Page 71 of Miss Dauntless
“Harry, who are your people?”
His steps slowed. “You ask me thatnow? I tell you I’m about to take your only begotten son halfway around the world, and when you should be shoving the deed to that house into my hands, you want to review old business?”
“Humor me. If you do plan to impersonate Tommie’s father, you will have to become accustomed to all manner of outlandish questions bearing no apparent relation to anything save a small boy’s curiosity. When Tommie asks about his grandpapa, what will you say?”
Harry touched a finger to his hat brim when a pair of shopgirls passed by. They giggled, he smiled, and Matilda wanted to shout profanities.
“If you must know, my father was a sanctimonious old Quaker whose own father made a fortune manufacturing guns. Papa refused to take over the business—the Friends have grown reluctant to openly dabble in war, though their banking tells a different story. In the grand tradition, I refused to wear my own father’s false piety. We had a falling out, and I decamped for Sodom on Thames, to the relief of all and sundry.”
“You did a bunk,” Matilda said, trying to keep the surprise from her voice. “Is this why you disdain violence, Harry? Because the ghosts of your ancestors would haunt you?”
“Those ancestors could be handy with a birch rod on a small boy’s backside, Till. Some of them at least. When can I have the house?”
“That is Tommie’s house. Why can you not see that a child lacking many of life’s advantages needs that asset more than you do?”
“Because he doesn’t.” The words were snarled without any pretensions to civility. “He’s had you to cosset and coddle him. He had me, for a time, to pay the rent and the coalman. He has a damned earl ready to send him to bloody public school, while all I have is a pressing need to quit the home shores. I will take the boy, Tilly. I don’t want to—he’s a good lad, and he loves you—but I will take him. All manner of rigs suggest themselves when I can be a grieving husband with my pale little son.”
Tommie was not pale, but he was little. Small enough to be snatched from the stable, despite the vigilance of the men and his mother. Besides, Harry could appeal to the authorities to return his son and his wayward wife to him, and the authorities would gladly render assistance.
While Matilda would look a fool, if not mad, claiming her husband had died on the Oxford Road at an inn that didn’t exist.
“I will take ship for Philadelphia,” Matilda said as they approached another intersection. “Tommie and I will, rather. Aunt Portia has some connections there, and it’s said to be a gracious and prosperous city. When I have left London with Tommie, you will have the deed to the house.”
Harry smiled at a veiled dowager mincing along on the arm of a footman. “You’ll leave your fancy toff just like that?”
I will do the right thing for the man I love.“Try as he might, Tremont cannot solve the problem that you’ve created for me and Tommie. That fresh start you mention is the only reasonable option if I still value my reputation, which I do. I have no connections of my own, so I am reduced to trading on Aunt’s girlhood friendships.”
“We’re good at landing on our feet, aren’t we, Tilly?”
For attempting that wistful, confiding tone, Matilda would have gladly pushed Harry beneath the wheels of the next oncoming coach.
“We’re cowards, Harry, who are good at running. I ran from scandal, and I ran from the vicarage. You ran from me. Now you’ve run from schemes gone inevitably awry, and I am running from scandal again.” And running straight into a broken heart.
Harry studied the sky, which today was a bright, wintry blue. “Cowards live to run another day, Tilly. Tremont wants you to be his fancy piece?”
No, he did not, though Matilda had offered. “Is that so surprising?”
“Not surprising in the least, but less than you deserve.” Harry drew Matilda away from the edge of the walkway just as a phaeton splashed past. “You will find it hard to credit, erstwhile wife of mine—I find it hard to credit—but I have missed you, contrary to previous representations. You kept a wonderfullytidy house, and you were so trusting, so earnest, and then so ferociously devoted to the boy.”
“And now,” Matilda said sweetly, “I am so angry. I will book passage for next Tuesday, and you will not see me off. I have arrangements to make if you are to be given the deed upon my departure.”
“I knew you’d see reason. Any chance I can have the deed sooner?” Harry studied a dray lugging a steaming load of manure along the muddy street.
“Tuesday is less than a week away, Harry. Are you truly that hard up?”
“Rent’s coming due.” Said with casual humor.
Matilda counted to ten in French, while a crossing sweeper diligently collected a fresh pile of horse droppings.
“And you think you are fit to parent a small boy,” she muttered, taking out a few coins and passing them over. “Until Tuesday, stay away from me and mine, Harry, and that means keeping your skulking minions away from Tommie too.”
The coins disappeared while Harry resumed studying the sky. “Never skulk. I taught you better than that. March, saunter, stroll, take the air, bustle along, but don’t ever skulk. I’ll expect that deed by Monday, Tilly.”
“Where shall I send it?”
He recited an unprepossessing direction in Knightsbridge, one that would, alas, never see another penny in rent from Harry Merridew.
Merriman. He was going by Merriman now, or so he claimed.
