After a Fashion (A Class of Their Own #1)(42)
What could she have been thinking?
People had been told she was his fiancée, and those people, as in the staff at Arnold Constable & Company, were probably even now spreading the word. Because of that, Harriet should have been aware that there was expected behavior she needed to display in public at all times. She certainly should have known it was beyond unacceptable to acknowledge undesirable women who called to her in the middle of the Ladies’ Mile.
It was obvious the ladies were of the demimonde—which begged the question of how Harriet had come to be acquainted with them.
Seeing her chat so easily with the ladies had shaken him to his very core. It had also caused him to realize that he’d made one of the biggest mistakes of his life, greater even than that of forming an alliance with Miss Birmingham.
It wasn’t like him in the least to behave so irresponsibly, and now . . . well, he was going to have to rectify the problem once and for all—before his reputation suffered irreparable harm.
His family was known throughout the city as Knickerbockers, or Old New York as they preferred to consider themselves, even though Oliver found the Knickerbocker title somewhat amusing. They were the elite of the elite, their ancestors having gained great social status through birth, accumulated wealth and land, and from being some of the first people to colonize New York, back when it had been called New Amsterdam. He and his family were included as members of the New York Four Hundred, a mysterious list Mr. Ward McAllister, one of the social arbiters of the day, had come up with, even though that particular list had never been formally published. But, published or not, he certainly wasn’t anxious to be the one in his family to get them kicked off that illustrious list.
Clearing his throat, he felt his head begin to throb when Harriet refused to look his way.
“We need to discuss what happened,” he began, frowning when Harriet, instead of turning her head to face him, lifted a gloved hand and began drawing a circle through the film of mist that coated the window.
“You could have caused me all sorts of unpleasant embarrassment if any of my friends had gotten a glimpse of you speaking with those women and then seen you with me.”
Harriet’s finger stilled for just a second, but then she continued with her tracing, adding a half circle inside the larger circle.
“You do realize you should have ignored them, don’t you?”
She leaned toward the glass and breathed against it, right before she resumed her tracing, this time adding what appeared to be two eyes.
“Those ladies were, at best, members of the demimonde.”
Her tracing stopped, but she remained stubbornly silent.
Irritation began to trickle through him. “Exactly how did you come to be acquainted, let alone friends, with ladies of ill-repute?”
Harriet turned her head ever so slowly and pinned him with a stare bright with fury. “I’d like to get out of the carriage now.”
“We haven’t finished our discussion.”
“I’m fairly sure we have.” Harriet reached for the door handle, and then, before he had the presence of mind to stop her, jumped out and disappeared from sight.
“Harriet!” he bellowed as he launched himself after her, grunting when he slipped and hit the hard stone street with his shoulder and then rolled to the right, narrowly missing the wheel of his own carriage. His hand slid through something squishy before he pushed himself to his feet. Panic seized him as he tried to locate Harriet, expecting to discover her lifeless body under one of the many wheels trundling around him. To his relief—and concern—there was no sign of the lady, mangled or whole.
“She went that way, Mr. Addleshaw,” Darren called, gesturing up ahead before he pulled on the reins and steered the horses to the side of the street.
Oliver nodded and dodged a carriage that was heading his way, waving an apologetic hand at the driver, who was screaming at him. He took off for the sidewalk and darted through the crowd, disgruntlement replacing the panic as he ran.
How had Harriet, a lady—and one wearing a dress, no less—managed to land on her feet, while he, a gentleman in fine form, had barely managed to escape his plunge from the carriage with nothing more than a ruined jacket and bruised shoulder and backside?
She truly was a confounding sort, but . . . No, he couldn’t allow himself to start thinking about things like that, especially since he knew the prudent step to take, once he caught up with the exasperating lady, was to end matters quickly, before disaster had a chance to fall. But . . . why was he even bothering to chase her? She’d made it clear by leaping out of his carriage that she wanted nothing further to do with him, and yet, here he was, sweat beginning to dribble into his eyes, charging after a lady who was doing her very best to escape him.
It was enough to boggle a gentleman’s mind and did have his feet slowing, until he glanced around and noticed he was in a less than respectable part of the city. The very idea of Harriet left to her own devices in such a derelict atmosphere had him picking up his pace. Angling around a gathering of elderly gentlemen, he raised his hand to tip his hat at some careworn-looking ladies staring at him with open mouths, but realized that somewhere along the way he’d lost his hat, most likely when he’d jumped from the carriage.
His head began throbbing harder than ever.
He’d liked that hat—it’d been one of his favorites—and now, because of Harriet and her impetuous nature, he’d have to buy another.