Page 167 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER NINETEEN
R en refused to flee. He insisted on returning to London with Harriette as soon as possible, and went off in search of the nearest posting inn to hire a chaise.
While he checked on the Manor House and ensured Mrs. Oram had enough to get by, and stopped by his solicitor to give Mr. Golledge instructions, Harriette frantically gathered all of her mother’s belongings that Mrs. Demant didn’t want.
She just as frantically attempted to urge Ren to heed her aunt’s advice and prepare a tour of the Continent, but to no avail.
He insisted on escorting her to London, paying for the post chaise, and arranging for sets of rooms at the inns where they stayed for the night, for it was folly to think of driving through the night on treacherous, unlit roads.
Both nights, when he knocked on her door holding a candle, his eyes full of desire, Harriette let him in.
She had sworn to herself that one night must be enough.
Her cousin already wanted to kill him, who knew why.
But with his tall frame before her, his beautiful face full of longing for her, his musky scent teasing her nose and the new knowledge of the pleasure he brought her stirring her arousal to instant life, she did what weak, carnal women have done since the dawn of time and pulled Renwick into her room.
When she helped him dress in the morning, cramming his twisted foot into the custom-made boot, tying his neckcloth and buttoning his coats while his hands played at her breast or pulled up her skirt for one last hurried swive against the wall, helpless to deny him or her eager, greedy body before he fastened his breeches and snuck back to his own room, she feared that might be the last time she held him and felt his strong, beloved body pressing against her, filling her.
And when he dropped her in Charles Street before departing to Renwick House to check on his mother and sister, she kissed him long and deeply behind the drawn shade of the chaise, and she couldn’t stop a traitorous tear from sliding down her face to their joined lips.
“What if he kills you? Ren, I couldn’t bear it. If you died…”
She couldn’t live if something happened to him. She had sworn to herself she was not the heroine of a great tragedy nor the fragile damsel of a romance, but she feared her heart would burst from despair if his life were taken because of her.
“Shh. Rhette. Nothing is going to happen to me.” He traced the curve of her cheek with a warm finger. “If he has concerns, we will talk them through like gentlemen. You forget you are a duchess—you answer to no one. And I am sure your aunt will have some influence with him as well.”
She kissed him as long as she dared, fiercely burning him into her heart, and then she shook out the black skirt of her mother’s old riding habit and strode into the Catherine Club.
It was mid-morning, and the women were gathered in the library, which also served as Melike’s work room.
Harriette paused in the doorway of the gracious chamber, savoring for a moment the buttery paper lit to gold and set off with the crisp white trim, the paintings—her paintings—along the wall giving the space a cozy yet elegant feel.
Her aunt sat beside the fireplace, her head close to Abassi’s as he bent over the back of her couch.
Across from them Natalya and Princess, relaxed in morning gowns and undressed hair, passed a set of fashion plates back and forth.
On the other side of the room, among the second group of furniture, Sorcha, Melike, and Darci gathered around a young woman Harriette recognized, feeding her cakes and tea.
Harriette gasped, seared by the betrayal. She pointed at the lovely if incredibly nosy young woman she had last seen as Lady Cranbury’s companion during her visit to the Marylebone Pleasure Gardens. “What is she doing here?”
“Harriette, Liebelein! ” Her aunt faced Harriette with surprise. “I am glad you returned so quickly. We have much to discuss. This is Chima. She?—”
“She was the one writing the gossip paragraphs about me, wasn’t she?”
The pieces fell into place. Why she’d seen this girl, watching from the sidelines, at every party and society gathering she’d attended. “She identified me as the maker of the prints of the Graf von Hardenburg. She said things about us that—that?—”
She had pushed Harriette to the fringes of Polite Society and, moreover, hinted at disreputable doings among the Calenberg household.
She had made Harriette so desperate she climbed a tree to throw herself through Ren’s window and beg for his patronage.
“She called us the Catherine Club,” Harriette finished weakly.
Chima lifted her chin with pride. “I did write those things.” She had a soft accent, bearing the trace of the African homeland where she, or her parents, had been kidnapped and forcibly removed. “I cannot say I am sorry.”
