Lord Haversham Takes Command

by Heidi Ashworth

  The idea bore more contemplation. He had behaved the perfect fool when he had visited with her parents and brothers, yet he was much more the Harry she had expected when it was only the two of them. What was so important that he must keep his true self hidden from her family? She felt that if she were to put the question to him when they were alone, he would as likely lie as not. She found she could not abide a liar but owned the possibility of secrets so important to be kept that the truth could not be shared. Depending on his reasons, she could find it in herself to forgive him.

  Whatever the case may be, Mira knew one thing: she had felt sure he meant to kiss her as he stood at the window, and for the first time in her life, was rather afraid she had meant to kiss him back. The tumult that had started in her chest when she feared he might plunge to his death on the ground below had subsided a bit, though perhaps it only seemed so in comparison to the insistent fluttering in her belly. Pressing her hands to her stomach, she moved to the washstand to begin her morning ablutions, suddenly determined to look her best.

  As she washed her face and combed her hair, she was set on accomplishing a number of other imperatives as well. First, she must discover what it was Harry was hiding, as well as answers to so many questions, such as why he had passed the night in the passage outside her room, and why he had again behaved as the tiresome Bertie. If the reasons for his sham performances were acceptable, and if he trusted her enough to tell her the truth, that was all she needed to feel confident that he was the man she wished to marry. When she was honest with herself, she admitted that he always had been. Next, she must discover the means to convince her parents of that fact. Last of all, though perhaps most imperative, was a much more pleasant task: to win Harry’s heart.

  With enticement in mind, Mira spent an inordinate amount of time over her toilette and refused to be rushed when her mother entered the room with a reminder that their journey would be resumed directly after breakfast. As it was clear her admonitions to be quick were falling on deaf ears, Lady Crenshaw took one of Mira’s long, red curls in her hand and proceeded to pepper her daughter with questions as they pinned up her hair.

  “Should you like your curls divided and off to each side or should we add a topknot at the crown?” Lady Crenshaw asked.

  “A topknot, certainly!”

  “And what about a ribbon? Blue to match your eyes or something to match your gown?”

  Mira briefly considered the blue but finally decided on the green as it matched the color of the leaves on her bonnet to perfection.

  Next were the difficult questions. “You are up rather early this morning. Did you not sleep well?”

  “In fact, I did not. I should be surprised anyone did with all that commotion,” Mira answered with a nonchalant air while analyzing her mother’s face in the mirror for a reaction.

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” Lady Crenshaw said, her expression above suspicion, “but I doubt I would have heard a gale outside my window what with the way your father snores!”

  “No! Not Papa!” Mira bantered, her mind occupied with the questions her mother should be asking, such as: What were you doing under the table with Harry Haversham yesterday afternoon?

  To Mira’s great relief, her mother didn’t ask but her next question was far from better. “You seem a bit anxious to look your best this morning. Is it on account of your cousin?”

  Mira bit back the sharp denial that came to her tongue. When the time came, it wouldn’t do at all for her mother to believe Mira had chosen Harry simply to escape marriage to George. Nor would it do for Lady Crenshaw to suppose that Mira was setting her cap for Harry, at least not at this point in her plans. “If I appear to be anxious, it is only in anticipation of arriving in London today. A girl has only one debutante Season, and I want everything to be flawless.” She twisted about in her chair to face her mother who was obliged to hastily release a clutch of curls from her grasp. “Mama, you know how much I love you and Papa, do you not?”

  “But, of course, my darling!” Lady Crenshaw dropped a kiss on her daughter’s nose. “Goose! Why do you ask?”

  Mira turned her attention to her reflection in the mirror and concentrated on holding still for the last few pins to anchor her coiffure. “It’s only that I am grown up now and shall soon be married. It is not a decision I take lightly. If I am to leave you and Papa, it would only be if I thought I should be truly happy with someone else.”

