A Dangerous Man (22 page)

“An undetectable weakness in the metal, perhaps?” Hillard offered. “Or the shell was improperly loaded?”

“That must be it,” Mercy said with a grateful smile. “And as it was undetectable, no blame can be ascribed. So as I was saying, please do not dismiss the gamekeeper.”

“If that is your wish, dear valiant lady,” Acton said. Hart felt his lips tighten.

“It is.” She looked over at him. “I’m sorry you have returned to such a commotion,
Mr
. Perth. I heard you went to London. On business.” The light in her eyes took on a harsher cast.

Ah
, he thought,
she knows where I have spent the day and wants to question me about what I’ve discovered
. She’d already dismissed her accident as inconsequential and was once more intent on pursuing news about her brother.

But even though she was satisfied with the explanation of why her gun had exploded, he was not. Acton wouldn’t own any but the finest firearms.

“I trust your trip was productive?” she asked, pushing herself more upright in the bed and glowering at him.

“Not particularly.”

“How unfortunate. Things did not go well?” she asked.

The others in the room swung their attention back and forth between them.

“The party I was hoping to meet did not show up.”

“Ah. You will
have
to find the time to tell me about it,” she said. “I insist. I am so interested in English business practices.”

No, he would not find time to tell her anything. He would not spend one more moment alone with Mercy Coltrane. She was blackmailing him—even if he understood her reasons for doing so. She was an impediment to his youngest sister’s marriage—even if she was unaware of it.

But most of all, she threatened all the years he’d spent buffing the chill that encased his heart, all the years he’d spent trying to subdue those feral tendencies.

Being with her simply risked too much.

Outside in the hall Beryl fell into step beside him. “Good Lord, Hart. I would have told you the girl was all right if you’d only paused long enough to listen. Whatever can you have been thinking? How on earth do you suppose it appeared to Lady Acton and her son when you burst into her room like that?”

“I don’t give a bloody damn,” he answered.

She snagged his sleeve, stopping him. She glanced around. They were well away from the interested gazes of the others clustered around Mercy’s doorway.

“Well, you’d better start giving a bloody
damn,” she said in a low, tense voice. “Your actions may well jeopardize Annabelle’s future.”

He ground his teeth. She was right. He’d acted like some gauche, ridiculous knight errant. The Dowager would doubtless be asking herself what had given him the right to storm into Mercy’s room and act so possessive. Mercy—as well as Annabelle—could only suffer as a result of his rash act.

“How could you, Hart?” Beryl went on. “Acton has been growing more and more indifferent and Annabelle is beside herself with anguish, the poor lamb.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. He would accept blame, but it was time that some things were made clear. “If Annabelle is beside herself with anguish, it isn’t discernibly different emotion from her rendition of jubilation.”

Beryl gasped. “Hart—”

“No, not ‘Hart.’ Annabelle. Good God, Beryl. If the chit has a
tendresse
for that blustering oaf, she has a damn odd way of showing it. Padding about like some wan ghost.”

“Hart, what has happened?” Beryl asked, troubled and anxious. “This isn’t like you. Annabelle is a dear, sweet child.”

“Perhaps Acton wishes to wed a woman,” he said, his thought unerringly refocusing on Mercy.

She blinked at him in consternation. “Please, Hart. Don’t be like this. Remember, you’re the head of our family.”

“No, Beryl,” he said intently, “Henley is the head of your family.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, turning pink. “But you’ve always … accomplished things. Annabelle needs your help.”

Annabelle. He had to think of her.

He was exhausted, his side throbbed, he stank of opium, and Mercy’s image imbued his every thought; Mercy, yielding to him; Mercy, laughing at him; Mercy, defiant and fierce; Mercy, pale and slight among white lace pillow shams. He scowled. Something about the gun’s explosion disturbed him. Ridiculous. First a shot in the woods, now this. Accidents did happen. Even twice in as many days. Even to Mercy.

He must force her from his thoughts. Whatever his preoccupation with Mercy, it did not exempt him from his duty to his sisters. “All right, Beryl. I’ll make amends somehow. Smooth things over.”

She nodded, satisfaction marching alongside her obvious relief. “And, Hart, there’s something else.…” Her gaze skittered away from his.

“Yes?”

“Henley. He is having some problems.”

“What sort of
problems
, and where
is
Henley, anyway?”

“Political problems,” she said. “That’s why he was gone today and yesterday. He was in Town meeting with various House leaders and some of his constituents.” Her mouth crimped unhappily. “Oh, Hart. They abuse his dedication horribly. Sometimes these meetings go on well into the evening. Often he has to stay in town overnight.”

Henley was having political meetings in Town?
During the off-season? It was highly unlikely. No one stayed in Town when Parliament was not in session. Yet one look at Beryl’s intent face and he realized she believed it.

“And what do you want me to do?” he asked.

“I want you to use your influence to smooth Henley’s way so he needn’t work so hard. See that he knows the right people.”

He shook his head. “As I’ve told you before, Beryl,
I
don’t know the right people. I have no connections, Beryl, whatever you think. I’m rarely even in the country.”

“But you’re the Earl of Perth,” she insisted doggedly. “People listen to you. Even Henley says so.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. “Did Henley ask you to make this request?”

“No,” she said, refusing to meet his gaze. “No. He would be angry if he knew I had. It is my idea. Being the Earl of Perth’s brother-in-law has always lent Henley a certain cachet. I thought … that is, I had hoped that you would be willing to actively exert yourself on his behalf.”

