by Lynn Messina
She needed to feel that way because as the day dragged on, the truth slowly started to sink in: He was not coming. If he returned her regard, he would have called upon her by now, for he would have found the separation as unbearable as she. The fact that he hadn’t sent a note either indicated something particularly damning to Vinnie, for if there was one thing she knew about the Marquess of Huntly, it was that his manners were impeccable. If he was uncertain about how he felt or indifferent to her in the wake of her confession, he would have forwarded an explanation at once to put her out of her misery. The only excuse for the extended silence was she repulsed him beyond all bounds of courtesy. He was too appalled to even write a polite missive.
Vinnie had finally presented him with the one disconcerting event for which he had no response at all. Despite his excellent breeding, he could not claim responsibility and apologize for her murderous bent.
She found this revelation to be profoundly upsetting, and even as she continued to work on her project, tears ran down her cheeks, making it impossible to see if she was spreading the new formulation evenly along the hose. She knew she should stop, but the only thing saving her from the utter devastation of her feelings was a useful activity. The task itself was irrelevant, and when she turned on the water to test the new hose, the fact that it actually held together made her cry even harder.
There Vinnie stood in the middle of the duke’s beautiful conservatory, weeping as if there was nothing good left in the world, while shards of sunlight glistened off water streaming from her absolutely perfect elasticized hose. She had done it. After five months, ten prototypes, six ruined gowns and one chemical burn on her left hand, she had finally invented the Amazing Brill Method Improvised Elasticized Hose.
This moment should be sweet, she thought, as a fresh wave of sadness overcame her, and the fact that it wasn’t made her angry with Huntly for ruining it and furious with herself for letting him and irate with Windbourne—yes, Windbourne, for it always came back to that bloody, awful, evil man—for turning her into this person whom Huntly could not love.
Utterly devastated at last, Vinnie slowly sunk to the floor and curled up into a ball. Still holding the hose, she kept her hand steady so that water wouldn’t flood the room, for even in her misery she remained mindful of the duke’s pristine tile floor—an act of consideration that would seem to indicate to Vinnie that she was at least a little lovable, though she knew for a fact she was not.
She stayed crumpled on the floor crying until Caruthers interrupted to tell her she had a visitor. At once, she leaped to her feet, the hose flailing in every direction as water surged through it, and ran out of the room. Without pausing to straighten her hair or dry her eyes or neaten her dress or clean her face, she ran down the hall and past the stairs and tore into the drawing room, her eyes wild as she looked for Huntly.
She came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the room.
It was not Huntly.
It was Mr. Townshend.
Mr. Townshend?
Her surprise was such that she didn’t feel disappointed or even renewed devastation, just confusion. “Mr. Townshend?” she asked, as if seeking confirmation.
“Miss Harlow,” he said with an agreeable smile. “I see I’ve taken you away from some important task, for you are quite rumpled.”
Vinnie knew very well that rumpled did not begin to describe how incredibly disheveled she was. There was not a single thing about her appearance that was appropriate for greeting a caller in the drawing room, but there was nothing she could do it about it now, so she sat down. “I was working on my hose project.”
“Ah, yes, your amazing invention. You will be able to get back to it very shortly, for I won’t keep you long,” he announced, leaning against the mantelpiece despite her entreaty to take a seat. “First, I would like to congratulate you on your presentation last night and your acceptance into the society. Both are significant achievements, and you should be very proud.”
Given Vinnie’s low estimation of Mr. Townshend’s character, she was entirely taken aback by this show of graciousness. “Thank you.”
“In my experience, I find it’s the attainment of one’s objective that has value,” he said, “not the objective itself. Oftentimes, the goal is insignificant and what we cherish is the knowledge that we are able to accomplish our goal. Do you not find this to be so?”
With a slow tilt of her head, Vinnie nodded, not because she agreed with him but because he seemed to want her to agree with him very badly and she hated to be rude. In truth, she didn’t entirely understand what he was trying to say about goals and objectives.
“I’m glad we are on the same page, my dear, for it means you won’t mind declining your membership to the society,” he said brusquely. “Do send the note immediately. Mr. Berry is expecting it.” Then, as if that concluded their business, he straightened his shoulders and walked toward the door.
She found his overbearing confidence to be as unsettling as it was absurd. “I will not be declining,” she said firmly.
“Unless you want all of England to know you killed your fiancé and then pretended to mourn his death, you will,” he said, his tone mild but the gleam in his eyes clearly triumphant. “I have the better hand, Miss Harlow. Murder trumps plagiarism, so be a good girl and submit to the superior maneuvering.”
As he spoke, Vinnie felt a calmness wash over her and it seemed amazing to her that just a few minutes before she’d been weeping like a babe over the Marquess of Huntly, that she’d actually curled herself into a ball because the pain of losing him was so great she couldn’t stand.
Losing him—as if she’d ever had him.
She was shocked to discover that he cared so little for her that he could heartlessly broadcast her deepest, darkest secret to the world. Even if he didn’t love her, she would have thought he had more integrity than that. He had certainly seemed like a man of honor, insisting that she could not withdraw her application to appease bullies and gossips. But what did she really know of men’s integrity or how they behaved? The only man who’d ever professed to love her had tried to puncture her stomach with a fish knife. Perhaps all men were this dishonorable. Perhaps they all thought nothing of betrayal. Perhaps they didn’t even consider it betrayal when it involved a mere woman.
