by Lynne Barron
The faint flush on Harry’s cheeks transformed into a mottled pink blush. She clamped her lips into a tight line, but not before a queer, breathy little yelp escaped. The sound was reminiscent of the first giggle that had escaped her lips when Phin had kissed her at the Montclaire Museum.
At which point, Phin realized two things, one atop the other.
Harry—his confident, indomitable, fearless Harry—was nervous.
And the entire evening, the entire bloody exhibition, from the guests, to the timing, to the décor, was no more than the backdrop of a portrait composed of vibrant shades and bold strokes. The big picture Phin had been too blind to see while he went about trying to paint Harry into a cramped little corner.
Withington lifted Harry’s hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles before holding their joined hands out before them as if offering her to the multitudes. Which, when it came right down to it, was precisely what he was doing. “I give you Miss Hesperia Eris O’Connell.”
While the upper echelon of the British aristocracy looked on in stunned amazement, Miss Hesperia Eris O’Connell’s green eyes filled until they glowed like polished jewels, and her quivering lips fell open to emit a symphony of high-pitched giggles interspersed with adorable little snorts and peeps and hoots.
Withington smiled fondly and raised his voice to be heard above her fit of hysterics. “As of this afternoon, at precisely half past three—when the first lode of iron was excavated from Wheal Mercy in Cornwall, and all selling, trading, wagering, gifting and collateralizing of shares were permanently prohibited—Miss O’Connell is, and shall forever be, the major shareholder of the British Consolidated Mining Corporation.”
“Bloody Hell!” Dunaway’s voice was as loud as a gunshot, easily carrying over Harry’s laughter to echo around the ballroom.
Chapter Twenty
Harry had expected to be nervous when presented to the ton. In fact, since the moment she’d made the decision to recklessly gamble her greatest truth on a convoluted concoction of fibs, fallacies and outright falsehoods, and at deplorably dismal odds, she’d not been able to expel a breath that did not end in some gauche, graceless tweet, chirp or squawk.
Still, she’d not expected to be so beset with nerves she’d be rendered deaf, dumb and blind. But as she stood beside Withy, surrounded on all sides by various relations both distant and near, she heard nothing but an odd ringing in her ears, low and steady and impenetrable. The guests assembled in all their finery in the ballroom below appeared as no more than a patchwork of bright colors and pale faces, their features indiscernible one from the next. And when the time came for her to deliver the coup de grâce, she was unable to catch a full breath, let alone form a single coherent word. Instead, when she allowed her lips to fall open, all manner of yips, yelps and whoops emerged.
Withy, bless his benighted and bedeviled soul, gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze and proceeded to lay waste to Dunaway’s ambitions and aspirations.
Harry heard none of it—not the giggles tumbling past her own lips, not the words her portly friend uttered, nor the reaction said words engendered from the crowd.
Until a single voice broke through the muted hum of sound in her ears.
“Bloody Hell!” Those words she heard quite clearly.
As if the two words had opened flood gates, a great deluge of raised voices, cheering and laughter inundated her ears. The shock of it jolted through her, and she opened her watering eyes wide. A multitude of faces were lifted to her, most of them unrecognizable through the moisture swimming in her eyes but no longer entirely indistinguishable. When her gaze collided with a pair of bright whiskey brown eyes, her nerves settled into something approaching calm. Swiping a hand over her eyes, she dashed away the last of the moisture hovering on her lashes, while her lips curved into a smile wholly against her will.
“Mission accomplished, my dearest girl,” Withy murmured.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Harry said in all honesty. “Though I still cannot quite believe you hurried off to Maidstone to straighten out the muddle at the mill without first making me aware of Dunaway’s scheme to marry off Annalise in exchange for shares in the mining corporation.”
“I expected to be gone only a day or two, else I would have informed you of the earl’s letter proposing the match and my reply suggesting a willingness to consider it,” Withy explained. “I never doubted you would learn of the earl’s machinations and turn them to your advantage one way or another. Though I didn’t imagine you would use the occasion to reveal yourself as Bathsheba and Montclaire’s granddaughter.”
“Lilith tossed the ball too high with her guest list,” Harry replied with a shrug. “The truth was bound to come out.”
“And you thought it best to manage the ensuing mayhem.”
“Managing mayhem seems to have become something of a habit for me, of late.”
“So long as you don’t take it into your head to manage me,” Withy warned with a wink. “Seeing as I’m your father. Great lark, that, my girl. Ought to keep the tongues wagging in Mayfair for weeks.”
“So long as the wagging is minimal in Wellclose Square, I’ll count it a worthwhile endeavor.”
“Fine looking fellow,” Withy said with a nod to the handsome rascal who stood near the bottom of the stairs, watching her intently, eerily motionless despite the tide of bodies swaying around him. “You could do worse.”
“If I’m to do, I’d prefer to do better.”
“And so you shall, no doubt,” Withy replied, tucking her hand in the crook of his elbow, there to press against his soft, round belly. “But for now, onward into the breach.”
