by Lynne Barron
That the company in question was owned in part by Mr. King came as no surprise. In fact, Phin was beginning to suspect Marchant and King were one and the same man. It would certainly explain the rumors surrounding the fortune the marquess had amassed in recent years.
It also went a long way to explaining the interest a certain ethereally beautiful lady had taken in the man. A woman of Harry’s mercenary nature would hardly invest her funds—no matter how piddling the amount—in a venture without first becoming acquainted with the man behind said venture. Nor would she leave to chance the fate of those funds once invested. Not with the specter of poverty forever looming over her shoulder.
Harry’s specter had become his own, haunting Phin as he rushed from one London parlor or ballroom to another for more than a week. Paying court to this heiress and that, charming eager mamas and suspicious fathers at all hours of the day and night, knowing full well that time was fast running out.
He could not set Harry up as his mistress without first procuring the funds necessary to banish the specter from her life, if not her memory. He had been forced to settle for the occasional jaunt to Wellclose Square to assure himself Harry was still there. Haggling with the merchants and collecting numbers from the residents up and down St. Sebastian Place.
At the sight of Harry’s hands shaking as if she’d been afflicted with a palsy, Phin lurched away from the wall. “Harry?”
She lifted her chin in the air in a haughty manner, her gaze colliding with his. Her green eyes were hard and brittle, her cheeks faintly flushed. “Are your sisters hiding somewhere within the gallery?”
“No, of course not.”
“No, of course not,” she repeated. “Gently born, well-bred ladies do not sneak into the House of Lords, not even when they’ve precisely nothing else to do with their time.”
“Harry O’Connell with nothing to do on a Friday afternoon?” he quipped. “I don’t believe it.”
With a muttered oath that would have done any young buck proud, Harry jammed her hat back on her head and took off down the hall.
Phin barked out a laugh. Harry O’Connell in a temper was a fetching sight, especially as only a simpleton would misconstrue the all too obvious reason for her pique.
Phin was many things—reprobate, rascal and rogue among them—but a simpleton he was not.
Or so he believed as he hurried after the lady, catching up to her and reaching for her hand. “Missed me, have you?”
Harry batted his hand away and started down the stairs at a pace she never would have managed had she not been decked out in gentlemen’s garb.
“I can explain,” Phin offered, following along at her side.
“You’ve no need to explain. I know what it is to want to protect one’s sisters,” she said, her voice as cold as an arctic wind. “Under different circumstances, I would applaud your efforts, if not your methods. But it is one thing to keep your sisters safe from potential scandal, and it is something else entirely to have me tossed from the House of Lords for your own amusement.”
“I did not have you tossed from the Lords,” Phin replied as he caught the first inkling of his idiocy. “I only wanted to speak with you.”
“My grandfather,” she began only to pause and draw in a hissing breath before continuing in the same cold, withering tone. “I have been visiting the Montclaire Museum Wednesday afternoons for nearly a decade.”
“I know you adhere to your schedule much the same way a nun adheres to the scriptures, but a decade?”
“Five hundred and eight… No, five hundred and seven Wednesdays at the museum. Can you name one thing you’ve done for half as long? Or even one tenth as long?”
Phin didn’t waste a moment contemplating the question as the answer was obvious to both of them. “Harry, I meant to be at the museum.”
“You meant to be at the museum?” she repeated, her voice dripping scorn.
“And I would have been, had my solicitor not called upon me as I was leaving the house. It seems he has been approached by a potential buyer for that land—”
Harry slashed one hand through the air, cutting of his explanation. “There was no need for you to be at the museum. Nor was there any need for you to have Mrs. Doherty bandy my name about Town before waylaying me. You had only to alter your sisters’ schedule. Obviously, that was far too taxing for you to manage, so instead you chose to muck about with mine.”
“Mrs. Doherty waylaid you at the museum?” Phin asked, the magnitude of his stupidity becoming all too apparent. “Harry, I never meant for her to speak with you.”
“Do you deny you told her it would be best for all concerned if my visits no longer coincided with those of your sisters?” She tossed the question at him like a sharp dart, her aim diabolically accurate.
