One Final Season (11 page)

‘Well, I’m delighted to welcome you as a brother, even if my sister is feeling as grumpy as a bear with a sore paw this morning, Lord Shuttleworth. You’re going to make an excellent addition to the family in my opinion,’ Isabella declared brightly and bounced out of her seat again to give him another of her impulsive hugs, as if she had no idea her sister had just dug herself a tiger trap and fallen headlong into it.

Kate scowled at her cooling piece of toast and hoped he wouldn’t take that embrace as anything more than an exuberant expression of joy and sisterly solidarity on Isabella’s part.

‘At least gaining a sister, and such a lovely one, by marrying into your family will go some way to soothing my wounded soul after your sister’s begrudging acceptance of my suit, Miss Isabella,’ he told her with one of those old, unaffected smiles as he returned her sister’s embrace and Kate tried to pretend neither of them were there while she fought off a ridiculous, primitive stab of jealousy even she couldn’t pretend was indigestion after such an interrupted meal.

He might have kissed her with sensuality and passion last night, but somehow the sight of him looking so genuinely pleased to see Isabella again made her long for the days when he’d greeted her with such warmth as well. Reminding herself she’d always returned his delight with either suspicion or indifference, she felt ashamed of her eighteen-year-old self and did her best not to regret the passing of the eager youth Edmund had been then. She had nobody to blame but herself if her attempts to set him at arm’s length had worked so well he probably believed her ridiculous invitation to Isabella to marry him herself just now had been sincerely meant.

‘It’s not begrudging, precisely,’ she qualified, waving her toast in the air in what she knew was a most ill-mannered fashion to emphasise her point. ‘It’s more a matter of being annoyed that you considered me so compromised that you must marry me whether you want to or not,’ she explained earnestly and made Isabella more interested in her sudden engagement rather than less so.

‘I should have got the coachman to whip up his team and get here last night after all, despite Miss Mausley’s delicate nerves, for it sounds to me as if you two had an evening I’m sorry to have missed. Are you going to tell me what you got up to, or leave me to speculate wildly?’ Isabella asked, wide-eyed and eager for any detail she could coax or trap them into providing.

‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ Kate intervened hastily, before Edmund could yield to the melting appeal Isabella suddenly managed to add to her wide-eyed and supposedly innocent stare.

‘We left the ballroom for half an hour, quite separately, then re-entered it looking scandalously dishevelled by one another after a very improper interval, so I broadly hinted to the company that an announcement of our engagement would follow very shortly,’ Edmund told her flatly and, shorn of all its twists and turns and the dizzying, unexpected seduction of his kisses, Kate hoped it sounded a workaday enough explanation to halt Izzie’s rampant curiosity in its tracks for once.

‘You did all that?’ she asked Kate incredulously as it became plain her curiosity was bolting headlong for the wide-open spaces after all. ‘No, Kate, please don’t tell me that you got carried away by
passion
? I really never, ever did come across anything quite so shocking in all my life, sister dear, and you, Lord Shuttleworth, are obviously a very superior kisser indeed.’

Kate shot her sister a furious look, then spared one for her new fiancé when she saw him appear ridiculously pleased by that accolade, then try to look modest and fail abysmally. It was true enough, so perhaps he had some reason to preen himself on his skill in that dubious art, but he could at least try to pretend to be ashamed of the bad example they’d set her sister.

‘Charlatan,’ she muttered as Eiliane made room for him to sit at the breakfast table, then rang for more coffee as if he was already part of the family.

‘Shrew,’ he countered and, plumping down in the seat next to her as if there was nowhere he’d rather be, he gave her a casual hug and pressed a quick, hard kiss on her open mouth that unfairly shot straight to her legs and rendered her incapable of getting up and walking away with dignified hauteur after all.

‘
Very
superior,’ Izzie observed approvingly and Kate came back to her senses to find all three of them staring at her as if expecting something spectacular.

‘Can I eat my toast now?’ she asked sarcastically and hoped they were safely put in their places by her feigned indifference.

‘No,’ he denied her ungallantly and, seizing it, made a show of biting along the surface she’d absently nibbled at, as if eager to put his mouth everywhere hers might be even in the mundane act of eating her breakfast instead of his own.

She might have found his posturing of the devoted lover seductive and warm, promising so much for their marriage she’d instantly forget his enforced captivity. Unfortunately she knew he was putting on a show for Izzie and his ability to parody a lover’s devotion made Kate feel edgy and, contrarily, a touch betrayed.

