Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718)
Page 45
‘Please, do take a seat,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, gesturing to a sofa set at a slight angle to the fireplace. He had been standing right next to Jack, Harriet realised, though she hadn’t really noticed him before. As Aunt Susan did as she’d been told, Harriet dropped a brief curtsy to acknowledge her host, then she and Jack gravitated to the sofa opposite her aunt’s and sat down together, still holding hands.
‘You know Mr Kellett,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, indicating Archie, who was sitting on a chair by one of the windows overlooking the rear to the house, his hands clasped in his lap.
Aunt Susan accorded him a regal nod.
‘Then, I shall ring for tea,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, going across to the bell pull by the fireplace.
There then followed a short interlude, during which Lord Rawcliffe kept the conversation at the most banal of levels, whilst they ordered, then waited for the refreshments to arrive. Aunt Susan did her best to look as though it was perfectly normal to pay a morning call upon an unmarried gentleman. But Harriet noticed how uneasy she was from the way she twined the strings of her reticule round her fingers so tightly that when it came time to remove her gloves, she was hard pressed to untangle them.
But at length, the moment that Harriet had been waiting for finally arrived. Just as they were all on their second cup of tea and the cakes had been reduced to crumbs, she heard the sound of the final, and most important guest of all, knock on the front door.
Only seconds later, Lord Rawcliffe’s butler opened the door again, and, as all eyes swung to look at him, he announced, ‘Lord Tarbrook.’
Aunt Susan started and dropped her teaspoon into her saucer with a tinkle. Fortunately, nobody but Harriet noticed this, because at the exact same moment, Lord Tarbrook was saying, ‘Cannot imagine what business you have with me that you consider so urgent, Rawcliffe. Good God. Susan!’
By now, Aunt Susan had composed herself and was able to greet his incredulity at finding her there with the mere raising of one eyebrow, as if to convey she had every right to be there.
‘What the devil is going on here?’ said Lord Tarbrook, darting dagger glances round the room.
‘Would you care for some tea?’ Lord Rawcliffe asked mildly.
‘The devil take your tea. What I want is an explanation.’
‘And you shall have it,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, waving a slender hand to another chair, inviting the latest arrival to sit on it.
Lord Tarbrook drew his brows down and leaned on his cane, as though declaring his refusal to accept the hospitality of a man who had engineered a meeting with his wife in such an underhand manner.
‘As you wish,’ said Lord Rawcliffe as though he perfectly understood. ‘Becconsall, perhaps you would like to conduct the next part of this meeting?’
‘Yes. Absolutely,’ said Jack, getting to his feet. ‘It’s like this, my lord. Harriet, that is, Lady Harriet, my betrothed, has naturally confided in me about the rift that occurred between you over the matter of the missing jewels.’
‘She did what?’ Lord Tarbrook turned his attention to her. And threw her his most repressive glare.
‘And it turns out that there has been a similar case in the family of our mutual friend, Mr Kellett,’ said Jack, drawing Lord Tarbrook’s attention to the figure sitting mute by the window.
‘What?’ Lord Tarbrook looked from one man to the other in confusion.
‘Yes,’ said Archie, finally getting to his feet. ‘When my g-grandmother died, my father found that some of her jewels were not the genuine article. C-couldn’t find any trace of gambling debts. Thought it must have been a private wager. Had them c-copied to raise the blunt. Hushed it up.’
‘What!’
‘Then, when we heard about the same thing happening in your own family, started wondering if…’
‘You heard about… How did you… Harriet!’ Lord Tarbrook whirled on her, his fury pouring off him in waves.
‘Started asking a few qu-questions,’ carried on Archie, ignoring Lord Tarbrook’s outburst. ‘T-turned out she had a maid with her during her last illness who matched the description of one employed by Lady Tarbrook.’
‘What?’ Now it was Lady Tarbrook’s turn to express shock.
‘More to the point, she’d c-come to my g-grandmother’s notice through an old friend of hers. Lady B-Buntingford.’
‘Oh!’ Aunt Susan clapped a hand to her chest. ‘I took on a girl recommended to me by Lady Buntingford. As a favour. But that must have been…well, it was a few years ago.’
‘We believe,’ said Jack, ‘that is when the switch of your rubies must have taken place.’
‘You mean…’ Aunt Susan was heaving for breath.
‘Yes. We believe you have been the victim of a very cleverly orchestrated crime.’
