by Lynne Barron
“Wait, did you say I was four months old?”
“Only just barely.”
“You were making merry with Kate’s mother!”
“My clever girl,” Dunaway said with a laugh. “Jenny Price was kitted out as a shepherdess, the little minx, and I’ve yet to meet a shepherdess I could resist.”
“Kate was conceived the very same night Arabella ran away and doomed me to twelve years of poverty and loneliness?”
“Would you wish it otherwise?” Dunaway asked. “Would you wish I had been there, watching over you, if it meant never having Kate in your life?”
“Of course not,” Harry answered immediately. “There’s a dreadful symmetry to it, isn’t there?”
“And therein lies the difference between remorse and regret, my dearest daughter of the evening, my darling goddess of trouble,” Dunaway replied. “I’m afraid I cannot take credit for your surname, as it was your mother’s choice to marry O’Connell. Though, I’ll not deny Arabella chose aptly if her intention was to be sure you were named after me. As you pointed out not long ago, and I just now confirmed should confirmation be required, I am a dog forever in pursuit of a willing bitch to mount, and I make no bones about it.”
Harry could not help the burst of laughter that erupted from her lips. “Make no bones about it, indeed. You’re ridiculous.”
“Yes, so Lilith is forever telling me.” Some new emotion glittered in his green eyes, lending him an almost somber countenance. “And as I am wont to tell Lilith on those rare occasions she cares to listen to me, I have led a less than exemplary life. I have sinned in more ways than I can count, lied when the truth would have sufficed and betrayed the love of more than one woman. I regret none of it, for every sin, betrayal and lie led me down a path littered with daughters, each of whom I hold dear.”
He was a charming reprobate, a fickle, faithless rogue accustomed to wielding flattery in pursuit of whatever he wanted at any given moment, and still Harry felt a queer pinch in her chest at his words. She wanted to believe him, longed for it with a strength that surprised and befuddled her.
“While I cannot regret my actions of that night,” Dunaway continued, “I’ve always wondered what might have been if only I’d been there, bent over your cradle.”
“If it hadn’t been that night, it would have been another.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed. “Still, I ought to have been the one to come for you twelve years later. If I had arrived to rescue you, brought you home with me, I might have been a true father to you.”
“And I might have let you be a true father to me,” Harry replied with a wobbly laugh. “Good Lord, what a terribly messy muddle that would have been.”
“Life is a terribly messy muddle.”
“Not my life.”
“Then you’re not doing it right, darling girl.”
When silence fell between them yet again, it was wholly comfortable, pleasant even. Harry untied her bonnet and removed it, lifting her face to the sun. A breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees, and a bird chirped out a cheerful melody.
An odd sort of stillness swept over her. She allowed the strangeness of it to settle around her, surprised to discover that she felt tranquil, calm and quiet deep inside.
It was a queer sensation, altogether alien but not unwelcome.
Idly, she wondered if this was how the rest of the world felt on a regular basis. Relaxed, unhurried and blessedly able to breath, slow and steady.
Unafraid. It had been so long since she’d been unafraid. Unafraid of tumbling back into poverty, of following the path well-trodden by her female forbears, of being unmasked as the daughter of a no-good wastrel, of depending upon anyone else for her safety, security and happiness.
She’d been terrified of life, with its inherent unpredictability, emotional upheavals, mistimed moments, thwarted expectations and intrinsically risky ventures.
If the last few weeks had proven nothing else to her, they had proven she could not avoid the caprices and calamities of life. What’s more, she wouldn’t want to.
“A gentleman called upon me this morning.” Dunaway’s voice was soft, but threaded with amusement as usual. “I took him for a fortune hunter the moment he stepped into my study.”
“Like does tend to recognize like,” Harry replied tartly.
“Just so,” Dunaway agreed. “As I haven’t a fortune to bestow upon any of my daughters, my curiosity was piqued. Thus, I greeted him graciously and offered him a choice of brandy or tea. Oddly enough, he chose the latter.”
