How to Treat a Lady (2 page)

Harry's eyes were drawn to the bill. “Wait.”

The waiter stopped, waiting politely. “Yes, sir?”

“Leave that. I may want something more after all.”

“Of course, sir.” The waiter bowed, then left.

Harry reached over and picked up the bill, looking at the flourishing signature for a long moment. Slowly, by barely discernible degrees, a smile touched his lips. Chase St. John might be leaving London, but his brothers would still be there. And for a while, at least, they wouldn't know the whereabouts of their beloved younger brother. It was just the opportunity Harry needed.

“Yes, indeed,” he said, folding the bill in half. “I shall have to thank my dear friend Chase, after all.” He tucked the bill into the same pocket he'd tucked the banknotes and, whistling softly, finished his port and called for his coat. Within moments, he had left the club and was making his way to his lodgings on 10th Street.

It took a lot to get a man like Harry Annesley down. He refused to give up hope. Thank God there was more than one way to pluck a pigeon. Especially one as wealthy as Chase St. John. Whistling absently to himself, Harry made his way down the crowded street, his hat set at a jaunty angle, no sign of his concerns on his handsome face.

“I
am going to retch.”

Harriet Ward cast a fulminating glance at her sister. “Sophia, if you retch in this cart, I will personally tell everyone we know about the entire experience. And I will spare none of the horrid details.”

Sophia pressed a hand to her cheek and said with all the false tenor of a threepenny actress from Drury Lane, “I am ill, and yet you mock me. You are cruel.”

“I am not,” Harriet said, noting that though her sister tried to appear ill in the bright sunshine, she looked anything but. Sophia, for all her high-flown wiles and die-away airs, was amazingly healthy and
had never suffered more than a cold in her entire life.

“Well
I
think you are cruel, and so does Ophelia.”

From where she sat on the backbench of the cart, Ophelia snorted. “Don't involve me, Sophia. I shall agree with Harriet, as you well know.”

Sophia cast a look of blazing indignation at their youngest sister.

Ophelia calmly patted Max, an enormous dog who was a solid mix of working sheepdog and family pet. “Soph, don't shoot dagger glances at either of us. Harriet and I were perfectly happy riding to town alone. But no.
You
had to come. And
you
kept us waiting while you looked for your bonnet. And now, here we all are, listening to
you
complain. So I hope you do retch, only not in my direction.”

Sophia gasped and opened her mouth to retort, so Harriet hurriedly said, “Enough, the both of you. I am in no mood to witness either retching or complaining. Besides, such commotion could upset the sheep.” She glanced over her shoulder at the three ewes riding in the back of the cart, bleating piteously. It was a shame they had to be sold, but the Wards needed the funds to pay for extra help during shearing season.

“I don't care about upsetting the sheep. In fact, the sheep,” Sophia said in a grand voice, “are upsetting
me
.”

“How?”

“They smell.”

“They're sheep,” Ophelia piped up, adjusting her spectacles on the bridge of her nose. Younger and plumper than either of her sisters, she'd always been something of a bookish sort of girl. Though
lately she'd discovered the wonders of the barn and had developed an unfortunate tenderness for the sheep, treating them as pets.

Harriet thought it was a good thing that they'd gotten sheep in order to collect wool and not to make lamb chops—Ophelia's soft heart would not have allowed for such a thing. Within two weeks of purchasing the flock, Ophelia had named them all and then, to make matters worse, had insisted upon tying ribbons around their ears.

Fortunately, Ophelia had ceased this unworthy practice when she realized that the other sheep were not only unimpressed with such vivid decoration, but thought of the ribbons as tasty treats. She turned to her sister. “Sophia, sheep can't help how they smell, but you…” She sniffed the air, then scrunched her pert nose. “What
is
that horrid odor? You smell like Grandmother Elbert, all musty and old and—”

“What?” Sophia's cheeks reddened. “I don't smell like Grandma Elbert! It's the
eau de cologne
Mother got me last Christmas, and it is very expensive.”

“I don't know what it cost, but if it was more than a pence, she was sadly cheated.”

“Oh!” Sophia said, twisting in her seat to glare at her younger sister. “At least
I
don't smell like a sheep, unlike
some
people I could name who spend all their spare time lingering in the barn as if they were a resident!”

Ophelia's chin jutted, her brown eyes flashing behind the round glass of her spectacles. “Just what do you mean by that?”

Harriet stifled a sigh. There was only one thing worse than driving a smelly hay cart to market, and that was driving a smelly hay cart filled with even
smellier sheep, a large damp-scented dog, and two bickering sisters. “Stop it, the both of you! You're upsetting the sheep.”

