them.
‘I also know dear Edward is as desperate to see you happy as I am. He’s repeatedly offered you a Season and I have repeatedly offered to be your chaperon in London—yet soon you will celebrate your twenty-fourth birthday and you haven’t set one foot out of Suffolk in for ever. I can barely get to you attend even the local assembly any more. What are you afraid of?’
She wasn’t afraid. Not exactly. Reluctant, more like. When one had the amount of money in the bank that she had, the vultures tended to circle. At least here, close to home, she knew all of them, had repelled most of them and didn’t have to waste valuable time trying to identify them as vultures in the first place. London was the great unknown, stuffed to the rafters with wholly unsuitable men who had no scruples and who would move heaven and earth to get their hands on her fortune. Winnowing out the wheat from the chaff did not appeal. Especially when Impetuous Thea had such poor taste in men.
‘I need to be close in case something happens.’ That was at least a reasonable excuse. With a sham for a marriage, no children and a largely absentee wife, Uncle Edward was alone. If Thea wasn’t there, then he would have nobody but his manservant, Bertie, to keep him company from one week to the next. She couldn’t allow him to live like that. Not when he had taken her in after she had been orphaned, loved her unconditionally and been both mother and father to her for over half of her life.
So much so, he had transferred the bulk of his unentailed fortune to her while she had still been a child. Tens of thousands of pounds, cannily invested, continually multiplying and held in trust until she had reached her majority. He still managed her fortune for her and every year it grew bigger still, ever multiplying like the venomous heads of the mythical Hydra and twice as frightening. Not that she would admit such a thing to anyone, least of all her beloved uncle. He had gifted her a lifetime of financial independence and had never asked for anything in return. It seemed horribly ungrateful to loathe the generous gift he had saddled her with.
‘Very noble—but exactly how many more years are you prepared to wait for the worst to happen? It has already been three.’ Which coincidentally was the last time she and her uncle had really argued, when Thea had defied him to sneak out of the house past midnight to kiss the handsome officer who she had met at the assembly rooms the week before. With hindsight her uncle had been entirely correct in his censure. The man had been too old, too worldly and wholly focused on her fortune. He was taking flagrant advantage of her youth, her rebellious nature and her inexperience to further his own ends.
Unfortunately, at the time she had been too outraged at being forbidden to see him and too wilful to accept the edict. While Impetuous Thea was out, the worst had happened. If Bertie hadn’t been there to save him, her uncle would now be as dead as her father.
‘Edward’s condition has neither deteriorated nor improved. You need to face facts, Thea. While you sit around waiting, being the overly dutiful niece and the devoted daughter Edward never had, your own life is passing you by. Mr Hargreaves notwithstanding, you could be married already, living close by and still being the dutiful niece who visits daily, yet you have thwarted every potential suitor who has shown an interest.’
‘None of them was suitable. They all just wanted my money.’ She didn’t want to end up shackled to a vulture. ‘With great wealth comes great responsibility. I have to be sure I entrust it to someone worthy.’
‘Or perhaps your exacting standards are too high on purpose? You are the most suspicious person I know.’
That stung. ‘I’m an heiress! I have to be suspicious! Every fortune hunter, ne’er-do-well and chancer who ventures into Suffolk automatically seeks me out and plights his troth, keen to get his greedy hands on all that money. I have to be cautious.’
‘Cautious, yes. Not overcautious and determined to denounce them all as villains. Lord Selwyn, for instance, didn’t turn out to be a swindler as you suspected.’
‘But he was a fortune hunter.’
‘And Mr Taylor, the young widower, was in fact a widower and not a bigamist either.’
Thea threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. ‘Yet he was in debt up to his eyeballs and hopelessly in love with my fortune, too.’
‘Yes, granted, both saw the money before you, but Captain Fairway had his own fortune.’
‘And three illegitimate children by two separate mistresses. I knew he was a philanderer!’
‘There is always something wrong with them—fortune hunter, philanderer, scoundrel...what was the name of the chap you thought was a highwayman?’
‘Chisholm Hunter? I’m still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t. There was something very shifty about that man.’
Harriet glanced heavenwards and briefly closed her eyes before continuing in an uncharacteristically measured tone. ‘Your overly suspicious nature has given you an imagination as vivid as your hair, darling. In the absence of any real reasons to discount them you now have a tendency to make things up.’
‘You think I should have settled? For a man I have no faith in nor any true affection for? Leap first into marriage without any forethought or rigorous contemplation? Like my uncle did with Aunt Caro? Look how miserable that hasty decision has made them! Might I remind you, you also found fault with all those gentlemen, too, as I recall.’
Harriet rolled her eyes again. ‘Only because you continually hammered home their faults and I am a good friend and want to please you. However, while you continue to repel each and every gentleman who glances your way, the clock is ticking. In two more years you’ll be well on the way to being considered an old maid. And I don’t want you to leap into marriage. I want you to risk the leap of faith. It’s the most splendid feeling in the world, darling. You stand on the precipice, not ever truly knowing what is the right course of action, but you take that chance. You abandon your fears and leap.’ She sighed romantically. ‘I adore leaping. It’s the ultimate grand gesture. The test of true love is the grand gesture.’
‘So I should abandon all hope of finding a decent, upstanding, genuine man to love, and simply settle?’
‘Leaping isn’t settling, darling. It’s throwing caution to the wind and trusting your instincts and laying yourself bare in front of another in the hope they feel the same. But if you are seeking absolute perfection inside and out before you dare to jump, which I am coming to suspect you are, then you are doomed. It doesn’t exist. Nor should you use your aunt and uncle’s marriage as the benchmark to justify your exacting standards—or your fortune as a barricade to hide behind. Your uncle would never have given it to you if he’d had any inkling you would use it to shut yourself off. He despairs of your stand-offishness as much as I do.
‘Every human has flaws, but unless you allow yourself to properly get to know a gentleman, warts and all...and he, you...and cease being instantly suspicious or stand-offish, you will never come to know if they are minor flaws you can live with or major ones which will make you want to grind their face under your heel when they dare to say good morning. If you want to fall in love and be loved in return, then you have to give it a fighting chance to blossom. Nothing blooms in the desert. You have to take that gloriously abandoned leap of faith. Your greatest flaw is that you dismiss people out of hand instantly.’
‘I do not.’ Surely she wasn’t that pernickety? ‘I judge every man on his merit and give them all adequate time to show it. A little cautious suspicion gives them the opportunity to prove their mettle.’
‘Adequate time to prove their mettle? Really?
