Chapter 4
Four
Coated in dew and sweat and rain, Thomas returned to the house from his foggy morning ride and found James tucking into eggs and smoked haddock in the breakfast room.
“Well met!” James called out as Thomas came in through one of the doors that led directly to the lawn.
“Met well!” Thomas answered.
James looked refreshed and none the worse for his excess of drink last night.
“You’re exceedingly muddy, Tom. Already been out and about on that horse, eh?”
“Barely went to bed.”
Thomas sat down and asked for coffee. One of the younger footmen brought it to him.
“I’ve decided to take your advice,” Thomas said.
“Splendid!” A pause, the clink of a fork on the plate. Then around a mouthful, “What advice is that?”
“To marry a rich widow.”
Thomas had no other options at this point.
He must have the money to save Sommerleigh, and he had no other way to get it.
But he could not bring himself to marry an innocent girl and ruin her.
As his sister had been ruined. He would not expose a virgin to his appetites.
He would not be party to that. Ever. And James was right.
A widow would not be shocked and would likely be happy to have her marital duties taken over by Madame Flora’s whores.
“Oh, yes, my very own Eureka!” James chewed and swallowed. “I’m just glad I didn’t get the idea in the bath and run naked through the house. Would have scandalized the maids.”
Thomas blew on his coffee. “Though my housekeeper Mrs. Dewey would have appreciated it. She has a soft spot for you.”
“Well.” James wiped his mouth and put his napkin on the table. “I hope Jackson has your evening clothes ready because Lady Huxley’s ball is tonight.”
“Tonight? Oh, no, Jamie, I’m not ready to go to any ball tonight. I must . . . I must lay my plans. I must have a strategy.”
“Pfft.” James dismissed Thomas’ worries with a wave of his hand. “Lady Huxley’s ball is the event. I personally know of several eligible and rich widows who will be there tonight. Lady Huxley herself, of course, although she is a bit of an old bat—”
One of the footmen stifled a giggle at that moment.
“—but the prize, and a slippery prize she would be, the widow Mrs. Catherine Lovelock might be there.”
“Slippery?”
“It’s rumored several gentlemen have sought her favor since her husband Edward died, and they have all been roundly rejected.”
“Her late husband was Edward Lovelock, the banker?”
“Surely a suitable stand-in for Croesus.” James winked and grinned.
“And, Tom, I hear Mrs. Lovelock is a beauty. She was on the stage for years before she married Lovelock. With her, you might never have reason to wander. And there will be dozens of other lovely widows there, as well. As you know, despite childbirth, many women seem to have the knack of outliving their husbands.”
So James cajoled and persuaded until Thomas was convinced and whisked away to London in James’ carriage to attend Lady Huxley’s ball that night.
Once his valet Jackson found Thomas some rooms near James’ rooms—the Middlewich town house being crammed to bursting with James’ sisters who were going to the ball themselves that night—there had been no time for a nap before having to report to the duke’s house for dinner.
Once there, Thomas ate and flirted harmlessly with James’ sisters and avoided the demon-child Charlotte who threatened him with a lizard, and he eventually found himself in one of the many carriages transporting James and his sisters to Lady Huxley’s house.
Thomas now bitterly regretted his decision to attend this ball.
He danced one dance with each of the sisters and met Lady Huxley—who was quite mature and rather bat-like—and several other widows, including the extremely fetching and dainty Widow Lovelock.
She was very attractive to him, a graceful dancer, able to carry a conversation, but he was not at his best, and he allowed another gentleman to claim her for the next dance and lead her away.
Thomas was exhausted. He had slept only four out of the last sixty hours. No wonder his charm was failing.
He stumbled out of the ballroom and went exploring.
He hoped to meet another gentleman or a servant so he might ask where he might sit in privacy for a minute.
He found no one. Well, it was unlikely any of the rooms on this floor were private family rooms. It would not be amiss if he attempted to find a drawing room on his own.
The first door he tried opened into a dark room. He closed the door behind him and stumbled forwards and felt what he thought might be the back of a sofa. It was. He felt his way around the edge and sat down. Bliss. He would close his eyes for a few moments.
Balls were a highly repetitious sequence of events.
Harry smiled and curtsied. She was introduced as Miss Harriet Lovelock to many people.
She smiled and curtsied. Lady Huxley sighed when she saw Harry and whispered disapprovingly behind her fan to her own daughter that Miss Lovelock looked destined to follow her mother, the first Mrs. Lovelock, as a consumptive.
But surely consumptives had better coloring than that?
Harry heard it all and followed her stepmother’s training and smiled and curtsied.
And now, blessedly, the music had started again.
It was a few minutes past eleven. Harry just had to wait until six when the breakfast would be served, and then she could be back to her room by half past seven in the morning.
Her stepmother and Arabella would sleep most of the day, and Harry wouldn’t be bothered during that time.
