Always the Best Friend (Never the Bride Book 4)

by Emily E K Murdoch

  Monty blinked, trying to focus on his cards and not his friend’s words. Yes, Harry was beautiful. How could he have spent so much time with her and not realized just how beautiful she was?

  “I have always said Lady Harriet will make some gentleman happy,” said Braedon slowly, raising the stakes by half a crown. “Whoever he is, I mean.”

  “But that is it, do not you see? No man ever calls on her, and she does not seem to have interest in any gentleman.” Orrinshire shrugged as he puffed on his cigar. “She is a most singular young lady.”

  Monty swallowed. He did not like the turn of the conversation, but he could either pay attention to turning it elsewhere or win this hand—and with a straight flush, it would be a pity to waste it.

  “She is just like any other young lady,” he said quietly, disbelieving every word he said. “Braedon was right, the town is full of them.”

  Hearing his name mentioned jerked Braedon out of his reverie. “Are you going to see my half a crown, or not?”

  Monty sighed and threw down the coin. “Now, show me your cards.”

  Braedon smiled and revealed a straight. “Straight to the heart, I am afraid, old thing.”

  Monty sighed. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

  Braedon and Orrinshire stared in wonder at the straight flush.

  Orrinshire was the first to break the silence with a loud guffaw, blowing cigar smoke across the table. “How do you do it, Devonshire?”

  “Another wonderful piece of luck,” said Braedon with a sigh. “Are you sure you do not have a spare pack up one of those sleeves, Devonshire? I could hardly believe it of you, but I am honor-bound to ask.”

  “Spare pack of cards? You shock me for even thinking of such a thing,” said Monty with a smile at the dwindled pile of coins. “Sorry, completely innocent.”

  As though to make a point of how innocent he was, he pulled off his coat and threw it onto the floor. The sleeve caught the side of the table, and a few coins rolled off.

  “It is strange, though,” mused Orrinshire.

  “What?” Braedon barked, his temper fraying.

  “Well, Harry. Harriet Stanhope.”

  Monty’s stomach tightened. Just when he thought they had safely left that topic of conversation, here they were again.

  “A beautiful woman, I think we had all agreed,” said Braedon, scooping up the cards and passing them over to Monty, who was next dealer. “I do not see what is so strange about her. A well-bred, elegant woman.”

  “Yes, but that is it, do you not see? Why is such a well-bred, elegant woman still single?” Orrinshire blew out what was obviously supposed to be a smoke ring, but it failed miserably. “Why is a woman like that not married?”

  “She has no need to marry,” Monty said sharply. “She has wealth, family, and influence, the three things most women crave and need to marry to obtain. She was born with them, and she would relinquish two and be distanced from the third by any alliance.”

  How was it possible for his words to be so calm when he felt like tearing off their limbs for even speaking of her?

  “When I think about it,” said Orrinshire slowly, “the only gentleman she has ever shown any interest in…is you.”

  Monty’s gaze dropped immediately to the cards in his hands, and he began to shuffle them fiercely.

  Braedon nodded, helping himself to a glass of port. “I think you are right.”

  “Nonsense,” Monty blanched, trying to focus on nothing but the cards. “You do not know what you are talking about—and you are in drink.”

  “In it, but not drowning, old thing,” smiled Braedon serenely. “And do not think us fools, we know she has been your friend for years. Your best friend, though few gentlemen would understand that.”

  Monty dealt the cards. “Yes, but that is no reason to suppose…”

  His voice trailed away. What was it they were supposing? It felt wrong, whatever it was. And right.

  Hearing Harry’s name alone on their lips was an affront, and he did not know why. Heat was seeping into his blood as though he was preparing for a fight, but he had not been insulted. It was the most primeval feeling he had ever experienced.

  When he looked up from placing the deck back on the table, Orrinshire was staring with a shrewd look on his face. When he spoke, however, it was on an entirely different subject.

