Actually, there was no plausible excuse for her to be sitting with him here, either, without any chaperon at all. If anyone she knew were to walk in and see her leaning over the table to hold a conversation with a man to whom she was not related, in heated whispers, they’d be bound to draw the worst conclusion.
She sat back, blushing. Lord Becconsall barely seemed to notice. He was frowning off into the distance, as though his mind was already fully occupied with the conundrum she’d set him, rather than proprieties.
‘There’s nothing for it,’ he said after a moment or two, during which Harriet’s levels of guilt grew to such a pitch that she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder just in case one of the other customers might be someone she knew. ‘We’ll have to call in reinforcements.’
‘What?’
‘Get someone else to go to Dorset, while I’m prowling round Thetford Forest.’
‘But you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone!’
‘I did. And I won’t tell anyone without your permission. But you have to face facts, Lady Harriet. If you’d gone to Bow Street, you would have had to tell your tale to a lot of people. The mission might have been shared between many operatives, none of whom you would have known. Whereas if I enlist a couple of my friends, you may be sure they would handle your predicament with the utmost tact and discretion.’
‘Your friends?’ A solid lump of ice formed in her stomach as she saw what he intended. ‘You mean, I take it, the ones I met in the park that morning?’
‘That’s it, you see—’
‘The ones who have already made me the subject of a wager?’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. Ah, indeed! If you think I am going to have them…interfering in my family business, after they’ve already made a…game of me…then I…’ She got to her feet. Snatched up her gloves. Then her umbrella. ‘This was a mistake. I should never have confided in you.’ The moment she’d started to trust him, to believe he meant what he’d said, he’d shown his true colours. He saw nothing wrong with breaking a promise if it was expedient to do so. He saw nothing wrong with sharing what she’d told him, in the strictest confidence, with a group of men he must know were the very last people in the world she wished to know anything about her business at all.
‘Lady Harriet—’
‘Good day to you,’ she said, turning on her heel and marching out of the shop.
Leaving him to pick up the bill.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She hated him. Eight hours it had been since she’d stormed out of the coffee house and stalked home, alone, and during that time her initial hurt and mistrust had steadily grown to the point where it felt as if it was going to burst from her very fingertips in sheets of flame.
She wasn’t quite sure how she managed to lay down her knife and fork so neatly across her plate when she’d finished eating dinner, rather than fling the plate across the room just for the pleasure of hearing breaking crockery, or stabbing the fork into the table so hard it stood upright, quivering.
‘You are quite sure you do not wish to come with me, Harriet?’
Harriet met her mother’s enquiry with a cold stare. There was nothing Mama wished for less than for her to suddenly change her mind and say that, yes, actually, she would love to come to the meeting at wherever it was to discuss whatever it was that had Mama so full of anticipation that she could hardly wait to get out the door. The very last thing Mama wanted was an unmarried daughter trailing round behind her, or worse, sitting in a secluded corner where she’d be at the mercy of every importunate rake—if indeed rakes attended meetings where scientists gathered to discuss the latest findings. Mama was just not cut out to take on the onerous duties of chaperon.
She patted her mouth with her napkin before putting Mama out of her misery by saying, ‘No, thank you, Mama.’
True to form, Mama smiled at her in undisguised relief as she got to her feet and scurried across the room, leaving Harriet to thank Mrs Smethurst for providing the meal when the elderly woman eventually shuffled in to clear the table.
Mrs Smethurst grunted something that Harriet didn’t quite catch above the noise of cutlery scraping and dishes rattling, but it didn’t sound any more cheerful than Harriet felt.
She drifted out of the room, across the hall and into the drawing room, though why on earth she’d done so she couldn’t imagine. The furniture was still shrouded in holland covers, and the grate stood empty. As empty as she’d felt when, contrary to all his protestations, Lord Becconsall had not pursued her from the coffee house. Not that she’d wanted him to. It was just that, if he’d been sincere, he would surely have attempted to explain. Or apologise. But, no. He hadn’t. Which meant he didn’t care about her. Not really.
He cared about his friends, though. So much that he’d attempted to conceal his interest in her from them by making it all out to be some kind of joke.
She rubbed her arms vigorously. If only she’d actually gone to an employment bureau this morning, while she’d been out, she might at least have been able to hire someone to light a few fires about the place. Though how hard could it be? The scullery maid who’d performed that office at Stone Court had been very young. As had the girl who’d come in to her room first thing at Tarbrook House. And right at the bottom of the hierarchy. If lighting a fire was such a menial task, she ought to be able to learn how to do it.
She went to the grate, gave the pile of dusty kindling and the empty coal scuttle a brief inspection, before deciding to go up to her room instead. There had been a fire in there earlier on, so that it wouldn’t be so damp and smell so musty as it did down here. It wasn’t as if she was expecting to receive visitors at this time of night. She could plan out her next move just as well at her dressing table, or curled up on her bed.
