Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
J ack watched her face, reminded yet again that of late he was having a hard time reading the play of emotions. His own feelings were equally confusing. Exasperation over her stubborn insistence on charging into danger tangled with the realization that he had come to depend on her common sense and camaraderie. And more troubling was the thread of worry that he had drawn her into a nest of vipers.
“Harry, I don’t want you dealing with these Frenchmen,” he growled. “Your help with deciphering the secrets held in the papers is more than enough.”
In a very un-Harriet reaction, she merely shifted her gaze to the paintings on the wall. Silence loomed between them, with a weight that seemed to press against his chest.
“Harry...”
“What do you see when you look at this face?” she asked abruptly, a slight nod indicating a large portrait from the previous century framed in age-dark oak.
“A fellow who looks like he’s cursed bored with having to sit still for the artist,” he grumbled.
“Be serious.” Her eyes remained on the painting. “Didn’t you ever look—really look—at the paintings of your ancestors that hang along the main stairway at Hendrie Hall and try to discern what they were like as individuals?”
“No, my attention was more focused on wishing I had the fourth Earl’s nose rather than that of my mother’s grandfather,” he shot back.
Harriet huffed a sigh.
Jack took a grudging step closer to the painting and studied the face. “Sorry, but I am a simple fellow. I see a slightly arrogant fop, whose shirt frills look deucedly uncomfortable. Beyond that, I don’t discern the nuances that you seem to expect of me.”
The answer deepened the furrow between her brows.
He tried to ignore it, but the sense that he had somehow disappointed her made him look again. For all his posturing, Gainsborough was actually an artist he admired. There was, he admitted, a depth to the man’s art. An ability to probe beneath the skin-deep smiles.
It made him think more carefully about Harriet’s question. His experience in military intelligence during his day on the Peninsula had taught him to pay close attention to expressions and gesture. One could tell much about a man by watching him interact with his friends. And his enemies.
“Very well, since it seems so deucedly important to you, I’ll play along with your game.” Jack squinted, making a show of studious examination. “The fellow’s gaze is oblique, he’s not willing to meet the world head-on.”
Harriet nodded. “And why is that, I wonder? To me, he has a slyness about him. I wouldn’t trust him.”
“I don’t deny that one can read much in a man’s face?—”
“Or a lady’s,” she murmured.
“Be that as it may, it is just one way of judging character,” he went on. “Some people see details better than others.” His words triggered an odd sensation, and for an instant he hesitated, trying to give substance to the shadowy image that was suddenly hovering at the edge of his consciousness.
“What is it?” she asked.
Jack closed his eyes for an instant, willing himself to bring it into focus. A face? It swirled, maddeningly elusive, and then dipped and darted back into the darkness. “Nothing. Your comments about studying the painted faces brought something to mind, but it’s gone now.”
“I find it interesting to observe people,” she mused.
Several of Harriet’s pithy comments about the school friends her brother had brought home from Eton and Oxford rose up from his memory. “I’m not quite sure how you do it, but whether it is by sorcery or witchcraft, you are skilled at discerning a person’s strengths.” His mouth gave an involuntary quirk. “And weaknesses.”
“Am I?”
Jack was unused to hearing her words resonate with such uncertainty. Which made him suspect she was holding something back.
Taking her arm, he drew her out into the corridor and found a spot by one of the mullioned windows. The light, freshly scrubbed by a passing rain shower, helped to cleanse the shadows from her features. “What did that damnable Frog do to upset you?”
Harriet looked down at the marble floor tiles, as if some answer might be hidden among the subtle veins of color running through the stone.
“Harry?”
A grimace pulled at her lips. “He made me realize I’m not nearly as good at it as I thought I was.”
“Explain yourself,” he demanded tersely.
She looked for a moment as if to fight him. Cross swords. En garde. Thrust and parry. Most of the time he enjoyed the duels. But not now. Not with that inscrutable look lurking beneath her lashes. “And be advised that I shall be relentless until I have the answer out of you. My steel is sharper than yours.”
