SWNOVELS A Vixen for the Duke: Chapter 9
With her fists balled up, Harriet stomped up the stone steps, and with a thud, she slammed the front door behind her.
“Harriet!” Lucy called out. She was still in the living room with Bridget. She stood up at once, her eyes wide and her brows lowered with confusion. “What is wrong with you?”
Bridget leaned back on the couch, her reading glasses lowered on her nose and her eyes peering just above the rims. She didn’t say a word, just observed the situation.
Harriet groaned, slapping a palm to her face and hoping the impact would send her starting in bed, sweaty and disoriented. But this wasn’t a nightmare. Harriet had long been the architect of her own demise. She should have known that fairytales didn’t exist. Love, whatever it was, was much more complicated than a glass slipper or even one perfect, stupid, incredible, no-good kiss.
She looked back at Lucy and her aunt, whose expressions were the opposite sides of a coin. Although Lucy had a hard outer shell, she obviously worried about her sister. Her expression looked similar to how an inexperienced father might look if he saw a baby cry for the first time, with his hands frozen in the air, halfway between standing up and sitting. Lucy looked afraid as if any sudden movement might break her older sister. She was usually the only sister who didn’t treat Harriet differently when she was upset, but this was different. Maybe that was because she hadn’t seen Harriet this mad at herself before.
Bridget, on the other hand, looked something akin to a naturalist, covertly observing a struggle between predator and prey without intervention. And although Lucy’s pity stung, Bridget’s indifference felt even worse.
“Say something,” Harriet begged, her eyes welling with tears.
“The moment I saw you running down the stairs with that coat was the moment I knew you were about to make a mistake,” Bridget said. “But if I told you, would that have made any difference?”
Harriet didn’t respond.
“You know it wouldn’t have,” Bridget continued. “Because intervention never stopped me when I was your age. Sometimes we must touch the stove to know for certain that it will burn us.”
Harriet was impulsive and energetic. Her aunt was right. Harriet would only resent her interventions. She spun around and stepped through the entryway before she trudged up the staircase, her head tucked down like the sad puppy she was. Lucy followed her, still acting like she didn’t know what to do with her.
Harriet entered her bedroom, and her sister shut the door behind them. She did not want a conversation. She simply wanted to tug the big duvet down, slide onto the tufted mattress and pull the blanket high so that she was nothing but a pair of eyes. Today was terrible. She was ready to go to sleep and wake up, and try again. But to what avail? Tomorrow, nothing would be different.
No. Something had to change.
Harriet got to work immediately, struggling to reach the buttons on the back of her dress before shimmying out of all of her suffocating finery until she was wearing a sheer white chemise. With her nice clothing left in a pile on the floor, she crawled into her bed and made herself into a chrysalis. Tomorrow, she would break free, a glorious butterfly—of, if she was being realistic, a moth—and make everything right again. No more hyper romance, no more her aunt Bridget and Lord Murrey, and certainly no more kisses. None of those.
Lucy sat on the bed, her back pressed against the headboard, and didn’t say anything. The two sat there, but the silence felt perhaps more uncomfortable than any conversation might be. “In the kitchen,” Harriet began. “There is that big cast iron pan. Did you see—”
“The—” Lucy glanced dubiously at her sister. “Yes, I think so.”
“I want you to go downstairs. Go to the kitchen. Get the pan.” Harriet’s breath was ragged.
“Pray tell, why?”
“And I need you to come, bring it to me. I will turn around, and with as much force as you can possibly muster, you will hit my forehead with it so that I may outsleep all of this strife.”
Lucy burst out laughing, her eyes widening. “Harriet!”
“What?” Harriet mumbled. “Does that not sound nice? To sleep away… I don’t know, five? Maybe ten years?”
Lucy nodded, hiking up her dress and rolling down her stockings until they were bunched up around each foot. “What happened?”
“You will gloat for being correct.” Harriet shook her head. “And I cannot endure such an annoyance.”
“I promise to bite my tongue,” Lucy said. She scooted down on the bed and lay beside Harriet, turning on her side to face her.
Back when they had been young and mischievous, they would stay up late whispering under the covers and laughing. And then, in the morning, when they had been falling asleep at the breakfast spread, their mouths full of scones, Margaret would chastise them, while Emma would hide an amused smile behind her teacup.
Things had been so easy then. All of the Hale sisters had been equally hopeful for their futures, each of them only having each other to confide in and love. But now, things were different. Margaret had Lord Barton, Emma has the Duke of Radford, and soon, Lucy would have found a bookish fellow to gripe with on rainy evenings. Each of them had been destined to be so happy and so in love, while Harriet had been left flitting around like a leaf from fairytale to fairytale before she had been inevitably crushed underfoot each time.
