Trouble With Harry

by Katie MacAlister

  “Our mother is dead,” the girl said, giving him a suspicious glare. “Does Papa know you’re here? He said we’re not supposed to talk with any strangers. We don’t know you. What sort of a present?”

  “I’m not a stranger. I know your stepmother,” he said, taking a step toward her, unable to keep a leer from his lips as his eyes wandered over the lithe shape concealed by the voluminous nightgown. He pulled the letter from his pocket and showed it to them. “You see? It’s just a simple little note for Plum. You look like an intelligent little poppet, why don’t you tell me which room is hers, and I’ll leave this for her as a surprise. Won’t that be nice?”

  “Pet Harry!” a small child of about five demanded as he popped up in front of Charles holding up a scrawny gray kitten.

  “Er…no, thank you. I don’t have time for kittens.” Much as he’d like to stay and approach the girl, he was growing increasingly nervous as each second passed. He bared his teeth again. “If you show me which bedchamber is Plum’s, I will give you a shiny new penny.”

  “What’s in that, then?” Marston asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he nodded toward the letter.

  It was hard going hanging onto his smile, but he did. “Something that will interest Plum. Do you like sweets? I will give you sweets if you show me where Plum’s bedchamber is.”

  “You’ve ruined Papa’s surprise,” a young girl said, pushing by the elder one. A boy followed her, a twin by the look of him. How many blasted children did Rosse have?

  “Eh…” Charles said, trying to think of some way to bribe the little bastards. He was swiftly running out of time—any moment a servant could happen upon them.

  “Now, listen, all of you, this is a surprise for Plum, so you mustn’t say anything about it. I’ll just slip it into her chamber and leave, so no one will know I was here—”

  “I don’t like you,” the younger girl interrupted him. His hand itched to slap the complacent look off her face.

  Her twin nodded. “And we like Plum.”

  “I wager he’s the man Papa’s been talking about,” Marston said. “You know, the bad one.”

  “Andy, you and Anne go fetch the rope,” the eldest girl said, picking up a vase as she started toward him.

  “I’ll get the flint and tinderbox,” Marston said, his eyes lighting up with unholy glee.

  “Now, just one moment,” Charles said, slowly backing away. A coward by nature, he never thought mere children could be threatening, but judging by the hell-spawned looks in their eyes, these weren’t normal children.

  From below he heard approaching voices. Desperately, he grabbed the youngest boy and shook him, hissing into his face, “Show me where Plum’s room is this very minute!”

  Charles’s last coherent thought before he fell down the stairs was that he would never again be taken in by childish innocence. In a flash they had gone from innocuous, if annoying, innocent children into five murderous terrors bent on his destruction. The youngest boy threw the kitten at his face, scratching his cheek just as another one of the monsters kicked him. A third bit his hand, while the eldest boy and girl shoved him backward until he lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs.

  Snarling, furious, and in no little amount of pain, Charles half fell, half limped down the remaining flight of stairs, followed by the shrieks and screams of the children as they ran after him. He shoved aside a startled footman who appeared at the bottom of the stairs, flinging the front door open and throwing himself out it, trailing curses and promises of revenge behind him.

  Fortunately for his abused body, neither the children nor the footman pursued him. The children stood on the front steps and hurled taunts at him as he limped across the small green that graced the square, but he ignored them, pausing in the shadow of a tree to wipe the blood from his cheek.

  “They’ll pay, they’ll all pay,” he swore as he gingerly felt around the bite on his hand. The door to Rosse’s house closed with a loud bang. He shook his fist at it. “I’ll see them groveling and begging for mercy before the week is out. She thinks she’s smarter than me, she thinks she can outwit me, well I’ll show her! I’ll have her on her knees before I’m through with her. With all of them! They’ll all feel the weight of my wrath.”

  “Having a spot of trouble, are you?” A voice emerged from behind him, deep in the shadow of a nearby rhododendron. “It looks as if you had a less than pleasant send-off.”

