The husband hunter must not form her opinion of a gentleman’s character solely upon the foundation of his present actions and manner in society. Every man has a past. What she has heard of him from others must be tested with careful observation and a willingness to listen for that history of his actions and relations which sheds the truest light upon his character.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
In the morning Harriet took the dog out before breakfast. She woke early from a fitful sleep with the same questions disturbing her peace. She supposed it was always so when the family was away. She might not truly be one of them, but their presence was a comfort. She had not considered that her place with them would ever end, but now she could see that the end had always been there.
To dance or not to dance. That was the question. Harriet had already weakened her position by agreeing to go to the Hardwicke ball. Yesterday Lady Luxborough had advised Harriet with her characteristic frankness to take advantage of Wynford’s interest and return to society. Harriet knew that if she chose to dance, she would be leaving the sanctuary she had found with the Luxboroughs. She would be exposed to censure and condemned for putting herself forward and seeking a match far above her deserts.
A fresh layer of snow covered the iron railings along Mount Street and made the flagstones treacherous. Harriet concentrated on her footing, heedless of where she and Cat were headed. They soon reached the park, and she let Cat off his lead. The sky was still heavy with more snow to come, and the great expanse looked as if an army of Gunter’s cake icers had worked through the night, touching every branch and blade with white. Cat bounded over the icy grass to greet his bird friends with deep barks, sending flocks of blackbirds and robins into sudden squawking flight. He tried with more stealth to make himself agreeable to a pair of wood ducks in the reeds at the edge of the lake, but they, too, were having none of his overtures.
Watching him lifted Harriet’s spirits. Whatever she decided, she had enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom in her position. She had chosen her life and had not thought any man could tempt her to go back on that choice. But Wynford, with his desire to dance with her and the sprig of mistletoe in his pocket, had put an end to her perfect contentment with those old choices. With her new knowledge of his past, he had stirred her compassion.
She had come to no resolution about whether to dance or not to dance when her teeth began to chatter. She summoned Cat and left the park. From Curzon Street, she turned up South Audley heading home. Cat no longer tugged at his lead but rather ambled along, stopping every few feet to investigate a new scent. The lead was slack in Harriet’s hand, and she was admiring the rosy tint on the low clouds overhead, when the dog darted down the narrow Lansdowne passage that wound its way through Mayfair, the lead flopping in his wake. She called, but to no avail. Some powerful scent had caught him, and he was not to be deterred from the pursuit. He skidded on the ice as he negotiated the turn onto Hay Street and disappeared. Harriet moved as quickly as she could over the icy stones.
His tail flashed around the corner of Dover Street, and when she reached the spot, she saw him bound up the front steps of a gray stone townhouse in the middle of the block. She recognized the house at once and hurried on, anticipating the dog’s inevitable outcry. Before she could reach him, he began to howl with the deep-voiced baying peculiar to his mix of English and French hound.
At that hour in the snowy street there was no covering sound of traffic. The penetrating howl could be heard by all the sleepers on the block. Windows, velvet curtains, and damask bed hangings would not stop that wail. A little breathless, Harriet reached the steps where Cat had taken his stand. She seized the dog’s lead and bent down to put an arm around his chest.
“Cat, it’s too early. No one can come out to play yet,” she said. She tugged on the lead, but Cat lifted his nose and raised another howl, his hindquarters firmly planted on the doorstep.
Across the street a door opened, and a surly voice shouted, “Muzzle that dog, wench, or I’ll muzzle ’im for ye,” while footsteps sounded in the house. Harriet dropped to her knees to hold Cat as the door opened by some invisible hand, and there in the entry stood Wynford, a dark blue dressing gown over his shirt and trousers, his feet in slippers. Harriet had been thinking for hours of the boy on the beach with a babe in his arms. Her mind shifted once again to take in Wynford the man. He was as striking as he had been the morning he’d come to ask a favor of her, tall, well-made, with an easy grace of posture.
Their eyes met and held, and Harriet watched as the memory of their first meeting surfaced in his gaze.
