One Final Season (14 page)

Eiliane shuddered theatrically at the very thought and chivvied them all down the broad steps to her luxurious carriage before Kate could even think of a sufficiently crushing reply to annihilate her little sister with. Then, once they were ensconced in the carriage, she had the fiery consciousness of Edmund sitting next to her to struggle with, so they managed to arrive in Drury Lane with Isabella still uncrushed and almost unbearably smug as a consequence.

‘I’ll pay you back for that,’ Kate managed to mutter to her when she thought the others too busy with polite manoeuvring as they descended from the carriage to hear either of them.

‘You can try,’ Izzie said before accepting Edmund’s gloved hand to help her descend with more grace than she deserved to have at her command, at least in her older sister’s opinion. ‘Oh, you
really
should have known better than to say that,’ Kate said menacingly, then promptly forgot the inventive punishments she’d been planning as she placed her hand in Edmund’s in her turn.

She marvelled that her sister could do that as coolly as if it was just an everyday courtesy, which she supposed dazedly that it was between Edmund and her sister. Fire seemed to shoot through their joined fingers and along her oversensitive nerves to render her so open to the promise of it all that she was almost beyond using her legs in their accustomed fashion, let alone her sharp tongue.

‘Now then, children,’ Eiliane said reprovingly, as if she had no idea Kate was moonstruck, or bewitched, or whatever it was Edmund had done to her with that first kiss in Lord Wyndover’s darkened book room. ‘There is a time and place for nursery squabbles and such tit for tat and this is neither. There will be no lemonade spilt with apparent clumsiness over each other, nor will either of you step contritely on the other’s hem as you climb the stairs to our box. Nor will Carnwood be further tried with your childish bickering after his wearisome ride to get here just when we all need him so badly, do I make myself clear?’

‘Abundantly, I should think,’ Edmund said, looking unforgivably amused that both sisters were trying not to look as chagrined as a pair of naughty schoolboys up before their headmaster.

‘As a mountain stream,’ Kate muttered.

‘
I
wouldn’t dream of behaving so badly,’ Isabella asserted with such angelic innocence not one of them believed her.

‘Then don’t,’ Kit greeted them as he strode forwards. ‘Whatever it is Eiliane is threatening you so magnificently over, just don’t.’

Isabella sighed. ‘Oh, very well, I suppose we are a little too old for such things now,’ she said regretfully.

‘I very much doubt it, but I’ve had a long and rather trying day and am over a hundred miles away from my wife to make it all much worse, so I think I can safely admit my temper is currently on a fine trigger. So do you actually want to see this interminable rigmarole of a play or not, brat?’

‘I do,’ Isabella agreed with a look of such charming docility Kate wondered if her little sister should not be on the stage playing Ophelia to Kean’s Hamlet, instead of just watching some less talented actress do it instead.

‘You have no idea how lucky you are,’ Edmund informed Kate as they were finally welcomed into the box the Mausleys had hired. She turned and looked enquiringly at him. ‘You belong to such a close family that you can fight with your sister, be at outs with your brother-in-law and earn a mighty scold from your much-tried chaperon and mentor all in one evening.’

‘And that’s a privilege?’

‘It is from where I’m standing,’ he said with a smile of acknowledgement that, yes, it was an odd thing to envy her. ‘I want my children to have it, too.’

‘Have what?’

‘That closeness, the chance to be knit into a family that will bicker and snipe at each other one moment and unite against the world the next to protect and love all the members of it as fiercely as tigers.’

‘I don’t think…’ she began and then the implications of what he was saying finally sank in.

His children would be hers as well now and, through her, part of the wider family she was fortunate indeed to have grown up in. A family she’d failed to appreciate fully these last five years, since Miranda had come home and found Kit, then put the deep bond all three sisters had with each other at the heart of her own new family.

‘I really don’t think often enough, do I?’ she continued with a rueful smile.

‘Never mind, I dare say I’ve had more than enough time to do it for both of us these last three years,’ he replied with an answering one that was much gentler than any he’d given her all Season.

‘Oh, come
on
, you two,’ Isabella summoned them impatiently, rolling her eyes in a pantomime of resigned exasperation at Fanny Mausley which she doubtless thought Kate couldn’t see. ‘Have you both become deaf as well as daft for each other?’

‘Isabella Alstone, you will keep a still tongue in your head on the subject of your sister’s private business, or risk being taken home before the curtain even comes up on the first act,’ Eiliane snapped irritably and Kate spared a moment to wonder what ailed their usually even-tempered friend.

‘Aye, be quiet, brat,’ Kit drawled warningly and Isabella subsided onto the seat next to her best friend and managed to be silent for all of two minutes.

