“This is not a reward. It’s a sentence,” he said gruffly.
Diana went to her room and flung herself on the bed to cry. Harrup soon went upstairs to change. As he shaved, his brow was furrowed with schemes. When he stood at the mirror arranging his cravat, an expression of unholy conniving settled on his saturnine features.
Dare he ask a favor of Laura Whitby after such harsh treatment as she’d received at his hands? It was outrageous—but it would surely turn Groden against him. Markwell was in a very insecure position at Whitehall with himself now the attorney general. If he wished to make any strides in his career at all, he’d be eager to ingratiate his superior. And Markwell must have some influence with Mrs. Whitby. The irony of what he contemplated after Di’s efforts on his behalf was by no means lost on him. She’d scratch his eyes out—just before her pixie smile beamed and he kissed her.
He hurried to his desk and wrote up two letters of purple prose, addressed them to Mrs. Whitby, and locked them in his desk. Next he wrote a brief note to Markwell. Markwell had been on the fidgets about not receiving an invitation to this evening’s do. He’d jump at the offer to come around after dinner.
This done, Harrup stuck a diamond stud in his shirt front and went downstairs to welcome his guests, every one of whom he was eager to see leave.
Chapter Twelve
A smaller number of guests were invited to Harrup’s dinner than to the rout afterward. The Grodens were there, the Eldons, and Lord Liverpool, along with the foreign minister and Harrup’s house guest, Diana. Ronald was induced to attend, but Peabody announced firmly she had no business hobnobbing with smarts and swells and would take her mutton with Mrs. Dunaway and Stoker early, to be on the alert during the guests’ dinner. “For you may rest assured everything will go wrong,” she forecast glumly.
Nothing went very far wrong. It is true Ronald knocked over his wineglass, but it was nearly empty—nothing a well-placed serviette couldn’t hide. Lady Selena sulked all through the fish and only smiled when she caught Ronald’s eye, which occurred more often than was seemly. She called Lord Castlereagh Lord Eldon more than once and appeared to think Eldon was the prime minister. But then, no one paid much attention to her, for by and large, she was silent as a jug.
Diana was also quiet. She did, at least, take a keen interest in the conversation around the table, however, and had no trouble conversing with her immediate partners. The handsome Lord Castlereagh was very adept at flirting with pretty ladies who admired him. He kept up a lively patter of anecdotes about the Congress of Vienna that nearly made her forget for a few moments this was her last evening with Harrup.
The host, Diana observed, was distracted. He made a token of talking to his partners, moved his food around on his plate, and sipped his wine, but his fork seldom rose to his lips. Once she noticed him staring at her, not her face, but her shoulder. She glanced down and saw her shawl had slipped, revealing the bruise. She lifted the shawl to cover it and peeked again at Harrup. His brows rose in a silent question. She hunched her shoulders and smiled. Harrup shook his head and lifted his eyes ceilingward.
When dinner was finished, the ladies left the gentlemen to their port and removed to the saloon. Lady Selena received her fair share of attention then, for the quizzes were all eager to spot a flaw in the sullen beauty.
“So you have attached Lord Harrup. That is quite a coup, my girl,” Lady Castlereagh informed her.
Selena looked on with serene indifference. “My papa arranged it.”
“When is the wedding to be?” Lady Castlereagh asked.
“Whenever they tell me. I have nothing to say about it,” Lady Selena answered, then rose and changed her seat. She chose to sit beside Ronald’s sister. “How did your brother do at his new job, Miss Beecham?” she asked.
“Very well, I believe,” Diana answered, and turned aside to inform Lady Castlereagh that her brother was Harrup’s assistant, hoping to imply this was Selena’s only interest in him.
Lady Castlereagh answered in a low voice, “if you want my opinion, Miss Beecham, Harrup is making a dreadful mistake. That young chit is not at all up to snuff. I’m surprised Groden hasn’t taken her in hand. You may rest assured Harrup will soon do it. He will not put up with her sighing and sulking ways. Furthermore, she is too young for him—though monstrously pretty, of course.”