Phin ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I might have said something to the effect, but I never meant—”
“You never meant to humiliate me?” Harry interrupted with a mocking smile as they reached the landing. “To make a spectacle of me and expose me to ridicule and gossip?”
“No, Harry, no.” Phin grasped her arm and spun her around to face him. “I requested Mrs. Doherty chaperone the girls to the museum a different day, any day but Wednesday. She must have mistaken my meaning.”
Harry yanked her arm free and stepped back. Derision and contempt shone in her eyes when she met his gaze and held it.
It seemed to Phin as if she peered deep into his soul, and for the first time in their acquaintance, she saw only the worst parts of him, the self-indulgent and dissolute qualities the rest of the world saw when they looked at him.
“I don’t know what occurred at the museum,” Phin said, “but I would never intentionally cause you harm.”
“No, of course not,” she agreed. “Intent would require you to actually make a decision, determine a course of action, expend the effort to make it happen and see it through to its conclusion. You are content to float through life on a wave of mistakes, accidents, coincidences and luck.”
As far as insults went, it was rather mild, yet the words struck him with all the force of the meanest of curses, the cruelest of deprecations.
“I will not be caught in the undertow of your carelessness,” she continued, her voice low and fierce. “You may have Mayfair, all day, every day. I have conceded Wednesdays at the museum to your sisters, but make no mistake, Lord Knighton, Wellclose Square belongs to me. You will no longer be afforded the luxury of visiting.”
Phin felt as if he’d taken a cheap shot to the gut, all the air gusting out of him as pain exploded somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. Stumbling back a step as if distance alone might make the truth more palatable, he fought a wave of nausea.
Harry O’Connell would never willingly concede an hour of her schedule, let alone a decade of Wednesdays, at the request of a man to whom she owed no allegiance, loyalty or respect.
Unless the alternative promised dire consequences.
“Should I spy you or your sisters somewhere betwixt Mayfair and Wellclose, I will do you the courtesy of crossing to the other side of the street. Kindly extend me the same consideration.” With those words hovering in the air between them, Harry spun away to cross the lobby and disappear through the massive doors.
Phin considered chasing her down and forcing her to listen to his explanations.
Only he hadn’t a single viable explanation to offer, only numerous excuses that when taken as whole would likely paint an uglier picture than the one she’d taken into her head.
Phin could not even cling to the excuse she’d decided upon for his actions. When he’d approached Mrs. Doherty with his veiled request she chaperone the girls to the museum another day, any day but Wednesdays, he hadn’t given a thought to protecting his sisters. He’d thought only of getting Harry alone so that he might woo her into his bed. Instead, Phin had exposed her to the very eyes from which she’d somehow managed to remain hidden even as she’d walked among them.
She’d spoken nothing but the simple, unvarnished truth.
Phin could no longer afford the luxury of loitering in Wellclose Sqaure, lingering on the fringes of Miss Harry O’Connell’s life while he courted heiresses in Mayfair.
It was time to make a decision, determine a course of action, expend the effort to make it happen and see it through to its conclusion.
Chapter Seventeen
Miss Hesperia Eris O’Connell owned seven perfectly lovely ball gowns. Apart from the silver bit of froth she’d worn to Lady Madeline’s come-out ball, Harry’s ball gowns had never seen the outside of the armoire into which they’d been stashed over the years. It was one of the six neglected gowns which necessitated Harry’s playing fast and loose with the terms of the bargain she’d entered into with a certain viscount.
More precisely, it was the emerald silk gown cut along oriental lines and embroidered with dragons stitched in ebony thread.
She really ought to have considered her weekly modiste appointment when giving Phineas Mayfair all day, every day.
Were it not for the fact she’d snagged one dragon’s long serpentine tail when removing it from the armoire, Harry would not have ventured into Mayfair on the Friday before her debut into Society.
But truly, Madame Broussard’s shop was barely in Mayfair, and then only by a mere fifty feet, the distance between the south side of Oxford Street and the north.
