Page 54 of Lady Like
To Harry’s surprise, the prince regent agrees to meet her personally at Longley Manor.
She had hoped to be passed off to some minor financial adviser and that she wouldn’t have to disclose quite as much of the story of why she pressingly needs to borrow money from the crown, or look anyone in the eyes while doing it.
But the prince sends a card—the same hand spelling out Longley Manor on the same stationery she had received in late March, for the meeting that unstoppered the drain of life as she knew it.
Harry arrives before the prince, accompanied by Havoc and Matthew—borrowed from his stables in Regent Park without asking Alexander—both of whom she considers letting inside the manor as a symbolic representation that the house is hers to do with as she likes.
In the end, she decides to leave them in the yard.
It may not end up being her house after all—and if it does, she’d rather not start with horse shit in the parlor.
She stands alone in the sitting room, realizing only once she sees it how much she had counted on the house being hers.
She banked since March upon the knowledge that she would marry Alexander and she would have Longley.
The title. The money. The unchanged version of herself that could keep carrying on alone.
Wasn’t that why she had quit the theater, given up her home, finally unshackled herself from Mariah Swift?
But now there is Emily, with her blue eyes and bright laugh and soft mouth curling around a curse, and there is everything Harry is when she’s with her.
Harry has slept well and laughed often, not just in the past few days but all along the delirious slide into the moment of their first kiss.
Emily had swept into her life like autumn, and as leaves did, Harry had fallen.
A marriage of convenience. How had she ever thought it would satiate her? Especially now that she knows the alternative.
It overwhelms her suddenly, and Harry lies down on the floor, her knees up and her hands thrown over her face.
She is alerted to the prince’s arrival by Havoc’s delighted barking in the yard, and a moment later, His Majesty’s royal shadow darkens the doorway. His trousers, she’s gratified to see, are smeared with drool and dog hair.
Harry sits up, arms looped around her knees. “Hello, Father.”
The prince inclines his head. “And here I hoped you wouldn’t be alone.”
“Did you think I called you here to present my intended? I would have insisted we do that at the palace, and you provide sandwiches.”
The prince eases himself down onto one of the covered chairs. The material bunches under him. “You’re hurt.”
Harry looks down at herself, as though there might be blood on her shirt. Then she remembers the flat bridge of her nose and the scrape across her forehead that is still not entirely faded. “I was thrown from a horse.”
“I hope you weren’t kept from the stage.”
“I’ve resigned, actually. Quit the company. I thought that would be the respectable thing to do.”
“I appreciate the sacrifice.”
“Oh sod off.” The prince’s eyebrows rise, and Harry laughs. “Don’t pretend to be sorry you’ve ruined my life.”
“Have I?” He scratches his chin. “I thought I was helping.”
God, Harry thinks, if anyone was likely to assume money could be a bandage over a bullet hole, royalty would be at the top of the list.
The prince clasps his hands and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. The dog hair transfers itself from his trousers to his coat sleeves. “Now, what is it that I can do for you? If not give you my blessing to wed.”
Harry rubs her hands through her hair. “I need a loan. Or perhaps we could call it an advance on my inheritance.”
“What for?”
“A friend is in trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“What sort of friend, then?”
“I’d rather not discuss that either.”
The prince’s nostrils flare. “Well, what can we discuss? How goes your search for a husband—is that on the table?”
Harry pushes her hands through her hair again, though she knows it must be standing at all sorts of odd angles. “Therein lies the second matter I mean to raise with you. I was hoping you might choose one for me.”
The prince tips his head. “Oh?”
“I don’t know many suitable men, and I’d rather not guess at where our definitions of suitable will overlap, so make your selection and I’ll consent.”
The prince strokes a hand over his chin, surveying her in a way that makes her want to start a coup. “I was hoping,” he says after a moment, “you might find someone for yourself. I don’t wish you to be unhappy in a marriage.”
“Rushing me into it for the sake of an inheritance you could bestow upon me without terms would suggest otherwise.”
She had just been thinking how impressive it was that he could hold his smile so neutral and so still—had he been made to practice such vacancy in his youth?
—when it slips, just a little, like the toe of a boot catching uneven pavement.
He looks, for a moment, almost reflective—something she would have thought he pays someone to feel on his behalf.
“You must understand that my terms are for your own benefit.”
“I do not understand,” Harry replies with her own blank smile. “Please enlighten me.”
“There are limitations on the protections extended to women in regards to an inheritance. The best way to protect what is yours is for you to have a man and then a succession line on your side.”
“If only we knew someone in a position of national power who could change said limitations rather than ensure his daughter is yet another victim of them.”
Is he going to storm out? Surely she has pushed him too far this time. But all he says is, “You’re giving a lot of cheek for someone who has come to ask for a loan.”
“It’s been a long day. Week. Year—when did we meet?” Harry pushes her hands through her hair. “That’s the stretch of time that has worn me down.”
The prince leans back upon his sofa. The afternoon light through the windows falls in bright streaks across his dark hair. “May I make an observation?” he asks.
“I don’t suppose anyone has ever stopped you.”
“I think you’re in love.”
