Lord Harry's Daughter Read Free Page A

Lord Harry could stop his gambling, drinking, and wenching long enough to remember his family, it was to make sure that his little girl grew up into a bruising rider capable of handling any horse that her father could put her on. By the time he had been killed in a futilely reckless charge across a ditch at Talavera, Lord Harry had at least succeeded in doing that for her, though he had given her very little else except an extreme reluctance to rely on any man for anything and a healthy cynicism where dashing men of wit and charm were concerned.
    Fortunately for Sophia, before she had become a complete misanthrope, her mother had met and married Sir Thornton Curtis, a man as different from the rash and irresponsible Lord Harry as water was from wine. Where Lord Harry had charmed with clever conversation and empty promises. Sir Thornton won with practical sympathy and solid support, and the wife who had never known where her irrepressible first husband was to be found, or in what condition, now discovered the joys of a husband who preferred his own fireside to any tavern and the company of his own wife to the charms of any of the fascinating courtesans that walked the streets or graced the brothels of Lisbon.
    This new matrimonial bliss was hard won and therefore doubly appreciated by the new Lady Curtis. The former Maria Edgehill had suffered much and for many years since she had first encountered the devastatingly handsome Lord Harry at a Harrogate assembly seventeen years before.
    The only daughter in a strict Methodist household, the young Maria had longed for the wit and gaiety of society, something that was almost nonexistent in the wilds of Yorkshire. It was only by her mother's forcible representations to her father of the expense of supporting a grown-up daughter that Maria had been allowed to visit an aunt in Harrogate long enough to attend the assemblies and find a suitable husband to take her off her father's hands.
    One dance with Lord Harry Featherstonaugh, the handsome younger son of the Duke of Broughton, had been sufficient to make her forget all her logical reasons for wishing to marry and Maria fell immediately and totally in love with the dashing scapegrace.
    And, to do him justice. Lord Harry had fallen in love with her too. The young Maria with her glossy dark hair, pure white and rose complexion, and dark blue eyes was extraordinarily beautiful; furthermore she worshiped him. To Harry, accustomed to being the despair of his family, her admiration was balm to a wounded soul and he pursued her with all the ardor of a young man who had always been given anything he desired except love and admiration.
    However, despite the Duke of Broughton's loud and repeated declarations that by buying his son a commission in the cavalry he had washed his hands of the young man and his ruinous way of life, he had not washed his hands sufficiently not to be utterly horrified with the news that his son wished to marry a provincial nobody.
    Oddly enough, Maria's parents were no more enthusiastic than the duke over their daughter's engagement to a wild and spendthrift young nobleman and they expressed their displeasure as forcibly as the Duke of Broughton had. Both families threatened to cut off their offspring without a farthing if the match were brought forward, but Maria and Harry were deaf to the dire threats of poverty and loss of familial support and one glorious day in October of 1792 they eloped to Gretna Green.
    By the time Sophia was born in August of the next year a good deal of the romance had already gone out of the marriage and Lord Harry was beginning to discover that his ladylove could be just as annoyed by his unsteadiness and his reckless disregard for anyone but himself as his family had been.
    To her credit, the new Lady Harry never voiced the slightest criticism of her husband's callous behavior; however, it was hard to be trapped at home with only a small baby for companionship while her husband was off