That was why the giant had lifted her on to the horse without asking her permission, too. Even though he’d meant well, he hadn’t treated her with the respect due to a lady.
Because she’d stepped outside the bounds set for the behaviour of ladies.
Damn her aunt for being right! She dashed a tear away from her cheek. A tear humiliation had wrung from her. She wasn’t afraid. Just angry. So angry. At the men, for treating her so…casually. For manhandling her, and mocking her and insinuating she was…
Oh, how she wished she’d struck them all with her crop. Men who went about the park, getting drunk and frightening decent females…
Although they hadn’t thought she was decent, had they? They’d thought she was out there drumming up custom.
She shuddered.
And no wonder. She’d melted into Ulysses’s kiss like butter on to toasted bread. And then been so flustered she’d forgotten to conceal her legs when untangling them from her skirts, giving him a view of them right up to her knees, like as not.
Oh, but she wished she could hit something now. Though she was more to blame than anyone and she couldn’t hit herself. Because it turned out that sometimes, just sometimes, Aunt Susan might just be right. Ladies couldn’t go about on their own, in London. Because if they did, drunken idiots assumed they were fair game.
Why hadn’t Aunt Susan explained that some of the rules were for her own good, though? If she’d only warned Harriet that men could behave that badly, when they were intoxicated, then…
Honesty compelled her to admit that she knew how idiotic men became when they drank too much. Didn’t she see it every week back home in Donnywich? By the end of market day, men came rolling out of the tavern, wits so addled with drink they had to rely on their horses to find their way home.
And men were men, whether they lived in the country and wore smocks, or in Town and dressed in the height of fashion. So she should have known. Because the rules were made by men, for the convenience of men. So, rather than expect men to behave properly, at all times, women just had to stay out of their way, or go around with guards, just in case they felt like being beastly.
She slowed Shadow to a walk as she left the park via the Stanhope Gate, her heart sinking. She’d so enjoyed escaping to the park at first light. It had been the only thing making her stay in London bearable of late. But now, because men rolled home from their clubs in drunken packs and…and pounced on any female foolish enough to cross their path, she would never be able to do so again. She’d have to take a groom. Which would mean waiting until one was awake and willing to take her without first checking with Aunt Susan that she had permission.
And Aunt Susan wouldn’t give it, like as not.
Oh, it was all so…vexing!
London was turning out to be such a disappointment that she was even starting to see the advantages of the kind of life she’d lived at home. At least nobody there had ever so much as raised an eyebrow if she’d gone out riding on her own. Not even when she’d worn some of her brothers’ cast-offs, for comfort. Even the times she’d stayed out all day, nobody had ever appeared to notice. Mama was always too engrossed in some scientific tome or other to bother about what her only daughter was getting up to. And Papa had never once criticised her, no matter how bitterly Aunt Susan might complain she was turning into a hoyden.
Nobody who lived for miles around Stone Court would ever have dreamed of molesting her, either, since everyone knew she was Lord and Lady Balderstone’s youngest child.
She sighed as Shadow picked her way daintily along Curzon Street. She’d been in the habit of feeling aggrieved when nobody commented on her absence, or even appeared to care if she missed meals. But the alternative, of having her aunt watching her like a hawk, practically every waking moment, was beginning to feel like being laced into someone else’s corset, then shut in a room with no windows.
She reached the end of Curzon Street and crossed Charles Street, her heart sinking still further. The nearer she got to Tarbrook House, the more it felt as though she was putting her head under a velvet cushion and inviting her aunt and uncle to smother her with it.
If only she’d known what a London Season would be like, she would have thanked Aunt Susan politely for offering her the chance to make her debut alongside her younger cousin, Kitty, and made some excuse to stay away. She could easily have said that Papa relied on her to keep the household running smoothly, what with Mama being mostly too preoccupied to bother with anything so mundane as paying servants or ordering meals. Aunt Susan would have understood and accepted the excuse that somebody had to approve the menus and go over the household accounts on a regular basis. For it was one of the things that had always caused dissension between the sisters, whenever Aunt Susan had come on a visit. Mama had resented the notion that she ought to entertain visitors, saying that it interfered with her studies. Aunt Susan would retort that she ought to venture out of her workshop at least once a day, to enquire how her guests were faring, even if she didn’t really care. The sniping would escalate until, in the end, everyone was very relieved when the family duty visit came to an end.
Except for Harriet. For it was only when Aunt Susan was paying one of her annual visits, en route to her own country estate after yet another glittering London Season, that she felt as if anyone saw her. Really saw her. And had the temerity to raise concerns about the way her own mother and father neglected her.
But, oh, what Harriet wouldn’t give for a little of that sort of neglect right now. For, from the moment she’d arrived, Aunt Susan hadn’t ceased complaining about her behaviour, her posture, her hair, her clothes, and even the expression on her face from time to time. Even shopping for clothes, which Harriet had been looking forward to with such high hopes, had not lived up to her expectations. She didn’t know why it was, but though she bought exactly the same sorts of things as Kitty, she never looked as good in them. To be honest, she suspected she looked a perfect fright in one or two of the fussier dresses, to judge from the way men eyed her up and down with looks verging from disbelief to amusement. She couldn’t understand why Aunt Susan had let her out in public in one of them, when she’d gone home and looked at herself, with critical eyes, in the mirror. At herself, rather than the delicacy of the lace, or the sparkle of the spangled trimmings.
