Chapter 15 #2
His accusing tone set Henrietta’s back up. She had been trying to help! “You have met this family? You approve of them?” The leaping muscle in his jaw betrayed him, and she pressed her point. “Where is the babe to stay while this family is found?”
His brows drew together in a scowl. “It is not your business.”
“You expect me to simply shrug and turn away when a child’s life is at stake?” Pinochle stood in her periphery, an oily black shadow. “Perhaps men have the luxury of ignoring the welfare of infants. Women do not.”
She held his challenging stare, chin up. He looked away first, and she exhaled, shaken by his anger. Better that than his playing at seduction, she told herself, trying to soothe her rattled nerves. She was accustomed to scorn.
“Miss Pennyroyal,” Darien greeted the girl with a stoic calm. Forsythia was dressed head to toe in a blushing pink, but her eyes were sharp.
“Daring,” she cooed. “So the cartoons are true. You have been cast so far out of Polite Society that you are obliged to associate with tradesmen and bluestockings.” Her look turned to surprise as she surveyed Henrietta’s dress. “My word, Miss Wardley-Hines. This is quite a change in your style.”
“I gave her some hints,” Darien said. “She was wise enough to take them.”
“My modiste persuaded me to try something new.” Henrietta gritted her teeth.
So this was to be the tenor of the night, raked down by one and all.
Polite Society was a sea of sharks, worse than a town council meeting at Salford when one was trying to obtain permits for rebuilding.
She glared at Darien, who had adopted his impassive face.
“Next she will turn you out in public in a nightgown.” Miss Pennyroyal snickered. “Daring, my dear, I think perhaps you should not take the advice of your friend Mr. Empson. Miss Wardley-Hines may not have the power to repair your reputation as you wish.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Darien looked about as if seeking escape and beckoned to a nearby group of gentlemen who were watching their discussion with great interest. One of them strolled over, raising a quizzing glass.
“But I saw Mr. Empson in the park just today, and he told me all about your little scheme,” Miss Pennyroyal pressed on.
“I do not think you need stoop to granting your attentions to unsuitable females to annoy your father, however! Turn to the Pennyroyals, milord, if you wish to redeem yourself in the polite world. For we at least have some claim to breeding and are not sullied by trade.”
Henrietta tried to step away. She didn’t need to stand here, a target for Miss Pennyroyal’s barbs. But Darien clamped his hand over hers as she tried to withdraw.
“Miss Pennyroyal,” Darien said. “May I introduce to you the Honorable Mr. Lionel Havering, heir to the Viscount Bourchier, unless he gets himself killed in a duel before he can claim his coronet. Havering, Miss Forsythia Pennyroyal. Her father was the late Colonel Pennyroyal, distinguished for his service in the Seven Years’ War. ”
“I gave you your chance to run me through, Daring,” Havering drawled. “Gone through all the duke’s daughters, have you, and reduced to preying on the orphans of our national heroes? I’ve told you before I won’t take your cast-offs.”
Havering raked Henrietta with an insolent gaze that turned to interest and then, as his eyes traveled back to her face, approval.
“This one, now,” he said, his drawl deepening, “you may introduce to me. She can’t be seen next to you, wearing that frock.
I have a weakness for damsels in need of rescue. ”
Henrietta felt a furious blush spread down her neck to her décolletage. She recognized him as Lady Celeste’s former fiancé. Darien said Celeste had jilted the man, but Henrietta wasn’t sure. “I know a duke’s daughter in need of rescue, Mr. Havering.”
Havering chuckled at her challenge. “That horse has fled the barn, I’m afraid. Come, Miss Wardley-Hines, take refuge with me. You are too interesting to fall prey to Daring’s version of sport.”
Miss Pennyroyal narrowed her eyes. “As am I,” she huffed. “Nor am I Daring’s cast-off. What tales are you spreading, sir?”
Darien held his arm before Henrietta as if Havering meant to steal her. “I warned you about being seen too much in my company, Forsythia.”
The girl went still. “Daring! All those visits to our house, though my mother and grandmother hate you. Your attention, your gifts— What did they mean, if not—?”
Darien shook his head, saying nothing, and Forsythia’s eyes filled with tears. She whirled and ran away, pushing ball-goers out of her path.
Darien steered Henrietta to the middle of the floor, where sets were being made up.
