by Carrie Lomax
“Won’t you please call me—”
“Absolutely not. I will not address you by your absurd given names. Viola and Harper. How eccentric,” the baroness sniffed. “Allow me to guess. You are destitute and have come to me for help. Is that it?”
Harper flinched, but Viola was made of sturdier stuff.
“We wanted to renew the family acquaintance. We came to London specifically to meet you,” she said noncommittally.
But their grandmother was no fool.
“You put on a better show than I might have expected. Decent lodgings, expensive card stock.” Her eyes narrowed onto Matthew’s jacket. The child fidgeted under her scrutiny. Harper gave him a sharp nudge. Instantly he stilled. “Were it not for the state of the child’s clothing I could almost believe you. At least the boy appears to have a passing acquaintance with manners. Come here, Matthew. Let me see you.”
Cowed into temporary submission, he obeyed. Harper’s lungs squeezed. Matthew was as unpredictable as any eight-year-old, but he managed to present himself to his great-grandmother with a modicum of propriety. He allowed himself to be touched on the shoulder, turned in a slow circle, and examined from head to toe. Beside Harper, Viola inclined her head in unspoken approval.
“You have the makings of a gentleman, my boy. Which is not to say that there isn’t a great deal of work to be done. If your education is as shabby as your dress, you will require a great deal of intervention.” The baroness posed her great-grandson beneath the painting on the mantle. The resemblance was unmistakable.
“I shall send the footman to your lodgings to retrieve your belongings. We will air out the nursery to accommodate the boy. The nursemaid’s room will have to be sufficient to your needs, Mrs. Cartwright. I am prepared to offer all of you a temporary home. The young man is, after all, family.” The baroness’s attitude made none of them feel welcome. But though no one made a sound, the relief was palpable.
The baroness raised one gloved hand. “My support is conditional. You may not stay here indefinitely. The season starts up again soon. All three of you are to study avidly to acquire the social polish that your diminished upbringings undoubtedly failed to provide you. Furthermore, Miss Forsythe, you will marry posthaste. You will entertain all suitors, young or old, handsome or ill-favored. You must agree to accept the first man who offers for you and marry quickly lest he change his mind. Mrs. Cartwright, you are widowed I presume?”
Viola hesitated. “Yes, madam.”
“You, too, will look for a husband to support you. Finding one will be no small matter given the existence of your son. You will each endeavor to attract a suitable husband, and quickly. I won’t be saddled with supporting a widow and a spinster in my dotage. I also refuse to permit my daughter’s daughters to choose lifetimes of poverty and loneliness. I am giving you the chance to secure your futures. You must promise to do your part. Neither of you is likely to have another opportunity to improve your lot in life like this one. That is my offer. Take it or return to your lodgings and do not darken my door again.” With that, the baroness bade them good day and swept from the room, leaning grandly on her silver-headed walking stick.
“Cor,” whistled Matthew as they descended the front steps, the butler having been instructed to show them out properly. “Wouldn’t want to be stuck in your shoes, Aunt Harpy.”
“Oh, shut it.” Viola swatted Matthew gently on the shoulder. “If it weren’t for Harper making a sacrificial lamb out of herself, we’d all be homeless tomorrow nightfall. I don’t imagine you would last long in the workhouse, either.” She ruffled her son’s head affectionately. “You were very good, Mattie.”
Harper barely heard them. She was trying with all her might not to be sick right there in the street. Marriage was not going to happen on her terms. How awful that she had only just recently turned down the only decent proposal she would ever receive.
Viola took her arm. “Harper. We are being watched. Put up a brave front, at least until we are out of her view.”
As though to give them a taste of the luxury they would be denied if they were foolish enough to say no to the baroness’s offer, their grandmother had sent around her coach to convey them back to the hotel. Returning to this grand town home in it meant that they had accepted their grandmother’s terms. If they did not, their options were grim.
“Harper, there is a simple solution,” Viola told her, still holding her gloved hand.
