The weeks following the dowager’s house party, and through to the end of the year and beyond, were the most miserable of Harriet’s life. When she had lost her parents, she had had Anne as a constant in her life. In losing Anne, she had drawn ever closer to Anne’s children. Now, not seeing them daily, not hearing of their little or great troubles and triumphs as they occurred was—well—heartbreaking, no matter how much she chastised herself for dwelling on her misery.
Nor was it only the children who occupied her thoughts morning, noon, and night. Looming beyond, over, and always was Quint. Especially the nights—there he would be. Quint: his face—that faint growth of whisker still visible during an early morning ride, his quick teasing grin, his voice in telling Sarah he loved her, his kiss—Ah, God! his lovemaking. How was she supposed to put these out of mind—out of heart? No doubt she would—one day—see the children again. But would she ever see Quint again? Be allowed to explain why she did what she did? Daily she went through the routine of “brace the shoulders and carry on”—that is what Miss Pringle’s girls were taught to do. But, dear God! It was hard.
She lived for letters from Sedwick. Miss Clarkson and Mr. Knightly kept her updated—briefly, and merely as a courtesy, for the children’s guardian was their employer. Harriet was glad that both of them seemed to have settled happily into their positions, for that was what Ricky, Robby, Sarah, and Elly needed: settled. So did Phillip, Maria, and Tilly, but not to the same extent, perhaps. The children were good about writing their weekly letters, though Harriet sensed they had sometimes been prodded into writing—especially Robby, who occasionally mentioned his continuing to deserve his ginger biscuits and lemon tarts. Phillip and Maria were as faithful as they had promised, and it was from their letters that Harriet gleaned her real news of Sedwick.
Phillip reported that besides his regular lessons with Mr. Knightly (whom he liked very much, by the way), he was continuing to enjoy studying piano with the vicar’s wife once a week. Harriet wrote back to encourage him in that endeavor, for both she and Emma Powers thought Phillip quite talented. Harriet thought his music also provided the young man a sorely needed emotional outlet. She was best pleased, though, by Phillip’s report that his Uncle Quint had insisted the young earl be present for a twice-monthly meeting with Mr. Stevens and floor leaders at the mills. Phillip reported that he himself had little to say in these meetings, but he was learning a good deal. She could tell he was thrilled to be included, to be treated like an adult. She had thought of writing Quint a note to thank him for including the boy, then thought better of that. He might think her presumptuous, or condescending, or…
From Maria she received newsy bits over all those weeks that were amusing or insightful, often making Harriet homesick—for that was what Sedwick had become: home. It was Maria who told her Lady Barbara had left Sedwick sooner than she intended and in something of a pet—and why.
According to Hodgie—I overheard her talking with Mrs. Ames—and you must never tell them I eavesdropped!! Anyway, Aunt Harriet, you will find this hard to believe, but apparently Lady B thought Grandmother was going to persuade Uncle Q to marry her! Mrs. A said there had been “something there years ago, but the colonel wasn’t no green boy any more” and it did not work.…So, Lady B left, and Gran was that angry with Uncle Q. They are still not talking much. I thought she might move back to the dower house, but I think she liked Mama’s rooms too well—and running things here—or trying to! Uncle Q says she is to make no more changes—and to undo some she has made—including moving out of Mama’s rooms! So—Guess what? She moved into yours! He was angry about that, but he let it go.…Uncle Q. spends most of his time sequestered (are you impressed with that word?) in the library. Or, weather permitting, riding the very devil out of Papa’s devil horse. Especially now that Mr. Gibbons is gone—at least for a while. I did tell you, did I not, about his sister coming down here from the Highlands to “drag him back to see his family” she said. She was a fierce one—I wish you had met her! He promised to come back soon.…We missed you sooo much at Christmas! We had the Yule log and carols and wassail and the smells of spices and greenery—even a kissing ball! But it just was not the same without you—and Mama and Papa, of course. Maybe next year—
Harriet refolded the letters and tucked them away. “Maybe. Maybe next year, Maria.” But she hadn’t much faith in that. Before restoring the box of letters to its place in a bureau drawer, she withdrew Maria’s last letter, which carried a troubling postscript:
P.S. The two youngest of the Powers brood have contracted chicken pox! Do you suppose its progress to the Hall is inevitable? Sigh. (But do note that big word, oh favorite aunt of mine: If nothing else, writing you is improving my vocabulary!)
Harriet had not found it difficult in London to fill her days with activities and people she enjoyed. She rode Miss Priss in the park nearly every morning, sometimes with her friend Lord Beaconfield, more often with just a groom, though occasionally her longtime school friend Lady Henrietta Parker—Retta—joined her. She chose always to ride early, before the nursemaids arrived in the park with their little charges. She made and received social calls, often accompanied by her grandmother or Elizabeth. She renewed her association with Retta’s favorite charity, which helped abused women and children. And she picked up where she had left off with the literary group, all of whom told her how much they had missed her.
