Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Lord Havelock's List\Saved by the Viking Warrior\The Pirate Hunter (4 page)

‘Well, we'll just have to get to know each other then, won't we?'

Oh, dear. Did he mean to ask her a lot of highly personal questions? Or expect her to come up with some witty banter, or start flirting like the other women? That's what came of throwing a man even the tiniest conversational sop. She'd made him think she was interested in
getting to know
him.

‘What,' he said abruptly, ‘do you think about climbing boys?'

‘I beg your pardon? Climbing boys?'

‘Yes. The little chaps they send up chimneys.'

All of a sudden, the odd things he said, and the abrupt way he said them reminded her very forcibly of her own brother's behaviour, when confronted by a female to whom he was not related. He was trying his best, but this was clearly a man who was more at ease in the company of other men. Lord Havelock had no more idea how to talk to a single lady than she had as to how to amuse an eligible male.

He was staring at his plate now, a dull flush mounting his cheeks, as though he knew he'd just raised a topic that was not at all suitable for a dinner table, let alone what was supposed to be the delicate sensibilities of a female.

And once again, she felt...not sorry for him. No, not that. But willing to meet his attempts to entertain her halfway. For he was exerting himself to a considerable extent. A thing no other male she'd ever encountered had ever even
considered
doing. And though men did not usually want to hear what a woman thought, he had asked, and so she girded up her loins to express her opinion. It wasn't as if she was ever likely to see him again, so what did it matter if he
was
offended by it?

‘It is a cruel practice,' she said. ‘I know chimneys have to be cleaned, but surely there must be a more humane way? I hear there are devices that can produce results that are almost as good.'

‘Devices,' he said, turning to her with a curious expression.

‘For cleaning chimneys.'

‘Really? I had no idea.'

‘Oh? But then why did you ask me about them?'

His brows drew down irritably.

‘I beg your pardon,' she said hastily, hanging her head meekly. Whatever had possessed her to question him? How could she have forgotten the way her father had reacted should her mother have ever dared to question his motive for saying
anything
, no matter how absurd?

There was a moment's awkward pause. She darted him a wary glance to find he'd folded his arms across his chest and was glaring at his plate as though he was contemplating sweeping it, and its contents, from the table before storming off.

A kind of dim terror crept over her. A mist rising up from her past. Her own appetite fled. She pleated her napkin between nervous fingers, fighting to stay calm. He couldn't very well backhand her out of the chair, she reminded herself. Not even her father had taken such drastic action, when she'd angered him, not in public, at any rate.

No—Lord Havelock was more likely to return her to her chaperon in frosty silence and vow never to have anything to do with her again.

She felt him shift in his seat, next to her. ‘Entirely my fault,' he growled between clenched teeth. ‘No business bringing such a topic up at a dinner table. Cannot think what came over me.'

The mist shredded, blasted apart by the shock wave of his apology. She turned and stared at him.

‘I dare say you can tell that I'm just not used to conversing with...ladies.'

Good grief. Not only had he apologised, but he, a
man
, had admitted to having a fault.

‘I...I'm not very good at it myself. Not conversing with ladies, obviously, I can do that. I meant, conversing with members of the opposite...' She floundered on the precipice of uttering a word that would be an even worse
faux pas
than mentioning the grim reality of chimney sweeps.

And then he smiled.

A rather devilish smile that told her he knew exactly which word she'd almost said.

With an unholy light in his eyes that sent awareness of her own sex flooding from the pit of her stomach to the tips of her toes.

Chapter Three

‘S
o you found your mouse,' remarked Morgan, as they strode out into the night.

‘I've found a young lady who appears to meet many of my requirements,' Havelock testily corrected him. He hadn't been able to believe his luck when the bashful creature he'd had to coax out from behind her potted plant had admitted to being an orphan.

‘The only problem is,' he said with a scowl, ‘the very things I like most about her make it devilish difficult to find out what her character is really like.'

‘How so?'

