She met Freya’s eyes in the mirror and must have seen rebellion there. “Truly, Miss Stewart, I don’t understand why you are protesting his offer. He’s the Duke of Harlowe. Had he proposed to either of my girls I would’ve been most pleased.”
Freya smiled a little wearily. “Even if he were marrying one of your daughters purely for her dowry, my lady?”
Lady Holland frowned. “But he’s not marrying you for your dowry. Unless I’m very much mistaken, you don’t have a dowry. I don’t understand your objection.”
Freya sighed and walked to the window, looking out even though she couldn’t see anything through the dark glass.
Explaining why she didn’t want to marry a duke was harder still when she longed for Harlowe right this minute. She’d thought of all manner of subjects that she wanted to discuss with him after ignominiously running from him this afternoon. She wanted to know his opinion on Dante, how he felt about kippers for breakfast, whether he was a Whig or a Tory, and if he’d ever considered breeding Tess and if so would he mind letting her have a puppy. Really, she could spend the rest of her life simply talking to the man.
Except of course that she enjoyed his kisses very much as well.
Not that the last should take precedence over other attributes, but it was certainly something to take into consideration.
For a moment she considered how masterful his mouth had been on hers two nights before.
Then she brought her thoughts back under control.
She had no wish to marry any man. To do so would be to put far too much trust in him—not only her heart, but her independence would be in his hands.
No. She was simply too suspicious and cynical a creature to rely upon words and feelings to determine her future.
Even if Harlowe could make her feel quite a lot.
Freya turned back to Lady Holland. “You’re quite correct, my lady. I don’t have a dowry. It may seem entirely foolish to you to decline His Grace’s proposal. He’s rich, titled, and powerful. Against that I’m merely a poor nobody in the world’s eyes. A mouse beside a lion.” She inhaled, marshaling her argument, and looked at Lady Holland. “But you see, to me I’m not just a nobody. I am myself and I am important. In my eyes, I am a lioness beside a lion. And as such I am free to accept or reject a gentleman for any reason, including the fact that he has proposed purely for society’s sake.”
Lady Holland stared at her for what felt like a very long time.
Then she sighed, let her shoulders slump, and said to Selby, “Oh Lord, get the brandy.”
Freya suppressed a smile. It wasn’t as if she wanted to best Lady Holland in argument. She was rather fond of her employer, not least because Lady Holland always traveled with a bottle of brandy in her toilet kit.
Someone knocked at the door.
Lady Holland nodded. “See who it is before we bring out the brandy. We might shock an impressionable maid.”
But when Selby opened the door, it was to reveal Messalina and Lucretia with, hovering behind them, Lady Lovejoy.
Lady Holland raised her brows. “Yes?”
Messalina took a step into the room, looking determined. Lucretia and Lady Lovejoy followed and Selby closed the bedroom door. Messalina turned to Lady Holland. “Have you forced Freya into accepting the duke?”
“Freya?”
Messalina blinked. “Erm…Miss Stewart.”
Lady Holland raised an eyebrow, shooting Freya an inquiring glance. “I thought your Christian name was Aethelreda?”
“Freya is a nickname.”
“For Aethelreda?” Lady Holland asked, both eyebrows now elevated.
“Yes,” Freya replied with dignity.
“Hm.” Lady Holland turned back to Messalina. “Am I to understand that you and your sister came to make sure I hadn’t browbeaten…erm…Freya until she agreed to marry the duke?”
Messalina lifted her chin. “Yes.”
“Well, you may rest easy,” Lady Holland replied wearily. “I’ve failed.” She glanced at Lady Lovejoy. “And you, my lady?”
Lady Lovejoy arched a brow. “Well, it is my house. I was curious.”
“Quite understandable under the circumstances.” Lady Holland sighed. Again. “Would anyone care for brandy?”
Five minutes later everyone in the room had a small splash of brandy in a glass, including Selby, because, as Lady Holland said, “You might as well join us.”