  “How goes the bride hunt?”

  “What?” Monty asked blankly. “Oh, yes. Badly.”

  Braedon snorted as he picked up his cards. “I would not be in your shoes for all the gold in the world.”

  “Really?” Orrinshire raised an eyebrow. “I thought you quite the lover of women, Braedon.”

  “And I am—but it has to be natural,” said Braedon in perhaps his most serious speech that evening. “If you ask me, ’tis better to wait until you meet someone naturally. Someone you can actually care about and be interested in for more than five minutes together. So many of these young chits don’t have twenty minutes of conversation.”

  He placed down a crown and leaned back in his chair to see if his two companions would see his bet.

  “Enforced matrimony is a devil’s business,” said Orrinshire quietly.

  Monty’s stomach wrenched, but he said nothing. It was none of his business, and although he and Orrinshire were good friends, they were not nearly close enough for him to ask about that statement.

  Perhaps he was not the only one at this table with an impending marriage hanging over their heads like a guillotine ready to fall.

  “I always think,” said Braedon, utterly oblivious to his two companions, “you should wait until you encounter someone without whom you cannot live. Then marry her. Are you two going to see my crown?”

  Monty shoved a crown over the table, barely able to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  That was exactly what had happened with Harry.

  Had not the last few weeks been torture? Knowing she was in Chalding, hiding from him, hating him perhaps? It had been thanks to his rigid self-control he had not stormed in there and made her talk to him.

  He had spent the last few weeks in isolation, not wanting to see anyone else, forced by his dratted brother to venture outdoors occasionally—but his mind had been fixed on Harry. What was she doing? What was she thinking?

  “Did you hear about Marnmouth?” Braedon was saying, their matrimony conversation forgotten.

  Orrinshire pushed over his crown and frowned. “No, what happened?”

  Their conversation continued as Monty sat in a stupor, his mind racing, trying to take in what his heart was saying to him.

  He loved Harry.

  Yes, he had loved her in one form or another for years, but it was different now. Deeper. Purer and wilder than he could have imagined.

  How had he not noticed this—how had it crept up on him so gradually?

  All those things he had said a wife had to be. Comfortable with horses, interested in the land, witty, beautiful… Harry was all those things.

  She was literally his perfect woman, and that figure…

  Monty shivered. She had blossomed into the perfect woman, and he had not noticed for years. She had been there, always by his side. Making him laugh, comforting him, and being the perfect foil.

  He could not get her out of his head, nor the kiss they had shared but a day ago. It had been on the tip of his tongue to offer her marriage. Why not a marriage of convenience between two old friends? She would understand, she knew the fix he was in with this damned will. She would not lose any rank or freedom, and he would be free to run his duchy as he saw fit.

  But his body had wanted more, and he had kissed her, and she had kissed him. Perhaps she was what he needed. Perhaps he could give her exactly what she wanted.

  He had not said anything, and the moment had disappeared. Would she understand?

  “And that is a flush, gentleman!” Braedon crowed, knocking Monty out of his reverie. “Thank God, or I would have had to leave the table after this
hand. Look lively, Devonshire! It looks like your luck has changed!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Harry? Harry, are you quite well?”

  Harry jumped, banging her leg against the side of the carriage and paying for her inattention with a sharp pain in her knee.

  “I—what?”

  While her reverie had caused a small amount of pain, it was nothing to the concern painted across her sister-in-law’s face. She had evidently been attempting to get her attention for a while, but Harry had been utterly absorbed in her thoughts.

  The carriage rocked as they made their way down the narrow London streets, and Harry tried to smile.

  “I am well,” she said weakly, dropping her gaze to her gown, which had become wrinkled. “Please, do not worry yourself.”

  Honora leaned back and frowned. “I know we are still getting acquainted, Harry, and there is much I have to learn about you. But I know your twin brother, and the two of you are very similar.”