“You must be joking,” Harper exclaimed.
“Yet there is one, if you would listen. Lord Northcote is in town. It ought to be a simple matter of arranging a meeting. His father would quite reasonably have objected to the idea of his son marrying a young lady of no consequence, but surely, he will see things differently if you are presented as the granddaughter of a wealthy baroness. A person of social consequence, if not precisely his equal.”
“Viola, that is neither simple nor a solution,” Harper wailed. “The earl knew full well that I was granddaughter to a baroness. Had he known that Edward had so much as whispered the word marriage to me, the earl would have sent Edward back to Brazil to keep us apart.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Viola asked, the dark arches of her eyebrows rising on her pale brow.
Harper stopped complaining and set her jaw. “No. It would be an ideal outcome if we could find a way to make it happen. But it is impossible. The earl would have him imprisoned if we eloped.”
“What if he offered to give up the title? Could he abdicate in exchange for an income? You don’t need to be a countess. What you need is a husband with some means of supporting us.”
“Us?” Harper stared at her sister incredulously.
“I married once to save our skins. This time it’s your turn. You go get the rich husband. I have no intention of complying with Grandmother’s absurd ultimatum. What’s more, I intend to enjoy every second of our residence at Landor House, no matter how temporary it proves to be.”
Harper’s vision hazed red. Her breath stopped in her throat, and for the first time in her life, she was furiously angry with her own sister. Viola had taken charge after their mother had died, and when their father had followed suit soon thereafter, organized care for her sister and support for herself. Harper had expected her protective sister to take care of her again. That was what she had asked for in her letter—an excuse to run away.
Maybe the Pattons had a point. She needed to start dealing with her own problems instead of running from them, the way she had run from Briarcliff. Harper’s spine steeled against the velvet squabs. Her nephew deserved a future. She could give him one. It wasn’t as if she had much to hope for herself.
“I’ll manage something.” She pasted a brave smile over her lips as the carriage pulled up in front of the hotel. They packed their few belongings with alacrity. There was not much to assemble.
“Harper,” her sister said quietly as they rumbled up the drive to the portico. “I can see you’re upset. Remember, we will help you. If you truly want Edward, and he truly wants you, we will find a way. Is there any chance the earl might relent?”
Harper shook her head once. “The earl insists that Edward must marry a suitable bride. That does not include me, even if our grandmother turns out to be a fairy godmother out of a children’s tale and transforms us into princesses. I don’t know about your impression, but it seems highly unlikely to me.”
Viola laughed. “I do believe that Grandmother thinks she is being a fairy godmother, now that you mention it. It must have been stifling, growing up in that household. Honestly, I can see why Mother rebelled. We will have to take good care not to let her dampen our Matthew’s high spirits.”
“Right, Mum.” Matthew grinned.
Chapter 17
They settled into a routine quickly, a mark of the baroness’s haste to get them “trained up.” Each morning they were yanked into tighter, itchier, and heavier versions of their ordinary clothes, and made to sit, stand, and curtsy elegantly under the dire
ction of the instructor their grandmother had engaged. Both the baroness and her butler occasionally weighed in, full of pointers on the minuscule actions that betokened a lady.
“I feel like a hound being brought to heel,” Viola had complained after one grueling day, but apart from that, she had taken to the lessons with alacrity.
Not so Harper. Harper struggled to care whether she trod on the dancing master’s toes, or if she slumped the fraction of an inch permitted by her new whalebone corset. Her figure required enhancement, or so the dressmaker had assured her. Simple, lightweight stays were insufficient to support the padding that pushed her admittedly unimpressive breasts up to her chin. Harper jabbed at her breakfast. If this was how Edward had felt upon returning to England, no wonder…
She must stop thinking about Edward.
