Page 10 of A Convenient Fiction

“Is that all it takes in Lower Hawley?”

“I fear it is.”

His mouth curved into a slow smile. “I shall keep that in mind.”

The fine hairs on the back of Laura’s neck stood up. She cast a discreet glance from Mr. Archer to Henrietta and back again. He wasn’t obvious in his admiration for her friend. He didn’t stare at her unduly or insinuate himself into her conversation with George. But during tea, Laura had more than once observed Mr. Archer look at Henrietta in a cold and faintly calculating manner.

Was that why such a man as he had come to their village? Not as the hero of the story, but as the villain?

There was certainly something dangerous about him. Something hard and predatory. It was part of what made him so thrillingly handsome. That edge of subtle menace. Rather like a feral wolf.

Was he hunting in Lower Hawley?

Her mouth pressed into a frown. She didn’t know Mr. Archer. Even so, she’d thought better of him. He’d seemed different somehow. A rare and mysterious creature in their midst.

But he wasn’t different at all. He was—if her instincts were correct—nothing more than a garden-variety fortune hunter.

She’d seen enough of them over the years. Gentlemen in reduced circumstances who came to pay court to Henrietta and her inheritance. They were the impoverished nephews and second cousins of the county gentry. Men who were ill-equipped to snare a wealthy wife on the London marriage mart, and who believed they’d have better odds with a vulnerable country heiress.

Henrietta had always dispatched such predatory gentleman with ruthless efficiency. She was certain to extend the same courtesy to Mr. Archer once she realized what he was up to.

Or so Laura hoped.

“Do you have a profession, Mr. Archer?” she asked.

He was silent for a long moment, the fall of his boots on the hard-packed earth the only sound as they entered the wilderness garden. “Are you asking me if I work for a living?”

The path narrowed, curving through trees that bowed inward into an arch, providing a leafy canopy against the blazing afternoon sunshine. “Do you?”

“I’m not obliged to.”

“You’re a gentleman of independent means?”

“I’m a gentleman,” he said. “A gentleman doesn’t soil his hands with labor, Miss Hayes. Independent means or no.”

The path grew narrower still, necessitating that she walk even closer to his side. It was entirely by design. Henrietta had once confessed that the landscape artist her father had employed so many years before had dreamed up the wilderness garden at Edgington Park as a trysting place for lovers. Every step through the trees brought one closer to the object of their affection.

Laura wished that Henrietta had chosen somewhere else for their walk. Through the rose garden, perhaps. Or along the drive that led down to the village. Anything other than the intimacy of the wilderness garden path. With every brush of her full linen skirts against Mr. Archer’s trouser-clad leg, Laura’s heart beat a little more erratically.

“An outdated precept,” she replied.

“You believe so?”

“Wholeheartedly. It’s been the ruination of many gentlemen who might have otherwise saved themselves, and their families, from ruin.”

“You speak with some authority on the subject.”

“I do. My father was such a one.”

Mr. Archer’s expression sobered. “Forgive me. I didn’t realize—”

“I’m not ashamed to own it. Had he exerted himself…” Laura couldn’t bring herself to finish.

The truth was, if Papa had exerted himself, it wouldn’t have changed anything in the end. He’d still have died and left them all. But perhaps there might have been some money to soften the blow of his loss. Some value left in the Hayes’s name.

“What I mean to say,” she continued, “is that a gentleman shouldn’t refuse to work merely because he’s a gentleman. The idea is as foolish as a man who can swim refusing to save himself from drowning. What does pride matter if the alternative is death or ruination?”

“Did your father leave you in very straitened circumstances?” Mr. Archer asked. “Or is that too impertinent a question?”