Chapter 4 #3
Genny recovered herself by the simple expedient of becoming flippant. “How alarming for you.”
“Extremely.”
Her pulse leapt.
Before either of them could add to the danger, Lord Penworth entered in a rush of agitation, followed by Mrs. Wexley and, to Genny’s disappointment, Lady Dorring herself.
Lady Dorring wore lavender silk and the expression of a woman who regarded offense as both a hobby and a moral duty.
“Lord Penworth insists there is some uncertainty regarding my pavilion placement,” she announced without preamble. “I trust that is being corrected.”
Genny felt Harrison go still beside her. Not tense exactly. Calculating.
Lady Dorring’s sharp eyes moved from him to Genny and narrowed a fraction. “Miss Moreland. How delightful. I had just heard you were instrumental in the morning’s amusements.”
There it was. Smiling malice in full daylight.
Genny smiled back. “How gratifying to know my efforts are already being discussed.”
Lady Dorring gave a short laugh. “One always admires a young lady who makes herself useful, though the line between spirit and disorder is so easily crossed.”
Mrs. Wexley looked as though she might expire on the carpet.
Harrison said, before Genny could reply, “Lady Dorring, your place in the pavilion is secure. There has been no change to your importance in the matter.”
The dryness of that sentence was artful.
Genny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
Lady Dorring, however, seemed satisfied. “Very good. I would hate for anyone to think I had been placed after Lady Castlemain.”
“That would indeed be dreadful,” Genny murmured.
Harrison’s hand moved, just slightly, just enough that the back of his fingers brushed hers on the table in a gesture so brief it might have been accidental.
It was not accidental.
The touch was a warning, or perhaps a plea; either way, it sent heat flickering up her arm and silence through the rest of her. She fell quiet at once, which probably told him more than it ought. Worse, she wanted him to know.
Lady Dorring, mercifully oblivious, swept on with renewed complaints about floral arches until Lord Penworth coaxed her away. Mrs. Wexley followed, looking half dead. When the room cleared again, Genny exhaled.
“You touched me,” she said.
Harrison looked down at the paper before him. “Did I?”
“You know you did.”
“I was attempting to prevent a scene.”
“And was I about to cause one?”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “Without the slightest hesitation.”
She ought to have denied it. Instead she said, “Perhaps.”
His mouth almost curved. “Perhaps.”
The ease of it unnerved her more than a quarrel would have done. It was too easy to imagine them on the same side of a joke rather than opposite sides of an argument.
Before she could think of something clever to say, Mrs. Fanshawe appeared in the doorway. “Lady Castlemain’s carriage has been seen turning into the square.”
Harrison straightened at once. “How long?”
“Only a few minutes, I should think. And,” Mrs. Fanshawe added with admirable composure, “Lady Penworth expects her to ask at once whether Mrs. Vale outranks her in the printed order.”
Genny closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, splendid.”
Mrs. Fanshawe regarded her with the serene pity of a woman who had seen many younger ones devoured by society. “It promises to become lively.”
“That,” Harrison said, gathering the altered papers, “is precisely what we must prevent.”
He looked to Genny, and in that glance she saw the question before he voiced it.
Are you ready?
Her answer rose at once, bright and stubborn and very much her own.
Always.
She lifted her chin. “Then let us make good use of the few minutes left before fashionable warfare begins and someone is obliged to weaponize the tea tray.”
If the words sounded light, it was because she did not trust herself to say what else she felt, that the house was tightening around them, that the whispers were spreading, and that every step she took beside him made it harder to remember she had once thought Harrison Jones merely exasperating.
Now she knew better.
He was exasperating, yes. Also thoughtful, infuriatingly capable, unexpectedly kind, and increasingly difficult to dismiss as Esme’s orderly elder brother who preferred ledgers to laughter.
Which was, upon reflection, a most serious problem.
Especially as she hurried belowstairs with Alexandra as nominal escort and Harrison’s permission tucked secretly close like a talisman.
The servants’ hall was not a place young ladies of her station were meant to invade, which was precisely why she entered it with an apology, a smile, and a basket of untouched lemon cakes salvaged from the drawing room confusion.
The kitchen maid nearest the table stared.
The footman who had mishandled the first packet went scarlet.
A scullery boy froze with a spoon in his hand as though she had discovered him at treason.
“Please do not stand on ceremony,” Genny said. “I have come in pursuit of truth, lemon cakes, and possibly a blue-trimmed bonnet. Only two of those are respectable.”
No one moved.
Alexandra leaned close. “Genny, perhaps this is not the best method.”
“It is my only method.”
The cook, a formidable woman with flour on one sleeve and the expression of a duchess wronged by pastry, emerged from the kitchen proper. “Miss?”
Genny set the basket on the table. “I am very sorry to intrude. Truly. But there has been such confusion upstairs, and I would rather ask plainly than allow half-truths to run about until everyone is blamed for everyone else’s mistakes.”
That softened the room a little. Not entirely. But enough.
The footman, Thomas, admitted he had seen Mrs. Fanshawe in the passage before the first confusion with the packets.
“Not that she did anything wrong, miss,” he added quickly, ears reddening. “She only passed through.”
“People generally do only pass through until one discovers they have not,” Genny said kindly. “You are not accusing her. You are remembering.”
That seemed to ease him.
A housemaid recalled Lady Dorring’s maid speaking with Maggie near the back stairs.
The scullery boy, once encouraged by a lemon cake, confessed he had fetched a pencil from the secretary’s room for a lady whose face he had not seen, though he remembered a shawl with dark fringe and the scent of bergamot.
“Bergamot,” Alexandra repeated once they had withdrawn to the passage again.
“Mrs. Fanshawe smelled faintly of bergamot when she handed Lady Penworth the cards this morning,” Genny said. “I noticed because she stood quite close and because I was attempting not to cry, which makes one absurdly attentive to useless things.”
Alexandra’s face softened. “Genny.”
“No.” Genny held up one hand. “Not yet. If you are kind, I shall become hopelessly sentimental, and I have only just persuaded a scullery boy to betray a pencil.”
Alexandra’s lips twitched despite herself.
Genny drew a breath. “Besides, it is useful, is it not? The noticing. The foolish little details. The things no one sensible thinks to value.”
“It has always been useful,” Alexandra said. “You have not always believed it.”
That landed, as inconvenient truths from beloved friends so often did.
Genny looked back toward the stairs. Somewhere above, Harrison would be sorting papers and expecting her to return with answers, not apologies.
The thought sent warmth through her, quickly followed by fear.
Being trusted was heady. It was also terrifying.
It made her aware of her own heartbeat, of the dampness in her palms, of the sudden sharp desire not merely to be useful, but to be worthy of his certainty.
If people expected nothing, one could disappoint them only a little.
If Harrison expected her to matter, then failing him would be something else entirely.
She squared her shoulders.
“Come,” she said. “Let us go tell Viscount Woodmere that I have started no revolution and found three useful pieces of gossip. He will be unbearable.”
Alexandra smiled. “And you will enjoy it.”
“I shall endure it heroically.”
But when Genny climbed the stairs, her steps were quicker than before. By the time she reached the library, Lady Castlemain had already been shown into the front drawing room, and the next phase of the disaster was waiting.