It was an uncomfortable half hour during which Selena only spoke voluntarily to Diana, while snubbing the wives of the most important government leaders. To Diana, she spoke only of Ronald. It was with a sigh of relief that Diana heard the approach of the gentlemen. Harrup came toward his future bride and tried to engage her in harmless banter till it was time for the other guests to arrive. The bride-to-be paid him only scanty attention. Her interest obviously lay across the room, where Ronald was caught up in conversation with Lord Eldon.
At nine o’clock the other guests began arriving for the rout. Diana went immediately to the ballroom to see that all was in order there. She was staggered to see one of the first arrivals was Lord Markwell. In a tizzy of disbelief she went searching for Harrup, who was greeting guests at the doorway.
During a lull in arrivals she tugged his arm. “Harrup, Markwell is here!” she said.
“Yes, I have already made him welcome.” He smiled blandly.
“You mean you invited him after what he tried to do to you?”
“Of course. He is an excellent employee in my department. Personal animosities cannot be carried over into work.”
“A rout isn’t work. I made sure you would snub him outside of the office.”
“This function is work related. You don’t think I voluntarily cavort with the likes of Eldon and Liverpool?” he asked, shocked. “This is my card of thanks for their kindness in my appointment. As it turns out, Markwell has this very evening performed an invaluable service for me.”
Diana just shook her head. “I thought I had begun to understand you, but you’ve surprised me again.”
“This has surprised you?” he asked, and laughed. “Wait till you discover the favor Markwell has done.”
“If you tell me Mrs. Whitby is coming to your party as well, I shall assume there is no limit and elope with Lord Castlereagh.”
“You’ve chosen your quarry ill. He won’t be easy to detach from his lady. He’s peculiarly fond of Amelia,” he warned her. “A fine example to those like myself, who are about to embark on a matrimonial journey.”
Diana stiffened perceptibly when this subject arose. She turned to leave, and Harrup touched her ann. “Save me a waltz. I’ll be joining the dancers shortly,” he said. That was all, but the searching smile that accompanied his short speech left her emotions in tatters.
The gentlemen, she decided, handled these tricky situations much better than she. Lord Markwell, who certainly knew who she was, made a point of being presented to her and stood up with her twice. He was an excellent dancer and amusing as well. When he had the impudence to express his joy on Harrup’s promotion, he went too far.
“I expect Mrs. Whitby was also thrilled that I got away with her letters,” she said frankly, hoping to jostle him out of his sangfroid.
Markwell emitted an uneasy little laugh. “It’s the chance of the game,” he said. “You win some, you lose some. At this point, I expect madam is nearly as confused as I am myself.”
“She is not as confused as I,” Diana declared, and decided to forget the whole affair.
Half her attention was on the doorway, where she expected to see Harrup appear at any moment. When he finally came, he was with the entire Groden family, and his first dance was with Selena. She noticed that he didn’t bother trying to prod the girl into conversation. While Selena looked around the room for Ronald, Harrup was busy looking for someone, who Diana soon realized was herself. When he spotted her dancing with Lord Castlereagh, he smiled and stopped looking.
Diana wondered if he would have to stand up with Lady Groden, too, before he could come to her. Perhaps Lady Eldon must be honored as well. She kept an eye on all these people while still enjoying her dance with Castlereagh. She saw Lord Groden called from the room by Stoker, and wondered what it could mean. In less than a minute Stoker was back, beckoning Harrup away. A sense of excitement was in the air. Markwell kept looking at her in a curious way. Soon Castlereagh began to wonder if something was amiss at Whitehall.
“It can’t be,” he decided. “Lord Liverpool is still overflowing one of the side chairs. If I see him being hauled to his feet, you must excuse me, Miss Beecham.”
At the end of the dance Diana went to join her brother, to prevent him from running to Selena. While she went through the paces of a country dance with Ronald, Lord Harrup was summoned to his own office by an extremely irate Lord Groden.
He lowered his bushy eyebrows and shook two letters under Harrup’s nose. “I have just been handed these missives, Harrup, and must demand an explanation of them.”
Harrup took the two familiar sheets and conned them quickly. “They appear self-explanatory to me, milord,” he answered blandly. “May I know where you got hold of them?”
“This Whitby woman,” he said, jabbing at the letters, “had the effrontery to send her footman to this house to give them to me.”
“What an extraordinary thing for Mrs. Whitby to do,” Harrup answered. “Are you quite sure they weren’t intended for me?”
