by Kate Moore
For a moment with her ear pressed against his chest, she could hear only his heart pounding.
She lifted her head. Glass bits glittered against the fawn-colored wool of his coat. He turned her toward the street again, and gripping her arm, led her down the stairs. Her cousins’ barouche pulled up. She caught the frown on Clive’s brow and the pout on Allegra’s lips. The footman scrambled to open the door and let down the steps.
Hazelwood jerked Jane forward. There was no time to speak, either to thank him or berate him. “See Miss Fawkener safely back to her hotel.”
Clive gave a curt command to his servants, and the carriage drove off.
Before the Husband Hunter orders wedding cakes from Gunter’s, she would be wise to check her runaway imagination. An unchecked imagination is as dangerous to the Husband Hunter’s happiness as an unbridled and spirited horse is to her limbs. Imagination, which so inspires poets and writers, may be a false friend, indeed, to the Husband Hunter. She, who is learning to read human nature deeply, and perhaps for the first time, may be led by a quick imagination to suppose that a gentleman thinks more highly or feels more deeply than, in fact, he does. When the Husband Hunter allows her too-rapid imagination to assume the conquest of a manly breast that seems hers for the taking like an undefended town, only one result is inevitable—mortification. Furthermore, the degree to which she has let her preference and her expectations be known within her circle of friends and even beyond, the greater the humiliation she must suffer.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter Sixteen
Hazelwood closed the shop door behind him. Miranda stood with a broom and dustpan ready to sweep up the broken glass. He reached down and picked up a chunk of paving stone the size of a man’s fist. It had been aimed at Jane’s head.
He was angry. At Jane Fawkener for setting out to avoid him this morning and exposing herself to danger. At whatever form of hired lowlife would chuck a stone at a woman’s head on a busy street. At himself, most of all at himself, for kissing her and for stepping through those curtains with Miranda Kirby’s name on his lips. With one careless blunder he had undone all the trust he’d built up between them.
Stealing her book had been the only way to recover from his mistake.
Goldsworthy pushed aside the velvet curtain and stuck his large head into the shop. “Did you get it then?” he asked Hazelwood.
“I did.” Hazelwood held up the little blue book he’d lifted from Jane’s bag.
Miranda dipped a curtsy in the big man’s direction.
“Nicely done, Miss Kirby. Very cool under fire.” Goldsworthy offered the girl one of his rare smiles. His glance took in the broken window and the stone in Hazelwood’s hand. “Close call, was it?”
“Did Miss Fawkener see you, sir?” Hazelwood asked. “I’m trying to puzzle out why she chose to enter this shop of all the shops on Old Bond?”
The big man turned to Miranda. “When did she come in, Miss Kirby?”
“Right on your heels, sir. Just as you went through the curtain.”
Goldsworthy frowned, but he shook his great head. “A near miss then. No reason for her to recognize me. I met the father in Koron, but not the daughter. Concentrate on the book, lad. Crack that code and report to me. Only days until the investiture ceremony.” With that he dropped the curtain. His heavy footsteps faded down the hall.
Miranda began to sweep the shop floor. “I’ll get Papa to board up that window.”
Hazelwood cleared his throat. “Miranda, I owe you an apology. I’m afraid I allowed Miss Fawkener to make an assumption about our connection that does neither of us any credit.”
Miranda did not look up from her sweeping. “I’m sure you did it for the case, my lord.”
“That doesn’t quite excuse me. I’ll set the record straight the next time I see Miss Fawkener.”
“There’s no need on my account, my lord.” The girl colored prettily.
“There’s every need, Miranda. I won’t have you pay for my faults.”
He went out through the back of the shop and across the frozen patch of garden. In the club he hesitated once at the foot of the stairs. He could settle down to figure out George Fawkener’s code, or he could get back to Jane Fawkener’s side. He hefted the piece of paving stone in his hand and took the stairs two at a time. In his room, he tossed the little book on the bed. He would tackle the code later, once he knew that Fawkener’s enemies couldn’t get at his daughter.
* * * *
Jane stood in the marble-tiled entry of her grandmother’s townhouse. She had refused to return to the hotel where Hazelwood could find her, and she’d convinced Clive and Allegra to leave her here in spite of their reproaches for her behavior in entering the chemist’s shop. She did not know whether the window breaking or Hazelwood’s embrace shocked them more. She suspected the latter.
As she lifted her bag to find the soap she’d purchased, she realized the bag was open. She reached in and found the soap and her few coins, but not her book. She looked at once at the floor and at the footman holding her coat and gloves, but there was no book in her grandmother’s foyer. Her mind made a quick scramble back through the carriage ride to the moment she’d last opened the bag to pay for her purchase when she’d fumbled with the coins. She was sure she had not dropped the book in the shop in spite of the shock of finding Hazelwood there.
Her thoughts settled on the distracted moments on the steps outside the little shop, and she took the time apart, moment by moment—Hazelwood wrapping her in his great coat, shielding her from some object that had hurtled past them shattering glass, assisting her into the barouche. She had been lifting her skirts, watching her footing, and trying to attend to her cousins’ reproaches. That was the moment he’d done it.
