by Lynne Barron
When Phin alighted from his carriage, all was dark and mostly quiet on the street, putting into sharp juxtaposition the bright candlelight and boisterous goings on behind the big bay window fronting the pub. There was quite a crowd inside, mostly merchants, tradesmen, clerks and their families seated at long tables with a few tough sorts jockeying for position at the bar.
And right there at a table in the middle of the pub, squeezed between Cedric the bullyboy and the nattily dressed Mr. Simms, sat Miss Harry O’Connell. Dressed in a pale blue gown with a high ruffled collar and long, narrow sleeves, sans bonnet or gloves, she might have been the wife of a well-to-do man of commerce. Mother to the tow-headed child asleep in her arms.
There was an odd sort of domesticity to the scene. A hominess one didn’t expect to find when peering through a pub window on a chilly June evening. Candlelight played over Harry’s features, casting her lowered eyes into shadow and streaming across her lips when she tilted her head to flash a grin at Mr. Simms in response to whatever bit of nonsense he was whispering in her ear.
It seemed to Phin that Harry belonged there amongst the merchants and tradesmen, clerks and solicitors, even the laborers with their threadbare garments and rough mannerisms. The wives, mothers, sisters and children of the men who toiled in one way or another for their living. Together, they made up a family of sorts. Perhaps the only family Miss Harry O’Connell possessed beyond a distant connection to an aging courtesan.
The baby in her arms began to fuss, clenched fist flailing about and nearly jabbing her chin. She pulled the little bundle closer, one hand patting a fat, diapered bottom. The inherently maternal gesture speared Phin somewhere deep within his chest, the pain sharp and jagged.
Phin had never wanted anything in his life as badly as he’d wanted to walk into the pub, into the midst of that oddly domestic scene and make himself at home at Harry’s side. With his heart racing, he waited for her to glance up, to spot him on the opposite side of the grimy window, perhaps to toss him a mocking smile and invite him to join her. But Harry took no more notice of him than she had throughout the days and nights he’d been following along behind her like a stray puppy.
It struck Phin—quite forcefully and rather disconcertingly—that while Miss Harry O’Connell had become the most significant person in his life of late, he was entirely irrelevant in hers.
Chapter Twelve
Wednesday afternoons at the Montclaire Museum were open to the general public as on any other day, but the practice of affording school children and their teachers, tutors and governesses free entry tended to keep the population of well-to-do, lofty patrons to a minimum.
As was her custom, Harry arrived at half past two in order to avoid the line of visitors waiting for the doors to open on the hour.
“Good afternoon, Miss Harry.” Henry Churchill, curator, concierge and all around expert on all things related to the museum, came out from behind his desk in the marble-floored, wood-paneled foyer.
“Good afternoon, Henry,” Harry greeted with the same little dip of a curtsy she always greeted the tall, strikingly handsome middle-aged man. “Lovely weather we’re having today.”
“One might even imagine summer is just around the corner,” he agreed with a smile. “I’ll be right pleased to see the back end of this wet and windy spring.”
“How is Mrs. Churchill?”
“Fair to middling today.”
“Oh, that reminds me, I understand you’ve invested a tidy sum in Mr. King’s latest venture.”
“I can’t say as Mrs. Churchill was pleased I dipped into Sally’s dowry,” Henry said as he circled behind her to assist her out of her spencer. “Not until I’d explained who’d suggested the investment, leastwise.”
“You tell Mrs. Churchill she has no need to worry.” Harry lowered her voice to a whisper, which still echoed faintly in the great domed hall. “I heard just this morning that the surveyors have most definitely found large deposits of iron in Cornwall.”
“Will they be closing the lists then?”
“I would imagine they’ll bring up the first load of ore by the end of the month.”
Henry met her gaze and held it, a wealth of emotions shining in his brown eyes. “You’re a godsend, miss.”
