Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718)

by Merrill, Christine; Burrows, Annie; Justiss, Julia

  No sign of anyone at all.

  ‘So that’s that, then,’ said Archie gloomily.

  It appeared so. For some reason, Lady Balderstone had not informed Lady Tarbrook of her plans. Or Lady Tarbrook might have said Stone House, when she meant Stone Court, he supposed. In either case, the result was the same. Lady Harriet was out of his reach. He could no longer pursue her.

  Worse, he might never see her again.

  In brooding silence, he escorted Archie back to Grosvenor Square where they parted company. And then he wandered the streets aimlessly for some time. Though part of him wanted to go to ground somewhere, somewhere quiet where he could lick his wounds in peace. However, the part of him that had seen him through so much of his life thus far refused to even admit that he was wounded. It made him greet every acquaintance with a cheerful smile and crack puerile jokes, and generally behave as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

  * * *

  That evening, his determination to prove he had no interest at all in Lady Harriet’s whereabouts saw him presiding over the most riotous table at Limmer’s.

  ‘Never a dull moment since you came to Town,’ said Captain Challinor, clapping him on the back. ‘What say you we repair to the Guards Club? Liven them up a bit?’

  With a grin, he agreed. There was nothing he’d rather do, he decided on the spur of the moment, than shake up some of the stuffy set that presided over that place. He staggered along Bruton Street arm in arm with Captain Challinor, plotting various ways he could wreak havoc on the men who’d written him off as a clown and a fool, and a wastrel.

  And then they reached Berkeley Square. And there was Tarbrook House. Where Lady Harriet wasn’t living any longer. Lady Harriet, who also thought he was a clown and a fool, and a wastrel, he shouldn’t wonder, else why would she have rebuffed him so forcefully?

  And suddenly he no longer saw the point in making a nuisance of himself with the military set. It wasn’t them he wanted to…shake.

  ‘Just remembered, something I need to do,’ he said.

  Captain Challinor shrugged and set off south along the square, while Jack, having glared one last time at Tarbrook House, set off in a northerly direction.

  The sun was just crawling sluggishly out of a bed of purplish clouds as he entered Hyde Park. He didn’t know what good it would do to come and stand by the very tree under which he’d kissed her. Before he’d even known her name. And yet that was where he found himself standing. Gazing down at the ground. Remembering the taste of her. The feel of her coming alive in his arms. The moments he’d spent with her since. The way her little face came alive after only a moment or so of his teasing. The way her eyes flashed up at him as she sent him a stinging riposte.

  ‘You really fell for her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Good God!’ He whirled round at the sound of Zeus’s laconic voice, emanating not five feet from behind him. ‘Did you follow me here?’ He hadn’t noticed anyone following him. He hadn’t thought there was anyone in the park at all, apart from a couple of sleepy park-keepers, either.

  He clenched his fists. This was what his aimless existence had brought him to. This state of…dulled wits that rendered him vulnerable to ambush. If this had been northern Spain, he could well be dead.

  ‘No. I did not follow you.’

  ‘Then what the devil are you doing prowling around the park at this hour?’

  ‘I could well ask you the same question,’ said Zeus, glancing briefly at the spot on the grass where Lucifer had deposited him. ‘But in your case, there is no need, is there?’ He sighed. ‘It is obvious that you are…in need of a friend.’

  ‘Is it?’ Jack gave a bitter laugh. ‘I have it on good authority that there is never a dull moment while I am in Town.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but that doesn’t mean you don’t…hurt all the same.’

  Hurt? He didn’t hurt. He might be a touch disappointed that this…whatever it was with Lady Harriet had been nipped in the bud. But that was all.

  ‘Damn you, Zeus!’ Jack struggled with the urge to take a swing at him. ‘You think you know everything…’

  ‘No. Not everything,’ he said with infuriating calm. ‘But I do know what I saw when you were with her. You reminded me of a twelve-year-old boy, pulling the pigtails of a girl you liked, to try to get her attention. And now she’s gone, perhaps only now she’s gone, you are having to face the fact that she meant more to you than you knew. And also that your tactics were the worst you could possibly have employed.’ He turned his head to gaze across the park, as though watching someone walking along the path, though Jack couldn’t see anyone through the mist. ‘Because the way you made her feel about you, the last time you spoke to her, means that you have no valid excuse for following after her and admitting what is really in your heart.’ He uttered a strange, bitter kind of laugh. ‘Even if you were to admit it, she now regards you with such suspicion that she won’t believe a word you say. Not even should you demean yourself by grovelling. All you would do would be to make a complete cake of yourself.’

  What? ‘It’s not as bad as that. Lady Harriet—’

  ‘Who?’ Zeus raised one hand to his head. It was only at this point that Jack began to wonder if Zeus was as foxed as himself. Only thing to account for him wandering about the park at this hour.

  ‘Oh, her,’ said Zeus. ‘Yes, we were speaking of Lady Harriet, were we not?’

  Jack wasn’t at all sure any longer.

  ‘You know what? You don’t look quite the thing. I think you should go home.’

