Chapter Eight #2
“Now. See there, Jonas,” Mrs. Handley said, breaking her blessed silence.
“There is Miss Harrington. Now she is quite an agreeable young lady. Her uncle is an earl, you know. And her mother is the daughter of a marquess.” Mrs. Handley gave Athena a look so pointed Athena half expected to find herself bleeding from someplace vital.
“And yet she does not put on airs. I do not think we would hear her spouting nonsense about natural curls and family connections that were not worth mentioning.”
Athena clasped her fingers more tightly, keeping herself quiet by sheer willpower. If only Adam were in the carriage at that moment. He would set the dragon to the right about!
“Quite right, Mother,” Mr. Handley agreed. That was all he’d done from the moment they’d left Falstone House. He’d simpered and fussed and agreed to every bit of nonsense that had dropped out of his mother’s mouth.
“Oh, Jonas! See. There is Mr. Windover. Do wave him over. I simply must speak with him.”
Harry? Athena shifted in her seat enough to peer in the direction Mrs. Handley was indicating. Sure enough, there was Harry, riding his dappled mare and looking as carefree and unaffected as ever. Harry and his ridiculous friends!
A moment later, Harry was beside the landau. “Mrs. Handley,” he offered with a most charming smile. “You are as handsome as ever.”
“Flatterer,” Mrs. Handley replied with a playful wave of her hand.
“Not at all,” Harry grinned. “I have often said that you are a lady whose looks defy comparison.”
Harry’s eyes slung quickly to Athena, laughter sparkling in their depths.
Athena understood then. Harry was speaking absolutely truthfully but phrasing his words in a way that could, if one was inclined to hear them a certain way, be interpreted as flattering.
“Miss Lancaster,” he said, sounding for all the world as if he had only just noticed her there, even though his mischievous smile told Athena otherwise.
“Well met. How are you enjoying Hyde Park this afternoon?”
“The park is much as it was the last time I was here,” Athena replied, borrowing Harry’s method of careful phrasing.
“Would you say you are enjoying your ride today as much as you did on your previous jaunt?”
“In some ways I would even say this ride has exceeded the experience of my last.”
“Oh, I see.” Harry kept his tone light and cheerful, but Athena saw empathy in his eyes that nearly undid her determined air of indifference. Mrs. Handley’s barbs had not been enjoyable.
“Miss Lancaster is the Duke of Kielder’s ward, I understand,” Mrs. Handley said, commandeering the conversation once more. She’d managed to make the position of “ward” sound as demeaning as “boot boy” or “scullery maid.”
“She is, in fact, his sister-in-law,” Harry corrected but with such a brilliant smile, Mrs. Handley responded with an almost infatuated smile of her own. Athena couldn’t help noting that Mr. Handley knew as much but had not seen that she was given her proper place in his mother’s estimation.
“Tell me,” Mrs. Handley leaned closer to Harry, her layer upon layer of facial wrinkles piling atop one another as she twisted her face into a conspiratorial look, “do all of His Grace’s wards claim to have naturally curly hair as this one does?”
“Miss Lancaster’s youngest sister, as well as her brother, share with Miss Lancaster the very great fortune of having been born with the envy-inspiring ringlets you see before you,” Harry told her.
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Kielder, has perfectly lovely hair, as does another of His Grace’s sisters-in-law, though their hair does not curl naturally as Miss Lancaster’s does. ”
“So it is natural.” Mrs. Handley was obviously not happy to discover as much.
“It is, indeed. Naturally beautiful.” Harry smiled at Athena, and something about his expression, coupled with his tone, made her blush.
“It is a shame the gel is so impertinent,” Mrs. Handley said, skewering Athena with her beady little eyes. Athena had to clamp her jaw shut to keep from saying something uncivil. “If she weren’t generally quiet, she wouldn’t be welcomed anywhere, I dare say.”
“The Duke of Kielder’s sister-in-law will always be welcomed everywhere,” Harry countered.
His eyes fell on Mr. Handley, pulling that gentleman’s gaze away from his mother for the first time in a quarter of an hour.
“And all would be advised to remember that His Grace does not take kindly to seeing his loved ones, most especially his wife’s family, mistreated or made unhappy. ”
Athena heard Mr. Handley clear his throat uncomfortably.
“His Grace is particularly disapproving of insults,” Harry continued, still watching Mr. Handley closely, a warning obvious in his tone.
“Even the royal family dares not slight those His Grace considers under his protection. One would be well-advised not to allow the duke’s family members to be made unhappy lest one find oneself in His Grace’s black books. ”
“Point taken, Windover,” Mr. Handley said, his voice oddly strangled.
“Well,” Harry returned to his jovial manner of addressing them all, “I must not keep this beast standing, I fear he is rather the most impatient of horses.”
A moment later, Harry had cantered off. Athena’s eyes followed him as he made his way through the throng of people, wishing he had stayed longer, wondering why he had not been at Falstone House that day. She could not remember the last time he hadn’t been there before the afternoon had worn on.
“A very good sort of gentleman,” Mrs. Handley observed after Harry’s departure. “It is a shame his good friend, the duke, has been burdened with such an unwelcome responsibility. He—”
“Mother,” Mr. Handley interrupted, sounding more than a touch uneasy, “I do believe we have been out in the weather long enough. Do not you?”
She humphed, though it sounded oddly like agreement. “Learned all I needed to know,” she said, giving Athena another one of her scathing visual assessments.
Mr. Handley gave the coachman harried instructions to leave the park at the earliest opportunity.
Not ten minutes later, Athena was deposited on the steps of Falstone House.
“Good riddance,” she heard Mrs. Handley’s acidic voice declare as the landau pulled away.
“Amen,” Athena muttered in response.
Her list had grown by one more attribute. Her ideal husband would not possess a poison-tongued mother to whom he clung with almost unnatural fervor. She would not spend the rest of her life insulted by a mother-in-law and ignored by a husband who had not yet grown out of the role of needy child.
And Harry, she further decided, desperately needed to expand his circle of acquaintances.