Passing, unstable pleasures when compared to the delights of a sturdy, well-stocked mind. Darien might believe that romantic fancies could overcome the vast difference in their stations, but those illusions would dissolve when the real challenges emerged.
“This is exactly why Miss Wollstonecraft disapproves,” Henrietta said, stripping his hand from her hip and striving to gather her wits. “That a woman should give over her future, her property, her security, and her livelihood, all for passion, which can change from one day to the next. I confess I feel there should be a more equal exchange, in the general way of things. Now, put on this coat and come to dinner. And no more seductive looks from you, LordDaring, or Charley shall turn you into the street.”
She buttoned him into his coat and made herself a promise. Her future was already in peril, depending on what Prime Minister Pitt decided about her case. She would not lose her mind over this man.
She had already lost her heart, but that was an unreliable organ anyway. She could survive without it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Amarquess’s son upstairs, a duke’s son in the parlor, a viscount’s heir leaving his card; Lady Mama made no secret of her delight at the quality of persons circulating through her home. But she was just as surprised as Henrietta when the Earl of Warrefield knocked on the door of Hines House.
“Papa!” Clarinda said, ringing for tea. “I didn’t know you were in town.”
“Need to be in my seat if there’s talk of war.” The earl handed Dearbody his hat and walking stick. “Havey-cavey business coming down the line. What on earth are they thinking across the Channel? Bunch of boisterous frogs.”
“I believe the Jacobins have many valid complaints,” Henrietta said, sorting the stack of correspondence. “Representation in government, for one, which was exactly what the American colonists quarreled with us about.”
“Hetty, you featherbrain,” Warrefield exclaimed. “Is it true Pitt’s bringing a suit against you for disturbing the King’s peace?”
Henrietta dropped a letter through nerveless fingers. “Lady Bess warned me there might be a complaint. She thinks it astrong advert for the Minerva Society, but I cannot say I like the idea.”
“I should say not! Ain’t her neck if you get tossed in the watch house again.”
“You heard about that?” Henrietta asked in a faint voice. “Lady Bess thinks the attention will be good for our causes, and now that the National Assembly in France has abolished slavery, she thinks our petition?—”
“Oh,hangyour petition,” Warrefield exclaimed. “You’ll never get the Lords to go for it, and that’s that. But you will season a fine stew for your father if your name gets drawn through the muck, and he’s responsible for you, you know! What if they seize his assets and have him declared traitor to the Crown? Pitt’s mad enough about this French business to do it.”
Henrietta sat down next to Lady Clarinda. So this was the heart of the earl’s concern. The Wardley-Hines fortune, after the union of their families, had refortified the Warrefield name and dignity by replenishing its coffers, and his successful son-in-law continued to quietly subsidize many of the earl’s favorite pursuits that his estates, large and profitable as they were, could not support in the manner he desired.
“What do you suggest, Papa?” Clarinda inquired.
“Well, hanged if I know,” her father snapped. “Where’s Pell Mell when you need him? He ought to come up with some defense. A Whig if I ever saw one, but he’s a head on his shoulders for all that.”
“I did mean to go north,” Henrietta said. “Look in on some of Papa’s mills, then Birch Vale. Though I should hate to leave?—”
“Clary?” The earl frowned and shot a look at his daughter. “She can’t travel now. Too close to her time, and too fat to fit in a carriage besides.”
“Yes, Lady Mama will stay here until after her confinement,” Henrietta answered. “But I have other…obligations.” Herthoughts went to the man upstairs, who was tossing in a feverish sleep, and higher still, where a new infant had command of the nursery.
“Well, we must get you out of the scrape somehow,” the earl groused. “My countess will plague me until you do. Already afraid she can’t hold her head up, what with you running around with this Daring.”
“And why should she be concerned if I have been seen once or twice with Lord Darien?” Henrietta asked, indignant.
The earl stared. “Tare an’ hounds! You think we want our name on the list of families he’s ruined? Highcastle’s already getting laughed out of White’s, can’t find his daughter or her lover or her throw. The countess will have my hide if we get grouped in with them. I like Langford, but I must say, he got a rotten deal with his sons. Lost his first heir, can’t find his second, and can’t bring to heel the third. Makes me glad I had daughters, trouble though they be.”
“To have Papa in town!” Clarinda murmured after her sire took his leave. “I suppose I shall have to call on the countess, though perhaps you oughtn’t come with me, Hetty. At the very least we must invite her to dine.”
“I knew I should have left town,” Henrietta muttered. “A suit against me! For treason, or something else? Lady Mama, I never meant to bring down such trouble on your and Papa’s heads.”
“Jasper will sort everything,” Clarinda said. “Did Lady Bessington promise to call today? My word, there has been quite a parade of nobility in these rooms. Dearbody is beside himself with joy.”
But even Clarinda was astonished by their next visitor.
“The Marquess of Langford, mum.” Dearbody hovered in the doorway of Darien’s chamber, gazing with wonder upon the card he held.
Henrietta sat on Darien’s bed, repairing his shoulder after he’d torn out the surgeon’s stitches with another nightmare. Clarinda sat in a low chair against the wall, embroidering baby linens. Darien scowled like a man who had been shot and was not taking pleasure in his recovery.
“Devil take it. Rufie will have told him something that put a bee in his bonnet, I don’t doubt. Lady Clarinda, I apologize profoundly.”
