Chapter 9

“But my dear Harriet, you would so enjoy the afternoon.” Lady Forbes sounded quite crestfallen. “An excursion on the river and a picnic afterward and the weather so lovely again that one wonders how we will have to suffer for it later. It was very kind of the Smiths to include you in the invitation, but they did so because I explained how disappointed you were not to be able to come to the garden party yesterday. Can your visit to the National Gallery with the Beaconswoods not be postponed?”

“I have promised,” Harriet said, examining the backs of her hands. “And it is a place I really want to see while in London.”

Lady Forbes sighed. “But it could be done just as easily on a rainy day,” she said. “And you would not be wasting all this precious sunshine. But how dreadful I am being. I have told you to think of this as your home. You must do as you wish, dear. I am glad to see that your friendship with the countess is becoming such a firm one. She seems to be an amiable lady.”

“Yes,” Harriet said without raising her eyes, “she is. Our children enjoy one another’s company. Not that we will be taking the children to the gallery, of course. They are a little young.”

Lady Forbes rose from the luncheon table, from which Sir Clive had departed long ago. “Well, I have a river excursion to get ready for,” she said. “I will need to wear my largest hat, I believe.”

“Amanda,” Harriet said as her friend turned away. She closed her eyes tightly for a moment and clasped her hands together. “I cannot do this any longer. I cannot continue to lie.”

“To lie, dear?” Lady Forbes sat down again and turned her head to nod a dismissal to the servant who stood at the sideboard.

“I am not going anywhere with the Beaconswoods this afternoon,” Harriet said. “I did not go visiting with Julia on Monday or shopping with her last Thursday despite the accounts I gave you of both outings. The only times I have seen Julia have been in the mornings with the children.”

Lady Forbes said nothing.

“I will be going out alone this afternoon and every Monday and Thursday afternoon until the end of the Season,” Harriet said. “I have appointments.”

Lady Forbes was silent for a few moments longer. “You did not need to burden yourself with lies, Harriet,” she said. “And you need say no more now if you do not wish. You do not owe me explanations. Your life is your own.”

Harriet opened her eyes at last, but she continued to look down at her hands. “I feel,” she said, “that perhaps I should not continue to stay here. I will leave if you wish.”

“To go where?” Lady Forbes asked. She sighed. “Who is he, Harriet? Do you want to tell me?”

Harriet unclasped her hands and spread her fingers wide. 

“Not Tenby,” Lady Forbes said. “Oh, Harriet, not Tenby. Is that why you were so agitated yesterday? It was not just that you felt the duchess had been forced into offering you a place in Tenby’s carriage for a drive in the park?”

Harriet shuddered. “It was horrible, Amanda,” she said. “Sitting beside him all the time with his grandmother opposite. You cannot imagine how like a nightmare it was.” 

“Tenby.” Lady Forbes drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He will never marry you, Harriet.”

“I know that,” Harriet said quickly. “I have never had any illusions about that. Well, not for six years, anyway.” 

“He will break your heart.” Lady Forbes said.

“No.” Harriet looked up for the first time. “I know exactly what the situation is. I know it will end. I even know when it will end. He will marry Lady Phyllis Reeder this summer. I will accept it and be satisfied when the time comes.”

“Oh, Harriet.” Lady Forbes leaned across the table and set a hand over hers. “No, dear, never. You have a wonderful capacity for love—for unconditional, lasting love. You have no gift for flirtation or—dalliance.”

“Then perhaps it is time I grew up,” Harriet said. “I am twenty-eight years old.”

“And growing up means hardening your heart so that you can have an involvement with a rake and then shrug your shoulders and forget him when it is over?” Lady Forbes asked.

“I’ll not forget him,” Harriet said. “But I’ll be able to put it all behind me when summer comes. He offered me carte blanche six years ago when I was still with Clara. I never forgot him. Part of me was always a little sorry that I had refused.”

“Your heart was bruised merely because an offer had been made and rejected,” Lady Forbes said. “How is your heart going to bear up when you have—spent two afternoons a week with him for more than two months? Oh, Harriet, I think I know your heart better than you know it yourself, dear. It will be badly shattered.”

“I suppose I will find out which of us is right,” Harriet said with a rather crooked smile. “Besides, Amanda, it is too late.” She flushed.

