One Final Season (13 page)

‘I do enjoy a refreshing tussle to whet my appetite, especially when I know exactly how and where the engagement will end,’ he murmured for her ears alone.

Kate marvelled at the conspiratorial glance she intercepted between Kit and Eiliane when she managed to tear her gaze from Edmund’s and pretend to disregard his double-edged teasing. Surely they weren’t deluded enough to think she and Edmund were in the midst of some besotted lovers’ tiff just for the pleasure of making up their quarrel at the end of it? She could see nothing but some implacable purpose that involved his supremacy and her submission in his eyes, even if he was doing his best to use the sensual heat that had flared up between them as soon as their gazes clashed to get his own way. Struggling with a morass of contrary emotions, she wondered idly where cool and composed Katherine Alstone had gone, just when she needed her most.

This older, infinitely wiser and far more dangerous Edmund Worth called irresistibly to her senses and threatened to override her promise to herself never to fall in love, never risk her very soul for the traitor emotion that had lured her big sister into an elopement that had broken up their family and cast Miranda into a terrible limbo where she was excluded from everything she’d held most dear for five long years. Kate didn’t love him, had promised herself
not
to love him from almost the first instant she’d laid eyes on him, she now realised. Yet just because she suddenly longed to learn the intimacies between a man and a woman that had previously been too secret and dangerous to risk exploring with him, that didn’t mean she had to change her mind about everything else and become a meek little cipher to an unexpectedly powerful husband.

‘Don’t flatter yourself, my lord,’ she managed to hiss back almost soundlessly.

‘Oh, I don’t, and I certainly never promise what I can’t deliver, Kate. Surely you know me well enough to have realised that by now, my dear.’

‘Well enough to know I’m not
your dear
any more,’ she muttered.

‘The longer our acquaintance goes on, Kate, the more I become convinced you’ve little idea what really goes on in your own head, let alone mine.’

‘I certainly don’t have a clue what goes on in yours,’ she told him as fiercely as anyone could when trying not to be overheard by two very interested listeners.

‘No, I really don’t think you have,’ he replied with such a delighted smile he almost charmed her into abandoning her cross-grained mood and smiling right back at him, before the implication of his words hit her and she frowned instead.

‘Nor do I want to,’ she told him ungraciously.

‘Ah, but you will, Kate. You undoubtedly will, once we’re finally husband and wife and I have you all to myself at long last.’

‘That sounds more like a threat than a promise,’ she faltered in a most un-Kate-like fashion.

‘It probably is; you’ve made it into one by your own stubbornness over the years since we first met.’

‘Nonsense,’ she managed to scoff unconvincingly, all those spurned offers and ignored courtesies he’d once wooed her with so vainly piling up to mock her. Now she was to marry the wretched man anyway, she would welcome just a tithe of that worshipful dedication to her lightest whim he’d shown all those years ago.

‘Luckily for you I can hear the sound of a small tempest arriving home, even through Lord Pemberley’s substantial walls and fine doors, so no doubt your sister has arrived home from her excursion at last and we can find out if she chooses to stay here or remove to Derbyshire to witness our wedding.’

‘At least she’s got a choice,’ Kate mumbled grumpily, but he didn’t bother to reply.

‘I told Fanny and her mama we would meet them at the theatre tonight, Eiliane,’ Isabella announced even before Welland had the door open properly. ‘I hope we’re not engaged for some silly waltzing party full of giggling girls and spotty youths, for Kean is playing Hamlet and Fanny’s brother has hired a box.’

‘No need to ask if you’re fully recovered, minx,’ Kit told her, getting to his feet with a warm smile of welcome. ‘And being as contrary as ever from what I can see. I can’t help wondering why we bothered to go to all that trouble to arrange your début so carefully, since you’re finding it all so tedious.’

‘Kit! Oh, how lovely,’ Isabella exclaimed, throwing the bonnet she was carrying by its strings into a corner and herself at her not-very-stern guardian, who caught her, then swung her round in an exuberant bear hug.

Kate couldn’t help but contrast Kit’s bad-tempered greeting for her with his delight at seeing Isabella. She didn’t feel jealous of the open affection between them because she loved her sister too much to begrudge her the security of loving her guardian and brother by marriage, but it hurt a little that she didn’t share such a warm relationship with him. Yet Kate realised fairly that she alone was responsible for keeping Kit at a distance, even if he had taken her aloofness at face value and stopped there.

