Page 118 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER THREE
“ T his is a terrible idea, Harriette, Liebelein ,” said Princess in her heavy accent.
Jock squinted at the big, gracious house with its neoclassical pillars and high windows gorgeously lit by hanging lamps and tall braziers. “A swell’s ken,” he announced. “No place for your scampers, Miz H.”
Though his position was properly that of groom, and he wore the striped coat of his station, Jock rode atop the big Yorkshire coach horse that pulled the luxurious cabriolet.
Out of instinct, he shifted his weight to calm the animal as a string of carriages rolled noisily by, disgorging their brightly plumed passengers before the expansive edifice fronting Grosvenor Square.
“The countess’ll have you on the carpet for it,” rumbled Beater, the big man with the squashed face standing on the groom’s platform at the rear of the carriage.
“Which countess?” Harriette retorted. “My own dear aunt, or the Countess of Renwick, who has no reason to love me and will not condone my sneaking into her house?”
Princess rolled her eyes at Harriette’s insouciant tone, but Beater pondered the question. “Both,” he decided.
“I daresay it was mere oversight that Lady Renwick did not respond to my card,” Harriette said. “She must know that I, too, want to welcome her son home from abroad. After all, we were good chums the summer he lived in Shepton Mallet.”
“That was more than ten years ago, Liebelein .” Princess shook her head. “He’s a young man and has had many adventures since then. How can you depend on him to remember?”
Harriette bit her lip. She considered herself even-tempered and sunny, but her emotions had been in a roil ever since she heard the news that the Earl of Renwick was returning to London.
She’d grown and changed a great deal, and he would have seen much in his years at school and then abroad on the Continent.
What if, indeed, he had forgotten all about her?
She needed him to remember. She needed his help. They all did.
“I’m not easy to forget,” Harriette said with the devil-may-care tone that would not fool Princess, but might at least reassure the men that she knew what she was doing.
“Now let me off at this corner, and I’ll sneak in behind the Duchess of Devonshire.
No one will notice me when she is about, and I’ll contrive to make my way inside. ”
“You’ll be caught,” Princess warned. “And what a fine contretemps that will make if you are! We’re trying to blaze our way into the beau monde , not scandalize it.”
“Nay, our Miz H is sly enough to go upon the sneak,” Jock argued. “And see here, not a pair of peeps in the place! A clever tradesman could crack the crib in a jiffy.”
“Could ‘ee?” Beater asked with interest. “But ’ow’d ye cart it all off?”
A glare from Princess silenced him. “There will be no talk of robbing the house while Lady Renwick is throwing a party,” she said sternly. “Beater and Jock will return to wait for you in the mews, Hari, and I expect a full accounting in the morning.”
Harriette regarded her friend. Princess was wearing a splendid plum silk robe that showed every swell of her figure, and her tall, powdered wig was adorned with purple morning glories that fluttered with each movement.
“You expect your assignation to last the night, then?” Harriette teased.
Princess raised her darkened eyebrows, which stood out against her pale face and rouged cheeks. “Will yours?”
“A few minutes, half an hour at most,” Harriette replied. “I am not invited to the party, mind you.”
She needed enough time to ensure the Earl of Renwick was still the soft-hearted boy she remembered. If so, she would plead her case and no doubt win his support. Ren had never been able to deny her anything.
Though if the rumors that had floated home ahead of him bore any truth, Renwick was much changed from the sweet, stammering boy she remembered.
He was now a man of the world, a British peer, conscious of what he could command with his name and station.
He was a man of experience, if reports were true of the expensive courtesans he’d kept at various ports of call.
Harriette suppressed a flutter of fear. This had to work. He was the only one she could think of to ask.
“If he does want to touch you up, set a fair price first,” Princess whispered as the cabriolet merged into the line of carriages inching along the square.
The bright glare of a lantern set into the fence along the garden wall matched the flare of embarrassment that ran through Harriette at those words.
“Mum, you!” she said crossly. “We are artists, not bawds.”
Princess shook her head, and the jeweled pins set into her wig glittered in the passing light. “All the same to this set, and you know it, Liebelein .”
