A Question for Harry by Angeline Fortin Read Free Book Online

measure of rudeness … It was a price she was willing to pay.
     
    A ping sounded at her window and then another, drawing Fiona’s attention away from her diary. Frowning, she watched as a pebble arched through the half-open casement and bounced to a halt at the foot of the bed. Bewildered, she went to the window, peering through the glass to look out on the open park bordered on the north and south sides by the townhomes of Eaton Square before she threw the sash up the rest of the way and ducked her head out for a better look only to be bulleted in the forehead by another geologic projectile.
    “Ouch!” she griped, rubbing her forehead . “What the bloody–?”
    “Fiona!” a cheerful voice sounded . Fiona searched and discovered a tall, slender male form outlined in the darkness. “There you are!”
    “ Lord Ramsay!” she exclaimed, truly surprised to see her would-be fiancé hovering behind the hedges in front of her brother’s London townhouse after she had departed from him weeks before in Edinburgh. “What are you doing here?”
    At my window ? In the middle of the night?
    “I’ve come to see you, my darling!” he called . “Might I come up?”
    Fiona hesitated indecisively, trailing the lace curtains between her fingers. Come up? She dashed a sidelong glance around her room. Gowns and undergarments were strewn about willy-nilly, the counterpane on her bed turned back and rumpled … the hairbrush on her vanity. Come up? To her room ? The idea sounded disconcertedly intimate. “Nooo …” she called back slowly, then decided impulsively, “but I will come down.”

    Closing the front door as quietly as she could, Fiona hugged her hastily donned redingote around her and dashed nimbly across the cobbled street and walk and into the grassy green of the Eaton Square Gardens.
    “ Lord Ramsay?” Fiona whispered into the night as she looked about for his location. The park was flat and only sparsely dotted with trees, yet she couldn’t readily see him.
    “ Lord Ramsay? Where are you?” Fiona cried out shortly when a large hand caught her upper arm and pulled her unceremoniously behind one of the larger oaks.
    Rich male laughter rang out as a strong arm slipped about her waist . “I’ve got you!” Ramsay chuckled and bent his head to nuzzle Fiona’s neck. “Ah, darling, how I’ve missed you! Have you missed me as well?”
    Fiona stiffened . In surprise only, she told herself sternly before turning out of her beau’s embrace. “Of course, but what are you doing here, Lord Ramsay?”
    “That supercilious butler of your brother’s would not allow me entry when I tried to call on you earlier,” he said. “The old codger kept insisting you weren’t at home.”
    “We weren’t at home,” she told him, not that Hobbes would have admitted him in any case .
    Hobbes, who had been Eve’s butler before she married Francis, often refused to admit anyone into their Edinburgh home who m he didn’t approve of. Unfortunately, very few people met his standards, leaving many high-ranking nobles cooling their heels at the door. Since Francis had expressed his dislike of Lord Ramsay, it wasn’t surprising that Hobbes would put him off as well. And Hobbes was far less accommodating than her brother.
    Still that hadn’t been what she meant, so Fiona rephrased her question . “No, not the park. What are you doing here? In London?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to London?” he countered with a petulant pout marring his otherwise handsome features. “I had to find it out from one of your housemaids instead of from your own lips.”
    “I sent you a note,” Fiona protested, only to realize in that moment that if her brothers wanted to separate her from an unwanted suitor that something as simple as a letter was not going to stop him from making it so.
    Rather than give Lord Ramsay a grisly list of the details, Fiona only said then what she had relayed in her apparently confiscated letter.