“They were addressed to me, in this large envelope with a note. Mrs. Whitby says that I might be interested to learn the character of my future son-in-law. The character of that hussy is what I have learned. Forging notes . . .” He looked hopefully to Harrup, who stared at him in astonishment. “I know how these women behave. You have only to give me your word these were not written by you, Harrup, and the matter is forgotten. The handwriting is not at all like yours, now I take a closer look at it.”
Harrup examined the letters more closely. “No, these are a couple of letters I wrote to Mrs. Whitby, actually.”
“Now don’t be rash, Harrup. Look again,” Groden advised.
Harrup looked again. “They are definitely my letters,” he insisted. “You will notice the date on this one is today. I would hardly forget so soon.”
“But see here, you say ‘when we were together last night.’ You were at the party at Brooke’s last night.”
Harrup ground his teeth in frustration at this error.
“Quite right. I ought to have said ‘this morning,’ It was certainly well past midnight when I visited Mrs. Whitby.”
When Groden realized he had been outmaneuvered and must do the proper thing, he went into a fine bluster. “You can hardly expect me to hand over my innocent young daughter to a man who hasn’t even the decency to deny he wrote these!” he pointed out.
“Would a lie enhance my eligibility?”
“No, sir, but behaving like a gentleman would. I must inform you my wife will be sending in a retraction of the engagement to the papers this very night.”
“I am very sorry to hear it, sir,” Harrup replied mildly.
“Hmpf! Now you will lie,” Groden roared, and squashed the two letters in his fist.
Harrup stood like a rock, willing down the triumphant shout that he longed to break forth. He waited to see if Groden had any further abuse to heap on him, and when the old man only stood shaking his head, he spoke. “It was a bad idea from the start. I had no idea Selena was so, er, young,” he said.
“I told you she was not quite eighteen.”
“Eighteen or nineteen, you said.”
“What odds? She is out, and she is fully developed, so far as physique goes. A dandy-looking gel. Not a bright child, of course. I can see why you are reluctant to have her. Perhaps it is as well. My wife was not fully in favor of the match.”
“The season is just beginning, Groden,” Harrup pointed out. “An incomparable like Selena will be snapped up before you can say one, two, three. She will be very happy to hear the wedding is off.”
“I won’t pretend she hasn’t been pouting and mooning about the house till I can hardly look at her without feeling like Jack Ketch. It would have been an entirely eligible match, though. An excellent match for her. The attorney general’s lady, and that is just the beginning, if I know anything.”
“I am honored at your confidence.”
Groden cast a regretful glance at his host. “You’ll go far, my lad. There are more twists in you than we knew. Thank God you’re not a Whig.”
“True blue and Tory, too. Shall we drink a toast to the party?” Harrup asked. The battle was won, but to ensure he hadn’t lost a friend into the bargain, Harrup called for a bottle of his best champagne, and they drank their toast, chatting of this and that. “I hear Princess Charlotte is
enceinte
. That will be good for the mood of the country. Let us hope she gives Prinney a grandson,” Harrup mentioned.
“That would be some compensation for his wretched marriage. My eldest is expecting as well, did you hear? It will be her third. A good, fertile lass, and she gives us sons, too.”
“That makes ten grandchildren in all now, I believe?”
After one glass, the two gentlemen returned to the party. There was no scandalous storming out of Harrup’s house, wife and daughters in tow, but the Grodens did depart early. Lady Groden was informed by her spouse that she had a migraine and wished to leave. Lady Selena couldn’t be counted on to conceal her joy at the news and didn’t learn she had escaped Harrup’s clutches till she had reached home. She was so happy she cried for ten minutes before she fell sound asleep.
Diana watched from the sidelines when Groden and Harrup returned from the study. She observed there was no breach between them—in fact, Harrup was smiling and Groden looked no more fierce than usual. She saw the family take a polite leave, and while they left early, the evening was by no means just beginning. A few of the other elderly guests were beginning to pull out their watches and stroll purposefully toward the door as well.
Still following Harrup with her eyes, Diana watched him go to the orchestra and speak to the head fiddler. From there he came directly to her. It was impossible to interpret the gleam in his eyes, the smile he couldn’t quite hold in check, and impossible for her not to assume the same tokens of joy.