“Some men prefer to wait until the noon hour to partake of spirits.”
“I can’t name one in ten of my acquaintance.”
“I’m not the least surprised.”
“Yes, well this gentleman, a viscount he was, opted for tea,” Dunaway said.
“A viscount?”
“Trumped-up version of a baron, to my way of thinking, but a lord all the same, I suppose.”
“Which viscount?” It was silly, stupid really, to hope, but hope she did.
“Handsome young man,” Dunaway replied with a sly smile. “Dark hair, odd yellow eyes, fine physique.”
“His name, Dunaway. What was his name?”
“Can’t say as I recall his Christian name,” Dunaway said, valiantly attempting a frown, though he could not quite manage it. “I’ve never had a talent for matching names to faces. It’s led me into mischief more than once. Hmm, give me a moment, and it’ll come to me. Must have been written in the marriage contract he brought along. A tad presumptuous, that.”
“A dark-haired, yellow-eyed viscount called upon you with a marriage contract in hand?” Harry demanded. “And you can’t recall his name?”
“I’m better with titles.”
“What is his title?”
“Knighton.” Dunaway’s green eyes, so like her own, glittered with glee. “With a K, not an N. Madeline thought it important I mention that bit, and also that I remind you she skipped K as you suggested, and is currently stuck on L.”
“His Christian name is Phineas,” Harry said. “Phineas Nathaniel Griffith, Viscount Knighton, and his eyes are amber, whiskey-brown in certain light.”
“They’re yellow in the light of my study.”
“Never mind his eyes. He called upon you with a marriage contract already drawn up?”
“Like I said, a tad presumptuous,” Dunaway replied. “Foolish as well. I can’t think why he had the absurd document drawn up, or where he found a solicitor willing to see to the task.”
“The marriage contract was absurd?” Harry asked in confusion.
“Obscene.”
“Obscene?”
“Why, it’s likely to establish a precedent that might well lead to the collapse the English aristocracy as we know it. Imagine, if you will, a world in which marriages are no longer founded upon the exchange of titles and wealth. A world in which a bride's entire fortune—every last shilling, every share of stock, and every portion of every partnership—is placed in trust before the marriage, with trustees to be chosen by said bride, and the principle sums and all profits realized from such sums to be spent, saved or invested by the trustees at her sole discretion. A world in which a gentleman with no known source of income agrees to see to the household accounts and his wife’s demented modiste bills, and lavish said wife with love, if not luxury, until his estate begins to turn a profit, at which time luxury will be included in the form of an addendum to the contract. A world in which the only dowry involved is that which the groom brings to the marriage and consists of one beribboned, bejeweled and be-feathered bonnet valued at three quid.”
“Phineas offered up a bonnet valued at three quid as a dowry?” Harry asked around a snort of laughter. “Three quid?”
“It only gets worse,” Dunaway assured her. ”The terms for separation—should a separation be sought by the wife due to a single transgression by the husband—favor the former to the extent she maintains custody of any childr
en born of the union and is entitled to one half of all future profits he realizes from any joint mercantile ventures embarked upon during the marriage. What sort of peer of the realm embarks upon mercantile ventures? A peer with a trumped-up title, that’s what sort.”
“Or a man determined to make his own way in the world,” Harry countered.
“Stuff and nonsense is what it is, from start to finish,” Dunaway said. “I can only imagine it’s meant to be symbolic, for what sort of gentleman would adhere to such a contract when there isn’t a court in the land that would uphold it?”
“A gentleman of sterling honor and integrity,” Harry answered readily. “But Lord Knighton has an estate to set to rights, tenants dependent upon him for their livelihood, a mother to support and sisters in need of launching into Society. How does he intend to see to his responsibilities without benefit of an heiress’s fortune?”
“It seems he has liquidated his assets, relieved himself of everything that wasn’t nailed down, entailed or otherwise encumbered.”
