by Lynne Barron
“Goodness, that’s twice more.” Lilith’s voice held something very much like wonder as she took the seat beside Harry. “And I believe you might be surprised were I to share with you how very much Dun cares for you. Why only two weeks past—”
“Please, don’t, I beg you.”
Lilith, bless her soul, refrained from voicing whatever nonsense she’d been poised to spout in Dunaway’s defense. There was no defense for a lifetime of wanton disregard of everyone and everything beyond his own selfish pursuits. And the fact Harry had spoken his name in no way mitigated her feelings for the lecherous earl.
“Has some man broken your heart, darling?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harry retorted, even as tears continued to leak from her eyes, and a confusing mix of sorrow and regret rose up to eclipse, but not quite obliterate, the fury in her. “My heart was never… My heart isn’t…”
“Engaged?” Lilith supplied helpfully.
“My heart… Oh, Lil, my heart is a withered, dusty, dried-up relic.”
“Your heart is lovely, fertile land left too long untended, darling.”
“How sentimental you are when carrying a babe,” Harry said with a sniffle as she wiped at what she sincerely hoped was the last of her tears.
“It isn’t the carrying of this babe that has made me sentimental, but rather the love of a good man.”
Harry’s heart, as withered and dried up as it was, gave an extra thump at her sister’s words. “One can surely be forgiven the inability to differentiate between the two, seeing as you’ve been with child more often than not since your marriage.”
Lilith laughed softly.
“It’s true, I’ve done the arithmetic,” Harry insisted.
“I’m not the least surprised.”
Harry reached for Lilith’s hand, twining their fingers and holding on tight. “I’ve been a fool, Lil.”
“A fool for a man?”
Harry nodded and sighed at her own stupidity.
“As this man has not engaged your heart, I presume he has engaged other parts of your body?”
The bend of her elbow, the scar on her thigh, her measly bosom. “Only my lips.”
“Are you going to tell me or shall we play guessing games? I know, why don’t you tell me the first letter of his name? Though I do hope it isn’t between A and J, as I should not like to think you could be made a fool by the sort of nitwits Madeline’s been kissing.”
Harry pushed aside her misery to focus fully upon her sister. “Madeline told you?”
“Mad couldn’t keep the smallest secret to save her life.”
Harry hoped Lilith was wrong as she’d just the day previously set in motion a strategy to save the silly girl which would require keeping a secret of gargantuan proportions.
“Though, now I think on it, Mad deftly changed the topic before we’d gotten through the entire list,” Lilith continued. “She got me talking about the ocean, of all things.”
“A subject about which you are known to wax poetic.” Perhaps the silly girl might just prove herself up to the task of leading a double life.
“You needn’t tell me, if you’d rather not.”
“Hmph.” As if Lilith wouldn’t pry it out of her one way or the other. “Knighton.”
“Viscount Knighton?” Lilith asked with the same sort of confusion Harry had felt earlier. “Viscount Knighton of the unabashed smiles kissed you?”
“At the museum last week.”
“And there were witnesses to this kiss?” Lilith did not give Harry an opportunity to reply. “Good gracious, Knighton has compromised you.”
“He has not compromised me,” Harry retorted. “Leastwise, not in the way you mean. He has done something far worse. He has compromised all I’ve worked for, sacrificed for and navigated an abysmally narrow line for. All of it.”
In fits and starts, around stuttering breaths and undignified sniffles, but thankfully only a few residual tears, Harry poured out the entire tale. Beginning with Dunaway’s unexpected arrival two weeks previously and ending with Mrs. Doherty’s shrill pronouncement delivered before dozens of curious spectators.
“The scoundrel!” Lilith lumbered to her feet at the end of it. “The cad shall be held accountable.”
Laughter, broken and weak, fell from Harry’s lips. “There is no accounting, no reckoning to be had, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, there will be a reckoning, mark my words.”
“I’ve more pressing problems just now than exacting my pound of flesh.”
