Reforming Harriet Read online

  “You may think me a tiresome bluestocking,” she continued. “But I did wish to please Freddy. I did.” Her voice broke on the last.

  Elias found he could not take his eyes from her face. The rosy warmth of her cheeks contrasted with the cool blue of her eyes, and seemed to grow warmer as their gazes held.

  “Lady Harriet,” he said gruffly, “if Freddy was not satisfied in your arms, it was his own damned fault.”

  As her watery gaze held his, Elias told himself he meant only to comfort her, as one might comfort a child. Gingerly, awkwardly, he patted her shoulder. But she bit her lip, and he could see the effort it cost her to keep her emotions in check. And so he extended his arms — stiffly, like two sticks of wood. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaned toward him and put her head against his chest. He heard a soft sob.

  He did not know what to do with his arms, exactly. They seemed to want to close around her, and so they did — tentatively, uneasily, as if they could not quite negotiate the distance between confronting his adversary and extending her charity.

  And so they passed a long — very long — moment, during which Elias grew keenly aware of the softness of her form against his and the warmth of her skin through the muslin of her frock, the muslin he’d earlier thought insipid but which now taunted him with rough-textured fibers that awakened his senses.

  Finally, she looked up at him. Why had he never noticed her eyes were the color of Caribbean seas? He realized he was staring, so he dropped his gaze lower and found instant consolation in studying the smooth rosy flesh of her mouth.

  Not good, he thought, and wrenched his gaze away. It fixed lower still, on the graceful curve of her neck, then the slope of her shoulders — some pale freckles there, he noticed — and then, alas, on the slight rise of her breasts, very little of which was actually exposed, that muslin frock being the soul of modesty.

  Freddy, God rest him, was an idiot. Strident though she may be, this woman huddled against him possessed a spellbinding sensuality. It shocked him to realize that.

  Elias felt in danger of losing his moorings. All he intended was to offer his assurances that she had been blameless in Freddy’s death, but his mind had taken him on another journey. At last she gave an audible sigh and stepped away from him.

  “I appreciate your kindness, my lord,” she said in a shaky voice. “But I am well aware of my faults.”

  “I am not kind,” he said.

  That startled her. Elias thought it was well that she had severed their physical connection, because otherwise he would be tempted to reach out and touch her chin, perhaps tilting it slightly upward for closer inspection of those rosy lips. He would slip his other hand around her waist and pull her close, savoring the soft fullness of her breasts against his chest, though perhaps this time with more leisurely appreciation.

  “Harriet!” said a shrill voice. “Whoever is this man? And what is he doing to your, er, person?”

  ’Twas no fantasy, Elias realized, suddenly and acutely aware that his own mouth was but a hair’s breadth from Lady Harriet Worthington’s lovely lips. And that he had, in fact, pulled her once more into his arms.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Poor Eustace!” Draping herself in a chair, Monica Tanksley took refuge in her smelling salts. “I cannot believe you have betrayed me like this, Harriet. Poor, poor Eustace!”

  Harriet, mortified that she had succumbed to guilt and self-pity in the presence of Lord Westwood, had quickly recovered her poise and summoned more tea. Monica was inclined to grow overset over every perceived slight to her only son, regardless of whether it was intended. On second thought, Harriet decided, sherry was called for.

  She signaled to Horace to bring that and the little iced cakes her neighbor loved.

  “Now, Monica, it is not what you think,” Harriet began, then trailed off. In truth, she could not have explained what had transpired. One moment Lord Westwood was comforting her, and the next — well, she did not know exactly how to describe what had happened next. “Anyway, Eustace has no more regard for me than he does for that chair. It is useless for you to persist in the notion that we should suit. At all events, I am far too old for him.”

  “By but a handful of years,” Monica replied plaintively. “And you are young enough that I may yet hope for grandchildren. Moreover, I am quite certain you would keep him out of trouble.”

