by Merry Farmer
Harrison laughed—perhaps a little too loudly—at his grandmother’s quip. Fortunately, Lord Lichfield laughed as well. Their two families had been friends dating back to the Regency, when Harrison’s great-grandmother and Lord Lichfield’s grandmother had caused all sorts of mischief together after being blacklisted by the ton and shunned by polite society. The ladies and their friends, including John’s great-grandmother, had made their own society, as well as causing more than a few scandals.
Harrison grasped onto the hope that Lord Lichfield and his grandmother would say something about their family connections, but his hopes were dashed when Lord Lichfield turned a frown on him and said, “I was rather hoping you would come to see me, as I insisted you should, before this evening, young man.”
Harrison gulped, panic seeping around the edges of his gentlemanly calm. “These last few days have been mad-capped, my lord,” he said by way of an excuse.
“I was rather hoping my grandson had come to see you about something much sooner, my lord,” Grandmama said, her mischievous old eyes twinkling. “Preferably last summer, but after I spoke with him on Monday at the latest.”
Lord Lichfield’s brow lifted, and he and Grandmama grinned at each other. “It seems as though you and I are of the same mind on a certain subject,” he said. Both of them turned to study Harrison. “Particularly after I caught your grandson in a tender embrace with my Beatrice the other evening.”
“Harrison, you scoundrel,” Grandmama said with mock horror. There was enough of a flash in her eyes to suggest to Harrison that she herself had been caught in far more scandalous situations than the kiss Harrison and Bea had shared in Lord Lichfield’s dining room. “This is why young people these days should not be left up to their own devices,” she went on with a chuckle.
“I may have to agree with you on that one, Lady Landsbury,” Diana said, charging up to join their group without greeting or preamble, fury etched in the lines of her handsome face.
Harrison knew he needed to say something to stave off whatever attack Diana was clearly about to hurl at John, but he was bowled over by the anxiety painting Bea’s face as she rushed up to her friend.
“Oh, Diana, don’t. Please,” Bea whispered.
Harrison could only imagine what was about to happen. Instinct took over, and he immediately shifted to Bea’s side, reaching for her hand as if the battle were about to begin.
“Lady Diana,” John said with cheeky calm, raking her from head to toe. Clearly, he appreciated what he saw, as would anyone with eyes. Diana was dressed in a stunning and fashionable gown of deep blue that made her dramatic features even more stunning. John, being John, let his gaze linger at her décolletage, likely in a gesture designed to antagonize Diana even more.
“You cannot hide the truth from me for a moment longer, John,” Diana said, shaking a finger at him. “I know what you have been up to, you and your nefarious accomplice.” She spared a quick glance for Harrison, but it was obvious to all who the subject of her anger was. “You have been found out at last, and you will pay for your mischief.”
“I would gladly pay, sweet Diana,” John said with unflappable calm, even though the rest of them were struck with one degree of shock or another. “As long as you are meting out punishment.” He finished with a saucy wink that had Harrison’s grandmother snorting with laughter.
Diana pulled herself up to her full height. “The nerve of you,” she hissed.
“Diana,” Bea said in a soothing voice, resting a hand on her friend’s arm. “Perhaps now is not the time to—”
“Tart?”
The interruption came from none other than Burt, who was clean and groomed and holding out a tray of savory tarts, his grin fixed on Diana. The boy was so cheeky that Harrison almost laughed.
“I love a good tart myself,” John said without missing a beat. He plucked a bite-sized morsel from Burt’s tray and bit into it, staring at Diana all the while.
“You are impossible,” Diana huffed. “Pretending to be innocent when everyone knows that you are the miscreant who has been pulling pranks on London’s orphanages.”
Of all things, Burt looked mortally offended by Diana’s assertion.
“Whatever makes you think I would be capable of such a thing?” John laughed, then finished off his tart.
