Harriet glanced around the park in concern. She spotted Edlyn standing in the midst of what appeared to be a small assembly of governesses and their energetic charges. A cocker spaniel ran barking around a tree. “Shall we find a bench for you to rest?”
“I don’t need rest. I need to find a wife who will care for him and Edlyn.”
“And who cares for you, madam.”
Lady Powlis suddenly looked deflated. “That is why I hired you, my girl.”
Harriet shook her head. “Then, in all fairness, I will tell you again that the complaint lodged against me today is only the start of it. You would not be ill-advised to dismiss me.”
“I pay you to agree with me, ill-advised or not.”
“Yes, madam.” Harriet’s gaze drifted to the duke and the elegant lady guiding him toward a group of ladies and gentlemen who seemed eager to make his acquaintance. “She’s beautiful.”
“Beauty fades.”
“She’s an heiress.”
“Wealth corrupts.”
“His grace doesn’t appear to mind whether she fades away or corrupts him.”
She sighed as the duke broke away from the gathering. Lady Constance hesitated and then hurried after him. Suddenly Harriet resented the Boscastles for introducing her to a world in which she would always be an outsider, the design of a modern Prometheus who would meet a tragic fate only because she wanted a mate. She sighed in self-pity. She was really a little monster. Lady Constance had skin the color of moonlight. Harriet’s blushed and went blotchy at every emotion. She could never float about with a fox on her head without looking like a court jester. She had never taken a stand against cesspits. She had, however, once pushed a boy who was chasing her into one.
Lady Powlis’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I would do
Harriet felt a breeze quiver through the air at the duke’s approach. Lady Constance called back to one of the footmen to fetch her rabbit muff from the carriage. As the servant turned, a gray stillness enshrouded the park. The duke looked directly at Harriet. The unconcealed desire in his eyes tore through her like lightning.
She caught her breath. The clouds burst forth with such a sudden drenching rain that a malevolent wizard might have dumped a cauldron of bad wishes upon the gathering. Griffin glanced up with a deep laugh. The ladies around him shrieked, running for shelter, while the gentlemen complained about ruined attire and another afternoon better spent at the club.
“Look at her now,” Lady Powlis whispered over Harriet’s shoulder. “Her ringlets are dissolving in the rain.”
“Perhaps she’ll melt,” Edlyn said, her lip curling.
Harriet turned in surprise, hard-pressed to constrain a laugh. “That isn’t nice of you, Miss Edlyn. Ill thoughts against another are not to be spoken aloud.”
Edlyn smiled wickedly. Harriet felt a rush of bittersweet satisfaction and smiled back. An unbreakable bond, an unexpected one, had been formed.
Lady Constance cast the duke a furious look and ran for the carriage. He watched her for a moment, then strode toward the three women huddled together in the rain. “Are you all mad, my little ducks? Must I gather you under my wing?”
Harriet started to laugh.
He pulled off his coat, threw it over Edlyn’s head, offered one arm to Primrose, the other to Harriet.
There was grace, after all.
The four of them dashed for the carriage as one. The footmen met them halfway. Harriet laughed again, staring down at her muddy flat-heeled slippers.
She couldn’t imagine anything more fun than this, not even a midnight ball. It made up for the misery that she had been dealt earlier in the day.
And then a cry of unadulterated terror immobilzed her, indeed, everyone within earshot, to the spot. She looked up through the rain as a scruffy young man darted from behind a tree. A knife glimmered in his hand and flashed up toward the woman standing in front of him. Lady Constance went a deathly shade of white. The servant who was holding an umbrella over her head backed away.
“Oh, no,” Harriet whispered, swallowing hard. “Not again. Not now. Don’t do it.”
The young man was quick on his feet. Quicker than lightning. He ought to be. He had taught Harriet how to cut a purse. He shook his fist under Lady Constance’s chin with one hand. The other efficiently severed the strings of her reticule from her limp grasp.
“For the love of God, Harriet. What do you think you are doing? You’re only slowing me down. I’m more than capable of taking care of a little bastard like that.”
“So am I,” she said, rain washing down her neck in cold rivulets.
“You damned fool,” he muttered. “I’ve lost him now because of you. What am I supposed to do?”
She stood before him with the calm acceptance of what could never be changed. “Go back to Lady Constance and comfort her. That was one of my half brothers who stole her bag. I’ll get it back, don’t you worry.”
“Your brother, Harriet?” he said in disbelief.
“You know what I was. Now you know what I could have been. Frightening, isn’t it?”
She walked around him.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he shouted at her.
“I’m going ’ome.” She took off her slippers, one at a time, and tossed them at him over her shoulders. They didn’t match her dress, anyway. “Take care of your family, duke. And yourself. You’re not as bad as everyone thinks.”
Chapter Fifteen
I had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats, but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me.
MARY SHELLEY
The hackney driver who took Harriet to St. Giles remembered her from the old days. He’d heard how she had come up in the world. Everyone in the streets from the dustmen to the bone pickers boasted that they had once known Harriet Gardner. It was already common knowledge in the East End that she was now employed in the household of a duke. Last Christmas, she had sent the street children sweets and cloaks discarded by the girls at the academy. Still, she wasn’t a saint like the lady her half brother had just robbed. Pity. There wasn’t justice in the world.
“Don’t forget,” the driver said as he deposited her on the corner of her old haunt. “Duke or not, if ’e don’t do right by you, you always got yer friends, ’arry. We can take care of the nobs good and proper.”
Harriet shuddered, as much from the thought as from the misty early evening air that evoked memories of her life in the slums. Her stockinged toes contracted as she walked across the cobbles. She was grateful the rain had stopped. She’d gone soft, in body and heart. That was the price one paid for living with the swells.
A low whistle rang from the pub on the corner. A long shadow fell into step at her right. A shorter one joined it at the left. Then another. Soon all the shadows marched alongside her, taunting in their singsong voices.
“Well, well, look wot the cat’s dragged ’ome. Pretty, pretty.”