She flinched at the word “steel.” Feeling like a brute, he touched her arm and smiled. “Metaphorically speaking, that is.”
Her features slowly relaxed into an answering grin. “I am impressed. I thought you were booted out of Oxford before you learned any big words.”
“I learned them from you, who are far wiser than any of the prosy professors who tried to whack some knowledge through my thick skull with their boring lectures.”
Harriet was never boring, Infuriating at times, but never boring.
“At least you are smart enough to realize that.” The momentary note of whimsy faded. “But as I said, wisdom did me little good against Mr. Beaumont’s crafty cleverness. He maneuvered me into thinking I was parrying his probing on one front, then all of a sudden he skillfully slipped a blade in under my guard before retreating without a scratch.” Her hands knotted together. “I feel like the veriest of fools.”
Jack twined his fingers around hers and drew them apart. They were chilled, and without thinking, he gently chafed them between his palms. “You aren’t making any sense yet.”
“Yes, I know. I’m still aghast at my hubris.” Harriet didn’t try to pull away. “Thinking myself skilled at the art of subtle interrogation, I thought perhaps I could coax some useful information out of Beaufort. I was impressed with how well I matched his air of jaded cynicism.”
Jack was already itching to take the man’s fancy cravat and knot it tighter around his throat.
“And I was busy framing my first cunning question, when all of a sudden, he surprised me.” She took a moment to compose her thoughts. “Nay, shocked me is a more honest description.”
Despite his own impatience, he waited in silence, allowing her to get to the heart of what was upsetting her at her own pace.
It came out in a rush. “Beaumont knew about the attack on you.”
“Is that what has you in such a pucker?” Jack refrained from adding a chuckle. “It’s likely common knowledge within the émigré community. People find it hard to keep secrets. They talk among their friends. It is a universal weakness of human nature.”
“Yes...” She didn’t say it aloud, and yet the word but crackled in the air.
“But what?” he growled.
“He implied that if you keep asking questions, it could be very dangerous.”
At that, Jack did let out a gruff laugh. “Harry, I am no stranger to danger. Over the past few years, we have developed a comfortable camaraderie, but on the battlefield, I’ve proved I’m not such a frivolous fellow.” A spasm of emotion rippled through her eyes, its intensity catching him by surprise. “I was caught off-guard once,” he added softly. “It won’t happen again.”
“How can you be so sure?” she shot back. “I—I am worried about you. Perhaps it would be best to back away from this. Not every conundrum needs to be solved.”
“That’s unlike you. When you get a bone between your teeth, you are usually fiercer than a bull mastiff in keeping hold of it,” he drawled to cover the odd little lurch he felt inside his chest.
“It’s no jesting matter, you big lummox!” snapped Harriet. “Though why I should care about your hide if you don’t is beyond me.”
Their eyes locked for an instant, and the blaze of fury nearly singed his lashes. Then she broke away with a low huff and signaled to her maid, who was standing a discreet distance away between a pair of ancient Greek statues.
“Come along, Ellie,” she said in a tightly coiled voice. “I think I have seen enough art for the day.”
Jack watched her march off, skirts frothing like storm-churned waves around her ankles. Bemusement warred with a far more complex swirl of feelings, ones he didn’t quite care to examine at the moment.
Instead, he headed back to the portrait gallery, hoping another turn through the paintings might help recall the fleeting image that had flashed through his thoughts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow important.
Faces, faces. He paused in front of the oak-framed gentleman who had caught Harriet’s attention. The eyes. She had focused on the eyes.
He tried to recall from his brief Oxford studies who had said that the eyes were the windows to the soul? Was it Shakespeare? Milton? Plato? As he stood trying to puzzle it out, the image flitted back into his head. It was clearer this time, sharpening to a pair of smoke-tinged orbs. Closer, closer. Something about the nose was taking shape, but still, the whole face remained elusive.
Lost in thought, Jack turned away from the paintings and headed for the exit.
