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Samia cackled at the label. “You’re in our dancing place,” she retorted.
He hadn’t realized the Traveler children had claimed this little clearing. He needed to find a private spot where he could talk to Harriet Finch, tell her his true story, and ask her to marry him. With many more kisses involved, he hoped. Had things been different, he would have gone at once to Winstead Hall and made a formal offer. But they were not. If the aristocratic strangers hadn’t appropriated Ferrington Hall, he might have revealed himself and moved in there. But they had. Circumstances kept overtaking him. Ever since the stuffy Englishman had arrived in Boston to fetch him, he’d floundered behind events. It was time to take control. He left the dancing children and headed for the camp.
***
Harriet moved toward Ferrington Hall on a cloud of desire. No wonder young ladies were taught to avoid kisses, particularly girls with no prospects in the world and no one to protect them. She saw now how one could be swept away into acts that led to social disaster.
She’d taken care, when poor, never to make a single misstep. Then, as a sudden heiress, she’d been repelled by the young men with avid eyes who wanted her fortune far more than her person.
Now, here was Jack the Rogue, who had nothing to do with the marriage mart and was utterly unacceptable in every way except the most important. She loved him. She’d flung caution to the winds with Jack, and she wasn’t sorry. Her body and spirit still rang from that kiss! He’d opened a whole new landscape to her, a vision of a different kind of life far away from the stuffy confines of English society. That life did not depend on her grandfather’s fortune, which would be whisked away the moment he learned of her choice. They could leave Grandfather behind, go thousands of miles beyond his sphere of influence. Harriet felt as if vistas had opened at her feet and bonds she hadn’t even been aware of were falling away. She didn’t have to care about the proprieties that had been drilled into her. There was a larger world out there.
Except. Harriet was brought up short by thoughts of her mother. If she defied her grandfather’s wishes, stepped into that freedom, Mama would collapse. Harriet had no doubt about that. And she would have to support her, drawn back into the social snares her mother espoused. It wasn’t fair! Yet she couldn’t desert Mama. Leaving her to Grandfather’s revenge would be an unimaginable cruelty. Harriet’s spirits began to sink.
But Jack was…ingenious. He lived to scheme. He flung himself into pranks and adventures. Harriet remembered his ludicrous teasing of the duke at the camp and laughed as she walked. Jack had no instinct to defer or be overawed by a title. Indeed, he despised society as much as she did. He would help with Mama. Together, they would find a way out of the toils that had bound her all her life. Harriet skipped a few steps as she entered the Ferrington Hall gardens. Her faith in her roguish love was deep.
Harriet’s arrival coincided with the return of the duke. He was walking up from the stables as she crossed the garden. “I convinced the local magistrate to give me that letter,” he said, holding up a folded sheet of paper.
“Oh…good.” There was no reason to worry, Harriet told herself. Jack had said he hadn’t written it. And even if the letter was shown to be false, there was no reason to connect it with him.
They found Cecelia in a smaller reception room, which had become a cozy, flower-filled place since she took charge. The duke took the letter over to a writing desk, unfolded it, and set it beside another sheet of paper that lay there. He looked back and forth between the two missives.
Harriet braced herself. What should she say if they…?
“The writing seems the same to me,” Tereford said. “What do you think?”
Cecelia stepped up to look. Harriet followed her.
“I agree,” said Cecelia. “See the flourish on thetthere and the way thea’s are not quite closed.”
It was true. Harriet stared at the two pages. The note to Lady Wilton was a few lines with no signature, and the permission letter was a formal document on engraved letterhead, but the hand was the same. Harriet was astonished and then filled with joy. She had doubted. She admitted it. Jack was, after all, a rogue. But he had not lied to her. The relief of that was more intense than she’d expected.
“Are you all right?” Cecelia asked her.
Also, Jack was not in jeopardy, Harriet thought. That was wonderful, too.
“Harriet? Is something wrong?”
She gathered her scattered faculties. “No. Nothing.”
“But you seem to be…trembling?” The duchess frowned at her.
“I’m fine.” Harriet pushed down her emotions, as she had a lifetime of practice in doing. She did not intend to tell Cecelia about Jack. Cecelia was a delightful person, a good friend, but she was not unconventional. The perfect duchess, she wouldn’t understand, or approve of, Harriet’s choice. Harriet feared even her best friends would have doubts. She could hear Charlotte’s sharp questions and Sarah’s softer doubts. Ada had married another duke. She’d had no longing for escape. But none of them had grown up on the margins of society or been a victim of its looming threats and petty spite.
Briefly, Harriet worried that her long, precious friendships would not endure. Must she be ready to lose all she knew if she allied herself with Jack the Rogue? No, they would stand by her. They’d been through so much together, including a shocking glimpse into the darker side of society last season.
“Harriet?” said Cecelia again.
She shook off her doubts. The future would have to take care of itself. “Yes. So now we must wonder how this letter came to be,” she said. Harriet’s zest for investigation could surface now that she didn’t have to worry about Jack. “Where it came from and how the earl learned of the camp on his land,” she added.
“All those things,” the duke agreed with a smile.
Cecelia looked reassured by Harriet’s spate of questions. “Do we know how it was delivered?” she asked.
“A boy on horseback brought it,” her husband replied. “Perhaps a groom. No one in Sir Hal’s household remembered anything else about him.”
“That sounds like someone coming from nearby,” Harriet said. “But where?”
“Not this house or Winstead Hall,” Cecelia answered. “And not Sir Hal’s estate either, obviously. That appears to account for the large places in this neighborhood.”