  ‘Home. Hah.’ His face contorted into a sneer. ‘A great big house, that’s all it is. Not a home.’

  ‘Nevertheless, that’s where I’m going to take you,’ said Jack, going up to Zeus and taking him by the arm. He’d never seen his old friend reduced to such a state. Perversely, it made him feel a touch better to see proof that Zeus wasn’t invincible after all. That a woman had managed to pierce what he’d thought was unshakeable belief in himself.

  That Jack wasn’t alone in his misery.

  * * *

  Jack slept most of the next day away. Awoke with gritty eyes and a sore head, and a determination to pull himself together. He could forgive himself one night of excess. But he was never going to get so drunk that people could creep up on him unawares again. Besides, it was ludicrous to permit one failed love affair to drive him to drink in the first place. If you could even classify it as a love affair. He hadn’t actually declared himself to Lady Harriet and been repulsed, or anything near.

  It was just that Lady Harriet’s disappearance, coming on top of all the other blows he’d sustained of late, had been the last straw, that was all, he told himself as he went down to his study.

  He was, slowly, making inroads into the mountain of paperwork he’d inherited from his supposedly magnificent predecessor. He glanced askance at himself as he passed the mirror placed strategically close to the desk. From what he’d been able to gather, George had caused it to be hung there when his father had first started looking as though he’d been given notice to quit. He must have imagined checking his appearance in it, before admitting callers. He could just see him standing there, stroking those magnificent moustaches, and giving a final flick to his neckcloth. Though not actually sitting behind the desk. Not to judge from the utter chaos he’d found in here when he’d first inherited.

  His father had put all his effort into training his oldest son, William. That was what had gone wrong. And George had spent most of his time hunting or whoring.

  Jack resisted the urge to turn the mirror to the wall before sitting down at the desk. It was a good job he’d acquired a good training in administration during his time in the army. The success of campaigns depended on officers getting through a mountain of paperwork every single day. He might not cut an impressive figure swaggering about the
estates, or leading the field in a hunt, but by God he could certainly keep the paperwork in order.

  After a few minutes at work, he leaned back in his chair, and yielded to the temptation to put his feet up on the desk, twirling the pen in his ink-stained fingers. Perhaps it was time to return to Shropshire and throw his weight about a bit. Show them he wasn’t the timid boy who’d gone, shivering, into the army the moment he left school. The tone of correspondence he was receiving from his father’s steward was certainly becoming more respectful of late. Timmins no longer expressed surprise that he actually signed and returned the most urgent documents, anyway. Perhaps he should do as Zeus suggested and go down there, and take up the reins of his new life.

  Zeus.

  He growled, took his feet off the desk and pulled another document from the stack awaiting his attention. He was not going to do anything because Zeus bid him do it. He would go to Shropshire when he was good and ready.

  And not a moment sooner.

  * * *

  The next morning he woke early, thanks to the fact that he’d spent so much of the previous day sleeping and had then passed the night entirely sober. Drinking to excess had never solved anyone’s problems. It only dulled the brain, so that they no longer cared so much.

  However, the prospect of spending the best part of the day indoors did not appeal. And even though this was only London, rather than somewhere more scenic, he decided to go out for a walk.

  He could have gone in any direction. It must have been some perverse kind of desire to punish himself that sent him to St James’s Square. Where he stood gazing forlornly up at the shuttered façade of Stone House for several minutes before shaking himself and striking out towards the Strand.

  He’d walked along for several minutes before it struck him that the female hurrying along, several yards ahead of him, bore a marked resemblance to Lady Harriet.

  Was it just wishful thinking? Was he so far gone that he was conjuring up likenesses to her in every stray woman he saw? Or did he actually recognise that bonnet? His heart speeded up. Surely, no two women in London could possibly have the same shade of hair as that single strand which had escaped from the confines of her bonnet and was trailing over her collar? And would any other woman manage to have all the pedestrians walking in the opposite direction move so swiftly out of her path?

  Though she was walking very swiftly, his legs were longer. Nor was he hampered by skirts. Yet, for a few more minutes, he simply relished the sight of her. The way her hips swayed seductively with every step she took. The determined way she was gripping her umbrella in one hand and her reticule in the other, which made a fond smile kick up the corners of his mouth. If he’d been on horseback, at that moment, he would have clapped his heels into its flanks, and yelled ‘View Halloo!’

  Lady Harriet was still in London. And he had a second chance. This time, knowing what it felt like to imagine a life without her in it, he was going to be more careful with her. He was not going to let her slip through his fingers again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The sun came out.

  Or maybe it had already been shining and Jack simply hadn’t noticed it before.

  It took him but a moment to dodge his way through the traffic and reach a point on the pavement past which she’d have to go. And take up a position directly in her path.

  ‘Why, Lady Harriet,’ he said, risking the cut direct. ‘What a pleasure to run across you today.’

  ‘Is it?’ She looked down her nose at him and made as if to step past him. He mirrored her move, blocking her way.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ he said. Had he ever seen anything so lovely as her narrowed, furious eyes? ‘I was convinced you had left Town altogether and that I would never see you again.’