‘Well, it was damn near impossible to pry more than a couple of words out of her at a time.' To think he'd congratulated himself on so deftly separating her from her more exuberant cousins, only to come unstuck at the dinner table.

‘I made a complete cake of myself.' He sighed. She wasn't like the girls he was used to sitting with at such events. Girls who either flirted, or threw out conversational gambits intended to impress and charm. She'd left all the work to him. And he discovered he was a very poor hand at it. In his determination to delve to the heart of her, he'd asked the kind of questions that had both puzzled and alarmed her.

Climbing boys, for God's sake! Who in their right minds asked a gently reared girl about such a deplorable topic? Over a supper table?

Though in fairness to Miss Carpenter, she'd swiftly rallied and given an answer of which he could heartily approve. And shown her head wasn't stuffed with goose down. Devices for sweeping chimneys, eh? Where could she have heard about them? If they even existed.

‘You know,' said Morgan as they turned in the direction of their club, ‘either of her cousins would be only too glad to get an offer from you. Wouldn't be so much work, either. That's why I made them known to you. Family not that well off, eager to climb the social ladder. Have known them some time, so I can vouch for them both being good girls, at heart.'

‘No, thank you,' said Havelock firmly, recalling the way they'd fluttered and preened the moment they heard he had a title. ‘Miss Carpenter is the one for me.'

‘Very well,' said Morgan with a shrug. ‘Perhaps you will get a chance to discover more about her when we go and visit her tomorrow.'

‘Perhaps,' he said gloomily. He wished now that he
had
been more in the petticoat line. Had more experience with plumbing the depths of women's natures. He'd plumbed other depths, naturally, to the satisfaction of both parties involved, but had always avoided anything that smacked of emotion. The moment a woman started to seem as though she wanted to get ‘close', he'd dropped her like a hot potato.

He'd thought it was safer.

And it had been. Not one of them had ever managed to get under his skin. The trouble was, keeping himself heart whole had left him woefully unprepared for the most important task of his life.

* * *

‘Good morning, my lord,' gushed Mrs Pargetter.

Havelock favoured her with his most courtly bow. If he was going to be frequenting these premises, he needed to be on good terms with the hostess.

Miss Carpenter's cousins, whose names escaped him for the moment, fluttered at him from their strategic locations on two separate sofas, indicating their willingness to have him join them. Or Morgan. The hussies didn't appear to mind which.

Miss Carpenter, on the other hand, was sitting on a straight-backed chair by the window, looking very much as though she would like to disappear behind the curtains.

Morgan made straight for the younger chit, so he went and sat beside the elder. He'd paid this kind of duty visit to dance partners, the day after a ball, before. But he'd never realised how frustrating they could be if a fellow was serious about pursuing a female. You couldn't engage in meaningful conversation with teacups and macaroons being thrust under your nose every five minutes. Not that he'd had much success in the field of conversation when he
had
got her to himself.

‘We hope you will permit us to take your lovely daughters out tomorrow,' Morgan was saying. Havelock scowled. He didn't want to take either of
them
anywhere.

The girls looked at each other. Then their heads swivelled towards the window where Mary was sitting.

‘And you, too, Miss Carpenter, of course,' said Havelock, taking his cue from them. Morgan had been right. Man-hungry they might be, but they weren't totally ruthless in their pursuit of prey. They were willing to offer Miss Carpenter a share in their spoils.

‘Oh, no,' said Miss Carpenter, blushing. ‘Really, I don't think...'

‘Nonsense, Mary,' said her aunt briskly. ‘It will do you the world of good to get out in the fresh air.'

Her brows rose in disbelief. Since rain was lashing at the windowpane, he could hardly blame her.

‘It isn't really the season for driving in the park, now, is it,' said Morgan with just a hint of a smile. ‘I was thinking more in the lines of visiting somewhere like Westminster Abbey.'

Westminster Abbey? Was the fellow mad? Walking about looking at a bunch of grisly tombs? How was he going to find out anything, except whether the girl knew her kings and queens, by taking her to Westminster Abbey?

