The Maiden At Midnight (4 page)

Harry stared at his friend frowningly for a
moment, then followed him through the adjoining door. Joss had
hired a small suite comprising a bedchamber and a parlor.
Unconsciously, he mimicked his friend, moving as quietly as he
could. Sure enough, on the bed was a still figure that was
unmistakably feminine. It was dim, thanks to the drawn curtains but
he could see the pale outline of a face and the gleam of golden
hair upon the pillow.

He glanced at Joss, bewildered. A sleeping
Miss Piedmont, as opposed to a conscious Miss Piedmont hardly
seemed worthy of note. Joss shook his head, gesturing Harry closer
and he moved forward reluctantly. It felt quite wrong to be spying
on a female in such circumstances, asleep in a bed. Rather
voyeuristic, actually. When he was close enough to see her properly
in the room’s shadows, however, his gaze sharpened and he drew a
swift breath. It was, undoubtedly, a very pretty face that lay on
the pillow. Pale skin, crescent lashes dark half moons against the
gentle curve of her cheeks. Her hair was spread across the pillow,
a wave of soft golden curls. But there was something very wrong
with the picture, never the less. Joss’s’ hand gripped his shoulder
hard and Harry swallowed the words that had threatened to spill
out.

Both men turned and hurried quickly from the
room, Joss pulling the door shut until it was no more than
ajar.

Harry turned to stare at
his friend incredulously. ‘Where is Miss Piedmont? And, more
particularly,
who the devil is
that
?’

Joss winced. ‘Her name is Isabella
Hathaway.’

Harry cocked his head, trying to place it.
The name Hathaway certainly sounded familiar but he was drawing a
blank with the girl. ‘With a face like that, Isabella Hathaway is
to be congratulated. But why is she here?’

‘I… Well, the thing is, I took the wrong
girl.’ Joss looked at his friend uneasily.

Harry’s jaw dropped. He
felt it happen but was helpless to stop it. ‘Wait a minute…
you
took
the
wrong
girl
?’

‘Keep your voice down! Believe me, you don’t
want to wake Miss Hathaway up. She’s a positive virago with a
tongue like a serpent. I felt its sting through the early hours of
the morning more than once.’

Harry struggled to get his head around the
situation but it felt like a losing battle. It had been bad enough
when he had thought that Joss had actually gone ahead with his
scheme to marry Alora Piedmont but now, it seemed, he had taken the
wrong female. How that had come about was anybody’s guess. Harry
ran a hand through his own hair, his agitation rising as he
absorbed the consequences of Joss’s’ folly.

‘This is… dear God, this is
catastrophic!’

‘I know. I need to know how to set things to
rights.’

Harry glanced at Joss, bemused. ‘But how did
you come to take the wrong girl?’

Joss sighed. He looked entirely wretched.
‘Red domino, blue dress. And she was talking to that ghastly woman.
I assumed it was Alora.’

‘You did not
check
?’

‘Deuce take it, how was I supposed to check?
I got her through the door and then stuck a bag on her head.’

‘You… bladders and balls,
Joss, you stuck a
bag
on her head?’

‘Well I had to. I didn’t want her seeing
what was going on, now did I?’

Harry couldn’t think of anything to say to
this. Fortunately, there came a knock at the door, leaving him time
to regroup.

Joss frowned. ‘Now who the devil is
that?’

‘Breakfast,’ Harry said absently, ‘I ordered
downstairs.’

‘Oh, good. I’m starving. Didn’t think of
food. I’ll probably feel better after a bite or two.’ He went over
to the door and found the landlord, accompanied by a kitchen maid,
standing in the corridor holding trays. He invited them in and they
laid food out on the table. Harry watched in fascination as dishes
were deposited on the table, his mind going round in circles. The
landlord peered around furtively, no doubt seeking the whereabouts
of the ‘young lady’ that he had spoken of. Clearly he believed
there was some salacious assignation going on and Harry grimaced
inwardly. How fortunate it was that Joss had selected some out of
the way place. Anywhere a little more populous and the gossip would
spread like wildfire. Joss took a chair and began to help himself
to slices of roast beef. A jug of ale had been provided as well as
a pot of tea. He glanced at the ale and shuddered, looking up at
Harry enquiringly. ‘Aren’t you having anything?’