Darci intervened. “She used the money she gained from writing the gossip paragraphs to get free of Lady Cranbury and come here.”
“Why would she want to come to us? After what she said about our household, how we are eccentric, and—and—” Harriette sputtered to a halt, at a loss to fully catalogue the girl’s crimes.
Sorcha stepped before the other girl as if she meant to protect her. “Because she knew we’d take her in, and that we will.” Sorcha wiped her hands on her apron, streaked with flour and what might be jam, and planted her hands on her hips.
Harriette’s stomach rumbled. Her own breakfast felt very far away. “Aunt! You condone this?”
Her aunt lifted her charcoal-darkened brows. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because! She called me a…she said that I…” Again words failed her.
Harriette sensed she was misplacing her outrage, but that all her friends should make light of her betrayal…
It was like she was gone already. They had written her from the household books the moment she left for Shepton Mallet. It hurt.
“You have larger problems, darling.” Natalya set aside a colored plate of a Parisian gown.
“Ren.” Harriette’s stomach tightened with fear. “Aunt, you said my cousin has threatened to kill him. Why?”
Melike, always the peacemaker, rose and crossed the room to give Harriette a hug. Harriette sagged gratefully into her embrace. Then Melike handed her a print, and Harriette stared.
For a moment Harriette couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.
They’d been alone in Shepton Mallet; no one but she had seen Ren nude in bed, his broad chest sculpted by the firelight, one leg propped carelessly on the mattress while his damaged leg was curled beneath the sheet draped over his groin, where a simple, single line on the paper hinted at the bulge of manhood beneath.
How had anyone reproduced him like this?
Then she recalled the last sketch she’d done of him in her studio, what felt like ages ago.
These weren’t the charcoal lines she had drawn, but the inked incision of a print.
The printer’s mark was not Mrs. Darly’s, who would never allow something so scandalous on her copper sheets.
But plenty of more grasping salesmen would print these and worse.
“How did these get in print?” Her chest and face burned.
With embarrassment, perhaps—Ren, naked! And these prints were circulating about London?
Ren in bed was the single most sensual, most outrageously gorgeous thing she had ever seen.
No one else had any business seeing him like this.
“Someone had to have taken them from my table.” Her eyes roamed about the room, looking for a culprit.
Princess shrugged one round, nonchalant shoulder. “We needed money.”
“But to expose him like this! These were sketches merely for me, for anatomical purposes.” Oh, what a lie. “Not meant to be shown, and to kindle fantasies among every woman in London?—”
“Not every woman,” Sorcha objected.
Harriette pinned an accusing stare on Princess, who looked not the least bit abashed. “You couldn’t come up with another way to find money? A way that wouldn’t make Franz Karl call for his blood?”
“What else was I to do?” Princess replied. “Turn Abassi in for the bounty on his head? I don’t think so.”
Abassi straightened, looking around, and Chima sucked in a sharp breath of fear. Sorcha clasped her hand.
“No one is going to make you go back, child,” the countess assured Chima. “The Somersett case, remember? You cannot be compelled to return. You are free now.”
“Of course not Abassi,” Harriette said. “But some other means?”
“Perhaps if we could have consulted you,” Princess said sharply. “But you were gone. And a peer, a very high and well-placed peer, threatened to bring a suit against us as a bawdy house. Because we are a house of women, and men come and go at various hours. Your man, as was mentioned.”
Harriette gaped, astonishment warring with outrage. “A brothel ? We never?—”
She let the indignation die, for her aunt certainly carried on exactly as she wished, and it was no secret to anyone in London how Princess earned her jewels and furs. “Who would dare threaten such a ridiculous suit?”
“Someone Princess scorned, of course.” Natalya lifted a hand, and the neckline of her loose morning gown slipped down one rounded pink shoulder. “She would not leave her current keeper for him, so he threatened all of us.”
“And we needed a bribe to pay off the magistrate,” her aunt said. “Regrettable, but it seems to be rather a recurring item in our household ledger, I’m afraid.”
“But to sell my sketches means…” Harriette struggled for air. “It will be known that I drew these. Everyone must think I’m Renwick’s mistress.”