It was not enough for him to steal a kiss. He had to steal her book, too. She had not cursed him in days, but now a curse rose to her lips.
She sent it into the air. She wished him clumsy and awkward and confused. She wished him ragged and tattered and muddied. She wished him stuttering and tongue-tied and speechless, and she wished that whenever he tried to kiss a maiden, toads would fall from his mouth.
Her voice rang in the entry. Her grandmother’s butler listened in silence until she stopped.
“Are you ready to ascend now, Miss?” he asked.
She begged his pardon, and he unbent so far as to acknowledge that he suspected she was seriously vexed. She followed him up to her grandmother’s drawing room.
She remembered how she’d felt in Hazelwood’s carriage, how eagerly she had returned his kiss, how he must have known how lost she was in his embrace, how she had relished his strength, his arms tightening around her as if he, too, were helpless to do anything less than surrender to that kiss. Now it occurred to her that the kiss was a pretense from start to finish. It was nothing but an attempt to steal her book.
She slowed her steps and lifted a hand to her burning cheeks. She had come to her grandmother’s house to escape him, but she did not have to worry. She would probably never see him again now that he had the book.
The thought led to a still more lowering realization. She had considered herself above the common reader of the book. She did not need the writer’s advice. She could be amused by its passages on bonnets and balls. Her only use for the book had been to further her search for her father. And yet she had failed to heed its wisdom and suffered for it like the least sensible ninny whoever hunted a husband.
She was guilty of folly, deceived into thinking a man sincere, not by succumbing to his words, which she could easily dismiss, but succumbing to the flattery of his attention. And, if she were wholly honest with herself, flaming cheeks honest, to the flattery of a man’s body pressed eagerly to hers. He had probably deceived Miranda, the shopgirl, in just the same way. The girl had been jealous, needlessly so, but jealous nonetheless.
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It was not just Hazelwood’s perfidy fueling her frustration. Her cousins, too, had foiled her. She had wished to linger discreetly nearby the shop to follow the big man when he emerged, but she had been unable to even broach the matter with her cousins. She could not pursue the big man at the moment, but she could get her book back.
She found her grandmother dozing in the overheated room while her companion read aloud. Jane offered her grandmother the lemony soap and persuaded her to take a drive in spite of the cold that afflicted London. As soon as they were settled in the carriage, her grandmother confessed. “You rescued me, miss, and I know you know it. I could not have endured another chapter of that dreadful Raby novel Margaret is reading.”
Jane laughed. “Then perhaps I may ask for a favor, grandmother.”
Her grandmother frowned.
“Nothing grand. I need to send some messages without Hazelwood’s notice. Could I employ one of your footmen?”
“Hah! Escaped your keeper’s leash, have you?”
“For now.”
Upon their return to the house, Jane set to work to craft a message she hoped would persuade Miss Miranda Kirby to help her.
* * * *
The shop was colder than ever when Nate slipped in from the back with a hammer and nails and some thin strips of wood. Even for a man who’d grown up on Bread Street with thin coats and no coal, the cold felt unusually bitter.
Miranda sat huddled on her stool and didn’t look up. The glow of the lamp picked out the fiery strands of her hair.
“I’ll board up that window now.”
“I thought Papa was going to do it.”
It wasn’t Nate’s usual work, but of course, he’d volunteered to do it just to see her. “He’s finishing an evening coat for Lord Hazelwood. He takes Miss Fawkener to a ball tonight.”
“Oh that. It’s not a ball,” she corrected him, “it’s a party. I’ll be surprised if Lord Hazelwood does take her.”
“What do you know about it?” Nate leaned the strips of board against the wall and dropped a fistful of nails on one end of the counter.
“They met right here in the shop today.”
He couldn’t help but turn, and saw his mistake at once. Miranda’s eyes were lit up with whatever secret knowledge she possessed. He turned back to position the first of the wooden strips across the broken window. “She knows about this place? Does she know about the club?”
“Of course not. She came to buy French soap, about which she knows nothing.”
“How did her buying soap put them at odds?” He hammered in the first nail.
“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” Miranda really was a frustrating female.
“You want to tell me, so, I expect, I’ll find out.” He hammered three more nails in place. He was positioning the second strip of wood when she spoke again.
“Do you think she’s pretty, Miss Fawkener, I mean?”
He knew how a smart man would answer that one. “Not like you.”
He had time to nail in the second board before she responded.
“What does that mean—not like me—is she pretty in some other way?”
“Most girls are pretty in some way. They all have eyes and cheeks and curls and…” He could see from her frown that he was not making things better. He gave up trying to convey the nuances of male appreciation for female beauty. “You are pretty in all ways.”
He lifted the third board into place, and cut off the chill wind.
“Well, I’ll tell you what put them at odds. He let her see his attachment to me, and she didn’t like it one bit.”
If Nate didn’t know better, he’d think that Miranda had been smoking a pipe in the opium dens of Wapping. He finished his hammering before he turned to her. She would get her heart broken dreaming Lord Hazelwood would marry her.
