‘Mama does not know I have come,’ she said, swiping to left and right with her umbrella to remove his hands from her shoulders.
‘Yes, but the Runners? Really? Are you sure?’
She chewed on her lower lip, suddenly looking very unsure and very vulnerable.
‘Lady Harriet, if you are in some sort of fix, you’d do much better to let me help you out of it than trying to battle on alone. I didn’t get the nickname of Ulysses at school for nothing.’
She looked up at him, as though perplexed. And then her expression closed up completely. ‘You will have to forgive me, but I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I know nothing about Ulysses except that he was some character out of Ancient Greece.’
‘Oh. Right.’ He scratched his nose. ‘Well, Ulysses was the most wily and…er…cunning of the generals fighting in the Trojan War. But it wasn’t until he was on his way back from the wars that his talent for using those two weapons, against apparently insurmountable odds, were really put to the test. For instance once, according to legend, he and his men were imprisoned in a cave by a one-eyed giant.’
‘A giant?’
‘Yes. And every night, this giant would eat one of his men for his supper.’
‘Eurgh!’ said Lady Harriet.
‘Yes, but then one night Ulysses got the giant drunk and while he was asleep blinded him by poking him in the eye with a sharp stick.’
‘He sounds perfectly horrid,’ said Lady Harriet, wrinkling her nose.
‘Well, it was a desperate situation. He couldn’t sit back and let that giant eat his men, one by one, could he?’
She shrugged with one shoulder. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Well, the giant bellowed and his brothers came to find out what was the matter, and he shouted out—oh, I should perhaps have mentioned that Ulysses had already told the giant that his name was Nemo. Which means nobody, in Latin, do you see? So when the giant shouted, “Nobody has blinded me”, they all thought he’d got windmills in his head, and wandered off without helping him.’
‘They must have been incredibly stupid.’
‘Well, big fellows often are, I’ve found. But back to Ulysses and his men. The giant went off out to work, as he always did each day. He was a shepherd. And being a giant, his sheep were huge. Since he was blind, he ran his hands over the back of each sheep as he let it out of the cave to make sure it was a sheep and not one of the men who were getting out. But Ulysses got his men to cling to the underside of the sheep and so they all escaped.’
Lady Harriet frowned up at him. ‘So your school friends named you after a man who told lies and blinded people?’
‘You are missing the point. Ulysses used his brains instead of brute force to save both his own life and that of his men. And that was what I did, when I was at school. Used my brains to escape the attention of bullies, since I was too puny to fight back.’
‘Puny?’ She looked up at him. Glanced at his shoulders. Back up to his face.
‘No,’ he admitted, completely unable to stem a flush of pride at her assessment of his physique, ‘I’m not puny now. But I was the youngest, and weakest, of three brothers. And the older two got a lot of pleasure from holding me face down in the mud, or by the ankles off a bridge, or what have you.’
‘How very nasty of them.’
‘They were brutes,’ he agreed. ‘And it was through them that I learned to dodge and weave my way through life. Or, if all else failed, when cornered, to come up with enough jokes or antics that they got more amusement from making me play the clown than roasting me over a fire. But this,’ he said when she gasped, ‘is getting beside the point. We are not here to discuss my past, but my ability to help you out of what I suspect is a fix. And don’t give me that look,’ he said when she pulled her lips into a mutinous line. ‘You wouldn’t be going to the Runners, all on your own, if you didn’t need somebody’s help. And see here, Lady Harriet, I served in the army for the best part of ten years, after serving my apprenticeship in dodging trouble first at home and then at Eton. I know I appear in society like a bit of a…wastrel, but you have already told me you’ve seen through my disguise. The disguise I adopted when I was a boy, to make bullies think I didn’t care, so there was no sport to be had from tormenting me.’
‘Oh, are you in torment, then?’
She looked concerned. So he decided to strike while the iron was hot.
‘I was, when I thought you had left Town and I might never see you again,’ he said candidly. ‘However,’ he continued when she blushed and frowned, and looked as though she was about to voice an objection, ‘we are not speaking of me. But you. And why you feel it necessary to visit the offices of Bow Street. Which, I give leave to inform you, is not at all the sort of place a virtuous young lady should venture, even with a footman in tow.’
‘It is not,’ she said, shifting from one foot to the other, ‘something I can tell you.’
‘Then it is something that is going on within your family.’
She gasped again. Telling him he’d hit the nail on the head.
‘Hmm, well, that explains Lady Tarbrook’s reluctance to speak of why your mother removed you from her care.’
She screwed her mouth up into a tight, resentful line.
‘I was there, too, that day Lord Tarbrook stormed into the drawing room and hauled you out, in front of all the visitors, to give you a dressing down. At least, I heard him shouting and then saw your face when you came out of his study. Although I cannot see that a rift within your family circle would warrant a trip to Bow Street. Nor how you come to be at the centre of it.’
‘Will you just stop this? This is not a guessing game. It is a very serious…’ She pulled herself up. To her full height. And glared at him.
‘Surely you know you can trust me,’ he said gently. ‘After all, I kept what happened between us, in the park, a secret, did I not?’
