How to Treat a Lady Read Free Page B

chest—”
    â€œEnough!” Harriet frowned. “What was Mother thinking?”
    Sophia sighed. “Oh, she was just trying to save Garrett Park. If she hadn’t convinced the bank thatyou had a wealthy suitor on his way home from sea with trunks of gold, they’d have never allowed us time to gather the wool for the payment.”
    Harriet silently admitted that Sophia was right. Mr. Gower, the new officer at the bank, had unexpectedly arrived at Garrett Park one late afternoon with a rather unpleasantly worded demand for funds. Mother’s usual good sense had been sorely muddled by a large dose of laudanum she’d just taken for an aching tooth, and with a sense of pure panic, she’d launched into a disjointed, but apparently convincing story of how the money would shortly arrive in the form of a wealthy sea captain, who would also claim her oldest daughter for his own.
    Harriet was quite certain Mother had stolen the idea from a lending library novel. Still, the colorful fib had served its purpose; the bank had granted the extension.
    Sophia clasped her hands together and sighed dreamily. “Captain Frakenham is the most handsome man in the world.”
    â€œAnd the wealthiest,” Ophelia added with a mischievous grin. “From what I’ve heard, he has as much money as the Prince. Maybe more!”
    â€œPiffle!” Harriet snapped. Mother’s little fib wouldn’t have been so bad had everyone politely ignored it. After all, the family only needed three more months and they’d have the last payment for the mortgage.
    What Mother hadn’t thought of—what no one had seen or planned upon—was that the bank officials, given the few details Mother had managed to mumble through her numbed lips, had gone home and repeated every word to their willing wives. And those worthy women had, of course, mentioned the matter to a few women at the Church Fund Meeting. And those women had mentioned it to their friends, neighbors, sisters, and daughters, and so on and so forth until the entire town came to hear of the mysterious Captain Frakenham.
    As the story was told and retold, passing over the anxious tongues of every gossipmonger in town, actual details had appeared. Details like the fact that the captain was tall, dark, and handsome. And that Harriet was heartbroken if by some strange mischance he didn’t write one of his weekly epistles. And that the worthy captain was an orphan who had raised himself by his bootstraps from the humblest of beginnings and had found untold wealth in sailing the seas of India and beyond.
    Each new rumor added to the credibility of the whole, until Captain Frakenham was as real to the people of Sticklye-By-The-River as the butcher who sold meat from his shop on the corner. Except to the Wards, of course. They knew better.
    â€œI wish there really was a Captain John,” Sophia said, giving a blissful sigh. “He’s absolutely perfect.”
    Ophelia nodded, her round face wreathed with a dreamy smile. “Thick black hair and the bluest eyes—”
    â€œBlue eyes? Who told you that?” Harriet demanded.
    â€œCharlotte Strickton. I met her in town the other day and she said she’d heard it from the parson’s wife.”
    Blast it all, this whole thing was entirely out of control.
    â€œI’m glad I’m not so shallow,” Sophia said loftily. “I value the captain for his bravery and not hislooks. When I think of all the adventures he’s had, I feel faint with—”
    â€œOh for the love of—” Harriet snapped an exasperated look at her sisters. “There is no Captain Frakenham!”
    â€œWe know,” Ophelia said, looking amazed.
    â€œOf course we do,” Sophia added with an innocent blink of her long lashes. “Really, Harriet, you are too serious.”
    â€œIt annoys me the way everyone is treating me differently now that I’m supposedly