Harry picked a chair to sit where she wouldn’t be noticed. She rarely had partners. She could dance well enough if asked. She had withstood thorough schooling in the appropriate things to say to her partners. But most of the time she was let alone.
She might use this time to think on how to prove that if the product of two relatively prime numbers is a certain power, then each of those relative primes is also that same certain power.
The ballroom was so hot, which was so strange since usually she was so cold.
She hadn’t slept recently. Her eyes were closing a little.
She pinched herself and straightened up.
Mama Katie would be so disappointed if she fell asleep at a ball.
But the music was so soporific. Her eyelids went to half-mast again.
The dance ended, and the polite clapping made her jerk noticeably.
The movement of the dancers as they sought out their next partners provided cover for Harry to get up from her chair and flee the ballroom.
Harry had been to Lady Huxley’s house many times.
She knew where there was a drawing room where she might close her eyes momentarily.
She had done so last year at this very ball, and no one had been a bit the wiser.
She found the dark room easily enough. She opened and closed the door softly and crept to her favorite sofa.
It was an unusually long sofa, one that would allow the rather tall Harry to lie at almost full length with only a little curl at her waist. She stretched out and, at one end, found a curiously firm pillow that was just the right height for her head and went to sleep.
“Ahem.”
Harry was sure this had been one of the best nights of sleep she had ever had.
The sofa was so soft, and her pillow was so warm and firm.
And there was the smell of something comforting that she couldn’t quite identify.
Her nose itched, so she scratched it. There was a deliciously warm other part of the pillow that had a hard and curious lump in it.
Mmmm. She squeezed the lump, and it only became harder and larger.
This didn’t make sense, so she opened her eyes and was confronted by a set of brass waistcoat buttons.
She sat up.
Crack!
“Ahhhh!”
In very short order, blood was everywhere. The blood seemed to be coming from the nose of a tall man with dark hair who was sitting on her sofa. The top of her own head hurt, but not much.
Harry noted that the curtains of the room were wide open and the gray light of a London dawn was filtering in. The ball was almost over.
“Put your head back,” Harry said.
The man obeyed, trying to stanch the blood with his hand.
“You must pinch your nose very firmly.”
He was stammering and trying to speak, but clearly the blood was running down his throat, making words difficult.
Harry looked down and saw her white silk dress had several large gouts of blood on it. Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
She walked around the back of the sofa and said, “Let me,” and seized the man’s nose in a pincer grip.
“Arggh.”
“I hope your nose stops bleeding soon because I have to go find Mama Katie. She might be worried about me. And look how light it is outside. It’s likely nearly time for the breakfast.”
“Glub.”
“I used to have nose bleeds every day, so I am quite proficient at this.”
A pair of confused blue eyes stared up at her as she stood over the man. She peered at his face. Really, despite the blood, he had a very good face. Even upside down. His face was almost as pleasing as his lap.
“I must thank you for the use of your leg as my pillow. I didn’t know that was what it was when I used it, but it was quite a good pillow.”
Through a mouth full of blood, the man stammered something that might have been, “You’re welcome.”
“I think perhaps it would be best if we didn’t mention to anyone that we had slept together.”
The man nodded his head in agreement.
“I am not fully conversant with all possible outcomes for this situation, but it is my understanding it could lead to some very disagreeable things such as, one,” and here she grimaced, “our being forced into wedlock, or two, your death at the hands of my brother-in-law. I am told he is an extremely good shot.”
The man nodded again.
“Try not to nod so vigorously. I almost lost my hold on your nose, and the secret is constant pressure for at least three minutes.”
The man held still and just waggled his very dark eyebrows to show he understood.
“Unless, of course, you’re already married and then you would definitely die.
It doesn’t seem fair that you have to die just because the room was dark when I came into it and you have such a comfortable lap.
But then there are many things I don’t understand or that don’t seem fair.
Such as, why are balls so long and tedious when there are so many other useful and interesting ways to spend our time?
And why are men so opposed to the education of women? ”
Harry leaned down very close to the man’s face. Dark stubble on his jaw. That comforting smell again. Almost peppery, somehow.
“I think it’s stopped.” She released his nose. She wiped her hands on the front of her dress. The man sprang to his feet and spat a great gobbet of blood into his handkerchief, which he had finally fished out of his tailcoat pocket.
Yes, he was quite tall. Taller than Harry. Big shoulders, too. And, yes, muscular thighs stretching his blood-stained satin breeches. One of those thighs being responsible for Harry’s good night’s sleep.
What strange details to note about another person.
And that troubling lump. She kept her eyes on the lump. “So mum’s the word, yes?”
“Y–y–yes,” the man sputtered.
“And I want to make you aware you have a tumor growing in your lap. I hope you can avail yourself of a good surgeon.”
With that sincere wish, Harry opened the door, peeked into the passage, and slipped out. She had no idea why a gale of laughter issued from the room she had just left.