‘Only because it was to your advantage,’ she said mulishly. ‘If anyone had known about it, you might have had to marry me.’
‘Nonsense. I have told you that I am adept at escaping tricky situations. If I hadn’t wanted to marry you, no amount of threats would have prevailed. I would have found a way to wriggle out of that particular snare, you may be sure. The reason I kept your secret was because…’
She looked up at him. Right in the eye. Which made him swallow.
‘You are an innocent, that’s why. If anyone had heard what you’d done, they might have placed an entirely different interpretation on events. And you didn’t deserve that.’
‘You maintain that you were protecting me?’
‘I was protecting you.’
She didn’t look convinced. So he stepped back and folded his arms across his chest.
‘Now, look here Lady Harriet. You might as well accept the fact that I am going to find out what you are about, one way or another. Either you tell me, right now. Or I will come with you right into the offices and learn what is going on when you inform one of the Runners. Which is it to be?’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He wasn’t going to budge. She could see it in his stance, in the set of his jaw, in the determined glint in his eyes.
So why didn’t Harriet feel furious? Why was she instead tempted to unburden herself? To this man, of all people? The man who’d proved he could take nothing seriously?
It was partly because, the moment she’d set out that morning, she’d fallen prey to all sorts of disturbing thoughts. What if the men at Bow Street didn’t believe her? What if they did believe her, but ignored her request for discretion and blundered in, frightening the servants again? After they’d trusted her to do the right thing. Or, worst of all, what if they discovered it was Uncle Hugo himself who’d had the jewels copied, because of amassing huge debts, somehow? That made so much
sense, since she’d never believed a man so self-absorbed could really have been that concerned about the servants, that she then spent several minutes agonising over the consequences, should that prove to be the case.
She foresaw Kitty’s Season coming to an ignominious end. The town house having to be sold. The entire family having to retreat to the countryside, which both Kitty and Aunt Susan would hate. And they’d hate her, too, for bringing it all down upon their heads. Because the one thing they would not do was blame Uncle Hugo, who, although it was his fault, had been taking steps to secure their future before anyone found out—
‘Lady Harriet!’
She blinked out of her tangled web of conjecture to see Lord Becconsall still standing in her path, arms folded, expression stern.
‘It…it isn’t really my tale to tell,’ she said, passing her umbrella from one hand to the other. ‘Oh, dear, I really don’t know what to do.’
‘Is there nobody you can turn to for help?’
She shook her head. Mama didn’t care. Papa was too far away. And nothing but the direst emergency would induce him to come up to Town anyway, since it was a place he heartily detested.
‘Lady Harriet, I am here.’ He spread his hands wide. ‘Both willing and able to help you, no matter what it is that is troubling you so deeply.’
He looked so sincere. For a moment the temptation to unburden herself was so strong she almost confided in him.
But then she remembered why doing any such thing would be foolish in the extreme.
‘Typical,’ she said. ‘The only person who has taken any notice of what I planned to do today had to be you.’ She jabbed him in the stomach with her umbrella for emphasis. ‘The one man I cannot trust with this…business.’
He rubbed his midsection ruefully.
‘Of course you can trust me Lady Harriet. I swear, on my honour—’
‘Honour? Hah!’
‘That I will hold whatever you tell me in the strictest confidence.’
She wanted so badly to believe him it was almost enough to make her weep with vexation.
‘Do you take me for a complete idiot? When you’ve just boasted about your cunning and your love of telling lies in one breath, you then ask me to trust you in the next. As if it were some kind of test of my gullibility. When I know full well that you already regard me as a joke.’
‘What? How on earth do you come to that conclusion? Look, I may have teased you a bit, but—’
She stamped her foot. ‘Don’t think you can wriggle out of this one, Ulysses,’ she spat out. ‘I heard you with my own ears.’ As though she could hear with anyone else’s. This was what he’d reduced her to. Stamping her foot like a toddler and talking gibberish. ‘You were laughing about me with your friends. About the wager you’d made.’
‘You misunderstood—’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.’ He stepped forward. Leaned close and lowered his voice. ‘I’ve just told you how I cover up my feelings by playing the fool. And that was what I did, after you’d left the park. When all I could think about was finding you again. But I didn’t want to admit to my friends how much. So I made it seem like something I didn’t care about at all.’
She’d planted her hands on her hips the moment he stepped forward. And it suddenly struck her how peculiar they must look, standing toe to toe the way they were. Right in the middle of the pavement so that other pedestrians were having to weave round them, like a stream of water dividing round a pile of rocks.
If anyone her aunt knew were to see her like this…
Only that wasn’t very likely. Nobody from her aunt’s circle was in the habit of getting up this early, she shouldn’t think. Nor would fashionable people stray to this part of Town even if they did.
‘I needed to find you, Harriet,’ said Lord Becconsall. ‘Needed to find out if, once I was sober, you were as perfect as you’d seemed when I was foxed. That the kiss we shared was as magical as I recalled, or merely a combination of drink and a blow to the head.’