Mayfair or Marylebone, Madame Broussard’s shop was one of Harry’s favorite haunts. She enjoyed the atmosphere, the hustle and bustle of the shop girls and seamstresses running about, the brightly colored fabrics streaming across every available surface. Some days she came away from the shop with as many as three outlandish gowns and another two on order, other days with only a new petticoat or lace fischu, depending upon the state of her finances.
Most days she came away with nothing but the best bits of gossip London had to offer.
Harry breezed through the showroom, passed Madame Broussard with a regal nod and headed into the back room only to come to a grinding halt. The space was inordinately crowded with ladies adorned in gowns in various stages of completion and twice as many seamstresses flitting around them.
Heads turned and gazes lifted to the new arrival in their midst, but if any of the ladies recognized Harry as the woman at the center of an unravelling mystery, they gave no indication of it.
Which was to say, the ladies took in her modest gown of palest yellow muslin, matching spencer and simple straw bonnet without benefit of ornamentation beyond a blue ribbon, and promptly dismissed her as no one of consequence. Perhaps even as the merchant’s daughter she invariably claimed to be when queried by those people of an ill-mannered disposition.
The head seamstress and Harry’s best source of gossip in all of London knelt on the floor, gray skirts bunched around her legs and pins protruding from her mouth. Lottie Moore was a brash and sometimes crass woman of perhaps fifty with an invalid husband, three grown children and seven grandchildren dependent on her to one degree or another. One of those seven grandchildren was Miss Peggy Sholes. Of the Wellclose Square Sholes, not that ragtag bunch in Bethnal Green.
“You’re early,” Lottie declared by way of greeting.
“I’m afraid I can’t keep my scheduled appointment,” Harry replied with a speaking glance around the crowded room. “I only came to drop off a gown for minor repairs. I’ve snagged a dragon’s tail.”
“On that ridiculous oriental concoction you insisted I run up for you the year before last?”
“It’s really quite lovely and by far the simplest ball gown I own,” Harry protested.
“How did you catch the thread?” Lottie demanded, barely glancing up from the hem of the gown she was pinning, never mind the young lady fidgeting in the pale pink confection. “Carelessness, no doubt. When do you need the gown returned to you?”
Harry was used to Lottie’s brusque speech and abrupt manner. Not so the young lady, if one were to judge by the widening of the girl’s eyes.
“Tomorrow morning,” Harry replied, handing the gown off to one of the junior seamstresses.
“Impossible.” Lottie jabbed another pin into the lace and silk, and the girl flinched but bravely held her ground. “Monday’s the soonest I can get to it.”
“Noon time tomorrow,” Harry countered.
“Sunday evening.”
“Tomorrow, two o’clock.”
“Look around you,” Lottie grumbled. “We haven’t fitting rooms enough for all the ladies wanting gowns, nor seamstresses enough to handle the overflow.”
“For last minute orders for Mr. Withington’s grand gala, no doubt.”
Lottie glanced up at that, her eyes dark beads surrounded by plump, ruddy flesh, all of it topped with a frizzy mass of fading red hair. “Been invited, have you?”
“No, actually, I thought I would sneak in through the servants’ entrance,” Harry quipped as she took up a position beside the seamstress, near enough they were unlikely to be overheard by anyone but the pretty, dark-haired girl.
“Good for you,” Lottie chortled. “Though why not wear the scarlet silk with the black lace I ran up for you last year?”
“It’s a bit risqué, don’t you think?” It was one thing to strike a spark and hope she could control the blaze long enough to divert Society’s attention and ruin Dunaway in as public and permanent a manner as possible. The gown in question would only serve to fan the flames into an inferno of speculation.
“No more risqué than some of the gowns these other ladies are ordering,” Lottie insisted.
The young lady looked from the seamstress to Harry and back again.
“Stand still, girl,” Lottie ordered before glancing up a Harry once more. “I’ll have the oriental gown delivered tomorrow by four o’clock.”
“Six o’clock will be fine,” Harry replied with a grin. “Leastwise, I would have settled for six.”
