Lord Haversham Takes Command

  Lord Haversham Takes Command

  A Miss Delacourt Adventure

  Heidi Ashworth

  Text Copyright © Heidi Ashworth, 2013

  ISBN-13: 978-0615827049

  Dunhaven Place Publishing

  Cover design by Laura J Miller

  www.anauthorsart.com

  By the same author:

  Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind

  Miss Delacourt Has Her Day

  Lady Crenshaw’s Christmas

  A Timeless Romance Anthology: Winter Collection: It Happened Twelfth Night

  For Harry —

  he knows who he is.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter One

  “La! How dowdy are the de rigueur fashions from La Belle Assemblee, circa eighteen twelve!” exclaimed Miss Miranda Crenshaw. “I declare, if I were forced to wear such a bonnet, I would spend my days below stairs washing-up with the scullery maid!”

  Her father, seated by the fire at Prospero Park, the country seat of the Crenshaw clan, allowed his copy of The Examiner to slip as far as the arch of his nose so as to serve his wife a speaking look.

  She returned his look with a twinkle in her eyes. “Now, Mira, as I have said on numerous occasions … ”

  “I should think ‘multifarious’ a more apt word than ‘numerous,’ Mama,” Mira said with a pert air. “Though ‘copious’ and ‘profuse’ would do just as well.”

  “Very well, then,” her mother demurred. “I shall always applaud the superior word, no matter how disagreeably it is thrust within my notice. But that is neither here nor there.” She dropped her needlework into her lap and heaved a sigh. “I do not recollect what I was about to say.”

  Mira opened her mouth to rehearse the oft-used phrase, but her father was quicker.

  “Well-bred young ladies do not prattle on about tawdry subjects such as clothing, except when in the company of their dressmaker,” he intoned. “Well-bred and dashing gentlemen are under no such stricture, however,” he added with a deft duck of his head beneath the paper before Lady Crenshaw could pin him with a gimlet glare.

  Mira stood, allowing the relics of her mother’s debutante season to slip from her lap to the floor, and went to peer out the window. “I don’t know why you are so prosy on the subject, ma mere. Clothes and fashion are all my friends speak of. That is, except for Viola, who is prodigious intelligent and converses on any manner of subjects of which I’ve never heard.”

  “And it is no accident that she, as your sole respite from girlish frivolity, is your bosom beau. And then there are your brothers. Think what mayhem might ensue should they put too much stock in what they put on their backs.”

  “Stephen and Adrian?” Mira cried. “Why, they would don nightshirts for Queen Victoria’s ball if it weren’t for my constant admonitions. I hardly think they are the epitome of stylish restraint.”

  “S’true. There’s barely a Brummell between them,” Sir Anthony mumbled from behind the society page.

  “What was that, dearest?” Lady Crenshaw asked with an exasperated air.

  “Oh, do leave off twitting him, Mama,” Mira cried as she dashed to her father’s side and knelt at his feet. “You must own you would find it as tragic as I if he were to dismiss his tailor and dress like a country squire.”

  Lady Crenshaw pointedly pursed her lips and retrieved her needle and hoop. “Very well then, I shall leave off the subject of clothing and move on to that display of histrionics instead.”

  “Ginny, my love,” Sir Anthony said with a toss of his paper. “We knew when the girl made her entrance with that head of flaming red hair that she would display a goodly amount of dramatic flair. If you must blame someone, blame Grandmama, the original redheaded termagant, who is dead and well past caring.”

  “I could more easily blame you,” Lady Crenshaw said under her breath, “if she weren’t my relative as well as yours! There, that’s done it,” she announced with a snap of the thread between her teeth.

  “Why, it’s the prettiest monogrammed hankie I’ve seen yet.” Sir Anthony rose to his feet and took the bit of muslin in his hand to examine the intricately entwined A and G. “I shall make a point of taking too much snuff at the next affair we attend so as to bring your handiwork to the attention of all assembled. I am sure to be the envy of each and every one,” he said with a bow and a kiss for his lady.

