A Most Unconventional Match. Julia Justiss

rushing to his desk.

      Impatiently he flipped through the papers until he found Nicky’s note. As he reviewed it, a scowl settled on his face.

      Hell and damnation! He had remembered the dates correctly. Nicholas, Sarah, their children and all the rest of the Stanhopes and Wellingfords—all of Elizabeth’s family—had departed for Europe, it appeared, barely a week before Everitt Lowery’s passing. The family party was not due to return to England for another three months at the earliest.

      There was no help for it. Despite his vow never to willingly place himself again in the same room with the lady who had so shaken his world, that lady was Nicky’s sister-in-law. With her family out of reach, Nicky would expect Hal to call on the widow, ensure that her husband’s lawyer and man of business had her financial affairs well in hand and, in Nicky’s stead, offer to assist her with anything she required.

      Going back to his chair, Hal sighed and downed a large swallow of the wine. Please heaven, let Lowery have left a decent will and employed a competent man of business. The Wellingfords had been nearly penniless when Nicky married Sarah, so Hal knew Elizabeth probably hadn’t brought much of a dowry to her marriage. He hoped Lowery’s finances were such that he’d been able to leave his widow a comfortable jointure.

      Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t easily run herself into dun territory. As Hal recalled, a woman’s response to both joy and calamity involved the acquiring of a large number of new gowns, bonnets, pelisses, footwear and the nameless other fripperies females seemed so fond of. That had always been his mother’s way and he had no reason to expect that a woman as stupendously beautiful as Elizabeth Lowery would react any differently.

      With it having been six weeks since her husband’s demise, he’d best gird himself to call on Mrs Lowery immediately to make sure she wasn’t already having to outrun the constable. Lowery’s fatherless son didn’t need to have his mama land them in debtor’s prison.

      Taking another deep draught of wine, he recalled sardonically the bulging armoires in his mother’s several dressing rooms. Only the gigantic size of his father’s fortune had allowed Hal to achieve his majority—and assume control of his mother’s finances—with that lady still possessing a sizeable portion. Unless Lowery had tied up his funds carefully and appointed a vigilant trustee, if she spent her blunt as freely as Letitia Waterman, Lowery’s lovely widget of a wife could swiftly exhaust a modest competence.

      Fulfilling his duty as Nicky’s stand-in shouldn’t be that burdensome, he reassured himself. He’d probably only need to visit the widow once, after which he’d be able to deal directly with Lowery’s man of business. Besides, it had been a very long time since he’d seen Elizabeth.

      Having weathered seven Seasons’ worth of beauties posing, posturing and pouting before him, he was doubtless no longer as impressionable as he’d been that long-ago afternoon. Besides, ’twas likely that, over the years, memory had exaggerated the incident. Wary as he was of winsome women, surely when he met Elizabeth now he’d experience only a mild appreciation for her striking loveliness.

      After all, a man could appreciate a masterpiece of art without aching to possess it.

      Hal took a deep breath. He could do this. And he would…tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would meet Elizabeth Wellingford Lowery again.

      Chapter Two

      As early the next morning as Hal imagined a fashionable lady might be receiving—which meant nearly afternoon—Hal arrived at the Lowery town house on Green Street. To his relief, since he wished to get through this interview as quickly as possible, as soon as the butler read his card, he was shown to a parlour with the intelligence that the lady of the house was occupied at present with another caller, but would see him shortly.

      Telling himself to breathe normally, Hal paced the small room to which he’d been shown, silently rehearsing the speech he’d prepared. If he took his time and didn’t panic, he should be able to avoid stuttering through the few lines that expressed his condolences, offered his assistance in Lord Englemere’s stead for the duration of her family’s absence, and asked the direction of her late husband’s man of business so he might consult this gentleman without having to intrude again upon her privacy.

      As Hal made his third circuit of the room, running a finger under a neckcloth that had grown unaccountably tighter than when he’d tied it several hours ago, a soft scuffling sound caught his attention. Halting by the doorway, he peered out to see a small boy standing in the hallway, a metal toy soldier clutched in his hands as he cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder at the stairway behind him.

      When the boy’s eyes lowered from his inspection of the stair landing, his gaze met Hal’s and he gasped. Tightening his grip on the soldier, with another quick look up the stairs, he whispered anxiously, ‘You won’t tell Nurse I’m down here, will you?’

      Stifling a smile, Hal gave a negative shake of his head.

      Relaxing a bit, the boy said, ‘I shall go back up directly. Only…only the general lost his arm, and I thought Mama would want to know.’ He held up the toy, showing Hal the torso and the detached limb.

      A lady’s drawing room was no place for a young boy, as Hal knew only too well. He ought to save the lad a scolding by encouraging his immediate return to the nursery. But looking down at that small woebegone face, he couldn’t make himself utter the words.

      ‘I was ever so careful, but the arm just…came off,’ the lad continued earnestly. ‘Papa could fix him in a trice, I know, but Papa…’ The boy’s voice trailed off and he swallowed hard, tears appearing at the corners of his blue eyes. ‘Papa has…gone away. He always told me I must never disturb Mama in her studio, but she would want to know about the general, don’t you think? He is my best friend.’

      Suddenly a vivid memory engulfed Hal, so searing it robbed him of breath: a pudgy little blond boy weeping in a hallway, denied entry to his mother’s room. Exiled to the nursery, watched over by an unfamiliar, dragon-faced woman who rapped his knuckles when he cried and told him he should be ashamed of blubbering like a girl. Who refused his pleas to speak with his mother, informing him that Mrs Waterman was too busy to see a whiny little boy.

      Lowery’s son looked to be about the same age Hal had been when he’d lost his father. He’d never forgotten, could feel vestiges still of the loneliness and devastation he’d suffered.

      A deeply buried, smouldering anger welled up to swamp his reluctance to meet Elizabeth Lowery. He might not be the paragon of scintillating drawing-room conversation his mama wished for, but he could make sure this little waif wasn’t shunted aside and neglected, as he’d been. Whether the boy’s beautiful mother wished to deal with him or not!

      Without further thought, he stepped into the hallway and went down on his knees beside the child. ‘Hal Waterman here. Your Uncle Nicky’s best friend. Let me see your soldier. Then we’ll tell your mama.’

      The boy’s expression brightened. ‘Uncle Nicky talks about you all the time. I wish he was here. Mama cries and cries. She says Uncle Nicky has gone away too—’ Sudden alarm clouded the lad’s face. ‘Uncle Nicky will…come back, won’t he?’

      ‘Yes,’ Hal assured him. ‘Travelling in Italy. Be back soon. But I’m here.’ Gesturing towards the soldier, he said, ‘Let me look? Maybe I can fix him.’

      ‘Could you?’ the boy breathed. ‘That would be capital! Then you would be my new best friend!’

      If not that, at least the champion of his interests, Hal resolved grimly—until Nicky could take over, of course. Carefully accepting the toy and the arm the boy held out, Hal bent to inspect the mechanism that attached the limb.

      Meanwhile, in her studio down the hallway, for the last hour Elizabeth Lowery had been going over the household accounts. She’d found the books in her husband’s desk yesterday, along with enough cash in the chest to satisfy her disgruntled servants, but Sands informed her that he and the cook must soon purchase additional provisions. She