‘Lady Buntingford?’ Aunt Susan was shaking her head. ‘No. I cannot believe it. She would not…’
‘All we know so far,’ said Jack, ‘is that she has been the link between the families who have had jewels switched and the girl who appears to have done the switching. We will need to investigate further to discover—’
‘No!’ Uncle Hugo thumped his cane on the floor. ‘No investigation. I will not have my family’s reputation dragged through the mire.’
‘There will be no need for that,’ said Lord Rawcliffe repressively. ‘Archie will be going to Dorset on a visit to Lady Buntingford, who is his mother’s godmother, to discreetly ask her a few questions. It won’t arouse any suspicion outside our own circle. Nothing more natural for a man in his position to spend part of his holidays visiting such a woman. Particularly not when she happens to live in such a beautiful part of the country.’
‘And what part, pray, do you play in all of this? What makes you think you have the right to become so busy in my family affairs?’
‘I will be pursuing the girl who appears to have done the actual thieving,’ said Lord Rawcliffe. ‘Since I plan to go to the area from which we have reason to believe she hales, in a few days in any case, my own movements should not alert anyone to the fact that there is an investigation taking place.’
‘I don’t like it,’ grumbled Uncle Hugo.
‘That is what the thieves want, though, isn’t it?’ put in Harriet. ‘For everyone to be so determined to cover up the crime that they get away with it. And we can’t let them get away with it. We can’t!’
‘You don’t seriously expect to apprehend the culprits, do you? After all this time? And as for thinking you will ever be able to recover the jewels…’ He shook his head.
‘It isn’t a question of recovering the jewels,’ said Harriet. ‘But of seeing justice done. Of clearing Aunt Susan’s name. Proving her innocent!’
‘Hugo,’ said Aunt Susan. ‘What these gentlemen have just told us…the lengths to which they are prepared to go…well, you know what this means, don’t you?’ She got to her feet.
‘What does it mean?’ he replied testily.
‘It means,’ she said coldly, ‘that you owe me an apology.’
Everyone in the room held their breath, or at least that was how it seemed to Harriet. Everyone except Uncle Hugo, who was glaring down at the head of his cane and heaving in great heavy breaths as though they were all sorely trying his patience. He rapped the cane on the floor once or twice, his face working.
Harriet braced herself for an explosion.
But then he sighed. Raised his head to look at Aunt Susan. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do.’
Aunt Susan, who clearly hadn’t expected him to admit any such thing, especially not so quickly, sat down rather abruptly.
‘I…overreacted, I suppose that is what you all think. But…’ he glared defiantly round the room ‘…I saw it as evidence.’
‘Evidence?’ Aunt Susan was glaring right back at him. ‘Of what?’
He sighed again. And shrugged, in a rather sulky sort of way. ‘Well, you only married me because our parents pushed you into it. And you never gave me any sign that…’ He trailed off, going rather red about the ears.
‘That what?’
‘No matter what I did you never…cared.’ He straightened up, almost defiantly, and focused intently on his wife. ‘You never gave any indication that you returned my feelings.’
‘Your feelings?’
As the middle-aged couple stared at each other, Harriet could see a maelstrom of emotion playing across their faces. And she recalled the list of grievances her aunt had poured forth about Uncle Hugo’s behaviour, over the breakfast table.
And wondered if he’d been doing exactly what Jack had done to her. Acted badly, to try to get her attention.
Well, Uncle Hugo had certainly got Aunt Susan’s attention now. The pair of them were looking at each other as though they’d completely forgotten anyone else was in the room.
Lord Rawcliffe cleared his throat, and, when Harriet looked his way, saw that he was gesturing to the door.
With a smile tugging at her lips, Harriet took Jack’s arm, and followed Lord Rawcliffe and Archie out. Neither her aunt nor her uncle appeared to notice they were leaving, though neither of them had said anything, yet. Not that they needed to. Everything they were thinking was plain for anyone to see.
‘I wonder,’ said Jack, as Lord Rawcliffe shut the door behind them, ‘which of them will be the first to break down and admit they’ve been secretly in love with the other for years.’
‘I think it might well be Uncle Hugo,’ said Harriet. ‘After all, he almost went too far this time, the way he treated my aunt. He has a lot of apologising to do, and I dare say even he will have worked out, by now, that the best way to gain forgiveness is to admit that he loves her. And after that, she will admit that she loves him, too, and then—’
‘Please, no more,’ said Lord Rawcliffe with a shudder. ‘I may never be able to look at that particular sofa with anything but revulsion again. In fact,’ he said, pushing open the door to another room, which looked as though it might be his private study, ‘I may well simply throw it out and get a new one.’
