Rakes and Radishes by Susanna Ives Read Free Book Online Page A

isn’t bothering her. She’s just trying to get to her cousin in London. Don’t you see that she is using you?”
    “No. This was all my doing. She had nothing to do with it.”
    Lady Kesseley jutted her chin. “I don’t want a companion. Fanny and the princess Wilhelmina are coming in from Brighton to help us, so I have no use for Henrietta.”
    “But she is too excited now, going on about what she’s going to wear to plays and operas and all those senseless things she cares about.”
    “I don’t care if she sewed an entire wardrobe complete with a court dress of gold thread, she is not going.”
    “This man is pressing his intentions—”
    “She certainly had no difficulty telling you her feelings.”
    Kesseley shot up and strode to the mantel, but even there he couldn’t escape his mother. An oval portrait of her, painted before her marriage, hung over his head. She wore a simple white gown gathered along the bodice, her blond curls pooling about her shoulders. The passing years had done little damage to her beauty but her eyes had changed. In the portrait they were gentle, untouched by ugliness of his father.
    “I want her to go,” he said in a quiet voice. He was the earl, after all.
    Lady Kesseley returned to her desk and pressed her palms against her forehead. “Very well,” she said. “Don’t you understand? You’re such a wonderful man. I want you to have everything that I didn’t—someone to love you, respect you, cherish you. Henrietta isn’t that lady. Perhaps I once thought that you and she—” she paused, then shook her head. “She will ruin everything.”

Chapter Four

    In the cold darkness of the morning before departure, Henrietta kneeled before her opened trunk in the parlor. She wrapped herself in a blanket, and with a candle on the floor, checked her belongings, making sure the servants had packed the box of gentlemen’s fashion clippings and articles on gentlemen’s etiquette that she had collected from old copies of Town and Country, as well as a list she had made of London hatmakers and bootmakers and such. Mrs. Potts staggered in and slammed a basket down on the round marble table. She put her hand on her hip and poked her head out like a turtle, waiting for Henrietta to say something, a shot in their ongoing domestic war.
    “Good morning, Mrs. Potts! I’m going to London. Shall I bring you some nice fabric from the Grafton House, on New Bond Street? That’s where all the fashionable stores are.”
    “I won’t be needin’ any fancy-dancy fabric from London. It ain’t going t’ make this face any prettier.”
    “Oh well, I shall buy you a scrub brush. How pleasant. Did you make those heavenly creampuffs from Monsieur Ude’s cookbook? I think the additional egg yolks will make a nice light, flaky crust around the cream.”
    “I made the creampuffs I’ve been makin’ for thirty years. If the Lady Kesseley didn’t like them, she’d had plenty of time to complain before now. Good morning.” Mrs. Potts left the room, cursing under her breath.
    Henrietta opened the linen and lifted out a flat, browned creampuff. She snapped it open like a hard biscuit to see clotted-over whipped cream turning to butter.
    “You look beautiful this morning, Miss Watson, as you always do,” a male voice echoed in the room.
    Henrietta shoved the puff into her mouth and turned to see Mr. Van Heerlen fully turned out in tight doeskins, Hessian boots and a light blue jacket with large brass buttons that accented his bright eyes and fair features. He didn’t approach her or return a bow, but instead circled the edge of the room, falling in and out of the shadows, his gaze locked on her face.
    “You should know your father is a brilliant, brilliant man,” he said. “I had no idea the true genius of his mind—his numbers—until I came here. He is a mastermind of math and physics.”
    “Your words mean so much to me, for I’ve always believed in him. And, well, the societies have