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“Nothing. Martin, check the cinch,” she called. “I shall walk a little way.”
“I’ve said something to disturb you. Do you find it unnatural that I do not love my sister?”
Chaos followed behind Bennet like a large dog.
“No, of course not. It is I rather who have spoken out of turn. To condemn you for something I know nothing of is ill-done of me.”
“Well, I was going to mention that, but as you have admitted your fault I am left with no barbs to fire.”
Rose managed a brief smile, and she almost told him she knew Foy. But no, he would find out soon enough. Why ruin this day, when Axel was likely to ruin the next?
“Tell me what is wrong,” Bennet begged, looping the reins over his arm and taking her hand between his two.
“The engagement and duel, this all happened years ago.” Rose said, shaking the mental image of Axel’s piercing brown eyes from her mind. “Surely it is past history. Perhaps Foy did not even survive the war,” she said hopefully.
“No such luck. He was wounded several times and kept turning up like a bad penny to cut up our peace. This time when he begs for Harriet’s hand I shall agree.”
Rose became conscious of her surroundings and began walking again, forcing Bennet to surrender her hand. “That might make Harriet like you better, but if you did not think him worthy of her then...”
“It is not that Axel has become more acceptable, but that Harriet has managed to descend to his level. I must get her married off before she causes a scandal that I cannot squelch.”
Rose’s glance flew to his face.
“No, do not ask me what all she has been up to. By emulating her intimate acquaintances she has become very jaded. She may merely be trying to get revenge on me for being in control.”
“Perhaps, if you talked things through with her, there might be a reconciliation.”
“Harriet forgive me? Not a chance. Not with Mother on her side, and Harriet is like Mother in that respect. The catalog of my wrongs never has anything erased from it, but grows with time like the national debt. I doubt I could ever be forgiven for all my offenses.”
“You are joking.”
“Except that this birthday ball may wipe out a few. You should have your invitation by now. You are coming, of course.”
“You make it difficult to say no. But then we must be off to Paris.” She watched the smile fade from his face as he halted again.
“Do not go,” he begged.
“But I must. I must go whenever Stanley and Alice are ready to leave.” She signaled to Martin to bring Gallant, and Bennet helped her to mount.
“Help me convince Stanley to spend the season in London. You can stay in Varner House. Mother and Harriet would love to have you.”
“Now that is an untruth,” she said with her usual pert smile as she watched him swing up onto Chaos.
“Then stay to keep me from boredom.”
“To argue with you? I think you will find that grows stale after a bit.”
“Bantering with you? Never.”
The look in Bennet’s eyes could not be misread. He was not joking this time or making game of her. She smiled sadly and shook her head. One mention of her to Axel and he would revise his opinion about that. She urged Gallant into another canter, and the horse responded willingly to have two such treats in one day. What a strange man Varner was, to trust her with confidences about his family that if repeated would do them a great deal of discredit. She would not repeat them, of course. Rose never gossiped and took pains to say the best of people. She was well aware what careless chatter could do to a woman’s character, how it could mar her very life. Was Bennet Varner naive or merely the first frank man she had ever met? She would have liked to further her acquaintance with him just to puzzle that out
Bennet left Rose reluctantly at the hotel and wondered if he should risk delaying the ball just to buy a few more days. No, a celebration at Varner House would be no particular lure to the Walls, at least not to Rose. They would simply shrug and board the next packet. Just as the promise of a fine ship might not hold them. There was the possibility of making London so interesting for young Wall that he did not mind dallying in town, but Bennet caviled at introducing Stanley to any new vices just to serve his own ends.
He returned to South Audley Street, as he did frequently, to a house in pandemonium. Bennet heard his head groom sigh heavily as Bennet surrendered the reins to him and mounted the steps, prepared to untangle whatever setback was making his mother shriek in that disconcerting way. Had she only known, she could have gotten better work from the servants if she maintained her dignity rather than screaming at them like an angry fishwife.
For all her pretensions to society, Bennet felt his mother’s plebeian tantrums more of an impediment to the family’s acceptance than his involvement in trade. After quieting the seamstress and bribing her to finish Harriet’s gown by the following day, after soothing the ruffled feathers of Mrs. Marshall, the housekeeper, and convincing Armand, the chef, not to pack up and leave, be cornered his mother and sister in the morning room.
