My Wayward Lady (15 page)
137
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
But Lord Chalfont's greeting confirmed her intuition. "Lady Harriet, this is a delightful surprise. I had not dared hope to see you about at such an early hour. Any other young lady who had danced until all hours would not arise until well after noon. However, I am learning that you are not just any young lady and that I am constantly underestimating you." Harriet dismissed the habits of
other young ladies
with a contemptuous snort. "Pooh. Dancing is not so very exhausting, and I find the fresh air and lack of people in the park most reviving after an evening wast—er, spent, in a crowded ballroom."
The marquess's eyes gleamed. "So you too consider these gala affairs to be a waste of time. I rather thought you might."
"I did not say it is a waste of time, precisely." Harriet hastened to explain herself. The man was entirely too quick. No one else she knew would have noticed her slip of the tongue. "It is just that I fail to find such affairs as enthralling as the rest of the world appears to. After one has danced several dances and discussed the weather thoroughly, there is nothing much more to do. I try my best to enjoy them, but I fear that I am not like the other people who find such things entertaining."
Adrian chuckled and nodded in agreement. She was far too intelligent and inquisitive a person to be satisfied with such bland amusements for very long; however, there was a hint of wistfulness in her tone that he found oddly touching. "Yet you were never lacking for partners last evening so you must have appeared to enjoy yourself with great success." 138
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
Harriet looked up in some surprise. So he had been as aware of her after their waltz together as she had been of him. "I do try," she answered gravely. Then responding to the look of understanding in those penetrating eyes, she continued in a confiding tone, "You see, it is not for myself that I attend such functions, but for Elizabeth."
"Your sister?" He asked in some surprise.
"Yes. She is betrothed to Lord Rokeby and is most anxious that the family appears to its best advantage. If it were not for that I should not be here at all for I have not the least use for such things."
Lord Chalfont raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"Well, you see," Harriet went on to explain, "one only attends such functions as the Countess of Rotherham's for three reasons: to see, to be seen, or to catch a husband. As I care very little for all three, I really have no need to spend my time prancing around in all my finery."
"Though you did look extremely fine," his lordship could not help interjecting. "But tell me, why do you have an aversion to catching husbands? I thought all young ladies aspired to them."
"Why should I spend my life working to gratify the whims of someone who, from what I have seen of most gentlemen, would not be interested in anything that I am and would be a great deal stupider as well?" Harriet demanded somewhat pugnaciously.
"Why indeed?" Lord Chalfont murmured, his eyes dancing. Yes, as he had always suspected, Lady Harriet Fareham was 139
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
quite refreshingly different from every other woman he had ever met. "But what does your father have to say to all this?"
"Papa? Why, if he notices I am there at all, which is only occasionally when he emerges from the library, it is to make sure that I am healthy and furthering my own education. "The life of the mind, Harriet,'" she intoned in a deep voice." 'must be constantly cultivated, else we are no different from the beasts in the fields.' And Aunt Almeria feels much the same way: any time spent away from her studies is time wasted. But she has a strong sense of family duty and thus devotes herself to Elizabeth's needs until she is happily married and we can all return to our own particular interests."
"You are most fortunate in your family. Lady Harriet." The bantering tone had gone from the marquess's voice. In fact, there was a serious note that Harriet had never heard before and she looked up in some surprise. Lord Chalfont's expression was grave to the point of regret as he gazed off over the park. For a moment he was lost in his thoughts—and not very pleasant ones at that, Harriet thought as she tilted her head curiously, studying him carefully. This was a very different man from the insouciant rake who frequented Mrs. Lovington's. She wondered at it, wondered which was the real Lord Chalfont. Was it the reckless libertine who appeared to care for nothing, or the man who had served his country so well that Wellington had made him one of his own inner circle?
But before Harriet could marshal her thoughts, he had turned back to her and smiling wryly down at her, broke the silence. "Forgive me, my wits are wandering and it is not 140
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
good for the horse." He was entirely correct in this for they had slowed to a halt while talking and both Brutus and Trajan were tossing their heads impatiently.
Harriet glanced up at the sun. "Yes. And just look at the time. Why even Aunt Almeria will begin to wonder if I am absent this long." And with a nod to her groom and a flick of her heels, she had wheeled and began heading back toward Berkeley Square where, contrary to what she had led Lord Chalfont to believe, the sole occupant of the morning room when Harriet entered was surprised to see her return so quickly from her morning ride.
"Back so early?" Aunt Almeria barely looked up from the book in which her nose was buried before lapsing into silence again. Her devotion to Elizabeth's routine left her very little time for her own studies, so she seized every available moment not spent shopping, driving in the park, or chaperoning her charge at fashionable affairs to read.
"Oh, not really."
Harriet's tone was one of such studied casualness that her aunt glanced up sharply to discover the faintest of blushes tinge her niece's cheeks. Now what was the child about this time? she wondered. It was not like Harriet to act selfconscious. Ordinarily she had not the least compunction about revealing whatever outlandish scrape she had fallen into. It was a highly unusual circumstance when Harriet betrayed any signs of deviousness. This bore some watching, the older woman thought as she returned to her book while her niece rang the bell for more chocolate.