  Lady Crenshaw caught her daughter’s gaze in the mirror and held it with her own. “So, this is about George, is it not?”

  “I suppose, to some extent,” Mira admitted. “You know that I cannot abide him. Yet I do want to make you and Papa happy. Your happiness is my own.”

  “Your father and I would never wish you to sacrifice yourself for us,” Lady Crenshaw insisted. “At the same time, it might surprise you how much better the older generation is at pairing men and women than we are ourselves,” she said with a coquettish smile. “I never would have married your father if your great-grandmother hadn’t taken steps.”

  Mira had often heard the story of how her parents greatly disliked one another prior to being thrown together by Great-Grandmama. Mira rather doubted the quoting of a few lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest at a house party forced upon the hosts by a pox quarantine could make her love George the way her mother and father loved one another. In the end, there was nothing about George she could find to love. He was knowledgeable but not in the least wise. He was somewhat handsome but not attractive, at least not in her eyes. He was rich, but Mira never cared much for the things money could buy, aside from beautiful clothes. Though it made her feel slightly ashamed of herself to think such a thing, Mira had to admit the problem was not in her ability to love but in his very nature.

  “Mama,” Mira asked as she took her mother’s hand and rose to look her in the eyes. “Do you think you could have been as happy as you are now if you had married someone else?”

  “Well,” her mother said with a little laugh, “it wasn’t as if I had any other offers. Not legitimate ones, anyway. I suppose if I had waited long enough, someone might have come along and taken pity on me.”

  “Oh, Mama, never say so! I am persuaded there were scores of gentleman who would have given money to marry you!”

  With a wry smile, Lady Crenshaw shook her head and drew Mira down to sit on the bed beside her. “As to the question at hand, no, I do not think I would have been as happy as I am with your father and not only because I love him so much, as he does me. It has as much to do with the fact that loving him made me a better person, a person I could more easily live with as much as he. If I had married someone else — or not at all — I rather doubt I would have had enough reason to grow and change in the ways I have. So, really, it is about more than simply being with the person you love best. It is about becoming the person you can best live with as well.”

  “Oh, Mama,” Mira said around the lump that had formed in her throat. “How could I even think of marrying and leaving you and Papa? It is so very difficult to believe that I could love someone enough to leave you or to change for him. Shouldn’t I want my husband to love me for myself, just the way I am?”

  “But of course!” Lady Crenshaw said, gathering her daughter in her arms and giving her a squeeze. “And any man would! Why, you are beautiful, accomplished, and intelligent. What more could a man want? The question is do you want more?”

  With that, Lady Crenshaw stood and left her daughter to her thoughts, and troublesome thoughts they were. Was she only so against marriage to George because she would have to change in order to be happy with him? Could Mama be right in that she knew better who was best for her daughter? Or did she yearn for Harry because she knew, deep down inside, he would inspire her to become a better person if only he could somehow love her?

  There was one way to learn the truth. Surely this willingness to grow and change for the one you loved worked both ways. She would simply go to Harry’s room, knock on his door,
and ask him why he was found asleep in the passage outside her bedchamber. If he answered her question with the honest truth, she would take it as a sign that he cared for her enough to forever change from the deplorable Bertie to the Harry she knew lurked inside.

  She slipped into her shoes, hastened down the passageway to the room he had indicated belonged to him, and knocked boldly on the door. She could hardly swallow her disappointment when the man who answered the door wasn’t Harry at all, but the vacuous and intolerable Bertie, a fatuous smile fixed to his face and a quantity of lace at his chin and wrists. He stood, frozen with shock or some other nameless emotion, one hand on his hip and a foot turned out as if he were about to produce a pirouette. It was a stance she had always felt looked odd enough in dancing slippers but was utterly laughable in riding boots. However, she refused to give up so readily.

  Taking a deep breath, she rallied enough to ask what she had come to learn. “Lord Haversham, I find I cannot rest until I learn the answer to this question. Why did you sleep outside my door last night?” There, it was out and he must answer, one way or another. She prayed she would be able to hear his response above the pounding of her heart.

