*
So, Captain Cromarty was in Brighton. The knowledge—or at least the possibility—added a tingle of anticipation to her day, but also anxiety that what Lady Carew had said was true.
Were they really together once more? Had they made-up even before the night on board The Siren? She couldn’t work out whether their reconciliation was worse before or after. Neither spoke well of his feelings or his respect for Henrietta. Or her own, unforgivable behavior with him.
She was longing for distraction from worries she could do nothing to alleviate when an early morning caller was announced, and Matthew Lacey walked into the salon.
“Why, Matthew,” Lady Overton greeted him as he made his bow. “What a pleasant surprise. I did not know your parents were in Brighton.”
“They’re not, ma’am. I came on my own yesterday, and have made you my first port of call.”
“Why?” Henrietta demanded, when her mother returned to her stitching, accepting Matthew as almost family.
“I followed the most beautiful girl here,” Matthew said with enthusiasm. His eyes were unusually brilliant. “I thought I might be able to tag along with you so that I can meet her again.”
Henrietta blinked. “But Brighton is full of fashionable people right now. Is she a lady?”
“Of course, she is!”
“Well, don’t get angry with me. Gentlemen frequently pursue females who are not ladies.”
“And what would you know of that?” Matthew demanded.
“Enough,” she said darkly. “But tell me everything. Who is she, and how did you meet her?”
“Her coach lost a wheel on the Brighton road and I was able to assist. Her parents were most grateful and she has the sweetest smile… Her name is Eunice Blackridge.”
The name didn’t seem quite worthy of the reverence Matthew accorded it—it hardly rolled off the tongue in a poetic kind of way—but this was hardly the fault of Miss Blackridge.
“I don’t believe I know her,” Henrietta said regretfully. “But surely if you performed such a service for them, her family would welcome you as a morning caller?”
“Oh, I will call on them, but I can’t call all the time, can I? I need to meet her in unplanned social situations.”
“You do know we are returning to Audley Park the day after tomorrow?”
“Which gives us today, tonight, and tomorrow.”
Henrietta wrinkled her nose. “Tonight we’re going to Lady Carew’s soiree. She invited us, and Mama says we can’t get out of it. Do you suppose it’s the sort of event your Eunice would be invited to?”
Matthew looked daunted. “I would doubt it.”
“Well, we can see,” Henrietta encouraged. “Papa is not remotely interested in tenors, so I daresay he would be glad if you offered to be our escort instead.”
“Excellent plan,” Matthew enthused. “In the meantime, I could take you to…wherever it is ladies go in Brighton. We might bump into her.”
This optimistic plan was put into effect. Matthew accompanied them on a shopping expedition and then to make a couple of rather dull calls on friends of Lady Overton. By the time they returned to the house, there had been no sightings of the fair Eunice, and they had established that Lady Overton had never heard of the family. Henrietta began to wonder if they were of quite the rank Matthew imagined, but who was she to judge such things?
“Matthew?” she said as she accompanied him to the front door where they would part until the evening. “Do you know if Captain Cromarty is in Brighton?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. Is there any reason why he should be?”
“Lady Carew said he was, that he would be at her soiree tonight.”
Matthew sent her an unexpectedly piercing glance, but said only, “We shall see, then. Until this evening!”
Chapter Thirteen
Henrietta tried not to take extra care over her dress that evening. For one thing, she could not compete with the dashing Lady Carew. For another, she doubted Captain Cromarty noticed such things, and in any case, he was used to seeing her looking like a drowned rat or wearing ridiculous male attire.
All the same, she knew she looked as well as she could. Even her mother nodded her approval. And if there was an excited glitter in her eyes when she gazed in the glass, well, she could keep her eyes demurely lowered. Or strive to look bored, which would serve Lady Carew right.
The thought amused her as they went downstairs to meet Matthew. Her father waved them off with relief at escaping the ordeal, and they set off.
When they entered Lady Carew’s spacious drawing room, Matthew suddenly whispered in triumph, “She’s here!”
It was only the first surprise of the evening. For after Lady Carew’s languid welcome, Matthew all but dragged them across the room to meet the object of his worship. And instead of the unparalleled beauty Henrietta had been led to expect, she found a slightly plain, nervous girl. Her parents, flattered by Lady Overton’s attention, seemed to be perfectly respectable, if not of the first rank. The father appeared to be an ordinary country gentleman, much like Matthew’s.
For Matthew’s sake, Henrietta did her best to make friends with Eunice, who, however, seemed slightly stiff, with very little conversation. She was different with Matthew, though, and Henrietta discovered she did indeed have a sweet smile, which quite transformed her face from ordinary to pretty for the time it lasted. She reserved judgement.
At last, everyone moved to take their seats for the tenor’s performance. As they passed the drawing room’s double doors, Lady Carew was talking to one of her footmen, whom she immediately dismissed.
“Ah, Miss Maybury, I’ve had no chance to speak to you since you arrived. How are you?”
The others, who seemed not to notice she had been waylaid, moved on.
“I’m very well, ma’am,” Henrietta replied politely.
“No ill-effects from your affliction at the Pavilion last night?”