  Harriet sighed inwardly. The older woman’s belief that her best friend and son would make a good match was more than wrongheaded; it was bizarre. But she knew the notion was born of Monica’s dismay that Eustace had surrounded himself with some unsavory companions of late — and the futile hope that Harriet could negate their influence. The wife Monica envisioned for her son was more of a guardian than a helpmeet.

  Her friend was more than a decade older than Harriet, slender and with thin, light brown hair that would likely gray within a few years. Her sharp-set nose and angular features gave her a saturnine appearance in the happiest of times, but now more than adequately conveyed her disappointment. “You do not know my son as I do,” she added mournfully. “He is a dear, sensitive soul. To learn that you have given yourself to this...this rakehell, will be more than he could manage. He will be inconsolable.”

  A dry cough from Lord Westwood, who had remained ominously silent throughout Monica’s hysterics, drew Harriet’s attention. Conspicuously absent his neckcloth, which Harriet had laid carefully on a chair, the earl stood stiffly in the middle of the room, undoubtedly eager to take his leave but perhaps too much the gentleman to depart in the midst of Monica’s hysterics.

  “Monica, allow me to introduce Lord Westwood. He is — was — Freddy’s partner in the spice company. He is here to consult with me on business matters.” Harriet was well aware that benign explanation would not satisfy Monica’s curiosity over her relationship with the earl, which had doubtless appeared rather the opposite of businesslike when Monica came upon them.

  Monica cast the earl a jaundiced eye.

  “My pleasure, madam,” Lord Westwood said politely, with a quick bow.

  “I imagine it was,” Monica retorted meaningfully.

  The earl opened his mouth to respond, then evidently thought better of it and lapsed into silence once more.

  Eager to head off any fireworks, Harriet hastily grabbed the plate of iced cakes and passed them to Monica and the earl. Lord Westwood shook his head, clearly impatient to leave. But she held the plate in front of him for another moment and, with a barely perceptible sigh, he gave in. Absently, he took a bite, then looked up quickly in surprise. In the next instant, the entire piece had vanished.

  “Exceptional,” he murmured, reaching for a second piece.

  Monica glared at him. “It is the rose water that makes it special.”

  He tilted his head consideringly. “It is the mace,” he corrected. “It marries well with the sugar but does not eclipse the underlying tartness that keeps the cake from being cloying.”

  “Lemon juice,” Harriet put in quickly as Monica’s expression darkened. “Just a dash, mind you. It is one of my favor —”

  “I still say it is the rose water,” Monica groused, but she regarded Lord Westwood with new interest.

  “The hint of roses is all to the good,” he conceded, “but you must own that the sweetness of the spice and sugar harmonizes perfectly with the citrus.”

  Monica eyed him with grudging respect. “I have never met a man with such comprehension of taste.”

  “Lord Westwood is in the spice trade,” Harriet said. “He searches the West Indies for products that might appeal to English tastes and ships them here to enliven our ordinary cuisine with a bit of the exotic.”

  The earl looked at her in surprise. “Never say that you actually have an inkling of what my business is about?”

  “Our business,” Harriet corrected. “I hope you did not think me entirely ignorant, my lord.”

  “No, merely someone who sells off shares of a hugely profitable business
for a fraction of their worth.”

  Harriet snatched the plate of cakes away just as he was about to snare another one.

  The tart exchange was not lost on Monica. “Perhaps I misconstrued things,” she said, studying them. “I expect it is only a fleeting attraction between you. I have heard that these things can happen.” She paused, then added wistfully, “Not, unfortunately, to me.”

  Harriet flushed. “Lord Westwood and I are merely business partners.”

  Monica only returned her a knowing look and reached for another cake.

  But Lord Westwood had had enough. “Let me assure you, madam, that the only commonality Lady Harriet and I share is one for exceptional gastronomy.” Bowing deeply, he left, not bothering to retrieve the damp swath of linen that had served as his cravat.

  Harriet stared after him for a moment, then felt Monica’s gaze on her and managed a weak smile. “Truly, Monica, there is naught between us.”

  Monica simply shook her head. “Oh, dear, Harriet. Oh, dear, dear, dear.”