She did know it, and it was one of the reasons Harriette had resolved to storm his family’s townhouse and demand to see Renwick.
She needed a champion. Her aunt had given her a roof over her head and clothes upon her back, but Harriette needed more if she were to make a name for herself as a painter.
She needed a powerful patron, and the Countess of Calenberg was considered too eccentric to be embraced among more exclusive circles—the kind of circles that paid the best commissions.
Those were the circles in which Renwick moved. But he would have been besieged by hopeful toadies the moment he set foot in town. Crowds of supplicants would turn up hoping he would use his station and influence on their behalf. How could she be so crass as to attempt to use him the same way?
She reminded herself she had something to offer him in return. A fair trade, not a favor.
Beater helped her descend, ensuring her skirts did not catch on the tall wheels of the carriage, and Harriette looked up at the high wall that enclosed the garden that ran alongside and behind the house.
The lanterns clustered in front of the house lit the way for distinguished guests, leaving shadows lining the garden wall that continued down the side street.
But in surveying the house earlier that day—snilching, as Jock called it—she had noted a tree in the side garden that conveniently grew alongside the balconies lining the first and second floors.
She shivered, and not only because she’d left off a shawl and the late June evening held a damp chill she felt along all the bare skin exposed by the deep neckline of her gown.
Doubtless one room above would have the sash lifted, perhaps that designated as the card room or the retiring room for female guests.
It had been a long time since she’d climbed a tree, and never wearing a full set of skirts and petticoats.
But the goal was simple: slip inside, find Ren, speak with him, and have the matter settled within moments.
“You could come with me tonight.” Princess gathered up the ribbons. “Perhaps my—er, patron could commission a portrait. If he declines, we’ll simply go along as we have been.”
A house full of outcasts living on my aunt’s charity, Harriette almost said, but caught herself in time.
“I need to contribute to our keep,” she said instead. “My aunt has already done much for me. And I don’t want to be known for my roués and courtesans, the painter of the demimondaine. If I am to exhibit in respectable places, I need a respectable clientele.”
“Good luck finding that here.” Princess withdrew beneath the hood of the small vehicle. “Very well, Liebelein. Guten Abend. ”
She flicked the whip lightly and the horse trotted away before Harriette realized her insult.
The Princess was the closest friend Harriette had made among the eccentric circle of orphans and refugees collected around the banished Countess of Calenberg, and she’d sat for Harriette more than anyone.
There’d be some groveling to do come morning.
Or worse than groveling, if this evening didn’t go as planned.
The key to the garden gate was exactly where the gardener she’d spied on earlier that day had left it when his work was done.
She wouldn’t have asked someone to prop the door open for her.
London’s all-too-active criminal element wouldn’t refrain from attempting to rob a house with dozens of people in it.
The city’s thieves were wildly inventive, according to Jock.
Men slid into houses during the day and then hid to let their cronies inside at night.
Boys were pushed through windows to open an inside door, or lamplighters enjoined to leave ladders against the sides of houses.
How Jock knew all of this, she couldn’t guess, since his former profession had been respectable.
She could, of course, have chosen the simpler but more unreliable approach of milling around Grosvenor Square waiting for Renwick to step outside his house. She could still try to stroll inside with the other guests and ask the butler to announce her.
And what would he say? “Miss Harriette Smythe of Shepton Mallet, presumed bastard daughter of a refugee foreigner posing as a noblewoman. Would-be painter.” No wonder Lady Renwick had not called back when Harriette left her card.
Ren had not called, either.
The tree was not a strong one, and Harriette scrabbled with hands and feet to haul herself onto the lowest branch.
It bent dangerously under her weight, and for a moment her heart stopped.
Going in through the front door was a much better idea after all.
A shadow moved across a second-floor window, tall and threatening against the glass, and her heart shrank and quivered.
She risked her life continuing upward if someone thought she was a housebreaker indeed, but she couldn’t see a way down.
She would be stuck in this tree until dawn came or she cried for someone to get her.
Oh, why had she assumed seeing Ren would be as easy as scaling the old Blinder Wall at the Manor House in Shepton Mallet?