On that other December morning, she had been kneeling with her arms around a dog outside the door to the tenants’ hall of Dunraven Park. Wynford had come striding down the servants’ passage, out of place in his elegance. He had been looking for someone to help him find a remedy for his ailing valet.
Now he raised one dark brow. Cat burst from her hold and shot into the marble entry, skidding to a stop at Wynford’s feet.
“So Cat got left behind.” He spoke, and Cat subsided at once, pressing his wet, muddy belly against the tiles and wagging his tail enthusiastically.
Wynford’s gaze, piercing now, returned to her. “You were the girl that morning with the dog.”
“My spaniel Nelson,” she said, coming to her feet.
“You let me think you were a servant. Why?”
“You were very fine that morning.” Harriet remembered him dressed all in brown for the shoot with gleaming boots that had not yet encountered mud. “I was in my oldest frock, muddied, my hair coming down, toweling off a wet dog.” She had recognized him at once as one of her brother’s prized guests, the ones she’d been warned to stay away from until presented in the drawing room. She had been conscious of Wynford’s air of sophistication. He had seemed years older than she, at ease in the world. She was sixteen and never at ease. His mistaking her for a servant, however, made her bold. She asked what brought him belowstairs. He’d apologized then for overstepping a guest’s bounds and explained that he’d come in search of a draught or tisane, some remedy for his ailing valet.
She enlisted his aid to shut Nelson in the tenants’ hall, explaining that the dog was apt to ruin the shoot if let loose, and led Wynford to the stillroom to find something for his man. It was there that she’d crossed the line, daring to be pert. She had some idea in her head that it would be a good jest to meet him later in the drawing room as her true self in her best dress and perhaps some of her mother’s pearls.
But he had revealed that he was leaving within the hour. The disdain in the way he announced his intention had goaded her. “You don’t wish to stay to meet the ladies of the house?” she had asked. “I doubt this house holds any true ladies,” he said with such repugnance that a hot flood of shame had washed over her. It wasn’t until it subsided that she’d realized she had no idea what prompted his contempt before they ever met. That evening her brother made it quite clear.
Ten years later with another unruly dog at her side she felt a rush of the old awkwardness. Then she had been playing a servant, now she was, if not a servant, nevertheless a woman sunk beneath his sphere. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I had no intention,” she faltered. “Cat would not be dissuaded from coming here today.”
“I see that,” he said dryly.
“I did warn you not to pet him,” she said, recovering her composure.
“And, of course, I did not listen. Will you have some coffee? To warm you? Perry’s here.” He stepped aside, letting Harriet see the open door to what appeared to be a library. Perry looked up from some papers on a table.
“Hello, Harry. Brought the dog, have you?” He turned back to the papers, tapping them with a finger. “Wynford, it’s just as you suspected. There was a scandal involving an artillery major, named Ashton, and the daughter of a Russian general, Dimitri Dashkova. All covered up, of course. That girl could be our woman. The fellow’s still alive, though.”
Harriet directed her gaze away from Wynford. Beyond him was the lovely room with a Brussels carpet and leather-covered chairs. At Wynford’s feet the muddy dog panted. She had set out with the firm intention of dismissing the man from her thoughts. Instead her wanderings had brought her to his door to be tempted by his beautiful…library.
“Thank you for the kind invitation. We won’t interrupt your...” She wanted to call it work, for that’s what it seemed to be. “Neither Cat nor I,” she looked at her damp hem flecked with mud, “is in a fit state for a visit.”
Wynford glanced at the dog. “What are the chances you can convince him to leave?”
He was maddeningly right. She had for years been the only person in the household outside of Jasper who could get Cat to obey voice commands. Now she had been replaced by a new idol. The awkwardness of her situation deepened.
“Perhaps...”
“Let me come with you. We should talk in any case.” He shrugged out of his dressing gown. The careless gesture cast aside whatever he had been doing with Perry and claimed her whole attention.
“You will be safe with me in the street, you know. There’s no mistletoe hanging from the lampposts.”
Color rose hotly in her cheeks, as if there were any danger of a kiss from him now that he had remembered who she truly was. “Do you want to talk about your sister?”
