Marrying Harriet by MC Beaton Read Free Book Online

rake?’
    ‘He appears very fashionable to me,’ said Harriet, unruffled. ‘It will do my consequence no harm to be seen with him.’
    ‘And,’ said Effy Tribble consolingly to her furious sister when they were alone, ‘you can’t really argue with that.’
    Miss Spiggs and ‘Dr’ Frank had taken up residence in a small apartment in Bloomsbury. Frank had not told Miss Spiggs he was married to Bertha, whom he had left behind in Bath. Although they were masquerading as man and wife, Frank had not even kissed Miss Spiggs or held her hand. He told her his love for her was so pure and his intentions so honourable that he had no intention of ‘making things warmer’ until he felt free to marry her. Miss Spiggs was enjoying the feeling of appearing to be a married lady. She sat in the evenings and told Frank everything she knew about the Tribbles, although there was not much to add to Frank’s knowledge, Frank already having worked for the Tribbles himself. Miss Spiggs herself had recently been employed as companion to the Tribbles’ previous charge, a Miss Maria Kendall, and had lost that job and the subsequent job of companion to Maria’s mother all because of the Tribble sisters’ spite – or so she persuaded herself. But together, Frank and Miss Spiggs finally arrived at the Tribbles’ greatest weakness, their pride in their success. If, said Frank, they could kidnap the Tribbles’ latest ‘client’ and hold her for ransom, then the Tribbles would probably pay a large sum to get her back.
    Miss Spiggs looked at him doubtfully. ‘I do not think, you know, that they have very much money,’ she said.
    ‘But that nabob, Haddon, has,’ said Frank gleefully. ‘They’ll go weeping to him and he’ll pay up.’
    Mr Desmond Callaghan was back in London. He, too, wished nothing but ill on the Tribbles. Although he had tricked their aunt into leaving him everything in her will and cutting out the Tribbles, that everything had proved to be nothing but debt. Convinced the Tribbles had money, he had courted Effy, only to insult her when he learned she was virtually penniless. That was when Mr Haddon had challenged him to a duel and he had had to flee the country. He wished revenge not only on the Tribbles, whom he blamed for all his discomfort, but also on that footman, Frank, who had left the Tribbles’ employ to aid him, only to thieve all his valuables.
    He decided to lie low for a little and study how best he could hurt the Tribbles and perhaps make a profit for himself.

3

    But I’m not so think as you drunk I am.
    Sir John Collings Squire
    Lord Charles spent a pleasant evening with Guy Sutherland, unaware that Jack Perkins was searching for him. They left White’s after an early dinner and repaired to Guy’s comfortable lodgings where they sat beside the fire, remembering battles and their school days at Eton.
    Jack had come to regard Lord Charles as his personal property and was as jealous as any slighted woman. In fact, he blamed the mysterious lady Lord Charles had gone to see for Lord Charles’s absence.
    And so it was that when he called early the following day – twelve noon
was
early in London society – it was to find that his friend was engaged to take a certain lady driving. Concealing his dismay, Jack suggested they should hail the new day with a couple of bottles of champagne. Lord Charles amiably agreed. Port followed the champagne, and then brandy. Lord Charles finally looked at the clock with fuddled eyes and remembered he had promised to take Miss Brown driving at three and he was in his altitudes and his undress.
    He howled for his valet, dressed in haste, and, ignoring Jack’s protests, made his way shakily to his carriage. The cat, Tom, slunk out of the house after him and leaped up on the seat. Normally Lord Charles would have shooed the cat out, but he felt so bleary, so totally drunk that he could not be bothered. He set off, driving carefully.
    Neither Effy nor Amy noticed his