It was Lady Lovejoy who broke the silence, looking at Freya. “Don’t you like the duke, Miss Stewart?”
“Oh, I do,” Freya said. She was sitting on a settee by the fire and her usual rigid posture had…relaxed a bit. “I really, really do. That’s not the problem.”
“I should hope not,” Messalina muttered, glaring into her glass.
“Well, it’s not,” Freya replied. “It’s just the principle of the thing, I think.”
That statement met with silence, broken only by a “Hmm” from Lucretia.
Lady Lovejoy lowered her brandy glass. “I do see your point, really. If you were a bright young thing, just entering society, it would be one thing.” Her eyes slid to Lucretia, who was staring rather dreamily into her glass. “One feels that the young should be protected, as it were, against the scourge of gossip. But once one reaches a certain age”—her gaze skipped to Messalina—“ought not one be considered an individual?”
“Yes,” said Freya, rather astonished that Lady Lovejoy had turned out to be such a freethinking lady. “A person.”
“A woman,” Messalina said with a nod.
“Free,” Lucretia murmured.
“Exactly.” Lady Lovejoy leaned back on a settee opposite Freya’s, her arm stretched along the back, her ankles crossed in front of her. “Rather like a man, if one wants to make that point. Just as a man comes into his majority and is made independent and capable of making his own decisions, so should a woman.”
“Hear, hear,” Lady Holland said, raising her brandy glass rather mockingly. “But that isn’t the crux of the matter, is it? Freya can make her own decisions. She can decide to refuse marriage to a titled, rich, strikingly handsome—”
“In-deed,” murmured Lucretia.
“—gentleman whom she self-admittedly likes, but if she does so there will be many in society who punish her, no matter how noble her reasons.”
“Christopher doesn’t really have a choice, either,” Lucretia said.
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged. “Well, he doesn’t—not if he’s at all honorable.”
“True,” Lady Lovejoy said judiciously. “But now that he has offered, I think most would agree that whatever duty to do the honorable thing is over. The matter certainly won’t affect his ability to marry later. In contrast, Freya might never be able to marry.”
“Perhaps I don’t wish to marry,” Freya retorted, getting into the spirit of the debate.
“Don’t you?” Lucretia asked with interest.
Now everyone was looking at her.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. She glanced around at the other ladies. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Twelve
Rowan followed Ash through the gray wood. No birds sang. No wind blew. All was still, as if the world had never lived.
Rowan looked up to see if the sun was gray as well, but though the gray sky was clear of any clouds, she could see no sun.
A single drop of dew fell from the trees above and landed on her lips.
Absently Rowan licked it away.…
—From The Grey Court Changeling
It was just after midnight when Christopher was woken by Tess’s low growling.
He lifted his head, listening in the darkness, and heard footsteps in the hall outside his door. His room was at the corner of the hallway and there was only one room beyond the turn.
Plimpton’s.
Surely the man wouldn’t be such an idiot as to return.
But then again, he had left half his possessions behind. To a man in fin
ancial straits a suit and a pair of boots might be worth the risk.
Christopher pulled on his shirt, breeches, stockings, and shoes, and then quietly opened the door to his room. If he craned his neck he could just see around the corner.
There was a light beneath Plimpton’s door.
Tess followed Christopher as he stalked into the hall, rage making his shoulders bunch. Plimpton had been the one to contact him with his outrageous demands. Plimpton had insisted on meeting him at this house party. Plimpton had locked Christopher and Freya in a ghastly, dark, cramped little well house.
And then Plimpton had run away.
The man acted like a nervous virgin with Christopher in the role of pursuing satyr.
Except the woman he’d actually pursued hadn’t bothered to run. She’d simply stood her ground and turned him down flat.
But then Freya was by any measure the more courageous of the two.
He reached Plimpton’s room and knocked at the door.
There was a rustle from within and then silence.
“Plimpton,” Christopher growled, his mouth close to the door. “Let me in or I’ll kick this bloody door down.”
He heard fumbling on the other side, and then the door opened a crack.
