Page 6 of To Follow her Heart

“Damned if I will,” Jasper said with a bark of laughter. “She eats little boys for breakfast.”

Jerome glowered at him. “I’m only three years younger than you.”

Jasper returned a quelling look, one he’d spent years perfecting.

Jerome narrowed his eyes.

“Fine,” he said, and stalked off, no doubt to find another method of ruining Jasper’s evening other than flirting wildly with Mrs Manning and making a spectacle of them both.

Jasper watched his brother’s progress, and the smile which lit Harriet’s face as she greeted him. He suppressed a vicious stab of jealousy which he knew was beneath him. Harriet then introduced Jerome to her friend, Miss Bonnie Campbell. The young Scottish woman was a curvaceous bundle of trouble if ever Jasper had seen one, and he recognised the gleam of interest in Jerome’s eye all too well.

Jasper suppressed a sigh and wondered when he’d become so ruddy old. At that moment, Harriet looked up and his heart stuttered in his chest as her cool, bespectacled gaze met his. Wide brown eyes that were even larger behind the glass of her spectacles settled on him for a second, during which time all the warmth and laughter chilled to arctic temperatures before she looked away again.

“Would it kill you to smile at me, Harry?” he murmured, before pasting a smile to his own face and attending to his friends.

***

Kitty stared at the skies until her neck ached, amazed and delighted by the spectacle above them. The festivity, intended to celebrate the centenary of the House of Brunswick and the peace with France, had been done on a scale Kitty had never experienced. The faux fortress was like nothing she’d seen in her life. Rockets thundered from the battlements, at once impressive and beautiful and yet giving the crowd a tiny taste of the power and horror of everything the men involved in the conflict must have faced. Smoke and noise, flashes and fire as explosions rocked through the spectators, drew startled gasps of wonder from even the most jaded onlookers.

For a moment, she allowed her attention to drift away from the sparkling skies as flurries of golden stars fell to earth, and focused instead on those below. Hundreds and thousands of people. As she always did, she searched their faces, though it was impossible to see in the crush, and beneath the light that changed in a moment from brilliance into darkness and back again. Was Luke here somewhere? If he was here, why hadn’t he come for her, or at least sent word? Had he forgotten her, had he found another? Perhaps he was married now.

Had the words he’d spoken with such gravity meant nothing to him?

She knew it was foolish, or at least that anyone else would believe it so. She’d attended a real wedding earlier that day, when Viscount Cavendish had married Aashini. It had been an informal affair and yet with all the attendant solemnity and intent it ought to when two peoples’ futures joined together—till death them do part.

She and Luke had been children: innocent, silly children with no notion of real life and responsibilities. Yet it had meant something to her, and to him. Kitty knew in her heart he’d felt the weight of his promise to her, and he’d meant the words. So why hadn’t he come to her? Why hadn’t she been able to find him? How could a boy who’d told her he loved her with such devotion disappear, and never so much as send her a note of explanation?

A barrage of sound drew her attention back to the fortress amid a violent display of flame and smoke and the thunder of artillery. The giant edifice was slowly transformed by the removal of giant screens to expose the Temple of Concord beneath the layers of the fortress. The rockets continued to fire overhead, and the temple was revealed like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Each rocket contained a multitude of smaller rockets that burst and burst again, brighter than any star, illuminating the scene beneath. An ethereal blue light was cast over the world around them, everyone from the lowliest to the grandest dipped in silver and, for one transient moment, appearing equally magnificent.

At last the skies subsided, and the land grew quiet again, until the crowd erupted with cheers and laughter, clapping and exclaiming about all that they’d seen.

Kitty stared still at the heavens, at the billows of smoke that drifted over the clear night sky. The stars began to appear, one by one, shining tentatively now the gaudy display was done. Though it was foolish, Kitty searched for and found the north star as she’d done with Luke when they were children, usually with one or other of them wishing for nonsense—a pony or a puppy, or that Papa shouldn’t discover who’d broken the vase in the dining room.

“Let me find him,” she begged, focusing on the tiny light and feeling the ache in her heart with as much sorrow as she’d done the day she’d discovered him gone. “Please. Please let me find him.”

Chapter 2

Dear Bonnie,

We are leaving tomorrow for St Clair’s House Party!

I’m so excited. Aren’t we lucky to have found such generous friends, for surely neither you nor I would have a hope of attending such an event without them? You would be destined for Gordon Anderson for certain, and my father would be haranguing me for not having found a husband, but now we have a chance to live a little longer and hope for better things.

We must grab the chance and hold on tight!

―Excerpt of a letter from Miss Kitty Connolly to Miss Bonnie Campbell.

19th August 1814, South Audley Street, London.

“It’s so good of you to take me with you,” Matilda said, embracing Harriet as the young woman’s eyes widened at the number of valises and hat boxes assembled in the hallway. “Oh dear,” Matilda added, seeing Harriet’s alarm. “I’ve packed far too much, haven’t I? You don’t have space?”

Harriet laughed and shook her head. “No, indeed. We have plenty of space, only… you’ve brought three times as much as I have, and now I feel anxious I didn’t pack enough.”

“Well, I’m sure you barely have a trunk full, once you discount the two you filled with books,” her brother Henry remarked as he oversaw the servants trooping back and forth. “I never knew a girl less interested in clothes,” he added, shaking his head. “You’re an oddity, Harry, no getting away from it.”

Poor Harriet blushed scarlet and Matilda took her arm.

“Don’t listen to him, you’re certain to have just the exact right amount of everything. You’re always so organised. I’m afraid I’m horribly vain and can’t make a decision to save my life. Packing is torture so I just cram in everything I can and hope for the best.”