“He’ll regret ever having tangled with us!” Lilith exclaimed as she paced around the room. “We’ll make him rue the day he held himself and his relations superior to you and yours.”
“Please don’t work yourself into a lather in your condition.”
“Bother my condition. Who does he think he is to deem you unworthy of walking the same hallowed halls as his precious sisters?”
“I told him, Lil,” Harry whispered, mortified by the naivety she’d exhibited in believing he could be trusted with even the barest essentials of the truth she’d carefully guarded for years. “I stood beneath my grandfather’s portrait and shared all of it with him.”
“You told Lord Knighton you are the granddaughter of the Duke of Montclaire and Bathsheba Sinclair?”
“I did not reveal the entire cast of characters, only the bit-players, particulars and locations.”
“Which bit-players, particulars and locations?”
“Mother and Jimmy and Shropshire,” Harry replied. “I told him I was born of shame and raised in squalor.”
Lilith waved away the words as if they held no import to the point at hand. “Before or after he kissed you?”
“What difference does it make?”
“What difference does it make?” Lilith paused in her pacing only long enough shoot a frown Harry’s way, before continuing across the room. “It makes all the difference in the world, Harry. Did you tell him before or after he kissed you?”
“Before, but I still don’t see—”
“And did you or did you not tell Knighton the Earl of Dunaway is your father?”
“Of course not,” Harry replied. “Nor did I tell him my mother was a two-bit tart, my grandmother half of a matched set of notorious courtesans, and my great grandmother mistress to a king’s by-blow.”
“You mustn’t leave Mother and me off the list of female relations you are ashamed to acknowledge as your own,” Lilith retorted, a wash of color rushing up her cheeks and perspiration beading along her temples.
Harry surged to her feet. “I am not the least ashamed of you! I adore you and would joyfully acknowledge you, acknowledge all of you—Auntie Alabaster and Bathsheba and Eve Marie, even my mother and yours—if only our shared family lineage weren’t a path leading directly to Dunaway.”
“And his daughters?” Lilith rushed across the room to clasp Harry’s hands tight. “Oh, my darling, is that why you will not acknowledge Dun as your father? All these years you’ve held yourself apart from us in order to protect us from the scandal of his affair with Arabella?”
“This is Dunaway we’re talking about,” Harry replied. “No one would be the least scandalized to learn he had seduced his mistress’s cousin, nor the slightest bit surprised to discover their liaison resulted in yet another daughter.”
“If you aren’t concerned with the potential scandal, why not simply acknowledge Dun as your father?”
“I’d sooner acknowledge Beelzebub as my father.”
“Dun is something of a devilish scoundrel, but he is hardly on par with Lucifer himself.”
“As like as,” Harry muttered.
“Be that as it may, I simply do not understand why you will not claim Dun as your father when, by doing so, you could claim us as your sisters and cease hiding behind hideous bonnets?”
“I’ve come to rather adore my hideous bonnets.”
“Do be serious,” Lilith ordered. “Why not simply acknowledge Dun and be
finished with all the subterfuge?”
“The subterfuge would not be finished, but only just beginning.” Harry paused to drag in a choppy breath, her heart racing as she prepared to give voice to thoughts that caused her to tremble with anxiety. “If I acknowledge Dunaway as my father, I give him the power to destroy the life I’ve carved out for myself, to command from me a daughter’s obedience, to take possession of everything I own and to shape my future to suit his needs. I’ll not give him that power. I’ll not surrender my freedom and independence. I’ll not relinquish the funds I inherited from Bathsheba so that he can fill his empty pockets. And I most certainly will not subjugate myself to his whims and machinations.”
“Oh, dearest, how is it you can be so perceptive and yet so blind?” Lilith asked, her voice breaking and tears welling up in her eyes. “Dun would never demand your obedience, muck about with your life or steal your inheritance. Nor would he ask you to surrender all that makes you the remarkable young woman you’ve become. I’ll be the first to admit that Dun is prone to making mischief and creating mayhem, but he truly does mean well.”
