Eager to join Mira for their ride, he forced himself to concentrate and was rewarded with a clear picture of the red-sealed orders where they lay on the tray Randall had brought up, the same tray he had thereafter removed. Harry realized that the fire on the landing had distracted him from his vigilance, and that the orders had not been burnt but had been taken down to the kitchens where they might have fallen into any number of hands. He was grateful that those particular orders divulged little more than that Harry was to stay put, but their presence alone was additional proof that Harry was far from the fribble he affected to be. Grateful that his most recent orders had not fallen under the eyes of his enemies, he took up his pistol and departed his bedchamber, leery of anyone who might forestall him and thus deprive him of even one precious minute with Mira.
As he did not wish to wake any of his guests and encourage unwanted company, both congenial and murderous, Harry waited to don his boots until he gained the front hall. He handled the great front door with as much care as possible and hoped few to none heard the slight squeak of the hinges. Finally, he gained the stables and was delighted to see Mira had arrived before him. She was glorious in her deep blue riding habit, her hair aglow in a rare morning beam of sunshine, and the way she smiled and held her hands out to him induced such a wash of emotion — love, adoration, regret, sorrow, and longing — that tears started in his eyes.
Abashed that she should see his weakness or perhaps discern his latest secret, he shook away the drops of moisture and affected pain from an imaginary bit of straw before he took her hands in his and smiled in return.
Quickly, he saddled the horses. “Are you ready then?” he asked, just as he always had when they had ridden together as youngsters. He knew she recalled it as well when she tossed her fiery mane of gold-red curls and answered as she always had in days gone by.
“When am I not?” The saucy smile that accompanied this piece of impertinence was thoroughly familiar, but the sidelong look from beneath her long lashes and the blush that followed were entirely new. With a wide grin that belied the constriction of his heart, he cupped his hands to facilitate her dainty foot and, just as he had done so many times before, tossed her into the saddle.
They guided their horses into the path that divided a nearby copse of ancient cedars and trotted for quite some time in amicable silence. Harry wanted to say so much but cast aside one precarious topic of conversation after another; since Mira didn’t seem any more disposed to talk, he remained silent. He attempted to enjoy the squeak of the leather, the scent of the leaves, the breeze in his hair, but only the warmth of her gaze could touch him. In spite of the light and bright air, redolent of the sea and abrim with birdsong, his oppression was so great it threatened to collapse his lungs. To remain so close at her side and yet so far from his heart’s desire was a torture he could bear no longer.
With a cry of frustration, he pressed his feet into his mount, rode ahead a pace or two, and swung his horse round to face Mira. He could see that she was startled but he chose not to pause long enough for speech. Instead, he urged his horse alongside hers so that his right knee grazed her left, turned in the saddle, and pulled her into his arms.
With a sigh, she rested her head against his chest where she doubtless felt every beat of his thundering heart. It was then he knew she had guessed the truth of his imminent departure, yet she did not complain or lament or even speak. He had loved her as a girl, had loved her more when he saw the young lady she had become, but he thought he should never love anyone as much as this woman in his arms who trusted him so far beyond what he deserved.
He longed to kiss her before it was too late, fearing it would be their last; the thought served to remind him that she belonged not to him but some other man who would one day make her his wife. He prayed he had said enough to dissuade her from granting George that honor but owned the identity of her husband was no longer his affair. His horse took a step back, and he was forced to release her. However, once she had regained her seat, he took her face in his hands and willed her to know what he would do if he were free to do so. She stared back at him, her heart in her eyes, and with a little cry, put her hands up to cover his and pressed her lips to the heel of his hand.
They remained thus until Harry became aware of the presence of other horses, presumably with riders. He grasped the reins and wheeled his horse in the direction of the threat just as George and his mother emerged from behind a stand of trees. It flashed through Harry’s mind to wonder how much they had seen and, for Mira’s sake, was gratified he had not kissed her after all. He must ever after consider the kisses they shared at Haversham House as the promise for the future they implied, as well as their farewell.