  Charles spun around, almost jumping from his skin at the man’s voice. His own voice shook as he tried to brazen his way out of the situation. “What? Who…who are you, sir? Come forward where I can see you!”

  “I am a friend, I assure you,” the voice said. A shadow flickered, then resolved itself into the figure of a man of middle height and age. “Someone who thinks we might be of mutual help to one another. I sense you have a grievance against Lady Rosse. Perhaps we might have a little chat, you and I, and you can explain the nature of your grievance.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Charles asked, relaxing at the sight of the man’s bland, placid face. Although the stranger wasn’t a gentleman, as he was, his voice was relatively educated and not that of a thug.

  “I thought you might want someone to bend a sympathetic ear to your tale of woe.”

  Not likely. Charles wasn’t about to share the ripe goose that was sure to be his. Plum owed him, and he would collect his reward. “I don’t know you, do I? What the devil do you mean accosting me in this fashion? Who are you?”

  “I told you,” the man said, smiling. “I’m a friend.”

  “You’re no friend of mine,” Charles said with a haughty sniff, straightening his waistcoat.

  “Is it not said that my enemy’s enemies must be my friends? I believe we have a shared interest in the Rosse family. Yours, I gather, is to seek revenge on Lady Rosse, while mine…”

  “Yes?” Charles said, only moderately interested in the man. He had no time to waste in idle gossip. He had to return home so he could best plan out the next step in his revenge.

  “Mine is to see them all destroyed.”

  Charles’s head snapped up at that. He eyed the mysterious man for a moment, considering whether or not he might make use of him, then gestured graciously. “I find that you interest me strangely. Shall we take a little stroll?”

  “Indeed we shall,” the man said, smiling again. “Indeed we shall.”

  ***

  “I’m quite able to walk, Harry.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not doing a blessed thing until you’re safely delivered of the babe. Not one single thing, do you understand me? Not one. I shall beat you mercilessly if you attempt even the littlest act.”

  Plum kissed Harry’s ear as he carried her up the steps to their home. “But some exercises are beneficial for ladies in my condition.”

  “No,” Harry said abruptly, kicking the door until Ben the footman opened it. “No walks, no riding, no driving through the park, nothing. You are to remain off your feet at all times. Exercise of any form is entirely out of the question. I might allow you to lie in a chaise and read if you promise not to exert yourself while you do so.”

  “My lord, if I might have a word with you?”

  “Not even calisthenics?” Plum whispered in his ear, ignoring the footman trying to get Harry’s attention. Her teeth grazed his earlobe. “Say, perhaps, ones that might be done from the comfort and safety of one’s bed?”

  “It is a matter of some importance, my lord.”

  Harry paused at the foot of the stairs. He looked at her with narrowed eyes. She rubbed her nose against his. “Do you honestly believe, madam, that my will, my resolute, inflexible, unbending will is so easily swayed?”

  “Yes,” she said, all but purring in his arms.

  “You know me so well,” he said with that wonderful twinkle in his eyes as he started up the sta
irs.

  “My lord, I would not bother you if it was not a matter of some urgency—” Ben was summarily ignored by both Plum and Harry.

  “Papa!”

  Both Plum and Harry looked up at the shouts that greeted their arrival.

  “Papa, you’ll never guess!” India said as she appeared at the landing.

  “—but you should know, my lord, about the incident that happened here earlier.”

  “I get to tell it, I’m the one who pushed him down the stairs,” Digger said. The other children followed quickly, swarming Harry and Plum, all of them talking at once.

  “I pushed him, too, and I’m the eldest.”

  “You’re just a lady, I’m an earl.”

  Ben gave it another valiant try. “It was just a short while ago, my lord. I was on duty in the hall, as I have been these past three nights—”

  “Children—” Harry said, trying to make himself heard above the din.

  “Mama, pet Harry!”

  “Papa, Andy bit the man, and I kicked his shin, and he ran away!”