He shot her a glance that saw through the evasion and turned to give a few quick orders to his servants. A coat, hat, and gloves appeared. He donned them and gave the dog a look. Cat rose obediently and trotted to the door. Wynford offered Harriet his arm, and they set off.
The street had begun to fill with people. Servants shoveled snow from walkways and rooftops. Rattling carts and smooth-rolling carriages carved a dark, wet path through the white center of the street. Cat danced and ran in circles, returning excitedly to Wynford.
“Did my sister tell you how I offended her?” he asked. She was grateful for his willingness to shift the conversation from their own history to a less unsettling topic.
“Apparently you ‘spied’ on her post,” Harriet said.
There was a check in his stride at the word “spied.” They went some ways in silence before he spoke again. “Have I blundered irretrievably with her?”
“Irretrievably? The brother who saved his sister’s life on a beach in France?”
“She told you our history then.” His gaze sobered.
“She did.”
“And?” he asked. “Did my past actions earn me forgiveness in the present?”
“Understanding, perhaps, if not yet forgiveness.” Harriet faced him directly. “It is I who must beg pardon of you for thinking you an unnecessarily protective brother. If the dangers of a London Season are not those of Bonaparte’s France, your desire to protect Octavia from them is entirely reasonable.”
“Dance with me,” he said, a gleam of laughter lighting his eyes. “And anything may be forgiven.”
“I thought we had an understanding on that point.” He set her off-balance again. He could not wish to dance with her now that he remembered their first meeting.
“I have the full support of Lady Luxborough, you know.”
Harriet did know. “Yes, and I’ll thank you not to join forces with my employer against my peace of mind and strength of resolution.”
“You won’t discourage me by letting me know that I am a temptation,” he said with a grin. “What did she say to make you laugh like that yesterday?”
“Oh,” said Harriet. “It was her description of Lady Hardwicke as a woman with a secret ambition to run a theater, who considers her guests the cast of a three-act farce and arranges her parties to promote scenes of discord. Lady Luxborough said I could very much oblige her by providing Lady Hardwicke with the spectacle of a governess flouting convention.”
“And are you game to do it?” he asked.
“If we are bargaining for a dance, I must state my conditions as well.”
“Name them,” he said.
“If you will be serious for a moment.”
“I am likely to be all too serious about a dance with you.”
They had reached Mount Street and were now only steps from Luxborough House. “Your sister’s account puzzles me. She necessarily relies on others for the story and accepts it with all its improbable details.”
“You think it improbable that a band of rogue soldiers killed a defenseless woman?” He did not meet her gaze.
“I doubt they were rogue soldiers. Your sister does not know what the simple story reveals, and that’s why you discourage her from telling it. Your mother, it appears, went to France on a mission of some sort, for our government, but apparently the participants were betrayed by someone in Paris.” Harriet watched his stern profile. “She fled with her children to the rendezvous, but the storm delayed the boat from England and gave those who searched for her time to find her on that beach. With extraordinary presence of mind, she led them away from her children.”
He stopped walking and stood looking down at the snow before Luxborough House with bleak, unseeing eyes. “It was a royalist plot to assassinate Bonaparte after the attempt in ’04 failed. The conspirators had the support of our government and sent messages to one another through my mother in Saumur.”
She had not expected the admission. She closed her hands into fists to refrain from reaching out to him. The dog, returning from a brief foray to the other side of the street with a stick in his mouth, had no such scruples and nudged Wynford’s hand, bringing him back to the present. He turned to Harriet.
“You owe me a dance,” he said, in a maddeningly imperturbable voice. “And I’ll take nothing less than a waltz.”
She nodded, expecting him to stop there.
“Since I am admitting things,” he said with a dry laugh. “The post I saw belonged to the marchioness. Among her letters was one addressed to our neighbor Horace Gresham in a hand so like Octavia’s that I had to ask her about it.”
Instantly an image of Wynford’s hard male presence in the blue silk dressing gown passed through Harriet’s mind. For him to see the marchioness’s post suggested a degree of intimacy between them that Harriet had not imagined, though his expression betrayed no shame or embarrassment in the admission.
“You did not tell Octavia where you saw the letter?” she asked in a faint voice.