Gavin, Lord Beaconfield, had called for her and accompanied her to that first meeting. As they settled into his coach on leaving, he said, “They were all sincere, you know, Harriet. They have missed you.”
“I know, and I am appreciative,” she said.
“I know you miss the country life,” he said with a smile, “but surely the last few weeks have reassured you that London still has much to offer.”
“Yes, Dr. Johnson, ‘He who is tired of London—”
“‘—is tired of life,’” he finished with a chuckle. “But Johnson aside, I doubt you are tired of life.”
“Gavin, what are you trying to say?”
“Two things, actually. First, you have not written anything since your return. Why?”
“I cannot give a reason other than it all seems so pointless, does it not? You walk in those oh-so-sacred halls of power. What do you see being accomplished—really?”
“I will admit it is slow, but even the gods grind slowly, you know.”
Feeling herself go very still at those words, she said after an instant of pause, “You are not the first to tell me that in recent months. What was your second thing?”
He shifted on the seat to face her—they were sharing the forward-facing bench of the coach—and he wore a serious expression. “The second thing is in the nature of a confession.”
“A confession?” She stared at him.
He held up a hand. “Hear me out. I went to that house party at Sedwick because my mother nagged me into looking out for my sister. She has also been after me—for years—that it is time I married. I finally agree with her. I went there primarily to propose to you.”
“Oh, Gavin.” She lowered her gaze. “But you did not.”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I saw that there was something in the air between you and Burnes, so I backed off.”
She was quiet, searching for a response.
He went on. “I am not the only one who noticed, by the way. Lady Pearson mentioned it to me.” He paused for a long moment, and still her thoughts were so tangled she could not speak. “So, now that you are back here, back in the old groove, so to speak,” he continued, “the question is—”
“No, Gavin, do not. Please. I beg you,” she said hastily.
He laughed softly. “No, my dear. I was not going to pop that question—not for a while at least. I was about to ask just how much of the real Harriet is London getting these days? You often seem to be decidedly distracted.”
“You, sir, know me too well.” Incongruously, she recalled Miss Pringle’s “brace the shoulders” line; so she did. “I suppose I have been, but I am glad you did not ask me that question, my friend. For that is what you are to me: a most valued friend.”
“As you wish.” He moved closer to put his arm about her shoulders and gave her a very friendly hug.
As they parted, he promised to meet her in the park in the morning.
* * * *
“You shouldna’ ha’ let her go. You should ha’ gone after her.”
Chet’s words the morning Harriet left and repeated only once—when Chet himself left—had rung like faraway cathedral bells in the caverns of Quint’s mind for weeks. At night they rang louder and more persistently. Chet had first uttered those words as he encountered Quint just entering the library after seeing Harriet leave.
“You do not understand, Chet. It is more complicated than that.”
“Only to you stiff-necked English,” Chet said. “That girl loves you—I’m sure of it. And I am damned sure you love her.”
“Leave it, Chet.”
“As you will, Colonel, sir.”
Quint had just sat down at his desk, still unsettled by that conversation, when his mother bustled into the room.
“Thank goodness, that lot are on their way. May we be spared their company in the future.”
He looked up and raised an eyebrow. “You are overlooking the rather significant fact that they are blood relatives of Sedwick’s Seventh Earl, are you not?”
She heaved an exaggerated sigh and sat down heavily in one of the wing chairs. “That scene last night at my ball was beyond enough! I intend to make that Mayfield chit pay dearly for embarrassing me so. By the time I am through, the whole ton is going to know how she is trying to cheat her own nephew out of valuable property. Taking advantage of an innocent child! How could she? She will not be received in any reputable house in all of London!”
Quint sat still for only an instant. Then he dug into an inside pocket of the coat he was wearing, retrieved a small key, and unlocked a desk drawer. He took out a small bundle of mismatched pieces of paper and a ledger book. He walked over to stand towering over his mother.
“You will do no such thing, Mother. And you had damned well better see to it that none of your minions take on such a nefarious task, either.” He might have been dressing down one of his subalterns on the Peninsula.
She looked up at him, her face white with rage, but something in his demeanor tempered the rage with apprehension, if not downright fear. “Do not swear at me,” she said weakly. “I am your mother. ‘Nefarious.’ Indeed.”
“How about ‘malicious,’ then? Or one of your favorites: ‘bad ton’?” He refused to tone down his sarcasm, but his voice became cold and iron-hard as he went on. “If I hear even the faintest whisper of what you have just outlined—from you or anyone else—the tabloids will have a holiday with this information.”
