Anne Gracie - [The Devil Riders 02] (10 page)

Maude, Lady Gosforth, clutched her head and said with asperity, “A gentleman would not count.”

“I didn’t,” Harry said. “I
lost
count.”

“Well, if you must be so vulgar as to refer to it,” his aunt declared, “you will understand why I am in need of the restorative powers of the waters at the pump room. And since the only reason I went to the ball last night was to assist you in this search for a wife, the least you can do is escort me.”

It was a barefaced lie. Wild horses couldn’t keep Aunt Maude from a party, but Harry was aware she’d gone to a lot of trouble for him. He sighed and presented his arm. “All right, but only to the door.”

“Nonsense.” His triumphant aunt tried not to smirk. “You are clearly liverish and out of sorts. You need to take the waters.”

“I don’t,” he snapped. “It’s filthy stuff and I can’t bear those rooms, full of old tabbies and—” He broke off and said in a firm voice, “I’ll escort you there, but that’s my limit.”

He was in a foul mood. For the past three days he’d done everything Aunt Maude had asked him to do: dressed up like a tailor’s dummy, sat and walked and made painstaking conversation with daughters and their fathers and mothers. He’d been as agreeable as he could possibly be to a bunch of people he never wanted to see again.

It had all been a complete waste of time. He was no closer to finding a suitable wife than he had been the last time he’d come to Bath. Worse, in fact, because then he wasn’t comparing every blasted girl he met with
her
.

Nell, Lady Helen Freymore, with her creamy, pure complexion and her honey-dark voice. No girl he’d met had such a clear direct gaze, such quiet self-possession. And none could create such . . . fire in him.

But Nell hadn’t wanted him. She preferred to be off in London pouring tea for some rich, no doubt indulgent old lady. Nell preferred to run errands rather than be married to Harry. And Harry was miles away in Bath looking for a substitute who wouldn’t stir him up as she did.

So why was he all stirred up?

Aunt Maude wasn’t in the sweetest of tempers, herself. She continued, “But you must. I’ve put myself out searching high and low for eligible middle-class girls, but you’re so liverish you won’t even give them a chance!”

“I did give them a chance,” he told her. “It’s not my fault if they weren’t what I asked for.”

She smacked him lightly on the hand. “Pish, tush! I find you three of the most ravishing girls and you say they’re stupid—”

“They are stupid.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Pretty girls don’t have to be clever, you irritating boy!” She took a deep breath and continued, “But being a loving aunt, I find you two more intelligent, lively, and still remarkably attractive girls and you say they’re dull.”

“They were.”

“How would you know? You hardly exchanged a word with either of them.”

“I did. The black-haired one liked cats, hated dogs, and was frightened of horses. And the yellow-haired one talked about poetry and went on and on about that Byron fellow.” He snorted.

His aunt smacked his arm again. “Every female in England is in love with Byron, you savage! It is the fashion! The fault is not with the girls but with you. Anyone would think you didn’t want to get married, but since that’s obviously not true, the only explanation is that you are liverish. And a course of the waters will cure that.”

Harry scowled and stumped unevenly along beside her. “I’ll escort you inside, but I won’t swallow any of that stuff,” Harry growled, “so cease and desist, or else walk the rest of the way down this street on the very strong arm of your extremely capable footman.” He gestured to the liveried servant walking quietly behind them.

His aunt sniffed, but said no more.

Their entrance caused a discernible stir of interest in the population of the Pump Room. Harry didn’t feel the slightest bit flattered—he was the only male in the room under the age of seventy. He fixed his gaze on the benches set aside for peeresses and marched his aunt across the room, intending to seat her and be gone.

It took him longer than he planned, as his aunt stopped every few feet to greet acquaintances, but eventually he had her settled with one of her cronies and with a glass of the vile water in her hand.

He was about to take his leave when he heard a voice behind him say, “Lady Helen! What a clumsy creature you are!”

Lady Helen?
Harry’s head jerked around and he stared across the room. It was her, Nell. What the hell was she doing here? She was supposed to be in London.

A richly dressed, tightly corseted woman with a florid face was speaking to her in a loud voice, as if she were a half-wit, saying, “Well, don’t stand there, girl, pick it up at once.”