  “Why, Miss Crenshaw, my dear girl! Don’t you know, it’s what all the Parisian fellows do these days,” he said with a flip of his wrist. “They find the loveliest girl in the inn and they sleep outside her door. It’s terribly gallant, don’t you think?”

  It was a pretty answer, but Mira knew it to be a lie. Her disappointment now too great to hide, she felt her face fall. In fact, she was persuaded every muscle in her body had turned to jelly. Before she could put a hand against the wall to steady herself, he was there to balance her in his arms, and she found herself suddenly in his room with the door shut behind them.

  “Perceptive girl, I should have known I could never throw dust in your eyes long enough to deceive you about anything at all whatsoever,” he said, gazing earnestly into her face. “In point of fact, I did know it, which is why I was determined to stay as far away from you as possible,” he admitted as he assisted her into the chair alongside his bed, which, she noticed, had not been slept in.

  “But, Harry, why?” she asked, her heart beginning to again hammer in her chest. She sensed rather than saw the way the muscles in his shoulders tensed as he turned away from her.

  “Why must I lie to you? Pretend to be someone I am not?”

  She nodded, and he began to pace the bit of rug between the bed and the fireplace while she waited.

  Finally, he threw his hands in the air and said, “I can’t. I simply am not at liberty to explain why I must keep secrets from you. Perhaps one day I shall.” Kneeling at her feet, he took her hands in his. “You have always stood my friend and I must beg you to continue to do so,” he urged, his eyes glittering with unshed tears.

  Before she could form a reply, he rose to his feet and once again turned from her to stand with his hands braced against the mantel. “What might I do to convince you of my sincerity?”

  Mira had never in all her life felt such an intense range of emotions in so short a space of time. One minute her heart was pounding, the next it hung like lead in her chest. Every time her hopes had been lifted, they had been as equally dashed, and now he twisted her into pieces with a sorrow that seemed so genuine. However, if he could truthfully answer her original question with as much authentic feeling as he even now exhibited, she would give him the benefit of the doubt and wait with patience for the day when he could tell her all.

  “It is true, we have always been friends and it is my dearest wish we might remain so, though, as you must have guessed, I have no use for your Bertie.”

  “As I would have had no use for you should you have taken a shine to him,” Harry said with a rueful laugh.

  She rose to her feet and reached out to lay her hand on his arm but snatched it back. In spite of all the familiar interactions they enjoyed when they were young, to touch him now, if even in the same careless way, felt like a promise rather than a mere gesture. She pressed her hands together against her once again fluttering stomach and imposed her conditions.

  “I understand you feel you mustn’t tell me what is happening or why. Though I do not like it, I can see that you are sincerely distressed. It is not my wish to deepen that distress, yet I find I need some indication of your veracity. You need not tell me all; I merely wish to know the answer to a single question and should you tell me true, I will wait for the answers to the others for as long as you need keep them from me.”

  Slowly he turned to face her, his mouth a grim line even as hope lightened the shadows in his eyes. “Ask and I shall answer, but only if I am free to do so, in which case it will be God’s truth, I so swear it.”

  Now that the moment was at hand, Mira felt oddly reluctant. She knew her questions would reveal her feelings but she dared not trust him with something so precious as of yet. Perhaps it would be safer if her questions sounded chosen at random. “I suppose it would be most useful to ask why you have requested to be called Bertie and why you sometimes behave like a buffoon, however, based on the shadow that has just crossed your face, I daresay you would not answer me that one.”

  “In that you would be most correct,” he said with a tiny smile of relief.

  “There is always the matter of the pistol I saw half hidden in the folds of your clothing this morning, but that seems a most personal matter and one which you would likely find not for my delicate ears.”

  Harry gave her an arch look. “What is amiss about a man arming himself?”

