A Little Scandal (31 page)

“You go near that man again, Isabel,” he said, “and I’ll snap your neck in two.”

“He’s not what you think, Papa,” Isabel insisted. “He’s not what Miss Mayhew thought, either. Why, he’s everything that is perfectly charming. He’s just dreadfully misunderstood. Why, he’s quite sorry for—”

“You’re not to go near him,” Burke raged. “You’re not to speak to him, or dance with him, or so much as look at him, do you understand?”

“I don’t need your permission to see him, Papa,” Isabel said coldly. “I’m of age. If I wanted to, I could marry him. And we needn’t worry about posting any banns, either, not when all we have to do is cross the border and—”

He took a quick step forward. He had never in his life struck his daughter, and he had no intention of doing so now. But she didn’t know that, and she stumbled backward.

“Isabel,” he said menacingly. “I’m warning you. If you go near that man again, I’ll kill him. First him, and then you.”

Isabel tossed her head. “Daniel said you would react this way. I told him he was wrong, but it appears now that he was quite correct. I think you are being too horrid for words. I love him, Papa, and I am going to marry him, with or without your permission.”

He came as close to hitting her as he had ever come. What he hit, instead, was the window, and what he hit it with was the whiskey glass he’d held. The glass in the window shattered first, and then, a few seconds later, the whiskey glass broke, as it struck the street below. Isabel, who had ducked, straightened, then stared at him. The look she gave him was one he would never forget, no matter if he lived to see a hundred. It was a look of utter contempt, mingled with such abject pity, that Burke felt as if someone had sunk a fist into his gut.

‘Isabel,” he’d said desperately.

But it was too late. She’d turned and, without uttering another word, left the room.

He did not see her again. The next morning, Mrs. Cleary, tears streaming down her face, brought him the note. Isabel had gone, with Craven, to Gretna Green. She would return, she asserted, a married woman. And if he had any care at all to see his grandchildren, he would do nothing to try to stop them.

“I say.” Bishop, who’d listened quite patiently to Burke’s abridged version of this story, while continuing to hang in midair, spoke rather dryly. “That is a bit rough, old man. Why don’t you put me down now, and together we’ll try to think this through.”

Burke did set him down, and not very gently, either. “I’ve thought it through,” he said, running a hand through his over-long hair. “And the only solution is that I’ve got to find Kate. Kate’s got to go with me to Scotland. Isabel won’t listen to me, but she’ll listen to Kate.”

Bishop shrugged his shoulders. Burke’s manhandling of him had apparently done something to the lining of his coat. “Well, I’m sure that’s true, old bean,” Bishop said. “But you’re forgetting one rather important thing. Kate doesn’t want me telling you where she is. You do remember that, don’t you?”

“But this,” Burke said, “is an emergency.”

“Well, I’m sure it is, old man. To you, anyway. But you have to understand, it isn’t in my best interests—or, I’m convinced, Kate’s—for you to find her.”

Burke blinked at him. “Right,” he said, through bloodless lips. “You want her for yourself.”

“Well, rather,” Bishop said. “I mean, she doesn’t feel that way about me, of course, but given time—”

“And your soprano?” Burke asked politely, since he was not in the least interested in the earl’s romantic life.

“Yes, well, she is a bit of a complication, and all of that. But Kate’s a very understanding woman—”

“Not,” Burke said, “as understanding as you might think.”

Bishop threw him a speculative glance, and said, “Well, you might have a point there. I don’t know what to say, old man. I really do feel my hands are tied. I mean, I gave her my word I wouldn’t tell you anything.”

Burke took a deep breath. He said, “Bishop. My daughter is an inexperienced seventeen-year-old girl. She has thrown herself into the arms of a coldhearted bastard who, at the very least, is a thief, and who could possibly have burned two people alive in their bed. And that is to be my son-in-law. That is the type of man who will father my grandchildren.”

Bishop frowned. “It’s hard luck,” he began, but Burke interrupted him.

“Think of Kate,” he said, with one last, desperate attempt to make the younger man understand. “Think of what Kate would say, if she knew. If she knew Isabel had thrown herself into the power of Daniel Craven, what would Kate say? What would Kate want you to do?”