Worse, on the few occasions she’d attended balls so far, Aunt Susan had not granted any of the men who’d asked her to dance the permission to do so. The first few refusals had stemmed from Aunt Susan’s conviction that Harriet had not fully mastered the complexities of the steps. And after that, she simply found fault with the men who were then doing the asking. But what did it matter if her dance partners were not good ton? Surely it would be more fun to skip round the room with somebody, even if he was a desperate fortune-hunter, rather than sit wilting on the sidelines? Every blessed night.
Yes, she sighed, catching her first glimpse of Tarbrook House, the longer she stayed in Town, the more appealing Stone Court was beginning to look. At least at home she’d started to carve out a niche for herself. After being of no consequence for so many years, she’d found a great deal of consolation in taking over the duties her mother habitually neglected.
But in Town she was truly a fish out of water, she reflected glumly as Shadow trotted through the arch leading to the mews at the back of Tarbrook House. Instead of dancing every night at glittering balls, with a succession of handsome men, one of whom was going to fall madly in love with her and whisk her away to his estate where he’d treat her like a queen, she was actually turning out to be a social failure.
The only time she felt like herself recently had been on these secret forays into the park, before anyone else was awake. And now, because of those…beasts, she wasn’t even going to be able to have that any longer.
She dismounted, and led Shadow to her stall, where a groom darted forward with a scowl on
his face.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I should not have gone out riding on my own. But you need not report this to Lady Tarbrook. For I shall not be doing so again, you may be certain.’
The groom ran his eyes over her. His gaze paused once or twice. Over the grass stains on her riding habit, for example. At which his mouth twisted in derision.
He thought she’d taken a tumble and had now lost her nerve, the fool. She gripped her crop tightly as she warred with the urge to defend her skill as a horsewoman. But if she admitted she’d dismounted through choice, he’d wonder where the grass stains had come from. And since she was not in the habit of telling lies, she’d probably blush and stammer, and look so guilty that he’d go straight to Aunt Susan and tell her that her hoyden of a niece had been up to no good.
And Aunt Susan would extract the truth out of her in no time flat.
And she would die rather than have to confess she’d let a man kiss her. A strange man. A strange drunken man.
And worse, that she’d liked it. Because, for a few brief moments, he’d made her feel attractive. Interesting. When for most of her life—until she’d taken to giving the servants directions, that was—nobody had thought her of any value at all. She’d just been an afterthought. A girl, what was worse. A girl that nobody knew quite what to do with.
So she lifted her chin and simply stalked away, her reputation as a horsewoman ruined in the eyes of the head groom.
* * *
Jack Hesketh sat up slowly, his head spinning, and watched the virago galloping away.
‘Do you know,’ he mused, ‘I think we may have just insulted a lady.’
Zeus snorted. ‘If she were a lady, she would not have been out here unattended at this hour, flirting with a pack of drunken bucks.’
Jack shook his head. He couldn’t believe Zeus—who’d pursued women with such fervour and conquered so many of them while he, and Archie, and Atlas had still been too pimply and awkward to do anything but stand back in awe—had become the kind of man who could now speak of such a lovely one with so much contempt.
If he were to meet Zeus now, for the first time, he didn’t think he’d want to be his friend.
In fact, after the way he’d behaved tonight, he’d steer well clear of such a man. Zeus had always been a bit full of himself, which was only to be expected when he was of such high rank and swimming in lard to boot. But there had been a basic sort of decency about him, too. He’d had a sense of humour, anyway.
But now…it was as if a sort of malaise had infected him, rendering him incapable of seeing any good in anyone or anything.
And Archie—well, he’d turned into a sort of…tame hound, trotting along behind Zeus like a spaniel at his master’s heels.
While Atlas…oh, dear God, Atlas. He winced as he turned his head rather too quickly, to peer into the gloom at the wreck of the man who’d been his boyhood idol.
Though, hadn’t they all been his heroes, one way or another? Which was, perhaps, where he’d gone wrong. In keeping his schoolboy reverence for them firm in his heart during all his years of active service, like a talisman, he’d sort of pickled their images, like flies set in amber. That would certainly explain why it had come as such a shock to see how much they’d all changed.
Especially Atlas. Imprisonment at the hands of the French, and illness, had reduced him to an emaciated ruin of his former self. In fact, he looked such a wreck that Jack had been a bit surprised he’d managed to lift the virago on to her horse at all. Though at least it proved he was still the same man, inside, where it mattered. They hadn’t given him the nickname of Atlas only because of his immense size and strength compared to the rest of them, but because of his habit of always trying to take everyone else’s burdens on his own shoulders. Rescuing that girl from Zeus was exactly the kind of thing he’d always been doing. Atlas had always hated seeing anyone weak or vulnerable being tormented.