“Well, well, well,” George said. “It would seem we were not the first to rise with the dawn this morning.”
The Duchess, her heavy, honey-gold hair twisted into elaborate knots under a brown hat that matched her eyes, sniffed and looked away as if Harry and Mira were the very least of her concerns. Harry, suddenly aware that his enemy could be a woman as well as a man, heartily hoped they were.
“Why, Miss Crenshaw, it is His Grace and Her Grace!” Harry squealed. “One might almost refer to them as The Graces if there weren’t only the two of them.” He added a pithy laugh that sounded sharp in his own ears and wheeled his restive mount around in a circle to address George and his mother yet again. “How fortunate that you have arrived! I was just telling Miss Crenshaw how I must be off to see my tailor. He isn’t what one would hope for in London but he does well enough for these backwater affairs.”
George cocked a brow in question and drawled, “I am shocked to learn you employ a London tailor. I had thought all of your affairs to be of a backwater nature.”
Harry felt his skin bloom red with anger and his jaw clench until he could hear the grinding of his teeth above the Duchess’s unladylike laughter. However, until Harry sailed away, Bertie must needs hold the reins.
“I should think that most of Lord Haversham’s wardrobe to have been made abroad,” Mira asked in mild tones designed to soothe. “You are always the epitome of elegance, Lord Haversham, even if Papa feels you sometimes eschew lace to your detriment.”
“Oh,” Harry said with a crow of laughter. “It is my manner of dress His Grace refers to, is it? Well, color me contrite!” he quipped with a bow so deep he was in danger of poking his eye out on the pommel.
“You are far more remarkable than I had remembered,” the Duchess commented with a smile more snide than unctuous. “How could I have forgotten such a wit as yours?”
“Did you hear that, Miss Crenshaw?” Harry twittered. “She thinks me a wit, a speaker of bon mots, a purveyor of mental delicacies! Have you heard the one about the fan? Or was it the flute? I hardly can remember!”
“We have heard it,” George muttered. “Several times at dinner last night and at least once before if my memory serves me right.”
Harry felt Mira’s gaze on him and knew she wished to share one of her mirthful glances, but he dared not. “Then I shall not trouble you with another rendering. At least not until luncheon!” he said with a hearty bray. “I am off then, to my tailor, as I have so said. A bientot, alors!” he called and rode off as clumsily as could manage. He paused and turned to giddily wave a handkerchief and thereby verify that Mira had ridden off with her aunt and cousin as her knew her to be safer in their company than at his own side.
The knowledge sobered him as he felt something akin to despair rise in his breast. Only once before had he been in so hopeless a position. Though the boating accident had happened four years prior, it was just one more matter that stood in the way of his happiness with Mira. Now he was England and operating in her very orbit; he had long believed that could never occur. Perhaps he was capable of formulating the words to tell her the truth about what had happened that long ago night after all.
With great effort, he gathered his wits and told himself that as long as both he and Mira were alive and no
t wed to another, there was still a chance they could be together. His first priority must be safety, and his second to get through the remainder of the day without incident. Once he was out at sea, he could worry about all that stood between them; her parents’ objections, his hopeless mother, the possibility that Mira might wed another, his own doubts and fears and feelings of unworthiness — but not before.
When he reached the great lawn that stretched between Cedars and the path down to the sea, he urged his horse into a gallop and streaked to the stables. There was much to do, but first, he must catch his mother’s monkey. A rapid but thorough investigation of the stables produced a net on a pole that had most likely been used, quite recently in fact, for the scooping of fish from the sea. Something told Harry he would have a far more difficult time in the capture of the monkey than even his mother had in the acquisition of the sole at table the night prior.