“What do the sheep matter?” Sophia asked, momentarily distracted from irking Ophelia.

“They matter a lot, and you know it. I want our sheep to look like the best, most pleasant-natured sheep on earth.” Anything to get a good price. God knew they needed it.

Sophia looked over her shoulder and regarded the sheep with a dubious air. “I don't know how you could tell if they were upset. They all look the same to me. Very woolly and…” She tilted her head. “Perhaps they
do
look as if they have a mood. But it's not a good one.”

“Nonsense,” Ophelia said stoutly. “They're happy sheep. You can tell.”

“How?” Sophia demanded.

Ophelia regarded the ewes for a moment, then suddenly broke into a huge grin. “Maybe you can tell they're happy sheep because they don't feel baaaaad.”

Harriet winced as the other two giggled uncontrollably. “Ophelia, between you and Derrick, I've had more than I can take.” Derrick was their younger brother, and at age sixteen bid fair to become the wittiest of the Ward family, a high honor indeed.

Sophia adjusted the pretty blue ribbons fastened to her old bonnet. “I'm sorry, Harriet. I shouldn't laugh, but Ophelia does that so
well
.”

Ophelia grinned, twin dimples in her round cheeks. “I do, don't I? Sorry I made such a baaaaaad joke.”

One of the sheep in the back of the cart lifted its head and answered.

Sophia chuckled. “You bleat even
better
than the sheep.”

“You have your own gifts,” Ophelia said in return, no sign of her earlier rancor. “You should be on a stage. No one can do Juliet like you.”

Sophia's face burned with pleasure. She tilted her pretty face to the sky and placed her hand to her brow. “
What's here? A cup, closed in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end—
”

As if in great pain, a sheep bleated loudly while Max the dog shuffled in a circle, obviously anxious to get out of the cart. Ophelia giggled and even Harriet had to stifle a grin.

Sophia's face suffused with color. “I was not made for such conditions.”

“None of us was,” Harriet said dryly, hawing the horse to a trot. “I was not made to drive a smelly hay cart, either.”

“I know what you were made for,” Sophia said with a smug smile. “Captain John Frakenham.”

Harriet stiffened. “Do
not
mention that name to me!”

Sophia and Ophelia exchanged amused glances.

“I don't want to hear another word,” Harriet said firmly. “And if I do, you'll walk the rest of the way to town.”

Ophelia leaned forward to whisper loudly to Sophia. “Harriet is always ill-tempered when Captain Frakenham is not in port.”

“Indeed. She's pining for him. For his manly arms and his broad chest—”

“Enough!” Harriet frowned. “What
was
Mother thinking?”

Sophia sighed. “Oh, she was just trying to save Garrett Park. If she hadn't convinced the bank that
you had a wealthy suitor on his way home from sea with trunks of gold, they'd have never allowed us time to gather the wool for the payment.”

Harriet silently admitted that Sophia was right. Mr. Gower, the new officer at the bank, had unexpectedly arrived at Garrett Park one late afternoon with a rather unpleasantly worded demand for funds. Mother's usual good sense had been sorely muddled by a large dose of laudanum she'd just taken for an aching tooth, and with a sense of pure panic, she'd launched into a disjointed, but apparently convincing story of how the money would shortly arrive in the form of a wealthy sea captain, who would also claim her oldest daughter for his own.

Harriet was quite certain Mother had stolen the idea from a lending library novel. Still, the colorful fib had served its purpose; the bank had granted the extension.

Sophia clasped her hands together and sighed dreamily. “Captain Frakenham is the most handsome man in the world.”

“And the wealthiest,” Ophelia added with a mischievous grin. “From what I've heard, he has as much money as the Prince. Maybe more!”

“Piffle!” Harriet snapped. Mother's little fib wouldn't have been so bad had everyone politely ignored it. After all, the family only needed three more months and they'd have the last payment for the mortgage.

What Mother hadn't thought of—what no one had seen or planned upon—was that the bank officials, given the few details Mother had managed to mumble through her numbed lips, had gone home and repeated every word to their willing wives. And
those
worthy women had, of course, mentioned the matter to a few women at the Church Fund Meeting. And
those
women had mentioned it to their friends, neighbors, sisters, and daughters, and so on and so forth until the entire town came to hear of the mysterious Captain Frakenham.