Once the main performance of the night began there was none of the usual murmurs and interruptions from the audience, who were as caught by the menace and turmoil stalking the state of Denmark on the stage as Isabella, who sat still and spellbound by the whole performance. It was a
tour de force
; even Kit had to admit that when the curtains closed for the interval. Kean had held his audience completely in thrall from the moment he stepped onto the stage and Isabella was voluntarily silent for all of a minute before she came out of her drama-induced daydream.

‘Better than any ball,’ she said as she finally left Elsinore for London.

‘Don’t look to me for an argument,’ Kit said and even Fanny Mausley agreed it had been a very fine start to their evening, if a little gloomy, and now she could see why her brother had dragged them here when they could have danced all night instead, which was high praise, considering she adored the social whirl and all the glitter and gossip that went with it.

Young Mr Mausley had ordered refreshments delivered and looked very pleased with the success of his plan to please Isabella, even if her equally besotted suitors and friends of both families flitted in and out of their box to compare notes on actors and audience alike. Kate’s ring was eyed enviously by ladies she knew would eagerly tell everyone who’d listen that the elder Miss Alstone had indeed captured the most eligible and desirable bachelor on the marriage mart as soon as they set foot outside the door. She did her best to be amused by her current notoriety and wondered for at least ten seconds if Isabella might one day discover her match in the obviously besotted but still painfully young Frederick Mausley, just as she had in Edmund, then dismissed the idea out of hand. Frederick had neither the strength of character nor the promise of grace and mature power Edmund had possessed at a similar age, if only she had let herself see it.

Chapter Fourteen

‘S
o here you are, Miss Alstone,’ Lady Tedinton drawled as she insinuated herself into the box and sat herself down in the chair next to Kate while she was still busy wondering how the woman’s presence tonight hadn’t registered with her until now. ‘What a costly bauble you’re wearing tonight, and how fortunate for you that you managed to catch such a fine fish in your net before your sister arrived in town to eclipse you.’

It must have been self-protective instincts that kept her ignorant, Kate decided, as she froze a visible shudder of revulsion in its tracks and faced her enemy as if having trouble recalling who she was. She managed a curt nod of acknowledgement and fought a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach when she realised Edmund had left the box for some reason while she was having her ring inspected once more.

‘Most young ladies who transgress the limits of acceptable behaviour pay for it with their reputations. You are fortunate to belong to such a rich and powerful family, Miss Alstone,’ the woman said silkily and how could Kate fight back, when she was supposed to be ignorant of the repulsive and possibly criminal behaviour her enemy indulged in when she thought nobody was listening?

‘Indeed,’ she said distantly instead.

‘I was not so lucky,’ her ladyship went on melodramatically.

Kate raised her eyebrows and allowed herself a pointed stare at the glitter of diamonds decorating her ladyship’s throat, ears and wrists and the finest silk gown that clothed her and she hoped she managed to convey her incredulity, as well as her indifference to anything else the spiteful creature had to say.

‘Tedinton rescued me from my encounter with a certain gentleman when I was much younger and probably more foolish than even you are now,’ she went on, as if warming to the picture of herself as the
ingénue
she’d probably never been. ‘As the sixteen-year-old daughter of a mere country squire with no fortune or aristocratic connections, I was easy prey for a cold-hearted seducer, although he was barely two years older than me when he got me with child and laughed in my face when I begged him to marry me.’

‘How affecting,’ Kate said expressionlessly.

‘You won’t look so smug when I tell you his name,’ Lady Tedinton leaned forwards to whisper venomously.

‘Will I not?’ Kate asked carelessly, finding the whole performance distasteful and a lot less convincing than any she’d seen on the stage tonight.

‘It was Edward Worthington—such a neat alias for a nobleman to go carousing under away from his own nest, don’t you think?’

‘It might be, if I believed a single word you have to say.’

‘Do you think I care what you think?’ her ladyship asked with barely veiled hatred.

‘Then why are you here?’

‘To let you know exactly who and what you are about to wed.’

‘How altruistic of you, Lady Tedinton, but I don’t believe you care a snap of your fingers if I marry a paragon of all the virtues or Bluebeard himself.’

‘Very well then, you tell me why he should be allowed to get away with what he did to me. He fully intends to marry you and pretend that his honour forced him to do so. How can he act as if he’s so noble and upright and correct when he left me outcast and pregnant so young as if he had nothing to do with it? Well, I won’t have it. I refuse to sit by and let him behave as if he never seduced me, then left me so friendless and alone that I had to wed a man thirty years my senior to give our bastard a name.’

