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“I haven’t one.” She bit off the final word. She hadn’t meant to say that. Though it was certainly true. Mama had given up the rented house where they’d once lived. “My mother and I are his dependents. He will take it all away if we defy him.”
“That’s an uncomfortable state of being.”
He said it with quiet understanding. No argument. None of the bantering that had laced their earlier conversation. Harriet looked into his dark eyes and found them full of sympathy. It felt as if he knew exactly what her situation was like and how rebellious and anxious it made her feel. She couldn’t think what to say. The silence was stretching too long. Finally, she simply nodded.
“But you know, there’s a kind of freedom in it, too,” Jack Mere added.
The tremulous moment collapsed like a soap bubble. He didn’t really understand. How could he? “For you, perhaps. You can wander and…blather and be a rogue. Do whatever you like. I cannot.”
“I’m not really…”
Harriet heard her name called. She turned toward the sound. It was her mother’s voice, which was unusual out of doors. “You must go. If my grandfather discovers you, he will have you thrown off his property.”
“Will he now?”
“Oh yes.” Harriet might have liked to annoy her grandfather. But she didn’t want to distress her mother. Wasn’t that the pinching point of her current life? She didn’t want to see Jack insulted either.
“Might you walk toward Ferrington Hall another time?” he asked.
She wanted to see him again. That was clear, though not very wise. “Perhaps.”
“I could take you to visit the Travelers’ camp.”
“Would they let me in?” Harriet was curious about these wandering people.
“If you come with me. Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“I will see. I cannot always get away.”
“Trying is all we can do,” he answered. And with a nod, he disappeared into the shrubbery. Harriet had no doubt he would not be seen if he didn’t wish to be. He seemed a man of many unusual skills. She went to see what had brought her mother out to find her.
***
Jack brooded over the deception about his name as he walked back toward the Travelers’ camp. If he’d told her he was Jack Merrill, she’d have connected him with the missing earl. If not right away, then soon. And she knew Lady Wilton was after him. Could anyone resist passing along that information? He didn’t want to find out. Such a revelation would bring his furious great-grandmother down on him and force his choices. He would have to take up the position the old lady wanted to thrust on him or leave, and he didn’t want to do either of those things just yet. So he’d lied to a girl—as smart and lively as she was beautiful—who drew him more and more. Partly, he wished he hadn’t, but his lips had literally not let him say the name.
So he’d deceived her. He’d meant no harm. He wasn’t trying to put anything over on her. Except—she seemed to like the idea of a rogue, and he was playing that role as she appeared to see it. Jack shook his head as he walked through the flowering band of woodland between Winstead and Ferrington Halls. He’d met some real rogues, and she wouldn’t have liked them. Nor would they have treated her well. The idea of young Harriet Finch chatting so artlessly with some of them made his blood run cold. Fortunately, he was not a man like that.
She didn’t come the next day, and Jack’s disappointment was sharp. But the day after that, he spied her walking along with her perpetual parasol, fresh as a daisy in a straw bonnet and a figured muslin gown. He intercepted her near the gates to Ferrington Hall and steered her away. The caretakers were in residence today. Indeed, the old man was in the kitchen garden pulling weeds.
“I couldn’t get away yesterday. My mother needed me.”
Her expression implied tribulations. “She’s not ill, I hope?”
“No. Not…really. She’s anxious, and sometimes it…gets the better of her.”
The strain in her voice suggested this was an understatement. Jack didn’t know what to say. He settled on, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She’ll improve with time.”
This sounded more like a hope than a certainty.
“Are we going to visit the Travelers’ camp?”
In other words, she was finished with the previous subject. As she had every right to be. “We’re on the way,” Jack replied. He led her along the wall around the gardens. “I wanted to tell you that Mere is not my real name.”
“No? Is it a nom de rogue?”
“Eh?” She’d taken this admission more easily than he expected.
