Kitabı oku: «Regency: Courtship And Candlelight», sayfa 8

Chapter Eight

‘Have they really gone?’ Kate whispered as quietly as anyone could whilst making a sound at all.

‘I hope so, since you’re restless as a cat and nowhere near as silent,’ Edmund grumbled back.

‘I was quiet as a mouse and resent your aspersions, my lord,’ she informed him with as much dignity as a lady could assemble whilst shut in this cupboard of a room with the unbelievably infuriating Viscount Shuttleworth and forced to listen to murder and her own forced marriage being planned outside it.

‘Then for heaven’s sake do it softly for a change.’

Kate stamped a soft-soled foot on the runner and hoped Bestholme really had left and so wouldn’t hear the faint thump it made against the oak floor underneath. If being angry with Edmund for very little reason helped keep her from falling into hysterics over what she’d just overheard, then Kate was all for it.

‘Virago,’ he chided impatiently.

‘Tyrant,’ she flashed back at him.

‘Come on, I’ve had enough of lurking in the dark like a thief,’ he growled in an exasperated masculine rumble and towed her as abruptly out of their hiding place as he’d hauled her into it in the first place.

‘Just as well they really have gone,’ Kate carped even as she clung to his hand like a lifeline. ‘We’d have been in a fine pickle if he’d stayed here in order to give her a head start for the ballroom.’

‘He’s not that much of a gentleman and we’re in a fine pickle anyway,’ he told her seriously.

Thinking back over the last however long they’d now been away from the ballroom and propriety, Kate could only agree with him. ‘How are we going to stop them?’ she asked shakily.

‘We aren’t.’

‘Then you’re prepared to let that harpy and her disgusting paramour murder her husband without even lifting a finger to stop her?’

‘No.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’

‘We are going to do nothing. When you cease your incessant nagging and let me think, I dare say I will eventually find a way to stop them without a scandal.’

‘And I just sit about simpering while you stamp about brooding and proving what a clever gentleman you are?’

‘You’re a single female with a reputation to consider.’

‘Bah! If I were a married woman without any shreds of one left to me, you’d still find a way of excluding me,’ she fired back at him, struggling to free her hand from his at last, although it felt very comfortable in the misogynistic, contrary man’s hold and part of her really didn’t want to stand alone after such an evening.

‘Yes, I would,’ he told her implacably.

‘Why? I’m not a fool or a hysterical female given to fainting and die-away airs.’

‘No, just because you’re you,’ he told her rather obscurely, ‘and you’ll be busy,’ he added by way of a diversion.

‘Busy?’

‘Planning our wedding,’ he said and Kate felt the odd sense of detachment she’d been suffering ever since he’d stopped kissing her finally threaten to overwhelm her.

‘I thought you just said “our wedding”,’ she said faintly.

‘I did.’

‘But how can I do that when we aren’t going to be married, Edmund?’

‘Because we are, Kate.’

‘Solely because you just kissed me in a private room where nobody could see us? That’s complete nonsense and nobody will know what we’ve been doing if we don’t tell them.’

‘They will when we return to the ballroom together in a state of disarray and hint very strongly that we’ll shortly be announcing our engagement. I may despise Bestholme and his whore, but I’m not above borrowing that scheme now the devil’s in the driving seat.’

‘Nonsense, if you go ahead and I follow you into the ballroom a little later, nobody will dream we were together all this time, or that either of us heard anything we shouldn’t have tonight. Nobody need be any the wiser.’

‘You have a simple-minded faith in the gossips suddenly turning incurious about all you say and do that I could find almost admirable, Miss Alstone. If only it wasn’t so misplaced and silly,’ he told her, suddenly back to the aloof and superior Lord Shuttleworth he’d been towards her since returning to town and Kate refused to ask herself why his icy tone hurt and the hard look she could imagine in his eyes cut through her so coldly. ‘You have now been absent for far too long to just shrug it aside and pretend you’ve been innocently drifting about, and I don’t want those two black-hearted villains realising you overheard their assignation,’ he went on relentlessly and Kate felt her palm itch to slap some sense back into him.

‘Then what do you suggest that I do instead, you infuriating man?’ she gritted through clenched teeth.

‘Be thoroughly compromised by me, or prepare to embrace life as a social outcast,’ he informed her so laconically she felt that odd sense of not being quite connected with the real world threaten her again.

‘You can’t do this, Edmund, you’ll be dragooned into marrying me if we appear together in such a state as you suggest and we both know that you don’t want to wed me any more,’ she protested in a fierce whisper.

