Chapter One
LATE NOVEMBER 1825 …
The trouble with lies is they have a tendency, if not well managed, to catch a man out. Hugh’s out-of-control, grossly overembellished falsehood was like a snarling, rabid dog about to sink its foaming teeth into his behind, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it.
He stared at the letter again, pathetically hoping he had misread his mother’s flamboyant, sloping handwriting—but alas, he was doomed. She had booked passage from Boston to leave on the first and, if the tide and the current and the trade winds complied, intended to be in Hampshire for Christmas. Which meant he had received her blasted letter far too late to put a stop to it, no doubt on purpose, as his mother, stepfather, and a whole heap of trouble were currently bobbing somewhere ever closer on the Atlantic Ocean. Worse—if indeed things could get worse—there was only one purpose to their spontaneous and wholly unwelcome trip.
They were desperate to meet and become better acquainted with his fiancée now that she was finally out of mourning.
The fiancée who didn’t exist.
“Let’s face it, you’re done for.” His best friend, Giles, the unenthusiastic heir to a dukedom, was an eternal pessimist. He popped his eighth biscuit into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully as he stared at his ceiling. “Perhaps now is a good time to run away? Take an extended tour of the Continent and only return once they have sailed back. Your stepfather is a businessman, is he not? In my experience, all businessmen are so dreadfully dull they cannot bear to leave their business alone for prolonged periods of time.”
“If I run, I might as well tell my mother everything. Unsupervised, she will dig and dig until she has fully excavated the whole truth and then I shall never hear the end of it. Might I remind you, I only invented Minerva in the first place because she threatened to come home and help find me a bride. You have no idea how tenacious that woman can be. She has become quite obsessed with my happiness since she went and married for love.” Hugh screwed up his face with distaste. “She has it in her head I will never be truly happy unless I am shackled to the woman of my dreams. If that woman is not Minerva, then she’ll find me a replacement quicker than you can say ‘I do.’”
“Well, at least your lone surviving parent wishes for you to have a blissful union. My father is determined to foist a duty bride on me, and despite my repeated assertions to the contrary, presents me with a suitably uninspiring candidate at least once a week. I’ve developed an irrational fear of Hyde Park now, as he has sucked all the joy out of my riding there. And Rotten Row used to be such a fruitful place to meet like-minded ladies.”
By “like-minded,” Giles meant discreet, open to a dalliance, free and easy with their favors, and desirous of no permanent complications. One of the many reasons he and Hugh had always been such good friends was their similar taste in women and abhorrence of permanent attachments.
“You know I sympathize—but can we please focus on the most pressing problem in hand. My problem. What am I going to do?”
“Well, if you are not prepared to run, you are going to have to face the music, old boy. I hear confession is supposed to be good for the soul. Unless you can conjure up a fiancée in the next few weeks.”
Not at all helpful. “Because there must be at least a hundred proper young ladies in Mayfair who would be delighted to be my temporary betrothed and dragged across the country to spend Christmas in dreary Hampshire.”
“Why does she have to be proper?”
“Because Minerva is proper! That’s how I created her. My mother wouldn’t settle for anything less, and frankly, seeing as she is a figment of my imagination, crafted to serve a necessary evil, I purposely made her the sort of paragon which every mother would want for their son.”
“‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, / When first we practice to deceive!’”
Hugh glared at his friend. “Must you quote the theatre while I’m in the midst of a crisis?”
“I adore the theatre.”
“I came to you for help. Some guiding words of wisdom because you are supposed to be my best friend. So far, all you’ve done is eat an entire plate of biscuits and tell me I’m done for.”
“You are done for.” Giles waved a fresh shortbread at him. “I gave you my infinite words of wisdom when you started this mockery of a sham two years ago and you blithely ignored them all.”
Even more unhelpful. “You agreed Minerva was a stroke of genius at the time!”
“Indeed I did. Because it was a stroke of genius and it made me very jealous. If only my father lived across an ocean so I could invent a fiancée … And I must say, you have a flair for effusive prose, which I lack. Those poignant letters you wrote during her long battle with consumption, where you stalwartly sat at her bedside and read to her, silently praying for a cure while cursing the fickle finger of fate, brought a tear to my eye, I don’t mind telling you.” The remnants of biscuit number nine disappeared before his friend wagged a chastising finger. “But you must also recall I was all for her tragic death. By then she’d more than earned it, the poor thing. Consumption is such a romantically lingering disease and you could have played the heartbroken hero. That would have bought you a few more months at the very least. Yet you dragged it out interminably. Expressly against my good advice that all good things must come to an end.”
“I couldn’t kill her then! If I had, I’d have been right back where I started and vulnerable to my mother’s rampant matchmaking again. She was about to buy passage on a ship to help console me at the end!”