  Harry nodded. She was not the first to mention the strong resemblance between brother and sister—a resemblance which she had found hard to shake off a few years ago when she found herself referred to across town as ‘Chester’s sister.’

  “So similar,” Honora continued, “that I cannot fail to notice you both bite the corner of your lip when nervous.”

  She blinked and allowed the corner of her lip to escape her nibbling teeth. “You read people well.”

  “I had to.”

  Honora had been right. They were still getting to know each other, which was a rather odd circumstance for two women who were, in the eyes of the law, now sisters. But it would take some time before she earned Honora’s trust enough to ask about her time before she married her brother.

  Being a courtesan, especially after being abducted and forced into it, was not a story to be told to a stranger.

  “Here we are.” Honora leaned out the window as Harry jumped, her thoughts once again interrupted. “Thank goodness I do not enjoy carriage journeys. Altogether too much like being at sea again, and I found it impossible to find my sea legs, whatever they are.”

  The carriage had indeed come to a stop, but not before Harry raised an eyebrow at Honora.

  “Feeling nauseous, are we?”

  Honora grinned as she picked up her reticule and fan. “Not a word to anyone else, you sly thing. I do not need that sort of attention, not yet, and until I go into my confinement, there is no need for the world’s gossips to know the future Earl or Lady of Chester will soon be with us. Ah, Blenkins.”

  The footman who had opened the carriage door bowed low and reached out a hand to help them from the vehicle.

  Harry stood up and stretched as her feet touched the cobbles. Anything to be out of that dratted carriage, but she was not looking forward to this evening’s outing. Her last visit to Almack’s kept rising in her mind, and whether it was her attack on Mr. Lister, her dancing with Monty, or the resulting gossip, she could not tell—but she was not eager to be back.

  “I will return for you at about midnight, Your Grace,” Blenkins was saying to Honora. “But if you desire to return earlier, please send word, and I will be with you within twenty minutes.”

  Honora nodded. “Mind you are, Blenkins, or I shall not be responsible for the consequences of my actions.”

  Harry smiled. There were few women in the world who could speak so frankly, and she was glad Josiah had chosen one of them to be his bride.

  “Well then, are you ready?”

  “Ready? Ready—for Almack’s. Of course.”

  “If you are feeling unwell, then you should go home,” said Honora, taking her hand. “It will not take Blenkins five minutes to return, and I think you could do with being in bed, Harry.”

  Harry shook her head. “I am a Stanhope. We do not back out of evening engagements just because one is…one is tired.”

  And one is only tired, she said in the privacy of her mind, because one cannot get a certain gentleman out of their mind, and so sleep is becoming impossible!

  Honora searched her face, then nodded. “Onward, then. Let us hope Lady Romeril has chosen a better menu than last time—tripe, I ask you! If there is naught but tripe again, I do apologize, but we are going straight home.”

  Harry forced a laugh as they approached the doors. This was an outing, and one you used to enjoy, she told herself. Try to remember what it was to enjoy it.

  But she could not. Monty may be here tonight, and it would be the first time she had seen him since that stolen kiss in the lane.

  They were doing everything backward: making love, then a stolen kiss, and she hoped he would soon ask for her hand. But they had never paid much attention to society’s rules. Why should they now they were…well, there was not a word for it.

  The footmen who opened the doors were dressed in the typical Almack’s finery, but there was something different about tonight. Instead of the deep bow typically afforded to a countess and a lady of that house, one of them gave a small inclination of the head—and the other, no sign at all they had passed, save for the opening of the door.

  Harry looked back at them as they walked into the entrance hall but put it from her mind. She had been forced to study the rules and etiquette of rank as a child, and as an adult, had rarely demanded people treat her with such reverence. She was not a duchess, and she did not expect to be treated so just because she was the daughter of one. Still, it was strange.