As the story was told and retold, passing over the anxious tongues of every gossipmonger in town, actual details had appeared. Details like the fact that the captain was tall, dark, and handsome. And that Harriet was heartbroken if by some strange mischance he didn't write one of his weekly epistles. And that the worthy captain was an orphan who had raised himself by his bootstraps from the humblest of beginnings and had found untold wealth in sailing the seas of India and beyond.

Each new rumor added to the credibility of the whole, until Captain Frakenham was as real to the people of Sticklye-By-The-River as the butcher who sold meat from his shop on the corner. Except to the Wards, of course. They knew better.

“I wish there really was a Captain John,” Sophia said, giving a blissful sigh. “He's absolutely perfect.”

Ophelia nodded, her round face wreathed with a dreamy smile. “Thick black hair and the bluest eyes—”

“Blue eyes? Who told you that?” Harriet demanded.

“Charlotte Strickton. I met her in town the other day and she said she'd heard it from the parson's wife.”

Blast it all, this whole thing was entirely out of control.

“I'm glad I'm not so shallow,” Sophia said loftily. “I value the captain for his bravery and not his
looks. When I think of all the adventures he's had, I feel faint with—”

“Oh for the love of—” Harriet snapped an exasperated look at her sisters. “There is no Captain Frakenham!”

“We know,” Ophelia said, looking amazed.

“Of course we do,” Sophia added with an innocent blink of her long lashes. “Really, Harriet, you are too serious.”

“It annoys me the way everyone is treating me differently now that I'm supposedly affianced. I'm not affianced, and I never will be.”

Sophia shook her head. “Nonsense. One day, the right man will come along, and you'll change your mind.”

Harriet wasn't so sure. In all her twenty-four years, she'd never met a single man who had managed to make her feel anything more than acute irritation. It was a lowering thought, but not one she'd willingly share with her talkative siblings. “I, for one, was not born to become some man's wife.”

Ophelia blinked owlishly through her spectacles. “What were you born for?”

“I was born to enjoy life, to lie in bed all day while eating bonbons and drinking hot chocolate. But somehow, fate has forgotten me, and so here I am.”

Sophia eyed her elder sister with some awe. “Bonbons in bed. I like that. Anything better than these sheep, which smell even if Ophelia is too thickheaded to admit it.”

“I know they smell,” Ophelia said in an offended tone. “But they cannot help it and I, unlike you, am not about to berate them for it.”

“What we really smell is not sheep,” Harriet said before the two could start up again, “but profit. Ex
tra funds that will enable us to replace Stephen for the shearing.”

“Poor Stephen,” Ophelia said, her eyes darkening in pity.

Sophia sniffed. “It was his own fault. I don't know what he was thinking, swinging from the barn loft on a rope like that. He's eighteen and far too old for such behavior. And he certainly has no right to upset Mother in such a way.”

“He was trying to impress Miss Strickton,” Harriet said. “Which I'm certain he did when the rope came untied and he went crashing into the barn wall.”

Sophia giggled. “I wish I could have seen that.”

“Me, too.” Ophelia chuckled. “Perhaps we can get Charlotte to tell us the tale when next we see her.”

Though Harriet understood her sisters' amusement at the thought of their pompous older brother's woes, she found that she could only manage a faint smile. That little rope trick had not only cost them precious time repairing the barn, but had also put Stephen out of service for the next two months, right when she needed him the most.

Harriet turned the cart down a narrow dirt road that was lined on one side by pleasant fields, a copse of trees on the other. They rounded a corner and Harriet hastily pulled the cart to a halt. “Goodness!”

“What is wro—” Sophia's eyes widened.

A beautiful black horse stood to one side of the narrow lane, head lowered, sides heaving, his hide flecked with foam.

“Good heavens,” Harriet said, setting the brake. She gathered her skirts and climbed down from the seat, making the last hop into the dirt road. “Whose horse could this be?”

Ophelia stood, rising on her tiptoes, her bonnet sliding back off her head to reveal a collection of thick brown curls. “What a beautiful animal!” She clambered to the side of the cart and hopped down, her booted feet clomping pleasantly on the hard dirt surface. Max followed her from the cart, his large head coming to her elbow as he trailed along.

The horse shied at the approaching dog. “Oh, piffle,” Harriet said. “Keep Max away.”

“Sit,” Ophelia said to Max. The dog reluctantly dropped to his haunches and didn't move. Max was a boon and a blessing to the Wards. He was a natural sheepdog, having been raised with the last batch of lambs. He made the barn his home just as they did. Even slept in the same stall when it rained. For this reason, the sheep trusted him implicitly, and it was no wonder; no stray dogs had ever managed to get a lamb or sheep that was under Max's care. For that alone, he was worth his weight in gold.