As she made her way up the stairs, she gave herself a stern talking-to. Running into Lord Becconsall earlier might have ended up being an infuriating and humiliating experience, but talking things through with him had given her a few ideas. To start with, if he could go to Thetford and make enquiries, then why shouldn’t she? She could saddle her horse and…
Actually, no, she couldn’t. Shadow was still stabled in the mews behind Tarbrook House. Uncle Hugo had drawn the line at condemning an innocent horse to potential neglect when he’d washed his hands of his female relatives. And she couldn’t see him, or his head groom, releasing her mare to her without first making sure the animal was going to be properly cared for.
Besides, a girl couldn’t turn up in a remote village, on horseback, without attendants, and expect locals to answer her questions in a helpful, or even respectful, manner. They’d think she was not a respectable person.
She strode to her bed and picked up the shawl she’d left lying there. Bother the rules that restricted the movements of females! Even a married woman couldn’t get away with jumping on a horse and taking off like that, without raising eyebrows.
She wrapped the shawl round her shoulders and went to sit at her dressing table. Very well, it wouldn’t be feasible to go to Thetford. But there was nothing to prevent her going to pay a visit to an elderly, female recluse, was there? She just had to come up with some pretext for the visit. To that end, she was going to have to—
At that point, her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on her bedroom door. Puzzled, she went to open it to see Mr Smethurst standing there, looking most put out.
‘You have visitors, my lady,’ he said accusingly.
‘Visitors? I didn’t hear anyone knock on the front door.’
‘They didn’t. Come round the back, they did,’ he said indignantly, ‘and was inside before I could rightly stop ’em.’
Once again Harriet felt guilty for not seeing to the hiring of extra staff to help the elderly couple who had been living here as caretakers. Especially as Mama had warned
her, on the way here, that it was going to be her responsibility to see to the running of the house.
‘Now, I am not going to berate you for falling foul of Hugo,’ she’d said. ‘For what woman of spirit could fail to irritate a man with his tyrannical disposition? But you must see that though I support your stand against him, you cannot expect me to suddenly become domesticated. I had no intention of opening up Stone House when I came to London. And getting us thrown out of my sister’s house is most inconvenient. You do see?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ she’d said meekly. And had vowed to see to everything. But first she’d spent those hours poring over maps to find out where Bogholt was and then had decided to visit Bow Street before the employment bureau. And finally, she’d been ambushed by Lord Becconsall. Which had left her so angry that she’d been in no fit state to do anything of a practical nature for the rest of the day.
With the result that she had no trained butler to deal with unexpected visitors, nor a burly footman to evict the kind that barged right in.
‘Never mind, Smethurst,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you did your best.’ Poor Mr Smethurst was only supposed to have the light duties of forwarding the mail and reporting to her father should the roof develop a leak, or something of that nature.
His expression became less troubled. ‘Put ’em in the drawing room,’ he said with a hint of malice. ‘Told ’em it would be warmer in the kitchen, but they insisted they wanted somewhere more fitting.’
‘You did quite right,’ she said, thinking of the empty grate and the holland covers and the general air of disuse. They were not in a fit state to receive callers and if people insisted on coming in then it served them right.
‘Who are they?’
Mr Smethurst looked blank.
‘Didn’t give no names.’
‘Did they not give you their cards, either?’
He shook his head.
‘Well, I’d better go and see what they want, I suppose. And…and you don’t know who they are?’
He shook his head again.
She couldn’t imagine what type of person would call at this hour of the night, unless it was someone looking for Mama. Oh, dear. She hadn’t been paying very much attention earlier. Had she gone to the Institute of Enquiry into the Natural Sciences, or the Scientific Society of the…something else? The trouble with Mama’s societies was that they all had names that used virtually the same words but in different orders. She was going to have to beg everyone’s pardon and confess that she had no real idea where Mama was this evening, and invite them to return on another day. By which time she would have made the drawing room a bit more habitable. She descended the stairs with the sense of dread that always went before a potentially humiliating encounter, squared her shoulders as she crossed the hall and opened the door of the drawing room with her chin up.
Only to halt on the threshold in astonishment. For the callers who’d broken with convention by ignoring the lack of the knocker, going round to the back of the house and pushing past poor defenceless Mr Smethurst were none other than Lord Becconsall, Lord Rawcliffe, Captain Bretherton and Mr Kellett.
She might have known it. They were just the sort of men to dispense with decent manners and do exactly as they pleased.
‘Very well, Mr Smethurst,’ she said to the faithful man, who was still hovering nervously behind her. ‘I can deal with this.’ Looking relieved, Mr Smethurst turned away and ambled off in the direction of his nice warm kitchen.
Harriet stepped into the drawing room and shut the door behind her.
‘You really ought not to be here at all, the four of you, not at this time of the evening,’ she said.
‘Yes, we know the proper time for paying calls is far earlier in the day,’ said Lord Becconsall, ‘but this is not exactly a social call, is it?’
And they were here now. And she couldn’t very well throw them all out.