He could just see her, barefoot, her skirts hitched up between her legs as she dragged the net wildly through the water, and finally, the stamp of her foot at her failure, eventual acknowledgment of defeat, and her return to the house to order some poor unsuspecting servant to fetch her fish. The fact that he could so easily picture such a scene threatened to renew his feelings of despair, but he ruthlessly quashed it and commenced his hunt.
He thought the best place to start would be in the house, though he could hardly corner his mother in full view of his guests and demand from her the monkey’s whereabouts. It would be best if he found it on his own, unobserved by any of his visitors, most of whom should have risen from their beds by now. As such he went round to the back of the house and entered through the kitchen door.
“Heaven have mercy!” squawked the cook as she waved a wooden spoon at him. “You gave me such a turn!”
“I am sorry to have disturbed you, only, I must ask … it sounds utterly absurd, I know, but have you seen a monkey hereabouts?”
“A monkey! A real live monkey?” she cried. “I should think not. Not in my kitchen!” she insisted with a warning look for the various kitchen girls who ranged round her and who might, unaccountably, be hiding a monkey somewhere about their persons.
“Ah, well, you never know when monkey brains might appear on the menu,” he said.
“Monkey brains for eating? I have never heard of such a thing!” the cook cried and shooed him out of the room.
His hunt through the breakfast room was deplete of monkeys but filled with more guests than he had expected, among them the entire Crenshaw clan, as well as Mira’s closest friend, Viola Carlson-Johnson. If the way she bent her head in earnest conversation with Stephen was any indication, she was fast on her way to becoming Mira’s sister-in-law as well.
“What is that deplorable object you have there, my lord?” Lucy Sutherland asked. “It reeks to high heaven!”
“Oh, this?” Harry said. “It’s a … a butterfly net. I have a mind to catch a few this morning,” he added with a Bertie-like twitter designed to remove the suspicion from every face in the room. In point of fact, he had never seen so many pairs of quizzical eyes in all his life. Only too late did he ascertain the presence of his mother.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Herbert! That’s the net I used to catch fish yesterday. It is quite broken, I am sure! If fish won’t swim into it, I am persuaded the butterflies will simply fly away from such a noxious thing, aren’t you?” she asked of Sir Hollis who was too busy scrutinizing Harry to respond.
In fact, the Carlson-Johnsons as well as the Sutherlands, the Marquess and his daughter Ramona, and the DiPastenas were all staring at Harry with a disconcerting intensity. The thought that any one of them could have something to do with the notes left under his door unnerved him so that he almost dropped the net as he stumbled from the room. Thankfully, he left before his mother had the chance to bring up the subject of monkeys or zoos or what she might have in store for the ball later that night. Whatever it was, he had no time to worry about it at present.
The drawing room was littered with various other guests, none of whom bore the expression of one who had encountered a monkey on the premises, so he headed upstairs and looked through his mother’s rooms in her absence. His search turned up nothing but a few mice, and, with great reluctance, he decided his time was better spent in the hunt for a small rowboat to plant in readiness for the night.
This chore was child’s play compared to the last, and he returned across the lawn to the house in time to witness Mira’s return from her ride, along with the Duke and Duchess and several other guests who had attached themselves to their party at some point along the way. In contrast to his expectations, Mira did not sulk or wilt; she seemed hardy and happy to be in the company of others. Not for the first time it occurred to him that she was better off with someone — anyone — other than himself. Though he was sure she knew that he must once again bow out of her life, he could not be so confident that she would forgive him. However, a man who harbored dark secrets, heavy obligations, and the Haversham genes was hardly what a young girl dreamed of in a husband. If he were honest, he barely wanted it for her either.
Rather than join Mira in the stables as he wished to do, he sheered off, determined to busy himself with other tasks. He had invited a number of gentlemen in expectations that, should Harry not win the Crenshaws’ approval, one or two would prove more palatable to Mira than George. It could hardly be otherwise. Until then Harry would make himself least in sight until dinner which would give Mira a chance at privacy with a suitable candidate for her hand and afford Harry a much needed rest from the burden that was Bertie.