After haranguing them for a few minutes, their grandmother would snap open a newspaper and glare at it while harrumphing over the misdeeds of the world. Viola and Harper twirled their way through the room until the baroness grew tired of insulting their efforts. When the lesson was over, Viola would reach over and take the crisply folded stack of newsprint.
“No doubt she thinks us illiterate,” she had laughed the first time.
But Viola’s habitual good cheer had vaporized while reading the morning news. Quietly she slid it across the luncheon table to Harper with a murmured, “Page two.”
Harper folded back the first page to see a lurid cartoon depicting a half‐naked man in a loincloth punching a dapperly‐dressed man in evening wear while a scantily‐clad woman looked on. Savage Attack on The Beastly Earl’s Own Brother read the headline. Can no one tame the wild man?
Harper’s heart raced as she read the one‐sided account of last night’s fight at a gambling club.
“This is Richard’s doing,” Harper hissed fiercely.
“How can you be sure, Harper?” asked Viola. “It says Edward severely beat his own brother in a common brothel, over a prostitute...what if he is not the man you believe he is? What if he is violent?”
Harper stared at her sister across the table. She read in the crook of her sister’s brow the reaction surely expressed at every breakfast table in London. Viola’s dark hair curled gently around her oval face, her eyes wide with concern beneath the dark sweep of her brows. Thanks to their lady training, Viola had perfected the precise expression of mixed concern and censure that high society ladies used when discussing subjects they disapproved of with people they cared about.
“You haven’t met Richard,” Harper replied flatly.
An uneasy guilt settled into Harper’s chest. She had left Edward because she had been afraid of jeopardizing his future. Now she wondered if clutching at a future with him might have been the right thing after all. She felt the loss of his presence like a physical ache.
“Is this Richard so dastardly that he would incite his own brother to riot?” Viola prompted, her brows raised.
“He absolutely would do something like that if he thought he could profit from it,” Harper replied.
“Shh.” Viola inclined her head toward the doorway. The baroness had returned. The sisters glanced at one another as they tried to make sense of her reappearance. Both had agreed that it would not do for their grandmother to know anything about Harper’s connection with Briarcliff.
“Good afternoon, Grandmother,” Harper and Viola said as one, like schoolgirls.
“This morning we discussed the fact that you have made much progress in your dancing lessons.” She fixed Harper with a steel gaze. “Although you could make more of an effort, Harper.”
“I am clumsy,” Harper replied in lieu of apology. “I once nearly fell off a roof.”
“There must be an epidemic. I heard a story just last week of a young woman who nearly fell off Lord Northcote’s roof earlier this summer. Supposedly, she was rescued by the Beast of Briarcliff. It could not possibly be you, of course. This young woman claimed to be a doctor, if you can credit it.”
Harper choked.
“Happened ages ago,” she muttered.
“You’ve a natural grace to your movements, Harper, which belies your performance with your dancing master. I expect that an opportunity to perform publicly will enhance your capabilities. This afternoon, we shall call upon Lady Stockton. She will issue an invitation to her daughter’s party this evening, provided that you can both be suitably charming company for a quarter hour. We shall go directly to the dressmaker’s for the final fitting of your gowns and then shop for the necessary accoutrements to make certain you show favorably this evening.”
“Sounds exciting,” Harper said without enthusiasm.
“Indeed, it does.” Viola grinned. “Will you introduce us to prospective dance partners?”
“Of course. That is the ultimate purpose of all this effort, after all. To marry you to the first man who offers for you.”
“What if we get two offers?” Harper asked sullenly. “Or six at once? How would we choose?”
Viola kicked her under the table. Their ever-humorless grandmother heard the swish of fabric and speared them with a glare.
“You don’t. You may declare a preference, but should you receive six qualified offers of marriage, I shall be the one to select the groom. You have expressed no happiness with the outcome of your first marriage, Viola. It’s best to leave these decisions to those with more life experience.”
Viola’s head snapped up, and she frowned.
“I was not aware that I had expressed any feelings whatsoever on the subject of my marriage, Grandmother.”