“Go on with you.” Harry reached for his hand and gave his fingers a quick squeeze, more than a little unnerved by the sincerity of his praise. “What sort of woman would I be if I didn’t share the occasional investment scheme with my friends?”
“We’re blessed to be counted among your friends.” His chiseled cheeks puffed out when he smiled, deep grooves forming on either side of his mouth. “Speaking of friends, you’ve two girls asking after you.”
“Have you heard what treasure they’re scavenging today?”
“Something to do with a prince, a cat and a bouquet.”
“If those girls would only break with propriety a bit more, they’d ask a handsome fellow like you for assistance,” Harry teased as she started off down the hall. “Seeing as you know every inch of this grand old mausoleum.”
“I’d never dare give the ladies so much as a hint,” Henry called after her. “On account of my fear of Mrs. Doherty.”
Harry laughed and turned into a wide, sunny room lined with Greek and Roman statuary collected by one of the dukes of Montclaire on his travels two centuries previous. Most of the pieces depicted warriors in battle and athletic, half-clothed young men performing feats of inhuman strength.
As far as Harry was concerned, the chamber was an ode to man’s stupidity and conceit and, were it not for the fact she followed a particular circuitous route through the museum, she would have skipped the room altogether. As it was, she lingered only long enough to offer a bit of praise to the young artist who for months had been painstakingly sketching Atlas holding the world aloft, and to share a smile with the stoop-shouldered tutor lecturing a trio of boys in the corner.
The next chamber held mostly portraits of long dead monarchs and landscapes of moorlands dotted with cottages, a combination Harry had always found rather fitting, seeing as the monarchs had ruled over those vistas, though in all probability they’d rarely visited the like.
Continuing on through a chamber filled with Egyptian artifacts and another boasting all manner of pinned insects and rodents beneath glass, she moved into the largest of the galleries. The walls were hung with paintings of brightly garbed ladies, gentlemen and children posed in gardens and parks, picnicking beside streams and boating across ponds.
Harry meandered along the perimeter of the gallery, greeting the occasional familiar face with a nod or a smile, ignoring the looks she garnered from those few visitors not in the habit of patronizing the museum on Wednesday, and thus not accustomed to seeing her wandering around without benefit of escort or chaperone.
When she reached the wide staircase, she took the steps at a leisurely pace, all the better to peruse the small paintings lining the wall and feel the wood of the bannister worn smooth by countless hands over the years.
As she ascended, she allowed her mind to drift back to her first visit to the museum. The Duke of Montclaire had led her from chamber to chamber, alternately prattling on nonsensically and attempting to tease Bathsheba from her temper. Harry’s grandmother had argued against the outing, not wanting His Grace out in the elements on such a cold November day.
But Monty had been adamant Harry see the museum before it opened to the public, determined to be the one to introduce her to the beauty to be found in the various works of art. Most importantly, her grandfather had wanted to show her about the Red Gallery, to introduce her to the illustrious family depicted in the portraits hanging on the walls and chiseled from stone in the statues and busts.
Harry’s grandparents had bickered quite a bit, both on the journey to the museum and while strolling through its chambers. They’d laughed and smiled more—at each other and at their only grandchild who’d walked between them, one hand tucked into the crook of the duke’s e
lbow, the other clasped tight by the woman he’d loved for more than thirty years.
It had been a good day, the last good day they were ever to share.
“Miss O’Connell.” The hushed whisper brought Harry whipping around at the landing to the second floor.
Two nearly identical whirlwinds of pink lace and ruffles, bobbing brown curls and flashing hazel eyes raced on slippered feet up the stairs.
“We were beginning to despair your ever arriving,” the first girl to reach the top of the stairs proclaimed.
“We even imagined you might have given up Wednesdays at the museum entirely,” her sister finished for her, joining them on the landing and smiling until the dimples appeared in her flushed cheeks. “But here you are.”
Before Harry could ask how they’d learned her name when she took certain pains to keep her visits to the museum from gossiping eyes and ears, another figure started up the stairs.