Which was what they’d been doing to that poor girl, Jack thought, his stomach turning over in shame. The four of them, making sport of her. No—make that three. Atlas had been the only one of them to behave like a perfect gentleman even though he was as drunk as the rest of them.
Or was he? He’d barely touched any of the drink Zeus had so lavishly supplied, at what was supposed to be a celebration of not only the Peace, but also his return to England. Of the fact that for the first time in years, all four of them had the liberty to meet up. As though the poor fellow felt he couldn’t trust himself to hold it down. Nobody had said anything, though. They’d all been too shocked at the sight of him to do more than squirm a bit as they drank his health. Health? Hah! The best that anyone could say of the gaunt and yellow-skinned Atlas was that he was alive.
‘I tell you what, though,’ he said aloud. ‘You are still my hero, Atlas’
Atlas started, looking taken aback.
‘No, really. After all this time, you are still the best of us. Always was.’
‘You paid too much attention to the letters I wrote when I first went to sea,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘I made it sound far more exciting than it was. Didn’t want you all to…pity me, for having to leave. Didn’t want to admit that I was seasick, and homesick and utterly wretched.’
‘B-but,’ said Archie, looking shocked, ‘you were a hero. Read ab-bout your exp-ploits in the Gazette.’
Atlas made a dismissive motion with his hand, as though banishing the Gazette and all that was printed in it to perdition.
‘Just did my duty. No choice, when you’re in the thick of action. You either fight like a demon, or…well, you know how it is, Jack. Same in the army, I dare say.’ He sent Jack a beseeching look, as though begging him to divert attention from him.
‘Only too well,’ he therefore said. ‘Which is why your homecoming is worth celebrating. Glad you’re alive. Glad I’m alive. Even glad Zeus is alive,’ he said, shooting his godship a wry grin. ‘Since he got us all together again, for the first time since…what year was it when you left school, Atlas?’
‘You are foxed,’ said Zeus with exasperation, before Atlas had a chance to make his response. ‘If I’d realised quite how badly foxed, I would never have let you attempt to ride Lucifer.’
‘Attempt? Pah! I did ride Lucifer.’
‘Not very far.’
‘Far enough to prove your boast about being the only man to be able to do it was patently false.’ God, how he’d wanted to knock the sneering expression from Zeus’s face when he’d made that claim. Which was why he’d declared there wasn’t a horse he couldn’t ride, drunk or sober.
Zeus shook his head this time as he stood over Jack where he lay sprawled.
But Jack didn’t care. For a few minutes, directly after he’d made the wager, all four of them had shaken off the gloom that had been hanging over them like a pall. They’d even laughed and started calling each other by the silly names they’d given each other at school as they staggered round to the stables. They’d sobered slightly when Lucifer had rolled his eyes at them and snorted indignantly when they’d approached his stall. Archie had even suggested, albeit timidly, that he was sure nobody would mind if Jack withdrew his claim.
‘Draw back from a bet? What kind of man do you think I am?’ Jack had retorted. And Zeus had grabbed the stallion’s halter and led the animal out into the streets before anyone could talk sense into either of them.
Good God. Zeus had been as intent on carrying through on the wager as Jack himself. Did that mean…?
Was there still something of the old Zeus left? Deep under all that sarcasm and sneering? He’d certainly been the one to arrange this reunion. And he’d also made sure they’d been given a chance to laugh at Jack’s antics, the way they’d done so many times at school. They’d certainly all been roaring with laughter as Lucifer had shot off, with Jack clinging to his mane. And so sweet had been t
hat sound that Jack hadn’t cared that the beast had unseated him before he’d managed one circuit of the park.
‘I still maintain that girl was not flirting with us,’ he said defiantly. Was he imagining it, or was there an answering gleam in Zeus’s eyes? As though he was relishing having someone refusing to lie down and roll over at his bidding.
Ah.
Was that why he’d become so jaded? Because nobody challenged him any more? It would explain why he’d jumped at the wager, ridiculous though it was. Why he’d whisked Lucifer out of his stall before the sleepy groom had a chance to fling a saddle on his back.
Perhaps, even, why he’d gathered them all together in the first place.
‘She may not have been a lady, precisely,’ Jack continued. ‘But I stick to my guns about her not flirting with us. Else why would she have set about us with her riding crop?’
That had come as a shock, too, he had to admit. One moment she’d been melting into his arms, the next she was fighting him off. And she’d been kissing him so sweetly, after that initial hesitation, so shyly yet…hang on…shyly. With hesitation. As though she didn’t know quite what to do, but couldn’t help herself. As if she was catching fire, just as he’d been.
One moment she was with him, and then…it was as if she’d come to her senses. As though she realised it was a stranger with whom she was rolling about on the grass.
‘I would wager,’ he said, a smile tugging at his lips as he recalled and re-examined her every reaction, ‘that not only was she not flirting, but that she was an innocent, to boot.’
That would explain it all. That gasp of shock when he’d first started kissing her. Her inexpert, almost clumsy, yet uninhibited response. Until the very moment when she’d hauled up the drawbridge and slammed down the portcullis. The moment when she remembered she was dabbling in sin.
Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718) Page 24