“Deeds like that are precisely the sort of thing a wretch like you would get up to,” Diana said, tilting her chin up and refusing to look at him. Except for when she peeked at him as if hoping he could continue their sparring match.
“Some toff shouldn’t get all the credit for ingenuity,” Burt said, slinking away with a scowl. He continued to mutter, but Harrison had more pressing things to give his attention to than the hurt feelings of a working-class lad.
“Confess your crimes, John, or I will make them known to everyone at this party,” Diana went on.
“Really, Diana,” Bea whispered. “Now is not the time—”
“Go right ahead,” John said, forced to raise his voice somewhat as the band Bianca had hired to play for the party burst into a lively waltz. “But before you do, dance with me.”
“I would never—oh!” Diana attempted to protest, but John swept his arm around her and led her to the center of the hall as party guests cleared to make way for dancing.
“My grandson isn’t the only one who needs to hurry up and propose,” Harrison’s grandmother muttered to Lord Lichfield.
“Indeed,” Lord Lichfield agreed as the two of them grinned and shook their heads at John and Diana.
Harrison turned to Bea, expecting her to look mortified because of their friends’ behavior, but instead, her eyes were as wide as saucers as she stared at him. “Are you really going to—”
“Ask you to dance?” Harrison cut her off, holding out a hand to her as his face heated. “Of course.”
“Oh.” Bea blinked, then took Harrison’s hand and allowed him to lead her out to the center of the floor.
Harrison didn’t know why he’d cut Bea off, only that he wanted whatever proposal he made to be perfect. Not that there was any chance of that now. The ring was gone, his grandmother had tipped his cards, hinting to Bea that the proposal was coming, and even if he hadn’t had plans to proceed on his own timetable, Lord Lichfield was determined to see things through for him. It was as far from the romantic moment Harrison had dreamed of, the moment Bea deserved, than he could have imagined. The whole thing was turning out to be a source of stress instead of joy. But it was all water under the bridge now. He might as well go ahead and ask the question that needed to be asked.
“Bea, would you—”
“Did you and John plot—”
They spoke at the same time. They each stopped speaking at the same time and blinked at each other as well, even stumbling through the waltz steps, like two children just learning the simple dance, as they did.
“I’m sorry, you—”
“I beg your pard—”
Again, they spoke over each other, and nearly stepped on each other’s feet as they did.
“You first—”
“After you—”
The third time, they both broke into laughter. Bea’s face turned the most charming shade of pink. Coupled with her red dress and her golden hair, it made her look as warm and inviting as a flame. He would forever be the moth that sought to get closer to her.
“I have tried so hard to make everything perfect for you,” Harrison said, letting out a breath and pulling her deeper into his arms as they danced. “You deserve everything and then some.”
“I don’t truly need everything,” Bea said, her face tilted down just enough that when she glanced up at him through her lashes, it caused Harrison’s heart to skip a beat. Something expectant remained in her gaze as she watched him, waiting for the conversation to go on.
“Bea, I—”
He didn’t have the chance to say what he wanted to say before John and Diana nearly rammed into them from the side. John looked as though he wer
e having the time of his life as he led Diana through a few more complicated waltz steps. Diana looked as though she were trying to wrestle the lead from him. Neither said a word, but then again, words weren’t needed to communicate what the two of them were saying to each other.
“They are impossible,” Bea sighed, shaking her head.
“Something must be done,” Harrison agreed. “But later. For now….” He paused, maneuvering Bea through a few waltz steps and whirling her toward the edge of the dancers. He wanted to keep her in his arms as long as possible while having as much privacy as they could muster in the crowded hall. “Bea, I can’t hold my feelings for you inside any longer. I’ve tried so hard these last few days to make things perfect. I even spoke to Grandmama, and she gave me a ring that once belonged to her mother for the purpose I had in mind. But then everything went pear-shaped. I lost the ring.”
“Oh.” Bea’s expression lit up, as though she’d figured out the solution to a puzzle.