Harry came forward and sank down in the
chair opposite. He waited until the door closed on the landlord
before speaking again. ‘So, let me just go over this again. You
kidnapped the wrong girl. Just as a matter of interest, when did
you happen to notice your error?’ He took several slices of roast
beef himself. It looked particularly good, as did the sausages and
eggs so he took some of those as well. A disaster might have taken
place but there was no need to starve one’s self and everybody knew
that a head thought better on a full stomach.

Joss grimaced. ‘In the carriage. She kicked
me in the… well, let us just say, I could not bring myself to
believe Alora – who is quite shy and retiring for all her beauty –
could behave in such a way. Oh… and she did not sound right at all.
As soon as I had the bag off, I knew I’d made a mistake.’

‘I’m sure. And, having realized that you had
made a mistake, why did you not return the creature back to where
you’d found her?’

‘I should have,’ Joss confessed, ‘I did
think of it. But she was making such an unholy racket I thought it
would be prudent to take her somewhere and let her calm down. I
mean, I could hardly return a hysterical woman back to Lady
Darnley’s party, now could I? A man would have looked like a
complete fool. Besides, she was calling for the hangman by then. I
was pretty much convinced that I’d be in Queer Street if I took her
back.’

‘And you were drunk,’ Harry suggested,
spearing a smoked haddock.

‘There was that. I suppose I wasn’t thinking
clearly.’

‘You are a master of understatement.’

‘That’s all very well but I need to know
what to do. How am I going to get out of this mess?’

‘You can’t. You wanted a marriage and now
you’re getting one. Miss… what did you say her name was?’

‘Isabella Hathaway.’

‘Right; Miss Hathaway. The only thing you
can do is to proceed with your original plan. Admittedly, it’s the
wrong girl but a marriage is a marriage. That blasted entail will
be broken and you’ll be set to rights once again.’

‘Two things wrong with that plan,’ Joss said
moodily, biting into a slice of crisp bacon.

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t actually want to be riveted to this
one. I had my eye on Miss Piedmont for a reason, you know. She’s…
well, she’s rather fine.’

Harry stared at him for a long moment,
taking this in. He had not realized that the earl’s affections had
been any way engaged. He’d just assumed that Joss had selected a
girl to fulfill his needs more or less at random. It’s how he
usually managed his affairs. ‘We’ll come back to that in a moment.
And the second point?’

‘I don’t get any money until a twelfth month
after my marriage,’ Joss admitted unhappily.

‘Excuse me? Why did I not know of this?’

Joss shrugged. ‘It’s just another
inconvenient covenant placed upon me by my wretched father. I am
allowed to take control of my fortune exactly a year and a day
after my marriage. Honestly, the man did not trust me at all Harry.
His will was a veritable sermon about what a scandalous young
wastrel I am.’

‘I seem to recall he revised it after you
were tossed out of Oxford for setting fire to the Dean’s quarters
while drunk. The same time he had to pay off that actress who
claimed to be carrying your bastard -’

‘It wasn’t mine!’

‘And this was at the
same
time -’

‘Oh very well!’ Joss said
irritably. ‘You have made your point. It does not alter the fact
that I need an heiress. And I
like
Alora Piedmont,’ he added, rather petulantly. ‘I
do believe we would rub along together very well. She’s awfully
sweet.’

‘It does not matter what she is as she is
not the girl who is currently asleep in the next room,’ Harry told
him bluntly. ‘Truth is, you’ve ruined the creature by acting like a
jackass. And you can’t go about ruining innocent girls. It just
isn’t done.’

‘But I know nothing about her!’

‘Well I wouldn’t panic just yet. For all you
know she may be an heiress as well.’

‘Oh really? Two heiresses who look like
Botticelli angels? I hardly think so.’

‘It is no matter. You must marry her.’

‘I don’t want to!’

‘You have no choice!’