  “—when a man ran down the stairs, followed by the children.”

  “An earl is nothing compared to being the eldest,” India informed her brother. “The eldest is the most important.”

  “One at a time! You can’t all speak at once,” Harry ordered. No one paid him any attention.

  Plum giggled, filled to overflowing with love and happiness and hope even in the midst of such a maelstrom. Harry knew the worst about her, and he didn’t care.

  “He ruined our surprise, too. Tell him, Anne.”

  “My lord, the man appeared to have met with some accident, which, Lord Marston later informed me, was of his and the other children’s doing.”

  “Pet Harry, Mama!”

  “He did, he ruined our surprise. I didn’t like him.”

  “I didn’t like him more than you didn’t like him, Anne!”

  “An earl is a title. Being eldest isn’t a title, it’s just a thing.”

  Harry loved her still! How could she have been so foolish as to ever doubt his strength of character?

  “I cannot understand when you all talk at the same time. Calm down, all of you. Who are you talking about?” he asked.

  Plum kissed the muscle that was jumping in his jaw. He was the most divine creature on the whole planet.

  “Being eldest isn’t a thing! Plum, tell Digger that being eldest is more important than being an earl.”

  Perhaps the most divine creature that ever was.

  “PET HARRY!”

  “Nothing is more important than being an earl except being a marquis or a duke, isn’t that right, Papa?”

  And he was hers, all hers. They all were hers, every last one of them, right down to Ben the footman who was so desperately trying to get Harry’s attention. She loved them all—her family.

  “You take that back! I didn’t like him the most, not you!”

  “Lord Rosse, you must listen. I tried to ascertain the man’s business in the house, but he ran off before I could know what was what.”

  Everything was right in her world. Harry knew all, and he loved her, and she loved him, and everyone loved everyone else, and wasn’t life the most fabulous thing that ever was?

  “The children later said that the man claimed he knew Lady Rosse and was attempting to find out the location of her bedchamber.”

  “That’s a lie! I told him I didn’t like him, and you didn’t, so I didn’t like him most of all. Papa, tell Andy I didn’t like him most of all.”

  “SILENCE!” Harry roared.

  “Harry?” Plum asked, her cup of happiness over- flowing.

  “What?” he barked, then immediately looked contrite.

  “I love you. Shall we try The Virgin and the Unicorn toni—” Plum’s eyes widened as Harry’s lovely hazel eyes went dark.

  “Man?” she asked him.

  “Bedchamber?” he asked her.

  They both turned to Ben.

  “What man?” Harry yelled. “What was he doing in Plum’s bedchamber? Good God, man, don’t stand there gaping like a fish, tell us what happened!”

  Plum nudged Harry until he set her on her feet, clinging to him as the incoherent bits and pieces the children and Ben tripped over each other to tell merged into one horrifying narration.

  “It must have been Charles,” Plum said, her happy world crumbling about her. “The description sounds like him, but how could he dare come into the house—”

  “He’s a dead man,” Harry snarled.

  “And you thought I was bloodthirsty,” Plum said under her breath, then gasped aloud as her husband started for the door. “No, Harry! You can’t call him out, remember?”

  Harry paused to shoot her an outraged glare.

  She put her hands on her hips, ignoring the captive audience of children and servants who were gathering behind her. She might yield to Harry about other things, but over this she would not, and the sooner he learned that, the happier they all would be. “Even if you did kill him—and I wouldn’t want that because I like living in England—even if you did, it would be too late. The second Charles thinks you’re threatening him, he will tell as many people as he can find the truth about me.”

  “It’s my right, Plum,” Harry growled, pacing back and forth before the door. “What the devil am I going to do if I can’t call him out?”

  “I don’t know, but there has to be another way.”

  Harry paused. “What if I were to thrash him within an inch of his life? He wouldn’t know about that until it happened, and afterward he would not be in any condition to tell anyone.”