“And I got caught up in preparations for this party,” he went on. “And what with your father the other evening….” Harrison sighed. “What I am trying to say is—”
Before he could finish, the party came to a sudden and explosive halt, quite literally, as a flurry of firecrackers exploded in the center of the room.
Chapter 9
One moment Bea was waltzing away in a cloud of happiness, overjoyed to be in Harrison’s arms at last. In a way that didn’t cause her father to scold or tease her. The evening was turning out to be far more wonderful than she would have imagined a party for orphans could have been. And above all, she had the excited feeling that maybe, just maybe, Harrison intended to propose at last.
The next moment the hall was in utter chaos. Sharp cracks and the acrid scent of gunpowder filled the air, along with the screams of women and children. The band stopped playing, and the couples that had been dancing away with varying degrees of bliss dove for the edges of the room.
“We’re under attack!” a traumatized, male voice called from one corner of the room. “Call the militia!”
Bea caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of her eye as several women rushed toward a relatively young man who had hunkered in on himself at the first, startling cracks. “He’s a war veteran,” one of them shouted in a furious tone as she threw her arms around him. “You’re all right, Billy.”
The initial burst of sharp, staccato explosions was followed by another before Bea realized that the noise wasn’t being caused by gunfire, but rather by a string of cheap firecrackers that had been lit and tossed into the center of the dancing couples. That didn’t stop her heart from racing as the fireworks exhausted themselves, leaving a puff of foul-smelling smoke in their wake.
The couples who had darted to the sides of the room recovered slowly. Bea noticed one middle-class woman beating at her skirt, which bore a sad, burned mark. She was the only one who seemed to have been damaged by the prank. A few women were crying, and a few men raised shaking hands to wipe sweat away from their brows, leaving Bea to think poor Billy wasn’t the only traumatized war veteran in the room.
What Bea found particularly interesting, though, was the way Diana trembled in John’s arms. They had retreated to the side of the room, like all of the other couples, and Diana had her face hidden against John’s shoulder. His arms were firmly around her, his expression serious, and if Bea wasn’t mistaken, he was whispering soothing words into her ear, as though the sole focus of his world was to make her feel safe and secure. The way Diana clung to him told Bea that John’s efforts were working.
Bea grinned over the picture her friends painted before stopping to consider that she was tucked in Harrison’s arms in a similar pose of protectiveness.
“Are you all right?” Harrison asked, rubbing a soothing hand across her back.
“I am,” Bea said, straightening and sucking in a breath. “But what a fright.”
There was one person in the room who wasn’t the least bit shaken by the explosive prank. Not only wasn’t he shaken, Burt was nearly doubled over in laughter, pointing at some of the more frightened ladies as they wept into their handkerchiefs. “Look at the lot of you,” he laughed. “Crying over a couple of crackers.”
Bea gaped at the lad, astounded that he could be laughing over such a cruel-minded prank, but even more when Jack Craig marched toward him, looking as though Hell were on his heels.
“That’s enough from you, boy,” Jack said, grabbing Burt by his collar and glaring at him.
Whatever other faults Burt had, he had the good sense to look duly terrified as he was forced to face Jack. “It was just a joke, sir, just a joke,” he insisted, the color draining from his face.
“Crackers are not a joke,” Jack growled, shaking Burt, and then letting him go. “People could have been hurt.”
“Not by those little things,” Burt said, lowering his head and hunching his shoulders. “They were the small ones.”
“What on earth possessed you to do something so idiotic in the middle of a Christmas party?” Jack asked on, standing tall and crossing his arms.
Burt got some of his cockiness back. “They were trying to take credit for all I did.” He flung an arm out toward John, pointing and glaring. “I put a lot of work into those pranks, and I won’t have some nob saying he did it.”
“You were the scamp who poured treacle on the books at St. Joseph’s?” one of the women who had been involved in the conversation days ago said, her expression one of shock and outrage.