“The man should be horsewhipped and shot between the eyes,” Lady Forbes said crossly. “He really should, Harriet. He has no business dallying with someone like you. He should keep to his own kind. There must be any number of women of a certain type who would be only too eager to—to serve him for a suitable fee.”

Harriet twisted her hands together again. “Would you prefer that I move away?” she asked.

“No.” Lady Forbes looked at her bowed head for some time. “You have not put yourself beyond the pale, Harriet, provided you are discreet. Doubtless there are any number of people who assume that if you are enjoying the Season as a young widow, you must be having an affair with someone. It would be surprising to many people if you were not. Life among members of the ton is much like a game, my dear. One must know the rules and keep to them quite rigidly. You may dally with as many gentlemen as you wish, provided no one is ever allowed to see you together in anything like compromising circumstances. No one would dream of judging you even if they suspected the truth. I do not judge you. I know you well enough to believe that you are doing that quite nicely for yourself.”

“At least,” Harriet said, “I’ll not have to tell you any more lies. The lies have bothered me as much as anything.”

“Your drive in the park yesterday will have worked to your advantage if anything,” Lady Forbes said. “If any people suspected—though I am quite, quite sure that no one does—they will now believe that they must have been mistaken. Tenby would not have done anything as brazen as drive out with his—with you in company with his grandmother and his aunt, they will believe.”

Harriet smiled rather wanly. “You have a river excursion to get ready for,” she said.

“Yes.” Lady Forbes got to her feet again as Harriet stood. “And you have an outing to prepare for too, dear. Take care. Oh, do take care.” She hugged her young friend before leaving the dining room with her.

Anger was an emotion that Harriet did not often experience. Her mother had used to tell her sometimes that she was too placid for her own good, that she had a tendency to make a doormat of herself. She was very much in danger of becoming a doormat now. She had been lifted, as usual, into his carriage, but beyond one cool look in her direction he had acted as if he were unaware of her existence. By the time they had reached his love nest and he had escorted her upstairs and through the sitting room into the bedchamber, she knew that he was angry.

Well, she was angry too. She could remember his parting words of the day before. She had been in a little too much distress then to be angry at what he had said. But she was angry now.

“Well?” His first word of the afternoon was like a cold whiplash. He had released her arm and closed the door. “You have your explanation ready, ma’am?”

“I would be foolish not to,” she said, “when I have had a day in which to think of it. I suppose I must tell the simple truth, your grace. I wangled the introduction to your grandmother and maneuvered to be invited to the park on the assumption that she would fall instantly in love with my beauty and refinement and insist that you make me your duchess.”

His eyes narrowed and he took a step forward until their bodies almost touched. “Have a care, ma’am,” he said. “Sarcasm does not become you.”

“On the other hand,” she said, “arrogance becomes you very well indeed, your grace.”

His silver eyes sparked dangerously. “It was unspeakably improper for you, my mistress, to set foot inside my home,” he said, “and to impose your company on my unsuspecting grandmother and aunt.”

“I have heard,” she said, “that it is infectious, like typhoid. Do you fear for their—health, your grace?”

His hands felt like iron bands riveting themselves to her upper arms. They squeezed even more tightly as he shook her until her head flopped back and forth and her breath was gone and she was reaching blindly for the lapels of his coat.

“Harriet, have done,” he said harshly, releasing her abruptly before she could find a handhold.

“You forget, your grace,” she said, emphasizing his title, “that I am not one of your doxies, that I do not take payment for the favors I grant you on that bed. I am a lady by birth and a baroness by marriage and I will not be made to feel like a soiled whore. If I am a whore, then so are you. Why should women be considered to have fallen when they give themselves outside marriage, but not men?”

She did not know where the words were coming from. She had never been so furious in her life. Perhaps it was because his attitude to her echoed her own, but she was too angry to analyze her feelings fully. If he touched her roughly again, she would go at him with her fists, she knew.

He looked at her steadily, his arms at his sides. “You are not a whore, Harriet,” he said. “Or my doxy. Even mistress is an inaccurate word since it suggests a kept woman. You are my lover.”

Something turned over in her stomach. The word caressed her. And mocked her. They were not lovers. Lovers loved. The very word suggested that. They did not love. They merely had sexual relations.