Harriet was still seething the next day, and sorely tempted to fling all her copious notes on Madame La Rochelle’s missing husband into the fire. The coals crackled, echoing the sound of the papers as she swept them up from her desk.
It would serve Jack right for being such a mule-headed sapskull.
But at the last moment, something held her back. “I suppose I’m just as mule-headed as he is,” she muttered under her breath. Jack would, she knew, ignore the warnings and be careless about his safety. So it was up to her to unravel the mystery. Beaumont’s words of caution had not been aimed at her, that much she was sure. So far, no one save Jack knew of her involvement, and she meant to keep it that way.
But it would demand more expertise than she had shown yesterday.
The fancy clothes and new-found grace had made her overconfident, a foolish mistake she would not make again. Whatever plot was afoot, the conspirators would be far more experienced in deception and manipulation than she was. There could be no more mistakes.
“But I have shown that I can polish new skills in a hurry if I put my mind to it,” she told herself, setting down the pile of notes next to her open journal. A glance at the page reminded her the weekly meeting at Lady Catherine’s townhouse was scheduled to begin shortly.
And if she didn’t begin dressing for the occasion, she was going to be late. It was a pity that Theo would not be there to help give the account of the ball. But her mother had demanded her presence at tea for an old friend, and a sense of duty had caused her friend to cry off from the current meeting. As for future ones...
Harriet shook off her disappointment. As she well knew, it wasn’t easy to know which battles to fight and which were better served by a strategic retreat.
An hour later, attired in one of her stylish new walking gowns—as promised to the others, who wanted to see Mrs. McNulty’s artistry in the flesh—Harriet was just passing into the entrance foyer of Lady Catherine’s townhouse when the clatter of hurried steps sounded behind her.
“Wait,” called a breathless Theo to the butler as he made to shut the door.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” murmured Harriet.
“I decided that I really wished to attend these meetings. I enjoy the new ideas, and the new friends I have made,” answered Theo, as she untied the string of her chipstraw bonnet. “And so I told my mother so.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Well, not in quite so many words.” Theo’s mouth curled up. “I simply told her it was a group of very interesting ladies, and that they were the ones who arranged my entrée onto Madame Deauville’s client list.”
“Very clever,” said Harriet.
“I am learning.”
“I wish I could say the same for myself.” Then, ruing her words, she quickly took her friend’s arm. “We had better go in. I’m sure everyone is impatient to start the agenda, so there will be plenty of time at tea for hearing about our Grand Adventure.”
Theo, however, dug in her heels. “You sound overset. What’s wrong?”
Harriet didn’t wish to lie. “I’m just a little preoccupied, is all.”
“I had wondered whether you and Jack were having a disagreement the other night,” ventured her friend.
“That is nothing new. Jack and I are always disagreeing about something,” she replied dryly. “He was being particularly stubborn on a certain matter, but I shall deal with it.”
“If you need?—”
“Gels, gels—come take a seat!” clucked Miss Breville as she crossed from one of the side parlors with a book in hand and made shooing motions toward the drawing room. “We have much to discuss on John Locke’s philosophy today.” Her solemn expression was lightened by a slight twinkle from behind the lenses of her spectacles. “And perhaps a less cerebral topic, assuming we have time.”
Not unhappy to escape further probing from her friend, Harriet dutifully led the way to the circle of chairs.
The discussion proved more lively than usual. Words and ideas spun round and round, like so many glittering couples twirling together across a dance floor.
“It seems,” remarked Mrs. Currough during a brief lull in the talk, “that we are all anxious to race through our intellectual gavotte and turn to the fairytale elegance of the waltz.”
Guilty chuckles greeted the observation. “Well, since you mention it, I have worked up quite an appetite for tea and cakes,” said Miss Ashmun.
“And sugar-spun romance,” teased Mrs. Griffin, who did not look to have a romantic bone in her body.
But as Harriet well knew, appearances could be deceiving.