Harriet was sprawled on the sofa, crying over the dress, which she pronounced ugly beyond words. Her tears would have been more convincing if she had not been wearing an expensive new blue walking outfit.
“Then wear one of your other dresses.”
“I have worn them all. The only thing that will make the new dress acceptable is a proper necklace of diamonds.”
“And I suppose you know just the ones to set it off. Very well, write down who has them and his direction and I will have Walters pick them up tomorrow. They will be your birthday present. By the way, you have sent an invitation round to the Walls, haven’t you?”
“Well, I have invited them, though I do not see the need.” Edith spoke now, two spots of color still remaining in her sallow cheeks from her recent tantrum. “They are, after all, just country cousins. What if they embarrass us with their dress or speech?”
“They won’t, Mother,” Bennet assured her absently as he picked up the Times. Just to discomfit her he glanced critically at her black bombazine. It was an affectation, this wearing of black three years after his father’s death, when she would have looked better in some other color. But like the dyeing of her hair, Bennet put it down to bad advice from someone.
“I’m inviting Axel, then,” Harriet said in the subdued silence that followed.
Bennet raised an eyebrow, and was about to say “why not?” but decided too prompt an acceptance of her suitor might make Harriet suspicious. “If you must.” He sat and tried to focus on the financial news.
“If you get to invite the wallflower and company, I should be able to ask my friends. After all, it is my party.” Harriet seated herself at the messy escritoire and pulled a list toward her.
“What did you call her?”
“A wallflower. Those dowdy clothes. And can you imagine her playing nursemaid to a young bride? She must be odd indeed.”
“If I hear that title fastened on Miss Wall I will know where it came from, and I won’t forget your maliciousness.”
“In another day you will not have any say in what I do. I shall be in possession of my own fortune and I may marry Axel if I wish.”
“Yes, I suppose you may, but do you not think you ought to shop around a bit first? Tomorrow you become one of the most marriageable young ladies in London, and I should think you could do a great deal better than Foy. Don’t you think so, Mother?”
“Harriet is in love with Axel. Aren’t you, Harriet? Why else would she have run off with him?”
“It has been four years,” Bennet said, trying to bury himself in the paper. “May I point out Axel has made up to several other women since then, every time he lands back in London, in fact.”
Harriet’s blue eyes were ablaze with anger. “It does not seem like four years. It was my coming-out season and I remember every moment of it.”
“I too recall the entire season with nauseating clarity, especially that bullet I took for you.”
“That was your fault, Bennet,” his mother informed him.
“Don’t tell me you favored that havey-cavey elopement.”
“It was better than having you break Harriet’s heart by not letting her marry Axel.”
“Well, I will no longer be the impediment.”
“What if he does not ask me, Mother?” Harriet rose, clenching her hands together dramatically. “What if Axel’s feelings have changed, or he has been too put off by Bennet?”
“Oh, he’ll ask you all right,” Bennet interrupted. “He needs your fortune more now than ever. Oh, by the way, I have made an appointment for both of us to see Barchester tomorrow morning. The reins of your future will then be put in your hands, Harriet. Have you engaged a man of business?”
“Not...not yet.”
“Do you wish Barchester to recommend someone?”
“Certainly not. Is it necessary to have such a person with me tomorrow?”
“Not really, unless you mean to change banks immediately.”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Let Barchester know when you do and where you want your monies deposited. He can arrange everything.”
“I don’t want him to do anything. He always treats me like a child.”
“He means no harm by acting fatherly. Most women of independent means do not care to handle their own affairs.”
“Most women do not have such an unreasonable guardian. I suppose you will charge me rent now to stay here?”
“Do not be absurd. You are still my sister, but I’ve no doubt you will be married within the month and off my hands for good.”
“Must you both bicker like this?” their mother demanded. “You give me a splitting headache.”
“I have tried bickering alone and it just doesn’t work,” Bennet quipped, sending his mother charging from the room, grumbling to herself.
Harriet waited until their mother was gone before she giggled. “Why do you bait her, Bennet? She cannot defend herself.”