The thought of what he suspected Uncle Hugo and Aunt Susan of being about to get up to on his sofa, that would make him wish to destroy it, seemed to amuse Jack no end.
But Harriet thought it was rather sweet.
‘I hope,’ she whispered up to Jack, while Lord Rawcliffe was busy pouring himself a drink from a decanter that stood on a side table, ‘that we are still as much in love as they are, when we reach their age.’
‘You can count on it,’ Jack replied, giving her waist a squeeze. ‘Though I shan’t be such a nodcock as to leave you ignorant of my own feelings for so many years.’
‘No?’
‘No. I plan to tell you, at least once every day, that you are the light of my life and that I love you more than…’
‘More than what?’
‘More than anything, of course.’
Harriet sighed with pure contentment. At last, she mattered to someone.
More than anything.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781488021671
The Major Meets His Match
Copyright © 2017 by Annie Burrows
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, M3B 3K9 Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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www.Harlequin.com
The courtesan’s courtship
Pursuing a role in Parliament, Christopher Lattimar needs a virtuous marriage to make society overlook his roguish past. When beautiful and disarming Ellie Parmenter offers to reform and refine him, he’s too tempted to say no.
Once a courtesan, Ellie knows a thing or two about polishing a diamond in the rough. She has no designs on Christopher—or any man in search of a wife—but their best-laid plans begin to tumble once lessons in respectability turn to seduction…
Hadley’s Hellions
Four friends united by power, privilege and the daring pursuit of passion!
From being disreputable rogues at Oxford to becoming masters of the political game, Giles Hadley, David Tanner Smith, Christopher Lattimar and Benedict Tawny live by their own set of unconventional rules.
But as the struggle for power heats up, so, too, do the lives of these daring friends. They face unexpected challenges to their long-held beliefs and rigid self-control when they meet four gorgeous, independent women with defiant streaks of their own…
Read Giles Hadley’s story in
Forbidden Nights with the Viscount
Read David Tanner Smith’s story in
Stolen Encounters with the Duchess
Read Benedict Tawny’s story in
Convenient Proposal to the Lady
Available now!
And this is the final book in Hadley’s Hellions, Christopher Lattimar’s story:
Secret Lessons with the Rake
Author Note
It’s difficult for the modern reader to understand how limited the world was for a “gently born” nineteenth-century girl. Her sole occupational choice was marriage, her behavior was held to an exacting standard, and any serious lapse of conduct meant permanent exile from her class and family.
Cast into the demimonde, my heroine must survive in a world for which she’s had no preparation. Ellie Parmenter is particularly grateful for the friendship of a scandalous matron of her own class—and for her son, who treats Ellie like the lady she was born. When the opportunity arises to repay that kindness by teaching Christop
her Lattimer how to court a girl with the wealth and connections to advance his Parliamentary career, she welcomes it—even though success will mean terminating any association with the man who’s become so dear to her.
Christopher realises it’s time to end his wandering ways and take a wife, as all his other friends have. But after an adulthood spent among the demimonde, he knows nothing about how to behave around a proper young virgin. Though he’d rather woo the lovely and now available Ellie, an affair with a famous courtesan might harm his career, and marrying her is impossible.
But love has a way of breaking all the rules…
I hope you’ll enjoy Christopher and Ellie’s story.
Secret Lessons with the Rake
JULIA JUSTISS
Julia Justiss wrote her first ideas for Nancy Drew stories in her third-grade notebook and has been writing ever since. After publishing poetry in college, she turned to novels. Her Regency historicals have won or placed in contests by the Romance Writers of America, RT Book Reviews, National Readers’ Choice and Daphne du Maurier. She lives with her husband in Texas. For news and contests, visit juliajustiss.com.
Books by Julia Justiss
Harlequin Historical
Hadley’s Hellions
Forbidden Nights with the Viscount
Stolen Encounters with the Duchess
Convenient Proposal to the Lady
Secret Lessons with the Rake
The Wellingfords
The Wedding Gamble
The Proper Wife
A Most Unconventional Match
One Candlelit Christmas
“Christmas Wedding Wish”
From Waif to Gentleman’s Wife
Society’s Most Disreputable Gentleman
Ransleigh Rogues
The Rake to Ruin Her