“However frivolous it may be,” went one Mrs. Griffin, “I confess that I am all atwitter to hear an account of the storybook evening our friends just attended.”
With that, the group quickly agreed to defer further debate on Locke to the following week. “There is nothing wrong with a little frivolity. Life is all about striking a balance,” said Lady Catherine as she rang for refreshments. “Laughter and gaiety are just as important as serious thought on abstract ideals.”
An expectant hush filled the room as soon as the clink of cups and plates had settled down. It was Mrs. McNulty who, after dusting the sugary crumbs from her fingertips, took charge of the proceedings.
“I do wish you all could have seen the ballgowns,” she began. “Harriet and Theo looked absolutely magnificent at the final fitting. The watered silk we chose for them, a special weave from the south of India, draped like a dream...” The dressmaker went on to describe in great detail the cut and the trimmings, ending with a soulful sigh.
“I do wish that someday I could experience the splendor of a Mayfair mansion ballroom,” she added after a sip of her now-tepid tea. “Sparkling champagne, polished marble and gilded moldings, fluted columns and pedestals festooned with fancy flowers, music floating through the perfume-scented air...” Her eyes closed for a moment, and a dreamy smile flitted soft as moonlight over her lips. “What a treat it would be to see my creations spinning and shimmering in the cut-crystal candlelight.”
Harriet was ashamed to realize that she hadn’t thought about that. The ladies of the ton might beg for the services of Madame Deauville, but no matter the effusive compliments and the generous gifts that showered upon her, never would a woman in trade be invited to one of their fancy parties. Basking in the glow of her marvelous labor could happen only in the realm of imagination.
That, vowed Harriet, would soon change...
“Oh, do describe every glorious detail for us,” urged Miss Ashmun, interrupting her thoughts with a plea and a beseeching glance.
Suddenly feeling even more unsettled, Harriet looked to Theo. “Why don’t you begin. I feel in need of another cup of tea.”
After hesitating a fraction, her gaze clouding in question, Theo began to describe the glittering scene. Her voice was hesitant at first, then took on greater confidence as her shyness gave way to the fun of recreating the swirling splendor of the ball. The glittering ladies swathed in their jeweltone colors and shiny baubles, the elegant gentlemen in their tailored finery, the lilting notes of the music...
Harriet quietly rose and moved to the tea table by the bowfront window. Turning her back to the group, she set her cup down and stared through the rain-spattered glass at the mist skirling through the square. Perhaps it was Jack’s comment about vipers, but the vaporous tendrils suddenly took on the look of writhing snakes, slithering over the wet cobbles.
Caught up in her own brooding, it took her a moment to notice she wasn’t alone.
“Your tea is cold,” murmured Mrs. Currough. “Shall I ring for a fresh pot?”
Harriet shook her head. “I just needed a breath of air to clear my thoughts.”
“The air,” said the Irish Beauty, “does not appear to have blown away the storm clouds.”
A rueful huff leached from her lungs, but she tried to make light of her brooding. “True, and the weather looks to be getting worse.”
“Any particular reason?”
How to answer? A coil of conflicting feelings seemed to have tangled inside her head, their smoke-dark shadows hazing her brain. But if there was anyone who could offer advice, it was the worldly courtesan.
“I think that in following your advice, I assumed a false sense of invincibility along with my straighter spine, and regal hauteur,” she finally whispered. “You explained that dress and deportment are all about illusion. And yet I told myself I was oh-so wise and clever, and actually believed it because I wanted to think it true.”
“Wisdom is a devilishly difficult thing to acquire,” replied Mrs. Currough. “And to judge. I daresay you are less foolish than you think you are at this moment.”
“Would that were true.” Harriet picked up a biscuit and then merely crumbled it between her fingers. “Y-You are an expert on men. Am I a peagoose to think I can match wits with them?”
The Irish Beauty’s gaze followed hers out to the broad swath of garden and surrounding cobbled streets. The rain was coming down in great sheets of wind-whipped water. “Now that is a question for which there is no easy answer.”