‘Contrary female,’ Edmund muttered and she marvelled that he could read her so easily, while her shrewd brother-in-law and usually perceptive little sister were apparently quite unable to, which was probably just as well at the moment.

He smiled and shrugged as if he didn’t know quite how he did it, either. Kate suspected that, as an orphan, even a very privileged and wealthy one, he’d learnt to watch and weigh up the feelings and motives of those around him from a very early age. He’d grown up with as little reason to trust others as she had learnt much later in childhood, yet he’d won his battle for his own unique place in the world and she felt as if she was still fighting for hers. Edmund George Francis St Erith Standon-Worth, Viscount Shuttleworth, really was an extraordinary man, she decided, and she wasn’t quite certain she deserved him.

‘Annoying man,’ she replied placidly enough.

‘And I couldn’t possibly comment on your state of mind or temper,’ he teased. Perhaps it was just as well Kit recalled he was weary and interrupted them before Kate could stare besottedly at her own fiancé, as if he meant more to her than he rightly should if they weren’t marrying for love.

‘Now we’ve got all that over with, and before I cross to my splendid mansion and change into equally splendid evening dress in order to escort you to Drury Lane tonight, brat, let’s settle what’s to be done next between us all, at long last, shall we?’ Kit said as soon as they were all back in their seats and he and Edmund and Isabella were working their way through plates of scones and several cups of tea.

‘Apart from Kean?’ Izzie asked between mouthfuls.

‘Of course, no waltzing party could ever compare,’ he reassured her approvingly, probably as pleased as the rest of them that Isabella was so deeply unimpressed with her many social triumphs and showing no signs of letting all the admiration and fulsome compliments she was receiving go to her head. ‘It comes down to you deciding what you wish to do most, Isabella,’ Kit went on.

Kate was surprised that Edmund had let him take charge, until she concluded they’d already decided what the absolutes were between them and she did her best not to be irritated by such masculine arrogance when there were more pressing matters to be irritated about, like planning a wedding around the projected arrival of Kit and Miranda’s very imminent baby. She and Miranda should never have become entangled with two such strong males if they wanted an easy life or to get their own way all the time, she supposed ruefully.

‘Your sister and Shuttleworth are determined to be wed inside a month,’ Kit went on, explaining the situation in his own inimitable manner, ‘although some of us could call that indecent haste when they’ve been shilly-shallying about it for the last three years. Maybe he thinks if he doesn’t get the contrary wench up the aisle very soon, she’ll change her mind and jilt him.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Kit,’ Eiliane intervened with a visible shudder that made Kate very glad she wasn’t in the least inclined to follow such a course. ‘None of us could show our faces in society for a very long time after such a lapse of courage and good manners on Kate’s part.’

‘You almost tempt me to do my best to persuade her to do just that then, my lady Pemberley,’ Kit remarked ruefully.

They all knew that he had never done much more than tolerate the social whirl, probably mainly for his family’s sake, and much preferred the company of the clever men and women he’d moved amongst before the
ton
ever dreamed of admitting the son of a bankrupt drunkard to their select ranks.

‘Which would almost sway me to try to call you out one fine May morning, Carnwood,’ Edmund almost joked in return.

‘An interesting way to begin a closer relationship with your prospective bride’s family, don’t you think, Shuttleworth?’ Kit replied and Kate was tempted to throw something at both of them for being so provoking.

‘And, as I have no intention of reneging on my word now it’s given, also totally hypothetical,’ she chided both of them.

‘True, and you’re also right to glare at me in truly Kate-like fashion. We’re wasting time and there’s precious little of that with the great lover here determined to march you up the aisle in double-quick time. The dilemma is, Izzie love,’ Kit went on a little more seriously, ‘that Miranda would dearly love to see our Kate married, which means the wedding will have to go to her since she is far too big with child to come here. Wychwood is Kate’s home as well, of course, and therefore the right and proper place for her to be married anyway.’

‘And Kate has no say in the matter, I suppose?’ she asked, largely because she felt it was expected of her rather than out of any real disagreement with that assertion.

‘Kate always has something to say about whatever matter is being discussed,’ Kit replied drily, ‘but is she going to argue that black’s white, before agreeing to do exactly what she and everyone else wanted her to in the first place this time, or can we take that part of the proceedings as read and get on with planning this wedding of yours instead?’

‘Why does everyone seem to consider me contrary to the point of mania all of a sudden?’ she asked with what she hoped was a creditable attempt at lightness.

‘I can assure you it’s not sudden,’ Isabella muttered darkly.