‘Better that than risk that unsavoury pair realising you were wafting about listening to out-of-the-way conversations, Kate,’ he declared not very encouragingly.

‘How flattering,’ she told him crossly, wishing she could turn her back on the infuriating monster and walk away.

‘Find a bit of steel to stiffen your backbone, for goodness’ sake, Miss Alstone,’ he chided like some large and handsome gadfly sent to plague her by a malign fate.

‘Why should I resign myself to such a fate when you obviously don’t have the least desire to marry me?’ Kate managed to say in defiance of her inner idiot, who was demanding stridently that she accept eagerly and be glad he felt honour-bound to marry her after being so sternly set against it.

‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ he said coolly and must have decided he was done with useless words and it was time for action before things got worse.

He hustled her out of a side door and into the garden proper before she could find breath or words to protest with and urged her inexorably closer to the long windows of his lordship’s fine ballroom, but not close enough for propriety, of course. The further they got from that darkened room the better, even if it was leading them closer to marriage, Kate decided numbly, and cursed herself for not fighting this more strongly. It was hard to fight temptation when it beckoned so wickedly.

‘You could leave me here alone,’ she whispered softly in defiance of her own eagerness for any sort of marriage with him, even this forced one.

‘So you could be quizzed from now until next Christmas on the identity of your cowardly lover?’ he murmured back, and anyone watching them would probably mistake them for fellow moon-led idiots lured out here by such promising darkness, she decided crossly. ‘Go back in that room alone after spending such a long time away from it and your chaperon, and you’ll be ruined without anyone having to plot against you,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘and in acute danger once that harpy realises you could have overheard her plot to murder her husband, whilst you wandered about in the shadows so carelessly that anything might have happened to you.’

‘And being a perfect gentle knight you’re sacrificing yourself instead?’

‘No, being a pattern-card of perfection was so dull that I gave it up,’ he declared flippantly.

‘Along with me?’ she murmured, then could have kicked herself for letting him know how much his recent rebuffs had hurt her.

‘I thought I’d save myself the pain of enduring another crushingly polite refusal,’ he told her and Kate hurt at the careless apology in his deep voice. ‘I dare say marrying you won’t be so bad once I get used to the idea again,’ he added.

‘And if you think I’ll stand by idly while you have affairs with other women you will be sorely disappointed, Edmund Worth,’ she informed him in a fierce undertone.

‘That’s entirely up to you, dear Kate. If you keep me otherwise occupied, I probably won’t have the time or the opportunity to stray,’ he observed and silenced her with another mind-stealing kiss.

Furious, she did her best to bite him, so he deepened his kiss and dared her give whatever she might have had the wits to withhold until now. Defeated by her own need of him, her body seemed to meld itself to Edmund’s powerfully lean one of its own accord and wild heat burst into instant life again. She angled her wanton mouth to his in a way she should think appallingly fast but didn’t. Never mind fast, her deepest buried instincts warred with her training, he’ll still marry you now, even if he doesn’t really want to.

She couldn’t make herself break away, even with that chilly thought in the back of her mind, but she clenched her hands at her sides and refused them the luxury of his lithely muscled body. It didn’t abate the searing wildfire flaming through her like a force of nature, but it made her feel a little better about herself and the self-control she’d once prided herself upon.

Unimpressed, his hands ran over her in an unashamed exploration and she loved it. She’d always denied being capable of deep feeling, in her ignorance of how elemental and out of control she would be with the right man. Now he let his wicked hands find a way between them, despite her body’s ridiculous efforts to plaster itself against him like a poultice, and Edmund ran an approving thumb over a raised nipple that immediately hardened and begged for more without permission from her. She had to fight not to moan and cry out a frantic demand for more, for everything. If not for the half-painful gnaw of need, the half-wondrous goad of heat at the heart of her, of course she would put distance between them and escape the purely physical spell he’d cast over her, yes, that was just what she would do, in a minute.

This was the wild and passionate Kate he’d always known existed beneath that façade of serenely composed beauty. Edmund managed to find enough willpower from somewhere to put a distance between them and convince himself painfully that he’d discovered enough about her most secret passions for now, in public or almost public as they were. He forced his hands away from her delicious body before his fascination with it broke his self-control. She was flushed and breathless, her soft gasps for air drawing his attention to her lush, but firm, young breasts, rising and falling rapidly against the low neckline even a single lady could wear by her fourth Season without being considered intolerably fast.