Watching Edmund and Isabella determinedly plough their way through a mountain of food as if they’d both just walked here from Windsor, Kate tried to consider if her sister would make Edmund a better wife, but found the idea horrifying. Then she wondered numbly when she’d become so jaded she refused to indulge in even the simplest pleasures without examining them for flaws? Food could be one of those pleasures, when not indulged to excess. So it must be sheer perversity that was making the coddled egg she absently helped herself to taste like dust and ashes in her mouth. Swallowing coffee hastily to help it down, she joined Eiliane in watching the experts at work instead.

‘I’d rather keep either of them for a week than a fortnight,’ Lady Pemberley observed with a smile that understood too much of Kate’s seesawing emotions.

‘It’s just as well that the kitchens are restocked from your marquis’s vast estates at such regular intervals,’ she said with a wry look back that agreed, yes, she did stand in need of a little sympathy and support. Yet if this was an ordeal, how could greeting the legions of callers they must expect this afternoon with a serene countenance and an unrevealing smile be described?

‘I’ll tell them to send an extra cartload every week if we’re to entertain a pair of hungry wolves for breakfast each morning,’ Eiliane joked.

‘Nonsense, I was only sharp set after so many weeks of being offered nothing but invalidish pap,’ Isabella emerged from her coffee cup to inform them. ‘If I ever even see a bowl of gruel again I swear I’ll throw it out of the nearest window.’

‘You poor thing,’ Kate said blandly, ‘did they lock you in a garret as well?’

‘They might have wanted to, because I made a sight sure to frighten small children, but Emily’s mother really did offer me a bowl of gruel one day, I swear it.’

‘Only the once, I suspect,’ Kate observed wryly and Izzie grinned back with a nod that somehow re-established their usual easy accord, one they’d surely need in the face of the changes about to take place.

‘She’s usually quite a sensible woman, so, yes, only that one time.’

‘Mrs Mausley was probably terrified what my lord Carnwood would say if his ward went into a decline in her care. I expect you were looking pale and interesting at the time as well,’ Kate teased her sister.

‘Probably—most inconsiderate of me not to have had the mumps when everyone else did at school, was it not?’

‘Yes, especially as I remember you being unbearably smug while
I
went about looking like a gargoyle instead, so maybe I should have caught the first stage to Bath to soothe your fevered brow and gloat just a little after all, little sister.’

‘Not if you ever wanted it to become un-fevered you shouldn’t.’

‘True.’

‘And if you’d come to stay with the Mausleys as well, you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to scandalise the
ton
outrageously as well as finally becoming engaged to Edmund at long last, so I for one am very glad you stayed away.’

‘As am I, dear sister-in-law-to-be,’ Edmund said with such politeness Kate couldn’t say whether he actually meant it or not.

‘Well, of course you are,’ Eiliane said as if there was no question about it, and for once Kate wanted to live in dreamland as well and smiled her thanks at her. ‘That being established beyond doubt, I think we should retire somewhere a little more private and discuss strategy, don’t you?’ Eiliane added with raised eyebrows and Kate wondered which of them she was intending to exclude.

‘Oh, very well,’ Isabella said with a sigh, ‘it’s perfectly plain you wish me to go away so you can discuss all the interesting things you won’t tell me, so I’ll just go and annoy my maid by getting in the way of her unpacking instead, shall I?’

‘If you would, just for half an hour or so, my love. Then all three of us really must visit Celestine as a matter of urgency and never mind preparing for morning calls. The
ton
will just have to wait.’

‘We must?’ Kate asked with a sinking heart, for ordering a bridal gown and her trousseau seemed so inappropriate just now, when she’d said such a foolish thing about her marriage, just as if it wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted all along and perhaps now even needed.

‘Of course we must,’ Eiliane said implacably and Kate avoided Edmund’s eyes, unsure if she would see mockery or fury at her apparent reluctance in them.

‘And I dare say I’ll need a new waistcoat or so as well,’ he said blandly and she was no closer to knowing his true feelings towards their upcoming marriage.

‘Half an hour, then?’ Isabella said with a sympathetic look for Kate that told her what her sister thought of his lack of enthusiasm.

‘At the most,’ Kate replied, thinking she could very likely stand no longer.

‘It’s like pulling teeth; anticipation is almost always worse than the act itself,’ Edmund assured her with a perfectly straight face.