  What was even stranger were the stares meeting her as they entered the dancehall. Something itched at the back of her mind as they passed groups of people who fell silent as she and Honora walked past them—and not in that intrigued, curious way they had done at Josiah and Honora’s wedding.

  No, there was malice here. When she turned to look back, the groups which had been silent were now muttering in low voices, a few casting fierce looks at her as though she had committed some sort of crime.

  Harry felt color rush to her cheeks. Well, if she was going to be treated in such a fashion for giving Mr. Lister exactly what he deserved the last time she came to Almack’s, then this was going to be a very short visit indeed.

  But no, it was surely more than that. There was Tabitha St. Maur, the Duchess of Axwick. Her husband and Josiah had not exactly been close, but they had enough in common to both applaud the type of action Harry had taken.

  But the Duchess of Axwick blushed as their eyes met, and she made an excuse to her companion and moved away.

  Harry swallowed. Something was not right here.

  “’Tis awfully hot in here, do you not find?” Honora said in a low voice so only Harry could hear her. “Or…or is it me?”

  Harry looked around and saw Charlotte Lennox, the Duchess of Mercia. She dropped her gaze and started talking hurriedly to the footman who was pouring her a drink, who looked utterly astonished such a high-born lady was taking any notice of him.

  “No,” Harry said slowly. “It is not just you. It does not appear any of my acquaintances will look me in the eyes.”

  The two ladies came to a stop. Two gentlemen who were walking behind them suddenly stopped, too, as though unwilling to walk toward them. One of them muttered something to the other, and they both laughed.

  Harry started to fan herself. Anything to distract her from the decidedly odd behavior in Almack’s.

  “This is like one of my nightmares,” Honora said in a low voice. “What I thought would happen everywhere I went when I eventually rejoined society again. I am sorry, Harry, this is all my fault.”

  Treacherous relief washed over Harry. “Do you mean—you think this is because of you?”

  Was it wrong to feel such relief? The idea it could be Honora, and not herself who was the reason for the mutterings was such an attractive one she had to force down her buoyancy.

  Honora looked miserable. “What else can it be? Come, let us get some punch. One drink, we will watch two dances, then we will go home.”

  Harry could not help but agree with
her. Why would you want to remain in such a place?

  But it was not going to be that easy. After they had moved to the punch table, there was further strangeness.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  Harry did not lower her voice but allowed sharpness to edge into it. The footman glanced around, desperate for support, but there was none. All those around them were looking assiduously away.

  “I-I am afraid I cannot offer you punch, my lady,” he stammered.

  Harry leaned over the offending punch bowl with such venom the young man leaned back.

  “Are you refusing to serve me?” she said quietly as Honora tugged at her arm. “Are you saying it is forbidden for me to drink punch?”

  The footman flushed, evidently desperate to escape. “N-No, my lady, it is…I have had orders…I cannot…”

  Harry tried to fight her rising temper and reminded herself servants were not to blame for their incompetence, their masters were.

  “Thank you for clarifying,” she managed not to shout. “Here, let me make your life infinitely easier.”

  Pulling the ladle from his unresisting hands, Harry poured two cups of punch from the bowl and thrust one into Honora’s hands.

  “Th-thank you, my lady.”

  Harry snorted and turned around to see the entire room staring at them. A heartbeat of time passed, and suddenly, the entire room was in deep conversation with their neighbors.

  Honora had taken a large gulp of punch. “I-I think this is it, Harry. It has happened. Every one in polite society has discovered what I am—what I was.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Harry. “You are not what you were. No one is what happens to them. We are who we want to be, and you are a lady by birth and a countess by marriage.”

  Fire was flooding through her veins. It was disgusting, the way they were all treating her—where was Lady Romeril? She would be having some words with that one, and no mistake.

  “And anyway, that does not explain this sudden rudeness tonight,” she said as they stepped away from the punch table and into the crowd, which parted for them like the Red Sea. “Plenty of people have been accepting your invitations to dine, have they not? So why this coldness?”