‘Nor is it true,’ Edmund defended her. Kate took in the lovely solidarity of being half of a couple for the first time in her life as his hand in hers, his warmth next to her, reassured her that even when her strong will clashed with his immovable conviction that he was right, they would still be more than my lord and my lady to each other.

It might not be love, it might not equal the almost headlong passion and devotion Kit and Miranda had for each other, or the deep, almost surprised joy Ben Shaw and his wife, Charlotte, her former governess, took in each other, yet her once-convenient marriage was going to become a far better thing than the shadow she’d aspired to at the beginning of the Season, Kate realised. She was so glad to have avoided such a dull travesty almost by accident, but not altogether sure she deserved what she had instead, which was Edmund Worth, probably the most eligible bachelor formerly on the marriage mart. The question was, did he deserve Kate Alstone, also very eligible on paper, but perhaps a little too distrustful and shrewish in fact?

Chapter Thirteen

‘I
should love to be wed at Wychwood, but as I want both my sisters to be there as well, perhaps we should wait until the Season is over?’ Kate suggested.

‘You are not putting off marrying Lord Shuttleworth for a minute longer on my account, Kate,’ Isabella told her sternly. ‘Besides which, I’ll be completely weary of this whole silly business by the end of a month, and I certainly can’t endure the prospect of waiting another to breathe some clean air and hear some reasonably sensible conversation again at last. Whenever you set the date, I will find a way to be there, Kate, even if I have to walk to Derbyshire dragging Eiliane and the marquis away from her balls and soirées along behind me.’

‘You won’t have to drag me. I’m feeling strangely jaded with them all myself this year for some odd reason,’ Eiliane admitted and shrugged when they all stared at their famously sociable hostess. ‘I suppose I’m just not as young as I used to be and lack the energy I once had,’ she told them, which made Kate meet Izzie’s concerned gaze with a shrug and a frown of her own.

Eiliane usually had almost boundless vitality and could outstay most of the younger set at the balls, concerts and soirées the London Season abounded in.

‘Anyway,’ Eiliane insisted, ‘Pemberley and I will be there whatever date you decide on, Kate, my dear. Lord Liverpool will just have to manage without my husband for a few days while he attends to more important matters than the tedious affairs of state that wretched man keeps bothering him with.’

‘Perhaps we’d best consult his lordship about when would be the best time for him all the same,’ Kate suggested, reeling slightly at the idea that her wedding was more important than the fate of nations and Lord Pemberley’s work for the government. ‘And we must consult Mr Draycott about dates as well, because there’s no point in us settling on one if Wychwood Church is not available when we want it.’

‘Draycott sent a list of possible dates for us to argue about,’ Kit recalled. ‘Shuttleworth has it, I believe.’

‘I do. Kate and I will meet with Lord Pemberley and discuss them, after we’ve decided which ones would suit us best for ourselves,’ Edmund said, his eyes cool and challenging as they met the Earl of Carnwood’s.

‘Then everything is well on the way to being settled,’ Eiliane interrupted brightly as if she really thought they might argue or worse in her sitting room, when Kate knew both were too gentlemanly to risk upsetting a woman they both held in such strong affection.

‘So it would seem,’ Kit said wearily and ran an impatient hand through his unruly dark locks. ‘Now I’m for Alstone House and a much-needed bath and shave, then a quick nap,’ he said gruffly.

‘And let’s hope you come back in a better mood,’ Isabella dared to tease.

‘We can only hope so, as I still have to draft a suitable notice announcing Kate and Edmund’s betrothal to send to the papers before I can bring about that wonderful transformation, don’t forget, so I’ll have to rack my brains and consult Lord Pemberley’s secretary about the correct form first. You have no idea how much easier my life was when I was a carefree black sheep of the family, nor how much I look forward to shuffling off at least one of my responsibilities on to you, Shuttleworth,’ he replied with a rather wicked grin before he took himself off to bring about those wonders.

Edmund bowed and left with a more conventional farewell to transform himself into the perfectly turned-out nobleman they were more familiar with than the travel-stained pirate he resembled just now.

‘Well, really,’ Isabella said indignantly once the three ladies were alone again, ‘you’d think Kit would be a little more civil on the subject of Kate’s nuptials and her future happiness, wouldn’t you?’

‘He’s concerned about her,’ Eiliane explained and surprised Kate herself with such a reason for his gruffness with her.

