Chapter Twelve
After an interminable week and a half of long hours at the Admiralty interspersed with a miserable stint in Portsmouth sorting out all the merchants there, Harry decided to do something he hadn’t done in a long time.
He left Whitehall early.
He was sick and tired of fighting fires that were not of his making, and sicker still of constantly pondering Miss Rowe when he did not want to be. After their oddly charged moment on his landing ten days ago, the vixen had infested his mind and inserted herself so deep beneath his dermis that her essence had haunted him ever since. To combat that, he had taken to avoiding her wherever possible, which of course she had taken as carte blanche to revert to doing everything her way again.
According to the irritating but ever-vigilant Lady Flatman next door, she and the children now spent at least half of their day outdoors in his garden or at the park, leaving the ordered classroom he had made for her mostly redundant. Not that it resembled his ordered classroom any longer. Incrementally, by stealth and sheer bloody-mindedness, she had changed the damn room entirely—and for the better. The neat line of desks seemed to float around to wherever she fancied on the periphery of the room, and the polished parquet in the center was now covered with the big, round rug he had fetched back from one of his travels that had languished in one of his empty bedrooms ever since. It had been wasted there, he now realized, as the vibrant pattern and all the colors of nature, which had first drawn him to it in that bustling souk several years ago, seemed to have been tailor-made to sit beneath these French doors, swathed in the late morning sunlight.
The big clock was now surrounded by his nieces’ and nephew’s artwork. Little Grace’s barely formed, overbright childish daubs sat beside Marianne’s whimsical, fairy-tale view of the world. Pastel, romanticized drawings of castles and princesses, fire-breathing dragons, and knights of yore which made him smile despite him currently having little to smile about.
And despite the lack of traditional rigor or rules, and despite all the kite flying, tadpole collecting, cricket playing, and laughing his governess encouraged on a daily basis, his nieces and nephews were thriving. They adored Miss Rowe. Talked incessantly of her. Most galling of all was that they behaved for Miss Rowe because she could control them with the mere quirk of an eyebrow. If he happened to be around to see it, she would then quirk that eyebrow at him, the message in it clear. I told you I was an excellent governess. And he liked that about her. Liked her spirit and her cheek and the inherent rebelliousness which made her instinctively challenge his original expectations rather than fall into step behind them.
It made him like the rest of her too, damn it, and that wasn’t helping matters at all. Not when his unwelcome and incomprehensible attraction to the contrary minx had to stop.
What the hell had he been thinking to caress her fingers like he had? To gaze so longingly into her eyes? To have almost—almost—tugged her closer because he had been sorely tempted to taste her. To want more from her than he damn well should be wanting when he had so many more important things to do?
Getting waylaid by a woman—again—after he had spent the last two years doing whatever it took to expedite and elevate his career after a woman had almost scuppered it was sheer madness. Especially when he was so close to climbing the next rung up the ladder that he could smell it.
Harry wasn’t daft. He knew that his name was on everyone’s lips at the Admiralty. The top brass, they now eyed him with undisguised interest. He was the heir apparent, to what he still did not know, but he was owed something big after all the outstanding work he had put in there at their express behest. Everyone knew that. To risk all that now simply because he had felt so empty inside—and because something about his prickly governess called to him on a visceral level—was the dictionary definition of lunacy.
A man in his prime—one on the cusp of his next big promotion—shouldn’t be feeling as empty as a pauper’s purse or so angry at himself that he wanted to punch a wall.
He should feel proud of his achievements. Invigorated. Impatient. Excited for the fresh challenges awaiting him in his career—not flat and worn down and so uninspired by the navy he could barely drag himself out of bed in the mornings.
Thankfully, this afternoon, as he had been staring, lost, into space, Harry had had an epiphany.
His current dissatisfaction with his life was all his fault!
Thanks to his own ambitions, he had allowed himself to be lured to the Admiralty. Then he had allowed himself to be swamped with so many of their problems, Harry had taken on far more than he could chew and lost himself in the process. He had said yes when he should have said no. He had negotiated when he should have laid down the law, and he had neglected his own wants, needs, and, bizarrely, the furtherment of his own career because he had been too overworked to see to those things. He had, in short, hoisted himself by his own petard.
That had to be why he felt so uninspired, and that had to be why, when his exhausted mind had clearly been at its most addled, he had that odd moment on the landing with Miss Rowe.
Well, no more! Now that he had identified the problem, he would fix it, because fixing things was what he did best. He was going to keep Miss Rowe at arm’s length, stop fantasizing about the prickly minx, and prioritize himself for a change. Reclaim his life, insist on his next overdue promotion, and find joy in his career again. He was also going to enjoy being a bachelor and sow some wild oats with determined abandon as a matter of urgency. Tonight, in fact! That would rid his mind of his most beguiling and befuddling employee once and for all.
Before the sun set, he was going to clean himself up, take himself out, and find himself a willing woman he could have a mad, passionate, but dispassionate fling with. Or a mad passionate night with. Or even a mad, passionate interlude in a conservatory with! Whichever opportunity presented itself first, he was going to grab it with both hands and thereby slake all his pent-up lust and hopefully banish all his unsettling emptiness as well. Kill two wretched birds with one stone. Three, if it also freed him of the incessant pondering of Miss Rowe’s contrasting pale skin and flame hair. Of her compact but tempting figure and her seductive eyes, or her tart mouth for that matter too. Because, frankly, he never wanted to have to contemplate the vixen’s lips ever again. Her lips, like the rest of Miss Rowe, were absolutely not on his bloody extensive list of things he had to do.
