A Wicked Pursuit

by Isabella Bradford

  But none of that changed the fact that she was an abject and absolute coward.

  She groaned and buried her face in her pillow. Why hadn’t she told him about Julia when she’d had the chance? Why had she let him be so—so forward with her? Holding his hand while he’d been suffering was one thing, but what he’d done last night was entirely, entirely another. And what he’d said as he’d toyed with her hand, all those pretty, meaningless words that no man had ever said to her before, words that she’d had no business listening to.

  He was the Earl of Hargreave. He was going to marry her sister. He was going to be her brother-in-law.

  Or much worse, he wasn’t.

  When she told him that Julia had fled, it was going to come out all wrong. How could it not? He’d know that she’d known, and hadn’t told him, but because she hadn’t pulled her hand away when she should have, he’d think she was encouraging him because Julia wasn’t. Which she wasn’t, but he couldn’t know that, and neither of them knew what Julia would know if she were here. The more she tried to figure it out, the more muddled she became, and the worse she felt about how she’d behaved.

  She shouldn’t have left the way she had. She did run away, which was why she was such a coward. Talking to him had been easy because he was bed-bound, and by leaving she could control when to end a conversation. There’d been a cowardly comfort in that, too, especially as he’d begun to recover and had become less of a patient and more of a man.

  Which would be bad enough if he’d been an ordinary man. But there was nothing ordinary about Harry. He was instead the most sinfully handsome man she’d ever seen. She thought of him sitting in the middle of the bed with his dark hair tousled and the throat of his nightshirt falling open and his sleeves pushed up over his forearms, his slow smile with the dimples—dimples, on a man who was otherwise so hard and lean—lighting his extraordinarily blue eyes as he watched her move around the room and—

  No, she must not think of him, not like that. She mustn’t think of him at all, and she thumped her fist into the pillow with the sheer misery of her life at present.

  It was at some point in this early-morning despair that Gus first heard the dogs.

  Dogs, barking furiously, and in the house. Her father’s house, where dogs were not permitted. Because dogs had made her older brother sneeze and weep when he’d been a boy, Mama had banished them from the house, and from habit her father had maintained the banishment even after Andrew outgrew his difficulties.

  Thus there was no reason for dogs to be inside the house, and especially not at this hour. The first light of dawn was filtering through the house, so at least she wouldn’t need a candlestick. She slid from her bed, swiftly tied her robe over her night shift, and hurried out into the hall and down the stairs, following the sound of the barking dogs.

  She didn’t have far to look. For the second day in a row, there were unexpected strangers causing a commotion in her front hall by the wavering light of the night-lantern. A very sleepy-looking Mr. Royce and a footman without stockings and his shirt still untucked from his breeches were standing before two travelers. The first man was obviously some form of gentleman, dressed in sober clothes and with a large leather portfolio beneath his arm. The second, shorter man accompanying him was definitely not a gentleman, but a groom or other stable servant, in a heavy woolen jacket, a neat cap, and boots.

  But more noteworthy than this man’s dress was the pair of large spotted dogs that he held on leashes—or rather, the dogs appeared to be holding him, straining against their collars as they leaned eagerly toward the butler and the footman. The dogs weren’t menacing, not with their feathered tails whipping furiously in unison, but they were noisy, and cheerfully determined to raise the rest of the house with their barking. Mr. Royce and the first man were both attempting to speak over the dogs, with the result that they were shouting against each other, and no one was hearing anything.

  Gus flipped her long braid back over her shoulder and marched into the fray. The two men stopped speaking as soon as they saw her, but the dogs were not so easily intimidated.

  “Hush,” she said sharply, scowling down at them. “Hush, if you please.”

  To the surprise of the four men, the dogs immediately stopped barking, contritely sitting and hanging their heads with remorseful guilt.

  “Hah, ma’am, I’ve never seen that before,” marveled their handler. “Mostly they only obey his lordship.”

  “‘His lordship’?” Gus repeated. She should have known. Really, she should have. “Tell me, please. Are these Lord Hargreave’s dogs?”