“That was cruel,” Henrietta said. She should not be surprised that he was capable of it. What man gave regard to a woman’s tender feelings? But it was disappointing to realize he was just another self-interested roué after all.
“She ought not go on thinking I am courting her when I have no such intentions.”
And what were his intentions toward her? Henrietta wondered. Oh, yes: advice from her uncle, and her help managing Lady Celeste, though he didn’t like the offer she had extended. Kissing her had meant nothing to him, a demonstration only. She pushed the lowering thought away.
“Of course. You break betrothals, not hearts.” She made her curtsy as the dance began. “But why should Forsythia think you were courting her if you were not?”
He placed his hand against hers as they circled one another, and she hoped he did not feel her fingers trembling. “Do you recall what your brother said over dinner, about how I gained my estate at cards?”
“Yes,” Henrietta said, sick at the memory. “And how the owner took his life thereafter.”
“I went the next day to his hotel suite to return the deed and settle our debt some other way,” Darien said.
They switched hands, circling in the other direction.
His face was like marble, his eyes bright and hard.
“I found the body there, unattended. His man had robbed him and left. The landlord nearly had apoplexy when he saw the gore. He left a wife and three daughters with no idea that he had plunged the estate into debt and mortgaged their futures.”
“The Pennyroyals,” Henrietta guessed, completing her turn.
“The pension from the Royal Army is next to nothing.” Darien grasped her arms and lifted her in a circle. He was warm and firm. She tried not to flush at the heat, the strength of his body.
“He made some terrible investments, then tried to retrieve them with worse gambles. His bailiff told me that his wife had been raising the children in London to be close to her ailing mother, so she never knew what things had come to. Because, of course, a proud husband would try to protect her with ignorance.”
“So what has kept Miss Pennyroyal in the manner which she feels her due?” Henrietta asked as they circled one another again, palms pressed together.
“With some correction and investment, the estate has been restored and continues to yield income.” He kept his voice low, aware that the dancers around them were very interested in their conversation.
Pinochle in particular never took his eyes from them.
“Part of the profits are conveyed to Mrs. Pennyroyal through her late husband’s solicitor.
She thinks it is a trust he left her. I retain part for myself, to keep me out of my father’s pocket. ”
“And you visit the family to be sure they are not in want.” This was altogether unexpected, overturning her assumption—the assumption shared by everyone—that he was a heartless cad.
Miss Pennyroyal clearly had no notion that Darien was her family’s benefactor.
“Yet you let people like my brother believe that you drove the Colonel to suicide.”
“I doubt I could have stopped him even if I hadn’t been nursing a thick head that morning,” Darien said. “A man who is set on self-destruction will find a way. Never mind who he leaves behind. Or how many other good men are taken from their lives when they would have given much to keep them.”
She saw the white lines come out around his mouth and guessed he was thinking of his brother, fighting the savage tide of grief.
She understood that blinding pain, how in the threat of that enveloping blackness one might use anything—or anyone—as a shield.
He’d hinted that he hadn’t had his head on straight with Celeste.
But he was doing his best to repair the damage now.
“And you let all those high sticklers think you are an indiscriminating seducer,” she said quietly. His hands were so warm, his grip on her sure and commanding.
“The truth would not serve. If her family knew a young lady were plotting to avoid an undesirable marriage, she’d be pressed to it all the faster. Far more expedient to have her ruined and left to her own devices after. A gentleman keeps a lady’s secrets.”
He drew his hand slowly along her bare arm as they reached the end of the line and parted. Henrietta held his eyes over their joined palms as they met again at the top.
“But the truth could repair your reputation far more than I could. Forsythia is right. Associating with me will gain you ridicule from more than just the marquess.”
His eyes turned wary. “Perry took some maggot in his head that I should pay court to unsuitable females to foil my father’s demands that I marry. Pay him no mind. No one else does.”
Henrietta forced a shrug. “The cartoons seem to have paid him some mind. But the thought is indeed silly. A tradesman’s daughter, and a bluestocking at that? Hardly a prize for the infamous Daring.”
He pressed those beautiful, mobile lips together. “I hoped you would not see those cartoons. They are cruel, and inaccurate.”
“I find them highly amusing,” Henrietta lied. “If only they knew your real interest in the Wardley-Hines lay with Uncle Pelton. How disappointed the scandalmongers would be.”