A Useful Affair by Stella Cameron

Author:Stella Cameron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

20

Four days, well three and a half anyway, and not a word from John. Lord Granville. Hattie corrected herself at once although, as far as she knew, no one could hear her thoughts. Three and a half days if she didn’t count the bit of Saturday that had remained after she left him by the pool in that room, that’s how long it was since she’d heard a word from the man who had insisted he intended to protect her—and make her his mistress.

Les Mead had protested that the rain would be unhealthy for them, but leaving the coachman and the carriage near the Baths, and with Dobbin on her right and Bea on her left, Hattie walked downhill on popular North Parade Passage to buy Sally Lunn tea cakes at number four. She swung the paper and string-wrapped copy of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park she’d finally managed to obtain from a tiny bookshop Miss Austen was rumored to have visited herself. Mr. Leggit didn’t hold with her reading. He had also been rude enough to suggest she only pretended to read because she couldn’t possibly know enough about it when Dobbin had only started tutoring her the previous year.

Hattie’s mother had taught her to read as a small child and somehow the Walls had managed to supply themselves and their daughter with books, even if there were times when Hattie longed for more.

Knowing how close she would be to 10 Farthing Lane and Porky’s Apothecary Shop, Hattie had wisely left the aunts’ ruby at Leggit Hall. She knew she would have been tempted to “lose” her companions, for at least long enough to sneak away and make the transaction she knew must be dealt with, and soon. The result might have been disastrous.

But she had made up her mind to come back here this evening. Before returning to Leggit Hall, she was to drop Dobbin and Bea at Worth House to visit Snowdrop. Dobbin had promised to find a way to speak with Snowdrop alone and arrange transport for tonight if possible.

The three of them swerved to allow a puffing costermonger, yelling out that he had meat pies for sale, to pass. The pies, flat, overly brown things, gave off steam that smelled of something, but not meat. Then the three of them swung wide in the opposite direction so that a strapping fellow could push a bath chair, occupied by a nodding old gentleman with a red nose, uphill to the Baths.

The shop’s fragrant scent of fresh-baked goods wafted out before it was reached. “Stay where you are at your peril,” a rotund boy with blond curls and pink cheeks cried. He whipped a hoop along with a stick. “Out of the way, ladies, or you shall surely fall when my hoop tosses up your feet.”

Hattie smiled and pulled her companions against the wall to let the cheeky, satin-dressed boy go by. He showed no regard for raindrop splotches on his rich clothes. A black-clad nanny, hands behind

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