Though his insistence on visiting his tailor was meant to be a ruse, Harry’s despondent mood was hardly lightened by the suit of clothes he donned for the night. Unlike his London wardrobe, his clothing at Cedars had not been updated in quite some time, and the seams of the slightly too-small suit he had brought with him had finally succumbed to the pressure of Harry’s more mature body. This meant he must resort to a suit that was too short, too narrow, and too out of date to feel the least elegant. He loathed that Mira’s last sight of him would include far too much shirtsleeve and silken hose for his liking, but there was naught to be done about it.
Dinner passed in wave after wave of misery, and halfway through Harry was unable to take another bite. He sat in silence and picked at his napkin while he studied the faces at table in an attempt to determine who was most likely to be a traitor to his, or even her, country. His gaze strayed to Mira more often than was seemly, but the sight of her exquisite face entirely devoid of any sign she mourned his departure was too painful to endure for many minutes in a row.
Harry felt his head droop lower and his chin sink deeper into his cravat, but he was too dispirited to rouse himself. It was with relief that he quit the table without lingering with a glass of port as did the other men. Instead, he employed his time until the dancing to renew his hunt for the monkey. An active search soon devolved into a mere wandering of the halls while he punished himself with one pessimistic thought after another, most of them having to do with Mira’s demeanor. Perhaps he had been wrong to think she loved him. She did not seem to suffer as did he and, after all, she had never said as much.
He commenced the ball by asking Mira’s friend, Miss Carlson-Johnson, to dance. He hoped his actions would not be misconstrued, but he refused to give his would-be-murderer the impression that he was overly attached to any one young lady. To do so would be to put her in danger, so he followed up the first dance with a waltz with Lucy, a jig with Heather, the March with Ramona, and the Quadrille with Jenny. He was acutely aware he had but a few hours more in Mira’s presence, perhaps forever, but he spent the second hour of the ball in the company of his other guests as well, and he took Viola Carlson-Johnson into midnight supper on his arm for good measure.
He could not enjoy his folly, however, especially when every time he met Mira’s gaze, she stared back at him with smiling eyes. Hardly knowing what he wanted — Mira safe or in his arms — h
e sent Viola back to the ballroom on the arm of a disgruntled Stephen. Harry watched them go, begrudging them their straight and simple path to marriage. He watched Mira go as well, on the arm of one of the gentlemen he had invited for her benefit, and waited until the room emptied of his guests while he sat alone and attempted to gain a semblance of control over his emotions. It was then that he thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, an ominous shadow scurry across the room. He was on his feet in an instant, and the pistol he always kept concealed in his clothing was out in a flash. However, there was no one in the room.
Carefully, his pistol still aloft, Harry bent to regard what lay below the tablecloth and spied a pair of very short and hairy legs hanging down from a chair on the opposite side. He threw himself across the cluttered table only to be met by a wide-eyed stare from a pair of huge brown eyes set above two rows of very sharp teeth which moved up and down in unison with the most appalling screeching Harry had ever had occasion to hear.
He threw out his free hand to throttle his mother’s monkey, but it bounded off the chair and down to the far end of the table where Harry regarded it from his position sprawled across the remains of someone’s meal. He knew the moment he stood the monkey would be off again and decided it was a pointless endeavor. Thoroughly frustrated, Harry got to his feet and replaced his pistol as the monkey jumped to the floor and disappeared under a chair. With a sigh of disgust, he dropped into the nearest seat and put his face in his hands. If his mother wished to entertain a monkey, who was he to say her nay? If Lord Melbourne wished him to depart England, how could he refuse? If Mira failed to go into a decline over his departure, so be it!
With the resignation of the damned, he removed the remains of someone’s dinner from his shirtfront and walked to the door, determined to spend his last hour in England with whomever was willing. To his mingled dismay and delight, his way was barred by the one person he least expected to see.
Lord Haversham Takes Command Page 17