  Mira noted how her mother blushed under her father’s gaze and hastily turned away. Sometimes she wished her parents were more circumspect, more discreet, more … ordinary. Their obvious affection for each other was disturbing in the extreme. “Well then, if you two lovebirds are going to continue making eyes at each other, I believe I shall go in search of my brothers.”

  “Not at home,” her father said in an off-hand manner, his attention no doubt taken up with the tracing of circles along the skin of her mother’s hand with his thumb.

  “Where are they off to so early in the afternoon?” Mira asked in a huff.

  “Harry is returned, hadn’t you heard?” Lady Crenshaw replied. “They’re off to Avery Abbey to see him.”

  “Without me? Not today! I shall have a thing or two to say about that when they return. Why, one would think this was not my coming out, what with this continual belittlement of my person,” Mira said, a bit more loftily than she intended. She suspected her nose tilted a bit closer to the ceiling than she intended as well, but as her parents proved bereft of speech, there was nothing to do but make the best of it and sweep from the room.

  Mira heard their powers of speech return in force once she slammed the drawing room door behind her, but she daren’t give them the satisfaction of listening through the keyhole. She had been down that road before, and it had brought her nothing but a sound swat on the bottom from Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper. Besides, more likely than not, they even now bemoaned their lot as parents to a hoyden who could ride and shoot as well as any man, with a redhead’s temperament to boot. The fact that she was in possession of a purely feminine figure, danced like a doyen, and exhibited exquisite taste in clothing seemed to impress them not one whit.

  And then it hit her; Harry was home! Harry — her Harry! The one who in days past rode and swam and fished beside her, who swung her round in his arms at the end of each term home from school; the one who had been almost like a brother to her, at least until that day he had kissed her and she had slapped his face. She was all of twelve at the time; surely he must have forgiven her by now! As she raced up the stairs to her bedroom, she cudgeled her brain for the perfect ensemble to don for his return.

  What would a gentleman recently returned from the Grand Tour in Europe find sophisticated enough without it seeming as if she were aching to impress him? The fact that she possessed a clothespress brim-full of new gowns, outfits, and fripperies hardly mattered as he hadn’t laid eyes on her in almost four years nor any of her clothes in all that time. Feeling confident, she chose a sapphire blue gown and quickly donned it with the help of the tweeny who, in the somewhat economical home of Lady Crenshaw, did double duty as a body servant.

  With its off-the-shoulder neckline, puffed sleeves, and split skirt that revealed a quantity of frothy white lace skimming over a delectably full
petticoat, Mira felt it the height of fashion and sophistication. It was, perhaps, a bit daring for daytime wear but the fact that the sun shone could not be helped. What mattered was that the gown was the precise shade of blue as her eyes and that it complemented the cascade of red, glossy ringlets that spilled out of her chip straw bonnet to perfection.

  Satisfied with her reflection in the pier glass, she tightened the belt at her satisfactorily tiny waist, took up her pocketbook in case they had a mind to go shopping in the village, and made her way below stairs to join her parents in the drawing room.

  “You look ravishing, my child,” Sir Anthony said as he took her in his arms and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “’Twould be a pity if he chooses not to call on us this afternoon. However, I am persuaded he is probably off cutting up some lark with your brothers.”

  Mira gave her father, who, she noticed, had changed into his favorite day suit, a conciliatory smile. Even Mama had removed her everyday lace cap in favor of one trimmed with the finest Venetian lace composed of a riot of cunningly worked roses. Surely, Mira thought, they were as expectant of Harry’s arrival as she.

  To her delight, it wasn’t long before the strike of riding boots against the flagstone walkway followed by gales of masculine laughter in the front hall could be heard from the drawing room. Suddenly, Mira was all aflutter at the thought of seeing him. Once she looked into his face, however, seeing him was all she could bring herself to do.

