Chapter 7
“The thing is, I could bear all of it. The whispers and the columns and the Mr. Alfords of the world. I have been bearing it for three years and I am very practiced.” She looked out across the ballroom. “What I cannot bear is the idea of my mother’s life being decided by a man again.”
Charity was quiet, and knew that her friend needed a listening ear more than anything else.
“She has had enough of that. And that’s why I’m beginning to change my mind about marriage.”
“Do you think marrying would protect her?” Charity asked.
“I don’t know, but at least, I think it would give me options,” Temperance said. “At the moment I have none. My mother’s situation is entirely at his discretion.”
She thought of Joseph at the breakfast table, sitting up straighter than was physically necessary and wondered how long it would be until he exerted the same sort of control over them.
“If I married, and if I had my own establishment, my own income, however modest, I could have my mother with me on my own terms and I could make choices for her that she couldn’t make for herself. I could make sure that no one else gets to decide what her life looks like.”
“That is,” Charity said carefully, “a very practical reason to marry. But you just walked away from the only suitor who’s agreed to dance with you this evening.”
“He was unpleasant,” Temperance groaned. “And just so terribly boring. And I suspect that he had been consuming the gossip mills far too much, and had already formed an opinion of me.”
“I know. I’m not criticizing,” Charity looked at her steadily. “But I’m observing that the man Harper found for you was not the right man, and that there will presumably be other men. Are you willing to sample through them, knowing your disdain for this sort of thing?”
Temperance looked at her, and heaved a sigh.
If someone had mentioned this to her a year ago, she could have never seen herself agreeing. But now things had changed since the arrival of the heir.
“I am all right with it,” Temperance said. “As I said, I don’t seem to have much of a choice about the matter.”
“It is a tough situation,” Charity frowned. “But perhaps something good can come out of it. Do you think that the duke has your best interests at heart, or do you trust him?”
“I simply have not known him long enough,” she frowned. “But he seems to not trust me around his son, which I find rather offensive.”
“I suppose he will come around when he gets to know you,” she said. “By the way, he has been watching you like a hawk this entire evening.”
“Suppose he has little better to do.”
“Oh, god,” Charity said, alarmed. “And I don’t think that he looks very happy at the moment either. I suspect he might be vexed that you’re not with Mr. Alford anymore.”
“I can explain my reasonings,” she shrugged in response.
Charity made a small sound that was almost a laugh and converted it at the last moment into something more neutral.
“What is your mother doing?” Charity asked.
Across the ballroom, Albina was having a very pleasant evening and Harper was standing beside her, watching Temperance talk to her friends.
“She left him,” he said, trying to reel in his anger even though he was more than a little annoyed by the whole thing.
“She finished the dance and then she left. Yes, which should be fine?”
“I found her a perfectly respectable man, and she is squandering the opportunity.”
“You found her a man,” Albina said pleasantly. “Whether he was perfectly anything remains to be established.”
“He is well regarded. His income is rather sizable as well, which will be important,” Harper looked at her.
Sometimes, he felt as though that the two ladies lived in a different world of their own. They had their own way of looking at the world, and it felt like the larger rules of society simply did not apply to them.
Or at least that they chose not to pay any heed to them.
If he was going to help them, he knew that was going to change.
“His income is not the point.” Albina accepted a glass of champagne from a passing footman, “My daughter is not rude, only that she has her opinions and she expresses them without particular apology, but she does not simply walk away from a dance without reason. If she walked away, something must have happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Harper said. “You are giving her far too much grace and she is now studiously ignoring the entire side of the room where I am standing, which is….”
“Quite pointed,” Albina agreed. “She is good at pointed, and she gets it from me. Though she is more subtle about it.”
Harper’s jaw tightened.
“Lady Wilmington…”
“I am simply saying, that if you want to know why Temperance left, you might consider that the gentleman in question is the more likely source of the answer than Temperance herself.” She looked across the room to where Mr. Alford had rejoined a cluster of friends near the far wall.
“She has considerable tolerance for unpleasantness. If her tolerance ran out mid-dance, then whatever prompted it was not subtle.”
Harper followed her gaze to Alford. Something shifted in his expression.
“I vetted him,” he said, but there was something in his voice now that was less certain than it had been.
“I’m sure you did,” Albina said. “You are very thorough, I have noticed that about you. But men are not always the same in the vetting as they are on the floor, are they? Especially with a woman whose reputation they consider accessible.”
Harper said nothing for a moment. He was looking at Alford now.
“She should have come back to my side,” he said, but it was quieter now, and it lacked the certainty of the things he said when he was fully committed to them. “She should have…”
“Your Grace.” Albina looked at him with the direct, unhurried gaze she reserved for things she was taking seriously.
