Sure enough, John had arrived. He spotted Harrison and nodded as he walked toward him. He also glanced across the room and winked at Diana when she looked up from her work. The color that came to Diana’s face and the fury in her eyes was enough to set Harrison laughing. There was a very fine line between love and hate.
“Morning, Harrison,” John said when he arrived. He turned to Bea. “You’re looking lovely today, Bea.”
“Thank you, John.” Bea smiled under the compliment, glanced to Harrison, then said, “I’d better get back to work.”
She dashed off before Harrison could say a proper goodbye, before he could tell her any of the things he wanted to, like how sorry he was for putting her in an awkward position with her father or how desperately he loved her.
“Ah, the lovesick puppy look,” John chuckled, slapping Harrison’s shoulder and snapping him out of his reverie. “Did you decide to go ahead and propose last night without the ring?”
Harrison turned to his friend, nodding toward the door. They headed out of the hall. John had been with Harrison the evening before when he’d received Bea’s note that she needed him, so he knew the beginnings of the story.
“She invited me to supper,” he filled John in on the rest of it as they left the building.
“That was the emergency?” John laughed. “Supper?”
Harrison sent him a flat, sideways look. “I suspect the emergency was an invention. Her father and sister were out for the evening.”
“Oh?” John’s brow shot all the way up and he laughed. “What a cunning little minx you have on your hands.”
Their conversation was halted as Burt leapt up from the front stairs of the hall and bounded over to meet them. “My lords,” he said, doffing his cap. “I’m ready to lead you on to the second orphanage.”
“Good lad,” John said, taking a coin from his pocket and flicking it toward Burt. It made a satisfying sound as John’s nail hit it, and Burt caught it with a grin.
“You won’t be disappointed,” Burt said. “I’m sure whatever you’re looking for is at Mr. Stephen Siddel’s place in Limehouse. Follow me. It’ll be easier to hail a cab at the end of the street.” The lad looked beyond happy at the prospect of riding in a cab to Limehouse instead of having to walk.
“Bea’s plan for an evening alone would have been perfectly delightful,” Harrison continued as he and John strolled after Burt, “had her father and sister not returned home early and caught us with our lips locked together.”
John laughed outright. “And how did you wheedle out of that situation without ending up engaged on the spot?”
“I’m not sure I did,” Harrison said, his embarrassment from the night before making a pointed return. “Lord Lichfield wants to speak with me as soon as possible. But what an ignominious way to get precisely what I want. Forced into it by Bea’s father.”
“It would hardly be forcing anything, if you ask me,” John said, nodding to Burt, who had caught the attention of a cab once they reached the curb. “You’ve wanted to marry Bea for almost as long as you’ve known her.”
“Yes, but being cornered into it because of a momentary lapse of judgement is hardly the most romantic way to go about the thing.”
“True,” John agreed.
“There’s nothing for it but to find my great-grandmother’s ring as quickly as possible so that I can propose to Bea properly,” Harrison said as the carriage pulled up to the curb in front of them. “Otherwise, I run the risk of Bea forever wondering whether marrying her was my idea or her father’s.”
“Here you go, my lords,” Burt said, grabbing the carriage’s door and holding it open for them, as if he had aspirations of being a doorman at a grand hotel someday.
“Surely she knows you love her,” John said, giving Burt a wink and rubbing his head, then hopping into the carriage.
“I hope so,” Harrison said, climbing in behind John. Burt leapt in with them and shut the door, looking as happy as a clam to be riding in a carriage with two gentlemen. “Either way, it all comes down to time and the ring. We have to find it so I can give Bea what she deserves.”
Chapter 5
“Oh! Did you see that?” Diana hissed, glaring at the doorway Harrison and John had just rushed out through and stomping her foot. “Why, I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”
Bea blinked up from the gift she was wrapping and glanced from the doorway to Diana. She did her best to keep her sly grin from growing too big, but one covert glance to Bianca and her efforts failed. She and Bianca were giggling before they knew it.
“Did I miss something?” Phoebe asked, the only one of them who looked confused by the turn of events. “What has happened to insult you?”
“John swans into the hall, as if he hasn’t a care in the world, winks at me, and doesn’t have the decency to come over here to address me face to face,” Diana sniffed, tilting her chin up.
“It looked as though he and Harrison were merely meeting here, but that they have business elsewhere,” Bea said.
The thought switched her from laughing at Diana to furrowing her brow in thought. What sort of business could Harrison and John have so close to Christmas? Could it be possible that after the debacle of the evening before, he was planning the proposal she’d waited so long for? But no, he’d informed her father that he already had business to attend to, business he had contracted before the kiss the night before ever happened, which was why he was unavailable to meet with her father. She was struck with sudden worry about what that business could be.
“Still,” Diana went on, “it was unforgivably rude for him not to at least say hello.”
Bianca laughed so hard she snorted, which had Bea breaking into a smile again.
“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand what’s going on,” Phoebe said, finishing with the box of toy soldiers she’d wrapped and reaching for another one.
“My dearest friends are laughing at me,” Diana said in a flat voice, though she was amused enough by Bea and Bianca’s carrying on to smirk.
“Do you love him or hate him?” Bianca asked with an impatient sigh.
“I hate him,” Diana insisted, her back snapping straight.
“Then why do you care that he didn’t come over here to greet us?” Bianca shook her head as though Diana were impossible. “Never mind,” she went on. “It looks as though we’re about to finish wrapping all of these gifts. Phoebe can finish up with the last of them. I’m certain more will come in today and tomorrow, but in the meantime, I have a different sort of errand I was hoping the two of you would run.” She glanced to Bea and Diana.
Bea tied the last bow on the gift she’d finished wrapping as her thoughts wandered. “I’m at your disposal,” she said with a shrug.
Bianca gestured for her and Diana to follow her around the table and over to the side of the room where several large baskets of freshly-baked bread, rolls, and cakes were waiting on a table. “We’ve had so many generous donations, but if we let things like this sit around until Christmas Eve, they’ll be pitifully stale by the time we hand them out. I need you to take this lot down to Limehouse, to Stephen Siddel’s orphanage.”