He tossed the small bundle of papers in her lap. He could tell by the way her face went even whiter as she fingered through them that she recognized gambling vouchers she herself had written at London gaming tables. He opened the ledger to a given page and pushed it under her nose.
“You will, of course, recognize the handwriting on many of these entries. Interesting that so many of the vouchers and entries here seem to have materialized after Win’s death and before I returned to England. Now tell me who was taking advantage of a situation.” He snapped the book shut, snatched the papers from her hand, and sat in the opposite chair.
“You do not understand, Quinton, darling.” She was begging. “I was trying to mend matters.”
“And when you got in even deeper, how did you hope to escape?”
“Sir Desmond offered to help if—”
He felt a cold chill of disgust slither through him. “Oh, good God. A London procuress has more honor.”
She started to rise.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “I meant what I said. If there is the faintest whisper of scandal pertaining to Harriet, I will release the truth to the tabloids.”
“You cannot hold me responsible for what others might say.” Her self-righteous tone indicated she had regained some of her bravado.
He stared at her until she looked down at her hands. “You pride yourself on being such a social queen of the ton. Here is your chance to prove just how influential you might, in truth, be. Surely, you have enough presence in your set to squash patently silly rumors before they take hold.”
“You have no sense of family loyalty,” she said petulantly.
“Perhaps. But somehow, I did manage to acquire the basic concept of the meaning of honor, Mother.” He stood and held up the bundle of vouchers. “These were neither mine nor my brother’s.” He locked them and the ledger back in the desk.
“You might begin, Mother, to control some of the damage that has been done as the rest of your guests leave,” he said and walked out of the room.
The following morning she had made her announcement of Lady Barbara’s extended stay, and Quint conjectured that she had devised yet another scheme, but he felt sure he had shielded Harriet from one of them at least. The Dowager Countess of Sedwick feared scandal involving herself every bit as much as she relished spreading it at the expense of others. Far more, in fact.
* * * *
“Harriet! You will never believe whom I encountered at the Betworths’ just now!” Elizabeth was so anxious to tell her news, she seemed positively flustered as she entered the Hawthorne drawing room. Harriet and her “Nana” had been receiving morning callers, but the last ones had departed just before Elizabeth arrived. Only that morning Harriet had received in the mail Maria’s letter with the worrisome postscript about chicken pox in Sedwick village.
“No, I suppose I won’t unless you tell me, Elizabeth.”
“Lady Margaret!”
“She is here—in London?” Harriet asked.
“For the moment. But only just. She did not even open Sedwick House. She is staying with the Goughs—you may remember Colonel Gough was on Wellington’s staff in Spain.” Harriet and her grandmother exchanged amused glances, for the usually restrained Elizabeth was talking so fast her words were nearly tumbling over each other.
“Mrs. Gough is Lady Margaret’s cousin,” the older lady informed them.
“Yes. Well,” Elizabeth rushed on, “it seems the colonel is to join Wellington again in Vienna and his wife invited Lady Margaret to go with them ‘so she will have some company.’ They are leaving immediately for the continent!”
“Lady Margaret will be in her element in Vienna, what with half London’s elite already there,” Nana observed mildly.
“So she is not at Sedwick Hall,” Harriet mused aloud.
“Are you thinking of visiting there?” her grandmother asked. “It has been some time, my dear. I am sure that unpleasantness will have blown over by now.”
“N-no. Not really,” Harriet said slowly, but she refused to share what she was thinking: Quint will be in that great house with sick children on his hands. Immediately, she braced her shoulders. Do try not to be such a ninny—the Hall employs a staff of over fifty!
A few troubling hours later, telling herself she had not yet made a decision, she nevertheless set Collins to packing and sent a servant to inquire about post chaise transportation to the north. Meanwhile, she would await further word from Sedwick, grabbing up the mail eagerly each morning. So far there had been no word that any of her lot were ill—but, after all, it usually took at least a week for that childhood disease to manifest itself. What to do? If she just appeared at the Hall, would she be allowed to stay?
Five days later, fully packed, but still hesitating, she sat at the piano in the drawing room idly playing whatever tune came to mind. She was interrupted by the Hawthorne butler.
“Miss Harriet, there is a gentleman to see you.”
“Who is it, Thompkins?” she asked, expecting to be handed a visiting card.
Thompkins cleared his throat. “Said he’d rather present himself. Shall I send him away with a flea in his ear?”
“A gentleman?”
“Dressed like one.”
Thinking the visitor might be someone with information about workers’ “corresponding societies”—clubs being formed surreptitiously to fight for workers’ rights about which Harriet was interested in writing—she said, “Show him in, but Thompkins, stay close by.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stood near the piano, waiting, and a few minutes later, the door opened and Quint walked in.
She gasped.
Then she quickly collected herself, curtsied slightly, and said calmly, “Colonel Burnes. This is a surprise.”
