she said as she got her knee over the pommel and adjusted her skirts, ‘you ought...all of you...to be ashamed of yourselves.’
She did her best to toss her head as though she held them all in disdain. As though her heart wasn’t hammering like a wild, frightened bird within the bars of her rib cage. To ride off with dignity, rather than hammering her heels into Shadow’s flank, and urging her mare to head for home at a full gallop.
She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Harriet urged Shadow into a gallop, as soon as she was out of their sight. They’d thought she was a lightskirt. That was why Ulysses had kissed her, and the one with the cold eyes—Zeus—had looked at her as though she was nothing.
That was why the giant had lifted her on to the horse without asking her permission, too. Even though he’d meant well, he hadn’t treated her with the respect due to a lady.
Because she’d stepped outside the bounds set for the behaviour of ladies.
Damn her aunt for being right! She dashed a tear away from her cheek. A tear humiliation had wrung from her. She wasn’t afraid. Just angry. So angry. At the men, for treating her so...casually. For manhandling her, and mocking her and insinuating she was...
Oh, how she wished she’d struck them all with her crop. Men who went about the park, getting drunk and frightening decent females...
Although they hadn’t thought she was decent, had they? They’d thought she was out there drumming up custom.
She shuddered.
And no wonder. She’d melted into Ulysses’s kiss like butter on to toasted bread. And then been so flustered she’d forgotten to conceal her legs when untangling them from her skirts, giving him a view of them right up to her knees, like as not.
Oh, but she wished she could hit something now. Though she was more to blame than anyone and she couldn’t hit herself. Because it turned out that sometimes, just sometimes, Aunt Susan might just be right. Ladies couldn’t go about on their own, in London. Because if they did, drunken idiots assumed they were fair game.
Why hadn’t Aunt Susan explained that some of the rules were for her own good, though? If she’d only warned Harriet that men could behave that badly, when they were intoxicated, then...
Honesty compelled her to admit that she knew how idiotic men became when they drank too much. Didn’t she see it every week back home in Donnywich? By the end of market day, men came rolling out of the tavern, wits so addled with drink they had to rely on their horses to find their way home.
And men were men, whether they lived in the country and wore smocks, or in Town and dressed in the height of fashion. So she should have known. Because the rules were made by men, for the convenience of men. So, rather than expect men to behave properly, at all times, women just had to stay out of their way, or go around with guards, just in case they felt like being beastly.
She slowed Shadow to a walk as she left the park via the Stanhope Gate, her heart sinking. She’d so enjoyed escaping to the park at first light. It had been the only thing making her stay in London bearable of late. But now, because men rolled home from their clubs in drunken packs and...and pounced on any female foolish enough to cross their path, she would never be able to do so again. She’d have to take a groom. Which would mean waiting until one was awake and willing to take her without first checking with Aunt Susan that she had permission.
And Aunt Susan wouldn’t give it, like as not.
Oh, it was all so...vexing!
London was turning out to be such a disappointment that she was even starting to see the advantages of the kind of life she’d lived at home. At least nobody there had ever so much as raised an eyebrow if she’d gone out riding on her own. Not even when she’d worn some of her brothers’ cast-offs, for comfort. Even the times she’d stayed out all day, nobody had ever appeared to notice. Mama was always too engrossed in some scientific tome or other to bother about what her only daughter was getting up to. And Papa had never once criticised her, no matter how bitterly Aunt Susan might complain she was turning into a hoyden.
Nobody who lived for miles around Stone Court would ever have dreamed of molesting her, either, since everyone knew she was Lord and Lady Balderstone’s youngest child.
She sighed as Shadow picked her way daintily along Curzon Street. She’d been in the habit of feeling aggrieved when nobody commented on her absence, or even appeared to care if she missed meals. But the alternative, of having her aunt watching her like a hawk, practically every waking moment, was beginning to feel like being laced into someone else’s corset, then shut in a room with no windows.
She reached the end of Curzon Street and crossed Charles Street, her heart sinking still further. The nearer she got to Tarbrook House, the more it felt as though she was putting her head under a velvet cushion and inviting her aunt and uncle to smother her with it.
If only she’d known what a London Season would be like, she would have thanked Aunt Susan politely for offering her the chance to make her debut alongside her younger cousin, Kitty, and made some excuse to stay away. She could easily have said that Papa relied on her to keep the household running smoothly, what with Mama being mostly too preoccupied to bother with anything so mundane as paying servants or ordering meals. Aunt Susan would have understood and accepted the excuse that somebody had to approve the menus and go over the household accounts on a regular basis. For it was one of the things that had always caused dissension between the sisters, whenever Aunt Susan had come on a visit. Mama had resented the notion that she ought to entertain visitors, saying that it interfered with her studies. Aunt Susan would retort that she ought to venture out of her workshop at least once a day, to enquire how her guests were faring, even if she didn’t really care. The sniping would escalate until, in the end, everyone was very relieved when the family duty visit came to an end.
Except for Harriet. For it was only when Aunt Susan was paying one of her annual visits, en route to her own country estate after yet another glittering London Season, that she felt as if anyone saw her. Really saw her. And had the temerity to raise concerns about the way her own mother and father neglected her.
But, oh, what Harriet wouldn’t give for a little of that sort of neglect right now. For, from the moment she’d arrived, Aunt Susan hadn’t ceased complaining about her behaviour, her posture, her hair, her clothes, and even the expression on her face from time to time. Even shopping for clothes, which Harriet had been looking forward to with such high hopes, had not lived up to her expectations. She didn’t know why it was, but though she bought exactly the same sorts of things as Kitty, she never looked as good in them. To be honest, she suspected she looked a perfect fright in one or two of the fussier dresses, to judge from the way men eyed her up and down with looks verging from disbelief to amusement. She couldn’t understand why Aunt Susan had let her out in public in one of them, when she’d gone home and looked at herself, with critical eyes, in the mirror. At herself, rather than the delicacy of the lace, or the sparkle of the spangled trimmings.
Worse, on the few occasions she’d attended balls so far, Aunt Susan had not granted any of the men who’d asked her to dance the permission to do so. The first few refusals had stemmed from Aunt Susan’s conviction that Harriet had not fully mastered the complexities of the steps. And after that, she simply found fault with the men who were then doing the asking. But what did it matter if her dance partners were not good ton? Surely it would be more fun to skip round