“Exactly. Therefore, I surmise that the experience is not one that you recall fondly.”
Viola turned to her sister. “I see where your ability to read people came from.”
They passed Lady Stockton’s perusal easily enough, and Harper endured shopping with the same enthusiasm she’d mustered at Briarcliff.
“You just choose for me, Grandmother,” Harper said wearily after being presented with the fiftieth pink ribbon. It was a great relief to see Matthew for an early supper, after which Harper and Viola were trussed into complementing plum and gold tissue gowns, their feet shod in matching bejeweled slippers, their hair brushed and coiled onto their brows and bejeweled with pearls and paste diamonds. Thus adorned, they were shuffled out the door and into a carriage as a maid chased Matthew around trying to get him ready for bed.
“Thank you for arranging this excursion, Grandmother. This is exciting!” Viola’s enthusiasm was catching. Harper perked up at the sight of so many carriages jostling to drop off their charges in front of another imposing townhouse. It was her first society party, and it was impossible not to be at least a little bit curious. They were announced and shown into a lavishly decorated room. Chandeliers sparkled with the glow of a hundred candles.
“Try not to stand beneath them lest you get dripped on,” the baroness warned. “If the servants have been doing their jobs properly there shouldn’t be any risk, but one never knows, so it is best to be in the habit of avoiding light fixtures.”
As her grandmother made an introduction to a gray-haired gentleman of at least twice her age, Harper glimpsed a larger-than-life masculine form. The din of the room fell away as she stared, unbelieving.
Edward’s back was to her, his hair now cropped and tamed above the collar of his evening jacket. Even Harper, who had little sense of fashion herself, could tell from the way the fabric clung gently to his muscular shoulders that his evening coat was superbly cut. And from the set of those elegantly clad shoulders, Harper quickly concluded that something was wrong.
She stilled like a songbird trying to blend into a bush at the first stealthy pad of a cat’s paw. Around her a faint ripple of sound carried across the room.
“Wild—”
“Nearly killed his own brother—”
“Still a savage, no matter if he’s dressed like gentry—”
“Half of London’s terrified.”
The entire room was talking
about Edward. He had not a single friend in a room full of hundreds of fascinated, fearful people.
“Do you know who that is?” her companion asked. “That is the Earl of Briarcliff’s eldest son, recently returned from abroad. The Wild Lord, they call him. Shocking to see him in public already, isn’t it?”
A passerby accidentally bumped Harper into motion.
“Excuse me,” she said automatically, not caring whether the new acquaintance whose name she had already forgotten even heard her. Harper’s feet were moving before she realized her direction. Pulled like a compass needle toward Edward, she lost sight of him momentarily in the crowd. When she emerged somewhere to the right of the orchestra, he was gone. She rose on tiptoe, searching for him.
A gentle hand on her wrist brought Harper’s attention to Viola’s serious face.
“Is that him?” asked her sister.
“Yes.”
“You never said he was handsome. I’d pictured a man much more threatening. I suppose that’s the newspaper’s influence.”
Harper started forward but was checked by Viola’s hand on her elbow.
“Don’t chase him,” Viola said, shaking her head slightly. “Just let him see you. We can’t let Gran get suspicious.”
“Am I so obvious?” Harper laughed, without humor.
“Only to me. But Gran is watching us for any misstep, so don’t wander off again. Come. I’ll find a way to get a proper introduction. You can dance and catch up. It isn’t as if your dance card is full.”
It went without saying that pursuing an earl’s heir across a ballroom was a very serious misstep. Harper was silent, scanning for her beloved. Heat bloomed as she spied him turning an older woman with elegantly silvered hair on the dance floor. She, at least, did not appear the least bit frightened, but Edward looked tense and miserable.
His face lit with wonder, however, as his eye slid past her and then back. Surprise and happiness lit his handsome features from within, as if someone had lit a candle in a window on a dark night. Viola tugged her arm.