‘Why on earth would he be?’ she betrayed herself into asking as if she couldn’t imagine why Kit cared one way or the other, so long as he was rid of all responsibility for her. Which was untrue, as she knew he cared deep down that she should be well and happy with whatever husband she chose to wed.

‘Because he’s not sure you and Edmund are marrying for the right reasons.’

‘But that’s ridiculous; Shuttleworth has been wildly in love with Kate ever since he first set eyes on her,’ Isabella argued.

‘But was Kate equally wild for him?’ Eiliane asked with a steady look.

‘I should have been,’ she replied with a self-deprecating grimace. ‘I could have been, if only I’d let myself see how different he was from all the others.’

‘And from Nevin,’ Izzie said and this time it wasn’t a question. ‘You were always afraid of doing as Miranda did and falling for a man who turned out to be nothing like he appeared, Kate. It’s a problem we both have to face after watching that monster cajole and flatter and creep until he had Miranda believing black was white, after all. I was only a little girl at the time and far too wrapped up in myself to take a lot of notice of him, but Kate was always too acute for her own good, Eiliane, and much too easily hurt by everything that happened to us after he came.’

‘I know, I should have been there, I should have come as soon as your parents died and certainly when I heard that your poor brother had been sent home from school after that wretched fever,’ Eiliane condemned herself, as if everything that had happened to the Alstone sisters since before Nevin Braxton eloped with Miranda had been her doing.

‘No, I’ve already told you that you’re not to do this to yourself!’ Kate ordered furiously. ‘Your first husband was ill at the time. In fact, the poor man was dying, so how could you just up and leave him while you came to Derbyshire on a fool’s errand? You loved him, Eiliane, and he needed you. You must never again blame yourself for something my damnable cousin Celia and infernal aunt were responsible for.’

‘You’re ordering me about like some warrior queen, love, and do mind your language in case something like that slips out in public, even if it’s a perfectly good description of the repellent creatures,’ Eiliane said.

‘It just makes me so angry to hear you blame yourself for not anticipating the evil those two thought up and carried out, as if you should have known about it all along,’ Kate replied brusquely.

‘And it’s so very hard to make her angry, don’t you agree, Eiliane?’ Izzie put in with an angelic expression of sisterly patience on her lovely face and laughter lurking in her eyes.

‘It was, at one time, far too difficult, Isabella,’ Eiliane said as if it had been something that worried her far more than Kate thought it should have done, considering how wayward her emotions could be when she gave them full rein. ‘But at last it seems much easier to goad her into all sorts of passions again, which is a blessing I’m profoundly thankful for.’

‘And one I shall suspend judgement about until after she’s wed and Shuttleworth can cope with her tempers and her wild ideas instead of us.’

‘Why, thank you, sister dear,’ Kate said ironically. ‘I
am
still here, you know?’

‘I do; you’re hard to ignore.’

‘Then kindly remember I’m still your big sister and that I know exactly where and when all your darkest misdeeds occurred.’

‘Sometimes a person’s memory can be too good,’ Isabella replied with a very steady look that told Kate she wasn’t referring to her own childish mischief.

‘Yes, I’m finally beginning to realise that,’ she admitted at last and felt as if a huge weight was lifting off her shoulders, along with the dark memories that had perhaps been allowed to shape her view of the world for far too long. ‘I almost let them win, didn’t I?’

‘So long as you don’t now, that’s all that matters,’ Isabella replied and Kate wondered how her little sister ever got to be so wise.

‘I forgot one small detail before I left for Wychwood, Kate,’ Edmund said when she came into the small drawing room of Pemberley House that evening. Kate finally realised why Eiliane had lost a glove, asked Izzie to go and fetch it for her and then suddenly recalled something else she’d forgotten, and had simply had to go and fetch it herself, leaving the newly affianced couple alone.

‘Apart from my missing proposal?’ she dared to joke, because treading on eggshells with each other for the rest of their natural lives was a prospect she couldn’t endure, when one of the things she’d always liked the most about him was his wry and often self-deprecating sense of the ridiculous.

‘No need for you to garner another of those when you already have a full set,’ he told her resolutely. ‘I’ve told you already that you can’t have that, Kate, but maybe this will go some way for making up for the lack of it?’

He handed her a ring box and within it was the most lovely sapphire-and-diamond ring she had ever laid eyes on and she’d seen Miranda’s, which until tonight had seemed unsurpassable.

‘It’s completely beautiful, Edmund,’ she said, staring down at the amazing depth of colour the sapphires held and the pure clarity of the fine diamonds that sinuously curled around them in a lover’s knot.