Into the breach Harry went, though not alone. Before she’d descended the first two stairs, ladies and gentlemen swarmed down until they flanked her on both sides, a half dozen stragglers bringing up the rear. It was a queer sensation, being surrounded by relations, most of whom had been strangers until an hour previously. It was made doubly so when she spotted her sisters congregated at the foot of the stairs.
Both Kate and Madeline smiled at her, while Annalise frowned worriedly. Sissy stood beside Thomas, who was prattling about something they were all likely to hear about the very next time they sat down to dinner together.
When Harry finally reached the landing, the current of the crowd of her familial connections merged with that of the surge of bodies in the ballroom, catching her and dragging her inexorably in the opposite direction until she could no longer see Phineas or her sisters at all.
Harry was introduced to one guest after another, though she made no effort whatsoever to commit names to faces. There was no point, seeing as after this night she would have no reason to move among them again. They were entirely immaterial to her life and always would be.
Still, she smiled and curtsied as she allowed herself to be ushered, prodded and tugged around the ballroom by an alternating array of female relations, beginning with Lady Fitzroy and culminating with the Duchess of Montclaire who, for some unfathomable reason, felt the need to pretend to a great familial affection for her exceedingly distant cousin, patting and petting Harry as if she were a favorite spaniel, while not actually speaking directly to her even once.
By the time she’d made a complete circuit around the vast, crowded space, Harry’s slippers were pinching her toes, her coiffure was listing perilously close to her left shoulder, the hem of her gown was torn, and her patience with the preening, prancing throng had been worn dangerously thin.
So it was, she found herself considering the consequences of simply sneaking away from her debut ball. Ned was waiting with his hack, likely tossing dice with the other drivers and swigging gin from a jug. She could be in Wellclose Square inside of an hour, sipping ale and playing darts with Cedric at the Pickled Prince shortly thereafter.
From the corner of her eye, Harry spotted a scoundrel separating from the muster of prettily attired peacocks leaning, lounging and otherwise loitering along one wall. The Earl of Dun
away slowly wound his way through the crowd toward the French doors at the back wall. Harry had half a mind to follow him out to the gardens and force him to face the long overdue moment of reckoning.
“Damn and blast,” she muttered as the earl slipped outside and was swallowed up by the night.
“Such shocking language,” a deliciously masculine voice whispered in her ear. “And from the granddaughter of a duke, no less.”
Harry could not help the shiver that traveled down her spine, any more than she could help the flash of regret for what might have been.
Well, if she was to be denied one moment of reckoning, she may as well fully enjoy another.
Harry spun around to face Phineas, fully expecting him to step back, though why she imagined he would begin behaving as a gentleman at this lamentably late date she hadn’t a clue.
He did not step back, but rather stepped nearer. So close his muscular chest nearly touched her breasts, so close his wide shoulders beneath a sapphire blue coat blocked the light from the chandelier. She might have reached out to run her fingers along the sculpted angle of his jaw, to sweep back the ebony curl falling over his forehead.
Harry lost herself in his gaze, cast adrift in a sea of impossible expectations until she was only vaguely aware of the crowd shifting and flowing around them.
“Good evening, Miss O’Connell.” Phineas pitched his voice low, a mere thread of sound. “Or should I say Mr. King?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harry replied with a splutter of laughter. “I am not Mr. King.”
“You’ll never convince me Mr. Withington is a man of astounding business acumen,” Phineas said, his eyes glittering with amusement. “Any more than you’ll convince me he would be the least bit interested in a peek at your…er, female attributes.”
“I was all of twelve when Mr. King took over the running of the ship works.”
“I’ve no doubt that even at the tender age of twelve you were more than up to the task of building a financial empire.”
“Flattery will get you precisely nowhere,” Harry replied, delighted by the compliment nonetheless. “Clearly, we did a poor job of it, if you came away from this ostentatious display believing I am Mr. David King.”
“You did a splendid job of it,” Phineas assured her. “I might have been diverted from the truth by the dramatic display, just like everyone else, had I not already known you to be Montclaire and Bathsheba’s granddaughter.”
“You knew?”
“Since our afternoon together at the museum,” he confirmed.
“But how?”
“You were wearing the very same hat depicted in the portrait of the duke.”
“My grandfather’s hat gave me away,” Harry said, a bit befuddled. “Twice, no less.”
“That and the portrait of your grandmother.” Phineas’s gaze swept over her from the curls Prudence had loosely piled atop her head to the delicate black slippers cutting off all circulation to her toes. “I have dreamed of you just so countless times.”
Warmth bloomed in Harry’s chest, spreading out in all directions, scorching a path up to settle on her cheeks, racing down her limbs and pooling between her thighs.
Good Lord, it ought to be deemed a criminal offense, what the man could do with only nine relatively innocuous words delivered in a sinfully soft whisper.
“Wait, did you say Mr. King’s given name is David?” Phineas asked with a chuckle. “David King? As in King David, husband to Bathsheba in the biblical story?”
“Are you learning to look to the nuances, Lord Knighton?”
“The Duke of Montclaire was Mr. King?”
