She looked at his set profile. He was in close conversation with Pottson. She felt a knot of loneliness. She didn’t want to leave Thurston Hall. She didn’t want to leave him. She wasn’t going home. She was leaving it. She realized the marquess was speaking to her and turned up her pale face to meet his.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t accompany you. Millie and Pottson have my instructions. You’ll be well taken care of. I shall call upon you in a couple of days to see how you’re doing.”
“I’ve been well taken care of all my life,” she said. “When will I see you?”
“In three days. I doubt I could last longer away from you. You madden me and I want to kiss you, very badly. Oh lord, I hope that Jack the footman didn’t hear that, else I would quickly gain a reputation as a pederast. Go, Lord Harry. Take care and rest. I’ll see you soon.” He wanted to touch her face, but he knew he couldn’t. They had to maintain the charade.
He closed the door to the carriage. He turned and walked back up the steps. “Silken,” he shouted, “have the carriage ready in half an hour. We’re going back to London.”
Tired and somewhat depressed, Hetty arrived dressed modestly in a woman’s gown at the stroke of noon. Thinking that her father would demand all sorts of details of her visit to Thurston Hall, she had carefully invented several parties and outings. She was rather unnerved when her sire, after greeting her with a negligent kiss on the cheek, asked only, “I understand the marquess was in residence during your visit and that you got along very well with him.”
“He put in an occasional appearance, Father.” She picked up a roll, but still, from the corner of her eye, she saw his speculative look. She smiled to herself. If her father only knew.
After luncheon, Hetty excused herself and trailed wearily up to her bedchamber. She lay very carefully down on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She thought of Jason Cavander’s manly command that she was never again to appear as Lord Harry. Still, no matter how much she just wanted to stare at him and kiss him, she couldn’t let him dictate to her. She knew what she had to do. She had to find out if Sir William Filey had indeed been responsible for Damien’s death. Nor could she turn her back upon poor Isabella’s plight. The thought of Sir William even being near Isabella made her ill. My motives are of the highest order, she told herself, and if the marquess goes into a snit, then so be it. Damn, why couldn’t gentlemen, the marquess in particular, not realize that they weren’t the sole guardians of honor and pride? Actually, truth be told, she hoped he didn’t really feel that way.
“You intend to do what?” Millie stared stupefied at her mistress the next afternoon when Hetty evenly informed her of her intention to invite Sir Harry and Mr. Scuddimore to dinner at Lord Harry’s lodgings.
“You heard me, Millie. If you don’t choose to accompany me to Thompson Street, I shall just have to go alone. But go I will. Lord Harry isn’t done yet. The marquess is innocent, but that leaves the man responsible still out there. I must get him.”
“But the marquess”
“To the devil with the marquess. I’m your mistress, and he has no say whatsoever in whatever I choose to do. Now, will you help me or no, Millie?”
Short of tying her mistress to a chair, Millie found that she had no alternative but to escort her to Lord Harry’s lodgings. When she tried to argue with her young mistress, she received only cold, uncommunicative stares.
Pottson served only to make Hetty want to strangle the man she was going to marry. “But no, Miss Hetty, the marquess told me that he would see to things now, that you were a young lady, after all, and you were still weak from the wound, and you would need to rest and remember how to wear your skirts again, and, well, he gave me strict orders to pack away Lord Harry’s belongings. He said that he was going to find out who was responsible for sending Master Damien away.”