Page 57 of Miss Dashing
“Dearest Cousin Hecate. Dare I hope you came out here knowing I’d follow?”
“You dare not. One simply wants a breath of fresh air before bed.”
Phillip silently applauded that sentiment.
Cousin Johnny’s footsteps crunched closer. “Is that all one wants? I’ve missed you, Hecate. Missed you far, far more than you can possibly know.”
A gentleman would not eavesdrop. A gentleman would slip away before another word was said.
Phillip longed to be a gentleman in the eyes of the world, to have the panache and presence of a Cousin Johnny. Instead, he had a good pair of ears and the burning conviction that the fellow was up to no good.
Phillip found a comfortable rock amid the ferns and bracken and settled down to do more than eavesdrop if necessary to safeguard Hecate’s wellbeing.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Hecate said, frustration flaring, “I will seek my bed.”
“Bide with me a moment,” Johnny replied. “Only a moment.”
Hecate weighed the price of delaying her slumbers another quarter hour against Johnny apparently feeling entitled to subject her to some sort of cousinlymoment. Phillip had been fast asleep when Hecate had let herself into his bedroom, and she hadn’t had the heart to wake him.
Had Johnny followed her to the summer cottage? He was an accomplished woodsman, after all, and familiar with Nunnsuch’s grounds.
She settled on a bench and arranged her skirts. “If you have something to say, you’d best say it. The horse race tomorrow necessitates organizing a picnic buffet sufficient to feed half the shire. The whole neighborhood has been invited, and they will rejoice to learn of your return.”
“I rejoice to be returned,” Johnny said, taking the place directly beside her.
Hecate barely restrained herself from moving away. The Johnny who’d left had still had the lanky vestiges of youthful awkwardness. He’d known enough to regard his Canadian posting with both enthusiasm and caution. He’d been charming, but not like the Johnny who’d returned.
This fellow was confident and calculating. Hecate did not trust him and wasn’t sure she even liked him.
“Do you know why I went to Canada?” Johnny asked, stretching out his legs and crossing his feet at the ankles. “The wilderness is endless, the frontier far from civilized, and the winters… You cannot imagine the winters, Hecate. Snow in June and September isn’t unheard of out west, and yet, they claim to have a summer.”
If Canada was so beastly inhospitable, then perhaps Britain ought to leave it in peace. “I’m told it’s also beautiful beyond imagining.”
“It is, when it’s not trying to kill you. I bought my colors because I did not want to be yet another Brompton preying on your generous nature. I took Emeril with me because he was already hatching schemes to relieve you of your fortune.”
“To compromise me? Miss Blanchard would have foiled those plans. My companion was skeptical of bachelors generally and of Brompton bachelors most of all.”
“The truth is, I wanted to be worthy of your esteem.”
Oh no.Not this and not now, when Hecate was exhausted, and wishing herself in Phillip’s arms, and ready to be done with house parties forever more.
“You have my esteem,” she said, scooting forward. “Anybody who escapes the pull of the Brompton tendency to mischief and insolvency deserves endless esteem, but right now, I deserve to find my bed.”
When she would have risen, Johnny seized her wrist. His grip didn’t hurt, but Hecate’s urge to leave edged closer to anger.
“We’re engaged, you know,” Johnny said quietly. “You and I. Isaac hatched up the notion when he learned I was thinking of joining up. I was losing hope that the solicitors would approve the funds for my commission, so I signed the settlement agreements at Isaac’s urging. A contingency plan, he said, but I signed them in good faith.”
Engaged?Hecate nearly laughed with relief, except Johnny was for once serious. “Isaac excels at hatching schemes that come to nothing. We are not engaged.”
“He says you signed the papers too.” Johnny’s grip shifted so his fingers were laced with Hecate’s. “Said he slipped them in among all the documents and whatnot the solicitors were always having you sign. Managing a fortune apparently necessitates mountains of correspondence, bank drafts, and so forth.”
“It doesn’t matter what I signed,” Hecate said, trying to keep her tone civil. “I was not yet of age. Having long since reached my legal majority, I can repudiate any contract I made when I was a minor.” The rule had exceptions. Her new solicitors would know them, but the concept held true in the general case.
“You’d do that to me?” Gone was the swaggering prodigal. In his place was a good man humbled by looming and undeserved defeat. The transition was a little too smooth for credibility, but Hecate couldn’t ignore the real bewilderment in Johnny’s tone.
She marshaled her patience and kept her voice down. “You expect me to marry a man I haven’t seen in ten years? A man who never once wrote to me or asked to be remembered to me—in ten years?”
“A bachelor doesn’t correspond with an unattached young lady.”
