‘Mama was?’
‘Oh, yes, she said that if it was a question of him being in the basket,’ said Kitty, clattering the dome over a dish of eggs, in order, Harriet supposed, to prevent the nearby footman from overhearing, ‘he ought to send all the bills for our come-out to your father, who was ready to stand the nonsense. Which practically sent him off into an apoplexy on the spot.’
Golly. It sounded as though, having advised Harriet to steer well clear of Lord Tarbrook, Kitty had crept back downstairs and put her ear to the keyhole.
‘I cannot quite see why,’ Harriet began. ‘I mean, if your father is having money troubles, why on earth did your mother insist on sponsoring me for a Season?’
‘Because he isn’t having money troubles at all,’ hissed Kitty indignantly. ‘It is just that Mama,’ she breathed, her eyes suddenly lighting up with excitement, ‘seems to have pawned off a lot of jewellery and had it copied. Papa found out when he took an old family heirloom to the jewellers to be re-set for my engagement ball.’
‘Your engagement ball? I didn’t even know you had received a proposal. When did that happen?’
‘It hasn’t happened yet, silly,’ said Kitty with a giggle. ‘But when it does, I was dreading being weighted down by the hideous parure that has been worn by all the Tarbrook daughters for the past two centuries. And Papa knows how much I detest it. So he sent it off to be put into new settings. As a surprise for me when I do finally choose a husband.’
‘My…my goodness,’ said Harriet, absentmindedly scooping a spoonful of scrambled eggs on to the plate Kitty had just pressed into her hand.
‘Yes, and now everyone is whispering about Mama,’ said Kitty, glaring round the room at the wooden-faced servants. ‘They must have all heard Papa shouting at her last night.’
‘And this morning,’ said Harriet. ‘I heard him myself as I was coming down.’
‘What, still?’
Apparently not. For at that moment, the door opened and Aunt Susan herself came in, red-eyed but straight-backed as she swished to her place at the foot of the table. Even before she sat down the butler snapped his fingers and Fred, the first footman, brought her tea and a plate of toast cut into fingers, the breakfast which she habitually consumed every morning.
Harriet’s mother peered at her sister over the top of her paper, frowned and laid it aside.
‘Never say the brute is still refusing to listen to sense?’
Aunt Susan stuck out her chin, her cheeks quivering as though with the effort of not bursting into tears again.
‘I cannot comprehend why he should think you would rob your own daughter,’ said Mama with exasperation. ‘You have no need of the money, after all. He gives you a very generous allowance, doesn’t he?’
‘He won’t believe a word I say,’ said Aunt Susan indignantly. ‘Not one word. After all these years.’
Well, that explained the sound of shattering crockery. Or at least, it was probably one of those funny little statue things that Lady Tarbrook kept handy on every available surface. If someone had accused her of theft, Harriet thought she might very well be inclined to throw something at her accuser’s fat head.
‘It would serve him right if you did start going to gaming hells and taking heavy losses,’ said Mama, startling Harriet so much she put her thumb in her eggs. ‘In fact, if it was me in your shoes, that is exactly what I’d do.’
‘Not all husbands are as easy to tame as yours,’ said Aunt Susan bitterly, as Peter deftly took Harriet’s plate from her, walked to the table, set it at her place and pulled out her chair.
‘To think of all the years I have been the perfect wife…’
Harriet and Kitty crept to the table while Aunt Susan began enumerating the dozens of ways in which she’d borne with her husband’s odd tempers over the years. The servants all adopted carefully bland expressions as they went about their work, though some of the tales about Uncle Hugo’s doings were so risqué they made Harriet’s cheeks burn. It wasn’t long before she started to wonder whether she ought to send the servants from the room. But then she remembered what Kitty had said and reasoned that not only was it too late to prevent them learning more than they should, but also that it wasn’t her place.