  His hair was as blond as ever, a circumstance difficult to avoid in light of his parents’ fair locks, and his full lips perhaps a bit thinner than when he was a boy, though they sat above the very same divot in his chiseled chin. His nose was long and straight and a bit blunt at the end, just as she remembered, and his eyes the same intense green orbs. For a moment he favored her with the heat of his gaze from beneath the cover of a fringe of dark lashes, then strode right past her without not so much as a how-do-you-do.

  “Sir Anthony, Lady Crenshaw,” he said, as he greeted her parents with all the enthusiasm she felt ought to have been reserved for herself. His voice was deeper than she recalled and a bit more brittle as well. His smile was a shade too bright and his entire manner somewhat … off. What could possibly account for it?

  Mentally, she went over her entire ensemble and knew herself to look absolutely exquisite from the crown of her ribboned bonnet to the tips of her square-toed shoes. With a confidence she felt deep in the marrow of her bones, she marched to the fireplace where their guest basked in the glow of the Crenshaw family, edged her way between her brothers, and thrust her hand beneath Harry’s nose.

  “I believe you have not properly greeted me,” she said with a perfectly polished smile.

  Harry’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “If it isn’t little Miss Crenshaw!” he exclaimed with an audible gasp. “I must own, I had not recognized you under that bonnet. I thought you a caller just arrived!”

  Mira was certain he was lying; certain, too, the look he had given her when he entered was one of recognition, as well as something else she couldn’t quite identify. Yet, he denied it all as he coyly covered his grinning lips instead of taking up the hand she held out for his kiss. At the same time, he used his other hand to fan his face with a flutter of his fingers in a gesture so unmanly as to unnerve her.

  “Why, you’ve been allowed to let down your skirts and pin up your hair!” With a bark of laughter, he turned to her parents. “What’s the occasion?”

  Mira noted how round her mother’s eyes had become and how her father looked, quite simply, agog, and rushed to reply before her parents made a remark that might cause her further humiliation. “It’s my come-out this year, Harry. You can’t have forgotten I am ten and eight come June! I shall soon be making my bows to the Queen,” she said with a little pirouette.

  “It’s Bertie,” her eldest brother, Stephen, said with a grimace. He and Harry had been born within months of each other the spring following their respective parents’ nuptials.

  “Bertie?” Mira asked looking about her for another young man who had ostensibly slipped into the house beneath her notice. “I’m afraid I don’t know to whom you’re referring,” she said with a glance at her parents who looked to be more and more alarmed with each moment that passed.

  “Poor child, I can see we have confused you,” Harry purred. “It is I! That is to say, I am he — Bertie! Harry was the pseudonym of my youth, but Bertie is the sobriquet by which I shall be known forthwith!”

  Adrian, Mira’s elder brother by two years, frowned. “But your name, as I recall, isn’t Albert or Bertram!”

  Harry gave another bark of laughter and touched Adrian lightly on the arm as if they shared some amusing secret. “The name with which my parents graced me upon my birth was Herbert, though if I had been known as such at Eton,” he gushed with an exaggerated waggle of his brows, “I would have been thrashed within an inch!”

  More laughter followed though Mira couldn’t help but notice that Harry — that was to say, Bertie — laughed alone. She realized he wasn’t Harry at all, and her heart sank. As the scales fell from her eyes, she suddenly saw her former friend in a new light. Though it was true that not much about his face had altered, his taste in clothes had undergone a sea change.

  Gone were the sensible but attractive and masculine clothes usually worn by Harry, now replaced by the ruffled shirt front, wide-spread collar, and tightly cinched waist favored, apparently, by those of ‘Bertie’s’ stamp. She was most alarmed by the fact that he sported not one but two waistcoats, both quite loud and in such contrasting hues it made her more than a little dizzy to gaze upon them. Mira knew it to be all the crack of fashion, but she felt the overall look not suitable paired with riding boots and certainly too fine for the middle of the afternoon, whereupon she remembered her own unwillingness to dress in accordance with the time of day and, with a self-conscious blush, turned away.