“Oh, no. I was fine in cooler air. Thank you for asking.”
“I hope you like music. You will love my tenor. Do take your place, my dear, I shall announce him in just a moment.” Lady Carew drifted away from the open doors, allowing Henrietta a glimpse into the hallway.
A man in evening dress strolled from the top of the stairs toward a room on the left. Captain Cromarty.
As though drawn by her surge of violent, muddled emotion, he glanced over and saw her. A frown tugged down his brow, which was hardly the reaction she hoped for. But then, she wasn’t pleased to see him here either, not when he wasn’t a normal guest but a private one making his own way to an entirely different room. As though he were quite at home.
Matthew caught her by the arm. “Hurry up, Henrie, they’re waiting for you,” he urged, and rather blindly, she followed him to the seat beside her mother.
The tenor was good, so good that he played on her raging emotions, and she had to keep swallowing tears. She was glad when he finished and Lady Carew invited her guests to repair to the dining room for refreshments, although adding ominously that her guest of honor had promised them two more songs later.
Mechanically, Henrietta followed her mother out of the drawing room and into the dining room to the left, where the first person she saw was Captain Cromarty in deep conversation with Lady Carew. She turned hastily away.
But as she let Matthew heap her plate—largely through inertia—she was aware of the attention the pair were drawing. She even overheard several murmurs concerning the fact he was Silford’s heir. And connecting his presence to the precarious health of Sir Edward Carew.
“From a disgraced branch of the Cromartys,” one lady confided to her friend. “But Silford has no choice but to forgive him.”
“Well, it’s not the boy’s fault his father married a cit’s daughter and turned to trade. I just hope he is a gentleman.”
“Well, her ladyship appears to think so.”
Unable to bear the conversation which she shouldn’t even have b
een able to hear, Henrietta moved blindly away. It took a few minutes before she realized she had lost her mother and Matthew, and looked around for them without much enthusiasm.
A hand stole across her plate and removed one of the elegant canapes teetering on top of the pile. She opened her mouth to tell Matthew off, and instead, gazed up at Captain Cromarty.
“I’m helping you out,” he explained, “since you’ve shown no interest in any of the daunting mountain before you.”
The dainty morsel vanished inside his mouth and was gone in a couple of chews.
“Please, help yourself,” she managed, offering him the plate.
He took it. “I’ll carry it for you. Where do you want to go?”
Home. She swallowed. “Wherever my mother and Matthew have vanished to.”
“Are you in trouble?” he asked. “Did word of your unplanned sail get out?”
“Not yet,” she said, hastily looking around. “Miss Milsom slept all night and didn’t even notice we’d gone. The Villins were so pleased to see us, they asked no questions.”
“If they’d been worried, they’d have looked for you. Lily knew you were with me.”
“She can’t have known.”
“Well, she guessed. I’m fairly sure she sent you to me in the first place.”
Henrietta frowned. “Why would she have done that?”
“She has her own reasons and means,” he said vaguely. “Look, it’s quieter through here.”
“Are you living here?” she asked abruptly.
He blinked, and she flushed in sheer embarrassment. “Excuse me, it’s none of my business. My mouth runs off without my brain’s permission.”
His eyes laughed at her without rancor. “True on both counts, but since you ask, of course I am not.”
It was such a relief, all her other questions died in her throat.
“Why are you here?” he asked more quietly. “She is not a great friend for any debutante, least of all for you.”
“She invited us.”
“Is Lord Rudd here?” he asked casually.
“Why, do you suspect him of supplanting you?” she snapped.
“Perhaps, but not in the way you mean. What of my delightful cousin Charles?”
“I haven’t seen him since he was at the Hart. Why?”
“No reason.” He hesitated, then, “I know this will sound rich coming from me, but you should not trust either of them.”
She didn’t, and yet she refused to let him dictate to her. Lifting her chin, she said carelessly, “Mama expects Rudd to offer for me any day.”
His gaze caught hers and held. “Do you?”
“I don’t think about it,” she said with cool disinterest.
“And if he does, what will you say?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You have no right to ask me such a question.”
“I know. But I ask it all the same. Would you marry him, Henrie?”
He was doing it again, making himself the only man in the world who mattered, filling her with trust and confidence in him.
She dragged her gaze free, gazing at the plate he held out to her. “Perhaps,” she said, taking a slice of peach, “it would depend on who else asked me.”
“Henrie—”
“Ah, there you are, little feather!” Inevitably, it was Lady Carew wafting toward them in a haze of gauze and diamonds.
Cromarty swore under his breath. “Damn, this is impossible!”
Lady Carew held out her gloved hand to Henrietta. “Come! I am charged by your mother to take you to her, since your escort has deserted you for another. Gentlemen are like that—so wretchedly fickle.”
Cromarty stood when she did and politely offered the plate. Henrietta glanced at it, then fleetingly up at his face. “You keep it. I find I am not so hungry after all.” And she walked away arm-in-arm with the woman she thought she hated most in the world.