  The other man stepped forward and raised his hat.

  “Good day, ma’am, and pray forgive our intrusion at this unseemly hour,” he said. “I believe I can explain. I am Mr. Arnold, ma’am, agent to the Earl of Hargreave, and I have come at his request.”

  The butler could bear this informality no longer; even if Gus was standing barefoot in her night shift, proper introductions should be made.

  “Miss Augusta, Mr. Arnold,” he intoned, as if Arnold had not just introduced himself. “Mr. Arnold, Miss Augusta Wetherby, the lady of this house. Mr. Arnold is his lordship’s agent.”

  “Good day, Mr. Arnold,” Gus said. “Though it is just barely day. Is it his lordship’s usual practice to summon his people in the middle of the night?”

  Arnold bowed, clearly embarrassed. “Forgive me, Miss Augusta. We would have arrived last evening at a more reasonable hour, if not for a broken axle on our conveyance. But yes, his lordship did express some urgency. His affairs have been unaddressed since his accident, and I have numerous papers that require his immediate attention.”

  “I can imagine,” Gus said drily. She was sure Harry did in fact have business matters that needed his attention; a gentleman of his wealth and property would. But it would have been generous of him to have warned her that he’d invited yet more visitors to the abbey, visitors that she would be expected to house and feed.

  And the dogs. She looked pointedly at them again, so pointedly that one of them whimpered and lay down. It was not that she didn’t like dogs, because she did. What she didn’t like was having them appear unbidden in the front hall before dawn, and against her father’s wishes, too.

  She sighed. “Did his lordship request the dogs as well?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Augusta,” said Arnold hastily. “It was entirely his lordship’s idea that his two favorite dogs be brought here, to help lighten his spirits. This is Hollick, from his lordship’s household in town, who will be keeping the dogs. The dogs are Patch and Potch.”

  Hollick made a kind of ducking bow, as much as he dared while holding on to the leashes.

  Gus sighed again, this time with resignation as she considered how she’d explain to Mrs. Buchanan that she’d have two more men to feed.

  “I’m sure you’d both like breakfast after your journey,” she said. “It will be some time before his lordship is awake and ready to receive visitors. Royce, please show Mr. Arnold to the green parlor. John, show Hollick and the dogs to the servants’ hall for now. They’ll have to stay in the stables, of course.”

  Hollick looked stricken. “The stables, miss? His lordship won’t like that, miss. His lordship’ll want his pups with him, same as home.”

  “I’m sorry, Hollick,” Gus said, “but in this house, dogs live in the stable, not—”

  “Mr. Arnold, good day!” Just as he had yesterday, Tewkes appeared at the top of the stairs, making a dramatic entrance like a character in a play.

  But today it wasn’t the newly arrived men who charged up the stairs to him. It was the dogs. Patch and Potch immediately recognized him—or at least recognized him as a sign their master was near—and lunged forward, pulling their leashes free from Hollick’s hand. Barking with excitement, they raced up the stairs with their leashes trailing behind them, lingering only a moment before they disappeared down the hallway with Tewkes in pursuit.

  “No!” Gus wailed, gathering her s
kirts to run up the stairs, too. As unhappy as she was with the dogs breaking her father’s orders, what concerned her much more now was the thought of them leaping up onto their master’s bed in a frantically joyous reunion. Although Dr. Leslie had kept Harry’s broken leg tightly bound in the splints and resting on the leather sling inside the break-box, he’d also warned that any sudden movement could dislodge the healing bones, in effect breaking them all over again. Patch and Potch practically defined sudden movement, combined with sizable weight, too.

  It would, in short, be disastrous.

  Likely Tewkes had the same fear, for Gus could see him ahead of her at the far end of the hall, moving faster than she’d ever thought possible, toward Harry’s bedchamber.

  But when she reached the doorway, there was no sign of the boisterous mayhem she’d dreaded finding. Instead the two dogs were sitting quietly with their front paws on the edge of the bed, their eyes blissfully closed as Harry stroked their heads and rubbed their silky ears. If the dogs looked happy, then Harry looked ecstatic, softly crooning nonsense to them.

