Lord Haversham Takes Command (10 page)

It took an unconscionable amount of time to reach the top of the stairs and the doors of the drawing room. However, Mira doubted there was a soul present who regretted the wait, for she stepped into the room just in time to witness how a gentleman in military red unwittingly snagged with his dress sword the hem of Lady Avery’s Greek Key robe. It was just what was needed for the punished seams of the too-small gown to give way altogether and collapse in snowy folds at her feet.

At the same time, there came a commotion from the floor below. It seemed a guest had entered the house and was so eager to reach the festivities that he pushed his way up the stairs, a circumstance that caused more than one guest to stumble with shrieks of dismay. As he stormed across the hall and threw open the doors, Lady Avery screamed with alarm and shouted, “Oh, Eustace, it is exactly like the Rape of the Sabine Women!” whereupon she collapsed gracefully into a pile of white silk and dried mud.

“My petal!” cried the newcomer, and with three long strides, he was at her side. Mira was amused to see how the men fell back and the women pressed forward to witness the scene. She was no exception and was vastly relieved to find that Lady Avery was entirely covered in the muddy substance that shielded her from almost utter nakedness. She was also glad to see that the guest who had burst on the scene was none other than Lord Avery and that he had the situation well in hand. It was clear he relished his role as rescuer as he whipped off his coat in a frenzy to protect his wife from prying eyes.

“There there, my love, did we not discuss how inadvisable it is for you to entertain without my knowledge?” He drew her towards the door, the crowd most pleased to give them a wide berth.

“Yes, Eustace, you have said so on many occasions, but Herbert asked if I would not throw him a party, and I could not say him nay,” she wailed as the dried mud cascaded from her skin like a shower of dying stars. “I so wanted to prove that I could be understated as well as elegant!”

“Understated, my foot!” exclaimed a woman with a formidable amount of gray hair piled high on her head and held in place with a garish enameled pin. She gave a tsk and turned away.

“If it weren’t for such scenes, I would never attend her parties,” another woman remarked to her neighbor, and they, too, turned their backs on the Averys as they made their humiliating progress across the room.

By the time Lord and Lady Avery had neared the door, every single one of the guests had cut dead their hostess with the exception of Mira and her mother who took Lady Avery’s free arm and went with them. At the landing they met their son as he obtained the top of the stairs. Mira could not fathom what he was thinking. His face was as inscrutable as a night with no moon, and he remained entirely silent as he followed his parents up the next set of stairs to their private rooms.

Mira hardly knew where to look. She burned with shame exactly as if she were the one whose gown had fallen in a puddle at her feet. She wondered if further disasters such as this were something she had to look forward to if she married Harry, for he had been present and catastrophe had not been averted as she had supposed. Worst of all, she wondered if enduring such social debacles on a regular basis would cause her to blame Harry or think less of him, or, even, love him less.

These were sobering thoughts indeed. When she felt a touch at her elbow and turned to see Harry, his face set in rigid lines even while his eyes beseeched her, Mira’s heart quaked within her.

“Harry, I … ” she began but could think of not one thing to say that would address both his pride and his pain all at once. The necessity of a cogent reply was made pointless when he dropped his gaze to the floor, executed a deep bow, and strode away. When he instructed the orchestra to play, and the strains of a waltz filled the room, she began to move towards him, determined to find the right words as they danced, but was brought up short when Harry stepped up to Lucy Sutherland and waltzed off with her in his arms.

Mira felt as if she had been slapped in the face. Lucy’s coy behavior towards Harry as they danced did nothing to mellow Mira’s feelings. A kind and genial girl, Lucy, if one were to judge by the alarming frequency with which she batted her lashes and wielded her fan, appeared to have had her head turned by the invitation to partner her host for the opening dance.

Mira, resolved to appear as if she hadn’t noticed and, furthermore, shouldn’t care a farthing if she had, joined a cluster of women in conversation but could not refrain from monitoring the proceedings from the corner of her eye.

When Lucy leaned in too close, quite purposefully brushing her bosom against Harry as he made some remark, Mira felt her own bosom heave with indignation. When Lucy emitted a trill of delight, Mira wished for nothing more than the opportunity to thrust her fan down the raven-haired beauty’s throat, the one with the fetching mole set against skin of alabaster white. When the music stopped, and Lucy joined Harry in a promenade about the room and twisted a glossy ringlet around and around her finger whilst giving him an arch smile, Mira nearly choked on the apple slice she had forced into her mouth.

Finally, music for the March began, and Mira was gratified when George entered the room and lost no time in claiming her hand for the dance. “I thought you would never arrive,” Mira said in a voice designed to rise gracefully above the music and into Harry’s ears.