‘I saw it years ago and knew then that it could have been made for you,’ he told her uncomfortably, as if he was ashamed of the headlong youth he’d been then. She could have stamped on her own toe in fury at herself for doing that to him, except it would have made her fall over in a heap at his feet and, she reminded herself, she’d already promised herself that she wasn’t going to do that.

‘Thank you, but can I wear it?’

‘I’d be highly insulted if you didn’t,’ he said with a wry grin.

She fumbled as she tried to take the lovely thing out of its bed of finest velvet with shaking hands and he did what she’d secretly hoped he might and took it from her to extract it neatly from its box and place it on her finger, presumably so she didn’t drop it and condemn them both to an undignified search on their hands and knees.

‘There you are, you see, I told you it could have been made for you,’ he said as he played with her fingers and suddenly very little of Kate’s attention was on the masterpiece of the jeweller’s art on her ring finger.

‘Edmund,’ she said huskily and even she heard the note of yearning in her voice, but somehow no longer cared if it gave away how much she’d missed him.

‘Did you really long for me so much that you’re actually prepared to admit it, sweet Kate?’ he murmured and drew her even closer.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, because as she was almost in his arms, her eyes heavy with longing and her lips parted and doing their best to invite his kisses, there seemed very little point denying it. She had missed him ever since he arrived in town this Season and she saw how changed he was from the lovelorn youth she remembered, then realised what she’d lost three years ago by refusing him so persistently that he’d finally listened to her and gone away.

‘Good,’ he said with exasperating masculine superiority and stepped away from her as Eiliane called something back to Isabella and they both stood on the stairs, very obviously pretending not to listen, but doing their best to hear every word.

‘Good?’ she muttered with a bitter glance in his direction. ‘About as good as finding cherry-stones in a pie.’

‘I
like
cherries, Kate,’ he said in a ruthless undertone, his eyes on her lips as he licked his own, as if anticipating the ripeness of her mouth moist and eager under his. ‘I long for them when they’re so red and ripe and luscious, picked just fresh off the tree. Then I just want to bite into them and feel their sharp sweetness on my tongue again so very badly.’

‘Very nice,’ she said aloud, her tone flat and her eyes on his, flaring defiance at him for attempting to seduce her with words, under her supposed chaperon and her younger sister’s very noses.

‘Not just nice, Kate, but also delicious, pleasurable and compulsive,’ he told her, placing a wicked emphasis on each description that made a shiver of anticipation run through her. ‘We really must order sweet cherries at our wedding breakfast; I would so hate to do without their unique and piquant flavour at our celebration when we’ll be setting out on our lives together at long last,’ he concluded.

‘I will order a tart especially for you.’

‘What an obliging wife you’re promising to become,’ he parried and, even as he picked up her evening cloak, he took elaborate care to enjoy every chance to touch her as he caressed it into place over her nearly naked shoulders and exposed neck. Somehow he managed to drive her half furious with him and half inclined to swoon with frustrated passion at his feet all at the same time.

‘And what a disobliging husband I seem to be chaining myself to,’ she managed to say lightly for the benefit of their audience.

‘You flatter me.’

‘That was not my intention.’

‘At least I’ll soon be in a position to give you a few lessons in how to tell truth from fiction, Kate,’ he said, looking inexcusably pleased with himself.

‘First, my lord,’ she informed him snippily, ‘you’ll need to find out what the differences between them are for yourself.’

‘I thought we could do that together,’ he said so smoothly that she glared at him in frustration, not quite sure if she wanted to slap him or kiss him. ‘Come
on
, you two,’ Isabella interrupted them impatiently, ‘the farce will be over and the first act as well before we even get to the theatre if you don’t hurry yourselves, instead of casting sheep’s eyes at each other in that nauseating fashion.’

‘Really, Isabella,’ Eiliane rebuked her, ‘that’s such a vulgar turn of phrase.’

‘But apt, they’re nigh as annoying as Kit and Miranda and I never thought I’d be able to accuse Kate of thinking the world well lost for love.’

‘I doubt you can now, either,’ Edmund said with a wry smile as he finally took his hands away from Kate’s shoulders and left her feeling horribly cold and bereft all of a sudden.

‘Whether I can or not, please would you two kindly hurry? Even if you don’t mind me glowering at you both for the rest of the evening for causing us to be late, I doubt very much if you’d endure Kit doing it with half as much detachment.’