Lord Lightning by Jenny Brown Page B

swag. Lord Hartwood led her to a chair whose clawed feet and gilded scrollwork recalled the elegance of the past, though she noticed its upholstery was worn away in places and its cluttered ornamentation was far less elegant than the furnishings she had seen at his town house. Given the shabbiness that surrounded her, she should have felt herself less overawed than she had been by Lord Lightning’s magnificent dwelling, but if anything she felt more uneasy. How would she cope with the coming interview with his mother? Back in London, where her new protector knew exactly what she really was, it had been easy to imagine herself playing her new role. But to actually be thought of as a fallen woman, to face another woman’s scorn devoid of the propriety her aunt had considered so essential—she could not help but feel fear tap at her heart, though she sternly repressed it. There was no reason to give way to such shameful emotion. She was merely playing a role.
    “You may as well sit down,” Lord Hartwood told her in a low voice. “It will be half an houror more until Her Ladyship can bring herself to greet us. After all, it has been only fifteen years since last she saw me.”
    “You have not visited her in all that time?”
    “I was gone into the army for some years. Then, when I returned, she barred her door to me.” He was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “She had her reasons. Unlike my father and my brother, when
I
left the paths of righteousness, I did not keep my peccadilloes secret. Though my mother easily forgave them sins pursued out of public view, she could not forgive me my lack of hypocrisy. She sees me now only because she is compelled to by James’s will.”
    “But if she hates you so, why is she willing now to welcome you and help you claim your inheritance?”
    “It is to receive her own inheritance that she must tolerate my presence. James’s will stipulated that if she did not let me attend her for a fortnight she would forfeit this, her permanent home. She has no other property of her own and no income save what I allow her. Because my father squandered her dowry on his mistress, she was left ill provided for at his death, and what James left her has been tied up by the lawyers pending this visit of mine. Indeed, since James’s death, she has only been able to remain in her home through my sufferance. I’ve had my man of business pay her servants and allow her a comfortable allowance. It gives me a certain pleasure to know that it is only
my
efforts that stand between her and poverty.”
    “It does you credit. Given her hostility to you, it would have been understandable if you had allowed her to suffer the consequences of her neglect.”
    “I am not interested in earning credit,” Lord Hartwood growled. “And did I not warn you against finding good in me where there is none?”
    “Indeed you did, Your Lordship,” she said, schooling her expression. “And I shall take care in the future to do my best to put the very worst interpretation possible on all your actions.”
    “Excellent! I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
    Their discussion was interrupted by a loud scraping sound coming from the hallway. “My mother is coming,” he whispered harshly. “Remain seated when she enters.”
    How unspeakably rude! But there was no time for Eliza to frame a reply, as the door to the parlor opened and a footman wheeled in a bath chair. As he pushed Lady Hartwood toward them, her son swung around from the side table against which he had been lounging and came over to rest his hand firmly on Eliza’s shoulder. The gesture at once established his familiarity with her person and made it impossible for her to ignore his command that she remain seated. She attempted to remain calm and to behave as she imagined someone like Violet might do, who had been raised in poverty without the benefit of the kind of education in manners Eliza had received. But since she
had
been schooled in