His eyes and his voice had softened. But only for a moment. They were both cold and hard again when he spoke once more. “Why did you see fit to call at St. James's Square and present yourself to her grace?” he asked. “Did your acquaintance with my aunt seem excuse enough?”

She watched her arm lift as if of its own accord and her hand whip with a satisfying stinging slap across his face. And she waited in steely-jawed terror for him to retaliate. He did not do so. She watched in fascinated horror as the imprint of her fingers reddened his cheek.

“Did you not think to ask them?” she asked. “Did you not think that perhaps I was invited?”

“Were you?” he said. “Why did you go?”

“Perhaps,” she said, “it was out of courtesy. Perhaps it was because I am fond of Lady Sophia, though of course it is hard to believe that anyone could be fond of a lady who is so very old and so very deaf, is it not? And perhaps it was because I did not know that was your home or that the lady to whom I was presented merely as Lady Sophia's sister-in-law, the duchess, was in fact the Duchess of Tenby. Perhaps I did not know it until you walked into the room.” 

“You did not know where my home was?” he asked, frowning.

“Why should I?” she asked. “Did you imagine that I paced lovelorn outside it each day and night?”

“I told you my grandmother and my aunt were coming to town,” he said.

“Why would I have made the connection when I received the invitation from Lady Sophia?” she asked. “People arrive in London every day. It is the Season.”

“I have done you an injustice,” he said stiffly. “I beg your pardon, Harriet.”

“Granted,” she said. She was pleased to hear that her voice was as crisp as his own.

“Well,” he said, turning his eyes away from her and looking across the room, “we are wasting time. Let’s go to bed.”

“No,” she said.

“No?” He looked back at her, his eyebrows raised.

“No,” she said again, and felt terror for a moment. Was she going to end it all here and now? Was there going to be nothing but emptiness for the rest of the Season—for the rest of her life? “I can’t, y-your grace.”

His eyes searched hers. He clasped his hands behind his back. “You will doubtless explain,” he said.

She was not sure she could, even to herself. “We are angry with each other,” she said. “You apologized to me but did not really mean it, and I did not really forgive you. And yet you want me to go to bed with you? I don’t expect it to be done with love. We have both agreed that there is no love and no romance, only a mutual seeking for pleasure. But there has to be something a little more personal than that alone. It is not just a—an acrobatic performance. Even though you say I am not a whore and I know I am not, I will not be made to feel like one.”

He stood motionless before her for many silent moments while she examined the backs of her hands. “Harriet,” he said finally, his voice soft again, “I am truly sorry for my anger. It was quite unjustified. And for my arrogance. I can see no possible reason why you are less worthy of being acquainted with my grandmother than I am. And I was touched by your kindness to my aunt. Most people find her tedious. Will you forgive me? Please?”

She nodded imperceptibly without looking up.

“It is not love, what happens here,” he said, “or romance. But it is more than an acrobatic performance, Harriet. Good heaven, is that how you have seen our encounters here? You give me more pleasure than any other woman I have known. You are still the sweet, prim little Harriet who so enchanted me six years ago. Sweet little Harriet with a temper. I like it.” He placed one long finger beneath her chin and lifted her face. “When you are on that bed with me, I am aware every moment that you are Harriet.”

She gazed into his eyes, but it was impossible to know if the smile she saw there mocked her or not. But there was gentleness in his voice. Yes, it was enough. It was enough to know that she was not just any woman to him. That was all she wanted. She knew there could be no love. She had never expected love.

“Harriet.” He drew one knuckle along her jaw to the point of her chin. “You are right I did treat you yesterday as if you were some kind of fallen woman. I am accustomed to a different type of—lover, I suppose. Please forgive me. It will not happen again.”

“Archie.” She touched her fingertips to his chest and removed them again. “For what it is worth, I was as horrified and as embarrassed as you when I knew that I was in your home and with your relatives.”

“Forgive me?” he said.

“Yes.” When she looked up at him this time, she found his eyes burning into hers. He surprised her by taking her hand and carrying it to his lips. Then he leaned forward to set his lips against hers.

Ah, but it felt very much like love, she thought as her arms came about his neck. Too, similar. Far too sweet. He kissed her with a gentleness he had not used on her before. She relaxed against him, trying not to feel the danger, the terrible danger of believing that she was more to him than just a body that he liked to enjoy. She must never start believing that they came here to make love. The only way to make the end bearable, and the rest of her life bearable, was to keep herself ruthlessly aware of the truth, that there was no love at all. They had both said it again just this afternoon. It was finally agreed between them that there was to be none.

