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“I shall behave with propriety…”
“You’ll flutter your eyelashes and bring him to heel. You can’t throw away an opportunity like this.” His mouth went hard. “Unless you want to be cut off and sent back where you came from.”
Harriet’s mother made a distressed sound.
“Titled gentlemen don’t want to marry vulgar romps,” Harriet replied. A memory of dancing around the fire at the Travelers’ camp flashed through her mind. But that romp hadn’t been vulgar. It had been…joyous. Then. She dismissed an ache from the region of her heart.
Something like a growl escaped her grandfather. He would not be contradicted. He turned on the easier target. “It’s up to the mother to push matches forward, is it not? You must be less useless, Linny.”
“Mama is not useless!” cried Harriet. Although her mother’s cowering posture didn’t support her point.
Her grandfather looked at them sourly, like a man who’d made a bad bargain in the market. “Between the two of you, surely you can find some way to bring this off.”
Harriet stood straight and cold and stared him right in the eye. He scowled at her for another long moment, then turned on his heel and left.
“Oh, Harriet.”
“Don’t begin, Mama!”
“You always make him angry.”
“Imakehim…”
“You must make a push. You heard what he said.”
“So you would have me fling myself at this…stranger to satisfy Grandfather? Like some shameless hussy?”
“You cantry. You scarcely spoke to the earl today. You might like him very well when you get to know him. He seemed perfectly charming. Not particularly handsome of course, but …”
“He is,” popped out of Harriet before she could stop it. She bit off the words.
“But beside the Duke of Tereford, any man would look commonplace,” her mother continued. “You need only make an effort, Harriet.”
Somehow it was always up to her to make the effort, to adjust and change. “He may have no interest in me at all.” She knew this wasn’t true. But whatwashis interest, precisely? Why had he stared so?
“Why wouldn’t he?” Her mother frowned at her. “You’re quite pretty and intelligent and sweet-natured. When you wish to be. I’m sure you can capture his interest if you exert yourself.”
She’d dreamed of running away with Jack the Rogue, leaving the constrictions and shameful inequalities of English society behind. Now that man was gone, as if a magician’s wand had passed over him and left behind a new-minted earl. And she was expected to marry him simply because hewasan earl. Her family cared about nothing else. Not his true character. Not her feelings. Or Ferrington’s. What did he feel? No one was making any mention of love.
“You will try, won’t you, Harriet?” asked her mother.
No, she would not! Her grandfather could rant and rave until he turned blue, she would not be pushed.
“Because if you won’t, I don’t know what will become of us,” her mother added in a quavering voice.
Harriet turned and saw that Mama had begun crying. Her handkerchief was a crushed wad in one hand. Her cherished embroidery had fallen to the floor. She was the picture of misery. And of…defeat. She looked utterly defeated.
Going to comfort her, Harriet tried to think what she should do. There had to be something, some way out. But at the moment, she couldn’t see it.
Eight
Jack sat in one of the little-used parlors at Ferrington Hall and thought about the vapid nature of society—capital-S society, which was, as far as he could see, a system for gathering people in a room to chatter about trivialities while they smugly excluded other people, of course. No wonder they called itexclusive. They made a great production of leaving people out and then looking down on those scheming and clawing to be invited. Actually convincing them to bother to scheme and claw, somehow. He wondered how many of those who succeeded found their coveted acceptance a dead bore.
He pulled at the fashionable neckcloth, which seemed to grow tighter by the hour, threatening to choke the life out of him. It had been maddening to sit in these borrowed garments a few feet from Harriet Finch and be unable to really speak to her. He’d wanted to pull her to her feet, rush her from the stifling chamber out into the air, and talk as they used to in the Travelers’ camp. That really had been an idyll, he saw now. They would not have such freedom again. There, he would have been able to explain everything. He was certain of it. Now, he wasn’t sure what to do.
She was still angry with him. The looks she’d shot his way had shown it. She didn’t understand. Jack almost wished Lady Wilton would show up here. If Miss Finch heard how the old lady talked to him, her venom, she would understand what had driven him to hide his identity. And he’d always meant to tell her the truth. Circumstances had conspired against him. And his own foot-dragging, yes, all right. Jack frowned unseeing at a painting on the wall.
The chamber door opened, and the Duchess of Tereford looked in. “There you are,” she said. “Why are you sitting in this room?”
