Lord Harry by Catherine Coulter

Her hands were on her hips even though it made her side hurt more than necessary. “Oh, he did, did he? Well, he certainly has his nerve, doesn’t he?” Then she just grinned at Pottson. “All right, both of you. Lord Harry is still very much in existence, and it is I who will decide just when he will disappear from London. If you don’t obey me, I swear that I will go directly to White’s and yell the truth of this entire matter to the world. Just keep on with me and I’ll do it. Do either of you wish to take that chance?”

Millie glanced at Pottson. They knew they’d lost, but just for the moment. Hetty guessed that, at the first opportunity, Pottson would take himself to Jason’s town house and fill his ears with Miss Hetty’s obstinacy.

Although Hetty suspected that Pottson, after delivering her invitation to Sir Harry and Mr. Scuddimore, had paid a visit to the marquess, she didn’t question him, just stared at him coldly, making him feel the perfect traitor, she hoped.

As she vigorously pomaded down her blond curls and drew them severely back at the nape of her neck, she found herself wondering just how Sir Harry and Scuddy were going to react upon seeing her. They would have many questions, of that she was certain. I shall just have to take them as they come, she decided, as she pulled on her breeches. She directed a grunt of disgust at the thin body looking back at her from the mirror. If her breeches had been loose fitting before, now they positively hung. She heard a loud knocking on the outer door, and with a final glance at herself, she turned and strode from the room, hopeful that during her illness she hadn’t lost her masculine swagger.

“Good God,” Sir Harry said, clasping her hand and pumping it. “You’ve become a damned scarecrow. You still feeling pulled, old fellow?”

“Ho, Harry, it is only that I thought of you and became too ill to eat.” How strange it was that she had slipped back so easily into Lord Harry’s role.

“Well, Scuddy here ain’t the worse for wear. Ate like a man mountain, he did, in sympathy for you, at least that’s what he kept telling me.”

“I thank you, Scuddy. It’s good to be alive. It’s also good to see both of you again.”

“Well, we’re surprised to see you, Lord Harry,” Scuddy said.

“Surprised? Why? Did you believe I’d curl up my toes and pass to the hereafter?”

Sir Harry said, “What Scuddy means to say is that the Marquess of Oberlon informed Julien my brother-in-law, the Earl of March, you know that when you recovered from your wound you would be returning home. We’re dashed glad, though, that you returned to say goodbye before going back to that barbaric place.”

Damn him, she thought. It was nicely done. She said in a cool voice, “I’m not quite ready yet to say my farewells. It appears the marquess was a bit premature in announcing my leave-taking.” She turned before either Sir Harry or Mr. Scuddimore could offer any further comment and led the way to the table.

They were midway through the first course of a raised pheasant pie when Sir Harry asked her the inevitable question.

“I say, Lord Harry, will you tell us now just why the devil you forced the marquess to fight a duel?”

Hetty paused a moment and lifted her wineglass to her lips before saying with just the right dash of hauteur in her voice, “I certainly have no intention of telling you the cause of our disagreement. It wouldn’t be honorable to do so. Suffice it to say that the marquess and I have amicably resolved our differences. I now call him friend.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided against killing his grace. It would have been a messy business,” Sir Harry said. “I would have had to second you out of the country.”

“That was clever, Harry,” she said. She’d started to say that it had been the other way around that it had been the marquess who’d done her in, but she didn’t say that. What Sir Harry said was the truth. She could have killed him, perhaps, if she’d still had the strength. She’d felt invincible at the time, but now, she didn’t know what would have happened. “He took me to Thurston Hall and cared for me. I owe him a debt of gratitude.”