“Miranda, Lord Hazelwood never suggested that he and you had any kind of attachment. He’s a viscount, and you’re—” He paused. He couldn’t bring himself to say that she was nobody. He knew all about being a nobody, but he couldn’t let her deceive herself in such a serious matter.
She had come off her stool, her eyes big, ready to battle for her illusions when the shop bell jingled.
A footman in dark green livery entered, carrying an envelope in his gloved hand. He stopped cold when he saw her. “Miss Miranda Kirby?” he asked.
Miranda nodded and held out her hand for the envelope. She broke the seal, unfolded the pressed paper, and turned away to her lamp to read.
“Can Miss give me an answer?” the footman asked.
“One minute.” She disappeared through the curtain. The footman cast a dismissive glance over Nate with his hammer and nails.
Miranda returned with a skip in her step and a look that told Nate she would not reveal the contents of her letter.
“Here’s my reply to your mistress.” Miranda handed the footman the folded paper again and a tip for his service like the haughtiest London lady, and the fellow took off.
“Miranda, what are you about?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She lifted her chin in her best fine-lady imitation. Nate felt his heart sink. It was pointless to tell his proud, stubborn love that she would suffer if she did not mind her place in the world.
The best remedy for the inevitable disappointments and embarrassments of the Husband Hunter’s misjudgment in one case is a return to the fray. One ball, one rout party, one excursion to the park or to a museum, or one evening at the theatre is inevitably followed by another. A certain stamina for pleasure is a necessary quality of the serious Husband Hunter. She must be willing, even after severe disappointment to dry her tears, don her best raiment, and go forth to give and receive pleasure in the company of others. A willingness to let go of the anticipated pleasures denied her and to look with favor on the pleasures immediately available marks her as a woman worthy of the happiness that will ultimately be hers.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter Seventeen
When Jane returned to the hotel, she discovered that Hazelwood had been there and left her a message. There was an evening to be got through, and then she would put her plan in motion.
It was plain that Hazelwood was not strictly a protocol officer. He was a tool of the government. He had stuck to her side and flattered her and even made love to her simply to obtain her father’s hard won information while doing nothing to find her father.
She would get her book back and move out of Hazelwood’s reach. She would be safe from him in her cousins’ house. Once there, she would take the first opportunity to find the hidden map. As long as she, not Hazelwood, possessed the information for which her father had risked his life, she would be in a position to bargain with the Foreign Office.
Mrs. Lowndes listened without comment to Jane’s plan of moving to her cousins’ house and began to help direct Nell in packing Jane’s things. Jane offered her a hug, and the good lady waved away Jane’s thanks. Jane set to work immediately sending messages. Activity kept her mind as fully occupied as she could wish right up until the moment that Hazelwood called to collect them for the evening’s engagement.
In the carriage no one remarked on anything other than the weather. Hazelwood and Mrs. Lowndes agreed they’d not experienced a colder January. Jane said nothing about mountain caves and passes in that part of the world where her father might be held captive through the winter because the British government refused to come to his aid and instead set a protocol officer to spy on his daughter.
Outside the grand house, where the party was to be held, they waited in a long string of carriages, growing colder by the moment, until it was their turn to alight and enter the heated rooms of their hosts. The requirements of politeness, the noise of guests greeting their hostess, and the tide of movement made conversation impossible for nearly half an h
our as they ascended a grand staircase and passed into a vast glittering salon. The press of the crowd did not permit Hazelwood to offer both ladies an arm, so Jane insisted he give his arm to Mrs. Lowndes while she walked behind them. The ladies around them looked so lightly clad they might have been in the disrobing room of the women’s baths of Halab. Beside them, Jane felt invisible.
As they finally entered the salon, Hazelwood grasped her arm firmly above the elbow, arresting her movement. He spoke directly into her right ear. “Shall we argue?”
“Later,” she said, shaking off his hold and smiling to see Lady Violet present. Violet at once introduced Jane to a gentleman of her acquaintance. Jane accepted the arm he offered and followed him into a room arranged for dancing. Jane’s partner led her to a place in the set that was forming, and she set herself to concentrate on the pattern of the unfamiliar dance. Her partner was handsome, young, rich, and mad for politics. And Jane discovered how difficult it was to attend to an eligible partner when invisible gossamer strings bound one to another person in the room.
In spite of a warm welcome from Lady Violet and the dignity of Mrs. Lowndes on his arm, most of the guests, as they recognized Hazelwood, turned away. Jane tried to give her partner her smiles and her attention, but against her will, her gaze kept returning to Hazelwood as he crossed the salon speaking lightly as in jest to Mrs. Lowndes, apparently indifferent to the shoulders and heads that turned away from him. When he had settled Mrs. Lowndes among the chaperones, he did something Jane now knew him to be an expert at. He made himself invisible.
She told herself that he deserved such slights if he had done to others the sort of thing he had done to her, if he made girls love him with no intention of loving them back. He had probably made some ladies among the guests tonight love him, and now they punished him for having rejected them.