But Hugh knew he was right. Despite meticulously projecting a flippant and shallow exterior to the world, Giles was annoyingly right more often than he was wrong. Hugh huffed out a breath in surrender. He’d overdone it, and now his precarious house of cards was in danger of collapsing in a heap. “All right, the miraculous recovery might have been a bit far-fetched.”
“Not as far-fetched as her father’s untimely death in the Cairngorms last year! Didn’t I caution you against writing to your mother when drunk?”
“You did, and you were right, but Mama caught me unawares with her insistence on coming back to help plan the nuptials, and I panicked. I had the devil of a job convincing her of the truth of my lie.” More folly piled upon nonsense, and all so that he didn’t have to witness the inevitable disappointed look in his mother’s eyes. An irony that wasn’t lost on him now. “It quite spoiled my visit to the Americas last Christmas.” Perhaps conciliation would make Giles more sympathetic? “I should have listened to you. Are you happy now?”
“Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? Although clearly she wasn’t convinced, old boy, or she wouldn’t be coming now. With precious little warning, too. Anyone would think she’s come to trap you.” Giles grinned, obviously enjoying himself immensely.
“Again—hardly helpful.” Hugh stood, affronted. “If you can think of nothing better than criticism, then I shall leave and consult my sensible friends.”
“We don’t have any sensible friends.” And there Giles went again, being annoyingly right when it was unwelcome and infuriatingly unpalatable. “But if you’re off, can you ring the bell on your way out?” He lifted the empty plate from his stomach and held it aloft. “Somebody appears to have eaten all of the biscuits.”
* * *
Hugh took himself to White’s, which served to depress him further because it was devoid of his friends but filled with all the sad, old, crusty bachelors who had nothing better to do with their time than sit with each other in the comfortable wingbacks and grumble about the state of the world. So he left, only to wander aimlessly down a decidedly chilly Piccadilly rather than go home. He’d never been good at introspection because, despite the crushing guilt that always seemed to plague him, he was an optimist at heart. Introspection made him either maudlin or remorseful, two emotions that had plagued him ever since Payne, his trusty butler, had placed his mother’s blasted letter on the breakfast table this morning next to his two soft-boiled eggs—and Hugh realized he was about to break his mother’s heart.
Again.
Exactly like his father.
The missive—and the unavoidable comparison—had quite put him off food in general. In fact, he hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Was it any wonder his brain was struggling to find a solution? Momentous decisions and important plans probably shouldn’t be made on an empty stomach. He decided to visit the Lion and Lamb in Conduit Street, an inn where he was guaranteed a hearty meal while being blessedly spared the presence of anyone who was anyone in society, so he could consider his dilemma in private. He took the narrow backstreets for speed and pondered his problem.
What to do?
He wished he had killed off Minerva long ago exactly as Giles had said. His fake fiancée was only ever meant to be temporary—a way to stall his mother, avoid falling out with her and hurting her feelings yet again, and to give himself some time off. He hated arguments more than he hated introspection, and he hated disappointing people. And he particularly hated hurting people. Especially his mother.
Aside from her irritating habit of matchmaking, he adored the woman. She didn’t deserve any of this. All she had ever wanted was the best for Hugh, and she had sacrificed herself tirelessly for the sake of his happiness. He’d practically had to force her to marry the love of her life, because she was so dedicated to Hugh—something that doubtless drove her to push for him to do the same. She felt guilty for snatching some happiness of her own; ergo, to lessen her guilt, she needed to see him happy, too.
Which in her book meant marriage, although heaven only knew why. Despite the apparent success she had made of her second trip up the aisle, the legacy of her first still lingered in Hugh’s mind and always would. How could it not when he and his father were two peas in a pod?
Or almost two peas.
Dear Papa, like his father before him, had managed to sleep at night whilst Hugh knew he never would. To be the cause of all that hurt … Unconsciously, he shuddered and found himself shaking his head as he marched forward. Unlike his philandering father and grandfather, he had standards. A man should only enter into a marriage when he had every intention of honoring his vows. Such a noble undertaking obviously required two attributes that, thanks to his ancestors, Hugh was fairly certain he didn’t possess: eyes that didn’t wander and a heart selfless enough to be capable of great love.
He had loved a great many women in his thirty-two years on the earth, and not one of them had ever made either of those fickle organs work as a good husband’s should. Besides the Standish male’s penchant for deceit, that wayward, womanizing Standish blood ran through his veins and always would. No indeed, the path of matrimony wasn’t for him.
As much as he didn’t want to end up like one of those sad, old, crusty bachelors who only went to White’s because they had nobody to go home to, Hugh was resigned to his eventual fate. He would inevitably be in a wingback at White’s next to Giles, and the pair of them could moan about the state of the world together. Until one of them died …
And there he was, being all maudlin again, mapping out a sorry future for himself when he wasn’t anywhere near his dotage and was still a carefree young buck enjoying sowing his wild oats.