“And I cannot help myself. If only she realized how much we enjoy arguing. Seriously, Harriet, I will be placing a great deal of wealth at your disposal tomorrow. I hope you have considered that it might be wiser to keep control of it yourself than turn it over to a husband—any husband, including Axel.”
“I know what I am about. I am not the green girl I was at seventeen.”
“No, I realize that. There will also be investments to discuss. You will have to decide how you want to manage those.”
Harriet walked dreamily to the window and stared out at the redbrick residences across the way. “I think once I am married I will set up a proper town house. I consider it highly unfair Papa left you both Chesney and Varner House.”
“Hasn’t Axel some residence other than his lodgings and that estate in Yorkshire?”
“He has a house near Epsom, but I require one in London.”
“I am looking for a house for the Walls to rent. I can have Walters make inquiries for you...if you wish to make use of his services.”
“Why are the Walls looking for a house?”
“To rent merely. They cannot stay in that hotel forever, and Mother has made it abundantly clear she does not want them here.”
“But I thought they were on the point of embarking for Europe, at least before you introduced them to the social whirl of London.”
“One invitation can hardly constitute a social whirl—oh. I forgot to tell Mother I asked them to tea today to make her acquaintance before your birthday ball.”
“She won’t like that.”
“Yes, I know, but perhaps you can tell her for me. A diamond necklace should be worth one favor.”
“Very well, I will tell her,” said Harriet, walking in a businesslike way toward the door. “Just make sure my diamonds and my dress are ready by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I have nothing else to concern me at all.”
“Nothing but that nasty shipping business.”
“That nasty shipping business keeps you both in fine gig.”
“But must you flaunt it?” she asked with her hand on the doorknob.
“The world is changing, Harriet. I and other men like me helped win this last war. Don’t ask me to be embarrassed about that. Didn’t Wellington himself come to dine?”
“One evening.”
“Well, he did have a war to fight. Now go and tell Mother the Walls are coming and I expect you both to be polite to them.”
“If we must. But they are such encroaching mushrooms.”
“You have not even met Stanley and Alice yet.”
“Are we expected to entertain every country dowd we are remotely connected with?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I have better things to do with my time.”
“Just tell Mother.”
Harriet ducked out of the room. Sometimes, just for a moment, Bennet thought he had got through to her and made some impression. There was sense in her somewhere, but then she would quote their mother or one of her fashionable friends and turn his stomach. No, he did not love his sister anymore. She had changed into some creature he disliked exceedingly.
When the Walls were shown into the elegant gold salon there were already two guests present, enjoying their tea, Lady Catherine Gravely, and her daughter, Cassandra. After the coldly polite introductions it became clear to Rose that the other two women were intimates of Harriet’s and had been invited to amuse her, since conversation with the Walls was not expected to. It was also clear who had tempted Harriet to savage her hair so badly, for both women sported a head of tight curls.
Every time Bennet introduced a topic Rose or Stanley might care to discuss, Harriet changed the subject to some personage they did not know, thus shutting them out of the conversation. Poor Alice took everything in with such wide eyes, Rose knew they would put her down as a simpleton. Lady Catherine and Mrs. Varner were no help. The former stared speculatively at Rose any time she opened her mouth and the latter seemed interested only in her daughter’s gossip. If Edith remembered Rose’s mother at all she never made reference to her.
Rose was annoyed and in the mood to show it, but she liked Bennet Varner and did want him for a friend. She admired the way he had charmed her brother and sister-in-law, no matter how much she suspected his motives. And here he was, sending her embarrassed grimaces because his sister and mother were snubbing them. She could at least enjoy that repartee with him. She gazed about the lovely ground floor salon that was used only for tea. She could imagine the elegance of the rooms that must lie above. And yet she felt sorry for Bennet Varner, always having to apologize for his mother and sister. When Stanley cleared his throat meaningfully, Rose gulped her tea and was about to make some excuse to get them away early. Suddenly Harriet did mention a name they all knew.
“Lord Foy?” Alice piped up. “Wasn’t that the man you were engaged to, Rose?”
Stanley choked on a gulp of tea and Rose paused with her cup halfway to her mouth. Bennet looked at her in inquiry.
“Foy...Foy...” Rose pretended to muse. “Is his name Axelrod Barton?”