Ah, but his kiss felt very like love.

“Come to bed?” he asked, his mouth against her ear.

She nodded and shivered. She had just refused to go because there was no personal feeling between them at all. Now she was afraid there was too much. Perversely, she willed him to be more impersonal again—as he had been the last time.

“We will take it more slowly today, shall we?” he said, leading her to the bed even though he had not yet unclothed her. “More—tenderly, Harriet? Will you like that better? I will try to be less frantically aware of what little time we have together. And we will rest when our bodies need rest. It is part of the experience of—enjoying each other. You must teach me to be the kind of lover you want.”

She looked into his eyes as he undressed her beside the bed, but she could see no trace of mockery there. Surely that idea was a topsy-turvy one. Did not a man usually demand that his woman be the kind of lover he wanted? Could it be true that her feelings, her needs, her preferences, were important to him? Or was he humoring her because she had been angry and had refused him at first?

“Will that please you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Lie down, then,” he said, “while I get ready to give you your gentle lovemaking.'”

Lovemaking. She felt suddenly, more than she had felt on the previous two occasions, that she was playing with fire. And that there was no escaping being burned. He was going to do it too, she thought, looking into his smiling eyes as he undressed. He was going to make love to her. He was going to give her what he thought she wanted.

And what she had thought she wanted.

“Dinner for twenty-four,” the Duchess of Tenby said, presenting her grandson with a written list when they had retired to the drawing room after dinner. The duchess had never allowed her menfolk to linger over their port when they dined en famille. “I have included the people you especially asked for this morning, Tenby. The other suggestions are my own. You will notice that in addition to Lady Phyllis Reeder, I have listed the Kingsleys and their daughter, Lady Leila. She has been presented this spring, I gather, though she is barely seventeen. You may wish to consider her. Girls who are fresh from the schoolroom are often more easily bent to a husband’s will than those who are in their third Season. And she is a marquess’s daughter.”

The girl did slightly resemble a horse. Bruce’s words had been unkind but true. It was the narrow face and prominent teeth and rather long nose that did it. Now he was being unkind, even though he did not speak his thoughts aloud. The girl was just an infant and often looked frightened. Her mother should have insisted that she remain in the schoolroom for at least another year. The thought of bending her to his will did not appeal.

He looked at the list broodingly.

“So you see, Tenby,” his grandmother said, “that I am not tightening the noose about your neck. There will be twenty-three other persons here apart from Lady Phyllis. I will be interested in looking her over.”

His grandmother was amazing, the duke thought, his eyes scanning the names on the list. She had been in London for two days and had not been here for two years before that yet already she knew who else was there and who was eligible to be invited for her public viewing of his prospective bride.

“There are only twenty-three names on the list,” he said, counting.

“Eh?” His aunt had finished pouring the tea and had become interested in the conversation. He repeated what he had said in a yell.

“We need one more lady,” his grandmother said. “I did not know if you would prefer Lady Trevor, Lady Howden, or Lady Pryde, Tenby. I waited to consult you.”

“Eh?” Lady Sophia demanded.

The duchess repeated her words.

“Is my dear Lady Wingham on that list, Archibald?” the old lady roared. “I told Sadie to put her there, but I do not know if she heard me. Sometimes I think Sadie must be going deaf.” She rumbled.

The duke forced his fingers not to tighten on the paper.

“Her name is not here, Aunt,” he said.

“Put it down, then, dear Archibald,” she said. “And seat her next to me at dinner. She is the only person willing to speak loudly enough for me to hear. I would swear everyone else talks nothing but secrets all day long that they must whisper so.”

“I believe, Sophie,” the duchess yelled, “that Lady Wingham might feel out of place in such company. Perhaps you could invite her to tea again one day next week.”

“You know I do not like to be difficult, Sadie,” Lady Sophia said. “I am the most agreeable of persons, am I not, Archibald? You need not answer, dear boy. But I will not sit through that dinner unless I have my little pet beside me. I have never forgiven Wingham for marrying the gel. I was going to take her for my companion after her mother died. But there, he was good to her, so I must forgive him after all. Put her name on the list, Archibald.”

