Page 70 of Miss Dauntless
She would miss little John and his parents.
She would miss the men, the maids, and dear Nan, who was trying hard to remember herhaitches.
She would miss stinky, crowded, bustling London, some.
She would miss the parishioners of St. Mildred’s, who in their way had been kind to her when she’d desperately needed kindness.
And she would miss Marcus for the rest of her days.
“I know that walk, Tilly, me love,” Harry said, falling in step beside her. “You are in a temper.”
“If I hadn’t been before, I certainly am now. Do you know, Harry, I have you to thank for showing me that I even possessed a temper?”
“Happy to oblige, that’s me. When will you sign over the house to me?”
They waited on a corner while a stately four-in-hand negotiated the intersection. Charles’s replacement waited as well, because the delay was caused by a horse unwilling to heed nature’s call at any pace faster than a plod.
“I will sign the house over to you when all the seas gang dry, and rocks melt with the sun.”
“Burns,” Harry said. “’My love is like a red, red rose.’ Sentimental drivel, but he was apparently right popular with the ladies. I need that house, Tilly.”
“The lament does not improve for repetition, Harry. If you worked half as hard at legitimate employment as you work at avoiding it, you would be a wealthy man.”
Matilda knew better than to pick up the pace, because Harry, being half a foot taller than she, would keep up easily. She called on old skills, skills learned early in her marriage, to separate her mind from the rage in her heart, while she examined whether the encounter could be put to any use.
“I can make trouble, Tilly,” Harry said, ever so pleasantly. “I don’t like to make trouble—I like to turn a coin or two and be on my way—but I can make very bad trouble.”
“Why, Harry, I do believe you are threatening your own lawfully wedded wife. This follows inevitably upon denial of your purportedly reasonable requests, which are, in truth, the demands of a whiny boy. Next will come blustering, then a silence that is also intended to be threatening, but is, in fact, tedious. When I do not relent, you will do a bunk, to use the vernacular, and I am supposed to worry about my erranthusband. What your schemes lack in originality, they make up for in predictability.”
Harry offered his arm as Matilda stepped off the walkway. She ignored a courtesy that was entirely for show.
“Tilly, you wound me.” Something in Harry’s tone suggested he’d just parted with one of his rare, judiciously dispensed truths.
“You filleted me like a mackerel, sir, financially and emotionally, and I have yet to hear an apology.”
They passed the tea shop where Matilda had spent some pleasant hours. She would miss that, too, as would Tommie, no doubt.
“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?” The odd, honest note remained, not remorse, but perhaps bewilderment.
“You are always sorry. I have wondered, if anybody has ever been proud of you, or of their association with you.”
Matilda was tempted to continue spewing bile, but she’d made her point. She kept her peace, wondering if Harry had followed her to the bank. He would—he was that determined and that canny.
And some other day, some day when she and Tommie were far, far away and the ache in her heart had faded to a mere agony, she’d again indulge in tears. Since weeping on Marcus’s shoulder two days ago, Matilda had clung to reason with ruthless devotion.
Marcus had been closeted with his solicitors, though Matilda well knew what the result of those conferences would be. The situation occasioned by Harry’s rise from the dead had a solution. It did not have a happily ever after, not for her and Marcus. Harry was just being Harry—conscienceless and self-interested to a staggering degree—but he was Matilda’s husband.
“Did you for even one moment think of leaving me and Tommie in peace, Harry?”
“Yes. I left you in peace for several years, but I am tired, Tilly. I am tired of British laws, British snobbery, and British hypocrisy. I mean to go to the New World and take my chances in a new land. If you cannot see your way clear to deed the house to me, then I will simply take Tommie and leave you to your honorable earl. You can have all the peace you please.”
And there it was, Harry’s heavy artillery, fired with what sounded like genuine remorse.
“Your name does not appear on the birth registry, Harry. You dealt yourself out of an honor I would have willingly granted you. You are not Tommie’s father in any sense.”
“Happens I am. I have consulted the lawyers, and they say it’s not even a question. You were married to me when the lad was born, I have not repudiated him, and thus the honor of his paternity is entirely mine.”
Harry could put on and take off accents like a trained actor. Matilda had heard him glide from Cockney to Yorkshire and over to East Anglia in the space of an hour. He sounded in this conversation as if he’d had a proper education, to the manor born, even.
