Swear by Moonlight

by Shirlee Busbee

They were stopped at present, exchanging jests with several cronies, when the sound of a swiftly approaching vehicle made Patrick glance in that direction. A second later, a pair of long-limbed black thoroughbreds pulling a high-perch phaeton burst into view.

  With nary a check, the crimson-clad driver of the phaeton expertly wove the horses through the crowded park. As the vehicle and horses swept by, Patrick looked at the driver to see if he recognized the damn fool who was driving at such a dangerous pace down the crowded thoroughfare. He was astonished to see that it was a woman. Her features were a blur as the vehicle raced by, and he was left with the impression of masses of black curls under a saucily tilted crimson hat, huge dark, dancing eyes, and a red, laughing mouth.

  "Who in blazes," he demanded, "is that hoyden?"

  "Ah," said Nigel, "I see that you have not yet had the pleasure of being introduced to the notorious Miss Thea Garrett."

  "Not met Thea?" exclaimed the gentleman who was leaning against the side of Lord Embry's curricle. "Good Gad, man! She is the talk of England. Has been for the past decade—ever since that nasty business with Randall and her brother, Lord Garrett. Don't tell me you don't remember it?"

  Patrick nodded slowly. "Of course. I remember now. The girl was ruined, and when her brother caught up with them, he and Hawley fought. Both men died, didn't they?"

  "Indeed they did. Terrible scandal. Family tried to hush it up, but there was no help for it. I mean two peers dead from a duel? Naturally the reason for the duel came out. No one talked about anything else for weeks on end."

  "Can't believe you haven't met her before now," Nigel commented. "Must be that your trips to England didn't coincide with her stays in London. Of course, she wasn't in London—for years after the scandal she kept to the country with her mother and that half sister of hers, Edwina."

  One of the other gentlemen said, "It is a damn shame that the scandal tainted her half sister's chances in the marriage mart. As I remember she was a lovely girl. Didn't the chit finally end up marrying some bounder four or five years ago?"

  "Alfred Hirst," Nigel answered. "A nasty bit of goods, but related to enough of the ton that he has entree in certain circles."

  Patrick wasn't interested in Edwina Hirst. It was the crimson-mouthed, dashing driver who had caught his attention, and he brought Nigel back to that particular subject by asking impatiently, "But how is it that Miss Garrett is brazenly driving through Hyde Park amidst the cream of the ton? Has she no shame?"

  Nigel laughed. "That's our Thea! She's taken her notoriety and turned it into a bloody asset! Proud as the Devil himself. Doesn't give a damn if she's accepted or not—goes her own way, and these days, only the highest sticklers refuse to admit her to their homes. Besides, she's related to so many members of the ton, with a fortune to boot, that scandal or not, she is invited everywhere." He looked thoughtful. "Of course, the doors would shut in a blink of an eye if there was any hint that one of the gentlemen had gone so far as to lose his head and was considering marrying the wench."

  "But didn't I hear something about Lord Gale developing a tendre for her last year?" asked one of the gentlemen. "Swore he'd marry her or no one."

  Nigel nodded. "Caused a real dust-up. Family had a devil of a time before they were able to pack him off to the country."

  "Why," Patrick demanded, "would any gentleman of breeding want to marry such a baggage?"

  "Wait until you meet Thea," drawled Nigel with an infuriatingly smug smile.

  Patrick shook his head. "I have no desire to meet the young woman."

  Nigel's blue eyes gleamed. "A wager?"

  "What sort?"

  "That before we leave London for the winter, you'll change your mind."

  "You're wasting your blunt. I won't."

  "So, is it a wager or not?" prompted Nigel.

  Patrick suddenly grinned, amusement glinting in his gray eyes. "Very well, if you want to lose your money, I'll take your damned wager. But I can promise you that I have no desire to meet Thea Garrett!"

  Chapter 2

  Unaware and uncaring that she was the topic of conversation in the group she had left behind, Thea concentrated on her driving. She knew she would raise eyebrows for driving at this speed through the park, but like so much in her life these days, she didn't give a damn. Why should she? She was the notorious Thea Garrett, and people would talk about her no matter what she did—so let the gray-eyed stranger stare!

