A Wicked Pursuit (15 page)

His smile widened to a sly grin. “I told you they were perfect gentlemen.”

“You needn’t look at me like that,” she said, her cheeks warming. “I’m thoroughly covered and decent.”

“You’re dressed for bed,” he said. “Exactly as I am.”

He didn’t have to remind her. When he leaned forward to pet the dogs, the neck of his nightshirt had fallen more widely open, offering her an unexpectedly heady glimpse of his bare chest and the curling dark hair upon it.

“There’s nothing wrong with how I’m dressed,” she insisted. “For the hour and the circumstances, it’s entirely appropriate and modest.”

“Your feet are bare,” he said, lowering his voice to a rough whisper. “And you’re not wearing stays. I can see that your waist is still small without them, and your—”

“Harry, please,” she said, turning flustered and stern at the same time. “That is quite enough.”

“Hah, I heard that, Gus,” he said, shaking his finger at her. “You can’t deny it. You called me Harry.”

She raised her chin in defiance, or more accurately defense. “You called me Gus first.”

“
I
will not deny it,” he said cheerfully. “Ah, more company. Good morning, Arnold! How very glad I am to see you. I trust you have brought me newspapers from London as well as all those letters I must read and accounts I must sign. I’m famished for news. Come, will you join me for breakfast before we set down to work? Gus, might I beg you to arrange that?”

“You may,” Gus said, relieved to have something more to do than be stared at. “I’ll go speak with Mrs. Buchanan now. But mind you, I am not running away. I am leaving because you asked me to.”

“Agreed,” he said, and smiled. “My next request is that you do not stay away.”

Purposefully she didn’t reply. “Do the dogs wish breakfast, too?”

“Of course,” he said, clearly surprised she’d even ask. “It is not complicated. A mixture of minced beef hearts and livers, egg yolks, and a bit of bran. Hollick can tell your cook what’s required.”

She nodded, promising nothing, and left the men and the dogs. She could imagine all too well what Mrs. Buchanan was going to say when told she was now to be catering to his lordship’s dogs, especially at the direction of Hollick. Gus personally oversaw all the bills from the butcher and other purveyors, and she knew for a certainty that there were no beef hearts in the larder at present, nor had there ever been, not in her memory.

She stopped in her rooms long enough to find a pair of mules for her bare feet and a shawl to wrap over her robe—if Harry claimed he could see so much of her person, then the last thing she wished was to reveal the same to her staff, or at least the rest of the staff that hadn’t seen her yet today. Then she hurried down the twisting back stairs to the kitchen.

Yet as she did, she’d far more on her mind than the minced beef hearts for Patch and Potch. She was much more concerned with their master, and the news from London that he was so “famished” for. She had no idea of how much of the news that Mr. Arnold, as his agent, would share with him would be strictly of a business variety, of how his various properties and investments were faring, and how much might include the town’s latest gossip.

She hoped against hope that all Mr. Arnold would confide were rents and improvements. Because if he included news of parties, balls, and sundry doings at court, then he was sure to mention the curious fact that Miss Wetherby was there, and not here.

It wasn’t only that Harry would learn the truth about Julia’s faithlessness. He’d send Gus’s entire house of cards of well-intentioned half-truths and deceits tumbling down. He wouldn’t be able to trust her again, and likely that would be the end of the teasing banter, the charming compliments that she’d never heard from any other man, the rakish smiles that made her heart beat a little faster, the delicious amusement of being Gus and Harry. They’d return to being Miss Augusta and Lord Hargreave, and then in four or so weeks, when at last his leg was healed enough for travel, he would be gone forever, both from the abbey and from her life.

Oh, why, why hadn’t she told him the truth when she’d had the chance?

Harry lay
in bed, as comfortable as he could be. Though he hated to admit it, he was tired, exactly as the surgeons kept telling him he should be. It was still some time until supper, and though through the windows he could see the sun was slipping lower in the sky, the day was not done, more afternoon than evening. Yet Arnold was finally on his way back to London with all the necessary decisions and signatures tucked in that voluminous leather bag, and Harry welcomed the peace of once again having his bedchamber empty of guests. On the carpet beside his bed Patch and Potch lay curled together, snoring with voluptuous canine abandon, and Harry suspected he’d soon be snoring along with them.

To help ease himself into that nap, he had in his hands one of the magazines that Arnold had brought from London. Titled
The London Observer
, this one was new to him, and he could already tell that it would be juicy with scandal, the leering antithesis of the dry old
Gentleman’s Magazine
that Gus had so gamely tried to read to him.

He smiled, thinking how even the frontispiece would make her blush: a drawing of a bare-breasted goddess in a helmet, a goatish satyr lurking to one side, and several other clumsily drawn figures in ancient garb that looked more like bedsheets. Even he needed the caption to make sense of the picture: “A beautiful Frontispiece, representing Minerva, the Patroness of Learning, inspiring the Genius of This Magazine; while, in the Back-Ground, a Satyr exposes the Genius of Illicit Love.”

He snorted with amusement at that, and idly wondered if Gus was worldly enough to know about satyrs, whose main occupation was ravishing nymphs. How would he explain that to her, he thought sleepily, flipping through the pages. The rest of the magazine was much as he expected, filled with bad poetry, inane observations, and articles with enticing titles such as “The Man of Pleasure” and “A Portrait of a Buck.” Yawning, he finally settled on “Notes of the Town,” wondering how many of his friends and acquaintances he could recognize in the scandalous exploits, their names reduced to decorous initials to protect the Genius of this Magazine from libel.

The words were swimming before him and his eyes nearly closed when, abruptly, a short passage jumped out from the others.