  He glanced up when Gus appeared. “Have you met my boys?”

  “I thought they’d jump on the bed,” she said. “I thought they’d hurt your leg.”

  “What, my fine boys?” he said. “They’d never hurt anyone, especially not me. They’re the best-mannered pups in Christendom. Isn’t that right, my pretty fellows? Isn’t that right?”

  What was right was the sight of Harry with his two dogs. She’d never expected to see him display this kind of tender affection, and it made her smile happily, too, even as she realized it spelled the end of Papa’s no-dogs policy.

  “Papa says dogs belong in the stable, not in the house,” she said halfheartedly to appease her conscience. “They shouldn’t stay here.”

  “Then send your father to me if he objects,” he said. “I’ll show him what perfect gentlemen my boys are.”

  Almost too late, Gus remembered that Harry still didn’t know Papa was in London with Julia.

  “I suppose he’ll make an exception,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair, considering how you couldn’t go down to the stables to visit them.”

  But Harry wasn’t listening. “Why, Gus,” he said, his smile turning rakish. “How agreeable of you to come visit me in your nightclothes.”

  The way he was looking at her, his gaze sliding all over everything below her chin, made her feel as if she were standing there naked. What was worse was that she realized she didn’t dislike his scrutiny. In fact, to her dismay, her heart was quickening and she was breathing a little faster from it, the same as she had last night when he’d run his fingers along her wrist. Self-consciously she tugged the sash of her robe more tightly around her.

  “I had no choice,” she said. “Your dogs roused me from my bed with their barking.”

  His smile widened to a sly grin. “I told you they were perfect gentlemen.”

  “You needn’t look at me like that,” she said, her cheeks warming. “I’m thoroughly covered and decent.”

  “You’re dressed for bed,” he said. “Exactly as I am.”

  He didn’t have to remind her. When he leaned forward to pet the dogs, the neck of his nightshirt had fallen more widely open, offering her an unexpectedly heady glimpse of his bare chest and the curling dark hair upon it.

  “There’s nothing wrong with how I’m dressed,” she insisted. “For the hour and the circumstances, it’s entirely appropriate and modest.”

  “Your feet are bare,” he said, lowering his voice to a rough whisper. “And you’re not wearing stays. I can see that your waist is still small without them, and your—”

  “Harry, please,” she said, turning flustered and stern at the same time. “That is quite enough.”

  “Hah, I heard that, Gus,” he said, shaking his finger at her. “You can’t deny it. You called me Harry.”

  She raised her chin in defiance, or more accurately defense. “You called me Gus first.”

  “I will not deny it,” he said cheerfully. “Ah, more company. Good morning, Arnold! How very glad I am to see you. I trust you have brought me newspapers from London as well as all those letters I must read and accounts I must sign. I’m famished for news. Come, will you join me for breakfast before we set down to work? Gus, might I beg you to arrange that?”

  “You may,” Gus said, relieved to have something more to do than be stared at. “I’ll go speak with Mrs. Buchanan now. But mind you, I am not running away. I am leaving because you asked me to.”

  “Agreed,” he said, and smiled. “My next request is that you do not stay away.”

  Purposefully she didn’t reply. “Do the dogs wish breakfast, too?”

  “Of course,” he said, clearly surprised she’d even ask. “It is not complicated. A mixture of minced beef hearts and livers, egg yolks, and a bit of bran. Hollick can tell your cook what’s required.”

  She nodded, promising nothing, and left the men and the dogs. She could imagine all too well what Mrs. Buchanan was going to say when told she was now to be catering to his lordship’s dogs, especially at the direction of Hollick. Gus personally oversaw all the bills from the butcher and other purveyors, and she knew for a certainty that there were no beef hearts in the larder at present, nor had there ever been, not in her memory.

  She stopped in her rooms long enough to find a pair of mules for her bare feet and a shawl to wrap over her robe—if Harry claimed he could see so much of her person, then the last thing she wished was to reveal the same to her staff, or at least the rest of the staff that hadn’t seen her yet today. Then she hurried down the twisting back stairs to the kitchen.