“Surely he hadn’t many assets to liquidate, as his grandfather nearly bankrupted the estate.”
“Everything, Hesperia,” Dunaway emphasized. “He pawned the family jewels and sold more than half the furnishings and fixtures from his townhouse, and all of those from his manor in Wales. Beds and tables, settees and chairs and cabinets. Chandeliers and candlesticks, drapes and carpets, china and silver. Even some moldy artwork that had been languishing in the attics for years. What he couldn’t pawn or sell quickly, he bartered. A traveling coach, an oven, musty old books by the crate load.”
“Goodness,” Harry breathed in wonder. “I suspected that if he would only set his mind to something productive, he would not be satisfied with half-measures.”
“I don’t know why it never occurred to me to sell off some of the godawful furniture my lady wife has crammed into every chamber at Dunaway Hall.”
“Her ladyship will have your head on a platter if you make the attempt,” Harry cautioned.
Dunaway, being a careless wastrel, brushed away the warning with a wave of one hand. “I had no idea tradesmen and other sundry upstarts would pay a pretty penny for an aristocrat’s castoffs. Even if the aristocrat is in possession of a trumped-up title. Do you know a fellow bought Knighton’s chamber pot? Paid four shillings for the honor of pissing in a lord’s pot.”
Harry erupted into laughter. It just burst from her, light and airy enough to float off on the breeze.
“Devil of a thing,” Dunaway said as he joined in her merriment, his laughter ringing out, deep and full-bellied.
“Four bob for a chamber pot,” Harry gasped.
“Bloody brilliant,” Dunaway chortled.
“A viscount’s castoff!”
“Trumped-up title!”
It took some doing, and a bit of time, not to mention a few queer looks from passersby, but eventually Harry and Dunaway managed to rein in their amusement.
“Knighton realized a tidy sum, not from the chamber pot, but from the rest of it,” Dunaway said, swiping a hand over his eyes, “and invested the lot of it.”
“Phineas doesn’t know the first thing about investing,” Harry exclaimed, lurching to her feet and waving her hands about in agitation. “He’ll lose it all to some smooth talking shyster!”
Dunaway rose slowly from the bench, his movements languid and graceful. Plucking up her bonnet, he carefully placed it on her head, tilting it at a jaunty angle and grasping the dangling ribbons as if to hold her in place. “Knighton seemed to know what he was about when he rattled off some gibberish about diversifying profits and reinvesting holdings.”
“Diversifying holdings and reinvesting profits,” Harry corrected automatically.
“Just so,” Dunaway agreed. “Then he launched into a recitation about vagaries and vulnerabilities and cornering markets. And followed that up with something to do with initial expenditures, opportunities for expansion and likely timespans.”
“I knew he heard me, but I thought he wasn’t truly listening to what I was telling him.”
Dunaway smiled fondly and set to work tying the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin. “He listened well enough to take a jaunt to Blackfriars and the offices of the British Consolidated Mining Corporation.”
“His timing truly is deplorable,” Harry replied. “Mr. Peebles will not bend the bylaws, not even when offered a bribe in the form of a pretty bit of fluff.”
“You might want to check the lists, dear girl. Knighton’s name ought to appear on the piddling list. Leastwise, I imagine so, as I doubt he made it onto the middling with only the proceeds from the sale of a few acres of land. Look at the bottom of the list, for I believe his name was added mere moments before the messenger arrived with the news that the first load of ore had been excavated.”
“But the first load was brought up the day of Withy’s ball.”
“When Knighton still had a pot to piss in,” Dunaway added. “And when he believed you to be a penniless woman whom he meant to make his wife.”
“Why did he not say so?” Harry whispered. “Why did he allow me to believe he only wanted to marry me when I became the simplest solution to his monetary problems?”
Dunaway barked out a laugh. “You are not the simplest solution to any man’s problems, pet. Monetary or otherwise. Good Lord, but a man would have to be stalwart to take you on as a wife.”
“Are you calling me difficult?”