“Tsk, tsk. And you were doing so well.” It wasn’t until the words left her lips that Harry realized they perfectly echoed those she’d spoken to him upon their first acquaintance. It seemed fitting that their relationship should end much as it had begun. With the viscount blindly stumbling through a ballroom in pursuit of an heiress when he ought to be plotting a different path for himself altogether. “Mr. King is a phantom, a name whispered on the wind and borne on the breeze until it reached the gristmill, where it was promptly ground into gossip and scattered about for cackling hens and squawking roosters to feed upon.”
Phineas frowned as he considered her words. “A phantom created by your grandfather to hide the fact that he was engaged in commerce and trade?”
“A phantom created by my grandmother to hide the fact she had made a fortune with no more than her wits and a few pounds skimmed from the estate of her long-time lover. And now the enigmatic, illusive Mr. King can quietly retire, as I have invested Bathsheba’s entire fortune in the mining operation.”
“An interesting turn of events,” Phineas said, his lips slowly curling in a smile that was purely beautiful and all too arrogant.
Foolish man. Had he not yet realized his mistake?
“I don’t know as I’d say events have turned so much as come to light,” Harry replied with a laugh borne of gleeful anticipation, spiteful creature that she was. Lifting the fan dangling from her wrist, she pointed in the general vicinity of the far end of the ballroom. “Oh, goodness, look at that.”
Phin whipped his head around and peered past the crowd.
His two companions joined them and immediately turned to look as well.
“What are we looking at?” Mr. Maxwell asked.
“Why, I could have sworn I saw…” Harry said in a musing manner. “Yes, there it is, right in the middle of the far wall.”
Phineas turned back to her, slowly, perhaps even cautiously, as if he knew what was coming and was loathe to face it.
Harry met his gaze and held it, saw the wariness enter his eyes and refused to feel any compassion whatsoever for his predicament. He’d brought it upon himself, after all, though it had been bought and paid for with the wounding of her pride and the bruising of her heart. “Why, I do believe there is a fly on the wall.”
“Harry, love,” Phin murmured, reaching for her as the orchestra struck up the first bars of a new melody, the strains of the violins soaring around the ballroom.
With no more than a slight tap of her fan against his knuckles, she forestalled the motion. “As always, it has been a pleasure trading bits of polished flattery and witty banter with you, my lord, but I must be off now, as the Marquess of Marchant is to lead me out for my first dance.”
Phineas placed his abused hand over his heart in a gesture reminiscent of another ball, another misguided, mismanaged and mistimed encounter. And still he did not appear to grasp the magnitude of his blunder. “Will you grant me the next set?”
“I’m afraid my dance card is full.”
Phineas made no attempt to hide his skepticism, lifting one brow and expelling an aggravated breath. At any other time, Harry might well have taken offense.
But not, alas, at this particular time. “It seems Lady Malleville invited every unmarried gentleman with empty pockets and a notion to fill them at my expense.”
It took but a moment for Phineas to comprehend the full measure of his ghastly miscalculation, a moment during which Harry watched something that might have been sorrow flicker in his eyes. More likely it was merely regret for his own empty pockets.
Right on cue, Charles pushed his way through the crowd, nodded to the gentlemen and bowed to Harry. “I believe this is my dance, dearest.”
“So it is, my lord.”
As she turned away and placed her hand on Charles’s arm, Mr. Maxwell’s strident voice rose above the music and laughter and chatter of the guests. “I say, Knighton, you aren’t going to let the filly break free of the traces now, are you?”
“Eat your damn crop,” Phineas retorted, his voice a raspy snarl.
Harry cast one final glance over her shoulder to find Phineas standing precisely where she’d left him, his gaze on her retreating form as he raked a hand through his hair, leaving the curls standing up every which way.
Had she known it was the last glimpse she would catch of the man f
or the remainder of the night, she might have looked her fill. If the far too handsome rake remained at the ball, he was either hiding in the card room or stalking heiresses in the shadows. Either way, Harry saw neither hide nor hair of him.
Nor did she catch more than the occasional sighting of her sisters throughout the interminable entertainment that was in no way entertaining. Annalise went missing after the first waltz of the evening, and Lord Malleville led an obviously exhausted Lilith waddling away shortly thereafter. Kate was surrounded by more titled, handsome choices than any lady of sense needed, and Sissy, as usual, spent the evening plastered to her husband’s side, hanging on his every word. Which left only Madeline, who seemed perfectly content to ignore Harry in favor of dancing with one partner after another—none of whose names began with K—and making far too many trips to the punch bowl, the silly chit.
Of the Earl of Dunaway, Harry saw far too much. His lordship’s sojourn in the garden had been a short one, for he was prowling around the perimeter of the dancefloor when Charles led Harry through the first change of the quadrille. He lingered throughout every set Harry danced, watching her pousette, allemande, rigadon and moulinet with one partner after another. When she wasn’t dancing, he hovered on the fringes of every cluster of guests she stopped to converse with, followed her from the punch bowl at one end of the ballroom to the tray of tarts at the other.
Clearly he wanted an opportunity to plead his case and was not terribly subtle in trying to maneuver her into granting him one. Harry rather enjoyed toying with him, turning to him from time to time as if to engage him in conversation only to spin away again, walking his way only to wander off in the opposite direction, meeting his gaze only to look away.