  “Well!” Lady Crenshaw cried with what Mira knew to be fabricated enthusiasm. “It is so good to see you, Harry. That is to say, Bertie. It would seem your years on the Continent have wrought wondrous changes in you.”

  Mira felt ‘wondrous’ to be a more appropriate description than ‘wonderful’. She knew she was expected to follow her mother’s comment with a request that their guest be seated and regale them with tales of his tour through France, Italy, and Spain, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. In point of fact, the sooner this imposter wearing Harry’s face departed the better. She wandered to the other side of the room and ran her fingers along the furnishings in an absent-minded way, a clear indication she was no longer interested in socializing.

  Bertie-not-Harry acknowledged her disinterest with a little cough into his fist and with gratifying speed announced his intention to depart. He said his farewells to her parents and brothers then strolled up behind her where she stood with her face to the wall as she scrutinized a painting she had seen every day of her life. He said not a word, but she could feel the agitation rise from him like a haze of heat. The thought came to her that he was more himself, more Harry, at this moment than any other since he first entered the room. Still, she refused to turn about and face him, afraid of what she might see, or not, if she were to look again into his eyes.

  With a bray of laughter, he was off to the front hall where he made a noisy show of collecting his hat, gloves, and riding whip. However, these sounds were not immediately followed by those of his boots as they marked his way to the door, and Mira had the oddest sensation he was loathe to depart. With a surge of remorse, she brushed past her appalled parents and into the front entry where she found him still at the hall table, hatted and gloved but not gone. She thought she could see the old Harry in the rigid lines of his back, in the way he gripped the edge of the table with his long fingers, and she was certain it was Harry who threw a furtive glance over his shoulder to find her staring at him. He laughed, a rueful, Harry sort of laugh, then spun about to properly bid her goodbye.

  “Miss Cre
nshaw,” he chirped and sketched a bow. “It was a delight!” He touched the brim of his hat with his finger and favored her with a decided smirk, but it was the old Harry’s eyes that lingered on her face as if he savored the very sight of her. In spite of the carefree grin, those eyes were tinged with regret.

  Mira felt her heart gripped with grief. What could have happened to Harry to make him disappear? How could she beckon his return? Her brothers appeared and as ‘Bertie’ slapped them on the shoulders in farewell and made his way out the door, she wanted to run after him and force him to explain — to tell her where he had taken her Harry — but something held her back, and he was soon mounted and had cantered away.

  Mira returned to the drawing room in time to hear her father’s reaction. “Lord save us, he’s the spitting image of his mother!”

  “Whatever can you mean?” Lady Crenshaw cried. “He’s precisely like his father!”

  Sir Anthony dragged a shaking hand across his face. “Ginny, surely you saw how his hands were itching to come together in a resounding clap just like that infernal Lady Avery, and incessantly, I might add.” He collapsed into his chair by the fire, for all the world like a man harassed past bearing. “I’ll be hanged if there wasn’t a lisp hovering about waiting for the perfect moment to be unleashed as well.” He looked up at his wife. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “No! Surely you don’t mean it! He wasn’t as awful as all that, was he?” she asked in a voice that quavered just a trifle.

  Mira felt a new and unfamiliar sensation grip her. “Papa, what are you saying?” she demanded while doing her best to hide her fear. “How does Harry’s bizarre metamorphosis into Bertie have anything to do with you?”

  Her mother turned haggard eyes to her daughter. “Only that you shall be expected to marry your cousin after all.”

  “Who?” Mira demanded. “Not George!” An uncomfortable silence ensued. A bit deflated by their lack of reply, she carried on. “You can’t mean that I should marry George. He’s the most despicable, needle-nosed tyrant who ever walked the earth! Besides, I still have no idea what this has to do with Harry.” She blinked back a sudden onset of tears. She didn’t know what her tears had to do with Harry either, but she refused to examine that question further.