‘And now,’ Aunt Susan was complaining, ‘the first time something inexplicable occurs, instead of trusting me, he accuses me of…of…’ Her lower lip wobbled. She raised her napkin to her eyes and hid her face for a moment.
By the time she lowered it, Mama was looking thoroughly annoyed.
‘Do you know what you should do?’
‘I feel sure…’ Aunt Susan sighed ‘…you are about to tell me.’
‘Well, in your place, I think I might get some Bow Street Runners on the case. To see if they can find out what happened to the rubies.’
Aunt Susan froze, a finger of toast halfway to her mouth. But then she shook her head and sighed.
‘I would not know how to go about hiring them. Do you?’
Harriet’s mother shook her head. ‘It is a great pity James did not wish to come to Town with me. He may be a bit of a dunderhead, but it is the sort of thing even he would know, I dare say. Or if he didn’t, he could find out.’
Harriet grabbed a piece of toast and slapped it on to her plate. Then hacked off a slice of butter to spread on it, wishing Mama would not speak of Papa in such a derogatory fashion all the time. Why couldn’t she appreciate what an absolute lamb he was? In comparison with the tyrannical Uncle Hugo, particularly?
‘I don’t think Hugo would like that,’ said Aunt Susan, confirming Harriet’s opinion of him. ‘He might regard it as interference in his private business.’
Harriet’s mother curled her lip in scorn at what Aunt Susan believed her husband might think.
‘If anyone could find out how to hire such a person,’ said Aunt Susan, reaching across and patting her sister’s hand, ‘I feel sure it is you, Mary.’
‘Me? Oh, but I only came to Town to—’
‘Attend some important lecture and speak to some genius who has written some paper that has a bearing on what you yourself are looking into at the moment, I know, dear, you told me all that last night. But don’t you think you might find the time to…’
Mama withdrew her hand swiftly. ‘You know I won’t. I told you, that is why I didn’t even have Stone House opened up. I don’t have time for distractions of that sort. My work is important,’ she said firmly. ‘Not that I expect you to understand…’
‘Oh, I understand perfectly,’ snapped Aunt Susan, the brief moment of harmony between the sisters shattering. ‘If your work is more important to you than your own daughter’s future, not to say well-being, then naturally the troubles of a mere sister must fade into insignificance.’
‘There is no need to take that attitude—’
‘You were always a selfish little girl,’ said Aunt Susan, her blood clearly up. ‘But after I’ve gone to all the effort of making up for your neglect, teaching your daughter all the things you should have done, dressing her, taking her about and all the rest of it, and you will not even—’
‘Well, nobody asked you to do any of those things,’ replied Mama, unperturbed. ‘She—’ she glanced across the table at Harriet, who promptly buried her face in the cup of tea which had been sitting beside her place ‘—was perfectly content living quietly in the country.’
‘And what would have happened to her when Charles took a bride and brought her home? What would she do then with another woman taking the reins of Stone Court? Where would her place have been then?’
It felt as if someone had just jabbed a knife into Harriet’s gut. She’d never looked that far into her future. She’d never wondered what her role would be, once a woman came to live at Stone Court who would be entitled to take on the duties her mother shirked.
But
Aunt Susan had.
Harriet lowered her half-empty cup to its saucer with a snap. Once again, Aunt Susan was the only person who’d considered Harriet’s welfare.
The scraping of the chair next to her alerted her to the fact that Kitty was getting to her feet.
‘If you will excuse us, Mama, Aunt Mary,’ she said, dropping a curtsy as both women’s heads whipped round and treated her to almost identical glares. ‘But we need to attend to some, um, mending.’
Harriet gave her half-eaten plate of eggs and toast just one rueful glance before getting to her feet as well. Because she would rather go without breakfast than be a witness to any more quarrelling. Let alone revelations about what went on within such a stormy marriage as her aunt and uncle were conducting. It had been the most uncomfortable mealtime she’d ever endured. No wonder Kitty had suggested a way of escape.