‘How strange, then, that when you were sixteen my fiancé was probably just beginning at Eton and was therefore far too young to compromise anyone, and that your stepdaughter told me just the other evening that her eldest half sister was but four years of age and her little brother a mere babe in arms. While only you can truly know their provenance, your ladyship, I doubt even you are so remarkable a freak of nature as to have endured such a remarkably long confinement it must have entered the annals of science,’ Kate said coolly and stood up to withdraw to the back of the box where they would be less easily overheard, so Lady Tedinton was forced to either carry on sitting and crick her neck as well as lose much of her dignity, or stand and let Kate look down on her from an equal footing.

‘I am barely four and twenty and I miscarried his brat,’ the woman claimed impatiently, not even bothering to look particularly convinced by her own tall tale as she only just managed to keep her tone low and venomous. ‘You’re clearly besotted with the duplicitous coney catcher, which makes you even more of a fool than I thought you. If you don’t believe anything else, just ask him about his little interlude with me at the Crooked Man on the road to Oxford last year and see if he doesn’t give himself away for the villain he is.’

‘To me Lord Shuttleworth’s integrity is beyond question, madam, whilst yours is dubious to say the least. Nothing you can ever say will make me believe him the villain you’re trying to paint him for some perverse reason of your own,’ Kate said in so frigid a tone the others finally realised she was fighting off an enemy rather than just another veiled interrogation about her marriage plans, even if they were too far away to hear any details.

It warmed a cold place in Kate’s heart when Isabella and Eiliane moved to flank her and Kit stood fluidly to emanate menace and power as effortlessly as most men breathed. Even Lady Tedinton paled under his fathomless dark stare while she did her best to look unconcerned by such a united front.

‘I’ve been meaning to have a few quiet words with your husband, Lady Tedinton,’ Kit said at last, and didn’t even dignify her as a foe by pretending it was a threat rather than a promise. ‘Does he escort you tonight, or are you in other company as usual?’ he asked silkily.

‘My lord is from home.’

‘How singularly inconvenient, but I really must seek him out before I return to Derbyshire, so we can discuss certain acquaintances we have in common.’

If Lady Tedinton wasn’t trembling in her satin evening slippers, then she certainly ought to be now, Kate decided, as she felt an instinctive shiver run down her back at the contained danger in Kit’s dark eyes, even when it wasn’t directed at her.

Yet somehow even Kit’s menacing presence wasn’t as chilling as Edmund’s voice as he re-entered the box and saw Lady Tedinton confronting Kate. ‘Ah, now I see why that supposed urgent message from Cravenhill failed to materialise. I know you like to be forward with the gossip, madam, but I’d no idea you were so desperate for it that you’d contrive a meeting with my fiancée behind my back by such devious means.’

‘We have had a very interesting coze, but my patience with the infantry is limited at the best of times,’ she snapped and tried to back towards the door without it seeming like a retreat.

‘I hear that when it comes to actual infants it’s not just limited but non-existent; your husband has my sympathy,’ Edmund said, standing in her way with such a blandly social smile it only made the contempt in his eyes more telling. Surely that should kill off any lingering hope she had of engaging him in her illicit affairs?

‘Neither my husband nor my children are any business of yours.’

‘You consider taking too close an interest in another person’s private affairs could prove dangerous to the enquirer then, do you, my lady?’

‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘No, then I must be thinking of someone else likely to discover it shortly—an old friend of yours, perhaps?’

‘You speak in riddles, sir.’

‘Do you understand me, Carnwood?’

Kit nodded and his smile was every bit as chilling as Edmund’s. ‘I have the advantage over most of our kind in being brought up in a very different sphere, so I learned from a very early age to see the truth behind the false front.’

‘You are fortunate in your friends, Lord Shuttleworth,’ Lady Tedinton managed to reply as if she wasn’t in the least bit intimidated. ‘They seem to speak in the same sort of riddles as you specialise in yourself.’

‘I am
very
fortunate in my friends, and even more so in my family,’ Edmund said as he stepped casually past her to take Kate’s cold hand in his. Just as though the vicious virago who’d just done her best to ruin that family for him was a trivial obstacle in his way to what really mattered in life.

‘You two deserve each other,’ she hissed venomously.

‘They do,’ Kit intervened before her ladyship could escape with the last word. ‘Anyone foolish enough to try to come between them now they have both finally realised that very pertinent truth, Lady Tedinton, will discover how very unlucky such an intervention could be for the one who attempted it.’

‘You can’t touch me, you’re only a counter-jumper,’ she spat back, no longer looking in the least bit beautiful as her true nature glared out of narrowed eyes and a mouth suddenly hard as a steel trap.