‘Except for the small fact that it’s also painful almost beyond words.’

‘Not necessarily and, even if it is, the agony is brief, then comes the euphoria of finally being rid of it.’

Now why did Kate suddenly think they weren’t talking about dentists at all and why should his eyes take on such an intensely silvery light until she wasn’t quite sure if they were green at all any more? Which was all very confusing of him and his eyes; she was almost sure she wanted him to go back to being polite and reliable, instead of the mocking devil he’d become some time in the last three years.

‘I really hope you two know what you’re talking about, because I certainly do not,’ Eiliane interjected.

Chapter Eleven

A
s they were about to be sucked into the whirlwind of relentless activity the Marchioness of Pemberley generated whenever a new project presented itself to be organised, Kate wondered if this was the time to mention any doubts, but Eiliane sat down at her husband’s impressive desk and drew a blank notebook out of the top drawer as if everything was set in stone.

‘Not a new one, we’ll have to get married now,’ she joked feebly to Edmund.

‘We had to get married the instant we appeared in Lady Wyndover’s ballroom in a state of disarray. Don’t even think about backing out and leaving me to explain you preferred social ruin to becoming my wife,’ he said in an unamused undertone.

‘It was a feeble joke, not a declaration of intent.’

‘Never joke about our marriage,’ he said dourly, as if near the end of his tether as well as his patience with her. ‘I’ve endured enough taunts about your repeated refusals these last three years to last me several lifetimes.’

Kate flushed and mumbled something vaguely apologetic.

‘If we might get on with the business in hand, then?’ Eiliane asked, her expression almost as impatient as Edmund’s. ‘Isabella will not give us long, so if you two intend to marry with indecent haste we’d better get on with arranging it.’

‘I’ll have to go into Derbyshire and ask Carnwood’s permission before there’s an official announcement,’ Edmund said with a frown.

‘Shouldn’t I accompany you to tell him I’ve changed my mind?’ Kate asked.

She felt distinctly unlike herself in far too many ways and had done ever since Edmund had kissed her last night. So what did it say about her that stumbling on a pair of very guilty lovers and a plot to murder a man had left her feeling distressed but reasonably composed, yet one sensuous kiss from Edmund Worth had sent her floating in such a cloud of unreality she still didn’t recognise herself next morning?

‘Certainly not,’ he countered sharply.

‘Why?’

‘Because we’ve scandalised enough people already without adding to it by infuriating your brother-in-law and former guardian and upsetting your sister,’ Edmund said with exaggerated patience, as if addressing a slow child who probably wouldn’t understand him.

‘But we need not go alone.’

‘And what about your other sister?’ he asked, as if she was confirming all his worst suspicions by suggesting they uproot Isabella now she was safely returned at last and obviously in robust health as she prepared to make a spectacular début.

‘Isabella will stay here, of course, even Lady Pemberley can hardly present her if she’s not here to be presented,’ she replied patiently, as if he was the idiot.

‘Then who will chaperon
you
?’ he asked, still with such insufferable reasonableness she felt her temper rise and forced herself to count to twenty.

‘There’s sure to be someone,’ she said with a shrug, ‘some proper and respectable female who’d be willing to lend us countenance if she thought it would avert even more scandal. Emily Mausley’s aunt might even be prevailed upon to do so in such a worthy case for an instance, or what about Miss Carton, she’s certainly respectable enough for all three of us,’ she said brightly, glad she’d recalled the stern and efficient lady who came in three days a week to help Eiliane with her many good causes and her correspondence.

‘I need Miss Carton here,’ Eiliane protested. ‘I couldn’t think of managing without her for the fortnight it would take you to post to Derbyshire and back with any degree of comfort. It’s folly to even think of going, Kate. Shuttleworth can ride there and back in a few days if he’s unburdened by coaches and luggage and your maid and his valet, as you’d have to take them with you if you were to travel in that sort of state. No, it’s a ridiculous idea. You must stay here and face the intrusive questions until your betrothal is officially announced. It will be unpleasant, but you’re not one to shirk a task because you don’t like to make an effort to deal with it, I hope.’

‘That’s really not fair, Eiliane, you know I take my responsibilities seriously,’ Kate defended herself.

Being heiress to a large estate in Ireland, as well as owning several smaller holdings in England and the small fortune invested in funds left her in her parents’ will, weighed heavy on her shoulders now she was one and twenty and felt obliged to make decisions she’d been very happy to leave to Kit in the past.