Her eyes were wild and more beautiful than he could ever recall seeing them even in his dreams as they blazed with feelings he would give half his fortune to read fully. Her lips parted as she fought to get her breath back and his eyes lingered on them with hungry fascination as she slicked them with her sharp little tongue. If he wasn’t to throw himself on her and ravish her on the lower terrace of his hostess’s garden, he must get their engagement rolling relentlessly on before she lost that starry-eyed, just-kissed look and remembered all the doubts and fears that inhabited her contrary thoughts whenever he wasn’t in a position to haze them with merciless passion. An image he’d best not dwell on if he wanted to get the next few minutes over with without causing an even bigger scandal than the one he had in mind.

‘Come,’ he ordered brusquely as he towed her back to the shark-infested waters of the ton, before she balked.

‘I still can’t see why …’ Miss Alstone seemed about to take over from his wild Kate, so Edmund summarily tugged her into the ballroom and put an end to her nonsense.

‘Good heavens!’ Cromer exclaimed at the sight of a stormy-eyed, very thoroughly kissed Kate on Edmund’s arm and just managed to suppress a grin. ‘They’re quite right about that dangerous moonlight,’ he mumbled as he stepped back to let the company see what it had done to so cool and collected a couple.

‘Good heavens, indeed, and yes, very right,’ Edmund replied calmly.

‘I don’t think they had much to do with it,’ his Kate mumbled tartly and Edmund wondered if he was suffering from shock and hallucinating when she didn’t just tear herself away from him and flounce off. It wasn’t every day a man heard murder plotted, and with Kate pressed so close he’d struggled to listen to a word of it. He’d wanted her so mercilessly and now he nearly had what he’d longed for so deeply within his grasp at long last, what had happened so far tonight almost seemed unreal to him for a few moments.

‘I hope you’ll congratulate us, Cromer, for I refuse to wait any longer after three years of waiting for a yea instead of a nay, even if her former guardian and brother-in-law hasn’t agreed to it yet,’ he said with a possessive look at Kate.

‘Carnwood cutting up rough, is he?’ Cromer asked obligingly, managing to look astonished while his eyes told them he didn’t believe a word.

‘You see? Everyone thinks I’m your ideal husband,’ he whispered in Kate’s ear and felt her tense, as if she might jump away and deny every last truthful hint of how they’d been amusing themselves since they left the ballroom that he was building up so carefully. ‘Try it and I’ll kiss you right here,’ he threatened softly.

‘I hate you,’ she told him between clenched teeth and he met the heat and fury of her furious glare with a satisfied smile.

‘Hate away, my fierce Kate,’ he murmured and heard a sentimental sigh from somewhere close by.

‘Mountebank!’ she condemned in a spitting undertone, but still made no effort to pull away or give his apparent devotion the lie.

Looking as if he was trying very hard to come down to earth, Edmund considered his friend’s previous question. ‘No,’ he replied to the clever lead, ‘but I can’t tear myself away long enough to go up to Derbyshire and ask him.’

‘Should think you’ve obtained his permission often enough in the past,’ Cromer said.

‘So I keep telling Miss Alstone, but it took me until tonight to convince her I can’t endure to wait and be wed with the full fanfare and fuss of a grand wedding. I’ll have to go and beard Carnwood in his lair now she’d agreed at last that our wedding must be soon, then maybe we can get on with being my lord and my lady at long last.’

‘Short notice, gossips bound to twitter like starlings in an apple orchard,’ his taciturn friend warned sagely and Edmund gave an expressive shrug before looking significantly about him at the eagerly whispering throng.

‘I’ve waited long enough,’ he said loudly enough for most to hear him and enjoy a fresh wave of delighted speculation.

He smiled wolfishly at Kate, hoping his eyes conveyed a warning to back him up now this was all but irrevocable. She really had the most extraordinary eyes, they were truly ultramarine, he decided distractedly, savouring the word on his tongue as he almost murmured it aloud. Very blue, he translated, and was in grave danger of falling into the wondrous depths of them and not caring where it took either of them. Most blue, he corrected in his head, and freed himself of their spell just in time to stop himself kissing her passionately in public.

‘Well, here’s a fine to do,’ Lady Pemberley observed, apparently torn between laughter, delight and a chaperon’s duty as she hurried towards them. ‘Impatient children,’ she chided as if mildly exasperated.

‘You could hardly expect me to be patient when Miss Alstone finally agreed to wed me at last, my lady,’ he responded, fervently hoping Kate would play up to his act and not revert to that contained sceptical aloofness she used so often to set the world at a distance just at the wrong moment.

‘Yes,’ she managed rather lamely instead, ‘his lordship is most impatient.’

‘So I see,’ Eiliane Pemberley responded drily, with a comprehensive scrutiny of Kate’s wildly curling hair and scandalously creased gown before her sharp eyes met Edmund’s with a challenge.