There was no mistaking the artfully tousled ebony locks, the bright whiskey-brown eyes flashing mischief and mayhem, the broad shoulders beneath a gray coat and the long, muscular legs hidden by a pair of perfectly tailored black trousers.
“Interesting choice of headwear,” the viscount said by way of greeting as he slowly prowled up the stairs, his movements languid and graceful and altogether too masculine. “Somehow, I doubt Mrs. Hathaway created that particular bonnet.”
“It is a hat,” Harry corrected, adjusting the curled brim just so. “Specifically, a cocked hat. A relic from a bygone era, rather like noble rogues and honorable rakes. It belonged to my grandfather, the last of his breed.”
Phineas offered up a slow smile that did queer things to Harry’s heart rate. Halting two steps below and putting them nearly eye level, he swept his gaze over her from the tips of her shiny black half-boots to the feather sprouting from atop the old, triangular beaver hat she’d discovered amongst Bathsheba’s belongings.
His gaze lingered a half beat longer than was proper on her bosom tucked safely and securely away beneath a scarlet gown cut along military lines, complete with gold braiding at the shoulders and two rows of big brass buttons marching in tight formation down the bodice.
“For a gentleman, your manners are sorely lacking,” Harry accused when his gaze stalled once more…on her left collarbone if she wasn’t mistaken. “Will you introduce me, or shall I go on thinking of the ladies as dimples and despairing?”
“Eloise does have pretty dimples,” he agreed with a grin. “And Evelyn does have a tendency to despair. Miss Eloise Griffith, Miss Evelyn Griffith, might I make known to you Miss Harry O’Connell?”
The girls twittered and giggled while bobbing perfect curtsies, which Harry returned with all the propriety her grandmother had insisted she learn but rarely expected she exhibit.
With the niceties out of the way, Harry wanted only to be away from the Misses Griffith and their grinning escort. “I understand you ladies are scavenging a prince, a cat and a bouquet.”
“Prince Charles, a calico feline and an overturned vase of flowers,” Miss Eloise of the pretty dimples replied.
“We quite despair finding all three in one painting,” Lady Evelyn added, prompting a chuckle from Phineas.
“You might consider refining and broadening your search,” Harry suggested. “Perhaps you needn’t find all three items in a painting, but rather in two sculptures paired together.”
“Is there such a pairing of sculptures in the Red Gallery?” Miss Eloise asked.
“In the Yellow Gallery at the east end of the museum,” Harry said. “But you must be standing at the far wall just beneath the stained glass window to see them.”
“Oh, thank you.” Miss Evelyn clapped her hands in glee and spun away to dash down the stairs. “Make haste, Eloise.”
“I’m right behind you,” Miss Eloise cried, setting actions to words and rushing along in her sister’s wake. “Hurry, Phin, lest the others find the treasure before we do.”
“Run along without me,” Phineas called after them even as he continued to look at Harry. “I’ve a mind to keep Miss O’Connell company.”
“Lucky me,” Harry murmured, spinning around and heading for the gallery at the end of the hall. “While I commend your time management skills, aren’t the Misses Griffith a bit young?”
“My time management skills?” he repeated, falling into step beside her.
“Courting heiresses in tandem,” she clarified. “Devilishly cunning use of your time and resources.”
Phineas let loose a gravelly laugh. “My irrelevance is duly noted.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Griffith is my family name.”
It took Harry but a moment to recognize her blunder. “Don’t take it personally, Phineas. I am forever forgetting names, though rarely faces, more’s the pity. So, Eloise and Evelyn are your sisters?”
“In need of launching into Society in tandem next spring,” he agreed. “Twice the cost and double the aggravation.”
“Still, I’m pleased to know you haven’t stooped so low as to court sisters,” Harry said as they approached the Red Gallery. “You haven’t, have you?”
“Stooped so low as to court sisters?”
