Page 137 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TEN
“ A m I imagining things,” Harriette asked as the cabriolet clipped along Berkeley Square, “or are people staring at us more than usual?”
“I expect it’s my hat,” Princess replied, flicking the ribbons to steer Hyperion, the coach horse, around a stopped sedan chair. “It’s rather splendid, don’t you think?”
“It takes up more space than I do.” Harriette batted away an ostrich plume.
Princess wore an enormous black hat with a tall conical shape and a deep brim.
One side held an enormous striped silk rosette, and the other a set of ostrich plumes, dyed purple, that swept from the crown into Harriette’s eyes.
“But I think it is more than the hat, Princess,” she added as the passenger in the sedan chair craned her neck to stare at them.
They turned into Mount Street, and street boys paused to tip their hats as they passed.
A shop girl ran out the door of her premises into the street, nearly colliding with a sweep boy.
She held a sheet of paper in her hand and waved it with a joyous smile when she caught Harriette watching her.
Harriette turned to face front with a groan.
“It’s those prints of Renwick. I knew I was going to be exposed as the maker, and I let Mrs. Darly print them anyway.”
“They’re extremely dashing,” Princess murmured.
She smiled widely as a finely dressed gentleman, toeing the line between fashionable and ostentatious, turned and made them a grand leg, flicking back the tails of his coat.
“I bought two of each. But I don’t think it’s simply the prints that have increased your notoriety. ”
“I wanted to make myself respectable,” Harriette said, agonized.
“I wanted higher commissions. But Sorcha said with the price of cotton and sugar going up because of the war with the Colonies, she was overspending her marketing funds, and I did not want Aunt to go without her tea and chocolate. So I sold the prints to Mrs. Darly even though I knew this would happen.”
She gave a tight smile as a merchant’s wife and daughter stepped out of a haberdasher and brought up short, staring at the passing conveyance with wide eyes. “I sold my reputation for tea and chocolate. And to make Ren a desirable parti .”
“Those prints do inspire desire, but not for his hand in marriage.” Princess dipped her chin at the merchant’s wife and her ostrich plume tickled Harriette’s nose. “Good day!” she called to the pair on the street. The merchant’s wife covered her lips with a prim kid glove and blushed.
“And if you desire Renwick for yourself, I don’t understand why you don’t simply have at him.” Princess turned the cabriolet toward Grosvenor Square.
Harriette felt the tops of her ears heat. “Beater can hear you .”
“Beater don’t care who you tup,” Princess said. “And neither do we. It seems a shame to deny yourselves when it’s mutual.”
“Franz Karl, my betrothed, is coming to Britain to collect me,” Harriette said.
“I insist he come to fetch me. I won’t show up in Lowenburg like luggage.
And when he comes, if he finds I’ve become another man’s mistress, he will have no respect for me.
I will have no power to keep any independence or make any negotiation for myself in this marriage. ”
“The title passes to you from your mother,” Princess said. “At least, if I understand what your grandfather arranged. That means Fritz must bow to you. Some Polish and Hungarian royalty do the same, you know—dispense titles and lands to daughters if there is no male heir.”
“By marriage my cousin will control everything, my wealth and my person,” Harriette answered. “Prussian law is much like British law, God help us. I would pay the rest of my life for a few moments of stolen pleasure.”
Princess tipped her chin as a set of gentlemen strolling the square turned to stare at them through their quizzing glasses. “You’ve never known pleasure if you won’t pay that price,” she murmured.
Harriette flushed. She both knew and did not know what her friend meant. What she felt when Ren touched her, when he was simply near her—it was a craving that overset all sense. He made nothing feel so vital, so necessary, as following those sensations wherever they led.
But they led to ignominy and shame, and a husband who would despise her and perhaps shut her away for the rest of her life in a dim set of rooms. Visit her only to get heirs for the duchy.
Deny her companions, sociability, intellectual conversation.
Deny her any power over her life. She would rather live as her mother had lived, a fugitive noblewoman in poverty, than a wife helpless to the whim of her husband.
She would rather stab herself to death with her brushes.
“Top o’ the morning, Your Highness,” one of the strolling gentlemen called, though it was midday. “Lady Harriette! Want to sketch me? I look rather fetching in my shirtsleeves. Or you can strip me down to bare skin if it pleases you.”
