The Major Meets His Match

by Annie Burrows

  She learned why as they took their seats.

  ‘Only just made it in time,’ said Mama. ‘I should have been most displeased if my detour to fetch you had caused me to miss the opening statements.’

  Having neatly put Harriet in her place, Mama then gave her full attention to the talk that followed.

  To Harriet’s surprise, it was not about gases—which she’d thought was Mama’s latest field of enquiry—but stars. And she could actually understand some of it.

  Still, it wasn’t long before her attention began to stray. There was only so much science a girl could stomach. Which made her wonder why there were so many females present. And some of them dressed, contrary to what Mama had said, with what could only be described as flamboyance.

  She was just wondering what on earth had prompted an extremely thin young lady to wear a turban with feathers in, unless it was to annoy the gentlemen seated behind her, when she noticed that the gentleman in question was Lord Becconsall. And far from seeming annoyed by the feathers, he had his eyes closed. And his arms folded across his chest. As though he was taking a nap.

  Which was just typical. While everyone else was hanging on every word uttered by Mr...she frowned as she tried to recall the name and only came up with Cabbage, though she wasn’t convinced that was correct... Ulysses—that was, Lord Becconsall—was gently snoring.

  She sniffed and turned her head away. What kind of man attended a lecture only to fall asleep during its course? A man who would...make a girl think he found her attractive, intriguing, only to...dash her hopes by...well, to be honest he had no idea he’d dashed any hopes. Because he didn’t know she’d discovered he was only interested in her as the subject of a wager.

  But if he thought she was going to dance with him again, let alone speak to him, then he’d very soon discover his mistake.

  For the next few minutes Harriet amused herself by constructing several speeches in her head, all of them designed to annihilate his considerable self-esteem with the eloquence of her witheringly crushing wit. And was therefore rather surprised when suddenly everyone around her began to applaud. And the man at the central desk bowed. Then people began to get to their feet.

  ‘Well,’ said Mama. ‘What did you think of that?’

  ‘Um...’ said Harriet, desperately trying to think of a polite response.

  Mama sighed. ‘If I had brought William he would have found it most instructive.’

  Harriet flinched at the mention of Mama’s favourite child and, since her head was already full of pithy rejoinders, she found herself uttering one.

  ‘Well, since William is several thousand miles away, hunting for plants, you could not very well have done so, could you, Mama?’

  Instead of slapping her down for her impertinence, though, Mama just shook her head. ‘The only one of you to take after me,’ she said morosely. ‘Or so I have always believed.’ She looked at Harriet. Really looked at her, instead of through her. ‘But there is more of my temper about you than I had thought. Perhaps,’ she said, gathering her reticule as though in preparation for standing up, ‘though you do not show any signs of great intellect, it might be worth my while spending more time with you.’

  What? All it had taken for Mama to wish to spend more time with her was for her to be rude? She wished she’d known that years ago.

  Or perhaps not. Spending time with Mama would mean sitting through more lectures like this one, only to be told at the end that she was a disappointment for not having much in the way of intellect. She preferred going round the shops with her aunt. At least at the end of what Mama would condemn as an afternoon frittered away, she had some new clothes to show for the experience. Which had been purchased from motives of generosity, even if they hadn’t, so far, been exactly a success.

  ‘Good afternoon, Lady Harriet,’ said a voice close to her ear. The voice of Lord Becconsall.

  For a moment she contemplated cutting him. But before she could sniff, or turn her head away, or anything like that, he’d turned his attention to her mother.

  ‘And you must be Lady Balderstone.’ He bowed over Mama’s hand.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mama. ‘A friend of Harriet’s, are you?’

  ‘I like to think so,’ said Lord Becconsall provocatively. To Harriet’s mind. Since he was nothing of the kind. And then he stepped slightly to one side to reveal Archie. ‘Allow me to introduce my friend, Mr Kellett,’ he said to Mama.

  ‘Kellett?’ Mama practically thrust Harriet aside to seize the young man’s hand. ‘Not Thomas Kellett? The Thomas Kellett?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Archie, going rather red in the face.

  ‘The Thomas Kellett who has been doing such splendid work with the isolation of the essential elements?’

  ‘Ah, well, you know,’ he said, his face lighting up, ‘nothing like the strides being made by Nicholson and Carlisle with natronium and kallium, but I am hoping, now that I have constructed my own voltaic pile...’

  Harriet stifled a sigh. Once people began to pepper their sentences with words ending in -ium there would be no understanding the half of it.

  ‘So now I know where you have acquired your knowledge of all things scientific,’ said Lord Becconsall, with a mocking smile. Which set her teeth on edge all the way down her spine. ‘Your mother is, according to Archie, something of a phenomenon.’

  ‘And I suppose he wouldn’t let you rest until he had been introduced,’ she said acidly.

  ‘Correct,’ said Lord Becconsall, oblivious to her dig about him sleeping through the lecture. Clearly she was going to have to speak more bluntly if she was going to succeed in insulting him.

  ‘You managed to get quite a bit of sleep, none the less, though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Lady Harriet,’ said Lord Becconsall with a mocking smile. ‘Never say you were watching me, rather than attending to the lecture?’ He laid his hand upon his heart. ‘I am touched. Deeply touched.’