“Well, Tenby?” The duchess looked at him steadily. “You have no objection to Lady Wingham as a guest?” 

“None at all, Grandmama,” he said. “She seems genuinely fond of Aunt Sophie.”

“Eh?” his aunt asked.

He left his grandmother to repeat his words while he crossed the room to the desk and dipped a quill pen in the inkwell in order to add the name that would give even numbers to his guest list. For Monday evening.

He stayed at the desk rather longer than was necessary, his eyes reading the list, pausing at Lady Phyllis’s name, Lady Leila’s, Harriet’s. He was feeling utterly wretched. Under normal circumstances he would have dined privately in his own apartments tonight or, more probably, at one of his clubs. He would have sat and brooded afterward or, if at the club, he would have found a noisy group of friends with whom to carouse. He would have sought out a lively game of cards. Perhaps he would even have persuaded Bruce or some other friend to go to Annette’s with him. No. No, he would not have done that. But something like that. Instead of which, he was going to have to cross the room again soon and entertain his grandmother and his aunt for at least another hour before they retired to bed.

He wanted only to brood on what he had done.

He had made love to her. He had understood her need for tenderness as reassurance against the humiliation of his treatment of her—unpardonably, he had made her feel like a whore. And because he loved her, or perhaps because he had a conscience, he had decided to give her tenderness. Except that he had been unable to divorce tenderness from love and had given her love, though he had not called it that and she had doubtless not recognized it as that.

God! All his defenses had come crashing down and he had made love to her. Something he had never done before with anyone and something that had frankly terrified him. It was not that he had lost control of himself. He had had more control than perhaps ever before. Every move, every touch during what had remained of their hour and a half after they had finished quarreling, had been devoted to making her enjoy the bedding on her terms, not as a physical performance, but as an encounter between two persons with somewhat tender feelings for each other. He had kept an iron control over his body and yet had lost it completely over his emotions. Every move, every touch, had been given with love.

He did not know if he would ever again be capable of coupling with a woman without the extra dimension that made all the difference. He had understood in a flash why the act was called making love. He did not know how he would be able to give her up at the end of July. Would it be possible, he wondered, to persuade her to remain as his mistress even after his marriage during the summer? He doubted it. He very much doubted it. He had been surprised, even a little disappointed at first, to discover that she was willing to give him her virtue. He was quite sure, though, that she would be unwilling to be involved in an adulterous relationship.

And so the future yawned frightening and empty.

“You are satisfied with the guest list, Tenby?” He had not heard his grandmother come up behind him. She rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Yes, Grandmama,” he said. “I need not ask if you have the invitations ready to go out tomorrow, I suppose? Of course you have them ready.”

“Of course,” she said. “You did not mind giving in to Sophie’s whim?”

“About Lady Wingham?” he said. “No, of course not. Why should I?”

“I just hope you are not too pleased,” she said. “She is an unusually lovely woman. And she has a freshness and a charm that are beyond the ordinary.”

“Yes.” he said.

“I could not fail to notice yesterday,” she said, “that you were taken with her, Tenby.”

“I?” He chuckled. “I am always taken with a lovely face, Grandmama. And half of London is taken with this particular one. You must have noticed in the park how large her court is.”

“Yes, dear,” she said. “But sometimes a man’s pride is challenged by such a fact. We shall consider her to be Sophie’s companion on Monday evening, shall we?” 

“I doubt if Aunt Sophie would leave us any choice even if we decided otherwise,” he said.

His grandmother patted his shoulder. “Come back to the fire,” she said, “or she will be thinking we are whispering secrets again. I expect great things of you before the summer is out, Tenby, and an heir on his way into this world by Christmas. You will not let me down, I know. You never do. Your grandfather trained you well.”

He took her hand from his shoulder as he got to his feet and kissed it before laying it on his arm. “I just hope, Grandmama,” he said, smiling down at her, “that my wife has the good sense to present me with a son the first time and does not make him follow along behind two or three daughters.”

She held herself very straight. “The duchesses of our line have always known their duty, Tenby,” she said. “There is not a one of us for almost a century who has not produced a son first, and within a year of marriage. It is all in the breeding. Choose a bride of the right breeding and this time next year it will be the christening of the heir to Tenby we will be planning instead of a dinner.”

“Eh?” Lady Sophia asked as they drew close.