Page 54 of Tempting Harriet
She turned to look into his face with Harriet’s candid,trusting eyes. “But the ball won’t hit the bat,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears again. “Mama will get hurt.”
“It’s all in the timing,” he said. “If you swing at the ball as soon as the bowler releases it, your bat is around anduseless by the time the ball comes flying past. On the otherhand, if you wait until the ball is level with you and thenswing, the wickets are down before the bat is properly inmotion. The secret is to swing at just the right moment.”
She sighed, caught sight of his quizzing glass, and touched its jeweled handle with one small finger. “It’spretty,” she said.
“Thank you.” He smiled. “I shall let you peer through it the first time you hit the ball. Let me throw you a few practice balls. For the moment the wickets are blocks of woodagain. Agreed?”
“I can’t hit it,” she warned him. “You are going to get cross, like Paul.”
“Try me,” he said gravely, getting to his feet and holding out the small bat toward her. She sighed again and took it.
The first time he bowled the ball to her, slowly and gently, she demolished a portion of Freddie’s immaculate lawn and the wickets shattered.
“That always happens the first time during a practice,” he said. “Next time hold the bat firm and lean into the ball. Itwill give you a feel for when exactly it arrives.”
She trapped his next ball and left the wickets intact behind her. She knocked them down when she jumped up and down, squealing in delight. “Mama,” she called. “Did yousee? Did you see?”
The duke laughed.
“Yes, indeed I did,” Harriet said, and he realized that she was still standing there. Clara was following behind thebaby, who was running across the grass, his legs wideapart.
“Here come Paul and Uncle Freddie,” the duke said, hiding a rueful smile at the nonchalant look on the boy’s face. It was a well-remembered look from his own boyhood experience, a look that tried to tell the world that his stingingrear end was really nothing at all. “Maybe Paul will bowland Uncle Freddie will field while I help you with the bat.Those wickets are Mama and your doll and Uncle Freddie now.”
“Not my doll,” she said, pointing to the nearest wicket. “You. Who are you?”
“Tenby,” he said. “Now we will certainly have to be sure to put up a good defense.”
Paul marched forward. “I apologize, Susan,” he said handsomely. “I can’t hit the ball very well either unlessPapa bowls slowly to me, and I’m not even a girl.”
Freddie closed his eyes briefly.
“You are to bowl,” Susan said, “and Uncle Freddie is to stand over there. Tenby is going to help me with the bat.”She raised her voice. “Watch me, Mama. Watch me, AuntClara.”
The duke exchanged grins with Freddie.
“Be prepared to chase after a long ball, Freddie, my lad,” the duke said, standing behind Susan and setting his handslightly over hers on the handle of the bat. “Right. Have atit, Paul, my boy. A nice overarm fast one straight at thecenter wicket.”
They all had tea together in the nursery. In the few days she had been at Ebury Court, Harriet had learned that thatwas a daily ritual, abandoned only with the greatest reluctance, according to Clara, when they had visitors who didnot have children. Today it was easy to avoid awkwardnessby playing with the baby, building him a tower of woodenbricks in one corner of the room until he decided to knockit down and she had to start again. Freddie wrestled on thefloor with Paul while Clara poured tea. Susan, inexplicablyand embarrassingly, had set her favorite book beneath herarm, squeezed onto the chair beside the duke, and handedhim the book. Harriet wondered how he was enjoying reading it to her and whether he was reading the wolf’s part toSusan’s satisfaction. She heard a deep and menacing growleven as she thought it. Susan, she saw at a glance, washolding his quizzing glass to her eye.
In her room later, having washed and changed and combed her hair after a couple of hours out-of-doors in ahealthy breeze, Harriet wondered if she was going to beable to go downstairs to dinner. There would be no children. Just the four of them. Two couples. Clara, Freddie,herself, and—Lady Phyllis Reeder's betrothed. She wondered if he had known she was there when he decided topay a call on his friend. Surely not. Surely he wanted to seeher as little as she wanted to see him. Unless he was stalking her, tormenting her. It was not easy, perhaps, for someone of his rank to give up a possession—that was all shehad ever been to him—until he was fully ready to do so.
She hated to think that he had come to torment her. She wanted to believe that she had been wrong when she hadaccused him of being without honor. She wanted to believethat their quarrel had brought out the worst in both of themand in no way represented the persons they really werewhen rational.
She hated to think that he now knew about Susan. Why she had been reluctant for him to know, she was not sure.Except perhaps in keeping part of herself from him she hadthought to keep her identity, to save herself from becomingsubmerged entirely in her love for him. Now she felt utterlydefenseless. And he had played with Susan, showing ahumor and a patience that she would not have expected,though she had glimpsed it with Lord Mingay’s children atBarthorpe Hall. He had read the story to Susan three timesin a row, repeating the wolf’s part over and over each timehe came to it and Susan had demanded more.
Good heavens, Harriet thought, feeling quite sick, he was going to make as good a father as Freddie was. To her children. Lady Phyllis’s children. She fought the tears thatwanted to flow. She fought even harder and bit upon herupper lip when a tap came at her dressing-room door andClara opened it and peeped around it.
“Are you ready?” she asked. “Good. We will go down together.”
Harriet shook her head. “I—I don’t feel very well,” she said, “or very hungry. Too much fresh air, I suppose. It wasrather windy, was it not? I believe I will stay here if youdon’t mind, Clara.”
“But you are dressed,” Clara said. She came inside after a pause and closed the door quietly behind her. “It is no coincidence, is it? I told Freddie it was no coincidence, and he said of course it was not.”
“What is no coincidence?” Harriet took refuge in ignorance.
“Did he tell you,” Clara asked, “that his betrothal is ended? His fiancée eloped with someone else, or tried to.”
With Mr. David Lockhart. Oh, dear God. “No,” she said,“he did not tell me. Why should he?” But she felt the telltale color creep up her cheeks.