Huntly had betrayed her before—that perfect visit to Mr. Brill’s factory, supposedly arranged to make amends for wrongs done to her person but in actuality calculated to make her submit to his will. Even that betrayal wasn’t without precedent, for he had put her up for membership as an act of petty revenge. Surely that wasn’t the action of an honorable man.
That the marquess was responsible for this current misery, she didn’t doubt. Vinnie was a practical young woman and the facts were plain: Only six other people on the face of the earth knew the truth—she, Emma, Alex, Roger, Sarah and Mr. Garrison, Roger’s boss in the Home Office—and they had known it for several months. More than that, they had nothing to gain from the true story getting out. Indeed, it would hurt each of them, Garrison most of all. Only one of the seven learned of it the night before: Huntly.
What the marquess had to gain from telling Townshend was unclear, for if he’d wanted to coerce her into not joining the society, he could have done it himself. It was possible that he hadn’t meant to reveal her secret to the deputy director of Kew Gardens, that the truth somehow slipped out while they were discussing her pamphlet or vintages of claret. Maybe he didn’t realize how Townshend planned to use the information. Maybe he knew and approved but couldn’t bring himself to be present.
All this was possible, thought Vinnie, though none of it was likely, and she was too clever to take comfort in unlikely stories.
Taking her silence as assent, Townshend nodded his approval. “I knew you would see reason. Now don’t keep Mr. Berry waiting too long.”
As Townshend reached for the door, Vinnie said, “You had a leaf of spinach in your hair last night.”
Confused, he
paused and turned to look at her.
“Just above your ear,” she explained, standing up to walk over to him. “It’s no longer there so I have to assume at some point you noticed it yourself and removed it. Trent pointed it out to me as he was leaving the podium, and the information was well timed because up until that moment, I thought I was going to have a paroxysm, I was so nervous. I honestly believed I might faint or otherwise humiliate myself.”
As she spoke, Townshend’s face reddened and his fingers grasped the doorknob so tightly his knuckles turned white. Emboldened, Vinnie took another step forward.
“But then Trent told me about the leaf of spinach,” she continued, her tone as matter-of-fact as his, even as she warmed to her subject, “and I learned that out in that audience was an absurd human being who thought he was surrounded by friends and yet not a single one preferred telling him about a leaf of spinach in his hair to laughing at him behind his back. That, I realized, was more humiliating than anything I could do and I calmed down. So thank you, Mr. Townshend, for helping me attain my objective, for I could not have done it without you. And I will write that note to Mr. Berry immediately because there is nothing more repugnant to me than being a member of an organization that would accept you.” She opened the drawing room door as he stood gaping at her, paralyzed by rage. “Now, good day, sir.”
Vinnie stiffened her shoulders in anticipation of an attack when he opened his mouth to speak, but he immediately closed it again and swept out of the room with an ineffectual grunt. Then he stomped through the hall, out the front door and down the stairs to the street, where his horse waited for him. Anger undermined his usual coordination, and it took him three clumsy tries to climb onto the back of the patient animal. She stood in the doorway until he disappeared down the square, then grabbed her pelisse and stepped outside. She saw Emma on the sidewalk in front of the house, as she had just arrived home with several books from Hatchard’s.
Vinnie nodded in greeting but did not break stride.
Surprised, her sister called after her to ask where she was going without her maid.
“To strangle the Marquess of Huntly,” she announced.
Emma smiled. “Very good. I’ll hold supper until you get back.”
Vinnie did not bother to say thank you.
Chapter Fourteen
As he stood in the drawing room of Viscount Inchape’s family seat near Tunbridge Well waiting for Miss Harlow’s father to appear, the Marquess of Huntly conceded that perhaps setting out on a five-hour dash immediately after the meeting concluded to request her hand in marriage had not been the best plan. Not only was he covered in travel dust, but he was still wearing his dark-blue tailcoat with pewter buttons and white breeches from the night before. He looked absurd standing in the bright light of day in his evening clothes.
He hoped the man wouldn’t hold his impatience against him.
From everything Trent had said about Mr. Edward Harlow, he didn’t think it would be a problem, for the man showed little interest in any of his children. Unlike his wife, he had not bothered to return to London for the ball the dowager threw to celebrate his daughter’s marriage. He much preferred hunting with cronies and gambling with friends and dallying with dancers.
Trent himself had not asked Emma’s father formally for her hand. Instead, he contented himself with the nearest Harlow at the time, which happened to be Vinnie. Later, he sent a formal letter introducing himself and requesting they meet to discuss marriage contracts. Harlow responded with a brief note welcoming him to the family and suggesting he work out the details with his son, Roger.
Despite the duke’s inauspicious experience with the patriarch, the marquess could not bring himself to skirt tradition by asking her brother or—God forbid—Emma for permission. It must be her father, for following proper etiquette was the only way to demonstrate just how highly he honored her.
