Page 71 of Miss Dashing
“I promised you a house party without quadrilles.”
Phillip approached her. Hecate’s tone had been hard to decipher, but it had been far from warm. “I wanted to surprise you. Were you looking for me?”
She moved away before he’d come within embracing range. “I sought solitude, and this place reliably provides it.”
“Johnny doesn’t come here, you mean.” Phillip stood near the door, feeling as Henry Wortham must when faced with the conundrum of wooing a lady he’d gladly die for. What next steps? Were thereanysteps that would lead forward?
“Johnny… accosted me again.” Hecate crossed her arms and stalked to the French doors. “Rather, he could have. I was intent on counting table linens, because the buffet at the grand ball will require nearly all we have. Mrs. Roberts has offered to lend us some of hers, but I don’t want to put her to the trouble… I was in the linen closet, and there he was.”
That Hecate would spend her evening counting tablecloths when a housekeeper or chambermaid should have been tasked with the job was more reason for heartbreak.
“You were trying to hide,” Phillip said, “as I’ve been hiding here of an evening. Did he touch you, Hecate?”
She shook her head. “No. He simply stood in the doorway, letting me know without a word that I was trapped. He offered to assist me, I waved him away, and he sauntered off.”
“But first,” Phillip said, taking up a lean on the door’s opposite jamb, “he waited a moment, emphasizing your peril and his power. Let’s step outside, shall we?”
Hecate passed through the French doors and into the summer night. Phillip followed, and when she took one of the padded benches beneath the eaves, he sat beside her.
“Johnny has you spooked,” Phillip said, wondering if he dared take Hecate’s hand.
“I should have known better than to be alone in a linen closet, Phillip. I’m not thinking clearly. A man who will force himself upon me within shouting distance of the house is a man who trusts that I will not bellow with outrage when he makes further advances.”
What was she saying? “Have you decided to accept his suit, then?” Phillip had been steeling himself for that possibility without admitting it, but saying the words brought forth rage, despair, bewilderment.
Old emotions, long familiar to a boy who’d been rejected by his own father.
“I have mere days, Phillip, before Johnny gallops for London, where he will start his campaign to rob me blind. He will be subtle and thorough.”
“Sly and sneaking.”
“He means business. He has convinced himself that his ten years in the New World entitle him to get his hands on my fortune, and he will have documents, as well as Isaac’s support in the clubs, Charlie will probably cheer him on too. Years ago, Johnny told me to remain single if I wanted to keep hold of my money. Simple, sound advice, though now I see that he wanted me unwed so my fortune would remain available to him.”
Phillip’s beloved was talking herself into surrender. “He won’t stop at plundering your fortune, Hecate. He will use the threat of litigation to force you to the altar.”
She sniffed and nodded.
By the light of the moon, Phillip saw a skein of silver on her cheek. “Damn and blast.” He took her in his arms, and she came to him willingly.
“I hate to cry. Crying solves nothing. There is no such thing as having a good cry.”
Phillip fumbled for his handkerchief and passed it over. “I cried when I returned to Crosspatch after my first foray into London. I felt like a soldier who’d survived his first battle. I realized even then that by leaving Crosspatch, by braving the wilds of Town, I’d lost something. An innocence, a purity of perspective. But I’d gained wisdom and strength, and I’d made the acquaintance of the most fascinating lady.”
“Phillip, don’t.”
He stroked her hair, a terrible sense of parting cleaving his heart. “She was all starch and propriety, but also… fierce, kind, determined. She got me through my first formal dinner, and that gave me hope. This lady was devoted to her charities and had single-handedly established a sailors’ home that was a model of its kind. Her family was an unceasing trial to her, and yet, she never played favorites or complained of the burdens they placed on her.”
“Hush.”
He could not hush. If he was to lose her, he at least deserved his third-act soliloquy. “Come with me to the hay meadow, Hecate. If, when we leave there, you want me to depart from Nunnsuch, I will yield to the press of business or whatever fiction polite society resorts to when making a hasty exit. Johnny does not deserve you, he will betray your trust over and over, and you do not love him.”
Worse yet, Johnny did not love Hecate.
“I used to be fond of him, but now I cannot even esteem him, except as one esteems an enemy’s artillery, but he will turn his guns on my family, on women and children. I am well acquainted with how that feels, Phillip, to be too young and too female to mount an adequate defense against Society’s assaults.”
“So you will bear Johnny’s assault on your freedom instead?”
“It might not come to that. He can’t know the whole extent of my fortune. I am vastly wealthy. I might be able to buy him off and still have enough left to care for my sailors and cousins.”
