‘You are just making excuses. You heard my great-grandmother say she expected us all to go and my father will not go against her. The Dowager Lady Harecroft angry is an awesome sight, I can tell you.’
‘I do not see why she should be angry with me. I am not family.’
‘I am hoping that in the fullness of time you will be.’
She looked up from the ledger on the desk and stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I had intended to give you time to get to know me properly before proposing, but Great-Grandmama has precipitated it. But surely you guessed?’
‘No.’ She felt as though she was being carried along, tossed about like a leaf on the wind, as if she had no will of her own and it annoyed her.
He left the desk, walked round behind her and took the pen from her nerveless fingers, laid it down and clasped her hand in both his own. ‘Miss Bywater—Diana—would you consider a proposal of marriage from me?’
It was a very roundabout way of asking her, she thought, almost as if he were not altogether sure that was what he wanted. He had said nothing of his feelings towards her. Did he love her or was he simply looking for a helpmate in the business? Did she love him? He had not even asked that crucial question. If he had done so, she would not have been able to answer it. But it did not matter; she could not, would not, leave her father and she could not see the Harecroft family taking him to their collective bosom.
‘Mr Harecroft,’ she said, ‘I am an employee, I need my job and you are putting me in a difficult position.’
‘I do not see why. If you accept me, then you need work no longer, or only as long as you wish to. You have fitted into the business very well—in fact, I sometimes think you know more about it than I do—and fitting into Harecroft’s is more than half the battle.’
‘I do not want a battle, Mr Harecroft, I want to be left alone to do my job. And now, if you please, I must get on with it. I am lagging behind today.’
He let go of her hand and straightened up. ‘Very well, but I shall ask you again, perhaps at Great-Grandmother’s party. Yes, on reflection, that will be the ideal time. I will say no more until then.’
‘I have said I cannot go.’
‘Oh, you will,’ he said with infuriating confidence. ‘The Dowager Lady Harecroft will brook no refusal.’
Before she could reply, he was gone and she was left staring down at a column of figures that seemed to dance about on the page so that it took her three attempts to total them correctly.
Chapter Two
‘Well, what do you think of Miss Bywater?’ her ladyship asked Richard as their driver negotiated the traffic in Bond Street.
‘Should I be thinking of her?’ he asked mildly.
‘I am intrigued by her,’ the old lady went on. ‘Her situation is strange. She is educated, well spoken, deferential and neat in her appearance, but there is something secretive about her and I should like to know what it is.’
‘I cannot tell you.’
‘I wonder if it has anything to do with her father,’ she went on as if he had not spoken. ‘She says he is an invalid and is very protective of him. It is because of him she needs to work.’
‘But if she does her work well, is her private life any of our business?’
‘It is if Stephen wants to marry her.’
‘Good Lord! Does he?’
‘I think so. He asked me to invite her to my party.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She protested she could not leave her father and when I said bring him too, she began to make all manner of excuses.’
‘Then perhaps you should leave well alone.’
‘I do not want to. I need to know more. You could help me. Find a way of meeting her father, talk to him, discover all you can about his antecedents. I want to know about his family and his childhood, where he spent it, where he was educated, what happened to his parents, his mother’s maiden name. If either had any siblings, if Miss Bywater has brothers and sisters.’
‘To what end? To find out if Miss Bywater is a suitable person to marry Stephen?’
‘If you like.’
‘Then ask Stephen to do it. He is the one who will have to decide.’
‘Stephen does not have your finesse, Richard. He might alienate the man and that is the last thing I want.’
‘And is Miss Bywater to know of this inquisition?’
‘I would rather she did not. Not yet.’
‘Great-Grandmama, I cannot approve.’
‘’Tisn’t for you to approve or disapprove. Just do as you are told. Be easy, I bear the child no ill will, but I need to be sure.’
‘Is there something you are not telling me? I am very busy, Great-Grandmama, and acting the spy is not to my taste…’
She looked sharply at him. ‘Busy doing what?’
He smiled wryly. Why did everyone assume that just because he was not seen to go to work like his father and brother, that he was idle? Six years in the army had taught him many things. Serving with men from all walks of life had opened his eyes to his privileged position. Rubbing shoulders with the educated and the abysmally ignorant, those who knew no other life than soldiering and those who had enlisted as a matter of patriotism or because they were out of work or needed to escape the law, had taught him to judge a man on his merits, irrespective of his position in what his parents chose to call society. Unlike most of his fellow officers, who would not have dreamed of associating with the men under their command, he had taken the trouble to find out about their homes and their families. And what he had learned had horrified him and made him determined to do something about it.
He soon realised his attempts to help the poor and lame were too piecemeal: a good deed here, a generous donation there; taking poor artists into his home and providing them with pleasant conditions in which to work; writing articles that the more die-hard newspaper proprietors refused to publish, so they found their way into the more radical publications, which were frequently being shut down by the government on the grounds that they were seditious and encouraged unrest. He risked imprisonment himself every time he fired a broadside at those who ought to have been helping and did nothing. He had come to the conclusion that it would be better to work within the establishment. Hence his visit to the Commons.
The old lady tapped his arm with her fan. ‘Well? Will you do this for me?’
He had always found it difficult to deny her anything, but on this occasion he was adamant. ‘No, ma’am, I will not. It is an infringement of the young lady’s privacy unless
