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Harriet dug her nails into her palms. Had Jack meant anything he said to her? Why had she been so gullible? No one must know how she’d been duped.
“Harriet?” said her friend.
She forced herself to speak. “Such a surprising development.”
Cecelia examined her, clearly puzzled by Harriet’s responses.
She tried to find some response to make. “Lady Wilton will be very pleased with you.”
“James is writing a letter meant to keep her from coming up here.”
Perhapsshewould contact Lady Wilton and lure her here to torment Jack. Not Jack. He was Lord Ferrington. How would she ever call him that? She wouldn’t, because she would never speak to him again.Aftershe told him what she thought of his reprehensible conduct.
“I thought you would be amused.” Cecelia was quite intelligent. She would discover the truth if Harriet wasn’t more careful. Well, given a bit of time, she would be.
“We should go in,” Harriet said. “Mama will be looking for me.”
“Is she quite well?” Cecelia asked as they turned back toward the house.
“She’s finding my grandfather trying.”
Her friend nodded sympathetically.
Cecelia departed soon after this, and Harriet nearly went mad as the day progressed at a snail’s pace. Each time she tried to get away, her mother made strenuous objections. She reacted to Harriet’s mood, which amplified her fears.
At last, in the afternoon, her mother lay down for a rest, and Harriet slipped out at once before anyone could accost her. She didn’t even bother with a bonnet and gloves, not wanting to encounter Slade in her bedchamber and have to explain. Feeling rather bare without these garments, Harriet slipped out of the house and through the garden. She took the path that let her evade the watchers her grandfather kept on his borders. All that she wished to say to the perfidious Jack was running through her brain, but she came upon him sooner than expected, right at the near edge of the woodland.
“There you are,” he said, looking relieved. “Did you get my note at last? I’ve been lurking about for hours trying to find a way to see you.”
“You!” replied Harriet.
“I wanted to tell you…”
“Are you really an earl? Are you actually Lord Ferrington?”
His face creased with chagrin. “How…”
“Cecelia told me.”
His shoulders sagged. “Of course. It would have been too much to expect that dratted duke to keep his mouth shut.”
“So it is true?” Harriet realized that, up to this moment, some part of her had thought he would deny the story.
“Well, yes. I meant for you to know first, but we were interrupted when…”
“You lied to me!”
“I omitted some parts of my history.”
“Omitted.” Harriet put a full measure of contempt in her tone.Omitwas the word of a weasel. This was the sort of sly evasion common in the upper reaches of society, so those in the know could laugh behind their hands at everyone else. “Jack Mere,” she said bitterly.
“I told you that wasn’t my real name. You were a stranger then, and I didn’t want to be found.”
Then. What was she now? “And the letter to Sir Hal? You told me you didn’t write it. You swore!”
“I told you I did notforgeit,” he answered. “Which was true, as I am the earl. For my sins.”
Had he said that? Yes, perhaps. It was difficult to recall through her hurt and anger. “So it is necessary to test every word you have ever said to me for literal truth?”
