Tom, buried deep inside Harriet, froze. His mind was utterly incapable of coherent thought. His body, so much more unsophisticated—so much more predictable—wanted to shaft Harriet until he was thoroughly satisfied. He wished he had locked the door. He wished his unwelcome visitor would take the hint and go away.
Then he noticed the beautiful silver slippers in his line of sight and the embroidered hem of the matching silver silk gown.
“Dear me,” Tess Darent said. Her voice was mild and sweet. “I see you are very busy, Mr. Bradshaw. Perhaps I should call back later?”
Tom felt himself start to wither. He did not dare look up. He had a very bad feeling now, replacing the transcendent bliss of a few moments before. He could sense his plans diminishing with the same rapidity as his erection.
Harriet was screaming now. Tom wanted to cover his ears because it was so piercing.
Then matters got considerably worse. The door opened again and Tom saw the very shiny top boots beside Tess Darent’s slippers. Two pairs. A masculine voice said, “For pity’s sake, Bradshaw …”
Someone hauled him to his feet. Tess was helping Harriet to stand and tidy her clothing. Tom turned. On one side of him was a man he did not recognize. He did not like the look on his face. On the other side was Garrick Farne. Tom liked Farne’s expression even less. And when Farne spoke, the smooth courtesy of his tone did not in any way cloak the iron beneath.
“Good morning, Bradshaw,” Farne said. “Do I take it that you will be making a formal offer of marriage to my late father’s ward?”
“Certainly not,” Tom said.
Harriet threw the sherry decanter at him. Then she started to cry. “I don’t want to marry him,” she sniffed. “I want a rich old Duke.”
“I’ll find one for you, Lady Harriet,” Tess said, patting her hand comfortingly. “I’m very good at that sort of thing.”
Farne glanced toward the traveling bags, sitting guiltily in the corner of the office. “Were you planning on leaving town, Bradshaw?” he inquired silkily.
Tom, normally a fluent liar, found that his imagination appeared to have failed him under Tess Darent’s clear blue gaze.
“We are looking for my sister,” she said very sweetly. “Once before you had information on her whereabouts, Mr. Bradshaw, so I wondered if you might help us now?”
Tom started to sweat. “I have no notion—” he began feebly.
“I expect Lady Merryn has gone to Somerset to find out about your by-blow, Garrick,” Harriet said maliciously to Farne. “I told Mr. Bradshaw all about the baby—”
It seemed to Tom that Farne moved so quickly then that one moment he was standing and the next Farne had him pinned in his seat with one hand at his throat. Tom tried to squirm and almost choked.
“My illegitimate child,” Farne said. His eyes were very intent. “Tell me what you know about that …”
Sherry dripping down his face, a bitter taste in his mouth, Tom knew that it was going to be a very bad morning indeed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BY THE TIME THE CARRIAGE had reached Maidenhead they were all getting on famously. Merryn had discovered that the elderly gentleman seated across from her was a piano tuner on his way to tune a Broadwood grand for Lord Tate in Newbury. The fat lady on one side of Merryn was a Mrs. Morton, the widow of a very prosperous greengrocer, and the thin girl on the other side was her elder daughter Margaret, and they were traveling to spend the Christmas season with relatives near Barnstaple in the hope that Margaret would be able to catch a suitor.
“I did so wish Margaret to marry into the ton,” was Mrs. Morton’s constant refrain. “Goodness knows, her dowry is large enough but she did not take. And now—” she cast her daughter an exasperated look “—I very much fear that she will have to settle for a man who has to buy his own furniture rather than one who inherits it.”
“Well, that can be a blessing in so many ways,” Merryn said soothingly. “You have no notion, Mrs. Morton, as to the ugliest pieces of furniture we were obliged to have in our house when I was young simply because they had been in the family for so many years.”
As the day progressed, gray and drab with the hint of snow in the air, Merryn sat and watched the countryside unroll. As a child living in North Dorset her life and those of her sisters had been bounded by the nursery, the schoolroom and the village of Fenridge and its immediate neighbourhood. There had been few visits up to town. Stephen was the only one who had traveled and that distinction had made him even more fascinating in Merryn’s eyes. She had never traveled farther than Bath. The first time she had met Kitty was when Garrick had brought her to Starcross Manor as his wife. Merryn wondered now what had made Garrick make the infelicitous choice of taking his wife on honeymoon to a house a bare five miles from that of her lover. Kitty, she thought, with a sudden rush of feeling. Kitty would have asked Garrick if they could go there. Kitty had done it to be near Stephen.
For the first time in years Merryn felt hatred for Kitty Farne. Sweet, pretty Kitty Farne, who had had both Stephen and Garrick dancing to her tune. She had been so jealous of Kitty, not because Kitty had had Stephen’s love but because she had had Garrick’s attention, too. It had not been fair. Her thirteen-year-old self had been so jealous and resentful.
The coach passed Reading making good time and with plenty of stops to change the horses. At Newbury the piano tuner descended. Just outside Hungerford there was a close encounter with a private chaise driven by a reckless young man who shaved past them with only inches to spare.
“These young Corinthians,” Mrs. Morton said, generously handing around some boiled sugarplum sweets. “Do you have any brothers, Lady Merryn?”
“I had one,” Merryn said. “He died. He was a noted whip.”
The motion of the carriage started to soothe her into sleep. It was warm and stuffy inside, even warmer as Mrs. Morton had thoughtfully brought a spare blanket and insisted on lending it to her. Gradually the hours of the journey seemed to blur into one another as darkness fell. There was their arrival at Bath in a snow flurry, a room at the White Hart Inn where Merryn lay wakeful listening to Mrs. Morton’s snores through the wall, another carriage in the bright cold morning, this one considerably inferior in comfort to the mail coach. Finally she and Mrs. and Miss Morton rolled into the tiny seaside village of Kilve in Somerset, in the early afternoon and Merryn bespoke dinner and a bedchamber and arranged for a pony and trap to take her the final few miles to the village of Shipham.
It was a cold afternoon with a bitter winter wind off the sea that was edged with snow. Merryn huddled in the trap and shivered deep inside her winter pelisse. Now that she was here, she had no notion what she was going to say to Lord Scott. She thought she should have sent a note first. She should not have succumbed to this impatient desire to learn the truth. Except that it felt as though the whole of her future hung on understanding the past and now she was so close she could not wait.
The carter set her down at the entrance to Shipham Hall. Merryn put her hand on the metal gate that fenced the carriage sweep. The house stood back a little from the road, an Elizabethan manor, half-timbered, a modest family home. Merryn could hear children’s voices somewhere in the garden, the shrill calls and cries as they played, wrapped up in hats