“You replaced all of our sugar with salt?” a woman Bea recognized as the matron of Hope Orphanage said, glaring at Burt.
“How in God’s name did you smuggle a box with two dozen ferrets into my orphanage?” Stephen Siddel asked, though, Bea noted, with a spark in his eyes that said he was impressed. “Where did you even get two dozen ferrets?”
“My cousin, Bob, catches ’em in nobs’ gardens and disposes of them,” Burt said with a proud look. “Only, he’s been keeping them as pets. We were bringing boxes from here into the orphanage anyhow, and no one noticed what I had in the box.”
Bea tilted her head to the side, reluctantly impressed as well. At least, until she remembered the scent of the filthy water that had doused her at the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow the day before. “You rigged the trap door in Sister Constance’s chapel to spill filth all over me, didn’t you?” She narrowed her eyes at the boy.
Harrison flinched. “You were in the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrows’ chapel?”
Bea didn’t have time to answer before Burt turned to her, wringing his hands. “That was supposed to be for the nuns. Sorry, my lady. You’re awful nice, and I didn’t want to do it to you like that.” The audacious lad actually made eyes at Bea, as though he had boyish feelings for her. That image was shattered a moment later when he went on to say, “You should have seen the look on your face,” and started laughing again.
Jack put a swift end to the laughter. “That’s enough out of you, Burt. You’re just lucky nothing you did is a criminal offense. That won’t stop me from having a word with the headmaster of your orphanage, though.” He grabbed Burt’s arm and marched him toward the door.
“I swear, I won’t do anything like that again,” Burt scrambled to say. “I’ll be a perfect angel from now on, honest.”
Bea seriously doubted Burt would keep that promise. She watched until Jack escorted him out of the party, then she turned to Harrison. “I suppose that if the boy’s high spirits could be turned to something useful, he might have quite an ingenious career at one thing or another.”
“If he can avoid the gallows,” Harrison said with a wry grin.
“I told you it wasn’t me,” John was in the middle of saying to Diana as Bea’s attention was drawn toward the couple. “And here you thought I was such a villain.”
“You are a villain,” Diana insisted. She no longer stood in John’s arms. In fact, everything about her countenance had changed to the complete opposite of what it ha
d been minutes before. “You might not have been the one to pull those pranks at the orphanages, but I am quite certain that you are guilty of some sort of egregious sin.”
“The only sin I’m guilty of is, well, it’s unmentionable in present company.” John glanced around at the party guests, who were slowly calming down and resuming their party activities. “But if you’d care to step into a quiet alcove with me, I can demonstrate every sin I’m capable of.” He finished his teasing with a blatantly salacious wink.
Diana yelped and tilted her head up, her face flushing. She turned away from John and crossed her arms. “You are impossible. Utterly impossible.”
“But you adore me anyhow,” John said, sliding right up behind her, close enough that he could have nibbled on Diana’s ear.
He might have tried just that. Diana leapt away from him so fast that she nearly stumbled. Her face went redder than ever, and the look she sent John over her shoulder before marching away was as much of a challenge for him to try and come after her as it was scolding for his bad behavior.
John glanced toward Bea and Harrison, saying, “It appears as though hunting season has started,” before following Diana across the room.
“The two of them are perfectly horrid,” Harrison’s grandmother said, hobbling her way over to where Bea and Harrison stood, frozen in perplexity at the odd turn the party had taken. “And they are deliciously entertaining to watch.”
The band finished retuning their instruments after the fright and launched into a jolly Christmas tune. The air of panic that had encompassed the room gradually died down. Some of the young men who worked for various orphanages rushed forward to clean up the burnt papers and soot caused by Burt’s firecrackers. All in all, the party was able to resume without much fuss. Some of the children, particularly the boys, were even laughing about the disruption and retelling the tale with their own embellishments. Bea was amazed at how quickly things could move on after a terrifying situation.