George lifted a brow in surprise. “I am fortunate to find you unengaged. I had thought, surely, you would be on the dance floor this far advanced in the evening.”

“There was a bit of a
contretemps
tonight, and it delayed things,” Mira said, taking his proffered hand and all but dragging him onto the dance floor. “But all is well now.

“Of course,” George replied in a wry voice. “One might always count on a
contretemps
at an Avery event.”

Mira wanted to skewer him with her fan, but instead risked a glance at Harry who danced close enough to catch George’s remark. Harry, his jaw tight with tension, gave no other sign he had overheard the insult and bent his full attention on his partner who, to Mira’s annoyance, was once again the besotted Lucy.

The March seemed to go on forever. The fact that George was an admirable dancer, almost as skilled as Mira, did nothing to further her enjoyment. Try as she might, her gaze would stray over and over again to Harry and Lucy, and Mira was struck each time by how well they looked together. Lucy’s black hair and eyes and snow-white complexion were the perfect foil to Harry’s golden coloring, and it was clear that others in the room had noticed the same, the least of which was far from Lucy’s mother who blushed and nodded constantly as well wishers paid their compliments on her well-favored daughter. With a sigh, Mira tried to remember why it was she had been so eager to attend.

She was never so glad when a dance came to an end and looked forward to a rest when Harry caught her eye, made his bows to Lucy, and made his way to Mira’s side.

“I was hoping we might speak in private.”

“Of course, I was wishful of the same,” Mira said in a rush, as if he would walk away again if she wasn’t entirely clear that she wanted nothing more than to be with him.

“My apologies, Miss Crenshaw, I mean no disrespect, but I was addressing the Duke.”

She had forgotten that George still stood at her side, and, for the second time that evening, Mira was robbed of words. Why on earth should Harry wish to speak to George? She felt that something was quite wrong, and then there came a stir from the far end of the room. Lady Avery, adorned in a gold gown bearing puffed sleeves so large she was forced to hold her arms out at her sides, entered, remounted her plinth, and announced in a voice that sounded very much like doom: “I have returned.”

Chapter Ten

Harry was aghast. Why hadn’t his father kept his mother confined to her rooms? Surely one fit of fainting and nudity was enough for anyone’s evening. He wanted to drop his head into his hands; he yearned to sink into the floor; he wished his
mother
to sink into the floor, but, in spite of the intensity of his desires, none of these things transpired. After a moment of stunned silence, all returned to what had been: the orchestra resumed its melody, the couples returned to their dance, and Harry stood, stock still and silent, quite incapable of summoning a Bertie-like chuckle or
bon mots
to save his life.

The expression on George’s face proved that he thoroughly enjoyed Harry’s plight, but it was Mira’s reaction that undid him. She looked a question at him, her magnificent blue eyes sparkling with tears, and when he would not, or rather, could not, speak, she gave him a tremulous smile and walked away. Harry should have been glad of this chance to speak to George alone but knew his voice would betray him. Instead, he watched, his throat aching, as Mira approached his mother.

“Lady Avery,” she said, brightly. “Your gown is stunning! Wherever did you have it made? I must be sure to patronize her shop the next time I am in need of something quite this spectacular.”

“Oh, Miss Crenshaw!” his mother cried, bending towards Mira and clapping her hands.

Harry admired the deftness with which Mira dipped in order to avoid being clouted in the head with an enormous sleeve. He admired her sapphire blue eyes and the variety of colors that made up her fiery hair. He admired her kindness to his mother and longed to tell her so, but first he must deal with George and the missing orders. With an effort, he pulled himself away from the pleasant scene, cleared his throat, and returned his attention to the still-smirking Duke.

“She has a way with clothing, does she not?” George drawled.

“Yes,” Harry snipped, “though, they have been rather up and down of late.”

George raised a bewildered brow, and Harry realized the Duke had not been present during Lady Avery’s scene earlier that evening.

“It is of no consequence,” Harry said, momentarily thrown off balance. His plan to gauge where George’s loyalty lay through a carefully orchestrated conversation about the young Queen now seemed as transparent as his mother’s cries for attention. “Perhaps we had best retire to the library for a glass of something,” Harry suggested and led an inquisitive George out of the room. However, once they were ensconced on the sofa in the book-lined room, brandy snifters in hand, Harry still hadn’t any idea of how to initiate a conversation that would lead to the recovery of his missing orders.

The Duke swirled the brandy around in his glass and waited, while Harry, suddenly aware of how potentially dangerous his situation was, reminded himself of the letter he was duty bound to deliver, the failure of which might mean the life of the Queen.

George gave Harry a dubious look and sipped some of his drink. “Very smooth,” he said shortly, leaving Harry with the distinct impression the Duke did not refer to alcohol.