  ‘I was not watching you rather than attending—’

  ‘No? Then, you will be able to fill me in on the salient points. Archie is bound to want to talk about them on the way home and I should not wish to disappoint him by being unable to contribute to the conversation.’

  ‘First of all, I very much doubt that. I think you are far more likely to tell him, to his face, without the slightest hint of shame, that you slept through pretty much the whole lecture. And second...’

  ‘Second?’ His smile twisted into a grin. ‘Let me guess. Knowing you, I suspect you were about to admit that your mind wandered far too often for you to be able to so much as tell anyone even one thing Mr Babbage said.’

  Babbage, that was it, not Cabbage.

  ‘But you do not know me,’ she retorted, despite the fact that he’d just described exactly what she’d been doing.

  ‘Then I shall look forward to that particular pleasure,’ he said, leaning close and lowering his voice. Which sent a velvet caress all the way down to the places he’d previously set on edge with his mockery.

  ‘You will do no such thing,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, but I shall. Bound to, during the course of the Season, since we will be going to the same balls and lectures...and parks.’

  The way he said that, all low, and sort of meaningfully, turned the velvet molten. How did he do that? Make her remember the kiss, that was? And the feel of his body, pressed up against hers? Just by saying the word parks, with a slightly different tone to his voice and a certain sort of glint in his eye?

  ‘We will not!’ She was never going to go to the park again. Not on her own anyway. Not when it was such a dangerous thing to do.

  ‘One outing to the Royal Institution enough for you, was it?’ He chuckled. ‘Cannot say I blame you. All I have gained from coming here is a crick in my neck.’

  ‘I was not referring to this
lecture hall.’

  ‘No?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, since it cannot be the balls I was mentioning, you must mean...’

  ‘That is just where you are wrong. I did mean the balls.’

  ‘Oh? You are giving up dancing then, are you?’

  ‘With you, yes.’

  ‘Come, come, just because we got off on the wrong foot...’

  ‘It has nothing to do with our feet,’ she said, stupidly. But then that was what happened when she got cross. Her words came out half-wrong. ‘I mean, it wasn’t to do with the way we met. It is what I have learned about you since.’

  The laughter died from his eyes.

  ‘Oh? And what, pray have you learned?’

  ‘You know very well what it is,’ she said, although she knew he probably didn’t. ‘So don’t bother asking me to dance. And don’t come calling again. I shall not receive you.’

  ‘Is that so?’ His face had set into an expression that looked as though she’d just handed him a challenge. ‘We’ll see,’ he said softly.

  And with just a hint of menace.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It stung.

  He didn’t know why it should, but when she’d flung her chin up like that and told him she would never dance with him again, nor admit him to her home, it had most definitely stung.

  ‘I s-say,’ Archie suddenly panted, from somewhere behind him. ‘C-could you slow d-down a t-touch?’

  ‘What? Oh, sorry, old friend, I was miles away.’ And had started walking much faster as irritation had gone fizzing through his veins.

  ‘Alm-most literally,’ said Archie with a smile. ‘Civilians like me aren’t used to c-covering the miles on f-foot like you military men.’

  And that was when it struck him. He’d felt the same, when she’d rebuffed him just now, as he’d felt every time he’d been passed over for promotion. When the credit had gone to someone who didn’t play the fool. In other words, to some stiff and starchy booby who had no imagination and stuck to the rules like glue.

  Was that what she wanted, then? Some stickler for propriety, with no sense of humour, who probably voted Tory and sent tenants to the gallows when they had the temerity to poach from his land instead of meekly lying down and starving?

  He hadn’t thought so. He’d thought she was...

  He couldn’t put it into words. It was just as though he’d recognised her, somehow. The way she struggled to fit in. The way she...

  Hang it. What did it matter anyway? It wasn’t as if he was in love with her.

  He clapped Archie on the back and smiled. The devil-may-care smile that was his armour against all of life’s setbacks.

  ‘Enjoy the lecture, did you?’

  ‘Very much. Although the highlight of this afternoon had to be meeting Lady Balderstone. Never usually stirs from her estate, you know, and one c-can’t simply ride out there and visit.’

  Something stirred in the labyrinths of Jack’s mind. Something mischievous.

  ‘You...ah...keen to see her again, then, are you, old man?’

  Archie nodded, his eyes gleaming through the hair that Jack itched to set about with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Then we must definitely call upon her.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes.’ Archie had just handed him the perfect way to exact revenge on Lady Harriet. Because he would not be calling upon her again. Oh, no. He would be calling upon the fascinating Lady Balderstone instead, in the company of one of her most fervent admirers.

  He might even set up a flirtation with her, while he was at it. See how Lady Harriet liked that.

  ‘B-but you must have b-better things to do,’ said Archie.