‘It is so kind of you,' said the girl he was sitting next to, with a flutter of eyelashes up at Morgan, ‘to think of taking us all out to see the sights. And Mary would love that, wouldn't you, Mary? She hasn't seen anything of London at all.'

Before Miss Carpenter had the chance to voice her horror at the prospect of being dragged out on an expedition to examine a lot of mouldering tombs, the door flew open and a boy, who looked as if he was about eight or nine years old, and was covered in flour, burst in.

‘Mother, Mother, you have to come see...'

‘Will, how many times have I told you,' shrieked Mrs Pargetter, ‘not to come barging in here when we have callers?'

At the same moment, Miss Carpenter leapt from her chair and cut off his headlong dash into the room by dint of grabbing him about the waist.

She alone of the four women in the room was smiling at him.

‘You're all over flour, Will,' she pointed out as he looked up at her in bewilderment. ‘You don't want to spoil your sisters' pretty clothes, do you?'

She didn't seem to care about her own clothes, though. There was a little boy-shaped smudge on her skirts and a white handprint on her sleeve.

‘No, 'spose not,' he said grudgingly, rubbing his twitching nose with the back of one hand, making him twice as likely to sneeze. ‘But you've just got to see...'

‘Come on,' said Mary, taking his dough-encrusted hand in hers. ‘You can show
me
whatever it is that's got you so fired up. And later, when these visitors have gone, I'm sure your mama will want to see, as well.'

The boy glared at him, then at Morgan, then turned his floury little nose up at his sisters, as though roundly condemning them for considering the state of their clothes more important than whatever exciting development had occurred in the kitchens.

‘Oh, thank you, Mary,' said her aunt.

‘Not at all,' she replied, with what looked suspiciously like heartfelt relief.

* * *

‘Did you see that?' he asked Morgan later, as they were going down the front steps. ‘Her reaction to the floury boy?'

‘Indeed I did,' he replied. ‘Another item on your list ticked off. Or two, perhaps. She's not totally selfish and appears to be kind to children. Unless...well, I suppose she could have been using the child to make her escape.'

‘Blast.' He peered out from under the front porch into the teeming rain. ‘She might not have been thinking of the child at all. She might have just wanted an excuse to bolt. And she might well have given him a good scolding for spoiling her gown, once she was safely out of our sight. You see, that's the trouble with women. They put on a mask in public that makes you think they have the nature of an angel, but it comes straight off when they think nobody's watching. If only there was some way I could be sure of getting a genuine reaction from her.'

‘Our trip to the Abbey tomorrow would be a perfect opportunity,' said Morgan as they dashed across the pavement into his waiting carriage, ‘to set up some kind of scene,' he said, wrenching open the door, ‘where she will be obliged to react without thinking too much about it.'

In the time it took Lord Havelock to get into the carriage as well and slam the door on the filthy weather, he'd gone from wanting to tell Morgan he hadn't been serious—for what kind of man deliberately set a trap to expose a lady's faults?—to realising that too much was riding on his making a successful match, in the shortest possible time, for him to take the conventional route.

So when Morgan said, ‘Best if you leave the details to me', he raised no objection.

‘I'll stage something that will take you as much by surprise as her,' said Morgan. ‘So that if she's clever enough to work out what's afoot, the blame will fall upon me, not you.'

‘That's...very decent of you,' he said. And then wondered why Morgan was being so helpful. They'd only met, properly, a couple of nights ago. And Morgan had sneered, and mocked, and generally behaved as though he'd taken him in immediate dislike.

‘What's your lay, Morgan?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I mean, why are you so keen to get involved in my affairs?'

‘Just what are you accusing me of?'

‘Don't know. That's the thing. But it seems dashed smoky to me. When you consider that Chepstow, a man I've known all my life, skipped town rather than risk getting tangled with females intent on marriage.'

‘You can't know that. He could have left town for any number of reasons.'

