Page 9

The solicitor wet his lips and spread his hands upon the desk. "That I cannot tell you. It is not written anywhere I have found. The only trouble before us at present is the note itself — the claim that the money was your husband's alone."

He offered her a small, almost sorrowful smile. "I am sorry I did not speak of it sooner. It did not seem the moment, before this conversation." His glance moved to the Duke, and his smile warmed. "You are rather alone in this, Lady Colbourne, if I may be so bold as to say it." He gestured to the Duke. "But no longer, it seems."

Harriet rose. The walls of the small office seemed to have drawn a pace nearer while she sat. "This brings me no relief at all," she said, a little unsteadily. "It only makes a tangle of the thing. I did not fully understand the delay, and now I am told not only that a gentleman is to involve himself, but that he does so at the behest of a woman who somehow foresaw my whole difficulty — a woman I met but once in my life."

A tremor went through her. "You are quite right that I am alone, Mr. Braithwaite. That is neither my choice nor my wish. I am in London only because I have been made to come, and my one desire is to go home again and make what life I can there. And now I am told there is to be a great delay, and that no one can explain to me why."

"You have my assurance, Lady Colbourne, that I shall do all I am able to find the answers." The Duke had risen with her, his green eyes holding fast to hers — and doing nothing, she noted with some irritation, to quicken her breath except in the wrong direction. "If Lady Warrington asked this of me, then she must have been very certain I would see it done. So I shall."

Harriet did not know what to say to that. Had she expected him to refuse? To wave the thing off and go back to his Season? Her eyes closed for a moment. Whatever else the Duke of Blackwood was, he was, it seemed, a man of honor and of duty. Lady Warrington had asked it of him. He would do it, without delay and, she suspected, without a great deal of thought as to whether anyone else might have a view.

"I should like to read this note, Mr. Braithwaite," he went on, and — Harriet marked it — without so much as a glance at her, or a by-your-leave. "The one claiming Lady Colbourne is not to have the endowment. Did you say where it came from?"

"From another firm of solicitors." Mr. Braithwaite's answer sent a flush of heat up through Harriet's neck, her hands closing tight. "There is nothing very remarkable in it — only a friendly caution from a fellow in the same line as myself. A Mr. Wells. He would not wish any difficulty to touch his own house, nor any liability to fall upon it, and so he wrote to me with the concern, and I noted it."

"All the same, I should like to read it."

"As should I."

Both men turned to look at her. Harriet held only the solicitor's gaze, finding herself too vexed with the Duke to look at him. She knew she ought to be grateful. She knew his rank and his willingness were a gift, that a wiser woman would take the help and hold her tongue. But she had sat in this chair and watched two gentlemen discuss her inheritance, her difficulty, her future, across her as though she were a parcel to be seen safely delivered — and something in her would not have it.

"Your Grace," she said, as evenly as she could manage, "I am grateful for your willingness to be of aid. Truly. But you must understand that this is my own matter. Mine. My husband's endowment, my inheritance, my difficulty, and mine to answer for. I have no intention of being set to one side while you and Mr. Braithwaite take it all in hand without me."

The Duke's eyebrows rose.

"So." She was on her feet and moving toward the door now, a little unsteady but past caring. "Mr. Braithwaite, if you would be so good as to send the note to my residence, you may do so directly. I shall be the first to read it, if you please. Thereafter His Grace is most welcome to peruse it at his leisure."

She reached the door and opened it, and gave the solicitor a cool, crisp smile. "For my part, I have duties waiting at home. I shall look forward to reading the note for myself this afternoon. Good day to you both."

The air outside felt sharp and cold against her face for all the warmth of the summer's day, and Harriet stood a moment on the step and drew a long breath of it before she made for the carriage. She was shaking, a little, but it was not all distress. Her presence had been acknowledged. Her name had been put back into her own affair.

Let the Duke of Blackwood be as high as he liked. He and Mr. Braithwaite would both learn that she was not to be handed the part of some minor figure in a story that was, in the end, her own.

"My lady." The footman had the carriage door open, his hand out to hand her up.

She had lifted her skirts to step in when something across the square stopped her cold.

The man stood at the very same corner where she had seen him before, his dark coat wrapped close about him despite the day's warmth, a thick black hat pulled low so that his whole face lay in shadow. She could not tell whether he was looking at her. She could not see his eyes at all. But he was there, in the one place she had learned to dread, as though he had only stepped away for the length of her conversation and come back the moment she emerged.

"Is anything the matter, my lady?"

She turned to the footman, and to the driver beyond him, and their ordinary faces, and the ordinary square, steadied her enough to take the offered hand. She gripped it hard and climbed up into the carriage, her heart beating high in her throat. When she looked out again, the corner was empty. The man had gone, as though he had never been there — as though he had only wanted her to know that he had seen her see him, and, having done it, had no further use for the spot.

Perhaps I ought to go back, she thought, her hand moving toward the carriage door. Perhaps this is a thing the Duke should be told of.

Her fingers stopped short of the handle.

She had just stood in that office and demanded, in as many words, to be taken seriously — to be treated as a woman with a mind and a claim of her own, and not a helpless creature in want of managing.

To go running back now, breathless, with a tale of a man in a hat who kept standing on a corner, and to lay it before a gentleman she had known for the better part of an hour — a gentleman who had already shown himself inclined to take the reins from her hands the moment they were within his reach — would she truly be heard? Or would she only hand him the proof that she was exactly the fluttering, frightened widow she had refused to be?

She did not know him well enough to guess. And that not-knowing decided her. She sat back against the seat and rapped upon the roof, and the carriage rolled forward and carried her out of the square.

The corner stayed empty behind her. The man did not step out to watch her go. He had chosen his moment and taken it and withdrawn, the way she was beginning to understand he always did — revealing himself only when it suited him, and vanishing before she could do anything with the sight of him but be afraid.

Harriet shut her eyes and let out a slow, unsteady breath. No. She would say nothing. Not yet.

Chapter Four