From behind them sounded a peal of laughter. Theo was describing one of the foppish young men who fancied himself among the leading arbiters of style. He had appeared at the ball wearing starched shirt points that threatened to gouge out his eyes and a turquoise wasp-waisted coat with brass buttons the size of tea saucers.
Harriet felt equally absurd.
But to her surprise, Mrs. Currough continued, once the giggles died down. “I am quite certain that women are equal to men in intelligence. It’s a matter of how you use your strength.” Looking thoughtful, she gathered her skirts and perched a hip on the edge of the table. “Think of it this way—most men aren’t equally matched in physical strength. If it comes down to fisticuffs, some may try to use brute force to win, while others will have to depend on guile or speed. It’s a matter of knowing your own strengths and your opponent’s weaknesses.”
“Thank you,” she said with a tentative smile. “That’s exceedingly helpful.”
“I am always happy to answer questions. Not that I always have the answers.”
“Even with your experience?”
An unreadable look dances beneath the Mrs. Currough’s gold-tipped lashes. “Yes, even with my experience, I too, can feel the fool.”
Harriet was about to turn back to the group when she ventured a parting query. “Just one last thing. Do men ever get any less infuriating?”
The Irish Beauty’s lips quivered in silent mirth. “Never. But that is their charm. We would likely grow bored with them if they ever stopped setting off sparks.”
“Ha! There are times when I am heartily sick of getting scorch marks on my skin.”
Mrs. Currough slowly traced a fingertip down one of the fogged windowpanes, leaving a dark line in the silver-gray condensation. “Ice is far worse.” Seeing Lady Catherine cast an inquiring look their way, she gave a small nod. “Now, we had best rejoin our friends.”
Theo looked around as Harriet slid into her seat. “I’ve done my best, but you have a more discerning eye and are better at painting a scene. I shall gladly allow you to continue.”
Happy to see her friend losing her shyness with strangers, Harriet demurred. “I have been listening, and you’ve done a splendid job.”
“Aye, I can almost hear the violins and pianoforte echoing off the crystal chandeliers,” said Mrs. Griffin with a gusty sigh. “I do so love Mozart.”
“So I’ve really nothing to add.”
Lady Catherine, who occasionally enjoyed provoking a bit of controversy, fixed Harriet with a sidelong look, and then murmured, “Theo neglected to mention your dance partners. Was your handsome gentleman friend—that tall, broad-shouldered, dark-as-the-devil fellow—present, and did he ask you to waltz?”
Harriet colored as a titter of oohs and aahs traveled around the circle.
“This gets better and better!” exclaimed Miss Ashmun. “ What gentleman?”
Lady Catherine was discreet enough not to mention the dramatic circumstances involved in meeting Jack, but she did raise a teasing brow in support of the question. “Yes, do tell. The papers mentioned Lord ‘L’ was in your presence for much of the evening.”
“He is an old family friend,” stammered Harriet.
Theo nodded in support. “Yes, a friend. From her brother’s school days.”
“Who has seen the gosling transform into a swan,” murmured Lady Catherine.
Sensing Harriet’s discomfort, Theo quickly changed the subject. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you all about the supper room, where the tables were laden with all sorts of sumptuous delicacies...” A lengthy recitation followed.
“Lobster patties with cream sauce,” repeated Miss Breville faintly. “Good Heavens, that sounds very decadent—but divine.”
The others looked a trifle disappointed that the talk of men had given way to shellfish and butter, but the remaining quarter hour of the meeting passed cheerfully in a debate over which flavor of the special sorbets sounded the most exotic.
Feeling a rush of relief when the tall case clock in the corridor signaled the end of the gathering, Harriet shot up from her chair and took a hasty leave. That Theo had her own carriage waiting was also welcome. She longed for silence during the ride home, and Ellie could be counted on to gauge her current mood and remain silent.
Lady Currough’s words had given her much to mull over.
Strengths and weaknesses. Would that she could be a dispassionate judge of her own heart.