To Dream of Love by M. C. Beaton Read Free Book Online

stage leaving the White Hart at eight o’clock this evening. Make sure they are on it.”
    Harriet stood outside the door, shaking with rage. To be sent off to the country like an unwanted parcel! Cordelia would go to the marquess’s ball, where she would lie and giggle about her little sister who preferred a life among the hayseeds to the sophistication of town. It was past bearing, but Harriet knew there was nothing she could do to stop them from being sent away.
    All at once, she felt she had to get out of the house again, away from Cordelia’s selfish malice, away from Aunt Rebecca’s nerves, away from the insolent servants.
    She had three shillings in her pocket, part of the very little money remaining of the marquess’s generosity. If Cordelia wanted them to go, thought Harriet furiously, then she could pay for inside seats on the coach for them.
    She decided to go out again, to walk until she was really tired and then treat herself to an ice at Gunter’s, Gunter’s being one of the very few places in London a lady could visit unaccompanied.
    Out she went, along Hill Street, down Chesterfield Street, across Curzon Street, through Shepherd Market, and across Piccadilly into the quiet of Green Park, where tame deer came to nuzzle her hand.
    Few of the fashionable crowd paid any attention to her, judging her to be a lady’s maid by her sober blacks.
    She walked and walked, now determined to stay away until that stagecoach had left. It was awful to think of going back to Pringle House, to a life of drudgery and poverty, before she had had any fun at all. Harriet was young and romantic. She longed for frivolity and pretty dresses. If Cordelia had been kind and had treated her to only a few weeks of the Season, Harriet felt sure she would have returned to the country content.
    It was only the thought of Aunt Rebecca having to face dismissal on her own that made her think of turning her steps back toward Hill Street.
    She had wandered as far as the City. The road back seemed very long. Her worn boots were beginning to hurt her feet. Her stomach rumbled with hunger. She had gone to Gunter’s earlier, but the sight of all the fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen eating ices inside had made her too shy to enter.
    She walked down Oxford Street into Hanover Square and blinked at the commotion that met her eyes.

Chapter Three
    Smoke was pouring from a tall building at the corner of the square.
    As Harriet watched, a tongue of flame shot out from a downstairs window. She worked her way to the front of the crowd, praying that no one was trapped inside.
    “Make way!” shouted a man. “Here comes the ‘surance.”
    In fine style, the Reliable Insurance Fire Brigade rolled up to the front of the house, the bell clanging merrily.
    The firemen were dressed in blue jackets, canvas trousers, and hardened leather helmets that had hollow leather crests over the crowns. This form of helmet, Harriet had read, was taken from the war helmet of the New Zealanders. It had the addition of a hind flap of leather to prevent burning matter from falling down the fireman’s neck. The foreman wore his silver badge of office and carried a baton in one hand a leatherbound notebook in the other. He consulted the notebook as soon as he jumped down from the fire engine.
    “Who lives here?” he demanded laconically as soot-blackened servants piled all the furniture and paintings they had been able to salvage in the square outside.
    “My mistress,” said a butler, gasping. “Her maid has just told us she was asleep when the fire broke out and she had locked herself in her room. She is the Dowager Duchess of Macham. We’ve got to rescue her.”
    “Let me see,” said the foreman, thumbing the pages of his book. “Lindsey, Longham, Lumley … Ah, Macham. Ain’t paid her insurance this age. Come along, boys. No pay, no service.”
    An elderly lady appeared at one of the upper windows, screaming for help.
    “You can’t go,” said