  Yet as she did, she’d far more on her mind than the minced beef hearts for Patch and Potch. She was much more concerned with their master, and the news from London that he was so “famished” for. She had no idea of how much of the news that Mr. Arnold, as his agent, would share with him would be strictly of a business variety, of how his various properties and investments were faring, and how much might include the town’s latest gossip.

  She hoped against hope that all Mr. Arnold would confide were rents and improvements. Because if he included news of parties, balls, and sundry doings at court, then he was sure to mention the curious fact that Miss Wetherby was there, and not here.

  It wasn’t only that Harry would learn the truth about Julia’s faithlessness. He’d send Gus’s entire house of cards of well-intentioned half-truths and deceits tumbling down. He wouldn’t be able to trust her again, and likely that would be the end of the teasing banter, the charming compliments that she’d never heard from any other man, the rakish smiles that made her heart beat a little faster, the delicious amusement of being Gus and Harry. They’d return to being Miss Augusta and Lord Hargreave, and then in four or so weeks, when at last his leg was healed enough for travel, he would be gone forever, both from the abbey and from her life.

  Oh, why, why hadn’t she told him the truth when she’d had the chance?

  Harry lay in bed, as comfortable as he could be. Though he hated to admit it, he was tired, exactly as the surgeons kept telling him he should be. It was still some time until supper, and though through the windows he could see the sun was slipping lower in the sky, the day was not done, more afternoon than evening. Yet Arnold was finally on his way back to London with all the necessary decisions and signatures tucked in that voluminous leather bag, and Harry welcomed the peace of once again having his bedchamber empty of guests. On the carpet beside his bed Patch and Potch lay curled together, snoring with voluptuous canine abandon, and Harry suspected he’d soon be snoring along with them.

  To help ease himself into that nap, he had in his hands one of the magazines that Arnold had brought from London. Titled The London Observer, this one was new to him, and he could already tell that it would be juicy with scandal, the leering antithesis of the dry old Gentleman’s Magazine that Gus had so gamely tried to read to him.

  He smiled, thinking how even the f
rontispiece would make her blush: a drawing of a bare-breasted goddess in a helmet, a goatish satyr lurking to one side, and several other clumsily drawn figures in ancient garb that looked more like bedsheets. Even he needed the caption to make sense of the picture: “A beautiful Frontispiece, representing Minerva, the Patroness of Learning, inspiring the Genius of This Magazine; while, in the Back-Ground, a Satyr exposes the Genius of Illicit Love.”

  He snorted with amusement at that, and idly wondered if Gus was worldly enough to know about satyrs, whose main occupation was ravishing nymphs. How would he explain that to her, he thought sleepily, flipping through the pages. The rest of the magazine was much as he expected, filled with bad poetry, inane observations, and articles with enticing titles such as “The Man of Pleasure” and “A Portrait of a Buck.” Yawning, he finally settled on “Notes of the Town,” wondering how many of his friends and acquaintances he could recognize in the scandalous exploits, their names reduced to decorous initials to protect the Genius of this Magazine from libel.

  The words were swimming before him and his eyes nearly closed when, abruptly, a short passage jumped out from the others.

  All regret the absence of Lord H—g—e from the Recent Divertissements; His Lordship is said to be recovering well from Wounds suffered in the Hunting-Field, & we wish Every Speed to his Return. Miss W—y, who was widely believed to be in Possession of His Lordship’s Heart, has lately showed this to be an Exaggeration, & that no Hymeneal Union is imminent, by being seen much this last fortnight in the Exclusive Company of Lord S—l—d. Ah, Cupid! How sweet are his darts to the bosom of a Willing Beauty!

  What in blazes was this? He’d begun by being mildly irritated to see his name included and his accident blamed on a hunting accident. But then he’d come to the part about Julia, and how she’d not only severed ties with him but was in London, and had taken up with that idiot Lord Southland. Lies, it had to be lies, all of it no more than another invention of this damnable rag.