‘I can see you are deeply troubled, Lady Harriet,’ he said, setting up a pace that anyone watching them would describe as a casual stroll. ‘About your aunt, at a guess.’
‘What makes you think that?’
He chuckled. ‘Lady Harriet, you are practically doing cartwheels in the attempt to restore her to her normal frame of mind.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do. Nothing but the direst need would have induced you to come outside with me like this. Not after the...er...lesson you received in the park that morning.’
She glowered up at him as he described what she was starting to regard as one of the most pleasant experiences of her life as a lesson.
‘But we are not alone. As you pointed out, there are several other couples taking the air. As well as a brace of single gentlemen poisoning their lungs with cigar smoke.’
He drew her to a halt and turned her to face him.
‘If you don’t want to tell me, I can understand that. But don’t take me for a fool, Lady Harriet.’
She didn’t. Lord Becconsall, for all his playfulness, was nobody’s fool. He was the only man tonight who had noticed that anything was amiss with her aunt. The only man who’d bothered to enquire about it. The only one to seem to care.
Oh, how she wished she could tell him all about it. That they could revert to the easy way they’d got into, albeit briefly, of talking about all sorts of personal things. Like his odious brothers and her inability to choose clothes wisely. But she couldn’t. He’d made a strategic withdrawal when she’d asked him if he was going on that picnic. She’d seen it in his eyes. She supposed she should be glad he was doing what he could not to raise false hope in her heart. It was honourable of him. If he were a different sort of man he could very well use the easy way they’d got into of speaking to each other to take advantage. Right now he could be luring her into a darkened corner and kissing her again. She wouldn’t resist. And he knew it.
She whirled away from him, clasping her hands to her breast.
He followed, her, laid his hands on her shoulders, and turned her round, a questioning expression in his eyes.
‘Lady Harriet?’
‘I...I cannot!’ She gulped. ‘Ask me about something else, instead. Or let me tell you all about the picnic.’
‘The picnic?’
‘Yes. You would have enjoyed it immensely, you know. Some of the girls there behaved really badly. First of all Miss Angstrom got stung by a bee and let loose a screech that set all the dogs for miles around howling. And then, when Miss Jeavons saw that it made certain gentlemen take notice, she pretended to faint.’
For a moment, it looked as if he was going to object to her conversational choice. But then he half-shrugged, as though giving in.
‘How do you know she was only pretending?’
‘Because she sort of slid all the way down Lord Lensborough’s front, then landed in a graceful pose right at his feet.’
‘Did she?’ He almost smiled at that.
‘Yes, and then his younger brother, Captain Challinor, dashed a cup of water in her face. Which brought her round in a twinkling.’
‘Water has a tendency to do that. I wonder you didn’t try that remedy on me when you found me in a similar condition.’
‘Oh, well, there wasn’t a river nearby to fetch it from. Or any empty glasses to hand.’
He gave her a look.
‘I know what you are doing, Lady Harriet,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it for the best?’
He turned away from her and leant his hands on the balustrade bordering the terrace. ‘Yes,’ he said grimly. Causing something inside her to curl up and whimper.
Until that moment, she hadn’t realised just how lonely she was. Only now that he was agreeing with her, that it was best they maintain a distance from each other, did she understand just how badly she wanted to confide in him. To unburden herself. Even ask him for help.
‘It...it really isn’t my secret to tell.’
‘I understand,’ he said, turning to look at her over his shoulder. ‘And I commend your loyalty.’
‘You...you do?’
‘Yes, and, Lady Harriet, should there be any way in which I may be of service...’
‘There isn’t,’ she said more sharply than she’d intended. ‘And don’t ask about it any more.’
He raised his hands as if in surrender. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
And now she was angry with him for giving in so easily.
‘You had better take me back to my aunt now.’
‘Very well,’ he said, without even making a token protest.
Well, naturally not. Because he didn’t really care. This was all some kind of game to him. He’d told her so. She wasn’t sure yet what part he wanted her to play in his game, but the one thing she did know was that she couldn’t rely on him.
No matter how much she wished she could.
Oh, how she wished she’d never come out here. Well, that was one thing that was easily remedied. All she had to do was go back inside.
And so, giving him one last look which she hoped revealed how disappointed in him she was, she whirled away from him and marched across the terrace with her fists clenched.
Chapter Nine
‘Lady Harriet, wait!’
Lord Becconsall grabbed her hand before she’d gone more than a couple of paces from him and placed it on his sleeve, matching his own pace to her stride.
‘It needs to look as if I am leading you,’ he warned her out of the corner of his mouth. Which brought her to a standstill. It was things like this that made her like him so much. Oh, how could he do this to her?
Injecting every ounce of disdain she could muster into her movement, she removed her hand from his arm.
‘Don’t think you can bully me,’ she hissed.
‘What? I say, that’s a bit extreme, even for you. Especially when I was only trying to observe the conventions which—’
‘Stuff conventions!’
To her irritation, he grinned. ‘Well, most of the time I’d agree with you, but if I just let you flounce back into the ballroom with your fists clenched, after everyone saw us going outside together, it would create the kind of speculation that your aunt wouldn’t like, even if you don’t care what anyone thinks of you.’