141
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
Her aunt's scrutiny was not lost on Harriet and she sank into her place at the table deep in thought. What was it about the Marquess of Kidderham that commanded so much of her attention? Ordinarily she would not waste a second thought on a man such as he but now she found herself puzzling over him a good deal of the time. He was such a strange mixture, with his apparent disregard for most of the things members of the fashionable world treasured above all else such as respectability and reputation. Yet he demonstrated a real concern for other things most people would have been horrified even to mention, such as the lives of Mrs. Lovington's ladies. For quite apart from his obvious enjoyment of what they had to offer, he seemed to take a genuine interest in them and to approve most heartily of Harriet's projects to improve their lives. And today Harriet had come across yet another contradiction in the man. She sensed a sadness or ennui. There had been pain in his eyes as they had surveyed Hyde Park during their conversation, a pain that seemed out of place in the dashing character her brother had described or the amorous adventurer that Mrs. Lovington's ladies drooled over.
What was it that was wrong? Harriet could not pinpoint it exactly, but her curiosity was piqued. Though she did not like to think of Lord Chalfont as being a regular customer at the Temple of Venus, she did rather hope she would encounter him there again on her next visit. The man was a puzzle to her and Harriet could not resist a puzzle.
142
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
Harriet also could not resist remarking several days later to Lord Chalfont as she looked up to see him leaning casually against the door of the schoolroom after Rose and her class had departed, "I would think that a gentleman who had spent so much of his life defending his country would have something better to do with it now than idling it away at the Temple of Venus." Harriet could not have said what devil prompted her to make such a remark, for ordinarily she disliked people who meddled in her own life so much that she was careful to refrain from doing so in other people's. But the idea of a former hero of the Peninsula lounging aimlessly about irked her somehow. It seemed such a waste of a life that had until now been well spent, if half the stories her brother had been telling her were true.
Lord Chalfont's eyebrows rose in surprise and he regarded Harriet with faint hauteur. While it was perfectly true that he had little patience with the overly refined but meaningless phrases of fashionable intercourse, he was not accustomed to such plain speaking and it set him back a bit. "I apologize if my ways are so offensive to you, madam," he began with icy politeness.
But Harriet, now fully aware of how impertinent she must have sounded, pressed one hand to her mouth in dismay.
"No,
I
apologize," she muttered through her fingers. "It is my wretched tongue. I have no place criticizing you in such a fashion."
143
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
A wry grimace twisted his lips as the marquess replied.
"On the contrary, you of all people have every right to reprove me. You who are actively doing something to make the world a better place are quite justified in censuring those of us who are not." He smiled grimly. "At one time I could have said the same thing of myself, but now you are in the right of it. I am turned into a useless fribble and am likely to remain so—a perfect example of a man of the
ton."
He sounded so bitter that Harriet could not help laying a consoling hand on his sleeve. "No, do not say such things. I am persuaded that it does not need to be so." A grim laugh was his only reply as he stood there staring unseeingly at a marble statue of a nymph trying not very hard to escape the clutches of a satyr.
Harriet regarded him with a puzzled frown. It was not at all like Lord Chalfont to be at a loss for words. If anything, he usually erred on the side of having too much to say, and it was usually provocative at that.
Adrian glanced up to see her staring at him curiously. "Pay no heed to me, Lady Harriet. I am an ungrateful wretch. Any sane man would be delighted to be returning from war to a peaceful existence and living out his days on his own estate with a lovely wife and nothing to worry about but amusing himself. Only a fool would be a blue-devilled at such a prospect."
He turned as if to go, but Harriet detained him. "No, pray, do not leave. Surely you need not give in to it all so tamely. While it is true that there are no military battles to be fought at the moment, there are many political ones." 144
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
"Political?"
She hastened to explain. "Yes. There are all those soldiers who fought alongside of you now returned to a nation that has quite forgotten the sacrifices they made, a nation where there is little way for them to earn the food that is becoming increasingly dear."
Seeing that she had caught his interest, Harriet warmed to her theme. "They need someone in the government to remember their sacrifices, to speak for them, to insure that the way of life they fought to protect does not pass them by. You could be such a person. In fact, you are the perfect person. You have power and position. There are very few great landowners among the Opposition, and now that the price of corn has started to rise again, the agricultural interests are much less inclined to agitate for change than when corn had fallen to little more than fifty shillings a quarter. But the plight of the laborers has only worsened, and many of those laborers were the very men who fought for so many years to save England. The government is already borrowing in order to maintain what army there is left; who knows what will happen if that money is cut? There is a great deal to be done, and in my opinion the country is as much in need of your services now as it was when you were scaling walls under enemy fire in the Peninsula. Why not offer those services to England again?"
Whew! Harriet paused to catch her breath. Where had that speech come from? she wondered. And what had made her think that a devil-may-care rake such as the Marquess of Kidderham would listen to it, or care?
145
My Wayward Lady
by Evelyn Richardson
But he had listened to it. The tawny eyes focused on her intently and there was a curiously arrested expression on his face as he murmured softly, "Why not indeed?" He was silent for some time, considering.
It had been quite a moment as she confronted him, eyes flashing with righteous indignation. Adrian had never known a woman could look so fierce, or at least a woman as gently bred as Lady Harriet Fareham. He had seen peasant women in the Peninsula defending their homes and families against the foreign invaders and admired their spirit, but that had been different; their whole way of life was being threatened. Here was someone who had not the slightest reason to defend the poor and the downtrodden, beyond her own natural humanity, turning on him as if he were the veriest laggard. She was truly magnificent.
And almost as impressive as her passionate plea to help those in need was her grasp of the political situation right down to the price of corn. Adrian was both inspired and humbled—inspired by her very idealism, and humbled by her knowledge and willingness to consider some of the most pressing issues of the day, issues that were defeating far more experienced politicians than Lady Harriet.
"I know," a soft voice interrupted these thoughts. "It is all very well for me to speak. After all, I am not trying to convince Parliament to act. I should do something myself to tackle these problems instead of urging someone else to do so, but I cannot stand up for Parliament." 146