“You’re a cheeky chit,” Lottie said around the pins clamped between her lips. “I hear tell as how the Earl of Dunaway will be attending Withington’s ball in a last-ditch effort to marry off one of his daughters and save himself from the dunners.”
Harry glanced pointedly at the girl even as she waited for the thrill she typically experienced when the final pieces of a well-orchestrated scheme fell into place. That she felt only a muted thrum of something that might have been satisfaction, but more closely resembled an odd sort of weary relief, irritated Harry and left her feeling anxious.
“Don’t worry none about Miss Barthwell carrying tales,” Lottie said. “She don’t move in rarified circles.”
“It’s true,” Miss Barthwell agreed with a shrug. “My father is merely a merchant.”
“You stick to that story, girlie,” Lottie retorted with a laugh. “It’s worked wonders for other ladies of questionable origins.”
“Is it still working wonders?” Harry asked, almost afraid to hope.
“Bah, there was a bit of blather last week about dubious connections to twin sisters of unsavory reputation,” Lottie replied. “Along with some choice morsels having to do with a certain young lady nearly coming to fisticuffs with a matron over a handsome viscount’s attentions.”
“As if any woman with a modicum of sense would engage in anything so undignified as fisticuffs,” Harry scoffed. “And over a man’s unwanted attentions, no less.”
“And of course, there was the scuttlebutt about the marquess wagering the fellows at his club he’d have a certain lady set up in Hanover Square inside a fortnight.”
Harry waved away that little bit of nonsense.
Lottie pulled a pin from her mouth and pushed it through the lace. “But all of that was brushed aside when word got out the Duke of Cheltenham will be attending Mr. Withington’s ball.”
Harry was delighted to learn His Grace had been invited, though given the enmity that had festered between the two gentlemen—neighbors, brothers and rivals for longer than she’d been alive—she was rather
surprised the duke had accepted. But then, he owed Lilith a number of favors. And much like Harry, Lilith was not above calling in long-overdue and all but forgotten favors.
“If that weren’t enough to paper over lesser rumors and gossip,” Lottie continued, “Lady Malleville and her mother, that shameless hoyden Gwendolyn Aberdeen, came around prattling about Viscount Aberdeen and his grandfather, the Duke of Palfour, accepting their invitations the very same day they were received.”
“A stroke of pure genius that,” Harry said with a laugh. “A bucket brigade of various relations, no matter how dubious the connections.”
“I don’t know nothing about a bucket brigade,” Lottie replied. “But I heard as how Lord and Lady Fitzroy have made the journey from Scotland with their motley assortment of progeny.”
“They’ve a prodigious number of progeny,” Harry said, giddy with the knowledge that Lilith had swept the debacle at the museum beneath the proverbial rug with the leaking of her guest list.
“Barons and countesses and what have you,” Lottie agreed. “And the lot of them are related to Lady Malleville by way of the infamous Alabaster Sinclair.”
And thus, related to Harry by way of the scandalous Bathsheba Sinclair.
“But that ain’t even the most shocking of the rumors running rampant about Town,” Lottie said. “It seems the Duke and Duchess of Montclaire will be in attendance at Mr. Withington’s hoity-toity gathering.”
Harry couldn’t help the splutter of laughter that tripped off her lips, even as her heart rate increased in an alarming fashion. “Someone’s been feeding you fairy tales, Lottie.”
“I know it seems a faradiddle,” Lottie replied as she jabbed in the last of the pins required to hold the silk and lace in place around Miss Barthwell’s slippers. “Seeing as they never attend events to which the Fitzroys or Sinclairs have been invited. But I had it from the Duchess of Montclaire’s own lips two days past.”
Harry’s giddy delight fell by the wayside as she was gripped by the strange sensation that one of the many balls she’d been juggling was about to slip through her fingers. It seemed a rather puny ball, almost incidental, all things considered. She’d been so focused upon tossing all the various components of her myriad schemes into the air and keeping them spinning, she’d never paused to consider what might happen to the lot of them were but a single one to be lobbed with too much force.