances. Both which I have provided. He’ll keep his own counsel if he wishes to continue as Saybrook’s local banker.”

  She turned away from him and stroked a restless hand over the counterpane. “Even if my father were to recover his wits and remembered what he had done with the missing money—there is no way he could return to his position, is there?”

  “No, Harry.” Theo’s hands clenched, longing to reach for hers even as he shook his head in denial. “If it were only a matter of myself . . . But so many people depend on this estate for their lives and livelihoods. I cannot in good conscience put it at risk again.”

  She gave a quick nod, then took up a small miniature from the table beside the bed, staring at it for a moment before pulling out a handkerchief to polish its frame. A portrait of her mother, which his own mother had painted for Mr. Atherton long ago, when Theo and Harry had been children.

  “People are certain to wonder why father is no longer acting as your steward. Especially after having served your family for so many years. And soon gossip will have it that malfeasance, or at the least incompetence, was the cause.” She paused to wrap the handkerchief about the miniature and place it with care in the valise. “Perhaps I might quell such rumors if I told everyone he is taking a position in another county.”

  Theo’s hand clutched the bedpost. “Another county? But you can’t leave Lincolnshire.”

  “What other choice do I have?”

  The desolation in her voice struck him as hard as a broadside. No one should ever have to feel such sorrow, especially not someone as kind and caring as Harry.

  He cleared his throat. “You could marry me.�
��

  “Marry you?” she gasped, eyes widening. “Did I not imagine it, what you said—”

  “I know I spoke rashly, announcing we were betrothed without consulting you,” he interrupted. “But the more time I’ve had to think about it, the more taken I am with the plan.”

  “But Theo—”

  He grabbed both of her hands in his, squeezing them tight. “Please. Before you say no, let me explain.”

  She frowned, but nodded.

  “I might pension off your father, and grant him an annuity, which would suggest that there had been no ill will between us. But rumors would still spread. And I won’t have you tarred by association, or branded the daughter of a thief.”

  “I don’t see how you can stop it.”

  “If we were to marry, your father’s leaving my service would not be looked on askance. No nobleman would want a father-in-law to work for him.”

  “Yes, I see that. But—”

  “And if we were betrothed, you both would move to Saybrook House immediately. And there you would have an entire household full of servants to help you with his care, rather than being alone here, or hiring nurses unfamiliar to you. Or even worse, setting up in some other village or town where you know nothing of the people, and could not rely on old ties of friendship if you experienced difficulties.”

  Harry pulled her hands from his, shaking her head. “But all the benefits of this plan fall to me and to my father, and none to you. I have no dowry, no standing in society. How could I allow you to make such a sacrifice?”

  “Because you would be helping me as much as I would be helping you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I would? How?”

  “Well, first, because you would help me secure the succession.”

  A blush suffused her face. “But marrying any lady of good breeding would suffice for that. It need not be me.”

  “Yes, I believe it must.”

  Theo drew a deep breath, even now barely able to say the words. But if he were to have any chance of convincing her, he had to tell her the truth. “For I doubt many society ladies would have me, not after I told them of my own deficiencies.”