‘I agree that you’re as good and concerned a landlord to your tenants as anyone can be when a few hundred miles and the Irish Sea keeps you from meeting most of them, my love, but it’s high time you stopped being such a coward where your own life is concerned, Kate. You must learn to deal with more personal problems like a mature adult instead of a frightened child.’

‘I have, I am,’ she defended herself stubbornly and glared at both of them.

‘Then let’s get on with that list of things that must be done which you’re so eager to begin, your ladyship, before I must set out for Wychwood,’ Edmund intervened with a sigh that told Kate he disagreed with her about the emotional maturity she’d just claimed for herself, but wasn’t inclined to dally and argue just at the moment. ‘I should probably have left already if I’m to get as far as I’d like to with my journey before it’s dark,’ he added impatiently.

‘Surely you don’t intend leaving without a letter from me to explain everything to Kit and Miranda and assure them of my agreement to your offer?’ Kate objected.

‘Absolutely not,’ he barked as if she’d suggested sending a primed bomb in his saddlebags. ‘First you want some unfortunate lady who has just travelled here from Somerset, probably against her own inclinations and purely out of duty to a guest in her family’s care, to pack up again and hare off to Derbyshire at your say-so and at a few moments’ notice. Now you think it’s a perfectly sound idea to blithely inform your pregnant sister that I’ve compromised you to the point where a marriage between us is a more or less foregone conclusion among the
ton
and presumably you then intend to rely on her to prevent Carnwood killing me in a duel when he finds out how upset she is about just how close to the wind you sailed with me last night on the Wyndovers’ terrace?’

Feeling that horrible sinking in her stomach again that had plagued her on and off since Edmund appeared in town this spring, suddenly as indifferent to her as if he’d never begged her to marry him in the first place, Kate decided she’d weathered enough for one morning.

‘No, I’m not,’ she snapped, ‘for if Kit kills you, at least it’ll save
me
the trouble.’

‘Vixen,’ he informed her with a wry smile, but at least that frozen look had left his eyes, so did he still care for her after all? This was hardly the right time or place to find out.

‘So what does that make you?’ she asked snootily instead.

‘A fool, I suspect, considering I’ll be setting out to ride my poor horse into the ground in order to beg your brother-in-law and former guardian for your hand, Kate Alstone. Despite the fact I’d probably do better to buy a passage for the Americas and a new life in exile, instead of staying here and marrying a stubborn, ill-tempered termagant who’ll do her best to lead me a fine old dance for the rest of our days.’

‘Much better, so why don’t you?’

‘Because annoying you for the rest of our lives promises to be so much more amusing, and my estates and tenants need me, even if yours apparently don’t. Now, I believe we’ve used up half our time with arguing already, so shall we occupy the rest by doing something useful?’

‘You two may do so, but I’m going to find my younger sister. Remember her? The other sister I don’t consider whenever I’m putting my own selfish needs before anyone else’s? So I’ll bid you goodbye, my lord, and leave you to plan the rest however you please and tell me about it afterwards. I suppose I’ll see you after your epic ride to Derbyshire and back, whether I want to or not?’

‘That you will, my love, that you will,’ he informed her suavely and escorted her to the door and bowed over her hand, as if they’d been discussing their wedding in delighted harmony for the last quarter of an hour.

‘One thing I do know after the last few weeks, my lord, is that I’m certainly not your love,’ she muttered as Eiliane became ostentatiously absorbed in her list-making.

‘All the last few weeks have proved conclusively is that you, my lovely Kate, don’t know your own mind, let alone whatever happens to be skulking about in mine.’

‘And that you think you’re very clever,’ she informed him crossly.

‘You wrong me; only a complete idiot would marry you after what you put me through three years ago and expect any peace out of it.’

‘Then I suggest you decide now whether you’re capable of such a noble self-sacrifice after all and a long ride with all the bother of a visit to my brother-in-law to no useful purpose.’

‘I never said I wanted anything as humdrum from life as peace and quiet though, did I? So it will serve a very useful purpose to me,’ he replied in a low voice that sent an unwanted shiver of desire down her back, despite her threatening temper and secret reluctance to part from him. ‘Stop teasing me with such un-Kate-like shilly-shallying when we both know the die is cast,’ he added.

‘But I wasn’t teasing, Edmund,’ she said silkily and he laughed.