‘Perhaps we should send that notice to the Morning Post and so on soon, Lady Pemberley?’ he asked with apparent satisfaction before she could speak it.

‘I believe that might be for the best,’ her ladyship agreed blandly, despite the dagger look his Kate shot her. ‘Imperative even,’ Eiliane added implacably, giving Kate just as sharp a warning look in return. ‘It’s high time we ordered Kate’s bride clothes to be made up and St George’s, Hanover Square, isn’t at all easy to book at this time of year, even for you and this haughty young woman, if that’s where you decide you both want to marry in the end.’

‘I’m not haughty,’ Kate protested hotly.

‘No,’ he drawled, caressing her hand as it rested in his with a rightness he hoped she wouldn’t deny any more, even when they were alone. Playing with her gloved fingers absently, he smiled with sleepy-eyed approval. ‘You’re very far from it if I remember rightly, and I have an excellent memory,’ he murmured intimately.

‘Forgive us, ladies and gentlemen, but all will become clear to you when a certain announcement is published shortly. I cannot say more now, I fear,’ Edmund announced to nobody in particular with as elegant and ironical a bow as a gentleman might with his tawny locks still awry from his lady’s fingers and his neckcloth askew.

‘Since you wicked children decided to pre-empt proper formalities, perhaps you should have your betrothal dance now?’ Eiliane suggested just loudly enough for the cool clear sound of her voice to rise over the hubbub.

Lady Wyndover looked as if she might be considering the unlikelihood of it all, then nodded, before indicating the orchestra should play a waltz for her scandalous guests. Kate let her steps shadow Edmund’s as closely as usual. She was so confused by the suddenness of it all she couldn’t say what her feelings were at gunpoint, but most of their fellow guests evidently thought it a love match.

‘Keep dancing,’ Edmund scolded softly as her steps began to falter as weariness threatened to make her wilt like an overheated lily. ‘Don’t you dare flag and let Bestholme and that witch suspect everything is not exactly as it should be between us,’ he berated in a stern whisper.

Sympathy might have made her collapse in his arms and require to be taken home, but he could be a little gentler, Kate decided. He was looking at her now as if it was only a matter of time before she swooned or did something equally feminine and therefore foolish, so she glared at him instead.

‘You’re the most irritating male I ever came across, Edmund Worth,’ she informed him even as she smiled up at him as if the sun rose and set in his eyes.

‘At least I’m pre-eminent at something, then,’ he drawled back, as if he found her stubbornness and bad temper mildly irritating and amusing all at the same time.

‘I really and truly hope that you’re one of a kind then, my lord, for I’d hate to think the human race was afflicted with two such.’

‘Didn’t your long-suffering relatives teach you it’s rude to abuse your acquaintances in such a forthright fashion, Kate?’

‘You’re not an acquaintance, you’re my betrothed.’

‘I can see why you put off gaining one until now if this is how you intend to treat me from now on,’ he countered, giving her a supposedly warm smile even while his cool willow-green eyes warned her he wasn’t joking.

‘I could jilt you at the altar if you’d like me to,’ she offered half-seriously.

‘Banish the idea from your mind right now that you can escape this marriage, Kate, or I’ll walk off and leave you standing here with your mouth open. You made an idiot of me once too often three years ago for me to let you do it again.’

‘I never meant to make you feel an idiot then, my lord,’ she said and a heavy feeling of regret chilled the pit of her stomach as he looked unconvinced.

He looked at her austerely, as if seriously wondering what she was currently using for brains. ‘That’s moot, but there’s no going back for either of us after tonight, so all we can do is get on with it,’ he said brusquely.

‘I’ll do my best to make you a good wife,’ she said stiffly.

‘And that’s all a convenient husband can ask of his lady, is it not?’ he seemed unable to resist saying as the dance finally came to an end and he bowed over her gloved hand as gallantly low as if he was utterly besotted with her and thought her a queen amongst women.

‘Quite,’ she replied repressively and just about managed not to kick him soundly on the shin, or tread very deliberately on his toe.

The noble effort it cost her must have shown on her face if only because he was close enough to see more than anyone else. He grinned at her, that old, infectious grin she’d once taken so carelessly for granted, and it gave her a bittersweet heartache for the ease there could have been between them, if only she’d been less of a fool when they’d first met.

‘I wish we could be friends again,’ she said wistfully, only to see laughter fade from his unusual silvery green eyes and the chill return, as if she’d no right to ask.

‘I want you, Kate. I’ll be faithful for as long as you return the compliment, but I’ll never be your lapdog again.’