“Beryl,” he said wearily, “my interference wouldn’t do any good. Henley is a brilliant man. He will succeed or fail on his own merit.”

Her fine-drawn vulpine features took on a resigned cast. “As you say, Hart,” she murmured, and left, her shoulders bowing, her face for one brief moment stark with unhappiness.

Henley Wrexhall, Hart thought, had some explaining to do.

Chapter 19

“W
ell,” the Dowager Duchess said as soon as she had shooed the others from Mercy’s room, “what was that all about?”

“What?” Mercy asked.

The Dowager pursed her thin lips so tightly, they all but disappeared. “Don’t play the innocent with me, young lady. Nothing is going as I’d planned. The Earl of Perth storms in here, demanding explanations in the most proprietary manner. Nathan Hillard looks like a little boy who’s had his sweet taken from him, and my own son, after having arranged this elaborate house party, does nothing,
nothing
, to conclude his courtship with that young chit.

“Add to that the Whitcombes closeted in their adjoining room—I won’t even begin to tell you the coarse speculation
that
must be provoking; then young Annabelle Moreland inexplicably finds not only a backbone but one made of steel; and Beryl
Wrexhall attends every function without the benefit of her husband as escort. And it is all centering about you, Miss Coltrane. I won’t have it.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Mercy murmured, pleating the lace edge of her bed jacket, her thoughts fixed on the Dowager’s initial charge. Without a doubt Hart’s audacious conduct had landed her in a thicket. Still, a treacherous elation welled up within her. He might not like it, but he cared.

“Have you been doing something you oughtn’t?”

The Dowager’s question caught her off-guard. She dropped the bed jacket’s hem. “No!”

The Dowager gave her a hard look before muttering, “Well, see that you don’t. I have a responsibility to you and Lady Timmons. And I mean to do it … no matter how painful.” She lifted her chin, fixing Mercy with an odd, defiant stare. “I was hoping to avoid this, but it is obvious we need to have A Conversation. You, Miss Coltrane, need guidance.”

You can’t possibly know how much
, thought Mercy as she meekly replied, “Yes, Your Grace. I am grateful for any instruction you would be kind enough to offer.”

The Dowager sniffed. “Very pretty, child. I am sure your manner with the gentlemen has been just as circumspect.” She fixed Mercy with an expression that made it clear she was not at all sure of anything of the sort.

The memory of slipping into Hart’s bedchamber
caused heat to ignite in Mercy’s cheeks. The Dowager’s brows climbed. “Oh, dear,” she breathed. “Worse than I’d expected. We must salvage what we can.”

“Your Grace, really, you misunderstand—”

“I am an elderly woman, Mercy. I have lived a long life, during which I have witnessed too many women ruined because they gave their hearts the whip hand.”

“Ma’am?” Mercy asked.

The Dowager nodded. “We women, Mercy, are by nature foolish, gentle creatures,” she lectured. “We are malleable, trusting, at the mercy of our tender emotions. Altogether sweet and childlike, totally unfit to guide our own destinies.”

“I see,” Mercy murmured. She could almost hear her mother’s voice in the Dowager’s recitation.
Pliancy, Mercy, is our gift to the world. It is a woman’s duty to temper the harsh practicality of men with our innate gentleness
. But how often, Mercy wondered, did simple impotence masquerade as gentleness? Pliancy certainly wasn’t going to find Will and bring him home. The thought seemed a betrayal of her mother.

“Mercy, do try and attend. I speak only for your own good. Being an American you are doubly handicapped. Your womanly sentimentality is compounded by your American frivolity.”

“Madam?”

The Dowager frowned. She obviously found this frank manner of speech distasteful, but just as obviously felt the need for it. “You American girls
are so audacious, so animated, yet so
innocent,”
the Dowager said with something like surprise. “Especially compared to our serene, self-effacing English girls. Clearly, you have been encouraged to indulge your ebullient, labile emotions to an excessive degree.

“Not that you aren’t perfectly charming, my dear,” she added, “and I do not mean to wound you, but you do want to be a lady, do you not?”

Again, the words were so familiar, Mercy nearly blinked. Familiar and yet it seemed as though she were truly hearing them for the first time. Perhaps it was because this was only the Dowager Duchess of Acton speaking and not her mother and so she could for the first time hear beyond the disappointment to the content.

Her mother had spent her life hoping Mercy would achieve the dreams she herself had abandoned. But now, listening to the Dowager, it struck Mercy that her hostess was very much like her mother. Neither had really relinquished her own aspirations. They had simply bequeathed them to their children.

An idea pricked at Mercy. She had unquestioningly received the burden of those dreams and from the first she had failed to fulfill them. Always before she had been certain that some inherent quality within herself—something unworthy and unwomanly—had resulted in that failure. But perhaps that wasn’t true. Perhaps her mother should not have expected her to achieve secondhand goals.

The idea wouldn’t be ignored. And, Mercy was stunned to realize, instead of guilt she felt a sense of relief, something akin to emancipation.

“… but your ebullience may give rise to unfortunate talk,” the Dowager was saying. “Our English gentlemen may misunderstand you. As the Earl of Perth—and perhaps my own son—has obviously done. And then where are you, m’dear?” she asked.

“I have never acted improperly,” Mercy said distractedly, still overwhelmed by her newfound conjecture.