“My daughter has been managing unpleasant men since she was old enough to encounter them, which was considerably younger than it should have been. She does not need rescuing. She needs people to stop assuming the problem is her.”
Harper looked at her.
“I will speak to her,” Harper said. Could she really be onto something?
“That,” Albina said, “is probably not the conversation that most needs having tonight.”
But he had already set his glass down and was moving.
He was perhaps halfway across the ballroom when he heard it.
He passed a group of men near the column, and he was already past them when the voice reached him.
“…. not what I expected, I’ll say that much.”
He did not stop but instead slowed down to hear what was being talked about.
“The spinster? No, they never are.” A second voice said in an amused one. “Too aware of their own position, that type. They think gratitude ought to look a particular way and then when it doesn’t..”
“She was proper,” the first voice said. “But too proper for a woman in her circumstances, which is no income, no prospects, a mother who’s in the papers every other week. You’d think she’d be more amenable.”
“Not worth the effort, then.”
“Not remotely. Let Sedgewick find her someone who hasn’t been told yet. She’ll learn soon enough that she can’t afford to be particular.”
Harper had stopped walking and stood with his back to the group.
Somehow, all he could feel at the moment was rage. Albina had been correct, and it was no wonder that Temperance had walked away from him.
“I would encourage you,” he said, “to be careful of your words in future. In particular those concerning Miss Hosmer.”
Alford opened his mouth, and the color seemed to drain from his face.
It was as though he had seen a ghost, but Harper was determined to remind him that there were worse fates in store for him should he continue to run his mouth.
“Y-your Grace,” Alford sputtered out.
“Oh, we were only talking,” one of the other gentlemen quipped, though his eyes darted around the room, seeming desperate for an escape.
“I would be wary of speaking about other ladies in such a manner,” Harper said in a tone that caused the man to take several steps back, “especially those for whom I am responsible. You would not wish to know what would happen to you if you do. It would certainly be much worse than appearing in the weekly scandal sheets.”
Harper was openly threatening them now. It was not a skill that he particularly liked to boast about, but he was rather adept at it.
“It was nothing, Your Grace,” Alford said, trying his hardest to save face. “You are taking things to heart.”
“I would also encourage you,” Harper continued, “not to approach her again this evening. Or at any future occasion at which we might find ourselves in the same room.” He held Alford’s gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable.
“I trust I am being clear?”
Alford said nothing. His companion had already excused himself, and dashed away to the furthest corner of the room. Harper looked at him for one more moment.
“Y... yes... I... well, I am terribly sorry for misspeaking.”
Harper did not bother to stick around for the apology. Instead he turned and walked back across the room back to Albina.
She was where he had left her, beside the window, watching the room with an alert and interested expression. She looked at him when he returned, and something in his expression made her own become slightly more careful.
“Well,” she said.
“You were right,” he sighed.
Albina appeared to consider making something of this and decided to simply nod. “What did he say?”
“Enough.” Harper picked up his glass from the table where he had left it and drank from it without tasting it. “He will not be approaching her again.”
“What did you do?” the question was laced in curiosity.
Certainly, a few other guests had picked up on the tension and many eyes were on the two of them.
“Some men do not speak the language of politeness,” Harper replied. “You must remind them of their place, and their manners.”
Albina smiled at that, a Cheshire cat-like smile.
“Oh, my. Well, this is how a man ought to act,” she said with an obvious note of pride in her voice.
Then she looked across the room to where Temperance was standing with her friends, talking, her head bent slightly toward Charity. She was not looking their way but was laughing at something.
“She doesn’t know,” Albina said to which he shook his head, “You’re not going to tell her?”
Harper was quiet for a moment.
“There is nothing to tell,” Harper said. “I don’t particularly enjoy engaging in idle chatter. The matter is handled.”
“Ah, but I can read people rather well. You feel guilty,” she said.
“I feel,” Harper said, carefully, “that I made an error in judgement regarding Alford, and that the consequences of that error were borne by someone who deserved better than to be subjected to them.”
“That is a very thorough way of describing guilt, and you could just state it simply. There is nothing to be embarrassed about it.”
He said nothing, but he was beginning to learn that the woman had more wisdom than she put on.
Albina turned back to the room and across the ballroom, Temperance had accepted another glass from a footman and was gesturing with it as she said something that made her friend laugh.
“She will be all right,” Albina said, “my daughter is not so fragile as you expect. She has had a great deal of practice at that as well.”
Harper looked at Temperance across the room. She still had not glanced in his direction, and he found he did not particularly want her as it seemed like something that ought to be left alone.
“I know,” he said, without any of the certainty he usually carried, suggested that this was precisely what concerned him.
Albina said nothing. She sipped her champagne and watched the room and allowed the silence to sit where it was, which was, Harper was beginning to understand, one of the more useful things she did.