All regret the absence of Lord H—g—e from the Recent Divertissements; His Lordship is said to be recovering well from Wounds suffered in the Hunting-Field, & we wish Every Speed to his Return. Miss W—y, who was widely believed to be in Possession of His Lordship’s Heart, has lately showed this to be an Exaggeration, & that no Hymeneal Union is imminent, by being seen much this last fortnight in the Exclusive Company of Lord S—l—d. Ah, Cupid! How sweet are his darts to the bosom of a Willing Beauty!

What in blazes was this?
He’d begun by being mildly irritated to see his name included and his accident blamed on a hunting accident. But then he’d come to the part about Julia, and how she’d not only severed ties with him but was in London, and had taken up with that idiot Lord Southland. Lies, it had to be lies, all of it no more than another invention of this damnable rag.

Yet he had not seen her once that he could recall since his fall, nor so much as heard her voice in the house. He’d praised Gus for keeping her sister away, but what if he was the one who was being fooled instead?

He thought of all the little clues that he’d willfully ignored, clues that now made sense: how there’d been no sign of Julia or the viscount, how Tewkes had told him none of the servants ever mentioned Julia, how he’d not had so much as a scribbled note of cheer or endearment from her. He thought of how today, even Arnold had quickly tried to change the subject when he’d mentioned Julia and his intentions to marry her. Clearly he’d known the truth. The whole world did, except for him.

There was only one person who knew everything, the one person he’d felt sure he could trust above all others.

“Tewkes, here!” he roared, and the manservant came running from the next room. “Tewkes, send for Miss Augusta, and tell her I wish to speak to her directly. Here, now, and no excuses. I must speak to her at once.”

He sank back against the pillows, his heart beating painfully in his breast. He felt furious and betrayed and scorned, rejected and humiliated and pitied. But most of all, he felt hurt, wounded in ways he hadn’t expected.

And all he could hope for now was the truth.

Gus was working
in her mother’s rose garden, clipping away the wilted blooms, when Mary came to find her, her footsteps crunching on the crushed-shell path.

“Oh, Miss Augusta, here you are!” she said, out of breath from her haste. “We’ve been searching everywhere for you. You’re wanted at once in the house.”

Gus immediately tucked her pruning scissors into her basket and began to walk briskly. “What has happened, Mary?”

“It’s his lordship, miss,” Mary said, hurrying alongside Gus. “Mr. Tewkes says he’s in a terrible way.”

At once Gus thought the worst. “Has one of his wretched dogs jumped onto his leg? If it has to be set again because—”

“Oh, no, miss, it’s not that,” Mary said. “Mr. Tewkes says his lordship’s in a righteous fury over something, and wants to speak to you about it at once.”

And without doubt, Gus knew. She’d dared to think when Mr. Arnold had left that she’d been spared, that he hadn’t mentioned her sister. But clearly that had only been a false respite, and now she’d have to face the full force of Harry’s unhappiness.

It was going to be full-force, too. She could see that from his black expression as soon as she entered his room.

“Miss Augusta,” he said curtly. “I trust you have not seen this.”

He tossed an open magazine across the bed in her direction, not even deigning to hand it to her.

“The first item at the top, under ‘Notes of the Town,’” he said as she picked up the magazine. “Read it. I would very much like to hear your opinion.”

Her heart sank as she read it. Only a few sentences, but she could see her sister’s frivolity in nearly every word. Julia’s greatest challenge was the sheer number of darts that Cupid had shot her way, making her seem fickle and perpetually looking for another conquest. There was good reason for why, with her beauty and charm, she was twenty-two and still not wed. But this was the first time that Gus would have to face the consequences of her sister’s actions, and it wasn’t going to be either pleasant or easy.

The only defense she’d have would be the truth. She could only pray that it would be enough.

“Am I correct in assuming that, for once, a scandal sheet is telling the truth?” he asked. “That Miss Wetherby is not in residence here, but in London?”

Reluctantly Gus nodded. “She is in London,” she said. “She’s not here.”

His expression did not change. “When did she leave?”

“Soon after your fall,” she admitted. “I don’t recall which day exactly.”

“Yet all that time you’ve covered for her,” he said. “Did she ever visit me? The truth, Miss Augusta.”

She hated having him call her that again, almost as much as she hated this horrible interrogation.

“She did,” she said. “But you were not—not yourself. You wouldn’t remember.”

“Yet she judged that to be sufficient,” he said bitterly. “Did she give you a reason for leaving me?”

“No,” she said. “But I don’t believe she left you so much as she left the, ah, the situation. The surgeons were saying you might die, and that frightened her.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “She must be disappointed.”

“I wouldn’t say that of her, my lord,” Gus said quickly. “Julia has never been good in the face of challenges, which is why Papa went after her, to make certain she was well.”

His scowl deepened. “You father. Is he part of this deception, too?”

“Julia went back to London with a single servant in the night,” she said, wishing Julia’s antics did not sound so sordid in the telling. “Papa followed her from concern, as any honorable parent would.”

“Any parent with a spoiled, selfish child,” he said with disgust. “She’s certainly consoled herself fast enough, and with one of my friends, too, if the gossip is to be believed.”

His vehemence shocked her. “If she were to see you now, my lord,” she said, trying to coax him into thinking better of Julia, “to see for herself how much you have already recovered—”

“But she won’t, Miss Augusta, because I have no intention of seeing
her
again,” he said. His words were sharp with anger, but it was the undercurrent of pain and rejection that told Gus he would keep his word. “I will write to her tomorrow, and that will be an end to it. Thank God I did not ask her to be my wife! If such salvation has cost me the use of a leg, then it’s a small price to pay for not being shackled to a faithless slattern like her for the rest of my life.”

Beside the bed, the two dogs had wakened, made uneasy by the tension in Harry’s voice, and one of them let out a low, mournful whimper of distress.