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“No silk purse here, eh,” said Jack.
The man met Jack’s eyes for the first time. He looked shocked and perhaps worried. “My lord?”
It occurred to Jack that the fellow’s disdain hadn’t been personal. Rather, this cobbled together ensemble had offended his professional pride. The valet was a perfectionist. Perhaps he feared that Jack’s ensemble would reflect badly on his reputation.
A sound from the box of the carriage made Jack look up. The groom winked at him.
“Ah,” Jack said. He’d never had a mob of servants around him. In Boston, he’d lived in rented rooms—spacious and comfortable, overseen by a landlady who’d been as much friend as servitor. She’d managed those who cleaned and cooked. Jack had never had much to do with them. It seemed things were somehow different for an earl.
The valet was still gazing at him. “Er, well done,” Jack said.
“Thank you, my lord.” The man produced a hat and gloves from the carriage. Jack put them on, and his transformation was complete.
It almost felt as if he’d donned a new skin with the borrowed clothes and become a stranger. Who was he? This earl? My lord. His great-grandmother had imagined he could become a blank slate for her to write over with her proprieties and affectations. Jack felt a wave of revulsion. That was out of the question. He would not be molded into Lady Wilton’s creature. She didn’t tell him who he was to be. Nor this interfering duke either. No one did.
The valet mounted up and took the horses away. Jack hesitated.
“Ready, milord?” asked the groom.
He could still run. The Travelers would sell him a horse. He could ride for the coast and find a ship home. He had the funds in his money belt. In these clothes, ships’ captains would defer to him. He could easily book passage.
Harriet Finch’s lovely face rose before him. Might she come with him to Boston? Should she forgive him, that is. She’d liked Jack the Rogue. Perhaps more than liked. But that fellow was gone, dissolved into the Earl of Ferrington, who had deceived her. And Jack Merrill was really neither of those people. He was still here, beneath this costume.
“Milord?” said the groom again.
Of course, he couldn’t leave her. The idea tore at bonds that had formed swiftly but surely in these last weeks. He wanted a life with Harriet Finch. He suspected that, in the end, she would say that life was here. And perhaps he even owed something to his father’s legacy. Lords had duties and rights he didn’t really understand.
“Is all well, milord?” asked the groom. He looked down from the carriage box with concern on his young face.
“Well enough.” Jack stepped into the carriage and shut the door. He would see. He would try. But he was no blank slate. He’d learned a good deal in his time on this earth; he’d achieved some success. Neither Jack the Rogue nor the earl, he was himself. It was time to show England that fact and fill this new role in his own way.
The vehicle started to move, out of his past and into an uncertain future he was determined to shape for himself.
Seven
Harriet returned to a house in covert uproar. Her mother had woken, found herself alone, sent a servant to find Harriet, and sunk into muted hysterics when she could not be found. When Harriet came into her bedchamber, Mama rushed over and clung like a drowning man. “Where have you been?” she whispered.
Her eyes were wild. Her mouth and hands trembled. Efforts not to attract any attention from the master of the house had apparently increased the strain.
“I went for a walk, Mama,” Harriet said. “As I often do.”
“You promised to stay with me!”
This had been more assumption than promise, but that was clearly irrelevant. Harriet patted her hand. There was something clutched in it. Harriet opened her mother’s fingers and discovered an empty vial of laudanum. She’d known Mama was taking a sleeping draught at night, but if she was resorting to it in the daytime, that was worrying.
Her mother snatched back the vial as if it was a treasure she could not let go.
Harriet led her to an armchair before the hearth and urged her into it before sinking to the floor to sit at her feet. She dismissed the hovering maid with a nod and leaned against her mother’s knee, as she’d so often done as a little girl. “Please tell me what’s wrong, Mama,” she said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Harriet again took possession of her mother’s restless hands. “These last few days, you’ve been dreadfully upset.” She nearly added,Even more than you’ve been the whole time since we arrived here.But she decided against it.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Mama.” Harriet waited until her mother looked down and met her eyes. It took several minutes. “You have. It’s obvious.”
Her mother flinched as if threatened with a blow.