Aunt Susan gave a wave of her hand, dismissing them, and the girls scuttled out of the room, their breakfast abandoned.
Fred darted before them to open the door, and, as they heard their respective mothers take up the cudgels once again, followed them out into the hall.
‘Shall I send some fresh tea and toast to the drawing room, Miss Kitty?’
‘Yes, thank you, Fred,’ said Kitty as though it was the most natural thing in the world to resume breakfast in another location. Which, in this house, it probably was, Harriet reflected as Kitty took her by the elbow and steered her across to the stairs.
‘Your poor mother,’ said Harriet as they started up the stairs. So far, though she’d been grateful for all the things Aunt Susan had tried to do for her, she rather thought she’d taken her for granted. To start with she’d seen her, she realised, in the light of a fairy godmother creature, who existed only to grant her wishes. But since coming to London she was coming to know her as a real woman, who, though having plenty of troubles of her own, had a heart big enough to constantly look out for her lonely, socially awkward niece. And take practical steps to ensure she had a comfortable future.
Aunt Susan had never once counted the cost. Neither financially nor in terms of the potential for embarrassment.
Whereas Mama had done nothing to prepare her for life outside Stone Court. Which she would have to leave when Charles found a bride. At least, once Papa left the place to Charles, that was. Which would hopefully be a long way off. But…ugh. The thought of lingering in the place, with no real function, once Charles brought a wife in to run the place the way she saw fit. It was bad enough as it was, feeling as though she had to earn her place to win anyone’s notice by running the household, rather than just taking it for granted, the way Kitty did. But once they no longer needed her to stand in for Mama, she would be nothing. Worse than nothing—an encumbrance, that’s what she’d be. Hanging about the place with no real purpose and no value.
It would be unbearable.
‘Come on, Harriet, this way,’ said Kitty, making her realise she’d come to a standstill at the head of the stairs.
‘Beg pardon,’ she said, setting off again along the landing in the direction of the drawing room. She only wished she could beg Aunt Susan’s pardon so easily. For all the times she’d let her down. For rebelling against the strictures, even if she’d only done it inwardly. For wasting the chance Aunt Susan was giving her by comparing perfectly eligible men to Lord Becconsall, who’d told her outright he didn’t want to get married at all.
Well, no longer. From now on she would stop mooning about, wishing for Lord Becconsall, or some other man, to come into her life and turn it into something that only existed in the pages of a storybook. She would focus on the things that mattered. On making it up to Aunt Susan, somehow, for what she was going through. Because it was terribly unfair that all she was getting, in return for her generosity, was half-hearted compliance from her niece, and indifference from her sister, whilst enduring such persecution from her husband.
‘Kitty, we have to do something,’ she said, penitence for being so self-centred in the face of her aunt’s unhappiness making her stomach squirm.
‘Yes. I know. I only said that about sewing to get us out of the breakfast parlour because I couldn’t think of anything better. What would you like to do?’
‘No.’ Harriet felt like stamping her foot. ‘I mean, to help your mama.’
Kitty frowned. ‘Like…rubbing her temples with lavender water, do you mean?’
‘No. Though I suppose we could. Would she like that? But, no, actually, what I meant was finding out what really happened to those rubies and clearing her name.’
‘Oh, but we can’t possibly! I mean…’ she dropped on to the nearest chair ‘…how?’
‘Well, we can start by talking to the servants about it.’
‘The servants?’ Kitty clapped her hand to her breast in shock. ‘But, one should never discuss family matters with them.’
Harriet pursed her lips. ‘Look, Kitty, the way my mother and yours were arguing at the breakfast table, the servants already know all about it.’
‘That’s different.’
‘I don’t see how.’
Kitty sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘That’s the thing about you, Harriet. You just do not grasp the subtler points of governing a household such as this.’
No. And she didn’t want to, either. It all seemed to consist of one set of people pretending they didn’t know what they knew, while the other set expected them to keep their mouths shut about it. Instead of everyone just being open and honest.