“Did he mean well when he married the countess for her fortune and promptly spent a good portion of it setting up your mother as his mistress?” Harry demanded. “Did he mean well when he seduced my mother and left her with no choice but to marry a charming drunkard without a penny to his name beyond what Dunaway was able to scrape together to be rid of her?”
“He treated the countess and both our mothers abominably, it’s true,” Lilith admitted. “And Lord knows how many other women over the years, but he isn’t quite the same scapegrace when it comes to his daughters.”
“Not the quite the same scapegrace?” Harry repeated, appalled by her sister’s defense of the selfish blackguard. “I suppose he was only making a bit of mischief when he plotted to marry Sissy to the Beast of Breckenridge in order to pay off his debts?”
“That particular bit of mischief resulted in my marriage to Jasper,” Lilith protested with a laugh. “And I thank Dun for it every day.”
“Even now, Dunaway is conspiring to match Annalise to a man he has never laid eyes upon, a man he knows precisely nothing about beyond the fact he is rumored to be as rich as Croesus. I’ve hatched a scheme to thwart his latest attempt to replenish his coffers at the expense of one of his daughters, but what will happen the next time he decides to create a bit of mayhem?”
“With marriage in mind for Madeline or Kate, you mean?” Lilith asked. “Surely you’ve set in motion some sort of brilliant strategy to protect them?”
“Of course I have. I only need a bit more time to secure their futures and ensure their happiness.”
“What of you, Harry?” Lilith asked. “What of your happiness?”
“I’m perfectly happy with the life I’ve built for myself beyond the reach of Society’s judgement,” Harry replied. “I’ve only to come up with a plan to halt the gossip surrounding today’s cataclysmic events before it takes root.”
“I suspect the roots are firmly planted, and the first weeds are sprouting up all over Town even as we speak.”
Harry knew it was true, had known it the moment Lady Something-or-other and Mrs. Whomever had looked at her as if she were a sacrificial lamb upon an altar. Still, to hear the truth from Lilith, who’d never backed down from a challenge, was rather terrifying.
“What we need is a grand ball.”
“A grand ball?” Harry went from terrified to positively petrified.
“A grand, magnificent, positively ostentatious ball,” Lilith replied with a rather ferocious smile. “Specifically, your grand, magnificent, positively ostentatious come-out ball.”
“Have you not been listening to me?” Harry asked. “The last thing I intend to do is come out in Society!”
“You needn’t reveal yourself as Dunaway’s daughter, or even the granddaughter of the Duke of Montclaire,” Lilith argued. “Simply make your official debut as Miss Hesperia O’Connell, distant relation to Lord Fitzroy and his prodigious assortment of progeny.”
“I don’t know, Lil, it seems a risky gamble.”
“Are you not the same woman who declared it best to strike the first spark in order to manage the blaze?” Lilith released her grip on Harry’s fingers to plant her hands on her hips. “Will you now allow the Lady-Something-or-others of the ton to set your world afire without benefit of a bucket brigade?”
It occurred to Harry that the first spark of an entirely different firestorm had already been struck. With no more than a handful of whispered suggestions and innocuous queries, the kindling had been set and was likely catching flame even now. Upon that thought came another, and another, bouncing about willy-nilly in Harry’s mind until she caught hold of one, wrestled it into position with the others, sorted and indexed the lot of them into a cohesive, if rather convoluted, plan.
“It might work,” Harry murmured. “It wouldn’t be the first time all of Society has been diverted from one truth by the ostentatious display of another.”
“I’ll start on the invitations tomorrow.” Lilith’s words hindered but did not halt Harry’s ruminations. “What say you to Wednesday next?”
“Surely you’ll need more than seven days to plan a ball?” By Harry’s calculations, she needed fourteen days, perhaps twelve. Ten at a bare minimum.
Ten days to transform suggestions and questions into rumors and innuendo, and finally into cold, hard fact.
Ten days to secure Madeline the freedom she needed, Annalise the husband she wanted and Kate the choice she deserved.