  There was a distinct wheedling tone to his voice that made Plum want to smile. Such a dear man he was. She pursed her lips and thought it over. “Alas, my darling, if he survived the thrashing, he would tell someone sooner or later, and if he didn’t survive it, you would be hung for murder.”

  “Bah,” Harry said, resuming his pacing.

  “You see my dilemma,” Plum said, all her attention on her angry spouse. “You see why I had to hire a mur—” She stopped and shooed the children upstairs to bed. They didn’t want to go, but Plum was in no mood for argument. She waved the rest of the servants away, pulling Harry into the library to discuss the situation.

  “Harry, sit down, you’re making me dizzy,” she said a few minutes later as he paced a circle around her chair.

  “This is ridiculous. I’m to allow—without challenge—the man who dishonored my wife to creep into my house for who knows what reason? I’m supposed to tolerate the scum who dared ruin your name and let him escape without justice? I’m to turn a blind eye when he threatens you? I won’t have it, Plum! I have to call him out. It’s the only way.”

  “Then our lives will be destroyed,” Plum said softly, her gaze on her hands. She knew not one word of blame would ever pass Harry’s lips, but the truth of the matter was simple—she should never have married him. She knew she wasn’t to blame for Charles’s lying to her, but Harry…he was another matter. She had willfully hid the truth from him, and now he and the children and Thom were going to pay the price for her selfishness.

  “You’re exaggerating,” Harry scoffed. “Our lives will not be destroyed.”

  “Am I?” she asked miserably. “You know Society better than anyone, husband. You said you could hush up the scandal of my marriage to Charles, and you were right. Can you say the same thing about the scandal that will be born should the world know that the marchioness Rosse is the author of a book as notorious as The Guide to Connubial Calisthenics?”

  Harry paused in his pace, resuming it with a little less vigor, his eyes dark behind the lenses of his spectacles. “I don’t see why anyone should care if you wrote the blasted book if I don’t. And I don’t. Why should such information do us or the children any damage?�
��

  “Now who’s exaggerating?” Plum asked, her throat growing tight with unshed tears. “You know that there is no way a scandal to end all scandals could be avoided if the truth were made public. A marchioness simply cannot be the author of such a book without receiving censure. Oh, Harry…” Plum’s bravado dissolved as her heart crumpled. Her worst nightmare had come true, and it was all of her own making. Self-pity warred with guilt. The guilt won. “I should never have married you, but you were so nice, and I was desperate, but now look what it’s come to—”

  Harry took Plum’s hands and pulled her to her feet, allowing her to sob into his shoulder. He pressed his lips to her forehead, a caress so sweet that it made Plum cry that much harder. She wept for several minutes, aware every second just how much she owed the man who gently stroked her back and murmured soothing words in her ears.

  “Tears solve nothing, my love,” Harry said softly when she stopped weeping and started sniffling.

  “I know, but sometimes they make you feel better. Unfortunately, all I feel now is stuffed up.” She hiccupped, wiping her eyes on his cravat before looking up to him. “Harry, one of the things I wanted in a husband was someone who had no secrets from me, and yet I went into this marriage keeping secrets of my own. I’m very sorry about that. You deserve better. I know you don’t blame me for this, but I also know that we wouldn’t be in this situation now if it wasn’t for me, and for that I humbly apologize.”

  “This isn’t your fault, sweetheart. None of it is. You did nothing wrong. To tell you the truth, I’m proud of you.”

  “Proud?” She goggled at him, a tiny goggle to be true, but still a goggle. He was proud of her? For what? “How can you be proud of me? I’ve done nothing to be proud of, quite the contrary!”

  “I beg to differ, you’ve done much to be proud of. You survived a bigamous marriage that might have warped lesser women.”

  Plum sniffled again, her heart still heavy. “I didn’t have much choice.”

  “You wrote a book that has brought pleasure to hundreds of people.”

  “A book so notorious that no bookstore would admit to carrying it.” Plum took the handkerchief Harry offered and delicately blew her nose.