‘Well, since I am so…lacking in subtlety, nobody will be surprised when I start blundering about asking awkward questions then, will they? Besides which,’ she put in hastily when Kitty opened her mouth to make another objection, ‘as you pointed out, the servants overhear everything. If anything suspicious has happened inside your household, ten to one, most of the servants will know all about it.’
‘Well, then, why didn’t one of them come forward?’
Harriet felt like running her fingers through her hair. Except that would dislodge the pins which were holding it in place and ruin the style which had taken longer to create than the so-called fussy ringlets to which Lord Becconsall had objected.
‘Because,’ she said slowly, ‘they aren’t in the habit of speaking to the family openly, are they? And anyway, all this about the jewels has only just come to light, from what I can gather?’
Kitty nodded.
‘Well then, let’s give them a bit of time to talk about it and start to speculate about what must have really happened to the parure. And then I shall start asking them if they can recall… I don’t know…the last time anyone saw them before your father took them to the jewellers. I take it they don’t get an airing very often, if they’re so hideous?’
Kitty shook her head. ‘As I said, it is tradition for the ladies of the family to wear them for their betrothal ball and new brides usually wear them when they have their portrait painted, but other than that, they tend to stay locked away.’
‘So they might have been copied years ago?’
Kitty nodded, slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But then…if that is the case, who is likely to remember anything helpful?’
‘I don’t know. But one thing I do know,’ she said with resolution, ‘I am not going to rest until I have cleared your mother’s name.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Papa!’ Kitty could not conceal her surprise when, that night, Lord Tarbrook climbed into the carriage which was taking them to Miss Roke’s come-out ball. He’d never bothered to attend any of the events of the Season thus far, claiming they were insipid affairs which bored him to death.
‘Clearly, your mother is not to be trusted to put your welfare first,’ he grumbled as he took the seat beside his wife, ‘so what choice do I have but to keep a closer watch on her doings?’
Aunt Susan gasped
as though he had slapped her. Harriet did not know where to look. It was hard to avoid catching anyone’s eye in the confines of a small carriage, but by putting her mind to it, she managed to do so all the way to the ball.
‘It is of no use putting on that martyred air,’ snapped Uncle Hugo as they drew up outside the brightly lit house, causing everyone to start guiltily and look up. He was glaring at his wife, which relieved Harriet and probably Kitty, too, by the look of it. ‘What can you expect,’ he snarled, ‘after letting your daughter down so badly?’
Aunt Susan gave his back, as he pushed open the carriage door rather than wait for one of their footmen to perform the task, a wounded look. Though she replaced it with an emotionless mask almost instantly.
Harriet couldn’t help admiring the way Aunt Susan wrapped her dignity round her like a mantle as she climbed out of the carriage. And the way she held up her head as she placed her hand on her toad of a husband’s sleeve as they mounted the steps was nothing short of regal. This was exactly the way she was always encouraging Harriet to behave. And if Aunt Susan could do it, under the strain of such unfair accusations, then so could she.
Harriet took a deep breath, mentally renewing her vow to do all in her power to show support for her poor beleaguered aunt. She had not made much progress with questioning the servants so far. But anyway, what Aunt Susan seemed to want most, from Harriet, was to see her married off to someone suitable.
With that in mind, Harriet vowed that for tonight at least, she would behave impeccably. She could certainly try to recall all the advice Aunt Susan had given her and apply it diligently. She would not slouch in her chair, or pick at her gloves, or sigh, or fidget, or any of the things she was not supposed to do. And when some man did happen to ask her to dance, she would act as though she was thrilled, no matter who he was, if her aunt appeared to approve of him. What was more, she would treat him as though she thought he was amazingly handsome and witty, for the entire duration of the dance, no matter how dull and stupid he was. She would bite her tongue, if necessary, to prevent herself from speaking her mind.
Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718) Page 30