Besides, part of her was intrigued by the fact that they’d all come. That Lord Becconsall had obliged them all to come. Even though she’d told him she didn’t want them involved. And had walked away from him.
She’d been angry with him all day for not being persistent, but it looked as though his notion of persistency merely differed from hers. Which shouldn’t have surprised her, given the complicated way his mind seemed to work.
‘Very well,’ she said. Because there was just the chance that he’d come here to plead for forgiveness. And more to the point, she’d have no peace if she turned him away without a hearing. ‘Say what you have to say,’ she said and folded her arms across her chest.
‘Could we not sit somewhere where there is a fire? It is like an icehouse in here.’
He glanced at Atlas, then back at her, with a pleading expression.
‘It is entirely your own fault. You would insist on coming in here.’
‘Then it is clearly up to us to make the place more habitable,’ said Lord Becconsall, going over to the fireplace, kneeling down, pulling a tinder box from a pocket and setting about lighting the fire.
‘May I?’ Captain Bretherton didn’t await her reply before yanking the covers off a couple of chairs, rolling them up and tossing them into a corner.
Lord Rawcliffe prodded the upholstery of one of the uncovered chairs with the silver ferrule of his cane.
‘Lord Becconsall informs us that we owe you an apology,’ he said, turning to the other chair that Captain Bretherton had uncovered and giving it similar treatment. ‘Over the matter of the wager.’
‘Oh.’ So that was why he’d brought them here.
‘Yes. He is very angry with us. We have all, naturally, sworn that none of us have spoken out of turn, but he has remained adamant that we must all tender our apologies.’ He shot Lord Becconsall’s back a look of resentment.
‘I don’t see it is the slightest bit necessary for all of you to come here,’ she said, becoming aware, suddenly, that there was a good deal of tension flickering between all four men.
‘No, Ulysses is right,’ said Captain Bretherton, his face creasing in concern. ‘If you feel we have insulted you, then we do owe you an apology.’
‘If?’ She took a couple of paces into the room. ‘You jolly well did insult me. Mocked me. I overheard you laughing about me. At Miss Roke—I think it was—her ball.’
‘There, you see, Becconsall?’ Lord Rawcliffe turned to where he was crouched on the hearthrug, blowing on to the wisps of kindling he’d managed so far to coax into sputtering out smoke. ‘It was not one of us who spoke out of turn.’
‘I never said it was,’ said Lord Becconsall, between puffs. ‘Can’t you see, that’s not the point,’ he said, getting to his feet and wiping his hands on his coat tails.
‘Then, what is the p-point?’ asked Archie, looking totally bewildered.
‘The point is,’ said Lord Becconsall, approaching her with his hands held out as though in supplication, ‘I need you to trust them all, Lady Harriet. You need help and I have no truer, finer friends than these three men.’
‘Is that some kind of joke?’ She took a step back. How dare he bring them here and practically demand she spill confidential family information to them, when he’d just confirmed the fact that they’d made a joke of the last predicament they’d found her in?
‘The very last people I would trust with confidential family information is a bunch of men who make sport of defenceless females…’
‘Hardly defenceless,’ put in Lord Rawcliffe. ‘I seem to recall you gave a very good account of yourself with that riding crop.’
‘Nevertheless, you none of you behaved like gentlemen.’
‘I helped you remount your horse,’ Captain Bretherton objected.
‘And then you made me the topic of a wager!’
‘You know,’ Lord Rawcliffe drawled, ‘I believe Ulysses only did so
as a pretext for tracking you down. He has been smitten from the very first.’
‘Smitten? Hah!’ Harriet tossed her head. Though even as she did so, she wondered if the gesture might be lacking in conviction. Because Lord Becconsall had already told her the very same thing, in the coffee house. ‘A man who is smitten,’ she continued, putting every ounce of indignation into her voice that she could muster, ‘does not…hold the threat of exposure over a lady’s head. And torment her with her less than exemplary conduct every time he meets her.’
‘He does if he is behaving with the finesse of a boy of the age of twelve, who thinks the best way to attract the attention of a girl he likes is to pull her pigtails,’ said Lord Becconsall, ruefully.
Was that what he’d been doing? Oh. Come to think of it, even when she’d warned him she would not admit him to her house, nor dance with him, he hadn’t given up that teasing. On the contrary, he’d shown every indication of stepping up his campaign to annoy her.
There was a beat of silence while everyone stared at him. In varying degrees of shock. Well, everyone except Lord Rawcliffe, who wore his usual knowing, and faintly mocking expression.
‘While you are setting the record straight, Ulysses,’ said Lord Rawcliffe in a sarcastic drawl, ‘why don’t you explain the nature of the wager? She may well feel differently about the whole episode if she hears what the stakes were.’
‘The stakes?’ Lord Becconsall frowned. ‘What difference will that make? It was not the stakes, but the fact that we were, apparently, bandying her name about as though we had no respect for her that she objected to.’
Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718) Page 41