What an inadequate word, she thought, as she drank in the sight of him, absolutely unable to tear her eyes away from him. He was dressed fashionably in a dark green coat, a dove-colored waistcoat, dark trousers, and Hessian boots. His neckcloth was tied simply. The green of the coat reflected the almost green of his hazel eyes, which gazed at her steadfastly.
“I was afraid you would refuse me if gave him my name,” he said, nodding toward the door.
“I would never do that,” she said stiffly, visualizing what it would be like to have him hold her again—and quickly hating herself for the vision. She raised her voice slightly. “It is all right, Thompkins.” The door clicked shut.
“Why are you here?” she asked, unable to hide her anxiety. “Are the children all right?”
He smiled faintly. “Yes—and no. Our young people are mostly all right. When I left the Hall, only Elinor, Matilda, and Robert had so far succumbed to a bout of chicken pox that is running rampant in the village. But Sarah and Richard were not feeling at all well.”
“Oh, dear. Maria wrote me about the Powers children.”
“It started with their family,” he said, no longer looking at her directly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Won’t you sit down?” She gestured to a grouping of an overstuffed couch and two chairs. He waited for her to take one of the chairs, then took the other one.
“Half the village children are sick with it—and many adults as well,” he said.
“And the Hall?” she asked.
“As I say, when I left, only three of the children, but that was three days ago. They could all have it by now.” He sounded truly worried. “Moreover, because so many of our servants are relatively young, half of them are already down with it. Those of us who had it as children ourselves are pressed to keep tending them.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she murmured sympathetically.
He twisted in his chair to face her directly, his expression anguished. “Harriet, I am here on a mission of sorts. I have come to ask you—please—to come back to Sedwick Hall with me. Those lovable brats Win and Anne left us have driven me crazy since you’ve gone. Not a day goes by but one or two or more of them ask me, ‘When is Aunt Harriet coming back?’ Elly breaks my heart crying for ‘Auntie Harry’ as we try to get her to stop scratching her poxes. They need you to come back, if only to prove that you will.”
“Of course I will go back with you,” she said. “In fact, I am already packed. We can leave tomorrow morning, if you wish.”
“You will? You are? We can?” He was clearly dumbfounded.
She explained about Maria’s letter and her premonition of just those events that had transpired. “I-I just was not sure of my reception if I showed up unannounced,” she ended lamely.
“Oh, my God. Harriet.” He stood, pulled her to her feet, and buried his face against her neck. She drank in the scent of him. His voice was muffled against her skin. “It is not only the children. I am here for me too. I have missed you every hour of every day since you left.”
She did not answer him; she merely moved her face for a better angle to kiss him. Their arms tightened around each other and it was long, deep, utterly satisfying kiss of homecoming.
He raised his head to say, “I do love you, you know.”
“I do now,” she said with a laugh. “And I love you too. So now what? Seems to me we’ve already taken the next step.”
“Now we marry and live happily ever after—is that not what Snow White and her prince did?”
“Such things occur much easier in fairy tales, I think. In fact, as I consider it, my returning to the Hall with you is fraught with difficulties.” She nudged him toward the couch where they sat very close, arms entwined.
“My mother is off to the Continent,” he said.
“I know, but ton gossips are still right here in England too. I cannot bring down a sordid scandal for Phillip and Maria and the others to live with. You must go back to them. I shall come when my grandparents or Charles and Elizabeth can join me.”
“No. We shall leave tomorrow as you suggested.” He withdrew from an inner pocket of his coat a piece of paper and handed it to her. “I stopped at Doctors Commons before coming here.”
“A special license? My heavens! You were sure of me, were you not?”
“No, my love,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “Just very, very hopeful—and trying desperately to anticipate any difficulties in the way of what I wanted—and what I want most is you. Forever.”
“Did no one ever teach you to be careful what you wish for, my dearest?” she asked between a series of kisses and caresses that were growing more and more heated.
“May I ask just what is going on here?”
The voice of her grandmother from the open doorway abruptly interrupted. However, Harriet detected laughter beneath the show of shock.
Quint jumped up. “I can explain, Lady Hawthorne. Truly I can.”
“I should hope so, young man,” the old lady said, continuing her pretense of shock. “Would you not agree, dear?” She stepped aside to allow her husband entrance.
“Must I call him out, my dear?” the old man asked his wife very seriously.
“I wanted only this,” Quint said, embarrassed.
Harriet was embarrassed too, but she could not help laughing. “Nana. Poppy. Do stop. Quint and I are going to be married.”
“After that display, I should hope so,” her grandfather said.
“About time,” her grandmother said. “Took you long enough to come to your senses.”
They were married the next morning in that same drawing room. Three days and two blissful nights later, they arrived at Sedwick Hall and began to deal with the happily short-lived chaos of a great manor house turned into a temporary hospital.