He watched as Nell bent with her usual grace and picked up a shawl from the floor. His mouth dried. She looked just the same. Beautiful. Thinner, perhaps. She shook out the shawl, examined it, and made to pass it to the woman.

She didn’t look at Harry, didn’t so much as glance his way, but he was sure she knew he was there. She couldn’t have missed the entrance his aunt had made.

“No, no, you stupid girl!” The woman recoiled in a stagey manner. “It’s soiled. I can’t be expected to wear a soiled shawl.” The woman cast a long-suffering glance around the room, clearly playing to the audience.

Nell stood in profile to him, her head held high in a lovely cameo, receiving the reprimand with an expression of quiet indifference.

How dare she be indifferent! How dare that woman speak to her like that. He wanted to strangle the red-faced cow.

He wanted to march across the room and pick Nell up and take her back to Firmin Court, ride with her through the forest . . .

Nell said something quiet to the florid woman.

“No, it’s not perfectly clean at all, Lady Helen,” the woman declared in scornful, ringing tones. “I’m surprised you have such low standards. Run home and fetch me another. Off you go. It shouldn’t take you long.” She flapped her hands at Nell as though she were a child or a dog, saying, “Don’t just stand there. Hurry along, Lady Helen. I’m already feeling rather chilled.”

Harry gritted his teeth as Nell quietly folded the shawl and hurried out into the street. He made to follow her.

His aunt gripped his sleeve tightly. “You can’t leave yet. It’s too fascinating. That’s the atrocious mushroom I was telling you about the other day. Remember?”

Nell would be back, Harry reminded himself. She was just fetching another shawl for the cow. He would speak to her then, when he was calmer. For a second he’d wanted to strangle that woman. Talking to Nell like that. He allowed his aunt to pull him down beside her.

The florid woman smoothed her skirts with a satisfied expression and looked complacently round the room. She glanced at Harry and her expression sharpened. Without taking her eyes off him, she ran a finger around the neckline of her dress, which framed a deep bosom, in the cleft of which a large glittering jewel rested.

His aunt made a rude sound under her breath. “The airs that woman gives herself! She’s forty if she’s a day. Don’t you remember the tale?”

Harry vaguely recalled her telling some story about some vastly irritating woman but a great many things offended his aunt. Aunt Maude talked a great deal: the story had washed over him. Now he wished he’d listened.

“Remind me,” he said, his eyes on the door.

“She calls herself Mrs. Beasley. She is a rich widow—the rumor is her late husband was a sausage manufacturer, but she keeps her vulgar origins secret—or tries to. As if she doesn’t give herself away with every word she speaks.” Aunt Maude snorted.

“And the one who dropped the shawl?” Harry asked casually. He felt his aunt turn her head to stare at him. He pretended not to notice.

“She didn’t drop it at all.” Aunt Maude’s friend Lady Lattimer leaned forward. “I saw the whole thing. That Woman threw it on the floor deliberately to put Lady Helen in the wrong.”

Harry clenched his fists and forced himself to say in a mildly curious tone, “Lady Helen?”

His aunt gave him a thoughtful look. “Her paid companion. She’s Lady Helen Freymore, the daughter of the disgraced Earl of Denton—he gambled away his estate and killed himself. The girl is too poor and too plain to get a husband, never mind the scandal her father made.”

His aunt cast the florid woman a contemptuous look. “Nasty, vulgar creature! She simply loves having the daughter of an earl at her beck and call, and she doesn’t allow the poor girl a moment of peace.”

“How does she stand it?” Harry muttered.

Aunt Maude gave him another piercing look, but said in a mild voice. “None of us has spoken to her—La Beasley doesn’t allow it, but the girl seems to take it in her stride.”

“She must be a simple creature,” Lady Lattimer said. “Mrs. Beasley belittles her with every word, yet Lady Helen never turns a hair. She just smiles, and the humiliations roll off her like water off a duck’s back.” She shook her head. “No woman of spirit would stand to be spoken to like that by her social inferior.”

“She’s not simple at all,” Harry found himself saying, then aware of his aunt’s beady gaze on him, added, “At least she doesn’t seem so . . . er, from what I saw just now . . .”