“I went to go return the Duke’s coat, and…” Harriet shook her head. “I am not sure what I wanted to do. I wanted to be happy. I wanted him to sweep me off my feet and prove that fairytales exist.”
“Oh, Harriet,” Lucy said. “Why do you want to be saved so badly?”
“Because that’s how it is supposed to be! I am supposed to be worth as much. I am meant to be protected and cherished and—”
“Stop it,” Lucy said plainly.
Harriet huffed, having known full well that her sister would get into the I-told-you-so. She pulled the blanket over her head completely. In the darkness, she closed her eyes and listened as her sister got up and lifted the covers. Lucy slid under the blanket, and Harriet’s nose twitched. “Leave me alone,” she said. “I know what you will say. I have heard this one-hundred times. Mary Wollstonecraft and all of that non—”
“You remembered her name,” Lucy said.
“Because you speak of her incessantly!”
“Let me present my case just one more time,” Lucy pleaded.
On a surface level, Lucy proudly referring to herself as a bluestocking was admirable. She was smart and confident and didn’t settle for less than she deserved. But it was also annoying. As a child, Harriet had always wanted to play princess and imagine she’d find a handsome knight or prince to rescue her, while Lucy had vowed to defeat the Spanish Armada. Harriet was content with her purpose as a woman, but sometimes, it felt like Lucy judged her harshly for it.
“Fine.” Harriet sighed.
“You liken yourself to be a damsel in distress, and it makes me feel…” Lucy rolled onto her back and came up from under the covers. It was getting hard to breathe under there. Harriet joined her, and both girls lay with the blankets pulled up to their chins, looking at the ceiling. “I feel sad. I may act a certain way, but I have long admired you. You pine for things so deeply, and you were always so optimistic. You had a way of making the things you wanted yours without apologising or begging. When Lord Northwick came into your life, you decided that he was yours. And, granted, maybe that wasn’t the best thing for you, but your decisiveness is inspiring.
“And I just mean to say that believing you are in need of rescuing is an insult to all of the agency I know you to possess. I would be devastated for you to lose all of that because Lord Northwick made you feel as if you were less than.” Lucy breathed in deeply and settled against the pillow. “He is both the villain and the victim. You may be unfairly blamed for his departure, but his wickedness will one day catch up with him, even if it means I will have to commission a bog witch to curse him for eternity.”
Harriet couldn’t help but giggle. “That would be quite the vision. I do not think a just God could blame us for turning to supernatural means of enacting justice.”
“Or, we can sic the Duke of Stanton’s ghoulish little cousin on him.”
“Perhaps easier than finding a bog witch. I assume they must all be in Ireland?”
“Perhaps.” Lucy nodded.
There was a long drawn-out silence, but this time, it was comfortable and safe. It no longer made Harriet feel even more upset. Maybe, even if just for a couple more years if she was lucky, she would have Lucy to lament with. And then maybe when Lucy did get married, she would be comfortable enough in her solitude that the loneliness wouldn’t bother her as much.
And maybe even now, Lucy had helped.
“Do you really admire me?”
“It is the last I mention it,” Lucy scoffed. “Tomorrow, I will have to torment you mercilessly to balance out the scales of our relationship.”
“If you are being nice to me today, then I may capitalise on your charity,” Harriet said. Her sister didn’t say anything, so she took a deep breath. “I ki—Hmph!” She paused. Did she kiss him? Or did he kiss her? Everything was all muddied in her head. “I think I kissed the Duke?”
Lucy spun on her side and stared at her sister wide-eyed. “You what?!”
“He kissed me as well.” Harriet frowned. “There was a kiss, that much I am sure of.”
“You mustn’t be left to your own devices,” Lucy said. “How… was it?” she asked sheepishly as if she didn’t wish to admit how much the idea of the Duke’s kiss had fascinated her. Harriet could hardly blame her sister. He was uncommonly handsome.
“I must admit.” Harriet swallowed hard. “It was incredible until we pulled away and I had to confront the error of my ways.”
“But it was incredible?”
“I enjoyed it,” Harriet whispered.
“Does he have affection for you?”
Harriet took a breath, hanging onto Lucy’s words for a moment longer. “I am not sure if I want to know,” she admitted. “What good will it do? He may cherish me all he likes, but he will not marry me. It would be foolish of him to do so.”
“Harriet!” Lucy hissed sharply. “You mustn’t speak of yourself in such a way.”
“Even so, I have found myself returning to bad habits that no longer serve me. There is no world in which His Grace and I would share an attachment that is anything more than a cure for momentary loneliness.”
“That is a very mature observation.” Lucy yawned, stretching her limbs.
“Can you promise me something?” Harriet asked. “If I am on the verge of recklessness such as that of today, please, please—”
“Get the cast iron skillet?”
Harriet nodded.