  ***

  “I know what I saw, and it weren’t any business discussion.” Heavenly eyed her sister meaningfully across the kitchen table. “They were closer than the icing to those cakes of yours.”

  Celestial sighed. “Wouldn’t be a bad turn of events. The man does have a robust appetite,” she said approvingly. “That husband of hers never showed the least bit of interest in her before his port. More often than not he was too castaway to eat. Lord Westwood’s plate comes back clean as a whistle.”

  “Lord Westwood has an appetite, all right.” Heavenly frowned. “And herself having no idea about men. She might as well be a green girl.”

  Horace tried to look stern, but in truth he was just as interested in what had transpired between his mistress and the earl. He had followed Mrs. Tanksley into the drawing room in a vain attempt to announce her presence and had thus witnessed the same…closeness that Mrs. Tanksley had. Heavenly, he soon learned, had been watching from the adjacent parlor.

  “Lady Harriet would be distressed to know you had been spying,” he said disapprovingly.

  “Who’s to tell her?” Heavenly retorted. “Not me.”

  “Nor I,” Celestial promised.

  “If only you had seen her, Celestial.” Heavenly shook her head in wonder. “Wasn’t an ounce of daylight between them.”

  “He must have started it.”

  “Aye. Lady Harriet wouldn’t have,” Heavenly said.

  “Not a bit,” Celestial agreed.

  But Heavenly looked thoughtful. “Could be our lady is coming into her own,” she offered.

  Celestial considered that. “Wouldn’t be a moment too soon. After what that husband of hers put her through, she deserves to be happy.”

  “Was a scoundrel, that one,” Heavenly agreed.

  “You are speaking of our dear departed employer,” Horace said reprovingly. As he’d been part of the viscount’s household before his marriage to Lady Harriet, he usually rushed to his late employer’s defense. Still, there was no denying facts.

  “Wasn’t nothing dear about him,” Heavenly retorted.

  Horace remained tactfully silent. Lord Worthington had been, by any reckoning, something of a cad. But he would not indulge in kitchen gossip, either. Or at least he would not appear to.

  “It has been a year since the viscount’s death,” he said in a neutral tone. “It is perfectly understandable that Lady Harriet wishes to enjoy a gentleman’s company once more.”

  “No, it ain’t,” Heavenly corrected. “She is scared to death of men.”

  Horace frowned. “She runs that bakery, lives here on her own, throws all those parties in town by herself. Why, Lady Harriet fears nothing.”

  Heavenly exchanged a meaningful look with her sister. “Men are so ignorant,” she said.”

  Celestial regarded Horace pityingly.

  ***

  The trouble with living near a small village in the country is that the only people available to invite to dinner were those one saw every day, Harriet thought glumly as she put the finishing touches on the meal. She had invited the Tanksleys and Squire Gibbs to dinner before the morning’s unfortunate events. She assumed Lord Westwood would return for dinner, despite their very odd encounter over tea. But her earlier note to him had neglected to mention that his dinner companion would include the man with whom he had so recently been at fisticuffs. There being no fitting way to send a message round to either man at this hour informing him of that fact, Harriet suspected her dinner would be a complete disaster.

  Fortunately, she would soon remove to London, where her salons would be as lively and fascinating as ever, and where people knew how to comport themselves even when the discourse grew outlandish.

  She spent every Season in town — not for the parties and social whirl but for the stimulating talk that accompanied the arrival of Parliament. Over the years, her town house had become a gathering place for all manner of political figures from radicals to Tories. What flourished was a yeasty mix of ideas as scintillating as the food she served to accompany them. Her invitations were prized, although Freddy had often preferred to spend his evenings elsewhere.

  Last Season she did not go to town. It was not because she was in mourning. She had simply not wished to encounter Freddy’s friends — especially Lady Forth, who knew all too well Harriet’s failures as a wife.