His aunt fixed him with a baleful look and said in a goaded voice, “No, well, she wouldn’t, of course. From what you saw just now.”

Ignoring his aunt’s gimlet stare, Harry scanned the room. He needed somewhere he could talk to Nell on her own, without all these watching eyes.

“I believe she’s desperately poor,” continued Lady Lattimer, unaware of the undercurrents. “Quite literally doesn’t have a penny to her name, poor girl.”

Harry spotted two doors down the back of the room. He rose, saying, “Excuse me, Aunt Maude, Lady Lattimer, I must just . . .” and strode off to investigate.

When he returned, Lady Lattimer was dozing and his aunt was watching him with an annoyed expression.

“To think of all that time I wasted on all those other girls,” Aunt Maude muttered, thumping Harry on the arm as he sat down.

It was becoming a pattern. He moved his arm out of reach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Aunt Maude snorted. Harry passed her his handkerchief.

She stared coldly at it down her long, Roman nose. “What’s that for?”

“From the sounds you’ve been making, you’re coming down with a cold,” he told her.

She glared at him and gave a loud, contemptuous sniff. He smiled faintly and put his handkerchief away.

She glanced at her friend, who was gently snoring, then said in a low voice, “So, how long have you known Lady Helen?” she asked him.

“How did you know?”

She gave him a withering look through her lorgnette. “Oh, spare me—I’ve known you since you were child. Besides, it was obvious. I throw nearly a dozen girls at your head and you take not the slightest notice, and now, suddenly, you’re asking oh-so-casually about somebody’s paid companion, a plain and unprepossessing girl whom you cannot take your eyes off. And you expect me to believe you’ve only just laid eyes on her?”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen her around.”

There was a short silence, then his aunt said, “It’s more than a passing curiosity, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps.” Harry admitted after a moment.

It wasn’t perhaps, at all, he suddenly realized. It had hit him with the force of a thunderclap just now, when he’d seen her across the room.

There was no “suitable bride” for Harry; there was only Nell. He didn’t know how it had happened, he didn’t know why; he only knew it was so.

“You told me you wanted a girl from a thoroughly respectable background; a pretty, quiet, moral, and middle-class girl, preferably well dowered.”

“That’s right.”

His aunt made a frustrated noise. “Apart from being plain as a pikestaff, this girl’s got no money, no connections, and is tainted by scandal. Her father gambled everything away, then died at a crossroads! Right out in the open where anyone could find him. Appalling
ton
.”

“Yes, he should have chosen a more fashionable death,” he said ironically. “And she’s not plain as a pikestaff,” he said irritably. It was her clothes, he supposed. Aunt Maude set great store by how people dressed. He ran his finger around his tight collar. “If you look past those drab clothes, I think you will find she’s lovely.”

She stared at him in silence for a long moment, then arched her well-plucked eyebrows knowingly. “Well, well, well, and I never thought to see it.”

“See what?” He eyed the door impatiently. Where the hell was she? She’d been gone far too long.

She patted his cheek. “Smitten, that’s what you are, my boy.”

Smitten? He stared at his aunt. “Nonsense,” he mumbled. “I’m just . . . concerned for her welfare.” He was, too. Nell looked exhausted, as if she were being worked too hard. There were still those shadows beneath her eyes. And she was thinner.

He found himself clenching his fists in frustration. How dare that cow sit there so smug and comfortable, sending Nell running around the town on made-up errands.

“How did you meet her?”

“The estate I bought was one of her father’s minor estates,” he told her. “She was there when I inspected it.” He kept his eyes on the door. “Where the devil is she? She’s been gone for ages.”

“It’s a ten-minute walk each way to that woman’s lodgings. Have patience.”

He scowled and folded his arms.

“Just look at the state of you!” Aunt Maude shook her head. “It would have saved me a great deal of bother if you’d told me about her in the first place, Harry.”

“I didn’t know she was here,” he confessed. “She said she was going to London.”

“Then why didn’t you go to London instead of wasting my time?” Aunt Maude said with asperity.

He hesitated then said in a low tone, “Because she’d already turned me down.”