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It was nearly four, quite dark, and snowing steadily when Harriet at last placed Lady Luxborough’s full workbasket on the demilune table in the front hall. At that moment Cat’s distinctive howl came from the back of the stairs behind the door to the yellow room. When she opened it, he exploded into the hall, ran circles around her, and skidded to a stop at the front door, regarding her expectantly. Her thoughts immediately underwent another revolution. Her position in the world was clear. She was not an eligible young miss to spend an afternoon wholly absorbed in thinking about a man like Wynford. She was a doer-of-favors, a collector of odds and ends, a dog-minder, an afterthought, as easily left behind as Cat.

“Oh dear.” She laughed at him. “They’ve probably not missed you yet, and it will be too late to turn back.” He danced a bit at the door. “I’ll get my cloak,” she said. “But you’ll have to wait for morning for a proper walk.”

The husband hunter must not form her opinion of a gentleman’s character solely upon the foundation of his present actions and manner in society. Every man has a past. What she has heard of him from others must be tested with careful observation and a willingness to listen for that history of his actions and relations which sheds the truest light upon his character.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 17

In the morning Harriet took the dog out before breakfast. She woke early from a fitful sleep with the same questions disturbing her peace. She supposed it was always so when the family was away. She might not truly be one of them, but their presence was a comfort. She had not considered that her place with them would ever end, but now she could see that the end had always been there.

To dance or not to dance. That was the question. Harriet had already weakened her position by agreeing to go to the Hardwicke ball. Yesterday Lady Luxborough had advised Harriet with her characteristic frankness to take advantage of Wynford’s interest and return to society. Harriet knew that if she chose to dance, she would be leaving the sanctuary she had found with the Luxboroughs. She would be exposed to censure and condemned for putting herself forward and seeking a match far above her deserts.

A fresh layer of snow covered the iron railings along Mount Street and made the flagstones treacherous. Harriet concentrated on her footing, heedless of where she and Cat were headed. They soon reached the park, and she let Cat off his lead. The sky was still heavy with more snow to come, and the great expanse looked as if an army of Gunter’s cake icers had worked through the night, touching every branch and blade with white. Cat bounded over the icy grass to greet his bird friends with deep barks, sending flocks of blackbirds and robins into sudden squawking flight. He tried with more stealth to make himself agreeable to a pair of wood ducks in the reeds at the edge of the lake, but they, too, were having none of his overtures.

Watching him lifted Harriet’s spirits. Whatever she decided, she had enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom in her position. She had chosen her life and had not thought any man could tempt her to go back on that choice. But Wynford, with his desire to dance with her and the sprig of mistletoe in his pocket, had put an end to her perfect contentment with those old choices. With her new knowledge of his past, he had stirred her compassion.

She had come to no resolution about whether to dance or not to dance when her teeth began to chatter. She summoned Cat and left the park. From Curzon Street, she turned up South Audley heading home. Cat no longer tugged at his lead but rather ambled along, stopping every few feet to investigate a new scent. The lead was slack in Harriet’s hand, and she was admiring the rosy tint on the low clouds overhead, when the dog darted down the narrow Lansdowne passage that wound its way through Mayfair, the lead flopping in his wake. She called, but to no avail. Some powerful scent had caught him, and he was not to be deterred from the pursuit. He skidded on the ice as he negotiated the turn onto Hay Street and disappeared. Harriet moved as quickly as she could over the icy stones.

His tail flashed around the corner of Dover Street, and when she reached the spot, she saw him bound up the front steps of a gray stone townhouse in the middle of the block. She recognized the house at once and hurried on, anticipating the dog’s inevitable outcry. Before she could reach him, he began to howl with the deep-voiced baying peculiar to his mix of English and French hound.

At that hour in the snowy street there was no covering sound of traffic. The penetrating howl could be heard by all the sleepers on the block. Windows, velvet curtains, and damask bed hangings would not stop that wail. A little breathless, Harriet reached the steps where Cat had taken his stand. She seized the dog’s lead and bent down to put an arm around his chest.