‘I know and that’s what makes it so irresistible. Most men prefer to fight for what they want most from life, sweetheart, and you really ought to remember that very pertinent fact in your dealings with my sex and adjust your behaviour.’

‘As I’m fated to marry you in a matter of weeks, I won’t be dealing with any other gentlemen now, so their peccadilloes can be of no importance.’

‘But
I
am a man, Kate, and expect my peccadilloes to be vital to you for the rest of our lives. So important that they completely exclude any other gentleman’s,’ he said smoothly, but there was an implacable purpose in his silvery green eyes that made her shiver.

‘As
I
am a true lady, I will certainly never be aught but faithful to my husband, your lordship,’ she told him stiffly, but something flashed between them as his gaze heated and promised her such untold intimacies when they truly became man and wife that her head spun and her breath came short and shallow.

‘And I’ll be as devoted to my wife as you allow me to be, Kate,’ he promised ambiguously and she shivered as he bent over her hand and kissed it as formally again, as if society were watching, and not an unconventional marchioness pretending to be fascinated by the view out of the window and her notes for a spring wedding.

‘Goodbye then, Shuttleworth,’ Kate managed to say as if it was three years ago and she was as indifferent to his staying or going as she’d managed to pretend even to herself that she was then.

‘Goodbye, my dear,’ he corrected her gently enough, before surprising her by pressing another of those hard, hotly uncompromising kisses on her softly opened lips after all.

Whilst his mouth on hers was all she wanted to explore, enjoy and seek more and yet more intimacy with, as he drowned her senses in infinite possibilities until she was oblivious to everything else, Edmund calmly opened the door behind her back. Then he relinquished her mouth with a lopsided grin that admitted yes, kissing her was a very pleasant, if time-consuming, occupation before he gently pushed her out into the corridor. With jolted incredulity bordering on fury, she numbly watched him turn and face Eiliane’s bland smile of enquiry as if he’d just put the cat out, even as he gently shut the door in Kate’s face to exclude her.

Never before had one of the Marquis of Pemberley’s finely crafted and highly polished mahogany doors been subjected to a glare of such burning hatred. Never had Kate wanted to kick one of them so badly that her foot hurt in sympathy and anticipation until today. Simmering with fury and righteous indignation, she stood on the other side of that satin-smooth door and clenched her fists to stop herself beating them against it in a tattoo of wild frustration. Instead she turned smartly on her heel and tried to contain her rage and wounded pride as she marched up the stairs and sought her own spacious bedchamber to pace in agitation, until she was fit to seek out her sister without snapping Isabella’s nose off when she didn’t deserve it.

Isabella greeted her with a determined expression on her lovely face that told Kate she hadn’t escaped an inquisition. ‘If you think I’m going to tamely accept the tall story that you and Shuttleworth just fell into each other’s arms last night like a belated Romeo and Juliet, Katherine Margaret Alstone, you’ve never been more mistaken in your life,’ her sister informed her sternly.

‘We might easily have done,’ Kate defended herself, deciding she’d have to do better than that if she was going to escape having to tell Isabella the whole story.

‘After he asked you to marry him so many times that first year even I stopped counting, and you refused every single offer he made when he was more romantic and ready to love you than he appears to be now? I wasn’t born yesterday or even the day before that, sister dear.’

‘I’ve had a change of heart.’

‘Unconvincing,’ Isabella declared and tapped her foot impatiently.

Kate sincerely hoped she was wrong and wasn’t it almost true? ‘He’s grown into more of a man than the rest of my suitors put together,’ she heard herself say and it was true and yet a little less than the whole truth. She’d spent several weeks metaphorically measuring eligible bachelors against her requirements of a perfect husband and failed to be impressed by any but Edmund, but there had been others these last few years who would impress the most finicky and discontented of ladies, and none of them had made her heartbeat flutter and her knees go weak with need, which right now seemed most unfair of them.

‘Well, that can hardly be considered difficult, since you’ve turned away every overtly masculine and potentially demanding man you met since you made your come-out,’ Isabella echoed her thoughts mercilessly. ‘Little wonder they gave up on you and decided to marry someone less challenging and a lot more amenable after a few weeks of your ice-queen act, Kate. I suspect Lord Shuttleworth only ever seemed an acceptable escort to you in the first place because he wasn’t yet the mature and rather impressive man he is now when you made your come-out. He’s certainly nothing like the love-struck youth you met three years ago any more, is he?’