“Yes.”Bess nodded decisively.“And you need not fear overburdening me—you didn’t ask, I offered!And I do hope you will allow me to be of some use to you and your poor mother.”
Blowing out a breath, Gemma studied Bess’s earnest face.Sweet natured she certainly was, but there was an inner fortitude to Bess that had impressed Gemma almost from the first.She had a spine of steel underneath all her calm loveliness and gentle manners, and a stubbornness to match Gemma’s own.Looking at Bess, Gemma knew her friend wouldn’t readily accept ‘no’ for an answer.
And would that really be so bad?For the first time in a long while, Gemma allowed herself to contemplate the possibility that she was not entirely on her own.
She had friends.Real friends, who would rally round and offer to help, and Gemma could accept that help.It was an unnerving sensation, but one she savored.
“All right,” Gemma conceded, taking Bess’s hand impulsively.“If you are certain you want to involve yourself in our rather convoluted affairs, I would be exceedingly churlish to turn you away.Especially when you’ve been such a good and true friend to me.”
Bess’s fingers twitched in Gemma’s hand, and she pulled away with a strained smile.So modest, Gemma thought affectionately.Bess could never bear compliments.
“I am honored to be your friend,” Bess said with some difficulty, her voice almost too low to make out.And begging their pardon, off she went up the stairs to beard the lioness in her den, with Lucy tagging along to make the introductions.
After ascertaining that the Musgrave family were not in want of anything, Gemma moved on, greeting the people she recognized and introducing herself to the ones she didn’t.She was surprised by how many familiar faces smiled up at her from their plates of chicken pie and mushy peas, and she reflected with an inward grin that attending all those social engagements in London had been good practice for running a business that relied, at least in part, on being charming and learning the names of a great many strangers in a short span of time.
It was not an unpleasant way to spend an evening, but she would have enjoyed it more if she knew what was happening upstairs with Henrietta.Glancing at the door that led to the stairs, she considered whether she ought to check on things there but before she could take a step in that direction, she was being hailed by Hal.
Drawn to him irresistibly, Gemma found herself leaning on the bar before she knew what she was about.The rumble of conversation ebbed and swelled around them, in the corner someone pulled out a wooden flute and piped a few notes, and in the dim glow of the firelight, Gemma thought Five Mile House had never looked better.
“Did I see Bess head upstairs?”he asked, resting his bare forearms casually on the bar.At some point in the evening he’d rolled up this sleeves, and Gemma found herself mesmerized by the tawny gold skin and lean, corded muscle on display.She swallowed hard.
“Yes.Perhaps Mama will listen to her.She certainly doesn’t seem to hear Lucy or me when we beg her to bestir herself.”
“It’s hard.Seeing your mother so unhappy.”
Something about the way he said it made Gemma think he was speaking from personal experience, rather than simple empathy.“It’s very much against her character.When Mama entered a room on Father’s arm, she lit it up like a glittering crystal chandelier set with hundreds of candles.”
“So your parents were happy, then?”
“Embarrassingly so.”Gemma laughed, her throat aching.“When they looked at one another, the whole world fell away.They were insensible of anything outside of their connection.It’s not at all the done thing, you know, to be so enamored of one’s own spouse, but they didn’t care.”
“That must have been a nice way to grow up.Around parents that were affectionate with one another.”
“Were yours…not?”Gemma inquired delicately, keeping her attention on the rings of condensation speckling the bar.She had the sense that if she looked at Hal, he’d close his mouth and push her away.
“My parents…were not as lucky as yours.”
Gemma bristled.“It wasn’t luck.They encountered quite a bit of opposition to their match, beyond the general faux pas of being besotted with one another.It wasn’t easy for them.My mother was considered entirely unsuitable.She’d been my half-brother’s nursemaid, you see.Not what the ton had in mind for the second wife of the Duke of Ashbourn.”
She lifted her chin, trying not to care what Hal thought but studying his face for clues as to his reaction to her scandalous blood line all the same.
But Hal’s only reaction was a sardonic lift of one tawny brow.“Is that meant to be shocking?”
Gemma’s heart lifted like a feather caught in a breeze.“I know you are not easily shocked, but you can take my word for it: the Ton was in an uproar.My mother’s name was not to be mentioned in Polite Society.They were featured regularly in the satirical prints, drawing after drawing of my father as a dog panting after my mother’s skirts while she decked herself out in the family jewels.”
Hal’s face darkened with a grim look that paradoxically lightened Gemma’s mood to no end.“Bastards,” he said succinctly.
“Rather,” Gemma agreed, wondering how she’d come to share such humiliating and intimate details of her past.At least she had managed not to blurt out that her parents weren’t the only ones to appear in the scandal sheets and the satirical prints pasted up in booksellers’ shop windows.She pushed away the scalding memory of those first few prints she’d chanced to see with exaggerated caricatures of her own form cavorting about London, before she’d learned to ignore them.
Mostly.
“The furor had mostly died down by the time I came out,” she said lightly, glossing over the way her debut had revived the gossip.“There were still the highest sticklers in the Ton who would never have dreamed of admitting Mama, or any of us, to one of their gatherings, but there were plenty more who were happy to count my family among their friends.I’m sure from the outside the Polite World appears to be all at the same level, but I assure you the Ton is as stratified as any other part of society.Perhaps more so.Despite my father’s title, we were decidedly not Haute Ton—but then, my father wouldn’t have wished to be.He’d had enough of that with his first wife.”
Gemma realized she was all but babbling and shut her mouth, chagrined.She’d meant to be getting to know more about Hal!But somehow he’d managed to turn the conversation around to her, as he always seemed to.Before Gemma could think of a way to get him to open up about himself, Hal had straightened up and pointed at the spot in the corner nearest the fire, where a few tables were being moved to create an empty space.“Look, they’ll be after young Flora to sing in a minute.”
Sure enough, in a few moments the customers had pulled a laughing, only slightly protesting Flora Pickford into the circle of light cast by the fire.Flora had her cousin Bess’s looks, along with a jauntily uptilted nose and a saucy gleam in her eye.The flute struck up a merry tune and Flora caught the folk song and took it up, trilling the lyrics about a maid from the country corrupted by a visit to Town as though they weren’t describing some poor girl’s ruin and doom.
Her voice was pleasant, a little soft and breathy on the high notes, but with a liveliness that had customers all over the public room tapping their toes and clapping their hands in time with the beat.A chipped crockery jug passed from hand to hand, people at the tables plinking coins into it in thanks for the entertainment.