Having delivered that little homily, he extended his arm to her in the correct manner.
Giving her the choice whether to lay her hand on it and behave correctly, or resume her headlong flight from the terrace.
She didn’t have to think it over for long. She’d come here tonight vowing to support her aunt by behaving impeccably. Creating gossip by making it look as though Lord Becconsall had insulted her in some way, after she’d strayed out of sight of her chaperon, was the exact opposite. And it was a good job Lord Becconsall had reminded her in time.
‘I apologise for implying that you are a bully,’ she said grudgingly as she laid her hand on his sleeve.
‘Was that what you did? I assumed,’ he said as they stepped back into the ballroom, ‘that it was the equivalent of kicking the cat.’
‘Cat? What cat?’
‘The metaphorical one that takes the brunt of your anger when whatever it is that has made you angry isn’t in reach.’
‘Oh, that cat.’ Goodness, but he was perceptive. It was Uncle Hugo with whom she was really angry. Lord Becconsall was...she darted him a glance...incredibly endearing, actually. Even though he’d teased her rather a lot, there had never been any malicious intent to it. He’d warned her how he felt about marriage and stayed away rather than raise false hope in her breast. He’d even taken steps to prevent her from creating a scene—though he had been the one to goad her into losing her temper in the first
place.
She was just starting to wish she hadn’t been quite so sharp with him when she noticed that Lady Tarbrook was no longer sitting by herself. Lord Becconsall’s three friends, from the park, were standing all round her.
She felt his arm tense beneath her hand and darted him a look. Hadn’t he known they were going to be here? Was he as embarrassed to see them, with her clinging to his arm, as she was going to be, to have to acknowledge them in front of Aunt Susan? Unwittingly, her fingers gripped Lord Becconsall’s sleeve rather tightly, which was excessively stupid, since he was at the root of her potential humiliation.
But, as if sensing she needed reassurance, he patted her hand and kept his own resting over hers when they drew to a halt before her aunt’s chair.
‘Lady Harriet,’ he said, ‘permit me to introduce you to my friends. Lord Rawcliffe...’ he indicated the one they’d called Zeus in the park ‘...Captain Bretherton of his Majesty’s navy...’ who was the skeletal giant ‘...and Mr Thomas Kellett.’
She let out a relieved breath as she curtsied to them all in turn. For he’d made it sound as though they had only just met for the first time tonight.
They all bowed in their turn and muttered suitable responses. Though each of them stared at her rather harder than absolutely necessary. And in the case of the one they called Zeus, with so much contempt in his eyes that he made her feel like some kind of...insect that he dearly wished to flick from his friend’s sleeve and crush under his heel.
‘Lady Tarbrook,’ said Lord Becconsall, ‘I can see they have already made themselves known to you.’
‘Oh, I have known this scamp ever since he was in short coats,’ she said, reducing Zeus from god to toddler with one offhand remark and a dismissive motion with her fan. The look on his face was priceless. Oh, how she admired her aunt.
‘He has introduced me to his two friends,’ said Aunt Susan. ‘And yours, I now learn, Lord Becconsall.’
‘Yes. We were all at school together.’
‘Oh, that accounts for it,’ said Lady Tarbrook, casting Mr Kellett a rather scathing look. As though he had no business hobnobbing with titled gentlemen. Or captains in his Majesty’s navy.
Harriet felt indignant on his behalf. She hated to see anyone dismissed as being of no account, knowing exactly how it felt. For she’d been of no account pretty much all her life.
‘I have heard of you, I think,’ she said to the man she could have sworn they’d called Archie.
‘Have you?’ He peered at her through the fringe flopping into his puzzled brown eyes, putting her in mind of a shortsighted spaniel. ‘C-can’t think why you should have.’
‘Lady Harriet is, perchance, a follower of all the latest scientific investigations,’ said Lord Rawcliffe sarcastically, ‘and has been impressed by the brilliance of your latest publication regarding your theories concerning the properties of dephlogisticated air.’
If there was one thing Harriet knew about, thanks to her mother’s obsession with all things scientific, it was the vast range of theories currently being hotly debated regarding various gases.
‘Not at all,’ she said, flinging up her chin mutinously. ‘There is nothing the least bit impressive about suffocating mice under glass domes.’
All three men changed the way they were looking at her.
Aunt Susan sighed. As if to say, that is the end of that. For she firmly believed that if there was one thing more detrimental to a girl’s chances of success in the matrimonial stakes than being too old, it was being too clever.
But Lord Becconsall chuckled.
‘You have underestimated her, Rawcliffe,’ he said. ‘She clearly knows all about the experiments to determine what it is in the air that sustains life.’
Something flashed between the two men. Something that looked suspiciously like rivalry. And for some reason she didn’t understand, she felt like confirming the confidence Lord Becconsall had shown in her, whilst taking the odiously cynical Rawcliffe down a peg or two at the same time. She reached into the deepest recesses of her memory for anything her mother might have said, which she could fling at him.
‘Well, who could fail to be interested by the experiments of the British Pneumatic Institution to attempt to treat disease by the inhalation of various gases,’ she said, hoping she’d recalled the name of the society correctly.