  ‘Well, that’s just it, I haven’t.’ The old army cronies with whom he’d spent the first few weeks in Town, drinking and going over old battles, only reminded him of what he’d lost. Oh, he wouldn’t have had a brilliant career in the army, he was too apt to ignore orders from superiors when they were stupid, or worse, downright dangerous. But he’d been good at what he did. And he knew it. And his men had known it. Even some of his brother officers had admitted they wished they had his knack of getting their men to follow them the way his men followed him.

  But being Lord Becconsall—that was something he had no idea how to do. And nobody on his estates expected him to make so much as even a token effort to be him, either.

  All they’d asked of him was to do the Season and go back with a wife.

  Set up his nursery.

  Ensure the succession.

  Which was another reason why he’d been at such pains to avoid society events. He might have come to Town, but that didn’t mean he was going to meekly obey orders to find a wife.

  On the contrary.

  Which was why the moment his fascination with Lady Harriet had begun to alarm him, he’d gone into full retreat. She was only supposed to have been a minor and pleasant diversion. Once he’d satisfied his curiosity about her, he was supposed to have reported straight back to Zeus and consigned her to his past. Instead of which he hadn’t told any of them anything about her. And he’d been drawn to any event where she might be, like iron filings to a magnet.

  Even now, when she’d given him the perfect excuse to walk away and forget about her, he just couldn’t do it.

  Not at her bidding, anyway.

  No, because she had no right to forbid him to do anything or go anywhere. She was going to find that wherever she went, he would be there.

  Flirting with every other woman in the place. Showing her that she meant nothing to him.

  ‘I really think,’ said Archie plaintively, ‘that I c-could manage to get myself to a house in Grosvenor Square on my own without...g-getting lost, or c-committing some social solecism.’

  ‘I’m sure you could.’

  ‘Then, you don’t need to come with me, do you?’

  ‘What’s this, Archie? Want the lady scientist all to yourself, do you? Afraid I’ll queer your pitch?’

  ‘No.’ Archie went a bit pink in the face. ‘It’s just that...well, I don’t see why you all spend so much time p-pretending an interest in the things I am interested in, when—’

  ‘You aren’t going to upbraid me for catching forty winks during that lecture, are you?’ Jack cut in before Archie could really get going.

  ‘N-no, but see—’

  ‘Look, if you must know, I wasn’t asleep at all. I was just pretending.’

  ‘P-pretending? Why?’

  ‘Because I’d seen Lady Harriet come in, with her mother and...’ He’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off her. That she’d catch him staring at her, and think...well, he hadn’t been prepared to let her start thinking anything. ‘She was too distracting, if you must know,’ he admitted. Which was true. He’d hoped that once he’d told his friends who she was, that her identity was out in the open, she’d lose some of the fascination she held for him. It hadn’t worked. When her uncle had hauled her out of the drawing room, in a way that presaged trouble for her, he’d scarcely managed to stop himself from going with her. Because he wanted to defend her from whatever was about to happen. And when he’d seen her face, after the thundering scold she’d received for who knew what crime, he’d wanted to gather her into his arms and comfort her.

  And to crown it all, when he’d seen her earlier, all he’d wanted to do was drink in the sight of her like some...brainless, infatuated sapskull.

  Of course he’d shut his eyes and pretended she wasn’t there. What other defence did a man have?

  ‘Thank you for t-telling me. I wouldn’t have thought...’ He trailed off, his face flushing slightly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. A...thought I had. That’s all. A stupid thought, I c-can see. B-but then...truth is, I’ve b
-been a b-bit b-blue-devilled of late.’

  Jack darted him a glance. Why hadn’t he noticed the way his friend had been walking, with his head bowed as though weighted down with invisible burdens?

  ‘Want to tell me what ails you? I know I ain’t as clever as you, but you didn’t all start calling me Ulysses for nothing.’

  Archie glanced up, and smiled sadly. ‘You are out, there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In the way of thinking you are not as c-clever as I am. You are a master tactician. Couldn’t have led so many men into battle, and lost so few of them without having k-kind of mind that c-can implement c-complex strategies. And what you have done actually matters. To the outcome of the c-campaign as well as the men you k-kept alive. Whereas I...’ He sighed again. ‘Lady B-Balderstone reminded me of it, inadvertently of course, when she spoke of the discoveries being made of late in the field of isolating the elements. It feels as if every time I get to the point of a b-breakthrough, someone else b-beats me to it.’ He sighed again. ‘I am starting to feel like an imp-postor. That I ought to stop leeching off Zeus and go to t-teach in a school or something.’

  ‘I say, that’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’ Schoolboys would eat Archie alive.

  ‘P-possibly, but at least I would feel as if I was earning my living. Instead of sponging off Zeus.’

  ‘You aren’t sponging off him. He employs you as his chaplain, doesn’t he?’

  Archie made an impatient movement with his hand. ‘It’s a n-nominal appointment. Designed to give me p-pin money. I have never p-presided over a single service whilst living in K-Kelsham Park.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you need to let that side of things bother you. Zeus didn’t employ you to say prayers for him. He ain’t the slightest bit bothered about his soul. Since he thinks he’s God already.’

  Archie let out a surprised bark of laughter.

  ‘D-don’t be impious, Ulysses,’ he said. ‘Else he’ll strike you down with a b-bolt of lightning.’