‘I can’t imagine you as anyone’s willing slave nowadays, my lord, but I would have us be comfortable together at least.’

‘Do you think your elder sister and her husband find mere “comfort” in their marriage?’ he asked her as if the very word offended his mouth.

‘No, I think they each consider that the sun rises and sets in the other,’ she informed him steadily, ‘but I doubt they’d thank me for saying they were anything so mundane as merely comfortable together.’

‘Then why should we settle for less?’

‘Because we’re not in love,’ she was goaded into declaring exasperatedly.

‘My point exactly,’ he murmured in her ear as they returned to Eiliane’s side and she couldn’t glare into his challenging eyes, for fear of letting the world see this wasn’t the fairytale romance they’d just been at such pains to pretend it was.

‘You don’t fight fair, my lord,’ she murmured instead as she met his eyes with every appearance of dewy-eyed wonder.

‘No,’ he breathed for her ears alone as he raised his hand to let it whisper down her cheek in a regretful, lover’s salute as if he couldn’t bear to completely let her go whatever the conventions, ‘that would be because I fight to win, Miss Alstone.’

‘Win what?’ she asked with genuine puzzlement as he let his hand drop and she shivered as her every nerve seemed on the alert and desire almost made her shake with the effort of resisting a foolish driving compulsion to be in his arms again.

‘You, Miss Katherine Alstone, body, heart and soul,’ he murmured as he once more leaned towards her as if he might kiss her and Kate was sure she heard several of the ladies huddled nearby to get the best view of them sigh sentimentally.

‘First you’d have to want me,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, I most certainly do, sweet Kate, make no mistake about that,’ he drawled and she could see the truth of it in the flash and burn of such raging hot desire in his eyes that it made them look intensely green all of a sudden.

Involuntarily her mouth opened and her lips were so dry she just had to lick them, watching him gaze at her tongue as if he wanted to catch it with his own and then … Best not to think of that then, not with such a very interested audience hoping to see the self-possessed Miss Alstone melt into boneless idiocy in front of their eyes.

‘I suppose we’ll see you tomorrow then, my lord?’ she said foolishly, so muddled by the mix of fiery passion with that edge of angry desire that kept flaring between them that falling back on platitudes was the only option open to her.

‘You can be very sure of that,’ he replied, ‘but the night isn’t over yet.’

‘It is for me. Do you think we could leave now, Eiliane? I’m so very tired,’ she turned and asked her friend, eager for some peace and quiet in which to gather her scattered thoughts.

‘And at least I can accompany you home without arousing speculation, now we’re engaged all bar the shouting,’ Edmund said with an ironic smile.

‘Oh, I suspect there might still be shouting,’ Lady Pemberley said, evidently considering Kit Alstone’s reaction to the news that his sister-in-law and former ward had behaved so scandalously. ‘But, yes, we can go home now and your escort is always welcome, Lord Shuttleworth, especially in these strange and uncertain times.’

‘What it is to be wanted,’ he said with a smug look of faux self-importance that made Kate smile and Lady Pemberley inform him she’d always known he wasn’t the straightforward young man he too often pretended to be.

‘If I were that simple, I’d have stayed on my estates nursing my broken heart and missed the prospect of a lifetime of marital strife with your lovely charge, Lady Pemberley,’ he parried lightly.

‘Just as well you didn’t, then,’ Eiliane replied as he handed her into the luxurious carriage her husband had brought on the occasion of their marriage.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said with such cordiality Kate eyed him with suspicion.

‘My love?’ he prompted with such bland patience she once more felt her foot itch to kick him as she looked at him with a sharp question in her eyes. ‘Could you get into Lady Pemberley’s splendid equipage before the horses collapse from boredom or one of us catches an inflammation of the lungs, do you think?’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ she replied, doing so with such haste she nearly fell over her own feet. ‘I’m so clumsy that I seem to constitute a danger to myself and others tonight. It really is most irritating.’

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured as he managed to climb into the carriage with all the grace she’d failed to find. ‘I quite like it, and perhaps it’s a sign that I’ve finally knocked that exquisite balance of yours out of kilter at long last.’

‘And that’s something about tonight’s events I certainly need to hear about in more detail, my lord,’ Eiliane informed him in her sternest chaperon’s voice.

‘Later, if you please, my lady. We have a great deal to explain and only a short carriage ride to do it in, if you won’t consider letting me come inside to enlighten you properly when we get there,’ he cautioned and Kate could feel the tension in his powerful body as he sat opposite her, but evidently couldn’t bring himself to relax into the generous squabs of Eiliane’s carriage.