‘Science being put to a practical use, rather than merely for its own sake,’ said Lord Becconsall at once, approvingly.
‘Exactly,’ she said without a qualm. Although she had no idea what gases were inhaled, or for what purpose, she didn’t think she’d been too far from saying something vaguely intelligent, because Mr Kellett was nodding eagerly.
‘It is a great p-pity Mr Davy d-did not pursue his initial experiments with factitious airs,’ he said. ‘I think he might have b-been on to something there. My own work—’
‘For the lord’s sake, do not start boring the present assembly with an exposition of your current experiments,’ said Rawcliffe scathingly.
To her fury, Mr Kellett subsided at once, with the air of a spaniel who’d just been kicked by its master.
The naval officer patted Kellett’s drooping shoulders in a sympathetic manner, which made her rather like him. He’d been the one to put a stop to the teasing in the park, too, now she came to think of it. That he’d done it by flinging her up into the saddle had infuriated her at the time, but at least he had enabled her to escape a situation that had been becoming downright unnerving.
‘That’s the trouble with being a genius, Archie,’ said Lord Becconsall. ‘You leave the rest of us floundering in the wake of your brilliance. We wouldn’t understand the half of what you are saying.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Kellett. ‘Not the t-topic for a b-ballroom.’ He shot Rawcliffe an abject look. ‘Forgot.’
‘No matter,’ said Rawcliffe, his expression mellowing a touch. ‘That is what you employ me for, is it not?’
‘Employ you?’ Aunt Susan’s eyes rounded. ‘But—you are one of the wealthiest men in England.’
So why wasn’t she attempting to get him to notice Harriet? she wondered. Or, more to the point, Kitty? It could only mean there was something seriously wrong with him as a prospective husband. She’d have to ask her what it was later.
‘It was my little joke, my lady,’ said Rawcliffe with a sardonic smile. ‘For, although my friend is, nominally, employed by me in the capacity of, ah, chaplain, is it not—’ he gave Kellett a wry look ‘—I have long since learned that, when in pursuit of some new theory, he will give me orders for raw materials and equipment as though I am merely his assistant, whilst shamelessly poaching my staff to act in various menial capacities.’
Mr Kellett hung his head. ‘Forget, sometimes. Sorry.’
‘No need. When you make the discovery that will rock the scientific world, my name, too, will go down in history. As your sponsor and benefactor.’
‘And indeed, I am sure it is very generous of you,’ said Aunt Susan. Although she didn’t look the slightest bit impressed. ‘But, look, Harriet my dear. Here is Mr Swaffham come to claim his dance. If you will excuse her, my lords, Captain, Mr Kellett?’
Harriet had never been so glad to see someone coming over with the intention of asking her to dance. There was something about Lord Becconsall and his three friends that made her extremely uncomfortable. And it wasn’t just the way she reacted, physically, to him. It was...the way they spoke as if each word had a hidden meaning, known only to the four of them. As if there were undercurrents beneath their behaviour that only they understood. Which effectively shut out the rest of the world.
And she’d had quite enough of being made to feel like an outsider by her own family. She had no desire to suffer the same kind of exclusion from people who were practically strangers.
Chapter Ten
Poor Mr Swaffham did not receive anything like the attention she’d bestowed upon him during their previous dances together. Because Harriet couldn’t stop watching Lord Becconsall and his three friends, in spite of having told herself she wanted nothing to do with a group of men who’d first witnessed her behaving badly, then given her a bit of a scare and finally just made her feel excluded.
She watched them making their excuses to Aunt Susan and leaving her side almost as soon as Harriet had taken her place in the set. She watched them strolling round the room, greeting acquaintances or, in the case of the odious Lord Rawcliffe, cutting people he clearly regarded as impertinent for daring to accost him. And she watched them making their way, inexorably, in the direction of the exit.
She was glad they were leaving. She had no wish to speak to Lord Becconsall again. Or, heaven forbid, dance with him. No, twice in one night was entirely too much. People would start to link her name with his if she danced with him twice.
Oh. Would they do that with Mr Swaffham? She shot him a speculative glance as the dance came to an end. Thankfully, he was looking rather disgruntled, which meant that any speculation in that quarter was likely to be short-lived.
She smiled at him apologetically as he extended his arm to lead her back to her aunt. But from the cool way he took his leave of her it was highly unlikely he would be asking her to dance with him any time soon.
Oh, dear. Aunt Susan would be so disappointed.
In an effort to mitigate her offence Harriet sat up straight and drew her shoulders back. Not that Aunt Susan had admonished her for slouching. In fact, she wasn’t watching Harriet at all. She was simply staring off into space and fanning herself rapidly. And, Harriet noticed with alarm, looking a most unhealthy colour.
‘Aunt Susan, are you feeling quite well?’
Her aunt turned her head very slowly. And gulped.
It was all the answer Harriet needed.
‘Come along, Aunt Susan,’ she said, taking her by the elbow to encourage her to her feet. ‘We’ll go in search of fresh air, shall we?’
The Major Meets His Match Page 10