  Her mind on other things, she left the horses and phaeton with the groom and entered the house on Grosvenor Square that she had bought four years ago, just after her mother's death. Pulling off her black-leather driving gloves, she nodded to her butler, Tillman, as she crossed the hallway, intending to head upstairs to change her clothes. When Tillman coughed politely and called her attention to a note that had arrived while she had been out driving, she made a face and picked it up from the silver salver where it had been lying.

  Of course, she recognized the writer's scrawl immediately and a hard glint shone in the usually smiling dark eyes. She asked Tillman, "Did he bring it himself or did he have it delivered?"

  "He brought it himself, Miss." Looking uncomfortable, he added, "I followed your orders and would not let him inside—though it pained me to treat a member of the family in such a fashion."

  Since Tillman had been with the Garrett family since before Thea had been born, she allowed him a great deal of license—which he considered his due as a loyal family retainer.

  Cocking a slim brow, she murmured, "I do not remembering seeing the name 'Hirst' anywhere on the Garrett family tree. Perhaps I am mistaken?"

  Tillman drew up his small stature as tall as it would go, and said primly, "A family member by marriage, Miss—as you know very well."

  Thea snorted. "Well, you can consider him a member of the family if you wish, but I do not." Crossing swiftly to the stairs, she said over her shoulder, "And under no circumstances are you to let that verminous creature into my house—not even if Edwina is with him!"

  "Miss! Never say you would deny your own sister entrance to your home?" he gasped.

  "Half sister," Thea said as she strode up the stairs. "And I didn't say the door was barred against her—only her husband."

  Reaching her suite of rooms, Thea tossed the gloves on her dressing table and sent her saucy crimson hat sailing across the room, where it landed on her bed. Seating herself with more haste than grace in a nearby chair, she ripped open the envelope and read the contents.

  It was more of the same—another request, a demand really, for money. The sheer effrontery of her sister's husband amazed her. Having depleted a fortune of his own in four years of marriage, he had managed to make great inroads into Edwina's fortune, too.

  It gave Thea no pleasure to admit that she had recognized Alfred Hirst as a fortune hunter from the first day she had met him almost six years ago. None of her warnings, however, could dissuade Edwina, then eighteen, from marrying him. Thea had pleaded with her younger half sister not to marry Hirst, to wait until she was older, but Edwina, starry-eyed and madly in love with the handsome, sophisticated Hirst, would not listen. Thea saw goblins where there were none, Edwina had replied airily. Not all handsome older men were cut from the same cloth as Lord Randall. Thea was just jealous! And she always had been, Edwina averred, because Mama had married Papa and had left her and Tom to be raised by the Garretts.

  Thea had been three years old when her father had died. She had been too young to have many memories of him and most of her ideas about her father had come from the reflections of others. Her mother's marriage to Mr. Northrop a year later and Edwina's birth a year after that, when Thea had been five, might have aroused resentment in someone else at the happy little family group the Northrops represented, but not Thea. She had been an amiable child and tended to accept without question the actions of adults. Besides which she had been fascinated by her new baby sister, and almost from the moment she had laid eyes on the blue-eyed cherubic baby, she had been fill
ed with a feeling of protectiveness. Her mother had encouraged that feeling, wanting a bond between her two daughters, and Thea's devotion to Edwina had grown rather than dissipated throughout the years. She had never once been jealous of her younger half sister or resented the fact that her mother had made the choice to leave her and Tom with their aunt and uncle. She adored her aunt and uncle and had scant affection for her mother's second husband.

  Northrop, a bachelor of long standing, had made it clear right from the beginning that he would not tolerate another man's children constantly underfoot. Tom and Thea, already settled with their aunt and uncle, had viewed Mr. Northrop with aversion—which Mr. Northrop returned in full measure. Even a simpleton could see that the situation was going to be intolerable. Consequently, after much soul-searching and many tears, the new Mrs. Northrop agreed for Tom and Thea to stay at Garrett Manor and be raised by their father's younger brother and his wife. Mrs. Northrop was not a heartless woman, merely a practical one.