  “Pity. I have learned that it isn’t always preferable to be right.”

  “If that is your question, I have answered it truthfully. That is, as truthfully as I can,” he said, spreading his hands in entreaty.

  “I might ask why you kissed me yesterday.” It was an audacious question, and her heart pounded a bit harder than to what she was accustomed.

  “For the same reason I kissed you all those years ago. I beg your pardon for implying I had forgotten it; I have not.”

  “That is not an answer,” she fired back.

  “Isn’t it?” he asked softly, chaining her gaze with his own. “It is clear as day to me.”

  For a moment, she felt so disordered in her brain that she failed to recollect her specific query and would have thrown herself into his arms without another word. One corner of reason remained, however, and it reminded her that lies fell easily from his lips. She must ask her question, and he must answer true before she turned her heart over to him. “Why, then, did you sleep outside my door last night?” she asked, bowing her head to prevent his looking into her face to read what was written there.

  He laughed, a pleasant sound full of ease. “Are you sure that is the one you want to know? It is quite simple, really. You were in danger, and I meant to protect you. That is all.”

  “I? In danger?” Mira asked, incredulous.

  “But of course. Did I not just say so?”

  “You can’t mean from my cousin? Surely not! He is weak and tedious but along with that comes cowardice. He would never force himself upon me.”

  “No?” he asked and drew a deep breath. “I am most relieved. But, in truth, that is not the danger of which I spoke.”

  It was clear that he was preparing to reveal a secret, and the very idea sent a trill of delight along her spine.

  “I am in service to the Qu … ” he said, hesitating, “rather, I am involved in something … something thoroughly honorable that I wish I could share with you, but I cannot. I ought not but I will tell you that I was the target of yesterday’s shooting. Either that or Higgins was. Or rather, both of us. At any rate, there are those who want me dead,” he said shortly. “I didn’t care so much for myself,” he added, his voice shaking a trifle, “but knowing that I had put you and your most esteemed parents in danger was too much to bear.”

  Mira, too stunned to speak, sat with her mouth open in a most unladylike fashion.

  “I see t
hat you don’t believe me, but Mira, it is true. I wish it weren’t so, but it is and it’s all I can say. Meanwhile, my being here, still, with you in this inn, puts you in danger, but I … I simply couldn’t bring myself to leave you.” He paused and closed his eyes, then opened them again with a sigh. “That is why I slept outside your door last night, to protect you even as I was increasing your danger by so doing. Will you forgive me for my weakness?”

  Very quietly, Mira stood and held out her hand to him. Taking it in his, he kissed it with a fervency that felt as real as anything as Mira had ever known. Gently, she drew it away and without a word, opened the door and shut it behind her, her heart hammering in her chest. She thought he had been about to say that he was in service to the Queen. Could he have meant the Queen of England? Surely not! There was nothing left to do now but leave Harry alone with his deceit for she had never heard such a pack of lies in all her life.

  Chapter Six

  Harry had never been so indiscreet in all his life. What was it about Mira that caused him to come so undone? He had let slip too much, more than he should have, more, even, than was safe, yet far less than he wished. If she guessed the truth as to his mission in the Queen’s secret service … should she spread it about … the consequences did not bear thinking on.

  Once the door had closed behind her and she had descended the stairs to take breakfast, he felt it safe to quit the room, accompanied by a better hidden pistol, to check the passageway for signs of anything untoward. He then took the servants’ stairs to the kitchen and on out the back door to do a circuit of the grounds before he returned to his room and down the proper set of stairs to the dining room where he found the entire Crenshaw family seated just as they had been the afternoon prior.

  “I bid you a ravishing good morning!” he chirped in his best Bertie intonations. “It would seem there is something especially welcoming about this table as it’s the selfsame one at which you were seated yesterday.” He favored Mira with a hint of a smile in memory of how he had kissed her under said selfsame table, but she looked pointedly away, staring at her cup of hot chocolate as if it had grown horns.