No, he would not look for peace with this angel—Bess Pickford—but all the same, he wouldn’t mind another of her smiles.
Not that he’d rescued Lucy hoping for thanks. He hadn’t even been aware she was in Town; a large part of him wished he’d remained in blissful ignorance.
He had already spent more time in the maddening company of his youngest sister than he ever intended.
But when he’d come upon the small knot of jeering gentlemen, he’d recognized the thrum on the air, the dark anticipation—and he’d been inexorably drawn in by it. Only to discover his own half-sister being dragged through the muck, along with their family name.
Intolerable.
He’d had to intervene. And now he was entangled in the complex web of societal expectations and pressures that governed the Ton. Having lent his protection to these two ladies, he could not now abandon them but must see them safely home.
It was the correct thing to do, and Nathaniel always did the correct thing.
Well. Almost always.
So he inclined his head to a precisely judged angle and said, “My carriage is waiting. Perhaps you will be good enough to accompany me, along with your patient. I’m certain he would rest easier on his journey in your care.”
At that moment, as Mrs. Pickford—was she married? Widowed? It didn’t matter, of course, but Nathaniel wanted to know—as she wavered, two burly grooms in the Ashbourn livery arrived, ready to assist the injured sailor to the carriage.
They heaved the groaning boy to his feet and propped him up under the shoulders to help him walk. The way the young man sweated and cursed had Lucy hopping alongside the footmen, babbling exhortations to keep him steady and be careful of his wound.
Bess—no, he must think of her as Mrs. Pickford—braced a gloved hand against the ground and started to struggle to her feet before Nathaniel was able to get a hand under her elbow to assist her.
She stiffened at the help, but allowed it, likely out of necessity as the skirts of her gown and pelisse were heavy with wet and mud. The slim arm under his hand was lithe, taut with a supple strength that surprised him.
“I must thank you once more,” she murmured, stepping forward so that his hand fell away from her before he was altogether ready to let go. “I had better catch up with Lucy before she gets into any more trouble.”
“She will not leave our sight. Joseph and Henry will make sure no one accosts her,” Nathaniel promised, proffering his arm to escort her with an unaccustomed sense of anticipation.
She hesitated, but he only waited, unmoved and unmoving, until she rested her hand lightly upon his sleeve.
The touch of her hand—a commonplace polite gesture, less than meaningless—went through him like lightning.
Strangely tense, Nathaniel followed his servants and his half-sister at a respectable distance.
They walked along in silence, the roar and jostle of the festival crowd fading from Nathaniel’s notice. He had only attended the demonstration that afternoon in hopes of cornering the Earl of Marsden about the new legislation Nathaniel was putting forward.
Marsden was a weakling and a coward who preferred to dither indefinitely rather than commit his support, and it was easier to find him in a pleasure-seeking crowd such as this than at Parliament. It had taken Nathaniel about five minutes with the man to force a concession.
Most people could not seem to spend more than a moment in his presence without offering him whatever he wished if it would make him leave them alone—the notable exceptions being his half-sisters…and the woman on his arm.
Bess—Mrs. Pickford, damn it—seemed content to walk along in silence. The lack of conversation didn’t bother him; Nathaniel followed the forms of conversation with every attention to the rules of decorum, but he found most of it insipid and empty.
What it was, then, that prompted him to speak, he could not say.
“I take it you are my sister’s chaperone, Mrs. Pickford. You will forgive me, I don’t recognize the family name.”
Her slender fingers tensed slightly. “Of course. Yes. Her chaperone. I am…a distant relation. On the dowager duchess’s side.”
No wonder she seemed reluctant to answer. Any relationship to Henrietta Berring, however distant, must be something of an embarrassment.
This Mrs. Pickford spoke and carried herself like a lady—minor gentry, most likely, or even the daughter of a country vicar or some such. How embarrassed they must have been by their social-climbing relation; though now, of course, if Mrs. Pickford was in a position to need a place in the dowager duchess’s household looking after a hoyden like Lady Lucy Lively, perhaps she was more inclined to forgiveness.
Whatever her past, her current circumstances had placed her squarely under Nathaniel’s protection. Dependent.
Entirely unsuitable, he thought with an unwelcome pang of regret, and then couldn’t explain to himself unsuitable for what, exactly.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the task Nathaniel had set for himself—to be the Duke of Ashbourn, with all that entailed. To restore the title and to erase the memory of his father’s folly from the minds of the Ton.