  Tom and Thea did not have much contact with Edwina until after Northrop died and it was discovered that he was deeply in debt. Desperately poor, Mrs. Northrop, along with eleven-year-old Edwina, had no choice but to accept the generous offer of her former in-laws to return to live at Garrett Manor. Mrs. Northrop was fortunate the Garretts were so kind—the only thing left was a tidy little trust fund for Edwina, to be dispersed when she married or reached the age of twenty-one.

  It had been an awkward melding of families, and it made Thea feel even more responsible for her younger sister.

  After Tom's death and the resulting scandal, the two sisters were very close. It was only when Edwina grew older and realized the difference between her fortune and Thea's great one that her feelings began to change. It was during Edwina's London season, the year after Mrs. Northrop died, that she began to actively resent her older half sister. Her dreams of taking London by storm unfulfilled, Edwina was convinced that it was the old scandal, Thea's reputation, that kept her from having the choice of grand suitors and being the belle of the ball. When Hirst began to court Edwina, Thea's sincere but misguided attempts to throw the rub in the way of his suit only made Edwina more determined to marry him, and a growing chasm developed between the half sisters. Thea longed for her mother's calm, good sense in dealing with Edwina and mourned her passing even more.

  At the time of Mrs. Northrop's death, Edwina and Thea and their mother had been living at the Dower House on the Garrett estate. Thea had been happy at the Dower House, and if not for her mother's death, she might still be living there today. But when Mrs. Northrop died, the family was adamant that it was unthinkable for her and Edwina, then only seventeen, to live alone, with no older person to guide them. Thea protested, insisting that at twenty-two she was perfectly capable of running her own household, but Lord Garrett would not be swayed. A distant cousin was pressed into service to live with the two young women.

  Miss Modesty Bradford, possessing a small independence of her own, had been living happily in London when Lord Garrett approached her, and though she thoroughly enjoyed Thea and Edwina and tried to adjust to the quieter pace of life, she disliked the country. A brisk, tall, lean woman of forty-two, after enduring nearly nine months of bucolic boredom, Modesty wasted little time in convincing Thea that she could not, and should not bury herself in the country forever. There was a whole world out there for her to see, and London was just the start. Thea resisted, but Modesty craftily put forth the one argument she could not withstand; there was Edwina to think of—before her mother's death, a London season had been planned for her when she turned eighteen. Was Thea going to deny her sister her moment of glory? Deny Edwina the chance to make a good, if not spectacular, match?

  Thea capitulated. Move to London they must. And while Lord Garrett was perfectly happy for them to stay at the Garrett town house in London, Thea discovered that she wanted a place of her own, and since she had the fortune to do as she pleased, there was no gainsaying her. A year to the day after Mrs. Northrop's death, with Lord Garrett's approval, Thea purchased the town house on Grosvenor Square, and she and Modesty and Edwina moved in. Their year of mourning finished, Modesty and Thea immediately began to plan for Edwina's debut to society that spring.

  Setting aside the letter from Hirst and thinking back on Edwina's first forays into society four years ago, Thea grimaced. It had been heady, painful, exhilarating, infuriating, exciting, and humiliating—for Thea. All the old scandal had been revived, and the whispers whenever she appeared in public nearly drove her back to the country. It was Modesty, a glint in her fierce dark eyes, who kept Thea's chin up and spine straight. Looking at her younger cousin after a particularly distressing outing, she asked sharply, "Are you going to let a group of people you don't know, a group of people who don't know you, drive you from town with your tail between your legs? I thought you had more spirit, gel! They have no power over you—only you can allow them to make you miserable. What difference does it make that Lady Bowden looked down that long, skinny nose of hers at you? Or that Mrs. Rowland hustled that dreadful daughter of hers away from you at the party as if you had the plague? Are you going to let them rule your life?" Shaking a finger under Thea's nose, she went on sternly, "You have friends, titled friends, and a widespread family who will stand by you. Why should you care what petty-minded people think? The only wrong you did was to be young and foolish and to be bewitched by a blackguard and scoundrel. Wrong was done you, not the other way around."

  Her eyes bright with tears, Thea stared at Modesty's plain features. "I killed Tom," she muttered.

