Page 44 of Lady Daring
The girl’s eyes gleamed with tears. “What if I kill someone else’s baby?”
“Oh, child,” Henrietta said. “It was not your doing. God decides these things, not us.” It was no less than what Reverend Dingley had said in his short remarks, but the words sounded hollow, lacking comfort.
Mary Ann sat up and rubbed her face. “I’d best go talk to the matron, then. Nothing gets done by lying about, as my gran says.”
“My Aunt Davinia has a similar motto.” Henrietta nodded, touched by the girl’s resolution.
She wished she could bring Mary Ann to Hines House, but while Clarinda let Henrietta have her head in household management, she would want to choose the wet nurse for her own little stranger, due to arrive soon.
Henrietta, though, knew someone else who might require the services of a wet nurse.
She had resolved she would not press Darien about his situation, not after he had accused her of meddling, but Mary Ann’s weary, baffled face haunted her. James leapt to his feet, straightening his striped coat as Henrietta marched out of the hospital.
“Home then, miss, or a turn through the park for an airing?” he asked, tossing his dice to the sweep boy. James loved when Henrietta tooled through Hyde Park. It was very dashing for a woman to drive her own gig and have a tiger in livery perched behind, and James liked to show off.
“James, I do not wish to ring a peal over you, but isn’t it gambling that put you in the Fleet in the first place?”
“Just throwing the bones, miss. No stakes, eh, my lad?”
“You owe me thruppence!” the boy shouted. “Miserable dwarf!”
“Cheating tallboy!” James shouted back. “Big people,” he muttered as he swung into his seat. “How’d he do in a world made formysize, I’d like to know.”
“Wouldn’t last a day,” Henrietta soothed.
The Duke of Highcastle’s enormous house occupied one entire side of Portman Square. Henrietta had walked past it onher way to Elizabeth Montagu’s bluestocking salons. She tossed the ribbons to James as she hopped down from the vehicle.
“Don’t go far. I expect to be tossed out on my ear with a flea in it.” She held out her card to the stone-faced butler who opened the door. “Lady Celeste, please.”
The man gave Henrietta a cold, measuring look. She wished she had worn something smarter than her riding habit to the funeral services, but she had not anticipated she would be visiting a duke’s household today.
Or had she? Her heart had been tugging her toward this child since she’d first heard of its plight. And Darien had asked for her help, hadn’t he? In a way?
“Lady Celeste,” the butler said, pushing the door shut, “is not at home.”
Henrietta stuck the toe of her half-boot in the threshold. “Then may I speak with someone who attends Lady Celeste?” She presented a second card, and the butler’s dark brows drew together.
“Turn her off, Hemsworth,” came a commanding voice.
“I am in the process of doing so, Your Grace,” said the butler. He glared pointedly at Henrietta’s shoe.
The duchess appeared. She was just the sort of woman, elegant and intimidating, who made Henrietta’s knees quake with envy. Her hooped train swept across the polished parquet floor, she wore a full panoply of jewels, and her towering wig bristled with fruit and feathers.
“My daughter,” the duchess said with cold hauteur, “is not at home.”
“My card, Your Grace.” Henrietta held it out. “If you please.”
The duchess’s thin nostrils narrowed. “We have hadquiteenough of your kind making rude inquiries,” she hissed. “You’re like jackals! You can’t wait to profit from our misfortune.”
“I do not wish to profit, Your Grace,” Henrietta said. Hemsworth pushed at the door without appearing to do so. She put her elbow in the closing gap. “I only wished to make you aware of this establishment—oof—in the event that someone—ouch—in your household—really!—might be in need of such accommodations.”
“I cannot imagine why you thinkanyonein my household would stand in need of such accommodations,” the duchess snapped. “Goodday. Hemsworth!”
The portal swung toward her nose, and Henrietta found herself routed, an unusual outcome for her. She fell back against the unexpected form of a person. An arm in a fancy embroidered sleeve with a fall of lace at the cuff shot out and caught the door.
“I say, Hemsworth!” said a male voice. “This how my mother receives callers now?”
The door opened to the butler’s livid gaze. “Alfred,” said the duchess, glaring at her son with black eyes, “Hemsworth was dispatching a peddler. I don’t know why they don’t use the tradesmen’s entrance in the back.”
