Free The Bishop's Daughter by Susan Carroll Page B

what did she want of him?
    Pushing the bed covers aside, Harry scrambled for the door that led to the adjoining dressing room. Without even waiting to summon his valet, he shrugged into a pair of breeches and white shirt and then donned a satin dressing gown, belting it with a sash. Pausing to peek in the mirror, he ran his hand thoughtfully over his jaw, but he sensed that her ladyship was not the sort to take offense at the sight of an unshaven male. She was more likely to be annoyed if he kept her waiting. Swiftly combing his hair, he dashed some water on his face and returned to the bedchamber.
    A footman had just entered, bearing the tray with the breakfast Lady Dane had ordered for Harry. She directed the butler to place it upon a table before the empty fireplace, the hearth swept clean for the summer. The footman was then dismissed. He exited from the room. The young man barely able to conceal his curiosity.
    Harry watched as Lady Dane settled herself into the depths of a wing-back chair and proceeded to pour out the coffee. His lips twitched. He had small experience of grandmothers, but he suspected that her ladyship was not of the usual variety. She behaved as though it were an everyday occurrence to invade a man's bedchamber, which for her, perhaps it was. Harry had a notion the lady did as she damned well pleased.
    Strolling forward, he drew up a chair opposite her. He had always felt more comfortable with people who behaved in outrageous fashion than those who punctiliously observed all the rigors of a social code.
    Lady Dane removed the covers of the silver breakfast service and thrust at Harry a plate laden with muffins, dry toast, eggs, crispy bits of bacon, and deviled kidneys.
    "Won't you be joining me?" he asked.
    "I breakfasted hours ago," she told him loftily.
    Harry grinned, but bent over his plate with assumed meekness. As he ate, he was aware of her ladyship studying him over the rim of her coffee cup.
    "You have a look of your mother about you," she pronounced. "She came out the same year as my eldest daughter. I knew her ladyship quite well."
    "I fear I didn't," Harry said. His mother had died before his third birthday. It saddened him to think he bore not even the vaguest memory of her.
    "More's the pity," Lady Dane said, some of her sternness melting. "Nan Thorpe was a magnificent girl. The best horsewoman I ever knew. She could manage her men with the same skill as she did her horses. You and your father would have been the better for it if she had lived."
    "I am sure we would have." He set his plate aside and waited for her ladyship to come to the point of her visit. She did so with an alarming bluntness.
    "Do you love my granddaughter, sir?"
    "Yes," Harry replied, equally forthright.
    "You still wish to marry her?"
    "Very much so."
    "Then you have an odd way of going about it. I suppose you thought to pique her interest by pretending to be dead?"
    "That was not of my devising." Harry frowned. Yesterday afternoon, he had finally managed to uncover an explanation for his ‘demise.’ His death had been reported on the basis of a saber found engraved with his name near a body blackened beyond recognition, the same saber he had tossed to a friend before making that final, fatal charge. Charles had become unarmed, and Harry had still had his pistol.
    Leaning back in his chair, Harry briefly closed his eyes, his heart heavy with the memory of that grim moment. He had heard much talk of the glories of battle, but all he recollected was choking on gun smoke, the terrifying sense of confusion, the thunderous explosions, the screams of the wounded, the searing pain in his shoulder, his horse going down beneath him.
    "It must have been Charlie they found with my sword," Harry said wearily, opening his eyes. "When I came to, I had been taken to a convent where some nuns looked after me. I didn't make much effort to communicate to anyone that I was safe, but I never deliberately set out to deceive anyone