  ‘And that would have been a tragedy, naturally,’ she said in withering tones.

  ‘It would indeed,’ he said, smiting his breast. ‘I do not know how I would have survived the loss.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you would have found some other poor unfortunate female to make the butt of your jokes.’

  He almost flinched. Zeus had been correct. He had ‘pulled her pigtails’ once too often.

  Time to rectify his error.

  ‘I have no interest in any other lady,’ he said with complete sincerity.

  She made a very strange noise, for a lady. Something between a snarl and a mew.

  ‘Kindly step aside,’ she said, in a haughty voice quite unlike her own. ‘I have pressing business to attend to.’

  He stepped aside. But only to fall into step beside her when she set off again.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Escorting you.’

  ‘I have no need of your escort.’

  ‘Tut, tut, Lady Harriet. Have you forgotten already how unwise it is to walk about without protection?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said bitterly. ‘London seems to be full of men who will take advantage of females who are out on their own.’

  ‘Then what are you doing repeating your error? I took you for an intelligent female.’

  ‘It is not a question of intelligence, but necessity. I no longer possess a footman and maid I can spare to traipse round after me when I’m out doing errands.’

  ‘Indeed?’ He looked down at her in concern. ‘Has some misfortune befallen you? May I be of assistance in any way?’

  ‘You?’ She laughed.

  He clenched his jaw on what had felt like a direct hit.

  ‘You may think of me as a fool, but I can assure you, Lady Harriet, I am no such thing—’

  ‘I don’t think you are a fool,’ she interrupted. He would have felt pleased to hear her say that, except that he had a feeling she had something else equally derogatory to say instead.

  ‘You are too full of cunning and trickery to ever be mistaken for a fool.’

  ‘Trickery? Whatever can you mean?’

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that. You told me yourself you are playing some kind of devious game. So why don’t you go back to it rather than following me around?’

  ‘Because I cannot leave you to wander about the streets, without protection. Since you say you have no footman, I can very easily fulfil that function for you today.’

  ‘I cannot believe you wish to do any such thing. You must have better things to do with your time than…follow round after me, just to annoy me.’

  He almost said that he didn’t and that, anyway, annoying her was much more fun than anything else he could be doing. But though it was true, telling her that wasn’t going to produce the result he wanted. So he sighed. Adopted a mournful air.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I have nothing better to do than loiter about the taverns and clubs, drinking my days away. Or gambling my fortune away. Don’t you think it is positively your duty to save me from myself? Because at least if I was affording you some protection, I couldn’t be getting into any mischief, now could I?’

  ‘What utter nonsense! Besides, I have no need of your protection. See?’ She lifted her umbrella and waved it under his nose. ‘If anyone should importune me, I can defend myself.’

  He demonstrated that she was in error, by taking it from her hand in a move so swift that she gasped. Then scowled.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he said, smacking the handle of it against his gloved palm. ‘Yes, you could indeed do someone a nasty injury with this, should they have the effrontery to accost you. And having seen how well able you are to defend yourself, even when armed only with a riding crop, I have no doubt that you would set any number of villains running for their lives. But,’ he said, handing her back the umbrella with an ironic bow, ‘if I am at your side, the villains would not bother you in the first place. So I will be saving you from an embarrassing and possibly unpleasant scene.’

  She made the noise
again and started walking a bit faster.

  ‘May I enquire where you are going?’

  ‘What business is it of yours?’

  ‘None whatsoever. I am just curious. We have already passed Ackermann’s, which is the only place any person of fashion might consider visiting, along here.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said with a good deal of resentment, ‘I am going to…to an employment agency, to hire a big, burly footman and a maid who enjoys going for walks.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ he said soothingly. And then, when she did no more than dart him a look loaded with resentment, saw that it was up to him to keep the conversation going. ‘You mentioned lack of staff. Does that explain why there was nobody to answer the door when I called upon you yesterday?’

  ‘You called upon me?’

  ‘Yes. At least, I accompanied Archie, who was wishing to talk with your mother. I had planned to smile at you across the room as you refused to speak to me, just for the pleasure of baiting you.’

  ‘Now that I can believe.’

  ‘Archie and I were most disappointed to find the knocker removed from the door. We assumed you had gone back to the country.’

  ‘No. We…’ Lady Harriet paused at the corner of Catherine Street, looking distinctly harassed. ‘I believe the, er…employment office is just up here,’ she said. ‘Please, I would rather you did not come any further.’

  ‘If I didn’t know any better, I would think you were intending to visit Bow Street!’ He laughed as he made the suggestion, but Lady Harriet flinched and looked downright guilty. ‘Good, God! You are heading for Bow Street.’ A feeling came over him very similar to the one that had overtaken him when he’d seen her hangdog expression on emerging from her uncle’s study. A rush of concern that was this time so overwhelming that he turned and, forgetting all notions of propriety, took hold of her by both shoulders. ‘Are you in some sort of trouble? Are you sure hiring a Runner is the best course of action? Have you nobody else to advise you? Dammit, what is your mother thinking of, letting you run loose in London on such an errand?’