Harry folds her arms, resisting the urge to deny too vehemently lest she reveal herself. “And what makes you think that?”
“Because I too once loved unsuitably,” the prince replies. “And it all sounded very much like this.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees in what it takes Harry a moment to realize is meant to be a pose of confidence. “I fell in love with someone my father deemed unsuitable.”
“What was her name?”
“Maria.” The corners of his mouth turn up, as though around a spoonful of sweet pudding. “Maria Fitzherbert.”
“Why did your father not approve?”
“She was a commoner,” he replies. “And twice widowed. And a Catholic.”
“But you loved her?”
“I did.” He fiddles with the ring on his finger, sliding it past his second knuckle, then back absently. “We tried to marry. We did marry. But my father had it declared invalid.”
“That must have broken your heart.”
“It was the thing to be done. I had a duty to my country and my family. I needed an advantageous marriage to make up for some unwise debts I had accrued.”
“And now you are married to a woman you hate so much you have barred her from being coronated queen alongside you.”
The prince’s eyebrows slope. “Where did you read that?”
“It’s in every paper!” Harry says. “The two of you have not been able to stand being in the same country, let alone the same room, for years. You fight each other in the press for guardianship of your daughter when the royal edicts don’t move fast enough.”
“Careful, Miss Lockhart,” he says, and for the first time, he sounds as though he may mean it, but she truly doesn’t care. Somehow, in offering her the world, he’s given her so little to lose.
“You cannot say you want your children to be happy and force us into the same situation you were shoved into. At least tell me the truth—you want me to reflect well on you, you want me to be respectable, you want me to be controlled, but please God spare us both the embarrassment of pretending you are doing any of this because you want me to be happy. ” She says the word with such vehemence she accidentally spits, decides pausing to wipe her mouth will undermine her venom, and plows on.
“It doesn’t always have to be the same as it was, you know.
Just because your father forced you to leave the woman you loved because she had the wrong family name or not enough land or too red hair or whatever he decided made her arbitrarily unsuitable—never mind that you loved her.
Just because his father probably did the same to him and his father before him.
To say nothing of all the sisters and mothers who have been forced into bed with men who mistreat them and belittle them and—this is getting somber. ”
Harry presses her hands to her cheeks and stares hard at the floor for a moment, giving her racing heart a chance to slow.
She should not have spoken so boldly, for a whole host of reasons, not the least being that she still needs him to give her money—oh God, the money!
—but she’s already come this far. What’s one more nail in the treasonous coffin?
So she swallows and finishes. “You can change things. Nothing has to stay the same just because that’s the way it’s always been. ”
She can almost hear the sharpening of the executioner’s axe in the silence that falls between them.
When she finally finds the courage to glance up at the prince, she expects him to be wearing the sort of scowl most only see in prelude to being sent to the Tower for life.
She almost takes a knee in preemptive apology—or so he can behead her more easily.
He certainly looks shocked—though by her sentiments or the boldness in expressing them, she isn’t certain.
She starts to apologize for both, but before she can, the prince asks, “Am I wrong?”
Harry raises her head. “About what?”
“You’re in love, aren’t you?”
Harry considers lying down on the floor. Perhaps pulling the neck of her shirt up over her face and screaming as well. Everything she said, and this is what he lingers on? “Your Grace, I am, and I can confidently say there is no world in which you’d declare this a proper match for me.”
“But you are in love?”
It’s the first time someone has asked Harry this question, and despite the impossibility of her answer mattering, or perhaps because of it, she is overwhelmed by her desire to fall to her knees and proclaim aloud her love for Emily Sergeant like a soliloquy in a Shakespearean play.
Let her feelings into the sunlight, sparkling and radiant.
“Ardently,” she replies. “Passionately. Unbearably. So much that it makes me ill and stupid and happy and better. I am so much better when I’m with her.
Loving her feels like looking at the stars. ”
The prince studies her for a moment, and Harry clears her throat, preparing to restate her request for her prince to find her a suitable husband, now that he knows why she’s asking, but then the prince smiles and says, “Love makes you feel small and overwhelmed by the vast firmament of the sky?”
“Full of wonder,” Harry replies. “I’ve never felt part of anything so big before. Now.” Harry pushes herself to her feet, brushing her palms off on her breeches. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a friend to get out of jail, and two arranged marriages to see to.”
“Two?” the prince asks.
“Well, you must pick me a husband,” Harry says.
“If you know any dukes who identify as confirmed bachelors looking for a wife to make them look like less of a sod at royal functions, I’m happy to be that bulwark so long as you let me keep seeing my lady.
I promise she and I will be discreet. Simply the best of friends, the way ladies are.
And I’ve got to save her from marrying a lecherous cretin who wants her child-bearing hips and family land in Sussex so he can build an access road to your favorite seaside town of Brighton.
Yet another complication in my life I can thank you for.
I’ll be sure Mr. Tweed knows you’re to blame when his construction project fails to manifest. He can take his complaints all the way to the palace. ”
She starts for the door, determined to at least get a good storm out without looking back, but on the threshold, she hears the prince say, “Would that be Mr. Robert Tweed?”
And goddamn it, Harry has no choice but to turn back.