‘He's running scared,' Havelock insisted. ‘He would have bolted from the club after foisting me on to Ashe, if he'd thought he could get away with it.'

Morgan looked out of the window. Sighed. Looked back at Havelock. Lifted his chin so that when he spoke, he did so down his nose.

‘I have a sister,' he said defiantly. ‘Who is of an age to get married. And I would walk over hot coals rather than see her married to a man like you.'

‘A man like me?' His voice came out rapier sharp. ‘What, precisely, do you mean by that?' He was from one of the oldest families in the land. Everyone knew him. He was welcome everywhere. Not a scandalous word had ever been whispered about him.

Except, perhaps, about the duels he'd fought.

Though he'd fought them over matters of honour, not
dis
honour.

‘A man,' said Morgan in an equally chilling tone, ‘who won't love his wife. The last thing I want is for my sister to get drawn into a loveless marriage.'

‘Oh.' He shrugged. ‘That puts a different complexion on the matter. I have a sister myself. Well, half-sister, to be precise. But even so, I would walk over hot coals for her.' In fact, that was very nearly what he was doing.

‘So you see why I'm keen to get you off the marriage mart, before she comes to town?'

‘Oh, absolutely. Would do the same myself, if I thought Julia was in danger of getting tangled up with an unsuitable man. Like a shot.'

They nodded at each other with grudging respect.

‘Westminster Abbey, though? Really, Morgan, could you not have thought of somewhere a little more conducive to courtship?'

Morgan's craggy face relaxed into something resembling a smile. ‘You are the only one thinking in terms of courtship. I have no intention of taking a risk with either of those Pargetter girls. But it will be out of the wind and rain, at all events. And large enough that our two parties may drift apart...'

‘So that I can get Miss Carpenter to myself while you play the elder off against the younger,' he said. ‘Morgan, you're as cunning as a fox.'

‘Not really,' he said diffidently. ‘Just well versed in the ways of women. I have,' he added with a wry twist to his mouth, ‘
two
half-sisters, and a stepsister under my guardianship. There's not much you can tell me about tears and tantrums, scenes staged to persuade me to do something against my better judgement, campaigns designed to wear a man down...'

‘I get the picture,' he said with an appreciative shudder. ‘You clearly know exactly how the female mind works.' And thank God for it. And for Morgan's willingness to see him safely married before his own sister came to town for her Season.

* * *

‘Come
on
, Mary,' Dotty urged. ‘That's Mr Morgan and Lord Havelock knocking on the front door now and you haven't even chosen which bonnet you're going to wear.'

The girls, determined they should all look their best for this outing with the most eligible men it had ever been their good fortune to come across, had spent the previous evening, and the best part of this morning, ransacking their wardrobe for items to lend Mary.

‘The brown velvet,' said Lotty firmly, ramming the bonnet on to Mary's head. ‘Sober colour, to suit your sense of what you should be wearing for mourning, yet the bronze satin rose just takes the plainness off. And if you say you don't care what you look like one more time,' she said, tying the ribbons deftly under her chin, ‘I shall go off into strong hysterics.'

There was no arguing with the sisters. And if she persisted, she was afraid she was going to take the shine off their own pleasure in the outing.

Resigned to her fate, Mary trailed the girls down the stairs, hanging back while they launched themselves with great gusto, this time, at
both
of the gentlemen who'd come to take them out.

For Mr Pargetter, upon hearing Lord Havelock's name, had divulged that though he was only a viscount, and never likely to be an earl, he was very well-to-do.

While that information had sent his daughters into raptures, it had just made Mary wonder, again, what on earth he'd been doing at such an unfashionable event as the Crimmers' annual Advent ball. If he was as wealthy as Mr Pargetter thought, he couldn't have been searching for an heiress. She peered up at him, perplexed, as he handed her into the carriage. Could he possibly be thinking of going into politics? Perhaps he'd decided to mingle with the kind of men whose votes he would have to canvass and find out what they thought about various issues. Climbing boys, for instance.