“I believe the best are meant to be,” Harry countered.

His guest took another sip and rolled it about his mouth. “There’s better out there.”

“Doubtless true, but none other so close to hand,” Harry replied with a careless shrug then cursed himself for having let slip the fact that he was entirely alone; unless, of course, it
were
brandy under discussion.

“One must contrive when the prize is so dear,” George drawled.

It was Harry’s turn to raise a brow. “I hadn’t known you cared so much. Should I count you an admirer?”

“What else should I be?” the young Duke asked. “It would hardly do to upset the apple cart at this point.”

His reply was non-committal at best, and Harry felt nowhere closer to the truth as to George’s loyalties to the Queen as he had at the outset. But were they discussing the Queen or were they still on the subject of Harry as a secret service agent? He stood and went to the credenza to pour another drink, this time mostly water.

“It’s not as if I don’t know what you’re up to,” George claimed.

Harry froze, the decanter of water in his hand, and shifted to block George’s view of the proceedings. “Whatever can you mean?”

“What else
can
I mean?” the Duke said with a snort. “You think yourself quite clever, I imagine.”

Harry, still unsure of exactly what was under discussion, suddenly thought of a means of finding out; when at Eton, George had quite the reputation for having no tolerance for liquor whatsoever. Harry took up the brandy and splashed a double into George’s snifter. “No, Your Grace, not clever. I’m simply a man with a mission.”

“Exactly what might that mission be?” George demanded.

“The pursuit of the best brandy, what else?” Harry replied and downed the contents of his snifter. Suspicious, George did the same. Harry poured the Duke a robust refill, then turned his back, and filled his own snifter once again with water.

“You can’t be serious!” George scoffed. “Get to the point and tell me what this is all about.”

“It’s about a lovely young woman,” Harry said.

“That tells me nothing,” George grumbled into his snifter. “There are more than a few of those about.”

Harry drank deeply of his water and continued. “One whose impending nuptials have caused a bit of a stir.”

“Your sham of a pretense makes me laugh,” George said, but it seemed the brandy was not a matter for derision for he held out his snifter for another.

Harry smiled, delighted in more ways than one. “The question is, are you for or against it?”

“For or against what?” the Duke demanded in a voice that had started to slur.

“The marriage!” Harry retorted.

“It depen’s on whom the bridegroom is, o’course,” George mumbled.

Harry allowed the brandy decanter to hover over George’s snifter. “German or French?”

George stared at the stream of brandy as it poured, glittering, into his snifter, his brow furrowed with concentration. “Neither!” he said emphatically.

Harry was taken aback. He was not aware there was a third option. Victoria could hardly marry a British prince, as there were none suitable to be had. A Russian prince would hardly be viewed as more favorable than a German one, and the prince of Sweden was already married, while the prince of Denmark had recently been through a scandalous divorce. No, he would never do.

Harry thought of the plan to assassinate the young Queen over her choice of bridegroom and decided to put the question to George that mattered most. “It’s certainly not a killing matter for you, though, is it? Am I wrong to believe that you, as Duke of Marcross, are above that sort of thing?”

“I’d put a bullet in anyone who got in my way,” George said with a slur of his words and a wave of his snifter that resulted in brandy sloshing up over the sides.

“Your Grace, I own I am a bit appalled,” Harry insisted as he attempted to fill up the Duke’s wildly bobbing snifter. “I’ve never seen you as a blood-thirsty man.”

“You said it yoursel’. I have my position to think of. I’m the youngest duke in the land. Were you aware of tha’, Haversham?” George asked and followed it up with a thorough draining of his snifter. “I shall be a peer of the realm for a long time to come and I shall have matters arranged to my satisfaction. Mine!” he said, hammering his chest with his free hand.

“But what of her wishes? Hasn’t she the right to marry whom she chooses?” Harry demanded.

“No,” George said as he wagged his head back and forth in exaggerated arcs. “Too young. She don’t know by half what’s suitable. Women need a firm hand to guide them,” he managed to say just before he slid down the length of the leather sofa and dropped his snifter on the floor with a distinct tinkle of breaking glass.

Harry set down his own glass and began a thorough inspection of George’s pockets; with any luck he had brought the paper with him rather than having left it unattended at home. Harry felt a surge of excitement when the crackle of vellum assailed his ears and a deep sense of relief when he had spread it open and verified that it was indeed his missing orders.

Harry was not as cheerful about his instructions, however. He was expected to keep the letter meant to accompany these orders under close guard as he retired to Dover to await further orders, most likely to board ship for parts unknown. How could he leave Mira now, with so much unsaid between them? Besides, he could hardly protect Mira from George if he left London. It would prove difficult to protect the Queen from George if he left Dover as well, but his orders were clear, and Harry was already nearly twenty-four hours behind in their execution.