Bishop’s face, which had been wearing a slightly intractable expression, changed. He unfolded his arms and said, “By God. By God, you’re right. Sorry, old bean. I’ll tell you. Of course I’ll tell you. Katie would never forgive me, I’m sure, if, under the present circumstances, I didn’t tell you.” He took a deep breath. “She’s in Lynn Regis. Her old nanny rents a cottage there. White Cottage, I think it’s called. I don’t have the exact address on me just now, but if you’ll wait a moment, I’ll send a boy …”

Bishop’s voice trailed off, because he found he was speaking to an empty room.

“Well,” was all he could think of to say, after that.

White Cottage was the last house at the farthest end of a road that seemed traveled primarily by sheep … which was pleasanter, Burke supposed, than most of the roads in Lynn Regis, which seemed to him to be packed with people, in spite of a storm of rainclouds that were gathering out over the sea, and appeared to be closing in on land rather quickly.

White Cottage itself was just as it was named, a pleasant enough looking structure, very much on the small side, with numerous vines of late-blooming roses crawling about it. It was beneath an arbor of these enormous blooms Burke was forced to stoop in order to cross the yard to the front door. Had he been in a less agitated state of mind, he might have stopped to admire the tidy garden and cheerful window boxes, filled with chrysanthemums and other autumnal blossoms. As it was, however, it was all he could do to keep himself from knocking the door down with his shoulder.

He did manage to pause before knocking, and run a hand through his hair. He had given in to his valet’s demand that he shave before leaving London, but had eschewed the haircut Duncan had insisted he needed. There wasn’t time, and it wasn’t as if, he’d told himself, Kate cared how he looked. She could only hate him—quite deservedly so. And so what possible difference could a haircut make?

Except that now that he was seconds away from seeing her again, he wished he’d at least let Duncan give him a trim.

But as this was the least of all the regrets he was carrying about with him, it was easily cast aside. He raised a fist, and thumped upon the door.

A voice—not Kate’s—from deep within the cottage called, “Coming,” but it was nearly a full minute before the speaker actually reached the door. A minute during which Burke kept turning and looking back at the driver of the carriage he’d just left. The driver, alert to his master’s every command, kept looking questioningly back, thinking there was something the marquis wanted. But what Burke wanted, his driver could not supply.

The door opened, and an old woman, leaning heavily on a wooden stick, squinted up at him. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, after her milky blue eyes had taken in Burke, his overlong hair, and the chaise-and-four behind him. “You must be here for Katie.”

Burke felt as if the fist, or whatever it was inside of him, had loosened a little, his relief was so great. He said, “Yes. Yes, I am. Is she here, madam?”

“Madam.” The old woman smiled. It was a kind smile, made more appealing by the fact that, mercifully, she still had all of her teeth. “No one’s called me ‘madam’ in ever so long. Hinkle’s the name, you know.”

Burke uttered a silent prayer that God deliver him from this old woman’s presence without incident of violence.

“Yes,” Burke said, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt. “Mrs. Hinkle, might I trouble you to tell me whether Miss Mayhew is at home? You see, it’s very important that I—”

“Oh, it’s Miss Hinkle,” the old woman said, with a sparkle in her eye, for all she had to be half-blind. “And I’ll have you know I’m still turning a head or two, young man, down in the village of a Sunday morning.”

Burke felt the fist inside of him tighten until he thought his heart was going to explode from the pressure.

“Miss Hinkle,” he managed to say in a normal enough voice. “Where might I find Miss Mayhew?”

“Out back,” the old woman said, pointing in a direction that might have been behind the cottage. “Taking in the wash. It’s going to rain, you know. I’d have done it myself, only my foot’s been acting up again, and …”

Her voice trailed off. Not because she’d stopped speaking, but because Burke had walked away from her, going through the garden, and then around the side of the house. Behind White Cottage was rolling field, and beyond the field, the sea, churning slate-grey and ominous beneath the approaching storm cloud. Not far from the cottage, in the middle of one of these fields, stood a gnarled and twisted tree, from which a line ran, twenty or so feet away, to another tree. From this line hung half a dozen white sheets, some pillowcases, and other linens, all of which were fluttering violently in the wind. Behind these sheets, Burke could see the slim silhouette of a woman, a basket by her feet. Her skirts, all that he could really see of her, were plastered to her legs by the wind. Her arms were lifted over her head as she reached up to undo the pins that held the laundry in place. Occasionally, she had to rise on tiptoe to do it.