“Cat, it’s too early. No one can come out to play yet,” she said. She tugged on the lead, but Cat lifted his nose and raised another howl, his hindquarters firmly planted on the doorstep.

Across the street a door opened, and a surly voice shouted, “Muzzle that dog, wench, or I’ll muzzle ’im for ye,” while footsteps sounded in the house. Harriet dropped to her knees to hold Cat as the door opened by some invisible hand, and there in the entry stood Wynford, a dark blue dressing gown over his shirt and trousers, his feet in slippers. Harriet had been thinking for hours of the boy on the beach with a babe in his arms. Her mind shifted once again to take in Wynford the man. He was as striking as he had been the morning he’d come to ask a favor of her, tall, well-made, with an easy grace of posture.

Their eyes met and held, and Harriet watched as the memory of their first meeting surfaced in his gaze.

On that other December morning, she had been kneeling with her arms around a dog outside the door to the tenants’ hall of Dunraven Park. Wynford had come striding down the servants’ passage, out of place in his elegance. He had been looking for someone to help him find a remedy for his ailing valet.

Now he raised one dark brow. Cat burst from her hold and shot into the marble entry, skidding to a stop at Wynford’s feet.

“So Cat got left behind.” He spoke, and Cat subsided at once, pressing his wet, muddy belly against the tiles and wagging his tail enthusiastically.

Wynford’s gaze, piercing now, returned to her. “You were the girl that morning with the dog.”

“My spaniel Nelson,” she said, coming to her feet.

“You let me think you were a servant. Why?”

“You were very fine that morning.” Harriet remembered him dressed all in brown for the shoot with gleaming boots that had not yet encountered mud. “I was in my oldest frock, muddied, my hair coming down, toweling off a wet dog.” She had recognized him at once as one of her brother’s prized guests, the ones she’d been warned to stay away from until presented in the drawing room. She had been conscious of Wynford’s air of sophistication. He had seemed years older than she, at ease in the world. She was sixteen and never at ease. His mistaking her for a servant, however, made her bold. She asked what brought him belowstairs. He’d apologized then for overstepping a guest’s bounds and explained that he’d come in search of a draught or tisane, some remedy for his ailing valet.

She enlisted his aid to shut Nelson in the tenants’ hall, explaining that the dog was apt to ruin the shoot if let loose, and led Wynford to the stillroom to find something for his man. It was there that she’d crossed the line, daring to be pert. She had some idea in her head that it would be a good jest to meet him later in the drawing room as her true self in her best dress and perhaps some of her mother’s pearls.

But he had revealed that he was leaving within the hour. The disdain in the way he announced his intention had goaded her. “You don’t wish to stay to meet the ladies of the house?” she had asked. “I doubt this house holds any true ladies,” he said with such repugnance that a hot flood of shame had washed over her. It wasn’t until it subsided that she’d realized she had no idea what prompted his contempt before they ever met. That evening her brother made it quite clear.

Ten years later with another unruly dog at her side she felt a rush of the old awkwardness. Then she had been playing a servant, now she was, if not a servant, nevertheless a woman sunk beneath his sphere. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I had no intention,” she faltered. “Cat would not be dissuaded from coming here today.”

“I see that,” he said dryly.

“I did warn you not to pet him,” she said, recovering her composure.

“And, of course, I did not listen. Will you have some coffee? To warm you? Perry’s here.” He stepped aside, letting Harriet see the open door to what appeared to be a library. Perry looked up from some papers on a table.

“Hello, Harry. Brought the dog, have you?” He turned back to the papers, tapping them with a finger. “Wynford, it’s just as you suspected. There was a scandal involving an artillery major, named Ashton, and the daughter of a Russian general, Dimitri Dashkova. All covered up, of course. That girl could be our woman. The fellow’s still alive, though.”

Harriet directed her gaze away from Wynford. Beyond him was the lovely room with a Brussels carpet and leather-covered chairs. At Wynford’s feet the muddy dog panted. She had set out with the firm intention of dismissing the man from her thoughts. Instead her wanderings had brought her to his door to be tempted by his beautiful…library.