Not long after, she was reunited with her mother in the dining room, which was no longer quite so crowded, and the guests were summoned to hear the great tenor’s final two songs. Henrietta couldn’t help looking around her as she took her seat once more, to see if the captain had gone. He hadn’t, but nor did he sit with Lady Carew or with the rest of the audience. Instead, he stood by the wall, his shoulder propping up the doorpost as if preparing for a quick departure. A frown marred his brow, and she wondered whether it was she or something else entirely that was responsible for his anger.
*
Cromarty was furious with Susannah Carew, and with himself for falling for her tricks. She had summoned him under a false pretext, and had him shown into the dining room—which was already set with a mouth-watering collation of cold treats—while she entertained her friends of the ton in her drawing room. He was used to such treatment, and merely wished she’d get on with it, while someone warbled on incessantly.
Well, if he was truthful, the man sang beautifully, if he was any judge, but the wretched woman had not brought him here to listen to music. Or had she?
He realized he’d been tricked when she led everyone straight from the drawing room to where he was pacing the dining room waiting for her. Forcing him to be part of her social circle. Now that he was the Earl of Silford’s heir.
She came right up to him, smiling.
“Well played, Susannah,” he acknowledged. “But it won’t work a second time.”
“It won’t need to. You’ll be inundated by invitations from all the matchmaking mamas who want their darlings to be Countess of Silford.”
“Think you can cut them out?” he asked insolently.
But she only smiled in the way that had once driven him wild. “Easily.”
“Well, the darlings have one advantage,” he said. “They don’t already have husbands.”
As he walked away, leaving her seething, he meant to simply leave the house. If he had not been checked by the unexpected sight of Henrietta Maybury, he would. But she stood alone, for once, looking strangely lost with an enormously heaped plate in one hand. She was peering through the throng of people, as though looking for someone.
He hesitated, for he meant to stay away from her for both their sakes. He told himself she looked just like the puppy she’d found abandoned in the theater, but that wasn’t the reason he changed direction and approached her. Nor was her beauty, though he noticed that, too. She shone like a diamond in a wasteland.
Her defensive carelessness, which amounted to rudeness in places, should have amused him. It didn’t. But he understood Susannah’s reason for bringing her there. She sensed a rival and was telling Henrietta that he was spoken for. Truthfully, it would probably be better for Henrietta if he was, but something was going on he didn’t like. He already suspected conspiracy between Charles Cromarty and Lord Rudd. Now he began to wonder if Susannah was not part of it, too.
He had made Henrietta sad, and that bothered him because he wanted so much to make her happy. “Perhaps it would depend on who else asked me.”
For a moment, he had been unable to breathe. Did she really want to marry him? Even knowing what she did? A wave of happiness shook him to the core, and he had to shake it off to think. He had to talk to her, to resolve this, whatever it was between them. But inevitably, Susannah was there, furious because he had found Henrietta, and her plan had not quite worked.
He should have let it work, he realized as he watched her during the interminable songs. He should have walked away and left her alone. Native cynicism might tell him she was one of Susannah’s “darlings”, desperate to be Countess of Silford. But he knew it wasn’t true. She had put her heart into her kisses and he, utter bastard that he was, had taken them. And still she seemed to want him.
But he was wandering from the important point, which was the conspiracy. Susannah’s voracity allied with the violence of the other two, could easily encompass Henrietta. He could not rely on Rudd to protect her. He did not want Rudd to protect her, for he did not doubt the man would bring her grief.
&nbs
p; And so, when the concert had finally ended, he waited as she and her mother approached the door. She didn’t look at him although he was sure she knew he was there. Instead, she seemed to be laughing at something Matthew said. Matthew threw him a quick grin in passing. Cromarty followed them out.
He caught Henrietta emerging from the cloakroom in a moment of quietness and seized her hand. She gasped as he whisked her around the corner into a dimly lit passage. “If you’re in trouble, any trouble at all, send for me,” he said urgently. “Don’t be alone with them, any of them.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but already her mother was calling her and there was no time. With an impulse he couldn’t help, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. She snatched it back and hurried away around the corner.
*
It struck Cromarty, as he took public leave of Lady Carew, that unless her soiree just happened to have coincided with his one night in Brighton, she had known of it in advance. Which meant someone was too aware of his movements. His money was on Lord Rudd, who was famous for having a vast array of gossip coming into him from many sources, great and small. From this, he could sift the information he wanted. The man was serious about Henrietta.
Cromarty couldn’t blame him for that. But the combination of Rudd’s somehow sinister knowledge and Cousin Charles’s determination to be earl was one that worried him. So, he did the unexpected—collected his horse and rode through the night to Steynings.
There were hazards to be faced, travelling at night, but Cromarty had rarely experienced any. On the one occasion someone had tried to hold him up, the highwayman had recognized him, apologized, and shaken his hand before riding off again. On this night, he was aware of a few shadows that made the hair on his neck stand up in warning. But they, too, melted into the darkness.
He slowed, to let dawn break over Steynings as he rode through the ancestral acres. He felt no sense of coming home. Why would he? This had never been his home, and he had never wanted it to be. At least, not after he was eight years old. But he did appreciate the beauty, the sense that the land linked past, present, and future, as did the people sleeping in their cottages, and in the big house looming out of the dawn mist.
The Unmarriageable Collection (Books 1–3) Page 57