Now, however, he wondered if changing into proper clothes for traveling might have been a better way of honoring her. He’d considered going home first, but detouring to Berkeley Square had seemed like an intolerable waste of time.
Indeed, the entire evening had seemed like an intolerable waste of time. All those votes and counts and recounts and sudden deaths and sudden redeaths—the meeting had gone on forever. Even when the rest of Townshend’s coalition had been ready to concede simply to bring the endless proceedings to an end, the stubborn deputy director of Kew had stood firm, insisting to anyone who would listen that a woman, no matter how well versed in drainage pipes, did not belong in the British Horticultural Society. It was an affront to everything in which they believed.
At first, it had appeared as if Townshend’s opinion would hold sway but then Trent—good old clever Trent—played the rivalry card, announcing that Vinnie’s hose invention was a thousand times more ingenious than a similar device on which the Society for the Advancement of Horticultural Knowledge was working. Furthermore, hers was nearly complete, whereas the other organization’s still needed months of work.
Trent’s announcement was the deciding factor for many of their fellow members, but it took another three excruciating hours to convince Townshend that his fight was futile.
To be fair, the entire day had been excruciating for the marquess, not just the extended battle over Vinnie’s acceptance. From the moment he’d woken up, he’d worried about her, imagining her in a state of anxiety so intense she couldn’t string two words together, let alone make a coherent presentation, and then he had caught sight of her in the lecture hall, her face so pale under the high dome, almost as if she were about to faint. Seeing that look made his heart ache, and he realized he’d never been more nervous in his entire life, not even when the Triton hit a storm off the coast of Tonga and took on water. Thinking he might die paled in comparison to worrying about her.
And then for her to calmly explain that she had killed her fiancé!
Felix Horatio Dryden, Marquess of Huntly, could not conceive of a stranger moment in his entire life. In the space of a few seconds, he’d gone from worrying that a woman whom he admired might humiliate herself to realizing the woman he loved had a whole heart to realizing the woman he loved had been through a horrifying experience to worrying again that the woman he loved was too frail to make her presentation.
Through it all in that moment—the woman he loved.
It was just as Trent said: The truth didn’t mean anything if it didn’t come from Vinnie.
While she spoke, he tried to pay attention, but it was too hard to focus on the present when his mind was so busy reviewing the past and planning for the future. He recalled all those moments when he’d believed Vinnie was mourning her fiancé, most of which he’d created by trying to use Windbourne’s memory to manipulate her behavior, and felt a combination of disgust and relief. Disgust, yes, for how often he’d cruelly reminded her of that murderous bastard. But relief, such overwhelming relief, that he wasn’t competing with a dead man, that a long-lost love didn’t permanently hold a piece of her heart.
If it was selfish of him to feel that way, so be it.
He didn’t feel too badly about listening to her presentation with only half an ear, for as soon as she started talking, he knew she would succeed beyond his wildest expectations. Far from the faint, pale creature standing under the dome, the woman speaking at the podium was his Vinnie, the brave, wonderful girl who calmly took responsibility for her actions and brooked no interference.
And because it was his Vinnie, wading through the sea of well wishers after the performance to congratulate her had been the most excruciating thing of all. When he’d finally gotten near, when his eyes had finally caught hers in a heart-stopping look, he realized being close to her was even worse. Better to withdraw and wait until he could have all of her, not just a scrap.
It was then that he’d decided to seek out her father’s permission as soon as the meeting was over.
So he had and now he was stuck cooling his heels in Viscount Inchape’s
drawing room, waiting for Mr. Edward Harlow to return from the morning hunt. He’d been assured by the butler that the party would be back at any moment, as breakfast had been requested for ten o’clock and it was a quarter to now. Fifteen minutes was not long to wait, but he begrudged every second away from Vinnie. Furthermore, he still had a five-hour ride back to London, during which he would have to change horses and eat, and he couldn’t possibly propose in these clothes. No, he’d have to go home to bathe and change and find his mother’s ring.
Eons would pass before he saw Vinnie again.
To his relief, the door opened not ten minutes later and in walked a tall man with gray hair cut à la Brutus and blue eyes. He bore little physical resemblance to either the Harlow twins or their brother, but he saw Vinnie in his direct, forthright gaze. “Good morning, my lord, I understand you are here to see me.”
Despite the duke’s promise of paternal indifference, Huntly suddenly felt himself grow anxious. “I am, sir, yes,” he said and introduced himself. “I’m an intimate of the Duke of Trent’s and as such have gotten to know your daughters. They are lovely.”
Harlow’s brow furrowed at this seeming non sequitur, but he sat down and gestured that the marquess do the same. “I trust you are not here because Emma has slighted you or discomforted you or in some other way caused you harm. Though she remains a hoyden, she is no longer a minor and as such no longer my responsibility. If you have a problem, I suggest you apply to your friend the duke.”
“I assure you, sir, Emma has not caused me any harm,” he said, surprised to find himself offended on the young lady’s behalf. “I think she’s delightful, and even if I did not, I would certainly not run to you with tales.”
The gentleman smiled faintly. “That is to your credit. I’m sorry to report that other young men have not shown your forbearance.”