Seven Minutes in Heaven(109)

After Andrew’s funeral, her father had brought her home and stayed with her for weeks, not leaving the house, coaxing her out of bed, making her eat toast, if nothing else. Harriet and her half-siblings came and went, but her father stayed.

“The man is rubbish,” he said gruffly.

“Don’t you remember that you thought Harriet wasn’t a lady?” Eugenia asked.

“Harriet was disguised as a young man and doing a damn good job of it. No duchess I’ve ever known wore breeches as well as she did.”

“No duchess wears breeches,” Eugenia pointed out.

“Harriet still does, on occasion,” her father said with satisfaction. He tightened his arms and rocked her back and forth. “I suppose I’ll see his father at the session for that private act at the end of the month. I mean to say something about the idiot he raised.”

“The earl and countess are on a diplomatic mission to Sweden,” Eugenia said with an inelegant sniff. “But you do have to go to London and vote against the private act, Papa. The Duchess of Gilner is a harridan who only wants to raise Lizzie and Otis because they’re legitimate, whereas she tossed Ward out as a baby.”

“I shall.” He handed her a handkerchief.

“They’ll be shocked to see you, won’t they?”

“Who?”

“All those lords . . . You don’t attend Lords often, do you?”

“Certainly I do,” her father said indignantly. Then he added, with a shrug, “When I haven’t anything better to do.”

Eugenia stepped back. “I love you, Papa.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “You are the most beautiful and brilliant woman of your age in all Britain. If this young ass can’t see it, he’s not worth a single tear.”

“Thank you,” she said with a watery smile.





Chapter Forty-three





Monday, June 29, 1801

Beaumont House

The London home of

the Duke and Duchess of Beaumont

Kensington



Ward had always known that his father was powerful, but he hadn’t realized how many friends the earl had until he looked around the ballroom of Beaumont House. In the absence of his parents, his uncle by marriage, the Duke of Beaumont, was heading a campaign to ensure that the Duchess of Gilner’s private act would be soundly defeated.

There were three dukes in the room—no, four: as he watched, the Duke of Pindar strolled in, with his wife—Ward’s former fiancée—on his arm.

A quartet was playing at the far end, a few couples drifting through a quadrille. The Duke and Duchess of Fletcher were dancing scandalously closely, and if His Grace bent his head a smidgeon, they would be kissing.

One of his father’s closest friends, the Duke of Cosway, on the other hand, was arguing with his duchess, but Ward knew them well enough to understand that their arguments were like kisses. A prelude to intimacy.

For a moment a vision of a future with Eugenia drifted through his head. His longing to be dancing and arguing with her twenty years from now was a ferocious burning in his gut.

But the children were the important thing at this moment.

After the court case . . . Eugenia.

The vow beat in his head, the rhythm of the last week. Desire to be with Eugenia gnawed at him, and only iron control had kept him from returning to Fonthill and kidnapping her again.

Once the children were securely his, he would do just that. He could convince her that he loved her and respected her, after he’d become guardian of the children without her help, removing any question of whether he wanted her only for that.

He kept seeing the bleak, betrayed pain in her eyes, and the familiar sense of being gut-shot hit him again.

The thought of her dancing with Beaumont’s heir, possibly sleeping with him, was a roar of anguish in his skull. Thinking of the devil—or the devil’s father—the Duke of Beaumont appeared at his shoulder. “Mr. Reeve, I would like to introduce you to Lord Bishell, who just came into his title . . .”

Ward bowed as he was introduced to yet another peer who was implicitly being instructed to vote against the private act, or risk Beaumont’s wrath—and the Duke of Beaumont was the most powerful man in the House of Lords.

It was becoming clear to Ward that his grandmother was remarkably foolish to imagine that she could garner enough votes to win the case. She knew perfectly well how society functioned and yet she, an embittered old woman, was challenging the most powerful cabal of noblemen that existed in all England.

Ward actually felt a flicker of sympathy for her. She had lived to see her only daughter reviled by all England. From what he understood, Lady Lisette had died without ever again visiting her mother. And now the duchess’s bastard grandson would raise the only relatives she had left.