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“There will be no such day.”
As they glowered at each other, Cecelia said, “I still don’t understand just what you intend to do.”
That reduced the group to silence.
Sixteen
Jack returned to Ferrington Hall late the following night. Having tended to his horse, he let himself in and moved quietly through the sleeping house. It felt a bit more like home, but he realized this was because he was more at home in himself after this foray into the world. He had used his skills and resources to take action, as he was used to doing across the sea. Perhaps this was the real meaning of home, he thought as he undressed in his bedchamber. A person confident in himself could be at home anywhere, even in the country of a critical great-grandmother.
His business had gone smoothly, and he had a marriage license in his pocket. This might be overreaching. But if the document was not required, it could be torn up. He needed now to see Harriet at a time and place where they could talk and were not surrounded by prying eyes.
The next morning, Jack woke early and wrote a note to her, suggesting such a meeting. As he sent it off with a stableboy, he felt like a gambler risking all in a final throw. He didn’t wait for a reply, wishing to avoid the Terefords until his fate was decided. Instead he went out and walked to the Travelers’ camp.
He found them gone. Only trampled grass and charred fire circles remained from their visit. Jack was sorry not to have bid them farewell. Mistress Elena had suggested they would come again next year, and he hoped to greet them then as a settled man.
Movement caught in the corner of his eye, and Jack turned to see Harriet, ethereal in pale-sprigged muslin, approaching from the wood, her face half-hidden by one of her parasols. He moved toward her, and they met in an open space where a caravan had been.
“Here you are,” she said.
“I am.” It lifted his heart to see her. As much of her as he could see at any rate. He purely hated her parasols. They were like portable draperies, ready to hide her face at a moment’s notice. “Let us go and sit in the shade,” he said. Where she could shut the dashed thing. He didn’t wait for agreement, just strode off to the shelter of the trees.
He led her to the little clearing near the edge of the camp, where they had sat before on the large, dry log among the murmur of leaves. That had been an easier time. “You won’t need that here,” he said, pointing at the parasol. He did not intend to talk through it or to it.
Harriet closed the lacy barrier and set it aside. “I was glad to receive your note,” she said, speaking quickly. “I am sorry for what happened. I wanted you to understand.”
“As I did about the things I told you when we first met,” he couldn’t resist saying.
She bowed her head, then gave one nod.
Sitting near her was unsettling. She’d roused him and hurt him, touched his heart and bruised his spirit. Her familiar face and figure brought back moments they’d shared. He’d thought she was his. Then he’d been ejected from that happy state. Yet she’d come to see him when he asked. “I wanted to—” he began.
She held up a hand to stop him. “Before anything else, I would like to tell you why I acted as I did.”
Seeing that she was trembling to do so, he nodded.
Harriet folded her hands, released them, gazed into the wood. “I don’t think you know. My mother was rejected by her family, just as your father was by his. My grandfather didn’t approve of her marriage to my father, even though Papa was a valued employee of his business. He wanted her to make a grand match.”
She spoke like someone repeating an old tale, one she’d chewed over many times before.
“He thinks that is what females arefor,” she added with obvious bitterness.
Including Harriet herself, Jack knew.
“So he cut her off. From his money and his society. And more than that, he did everything he could to make sure Papa failed at any venture he undertook. There was a great deal Grandfather could do to ruin him. He is very influential.”
“How can you live with the man?” burst from Jack. The tale was worse than he’d realized.
Harriet’s face was stony. She didn’t look at him. “It is the most difficult thing I have ever done. But he approached Mama, you see, and offered to leave me all his money.”
“Which should have been partly hers from the beginning.”
“Yes. And she…”
“Couldn’t resist,” Jack put in. “Like a man thinking he was to be welcomed back into the family that had thrown his father out.”
Finally, she turned to him. He saw surprise and what might have been tenderness in her green eyes. They filmed with unshed tears as she nodded. She blinked them away.
“And perhaps, like that man, she found things weren’t so simple.”