But although he couldn’t see her face, Burke knew without the slightest doubt that here, at last, was Kate.

Burke strode up to the laundry line, oblivious to wind and sea, and stood on one side of an undulating sheet. Just behind it, Kate was struggling with a particularly stubborn clothespin. When she’d finally wrested it from the corner of sheet it held, the white material fell away.

She hadn’t changed. If anything, she was more beautiful than he remembered. The wind had brought out the color in her cheeks, and even the shock of seeing him standing there couldn’t drain that healthy bloom entirely away. If he’d been hoping that she had suffered as he had in the months since they’d last seen one another, then he was disappointed. She was still slender as ever, but there was a newfound buoyancy to her figure, a fresh softness to her face, an added lustre to those gentle grey eyes. And her lips—those lips which had been haunting him in his dreams for what seemed like forever—were fuller, and—if such a thing were possible—even duskier, and more kissable.

Those lips finally parted, after she had stared at him for nearly a minute, and that low voice he knew so well said, “You look terrible.”

He blinked. The whole of the interminably long ride from London, he’d been imagining what they would say to one another when at last they met again. He had pictured everything from her throwing her arms around him, and pressing those lips he’d missed so much to his, to her picking up blunt objects and hurling them at his head.

He had never, however, imagined her matter-of-factly commenting on his looks.

He found that he could not form a reply. It was as if suddenly he had forgotten how to speak. He stood there, struggling to think of something—anything—to say, and could not come up with a single thing. He could only stand there and stare at her, taking in every detail, from the fact that she wore a dress he had never seen before, a blue and white cotton one, with a green woolen shawl thrown across her shoulders, to the way the wind picked up long strands of her blond hair that had escaped from the knot at the top of her head, and sent them waving about her face.

“Well,” Kate said, after another minute, reaching up to sweep one of those strands from her eyes. “Don’t just stand there. It’s going to rain soon. Help me get the laundry in.”

And then she started tugging on the pins holding the next sheet down.

He might not have been able to speak, but he found that he could move. And so he did, helping remove the pins she could not reach and then aiding her in the folding process by holding the opposite corners of each sheet. This was a tricky business, considering all the wind, and occasionally, their fingers touched. Each time, they carefully avoided the gaze of the other.

And yet each time—to Burke, anyway—it was as if some kind of explosion occurred at the ends of his hands, he was that sensitive to her slightest touch. It was a weakness, he knew. An insufferable weakness that went along with the insufferable way he felt about her. And yet there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing except pray that she felt it, too.

Which, he saw, with an explosive feeling of relief a few seconds later, she did. She had to. Why else were her fingers shaking as if the wind, which wasn’t warm, but was not particularly cool, either, had dipped down to arctic temperatures? She was, he saw, only feigning this complete lack of feeling. She felt. She felt very much, indeed.

Only how to get her to admit it? That was the question.

She’s angry, he said to himself. She’s angry, that’s all. Her letter—her letter, which had been without acrimony, without recrimination … which had been sweetness itself, at least in closing … had not reflected what she now felt, which was anger. And she had a right to be angry, he supposed. He had, after all, insulted her. More than insulted her. Humiliated her, with his asinine assumption that she’d welcome a chance at becoming his mistress. Not to mention what he’d thought about her and Craven.

She had a right to be angry.

“I am perfectly capable,” she said, when he bent down and took the laundry basket from her, when it was finally full, “of carrying my own washing.”

He held on to the basket. “Not,” he said, “with your fingers shaking like that, the way they’re doing now.”

She hid them, crossing her arms over her chest, and tucking her hands from his sight. “I’m cold,” she said defensively.

“Would you like to borrow my coat?”

She met his glance, and then looked hastily away, as if remembering, as he was, another time when he had loaned her his coat. She said, “No,” in a faint voice. “That isn’t necessary. Thank you.”