Or at least he had enjoyed it. The bloom had faded off the rose a little in the last year, and he often had to force himself to go out purely to keep up appearances amongst his friends who were still dedicated to the sport. That worried him. It signaled his dotage was doggedly shuffling ever closer despite his fear of those depressing wingbacks at White’s.
Hugh had promised himself he would make more effort to enjoy his bachelorhood fully; however, more often than not, he made excuses nowadays. He tended to avoid the hells he’d been so dedicated to when he had first invented Minerva and hadn’t made any effort to chase any game women either. He’d dallied—of course he had—but the awkward truth was his carefree bachelor lifestyle wasn’t quite as carefree as it used to be.
Deep down, in the most cavernous, honest recesses of his soul, which he liked to pretend didn’t exist unless he was forced into introspection, he knew he had clung on to the idea of Minerva to avoid admitting to his mother that he was too much like his father to ever consider settling down. A tragic truth that would break her heart. He was very mindful of breaking hearts. Broken hearts healed over—they did not mend fully. Hugh knew this firsthand because his had been ripped in two when he had finally discovered that the father he worshiped and had always emulated wasn’t quite the great man he had always assumed him to be. And while he had accepted that he shared all of those same flaws, he was damned if he would use them as weapons to wound others as well.
But in clinging to his self-righteousness for too long and avoiding the conversation that would make the need for Minerva obsolete, he’d made a mess of it. He hoped the solution miraculously materialized once his belly was full; otherwise, he truly was doomed.
He was halfway down Sackville Street when he witnessed the altercation.
“I’ll pay you when I am good and ready, madam, and not before.” The older gentleman stood on the top of the short stack of steps outside a front door. Judging by his attire, he was either on his way out or had just arrived back. Below him, on the pavement with her back to Hugh, was a woman. Like the gentleman, she wore a heavy winter coat, although hers had seen better days and she had paired it with a thick woolen scarf and mismatched knitted mittens. Both looked homemade. Her head was swamped in an enormous velvet bonnet.
“Mr. Pinkerton—I earned that money.” She had a nice voice, confident and mellow. Mature even. She was also very well spoken, something that surprised him in view of her outfit. From the style of her coat, easily ten years out of date, he assumed she was a widow of somewhere between thirty and forty, perhaps left with several children she had to feed all by herself. The world could be a cruel place for some—something he often pondered long and hard when he worried about the world during his most introspective moments.
Her spine stiffened, and she pulled her slim shoulders back proudly. He could imagine her looking down her nose at the fellow and found himself approving of her stance. “I have already waited four weeks, sir, and I flatly refuse to leave this time until you pay me.”
The older gentleman noticed Hugh staring, and his face colored. “How dare you accost me on my own doorstep and cause a scene!”
“How dare you employ me to do a job and then avoid paying me for doing it. It’s been a month, Mr. Pinkerton. A cold one. I have waited long enough.”
Hugh felt his blood boil. The scoundrel! The poor woman was clearly in dire need of the money. She shouldn’t have to resort to humiliating herself on the street to receive what she was clearly due. “May I offer my assistance, madam? It looks as though you could use some.” For good measure, he glared at the man with haughty disdain.
She turned, and he realized she wasn’t a madam at all but a miss. A very pretty miss. Very pretty indeed. So much so, she took his breath away.
“Why, thank you, sir. What a gentleman you are.” Her eyes flicked back to the miser who had swindled her, and she gave him a thoroughly disgusted look that could have curdled milk. “Mr. Pinkerton here engaged me to create an illustration to accompany an advertisement, and whilst he has published the advertisement in The Morning Advertiser, The London Tribune—twice—and in today’s Times, I am still to receive the funds we agreed upon for my labors. He owes me nine shillings and threepence.”
Hugh had to tear his wandering Standish eyes away from her lovely face. “And what do you have to say on the matter, Mr. Pinkerton?”
“I shall pay her when I am good and ready and not before.”
“Were you unsatisfied with the lady’s work?”
The older man bristled at being challenged. “I’ve seen better.”
“But you deemed it good enough to place in The Times, The Morning Advertiser, and The London Tribune?”
“Twice,” added the bewitching young lady decisively. “And I daresay the advertisement has garnered him lots of new trade. Far more, I suspect, than the nine shillings and threepence he has neglected to pay me, because it is a very striking illustration.”
Out of her reticule she pulled a torn square of newspaper and handed it to Hugh. In the center of the picture was an intricately drawn medicine bottle with “Pinkerton’s Patented Liver Tonic” emblazoned on the label. To the left of the bottle was a haggard-looking man who appeared ready to keel over from exhaustion at any moment, to the right the same man invigorated and in fine fettle after just one week on Mr. Pinkerton’s patented potion. The bold banner across the top of the advertisement proclaimed “Purge Fatigue Forever with Pinkerton’s.” Very catchy.
Copyright © 2021 by Susan Merritt