‘No,’ said a voice, light,
feminine and furious interrupting their argument. ‘But I do. And if
you think I’m going to marry some… some peep-o-day boy then you
have both got another think coming! The only thing I intend to do
is to
go home
.’

Involved as they each were in their
conversation, nobody had heard the door open but now they turned
their heads and gawped at the ethereal apparition before them.
Golden curls mussed, blue taffeta gown sadly creased by rude misuse
and a militant light in her eye.

Miss Isabella Hathaway had woken up and the
party had truly begun.

Voices had woken Isabella. She had lain for
some moments, trying to make sense of the vague, unfamiliar shadows
in the room. She saw a tall, shabby bed stand, an equally
unprepossessing wardrobe and the dull gleam of a tarnished brass
footboard. This was not her bedchamber at Willows, her family home
in Wiltshire. Nor was it the bedroom that she had been given in her
aunt’s house in Hertford Street. The bed was wrong, the linen
scratchy beneath her cheek, not the fine lawn used by the very
properly run household Lady Geraldine Tremourne.

Her circumstances came back
to her in a rush that made her stiffen, remembering the abrupt and
unpleasant way her evening had ended. A fair-haired gentleman with
a black mask and a tentative smile, asking for her assistance
(which was absurd, if she had only thought about it), stepping
through the door to have a… a
sack
of some kind thrust over her head. And then she
had been swept off her feet and carried swiftly out of the house.
So swiftly, that her screams had not been heard by anyone, although
with the noise in the ballroom, that was hardly
surprising.

Quite naturally, Isabella had feared the
worst – whatever that may be. She was rather hazy on what the worst
entailed, having been gently brought up but she had managed to
secure the occasional romance by Mrs. Radcliffe and she knew that
certain young ladies experienced ‘adventures’. While she had
enjoyed reading such stories, she had no desire to be in one of
them. Surely no good could come from being abducted. She had been
thrust rudely into a vehicle, her hands and feet bound with
something – admittedly – quite soft (she rather thought a scarf of
some kind had been used) while the gentleman who had lured her out
in the first place had spoken soothingly. She had not been soothed.
Rather, she had managed to launch several well placed kicks that
she was almost sure had found their mark, if the pained grunts they
had elicited had been any indication. Before he had departed, he
had covered her with a thick fur rug.

‘So you do not take a chill,’ she heard him
say, although he had sounded a little sulky. Those kicks must have
rankled.

So she had lain, fuming and uncomfortable
while the fool who was driving took them over every pothole the
carriage’s wheel could discover. Which were many; clearly they were
not traveling over roads that were well maintained. As they went,
Isabella held on to her anger, nurturing it into even greater
heights. It was preferable to the underlying fear that she knew
would grip her if she allowed herself to think of what her
abduction could mean to her.

Ruin, plain and simple.

A girl did not
simply
disappear
from a dance. No matter how good her excuse – and surely
abduction was a perfectly sound one? – then somehow she sensed that
it would be her fault. A gently bred young lady did not allow
herself to be abducted. Her past was already scandalous enough.
This new disaster would put a seal on the unspoken, but none the
less very real, suggestion that the Hathaway girl wasn’t quite the
thing. And rich, suitable gentlemen, unless they were very much
smitten, did not offer marriage to girls who were not quite the
thing. Under the circumstances, it was surprisingly easy to foster
her anger.

One thing she did
not
feel was immediately
imperiled by her abductor. There had been something about him that
had been reassuring. He had simply not seemed threatening enough to
mean her any real harm.

Not that it helped her situation. Not in the
least. Even if he had taken her on some sort of ridiculous dare –
and it seemed likely, the stories that Marcus had brought back from
school had been hair-raising in their absurdity – it would not stop
the damage that would undoubtedly take place to her reputation. She
could only hope that Mama had had the good sense to act as if all
were well. A masquerade helped, of course. So many people and such
confusion. It was possible her absence would not be noted among
such a crowd by any but those who were actually looking for
her.

She might be able to slip back home without
anyone being the wiser. Apart from her family, of course, and they
would not be speaking of it.