AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Anyone would. You mustn’t…play any of your tricks.”
“I was only funning, Mrs. Finch,” said Sarah. “Any man Harriet has chosen must be wonderful. Her standards are so high.” She smiled at Harriet.
Her friends had teased her about this during the season. They hadn’t understood what it was like to be a newfound heiress, tossed into the marriage mart like a fox among the hounds.Sarahhad never been courted with blatant calculation or totted up like a column of numbers. During her time in London, Harriet had seen so many varieties of greed—desperate, arrogant, pathetic, relentless. Smiles and flowery compliments might hide mercenary motives for a while, but something had always revealed the grubby truth in her town suitors. Her rogue earl had shown no trace of that, another mark in his favor and reason for her heart to ache.
“Your grandfather must be pleased,” Charlotte said to her. “An earl.”
“Yes.” Harriet had never been on the opposite side of one of Charlotte’s probes. Her friend’s tenacity, which she’d always admired, was less pleasing now that Harriet was a mystery herself. “Shall we have some tea?” she asked.
Her mother frowned at her. “You should show them to their rooms, Harriet. They will want to settle in. They haven’t even taken off their bonnets.”
At any other visit, she would have been eager to get her friends alone for a good talk. This time, it would be more like an interrogation.
“I should like to see my room,” replied Charlotte, confirming her conclusions.
Harriet gave in. The questions had to come. And shewantedto tell her friends what had happened. She just didn’t want them to think ill of her.
“All right, what’s going on?” asked Charlotte as soon as they were alone in her bedchamber. “Did your grandfather force you into this engagement?”
Sarah gaped at her, then turned to Harriet.
“How could he?” Harriet asked.
“By threatening to change his will again,” replied Charlotte impatiently. “That’s the sort of thing tyrannical old people do. And he is among the most tyrannical.”
They knew her too well. She hadn’t fooled Charlotte in a long time. “Let us sit down at least.”
Bonnets, gloves, and shawls were shed. Sarah and Charlotte took armchairs, and Harriet sat on the bed. It might have been any cozy afternoon in the past six years. But it wasn’t.
“It all began with a rogue,” said Harriet.
Charlotte frowned.
“Soon after we arrived here, I walked over to Ferrington Hall, which I supposed to be empty. I wanted to see the place because Lady Wilton had made such a mystery of her missing relative.”
Her friends nodded, perfectly in harmony with this mission.
“I found a…fellow lurking about there. I thought he was from the Travelers’ camp nearby. Perhaps planning to rob the place. But he didn’t seem just like them, and…”
“He turned out to be the missing earl,” said Charlotte with the air of one cutting to the chase.
Harriet nodded.
“How did you know that?” asked Sarah.
“It is a simple logical progression,” Charlotte said. “An unidentified gentleman surveying the hall. An heir gone missing. Harriet centering her tale on this person. Who is he likely to be?”
“Easy to see in retrospect,” Harriet commented acidly. “As many things are.”
“I expect it was not so clear at the time,” said Sarah.
“Precisely.”
“Because Harriet was falling in love with him,” Charlotte replied. “I’ve noticed love clouds one’s perceptions to a marked degree. It is sad to see.”
“I wasn’t.” But she had been, Harriet acknowledged. When he was the rogue. Her plans for a free-wheeling future flitted through her mind.
“All very obvious,” finished Charlotte in her most superior tone.