“I did not, and she denies any improper correspondence.” He laughed. “Octavia would find it strange, I know, but the thought of her writing to Gresham, however indiscreet such a letter would be, troubles me less than the degree of trust she places in our...cousin.”
Harriet noted the hesitation. “You do not believe the marchioness is your cousin.”
He offered her a wry smile. “I doubt she is French at all.”
“Of course.” In Harriet’s mind the details of the past and present continued to rearrange themselves. “The marchioness did not know Marie Rambert’s name or reputation, did not understand the insult she had offered the woman.”
“Yes, I noticed that. It is one of many inconsistencies in her story.”
“Then who and why...” Harriet broke off, realizing that she was far from understanding his interest in the marchioness or the woman’s particular attentions to Octavia. But it involved Perry, and she tried to recall what she had just heard about some Russian general’s daughter.
Wynford withdrew into his thoughts and absently tossed the dog’s stick in a high arc over the street. Cat gave chase and returned obediently to drop the stick at his idol’s feet. When Wynford looked up, she thought him about to ask her something, but he simply rang the bell. “Safely delivered to your door. We have a bargain then for Lady Hardwicke’s ball.”
She nodded.
A footman opened the door, and Wynford ordered Cat inside, bowed, and turned away. She watched him, contradictory ideas jostling one another in her head. He was three houses down the street when she cried, “Wait.”
With no regard for her footing, she ran to him.
He caught her gloved hands in his, his grip tight, and steadied her, an amused look in his eyes. “What is it?” he asked.
“You must believe Octavia,” she said. “She told me that since she has been in London she has written only to me and to the marchioness. Don’t you see? That means the marchioness has in her possession, as I have in mine, samples of your sister’s handwriting.”
His expression changed. “You’re suggesting forgery? The marchioness writing to Gresham in my sister’s hand?”
“Yes,” she said a little breathlessly. “Octavia would never write to Gresham. The things she’s said to me make it plain that Gresham has transferred his affections to another woman—recently, abruptly.”
“She told you this?” he asked.
“Hints only, but the loss of his regard would explain her desire to make herself into a different girl and win a husband by Christmas. What doesn’t make sense, I suppose, is what the marchioness is about writing a letter to Gresham in your sister’s hand.”
A look of menacing grimness hardened his features. “Indeed,” he said. “The marchioness’s motives are hard to fathom.”
He seemed to remember then that he held her hands in the public street. Heads of passersby turned. “Thank you,” he said, “for teaching me to do justice to my sister.”
“She is perhaps stronger than you think and more like you than you suppose.”
His look changed again, all harshness gone. “I must ask,” he said.
She lowered her gaze from his piercing one.
“What happened after I left your brother’s house that day?”
She lifted her chin and met his searching gaze with as steady a look as she could manage. “I found I could not marry the man my brother chose for me.”
* * * *
Perry paced the library when Wynford returned. “It’s no good,” Perry said, looking downcast. “All the gossip points to Major Ashton, a rakehell in his day, but the fellow’s alive, and as apt to stroll up Bond Street or show his face in a card room as you or I. In fact, I’m sure I saw him last week in the park on a bay hack with Sommersby.”
“And the general’s daughter?” Charles asked.
“Daughters,” said Perry. “Irina and Sophia.”
“Do we know which one caught the major’s eye? Are they both living? Married?” asked Charles.
Perry, who never forgot a bit of scandal, grinned at him. “Brilliant.” He went back to the notes on the desk. “The major pursues one of the girls, perhaps to her ruin...”
“Oh,” said Charles, “almost surely to her ruin.”
“And perhaps there is no redress. The English close ranks and protect the young officer from the consequences of his vile behavior, so the sister has reason to hate not only the man, but the nation.”
Charles nodded. He didn’t like it, but it looked to him as if the ruin of his own sister was at the heart of the marchioness’s scheme.
“A little more digging,” said Perry, “and we’ll know whether our marchioness is Sophia or Irina.” He went back to his papers.
“Perry, to whom did Dunraven want to marry his sister?”
“The man she refused, you mean?”
Charles nodded.
“Torrington, I think.”