“Only in the best possible way.”
“But where did Knighton invest the proceeds from the chamber pot and the rest of it?”
“He didn’t say,” Dunaway replied.
“What did you tell him?” Harry asked. “About the marriage contract?”
“I told him it was an affront to insolvent gentlemen the width and breadth of England,” Dunaway drawled. “I told him that if I were to sign so absurd a document I would be barred from all the best clubs and struck from the guest lists for all the worst balls.”
“You didn’t.”
“If you are to marry the man, I must take his measure.”
“How did he measure up?”
“Agile of wit, fluent in flattery, slow to anger,” Dunaway replied. “Well done, pet.”
“And when you were finished toying with him?” Harry asked.
“I told him I could not, in good conscience, give my approval of the contract or the marriage,” Dunaway replied, completing the tying of her ribbons and fluffing the resulting bow just so. “After all, I am not your father.”
“Oh, Dun,” Harry said, offering him the diminutive of his title used by Lilith and Kate, though not with the same fondness just yet. “You truly are the most ridiculous man.”
“I would be honored to affix my signature to the contract, should you wish to acknowledge me as your father.”
“Do you think to blackmail me?”
“I prefer to call it persuasion.”
“A rose by any other name.”
“I jest, my darling girl,” Dunaway said. “You needn’t acknowledge me in order to marry Knighton, if marry Knighton you intend to do.”
“I do intend to marry him,” Harry replied. “And I suppose there are worse things than a terribly messy, muddled life.”
“Harry!” The feminine cry from across the park had them both turning.
Kate skipped across the grass, lavender skirts swirling around her legs and a long golden braid dangling over her shoulder to bounce against her bosom. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
Harry’s heart clenched painfully as she was suddenly overcome with affection for the witty and generous woman who would never have been conceived had Dunaway not been a scapegrace. Of course, the same might be said of Lilith and Harry herself. The notion rattled around in her head a bit before she set it aside for further consideration. There was an interesting theory there, perhaps even one with mathematical applications.
“She’s a pretty hoyden,” Dunaway said when Kate lifted he
r dress to her knees and kicked a ball that rolled into her path. “I’ve my eye on a husband for her.”
“Don’t you dare plot to marry Kate off,” Harry hissed. “I’ve populated a small village with perfectly nice gentlemen for her to choose from when the time comes.”
“Vicars, blacksmiths and country doctors.” His voice positively oozed disdain.
“Kate is a country girl.”
“What a lovely surprise to see you two together,” the country girl in question called out from twenty paces away. “And not engaged in fisticuffs.”
Harry left Dunaway and hurried to meet her sister.
“Speaking of fisticuffs,” Kate began only to expel a laugh when Harry hauled her into her arms. “I’m happy to see you, too.”
Harry held her tight, breathing in the scents of freshly-laundered linen and cut grass that always clung to her, even after months in London. “I love you, Mary Katherine Price.”
“Mawkish sentiment?” Kate teased, holding Harry just as close.
“It’s past noon.”
“So it is.”
“Dun’s making mischief with you in mind,” Harry warned.
“I know.” Kate broke their embrace and grinned at her. “He and Robbie have hatched a surprisingly intricate scheme.”
“Dunaway and your grandfather are in league together?”
“Robbie and I are in league together,” Kate replied. “But don’t tell Dun. He so likes to think he is pulling the strings, poor man.”
“I’m afraid Harry has usurped your position as my favorite daughter,” Dunaway said by way of greeting as he joined them. “Knee-deep in adoration for her father, she is, and you know I cannot resist a beautiful woman’s adoration.”
Harry and Kate both rolled their eyes at his adoration, self-directed as it was.
“I popped around to your house to see little William, and Nurse Jeffreys said you’d called for a carriage to bring you round to Wellclose Square,” Kate said, rising up on her toes to buss Dunaway’s cheek. “I thought I’d better follow along to serve as your second should Harry decide to challenge you to a duel. She’s deadly with a rapier.”