Plimpton’s handsome face, looking rather less handsome than usual due to a sheen of sweat over the surface, peered out. “Harlowe. The thing is, I really can’t give you the letters without the money. You see—”
Christopher set his palm against the door and shoved it open.
Plimpton apparently hadn’t been expecting that. He stumbled back into the room.
Christopher kicked the door closed behind him. “You locked me and Miss Stewart in the damned well house.”
Plimpton’s eyes went wide. “I don’t—”
“Whatever do you have against Miss Stewart?”
“That was an accident.”
“You blindfolded her and then padlocked the door.” Christopher advanced on the man, rage creating a red mist before his eyes. “She might’ve died in there.”
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Plimpton was backing up, but he’d hit the wall.
“Where are the letters?”
“I don’t—”
“I’ve had enough of your sniveling excuses. Did you bring the letters or not?”
“O-of course,” Plimpton stuttered.
“All of the letters?”
Plimpton’s features twisted with distress. “I-I can’t—”
Christopher growled.
“Yes!” Plimpton mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “Good Lord, this is why I thought to lock you in that well house in the first place. You’re violent. I fled yesterday because I was sure you were going to kill me. It was only because I’d run out of funds at the local inn that I returned. All I want is the money you have. You needn’t be so beastly.”
“You seduced Sophy,” Christopher snarled. “And now that she’s dead you’re using her memory and good name to blackmail me. If anyone is beastly, it’s you.”
“Unfair!” cried Plimpton. “It’s just that I’m in need of a bit of ready blunt. I’m overextended, I’ve got tradesmen pounding at my door, demanding I pay my bills and refusing to extend my credit. You can easily afford to pay me. I doubt you’ll even notice the money’s gone from your ducal coffers,” he finished rather resentfully.
“Not notice ten thousand pounds?” Christopher shouted. “I’d have to be Midas himself to not notice that.”
“You owe me,” Plimpton retorted, taking another tack. “You all but abandoned poor dear Sophy. She used to cry on my shoulder, she was so lonely and miserable. I was her friend—her only friend—in Calcutta. She loved me.”
For a moment Christopher closed his eyes with pure, inarticulate fury.
When he opened them again, Plimpton was watching him with a self-righteous frown on his face.
“I owe you nothing at all.” Christopher inhaled and said very, very softly, “Yes, Sophy no doubt thought she loved you. After all”—he gestured to the man—“You’re pretty enough, you dress stylishly, if cheaply, and you have a sort of surface charm. So she loved you. And when the nawab’s army came, you ran away and left her to her fate like the bloody coward you are.”
Plimpton was looking outraged. Which might explain the unwary reply he made. “Her fate was that you killed her in that Black Hole.”
Christopher gave up all pretense of civility and punched him in the face.
* * *
“James the footman’s found a scullery maid let go just last week,” Messalina murmured in Freya’s ear. The other ladies were still debating marriage and a woman’s position in society while Freya had taken a seat a little apart by the fire.
Freya turned to stare at Messalina, only inches from her face. “So soon?” And she hadn’t explicitly told James to search for other servants dismissed from the Randolph household. The footman showed a nice ability to think for himself.
Messalina nodded. “The girl is in hiding at her uncle’s cottage. He says he can bring her here so we can question her.”
“When?” There was only a week left of the house party. After that everyone would go back to London—and Freya would be forced to retreat to Dornoch by order of the Hags.
Unless she found new information—real information—against Randolph so that she could make a plea to delay her return.
Messalina shrugged. “We asked James to bring the scullery maid at once, but he says she’s scared out of her mind. It may take some time for him to persuade her.”
Freya was still working through that information when she heard the scream.
She blinked and glanced at her glass of brandy—her second glass. But then she looked up and realized everyone else had heard the scream as well.
“Good Lord,” Lady Lovejoy exclaimed. “Whatever is it?”
She rose as Lady Holland struggled into a wrapper with Selby’s aid and the other ladies jumped up as well.