Ten days to bring up the first load of iron-rich ore at Wheal Mercy in Cornwall.
Ten days until the lists were closed, all buying, bartering, gifting and collateralizing halted.
Ten days until Dunaway’s expectations were swept out from under him like a carpet in need of a good beating.
If Harry didn’t feel quite the same satisfaction at the prospect as she had only hours previously, she blamed it on the upheaval of the afternoon. “Saturday after next, and don’t you even think to dicker with me over the day.”
“Leave everything to me, dearest.”
“Ought you to be exerting yourself just now?” Harry asked, eying Lilith’s great girth. “So close to your time?”
“I’ve weeks to go yet,” Lilith protested with a smile.
“Still, I’ll send Prudence around first thing tomorrow,” Harry suggested, her mind already leaping ahead to fill in the glaring holes and smooth out the ragged edges of her plan. “You’ve only to explain what needs doing, and she’ll see to it, including meeting with Mr. Sturgis to set things in motion.”
“Mr. Sturgis?”
“Withy’s butler,” Harry explained. “He’s an arrogant arse, but Prudence will manage him without difficulty.”
“Are you thinking to hold the ball at Withy’s mansion on The Strand?” Lilith asked doubtfully.
“I can’t think of a more fitting locale to host a grand, magnificent, ostentatious ball than Withy’s great gothic mausoleum.”
“Hasn’t Withy gone missing?
“He’ll return for my debut into Society,” Harry retorted. “Even if he’s gone all the way to Madagascar.”
“I thought it was the enigmatic Mr. King who’d run off to Madagascar.”
Harry waved away her sister’s words. “You must be sure to invite everyone who is anyone in London. Including Lord Dunaway.”
“Are you certain?”
“What sort of ball would it be without London’s reigning rake in attendance?”
“I rather think Dun’s reign is coming to a close.” Lilith plopped onto the settee, tugging Harry down beside her. “Speaking of reigning rakes. How is it you allowed Knighton near enough to steal a kiss?”
“I thought we were friends.” As excuses went, Harry deemed it a worthy one.
Lilith burst into laughter, her free hand fluttering about before landing softly on her belly. She patted the bump beneath her gown as if in apolo
gy for having startled the poor mite awake. But still she laughed uproariously.
“I don’t see what you find hysterical about the situation,” Harry grumbled.
“Oh, Harry, you dunderhead,” Lilith stammered between guffaws. “You simply must cease collecting stray rakes.”
“I do no such thing,” Harry protested.
“You collect rakes the same way other women collect names on their dance cards.”
“Why, the very idea is ludicrous. Stray rakes, indeed.”
“Rakes, rogues, rascals, call them what you will. You collect them all.”
“Name one.”
“The Marquess of Marchant,” Lilith answered without hesitation.
“Charles is… Well, he isn’t a rake, per say.”
“Because he prefers to dabble with the rabble?” Lilith asked, wiping at the moisture hovering on her lashes. “Wenches, tarts or scullery maids, Marchant will beguile, bribe or buy a tumble with anything in rough, homespun skirts.”
“It’s a holdover from his youth when he fell madly in love with a chamber maid at Montclaire Hall,” Harry replied in defense of her second cousin, twice removed. “It’s rather a tragic tale.”
“Teddy Luther.”
“Teddy is harmless.”
“Tell that to the women he got with child and refused to marry.”
“He took in Nick and baby Mirabel when either, or both, children might well be the offspring of a dozen other men.”
“And still he continues to crawl from one woman’s bed to the next.”
“I will allow Teddy is in need of some reforming, but I’ve a plan to see to it.”
“Your good friend, Mr. Simms.”
“Steven Simms is married.”
Lilith rolled her eyes. “As if that disqualifies him as a rake.”
“He’s quite devoted to Margaret,” Harry argued.
“Cedric the blond behemoth.”
“Cedric is friendly.”
“Precisely,” Lilith agreed. “And let’s not forget Withy.”