  "No! You did not kill Tom. Randall killed Tom." Modesty gave her a not unkindly shake. "And it is for Tom that you must not let all those old tabbies and cats send you running for cover. For Tom you must stand up and face 'em." Modesty grinned at her. "As my father used to say, 'give 'em hell, gel'!"

  With Modesty's backing, Thea did just that, after a time, taking pride and delight in staring down the stiff-rumped old matrons and their equally disdainful daughters. It was not easy, but for the past several years she'd learned to carry her head high and ignore the gossip that swirled in her wake.

  But if Thea had been able, for the most part, to ignore the whispers and sly looks, Edwina had not. Young, spoiled, and pampered, Edwina was convinced that with her sweetly angelic looks, butter yellow curls, and sapphire blue eyes she would be much sought after and it would be only a short time before she was engaged to a wealthy member of the peerage. But she suffered a distinct shock when it became apparent that, while happy to dance and flirt with her, no gentleman of high degree or great fortune was eager to align himself with the sister of Thea Garrett—even a half sister. And, of course, there was the matter of Edwina's fortune—it was not large. It was true that a fortune and family connections such as Thea possessed might have made some impecunious lord look the other way, but Edwina's portion was nothing so magnificent, and she had no powerful connections—except through Thea.

  When Alfred Hirst, so very sophisticated and a member of the Prince of Wales's set, appeared on the scene and showed a definite interest, Edwina was overjoyed. Hirst was well connected with a tidy fortune and, to hear him talk, he was a great friend of Prinny's. With visions of rubbing shoulders with royalty circling in her brain, Edwina was convinced that he was the man she had been waiting for her entire life.

  Thea was less than convinced. The fact that Hirst was thirty-five years old and a member of the Prince of Wales's rackety entourage did not recommend him to her. Prinny's friends were not always known for their respectability, and there was much gossip about his wild and raffish companions. Discreet inquiry by Thea revealed the fact that Hirst was badly in debt and was known to be hanging out for a rich wife.

  Edwina would hear none of it, and she and Hirst made a runaway match of it. With the deed done and painful memories of her own aborted elopement in the back of her mind, Thea tried to put a good face on it. But she had said too much in trying desperately to dissuade Edwina from m
arrying Hirst for the situation to be easy between them.

  Thea picked up the letter from Hirst and reread it, sighing. She supposed she would have to meet him tonight and see what sort of new scheme he had now concocted to wheedle more money out of her. It wasn't, she thought as she stood up and began to undress, as if she had not already saved Hirst and Edwina from financial embarrassment. Not six months ago, she had paid off their debts for the third time in eighteen months. At that time, she again made the offer to settle them in a nice little place in the country, with a small income, but her generosity was thrown back in her face.

  "Very well," she said, "since you won't leave London, I'm afraid that I must say some harsh words." She looked at her sister, her heart aching. "This is the third time that I have paid off your debts, mainly your husband's gambling debts, and deposited a sizable sum in the bank for you. I cannot continue to do so—especially if you make no effort to change your ways."

  "Will not, you mean!" Edwina said, her blue eyes glittering with temper. "I don't see why you have to be so selfish—you have plenty of money; you don't need it all. Alfred can't help it if the cards have been unlucky for him of late. It wouldn't hurt you in the least to share your fortune with me. Mother would want you to—you know she would."

  "Edwina is right," Alfred inserted, his darkly handsome face full of mockery. "I am sure Mrs. Northrop would be appalled to discover that you are not willing to help your sister in her time of need."

  Thea smiled sweetly at him. "I am perfectly happy to help Edwina... it is you that I object to helping. And since you are her husband and have control over her finances, and will proceed to gamble away any money I give her, I have no choice but to deny her." She looked at Edwina. "And I will. Believe me. This is the last time. I will not pay his gaming debts again."

  That unpleasant scene had taken place this spring, just before Thea left for the country for the summer. She had returned to London only a few weeks ago for the "Little" Season, and she'd no direct contact from either Edwina or Alfred until now. She eyed the note again. Was she being a fool? Should she simply tear it up and let Edwina face the consequences? She bit her lip. No. She could not do that. If her family had taken that attitude toward her when she needed them so desperately ten years ago, who knew what her life would be like today? No. She could not desert Edwina. She made a face. And that meant she could not desert Edwina's detestable husband either.