Magical? He’d thought that kiss magical as well? She could feel herself leaning into him. Gazing at his mouth.
His lying, deceitful mouth.
She pulled herself up to her full height.
‘Except that you didn’t.’
‘Didn’t what?’
‘Kiss me again. Nor even attempt to. Not at any point.’
He grabbed her by the upper arms. ‘I can rectify that error right here, right now,’ he said, leaning in and looking intently at her mouth.
‘In the street?’ Her voice came out as an indignant squeak. And she was indignant. Because that wasn’t what she’d meant to say. What she ought to have said. Not at all. Because questioning the venue, rather than the action, would make him think that she wanted him to kiss her. And look, see? He was leaning in even closer. If she didn’t do something, right now, then he would kiss her. And he was too close already for her to be able to jab him in the stomach with her umbrella again.
All she could do was pull her upper body as far back as she could and bring her umbrella down sharply on to his foot.
It had the desired effect. His face stopped looming inexorably closer. And he winced.
But he didn’t let go of her arms.
‘Your umbrella isn’t going to keep me off,’ he growled. ‘I’m not a shower of rain.’
‘But if you kiss me, here, in the street, it would cause a shocking scandal. You might even end up having to marry me.’ There, if anything could frighten him off, the threat of marriage should do it.
Or so she would have thought. But to her surprise, it only made him smile, in a rather grim sort of way.
‘At least if we were to marry I’d gain the right to come to your aid when you were in trouble. And you’d never have to walk about the streets unprotected, at the mercy of every rogue and rake in Town.’
‘I…’ Her breath seized in her throat. He really didn’t seem that concerned about the prospect of marrying her. On the contrary, it was almost as though he’d relish the opportunity of getting more involved with her. She felt something melt inside. Something that had always been wound up tight, and hard, in the very centre of her being.
‘It is a bit extreme,’ she said breathily, ‘don’t you think? Marrying me, just to find out…what the difficulty is that I’m trying to solve?’
‘That wouldn’t be the only reason.’
‘Oh?’ The melty feeling expanded. Fluttered. Almost took on the shape of hope trying to spread its wings. ‘What…what other reasons could there possibly be?’ Her heart began to beat really fast.
‘When I thought you’d left Town, when I thought I’d never see you again…’ His hands were no longer gripping her hard. They were sliding up and down her arms in a positively caressing manner. ‘I realised something.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes, I—’
At that moment, a hawker carrying a massive pile of wicker baskets jostled them as he failed to find enough room on the pavement to avoid them, knocking Lord Becconsall’s hat askew. Lord Becconsall scowled at him. Then straightened his hat. Then looked down at her as though he couldn’t quite recall what he’d been about to say.
‘This is not the place for this kind of discussion,’ he said. With such a look in his eye that Harriet’s burgeoning hope withered and died on the spot.
‘Devil take it,’ he snarled. Making her sure that he regretted all the soft words. All the hints that marrying her might not be such a dreadful fate after all.
‘Where can a man and a woman go to discuss matters of this sort, without an audience?’
As he scowled at the ever-increasing stream of pedestrians going about their business, Harriet’s spirits revived. Because he wanted to talk to her some more. About marriage.
&nbs
p; ‘I know,’ he said, seizing her hand and setting off back in the direction from which they’d come.
‘Where are you taking me?’ And why wasn’t she putting up the slightest bit of a struggle?
‘A coffee house,’ he said, as he plunged down a side street. ‘I know it isn’t exactly the right place for a respectable young lady to go, on her own, with a young man. But can you imagine what would happen if we were to head for somewhere like Gunther’s?’
She shuddered. Gunther’s was practically on Aunt Susan’s doorstep. Plenty of society people went in there. Possibly even at this hour of the day. Someone would be bound to see them and carry the tale back to her aunt. And make it sound as scurrilous as they could, while they were at it.
‘It isn’t all that far,’ said Lord Becconsall. ‘But I suggest that you use the time until then thinking about how much you wish to tell me about your problem.’
Her problem? So…he wasn’t taking her somewhere out of the way so he could speak to her about marriage?
Of course he wasn’t. Foolish, hopeless, Harriet. He just couldn’t stand being kept in the dark over a mystery.
‘What,’ she said with a touch of resentment, ‘if I decide not to tell you anything about it?’
‘Then I shall at least have had the pleasure of escorting you along the street and spending time with you, tête-à-tête, in a dark and private nook. But I give you fair warning…’ He darted her a look loaded with laughter. ‘Now that I know you are in some sort of trouble I shall be dogging your footsteps.’
‘Must you?’
‘I must. I would never forgive myself, you see, if any harm were to befall you.’
Something warm unfurled inside Harriet once more. Because nobody had ever cared enough to even say that they’d be unable to forgive themselves if something bad happened to her, even if they didn’t really mean it.
He towed her across the narrow street and down an even narrower alley, before ducking into the doorway of an oak-beamed building that looked as though it really ought to have fallen down just after the Great Fire.
Convenient Bride for the Soldier & the Major Meets His Match & Secret Lessons With the Rake (9781488021718) Page 39