“Or cousins, for that matter.”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he answered, pausing a moment before adding, “Though now I think on it, Miss Constance Pittman and Miss Jillian Foster are distant cousins of some sort, twice or thrice removed perhaps.”
“And you are courting them both?” Harry demanded.
“I’m not courting either lady at present,” Phin answered. “Must we discuss my courtship habits?”
“Have you courtship habits?” They entered the gallery together, Phineas stopping just inside, while Harry continued to the center and spun around to face him, fully prepared to tease. “Do you make use of tried and true bits of flattery to impress the ladies? Little witticisms that work every time? Poetry you recite to devastating effect? Roses are red, violets are blue…”
“I’ve missed you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Were Phin still a betting man, he would have given even odds as to which of them was more surprised by the declaration.
Harry blinked once, twice, then her eyes widened comically. Her lips parted, and her tongue swept across her bottom lip before she pulled the lush pink flesh between her teeth.
Heat prickled beneath Phin’s cravat, raced up his neck to his jaw and blazed across his cheeks until even his ears felt scorched. What was it about this woman that had him forever bumbling about like a green lad sniffing after the first pretty girl ever to come his way?
Phin was sorely tempted to play off the misguided pronouncement as stuff and nonsense, to continue the charade and return them to steadier ground. Except he hadn’t stepped a single foot on steady ground in days, and it was true, every word of it. Following her around day in and day out as she went about her business, running errands at all hours, visiting her neighbors and collecting their numbers for Mr. Prince had served only to torture him.
It had taken only a passing reminder this morning that his sisters were to visit the Montclaire Museum for Phin to decide he’d earned a reprieve from self-inflicted torture. Which was just as well, as it seemed Harry was moving on to torture of another sort altogether.
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I’ve missed you,” she said with a little splutter of laughter and a wave of one hand as if she might sweep the awkward moment into the corner. “Well, it rhymes, if nothing else. I suppose dimwitted ladies with deep pockets might well be taken in by such blatant balderdash.”
While attempting to gather his scattered wits, Phin glanced around the chamber. The walls were papered in a vibrant red silk from the marble floors to the domed ceiling. An unlit chandelier hung from the center, tiny crystals catching the flickering candlelight from sconces strategically spaced along the walls and bouncing it around the room like so many twinkling stars.
Gold velvet drapes were drawn s
hut over the windows, and a plush carpet in the same shade covered most of the floor. Heavy, carved wooden chairs and settees with thick, padded cushions were arranged here and there in clusters perfect for conversation, along with low tables holding vases of cut flowers and statuettes.
Fires burning in the grates on either end of the room lent the gallery a warm and cozy atmosphere. In fact, the chamber had the same look and feel one might find in a family parlor in any great house in England. If one ignored the portraits and sculptures of women in various states of undress scattered about between perfectly proper artworks of a more modest variety.
Phin’s attention was caught by the life-size painting of a voluptuous woman lounging on a bed amidst a tangle of white bedcovers and black pillows. Golden curls tumbled around ivory shoulders and the pearly swells of a generous bosom barely covered by a twisted length of scarlet silk. The garment, perhaps a discarded gown or a man’s dressing robe, was clutched lightly in one hand as if either hastily drawn up or about to be castoff.
There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, a certain mocking tilt to her lips, a wicked gleam in her dark eyes. “Is that Alabaster Sinclair?”
“I should hope not,” Harry replied with a sultry laugh that snapped his attention from the portrait. “All things considered.”
“Right, Montclaire’s mistress was the other sister,” he agreed.
“How goes the heiress hunt?” Harry removed her ridiculously masculine—though somehow fetchingly feminine—hat and carelessly tossed it on a chair. “Sisters and cousins notwithstanding, have you narrowed the field down to a manageable number?”
“Why the sudden interest in my matrimonial prospects?” Even as he asked the question, another occurred to him, one which was either astonishingly ludicrous or inordinately logical given the lady’s fiscal tendencies. “Are you thinking to assist me in my search for a bride?”