He put the paper outlining his orders in the flames of the fireplace and removed all signs of the spree of drunken depravity he forced upon George, whom Harry settled more comfortably upon the sofa before he quit the room. His thoughts were dark and full of despair until he recalled Cedars, his country house along the Marine Parade in Dover, the one that came with the title, Viscount Haversham. It wasn’t of his own comfort he thought; Cedars was large and sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the perfect setting for a house party. He would invite the Crenshaws, including the shifty Duke, and keep everyone as close as possible until his next orders arrived.

However, this plan presented a bit of a poser when it came to Harry’s mother. He had no hope at all whatsoever that she would feel disinclined to attend such an event. What new horrors awaited his guests under the roof at Cedars with Lady Avery in attendance? And what of Mira? Would she ever agree to be his viscountess if he couldn’t find his mother a more suitable means through which to acquire the constant attention she craved?

He caught a strain of music from the drawing room and remembered how hopeful he had felt about this ball, one which should have included making amends to Mira. Instead, he had danced with another girl and stood by and watched as Mira tended to his mother. How kind Mira had been! How erratic he must seem in her eyes! The retrieval of his orders was paramount, and the reason for his impromptu party in the first place, however, Harry couldn’t help but feel that he had left his true work for last and went in search of the one who meant most to him in the world.

When he returned to the drawing room, he expected to find Mira, an excellent dancer, making the most of a contradanse. Instead, he spotted her seated in a corner across the room in conversation with his mother. He had always known Mira to be as beautiful as she was intelligent, however, at this moment the beauty of her benevolence outshone even the sapphire of her eyes. As he witnessed her tender ministrations to his mother, he was gripped with a sudden, intense, and all-encompassing sensation; he must make Mira Crenshaw his own. She was much more than he had ever supposed, and he wasn’t worthy to so much as buckle her shoe; nevertheless, he vowed then and there that he would not rest until this kind-hearted, generous-spirited girl was plaited, inexorably, to his side.

So deep in conversation were Mira and his mother that they appeared startled when he presented himself and executed a deep bow. “Mother, should I be a boor if I were to claim Miss Crenshaw’s hand for the next dance?” he asked with what he feared was a besotted grin, one impossible to suppress.

“Of course, Herbert,” his mother replied, “but I do not like being deprived of her company for so long,” she added with a moue.

“Then I trust you comprehend my current state of devastation,” he replied. His look of intense longing was for Mira alone, who blushed and looked hastily away.

Lady Avery, whom Harry had rarely seen so happy and relaxed, rapped him on the arm with her fan and uttered a tsk. “You really should be less neglectful!” she insisted, but whether her admonition was for her own sake or Mira’s, he could not guess.

“I cannot deny the truth of that,” he said and drew up a chair to join them until the next dance, which, by his calculations, should be another waltz. “I find I am in need of a rest,” he mused.

“And to think, you have danced but the once!” Mira quipped.

“If it please you, I intend to dance the rest of the evening,” he said as clearly as he dared, for he knew not whether she would refuse all other partners and he would not dance at all if it could not be with her. “But it is not to dancing that I refer. My years of travel have made me long for a respite at the seashore.”

Mira gave him an arch look. “I would not have thought rusticating in Italy and France so tedious a prospect.”

Harry knew he deserved her censure but pressed on. “My months abroad were surprisingly eventful, though not in the way you might suppose,” he hastened to add upon noting her frown. “I occupied myself greatly in the learning of languages, as well as the development of skills I had not the time to acquire as a schoolboy.”

“Well, I should love a respite at the seashore above all things!” Lady Avery remarked with her usual enthusiasm. “Though I am persuaded it depends upon whom our hostess shall be.”

“I thought to invite a great number of guests to Cedars and make it a regular house party; you might be my hostess, Mother, if you are up to it.”

“Me? Your hostess?” she asked with a flurry of tiny claps. “In that, case, I know I shall have a lovely time! I am such an excellent hostess,” she remarked in an aside to Mira, “and am sure to treat myself with the deference owed my station.”

Harry noted the flash of surprise that crossed Mira’s face and hastened to explain. “Cedars is my country house in Dover. Mother would doubtless enjoy more rest were she to remain in London, nevertheless, I was persuaded once she learned of my plans she would insist on being in attendance. Now, Mother, I promise not to expect of you more than you are able. Perhaps Miss Crenshaw shall take pity on you and be an arm to lean on in a pinch,” he proposed, fully aware of the risk he took.

“I should be delighted to assist Lady Avery in any way possible,” Mira replied but Harry detected the hesitance in her voice. It was then that the contradanse came to an end, and the babble that always arose on such an occasion filled the air.