  Throughout her disastrous marriage, Harriet had kept an open mind, reasoning that Freddy had every right to seek his own happiness when he could not find it at home. She did not regret her decision. But she did regret that all of London knew that Caroline Forth was Freddy’s mistress. And Cecily Browning before that. And Lady Iris before that. And any number of dazzling stars in the ton’s firmament.

  Before her marriage, which had followed close on her first and only London Season, Harriet found Freddy a captivating diversion from the suffocating existence she had led in her father’s gloomy castle. She had grown up lonely, her father having retreated so far into his grief over her mother’s death as to appear as cold as those Cornwall winters.

  Harriet had never seen a man so full of life as Freddy. He had swept her away with his flattery and romantic ways. Harriet had wanted to believe that he cared for her; she yearned to find in another human being the warmth she had never known — and yes, she had been eager to share his bed. Early in her marriage, however, she discovered that she had mistaken his practiced charm for sentiment and that Freddy had fallen in love with her dowry, not the woman attached to it. And although he granted her all the freedom a wife could want, he had no intention of conceding his own.

  Marital intimacy had left her feeling empty and disregarded. Indeed, intimacy had only deepened the wedge between them, for it threw into sharp relief the hollowness of their union. How, Harriet had often wondered, was it possible to share such intimate touching yet remain such perfect strangers? Freddy’s eyes had looked past her, and that chilled her more than anything else. Later, after she discovered the true state of his allegiance, which was to say none, Harriet thought that perhaps things had worked out for the best after all. She did not try to cajole or wheedle or reproach her husband, accepting that her initial attraction to him had been misguided and that his for her had been nonexistent, merely a reflection of her own fantasies.

  Over the five years of their marriage, she immersed herself in her salons and in her baking. In time, she almost forgot about Freddy’s dalliances.

  Every time she encountered Lady Forth at a party or the opera, she remembered, of course. It was there in the woman’s pitying eyes, in the cool contempt with which she regarded Freddy’s eccentric wife. At such times Harriet’s resolve and confidence faltered, and it became more difficult to tell herself she was not to blame for Freddy’s straying. She considered whether her ignorance of men might have contributed to his rejection. That thought made her feel small and inadequate, but she did not know how to overcome her deficiencies.

  Nor did she know how to
reconcile her failure to please Freddy with her insistence since his death that she needed no man, that her world was complete as it was. It was as if she endeavored to compensate for her failures by removing any possibility of being judged for them. She was not unaware of the irony but, as with Freddy’s dalliances, chose not to dwell on it.

  A finality had settled over her since Freddy’s death, a peace of sorts. After all, it was but one more way in which he’d left her. Still, she could not help but conclude that marriage was overrated and desire but an illusion. This thing between women and men that had inspired poets and flowery words over the centuries was vastly inferior to the lofty literature it had spawned.

  Or so she had thought.

  That very strange moment with Lord Westwood, that embrace — if that’s what it was — had unsettled her. Reflecting on that moment now, she was mortified that she had confessed to him her torment over her marriage, that she had given in to emotion and weakness.

  It had been oddly comforting to linger within the circle of his arms. And there was something else: a heightened awareness of how nicely she fit within them. But that was a silly notion, another misguided fantasy. Men and women did not “fit” together. That was an illusion akin to that which led her into marriage with a man oblivious to any needs but his own. She might be a good judge of recipes, but she was a dreadful judge of men.

  And yet, it struck her that Lord Westwood would be an excellent teacher. He was not like Freddy. He was sober and serious, and not in the least frivolous. Certainly, he was not charming or diverting. But neither did he look past her. Indeed, when he fixed her with those dark eyes and bluntly stated his wishes, she did not doubt the truth of his words. He might be capable of negotiating ploys in the service of his business interests, but he was not a man to shun honesty.

  In recent weeks, Harriet had thought she was ready to return to London for the first time since Freddy’s death, ready to face her husband’s friends, perhaps even his mistresses. Not that she wished to face them. There would be whispers — perhaps even open comments — about Freddy’s scandalous exit from the world. She would not mind the whispers as much as the pity.