A surprised Simpkins met him at the front door. “You are home early?” Then he frowned, alarmed. “Has something happened?”
“Of course not. I am simply home a little earlier than usual”—by about eight hours!—“so that I can get ready for Admiral and Lady Nugent’s ball tonight.” Where he fully intended to cross his new number one priority off his list—those oats. “So I shall need a bath run immediately.”
“You… are going to a ball?” Simpkins struggled to hide his surprise, as Harry burned most of the invitations he got nowadays because he never had time for them, and if he did, he was always too tired to bother. “Very good, sir.”
“I shall need you to dust off my dress uniform for the occasion.”
Simpkins looked even more surprised by that request. “Are you sure, sir? Only it’s unseasonably warm for May and I’ll need to polish all the buttons before its fit to be seen. They’ve not been done in a while.”
“Then polish them until they shine while I’m in the bath, Simpkins.” He rubbed his chin and decided it was far too stubbly to be considered gentlemanly—especially when entertaining a woman. If he found a willing one tonight, he was jolly well going to give her carte blanche to have her wicked way with him this very evening, so it made sense to look his absolute best and be politely smooth at the same time. No woman wanted whisker burns. “And lay out all my shaving things too.”
Clearly peeved by that, his retainer scowled. “But you only had new evening clothes made for town last month, sir, and they’ve not yet been worn. A rather splendid set of evening clothes they are, too, which are pressed and ready and nowhere near as hot as your dress…”
“As Admiral Nugent was the man who dragged me to the Admiralty to prove my mettle, I must impress him.” And thereby make a start on priority number two—claiming his next promotion.
“You can impress him just as well in your evening clothes as you can in a uniform, and nobody wears their uniform here in town anyway and—” Harry stayed him with a raised palm because they were both men of the world, and the new no-nonsense Harry had already wasted enough time justifying himself when he was supposed to be resolute. “I am going to be wearing my uniform because I am due some shore leave, Simpkins.”
They both knew what shore leave was a euphemism for. Just as they both knew that, for some inexplicable reason, while it either irritated or intimidated the non-military men, there wasn’t a lady alive who did not prefer a man in uniform to one without one. His impressive but somewhat uncomfortable gold–trimmed navy captain’s coat had always attracted women like flies. In fact, it hadn’t once let him down in all the years he had worn it. Neither had the lieutenant’s coat he had swapped for it. Never one for propriety, Flora had always joked that Harry’s navy uniform was like catnip and no woman was safe from him when he wore it, so he was praying it still worked. A roll around a different woman’s mattress felt like the only way he was going to ever get his imagination to stop conjuring inappropriate images of Miss Rowe in his mind while he laid on his.
“Ah…” said Simpkins with a tap to his nose. “Yes, of course, sir. And if I might be so bold, I am glad to hear it. I was trying to find a subtle way to suggest that a bit of shore leave was long overdue. In fact, can’t remember the last time that you…” Needing neither the cringeworthy lecture nor the reminder, Harry stayed him with another hand in stark warning. Simpkins winked, unrepentant, as he backed away. “I’ll have those buttons so shiny all the ladies will be able to see their swooning faces in them. You’ll look so resplendent you’ll have no trouble attracting—”
“Just go, will you!”
“Yes, sir!” A grinning Simpkins disappeared out the doorway, then immediately reappeared in it with placating hands. “I know that I’m probably talking out of turn, but it occurs to me that if some shore leave is in the cards, then might I be so bold as to suggest that I lay out the newer breeches…” They also both knew that the newer breeches were a polite euphemism for the bigger breeches Simpkins had had made behind Harry’s back because, as much as he wanted to deny it, he wasn’t quite as lithe onshore as he had been out at sea. The lack of weevils in the biscuits and Mrs. Rigsby’s excellent cooking had added two inches to his waistline in the last two years that no amount of exercise seemed to shift. He kept himself fit and his belly was still as flat as a pancake, so he was determined to convince himself that those extra inches were the muscle which was meant to be there without the skimpy ship rations. But still—they galled. “They’ll be less… constricting when you’re… dancing, Captain.”
As much as the suggestion mortified him, for so many reasons that he was sorely tempted to blush when they both knew what dancing was a euphemism for, his faithful manservant made a valid point.
On their last outing, his old dress breeches cut him in places that breeches shouldn’t cut and, as a result, had distracted him all evening. He hadn’t purposefully gone on shore leave that night, but if he had, those breeches would have ruined it, as he’d spent the entire evening willing them not to keep creeping up his backside and had ended up leaving early. He’d be a much better and more charming flirt if he was comfortable, so he gave the crude wretch a curt nod before he spun away and sprinted up the stairs.
The newer breeches would also be much easier for a willing woman to strip him out of before the long-overdue dancing commenced, which was, if all went to plan, the only reason he intended to wear them. Whatever it took, he had to banish his dangerous but growing obsession with Miss Rowe from his mind once and for all.