Harriette tried to sink into the seat, which was impossible because the seat was covered with the enormous skirts of their gowns and petticoats, and the dashing slight overhang of the vehicle left the occupants open to the sight of all.
“I knew it. I knew those prints would make me talked about. I had better hope Franz Karl doesn’t suspect an affair anyway because of the way I?—”
“You are missing an opportunity to be admired,” Princess reproved her.
She sank an elbow into Harriette’s side, an elbow that, considering the lace ruffles on the sleeve of Princess’s dress and the stays beneath Harriette’s bodice, proved surprisingly sharp.
“You are also missing what he called you.”
Far different from the last time they went skulking around Grosvenor Square, Princess halted the cabriolet with a showy flourish before the solid, pillared expanse of Renwick House.
Harriette had scarcely a moment to appreciate the beautiful symmetry and architectural detail of the pediments above each window and the offset bricks that lent interest to the facade.
The butler wrenched open the front door and barreled into the street, reaching out a hand to help Harriette descend before the carriage had completely stopped, nearly risking taking a wheel over his toe.
“Your ladyship,” he panted. “I don’t believe I have your card.”
He recognized her as the woman he’d tossed out on her ear; she could tell by the way he looked at her hair, not her eyes. “Miss Harriette Smythe,” she said, lifting her chin.
“Lady Harriette von Lowenburg,” Princess called. “Daughter and heir to the Duchess of Lowenburg.”
“Lady Harriette.” The butler nearly touched his knee to his nose.
“You’re not to say,” Harriette yelped.
“They already know.” Princess nodded toward the cluster of people who had drifted across the green of Grosvenor Square to watch the proceedings outside of Renwick House with great and obvious interest. Harriette glimpsed the plumes and wigs of expensive ladies, the plainer gowns of nursemaids taking their charges for an airing, and the tradeswomen’s printed chintz among the workman’s drabs and the bright aprons of the costermongers.
She was accustomed to people collecting to stare at Princess, who was generally held to be one of London’s most sought-after courtesans.
But this time the stares were for Harriette.
“Who told?” she asked tightly.
“Ye can’t mean to keep it a secret, Miz H,” Jock called. He had his hands full steadying Hyperion as several boys leapt to his head, clamoring to hold the bridle for such distinguished visitors. “Back, ya snafflers,” he chided the boys. “His hooves’ll crush your trotters, and his bite’s worse.”
“Honestly, Hari, did you not hear Darci reading the gossip paragraphs at breakfast? They were simply brimming with news of your elevation,” Princess said.
“I wasn’t at breakfast.” Harriette took the butler’s offered hand and began the process of hauling herself and her several layers of skirts out of the vehicle.
She’d risen early and went straight to her studio to see if she could achieve the precise blue of Ren’s suit in gouache colors, and when Darci came in to sculpt, they had worked side by side for hours without speaking, as was their custom.
Darci was an excellent person to share an artistic studio with.
“How did word get out?”
“I can’t imagine,” Princess said innocently. “Your aunt never would have mentioned it, I’m sure. Nor I.”
Harriette turned to glare at her, ignoring for the moment the small crowd. “Will you stay?”
“My friend awaits me,” Princess said. “Jock and Beater will bring the cabriolet back for you. My friend will see I return home.”
Harriette wondered, not for the first time, about Princess’s recent new friend, who insisted on secrecy but seemed rather libertine in his habits and his wealth.
The thought fled from her mind when Ren stepped out the front door onto the scrubbed white stoop.
He was splendid and polished in morning dress and leaned on a cane.
“Hullo, W- Lady Rhette,” he said playfully. “Princess.” His eyes flickered over Beater, who had stepped down from the groom’s perch to stretch his legs. Then he saw Jock, and his face changed. He started towards them.
“No, don’t—” Harriette caught herself. Ren hated having attention brought to his limp.
Plenty of gentlemen carried canes as a fashion accessory, and he had learned to walk as if he had all the time in the world as a mark of his high birth, rather than an indication that he struggled to keep each step smooth and even.
“Oy, now.” Jock crossed his forearms and regarded the earl, but spoke under his breath to Harriette. “Yer gent shambles bad as I do.”
“Don’t make fun,” Harriette hissed.
“Can’t I? ‘E only needs one crutch, an I need two,” Jock said, with only the faintest trace of bitterness. He had learned to deal with his injury, but he still felt the occasional resentment, Harriette knew.