“I suppose we ought to go see who it is,” Messalina said, frowning.
“Yes, indeed,” Lucretia exclaimed. She was already at the door.
They spilled into the hall, where they found Lord Lovejoy and the Earl of Rookewoode running toward the part of the house where most of the gentlemen’s rooms were.
Lord Lovejoy stopped when he saw them. “I’m sure it’s all right, ladies. If you’ll simply return to your rooms the earl and I shall see what the matter is. Jane, perhaps you can send for er…tea.”
Naturally his wife ignored him, as did the rest of the ladies. The entire group tromped down the hallway and were encouraged when a shout and a flurry of barking came, pinpointing the area of distress.
It turned out to be Mr. Plimpton’s room.
“Good Lord, is that Mr. Plimpton? When did he return?” Lady Holland murmured.
Freya stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the heads of the other guests as Lord Lovejoy flung open Mr. Plimpton’s door.
“Damnation,” Lord Lovejoy exclaimed. “What is the meaning of this?”
Freya caught a glimpse of Harlowe, standing in the center of the room, looking particularly grim as he pummeled Mr. Plimpton. Tess was to the side, well out of the way of the struggle, but barking frantically at the two men. “Oh no!”
She pushed through the people in front of her and edged by Lord Lovejoy, who was blocking the doorway.
What she saw when the view was clear was not good. Mr. Plimpton hung limp from Harlowe’s left fist, which was wrapped around his neckcloth.
Tess abruptly stopped barking.
“Where the hell are they?” Harlowe roared.
“Th-there,” Plimpton hissed through a swollen mouth.
He was waving his hand in the direction of a rather battered portable desk.
Freya crossed to the flat box and opened it. There were blank paper, pens, a stoppered bottle of ink, and, shoved in a narrow drawer, a bundle of letters.
She turned with the letters clutched in her hand. “I have them,
Harlowe. Let him go.”
Harlowe swung toward her and opened his hand, not even looking when Mr. Plimpton slumped to his knees. The blackmailer was bleeding from a cut on his eyebrow and a split lip.
“Whatever is the meaning of this?” Lord Lovejoy demanded.
“Plimpton locked both Miss Stewart and myself in the well house. He confessed to me.” Harlowe spared a glance at the cowering man and his eyes narrowed dangerously. “I believe he had a fit of madness.”
“Well, I suppose then that it’s only what he deserves,” Lady Holland said, looking disapprovingly at Mr. Plimpton.
Harlowe straightened to his full towering height. His mahogany hair was down around his shoulders, he was flushed, and he wore a ferocious scowl on his face.
He was absolutely breathtaking.
Mr. Plimpton glanced up and stupidly opened his mouth.
“Madness,” Harlowe emphasized. “Because of course were he sane I would have to bring a charge of attempted murder against him.”
Mr. Plimpton went pale and snapped shut his mouth.
“I think, under the circumstances,” Lord Lovejoy said coldly, addressing Mr. Plimpton, “that you should gather your things and remove yourself from my house. I shall send several footmen to assist you.” He turned to Harlowe. “Is that agreeable to you, Your Grace?”
Harlowe nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
Lord Lovejoy looked at his guests, still crowded at the door to the room. “Now, I believe this matter is settled and we can all retire for the night.”
He held out his arm for Lady Lovejoy, who took it and said, “Well done, my dear.”
Lord Lovejoy turned a rather endearing shade of pink.
The gathering reluctantly left the room, tramping down the hallway.
Freya lingered, still holding the bundle of letters.
Harlowe took Freya’s hand and pulled her after him as he strode from the room, Tess trotting at their heels. “Come with me.”
* * *
Christopher’s knuckles hurt and he still felt the disorientating dregs of anger.
But Freya’s fingers were warm and solid in his palm, and for some reason that brought a measure of calm to him. For a moment he thought about what it would be like to have her always beside him, gold-green eyes flashing, telling him the blunt truth, leaning toward him as she argued a point, the scent of honeysuckle in her hair.
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