Hero, Come Back (Cynster 9.50)

This time, Dehaan ignored him and tossed the shirt over Harry’s head.

I’m not getting any younger. I’m lonely, living without seeing my only close relative for years at a time—an exaggeration, he’d never been gone above eight months—and I want grandchildren before I’m too old to dandle them on my knee. His mother wasn’t above playing the guilt card.

Harry allowed Dehaan to button his waistcoat, pin on his collar, and tie his cravat.

“Very elegant, my lord,” Dehaan praised. “The young lady will look upon you most favorably.”

Harry cast a cold gaze on his valet and wondered if Dehaan had been part of his mother’s scheme. Better not to know. Harry was already torn between rage and, unfortunately, amusement. His mother had the gall of a street urchin picking pockets! So I’ve sent you to Wildbriar Inn where you’ll meet Lady Jessica and court her.

“Inadvertently,” Harry declared.

As he helped Harry into his boots, Dehaan looked worried, quite as if Harry had lost his mind.

Harry read the last, outrageous line of the letter. So, darling boy, do make up your mind to like the match, for I’ve already ordered the vicar to call the banns and sent the announcement to the Times. You cannot, in all honor, do anything but wed Lady Jessica, on November 8, a mere six weeks from now.

Resign yourself.

Harry stiffened. Resign himself? He would do no such thing.

Dehaan brushed at the stark, elegant, black jacket. “Let me help you with—”

Harry snatched his coat out of Dehaan’s hands and stormed out of the door.

Dehaan hurried after him. “My lord! Don’t forget your knife!”

Harry stopped on the top step of the porch. Quivering with impatience, he pointed at the post beside him. The blade whistled through the air and sank into the painted wood not two inches from his finger.

No one was better with a knife than Dehaan.

“Thank you.” Freeing the knife, Harry stuck it up his sleeve and resumed his march toward the inn.

The morning light struck him full in the face, but off on the horizon he saw a bank of fog waiting to envelop the landscape. The weather had been almost too perfect for their idyll, but the good weather was over, and with it, any chance of romance.

For no matter what his mother demanded, he was not resigned. He was… oh, damn, admit it. He was eager. The night in Jessie’s arms had whetted his appetite for a lifetime of passion and laughter and joy. It had been so long since he’d noted the pleasures of life. The sunlight, the flowers, the birds had all been hidden from him, masked by the grim duties of his trade. Jessie showed him a world he had thought he’d left behind, and her uninhibited joyfulness lit the dark corners of his soul.

Feeling like a fool, feeling like a lover, he gathered a single, late, wild rose, the exact color of her nipples, and entered the inn. Outside the dining room, he straightened his cuffs, touched the pin in the center of his cravat, prepared to propose— and confess the truth about who he was.

But when he stepped in the door, he stopped short.

Jessie sat at the same, two-person table she’d occupied the morning before. Just as before, she had her breakfast in front of her, and just as before, a gentleman sat with her. But today…today she observed the fellow with a bemused, amazed expression.

With no thought but to renew his claim on her, Harry strode forward and towered over the table. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Oh! Mr. Windberry.” Jessie rose to meet him, a delightful young woman clad in the kind of frivolous gown she would wear to gratify her lover. Him. “I’m so pleased to see you. You’ll never guess who this is.”

He certainly wouldn’t. The blackguard was a few years younger than Harry; handsome in an open, hale-fellow-well-met manner; well-dressed; and sporting a dark mustache that drooped over a repulsively smiling mouth. He came to his feet eagerly, with every appearance of respect and pleasure at Harry’s appearance.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea who he could be,” Harry said with chilly precision.

As she dropped her linen napkin on the chair, Jessie smiled with blinding delight. “This is my third suitor.” She reached a hand across the table to the obnoxiously open-faced kn

ave. “This is Lord Granville.”

Eight

Harry had the funniest expression on his face, like a skater right after he landed hard on his rump on the ice—but Jessie felt no inclination to laugh.

She couldn’t allow Harry to influence her. He hadn’t indicated any desire to make an honest woman out of her—well, why should he? she’d been free with her affections without expectation of return—and now Lord Granville had arrived. He had arrived, and he was so much better than she remembered. He was handsome and polite, making no mention of their previous acquaintance. He didn’t stink, he didn’t smirk, he didn’t leer, he didn’t bully, and he hadn’t tried to kiss her. Yet. If she had to—and it appeared she had to—she could marry this man.