Lord Harry's Folly by Catherine Coulter (good romance books to read TXT) 📗

trailed wearily up to her bedchamber. She lay very carefully down on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She thought of Jason Cavander’s manly command that she was never again to appear as Lord Harry. Still, no matter how much she just wanted to stare at him and kiss him, she couldn’t let him dictate to her. She knew what she had to do. She had to find out if Sir William Filey had indeed been responsible for Damien’s death. Nor could she turn her back upon poor Isabella’s plight. The thought of Sir William even being near Isabella made her ill. My motives are of the highest order, she told herself, and if the marquess goes into a snit, then so be it. Damn, why couldn’t gentlemen, the marquess in particular, not realize that they weren’t the sole guardians of honor and pride? Actually, truth be told, she hoped he didn’t really feel that way.

“You intend to do what?” Millie stared stupefied at her mistress the next afternoon when Hetty evenly informed her of her intention to invite Sir Harry and Mr. Scuddimore to dinner at Lord Harry’s lodgings.

“You heard me, Millie. If you don’t choose to accompany me to Thompson Street, I shall just have to go alone. But go I will. Lord Harry isn’t done yet. The marquess is innocent, but that leaves the man responsible still out there. I must get him.”

“But the marquess”

“To the devil with the marquess. I’m your mistress, and he has no say whatsoever in whatever I choose to do. Now, will you help me or no, Millie?”

Short of tying her mistress to a chair, Millie found that she had no alternative but to escort her to Lord Harry’s lodgings. When she tried to argue with her young mistress, she received only cold, uncommunicative stares.

Pottson served only to make Hetty want to strangle the man she was going to marry. “But no, Miss Hetty, the marquess told me that he would see to things now, that you were a young lady, after all, and you were still weak from the wound, and you would need to rest and remember how to wear your skirts again, and, well, he gave me strict orders to pack away Lord Harry’s belongings. He said that he was going to find out who was responsible for sending Master Damien away.”

Her hands were on her hips even though it made her side hurt more than necessary. “Oh, he did, did he? Well, he certainly has his nerve, doesn’t he?” Then she just grinned at Pottson. “All right, both of you. Lord Harry is still very much in existence, and it is I who will decide just when he will disappear from London. If you don’t obey me, I swear that I will go directly to White’s and yell the truth of this entire matter to the world. Just keep on with me and I’ll do it. Do either of you wish to take that chance?”

Millie glanced at Pottson. They knew they’d lost, but just for the moment. Hetty guessed that, at the first opportunity, Pottson would take himself to Jason’s town house and fill his ears with Miss Hetty’s obstinacy.

Although Hetty suspected that Pottson, after delivering her invitation to Sir Harry and Mr. Scuddimore, had paid a visit to the marquess, she didn’t question him, just stared at him coldly, making him feel the perfect traitor, she hoped.

As she vigorously pomaded down her blond curls and drew them severely back at the nape of her neck, she found herself wondering just how Sir Harry and Scuddy were going to react upon seeing her. They would have many questions, of that she was certain. I shall just have to take them as they come, she decided, as she pulled on her breeches. She directed a grunt of disgust at the thin body looking back at her from the mirror. If her breeches had been loose fitting before, now they positively hung. She heard a loud knocking on the outer door, and with a final glance at herself, she turned and strode from the room, hopeful that during her illness she hadn’t lost her masculine swagger.

“Good God,” Sir Harry said, clasping her hand and pumping it. “You’ve become a damned scarecrow. You still feeling pulled, old fellow?”

“Ho, Harry, it is only that I thought of you and became too ill to eat.” How strange it was that she had slipped back so easily into Lord Harry’s role.

“Well, Scuddy here ain’t the worse for wear. Ate like a man mountain, he did, in sympathy for you, at least that’s what he kept telling me.”

“I thank you, Scuddy. It’s good to be alive. It’s also good to see both of you again.”

“Well, we’re surprised to see you, Lord Harry,” Scuddy said.

“Surprised? Why? Did you believe I’d curl up my toes and pass to the hereafter?”

Sir Harry said, “What Scuddy means to say is that the Marquess of Oberlon informed Julien my brother-in-law, the Earl of March, you know that when you recovered from your wound you would be returning home. We’re dashed glad, though, that you returned to say goodbye before going back to that barbaric place.”

Damn him, she thought. It was nicely done. She said in a cool voice, “I’m not quite ready yet to say my farewells. It appears the marquess was a bit premature in announcing my leave-taking.” She turned before either Sir Harry or Mr. Scuddimore could offer any further comment and led the way to the table.

They were midway through the first course of a raised pheasant pie when Sir Harry asked her the inevitable question.

“I say, Lord Harry, will you tell us now just why the devil you forced the marquess to fight a duel?”

Hetty paused a moment and lifted her wineglass to her lips before saying with just the right dash of hauteur in her voice, “I certainly have no intention of telling you the cause of our disagreement. It wouldn’t