‘I’m also the Earl of Carnwood,’ he replied almost mildly, ‘but I’m not ashamed of what I made of myself before I became a lord. How about you, your ladyship? What had you made of yourself before your besotted lord came along, I wonder?’

‘I am the daughter of a country squire,’ she said like a child reciting its catechism, but Kate could see the glint of fear in her dark eyes all of a sudden and the sheen of sweat on her upper lip.

‘No, you’re the daughter of a country vagrant, born and raised in the workhouse. Did you think you could threaten me and mine and fear no retaliation? I make it a rule to know my enemies, Lady Tedinton. Those among them who have as much to hide as you do are reckless indeed to join their ranks in the first place.’

‘You lie, and even if you didn’t, you’d have to prove it.’

‘My agent took copies of the parish register, descriptions of you and your mother from the superintendent and the milliner you were apprenticed to at the age of seven. You had a very hard start in life, madam, one I would never have held against you if you hadn’t sought to damage my innocent sister-in-law, who also happens to be my former ward and very dear to me on both counts. I pity poor Tedinton when he finds out what you really are and had made of yourself before he wed you. How hard he fell for your charade of the genteel innocent fallen into bad company and what a triumph for you when he wed you to rescue you from them.’

‘I was gently born,’ she insisted lamely.

‘You were the daughter of a criminal’s moll and she used you as a lure to catch unwary fools, then fleece them of everything before moving on to the next. Except you tired of sharing the proceeds and informed on her and her former colleagues, so you were free to set up on your own and catch far bigger game.’

‘And a fine coney I caught myself,’ she admitted brazenly at last. ‘My husband’s a fool and deserves to pay for his endless stupidity with his life, but he’ll not believe a word a shop-soiled earl like you has to say against me, especially when I tell him how sadly spiteful Miss Alstone has become towards me, and how she’s even managed to turn her whole family against me, just because she heard some vicious and untrue rumours about me and her lover and is a jealous little cat intent on destroying me as a consequence.’

She rounded on Kate, who eyed the spitting fury in front of her with acute distaste. From where she stood, she could see something, or rather someone, standing half in and half out of the door, looking frozen and distraught, as if the floor had just dropped out of the world.

‘Nothing to say?’ the woman demanded and Kate watched her serenely for a moment.

‘There’s nothing I need say that you haven’t just said for me,’ she replied as coolly as if her fiery temper wasn’t begging for release until she’d finally told the venomous creature exactly what she thought of her. No need to demean herself by falling to such a base level, at least not now.

‘Indeed you have, Selene,’ Lord Tedinton said wearily, as he finally opened the door he’d cracked open and discovered so much that he really didn’t want to know. ‘Indeed you have.’

‘Tedinton, we were practising a scene from a little play we’re all getting up. You know how I adore arranging evenings of dramatics for the amusement of our friends and family,’ her ladyship exclaimed as if she knew she would get away with it, which was, Kate supposed, her finest weapon against her rather gullible lord.

‘No, Selene, you were not. You hate them and say so every time they are suggested to alleviate your boredom with me and mine, and how odd if you suddenly acquired such distinguished friends and failed to tell everyone who would listen all about them and whatever you are planning.’

‘They are
not
distinguished, they are adventurers and liars,’ she said in a sudden switch from assured lady to little girlish, misunderstood victim. ‘They have been plotting to bring me down and now you’re letting them succeed.’

‘No, I’m not. You’re the one who’s been plotting and I’m the fool who stood by and let you meet your lover in dark corners to plan the downfall of an innocent young girl. I couldn’t bear to believe Philippa when she came to me the night after the Wyndovers’ ball and told me what she’d heard when she followed you out of the ballroom that night with your lover. I have hoped and prayed ever since that she was wrong; that she misheard and it was another man’s wife who she’d heard meeting with that wastrel Bestholme and planning to kill her husband. You have no idea how fervently I’ve hoped and prayed for that delusion to be true ever since, Selene.’

‘The little snake, I’ll murder her with my bare hands!’ Lady Tedinton finally betrayed herself utterly and Kate gave a horrified gasp, almost wishing she could erase the last few minutes from her memory and feel clean again.

‘When Shuttleworth came to see me this afternoon and told me that he’d overheard you, too, I still didn’t want to believe it, although I know him to be an honourable young man not given to making up such melodramatic tales. I badly wanted you to be vindicated, so I agreed to listen tonight, if Philippa would get you here and Shuttleworth persuade you to talk to him about his suspicions, unfounded as I thought them to be, but how very wrong I was. How could you behave so viciously towards a young woman who has never done you any harm, Selene? Miss Alstone, I really cannot apologise enough for my wife’s ill-bred spite and that ridiculous pack of lies she just tried to spin you.’