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“They were in fact the same as ever,” she replied. “Only now my grandfather’s ambitions focus on me, while he treats Mama like a pathetic failure.”
“You should turn your back on him and walk out the door.” It was what he had done in the face of Lady Wilton’s insults. Surely it was the only response to such tyranny?
“I would like to!” Her voice was fierce. “I would gladly go back to our small, frugal life. But Mama spent all our capital on my London season. Without consulting me.” Her fists clenched in her lap.
Jack’s urges to defiance died on his tongue. He had resources, an earldom. Her case was not the same. How right he’d been to take action.
“So Mama is terrified when Grandfather threatens to throw her out again,” Harriet added. “As he does if I try to oppose him in any way.”
The man deserved a thrashing.
“He is…was driving Mama to distraction with his threats. She’d taken to laudanum to ease her fears.”
A thorough thrashing, to be terrorizing that nice little lady in such a way. His own daughter, too!
“I had to do something,” Harriet said. Her tone and her eyes held pleading. “You must see that. I would do anything for my mother, as you would for yours, I’m sure.”
His bright, antic mother had died a slow, hard death, with disease eating at her insides. He’d done what he could, which hadn’t been enough, of course. That cruel process had certainly left him familiar with laudanum.
Harriet sat straighter. “And so, I…pushed for the engagement, the sort Grandfather insists upon, to a title.”
She spoke as if it could have been any match, any man, as long as he was noble. The idea brought a sharp pain.
“He’s so eager to climb the social ladder,” she added. “He thinks the high sticklers will welcome him in if I am a countess.” Her laugh was harsh. “I would almost do it, just to watch when he realizes he’s wrong.”
“But it wouldn’t be worth it,” said Jack. He kept emotion out of his voice, but he couldn’t help hoping for some contradiction. Marriage to him could not be such a grim prospect? Could it?
Harriet turned and blinked at him as if startled. “I didn’t mean… I wasn’t speaking…”
“Of me.” Had he been reduced to a mere counter in her game to best her grandfather?
“I was desperate about Mama. I followed an impulse. It was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”
He appreciated the apology. But it was not enough, any more than his regrets had been for her.
“I didn’t see how it would involve…”
“Me,” he said again.
“A number of complications,” she corrected. She bit her lower lip in the way she did when torn. “And you. I am very sorry, Lord Ferrington. I will make things right at once…”
“If you had simply told me all this in the beginning, I would have agreed to help,” he interrupted. He didn’t want to discuss how the engagement was to end.
She stared at him, lips slightly parted. “You would?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“But it… Why would you?”
“Because I despise domestic tyrants? Like Lady Wilton. And would be glad to see them all thwarted.”
She looked a bit dazed.
“I would have been happy to join in the, er, rebellion,” Jack added.
“It didn’t occur to me that I might…”
“Ask for help?”
