One Final Season (17 page)

‘The old rogue,’ Edmund said, seeming quite torn between awe and indignation that the stately Lawson could be quite so devious, quite so complicit in such scandalous behaviour on the part of a single lady and his unsuspecting, if deeply delighted, master. ‘I ought to pension him off.’

‘That man is not going anywhere until he wants to. He’s nearly as big a fraud as our Coppice under that chilly manner he cultivates so carefully and I like him extremely for it.’

‘Not too extremely, I hope,’ he joked and her heart danced that he could do so easily with her at last. ‘Ah, well,’ he went on, ‘at least we’ll still have him to help us out when we have to cook our own dinners and sweep our own floors, because the rest of my staff have discovered what a scandalous household they’re going to be living in from now on and have left for more respectable quarters,’ he said cheerfully.

‘I’m never going to be able to go back to being coldly polite and proper with you, Edmund, even for the sake of your household and our personal comfort, so please don’t ask it of me.’

‘Of course not, how could I expect or want you to be anything other than who and what you are, my Kate? But I won’t let you come to me like this again, love, for I care about your reputation even if you don’t. I nearly cost another lady her good name and her prospect of a good marriage once because of a few indiscreet rumours and a careless act or two and I vowed never to do so again. Certainly not with the female who matters to me more than the rest of womankind put together.’

‘She was the one Lady Tedinton pretended to be for some twisted reason of her own, I suppose?’ she asked as coolly as she had it in her to risk questioning him in order to find out something she didn’t want to know.

‘Yes, and only for you would I risk telling a soul about it after that. Word somehow got about that I had been indulging in a liaison with a lady possessed of a Frenchified name and Selene Tedinton decided that I added to her standing in society as a lover very nicely, I suppose, and hinted that the lady was her. In reality I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole, but Therese is a true lady and I couldn’t refute Lady Tedinton’s ridiculous posturing without revealing my one-time lover’s true identity, especially now that Therese is very happily wed to another man.’

‘Did you love her?’ Kate had to ask, even if it might cost her more than she dared contemplate to hear an affirmative.

‘Never. I still hurt so badly after making myself see I had not only lost you, but never had you to lose in the first place that I was incapable of loving another woman, then or now. But Therese was a widow and understood loss even better than I did at the time. We made the blankness easier for each for a while, that’s all. I’m not proud of using another woman to block out my need of you, Kate, but you were very much unavailable on every level there can be between a man and a woman at the time.’

‘I didn’t trust what I had begun to feel for you then, Edmund, and it frightened me so badly that I managed to convince myself love didn’t exist for me and that I would never let myself indulge in passion and its fell consequences as my sister had so disastrously. I suppose I needed to grow up and three years on, maybe I’ve managed to do enough of it to realise life is a gamble and, if you are to be my reward for taking a risk or two, then you’re more than worth it.’

‘Then you’re willing to forgive me an
affaire
that was over two years ago, I hope, my love?’

‘Only if you promise me solemnly never to look at another woman in that way so long as we both live on this good earth of ours and have each other to love,’ she returned implacably, knowing she could trust him now as she should have then, but feeling that he needed her to be territorial and witchy about it all just the same.

‘I’ll promise never to do
more
than look if you like, for I am a man, lovely Kate, and therefore fallible and foolish. But why would I risk doing more than feeling a brief moment of fleeting admiration for a lovely face or form as a wonder of nature, when I’ll have the beautiful, passionate woman I’ve dreamt of in my wildest fantasies ever since I first set eyes on her in my bed every night for the rest of our lives?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ she managed demurely enough, but the look she slanted him beneath her eyelashes was pure invitation to take her to his bed once more and prove it to her very thoroughly.

‘Stop it, witch. As it is, we can’t risk any more daylight than this in case some fool coming home with the dawn sees me escort you back to the bed you should have been sleeping innocently in many hours ago.’

‘I dare say I shouldn’t have come,’ she said, suddenly vulnerable and unsure of herself and him once more.

Kate wondered if she had shocked him by coming here, offering herself to him so blatantly that he could hardly refuse her brazen attentions without hurting her pride and her heart far more than he was capable of doing. He seemed suddenly able to read all her feelings and her fears though, for despite his stern resolution to get her home before daylight found them out, he strode over and took her in his arms to give her a reverent kiss full of promise as chaste as if they were both fully dressed and had a pack of interfering relatives waiting in the next room.

‘Never say so, love, for I can’t even begin to tell you how happy a man you made me by doing so, in defiance of all the conventions and your upbringing and that cautious heart you once insisted on keeping as close guarded as a miser would his gold. We’ll find ways to be together again before we’re wed somehow, without endangering your good name. I love you, Kate, with all of me. Don’t you ever doubt it or forget it,’ he vowed when he raised his head and watched her so seriously that she felt tears sting and threaten.

‘And I love you, Edmund. Most of me has done so since we first set eyes on each other, but it took until tonight for it to let the last little bit know about it.’

‘Then that’s all that matters,’ he said with a boyish, purely Edmund Worth smile she treasured and took with her to gloat over as they stole downstairs.

He urged her out through the garden door into the side streets and she fought the ridiculous urge to giggle all the time they flitted hand-locked and still dreamy and heavy limbed with such powerful loving, she covered with her cloak from head to toe like an illicitly escaping princess, as she whispered in his ear when they paused in a shadowy doorway to let a tradesman’s cart go past. They reached Pemberley House by a route she doubted she could remember again if she tried, but as he urged her silently to the garden door she had stolen out of last night, she shivered and hated the very idea of parting from him now the time had come.

‘I’ll come to see you as soon as I have snatched an hour or two of sleep, then bathed and shaved, my lovely Kate,’ he murmured as if he could hardly bear to part from her, either, and she leaned up to snatch a kiss that he gave her back with interest. ‘Go, before I undo all the good we just did your previously pristine reputation by coming back here so early in the day by being discovered making love to you in the shrubbery by one of Lord Pemberley’s astonished gardeners,’ he urged her with a mischievous grin that made her heart turn over with love for him.

‘Goodnight, Edmund,’ she murmured with a fatuous smile.

‘And a very good morning to you, Kate,’ he replied with a wolfish look.

‘Oh, go away, you wicked man,’ she chided obligingly and flitted through the door and shut it behind her.

Chapter Seventeen

N
ow she had just had the wedding she’d once secretly dreamed of, before Miranda’s elopement put her off the idea of marriage altogether for far too long, and it had been every bit as wonderful as she’d believed it would be in her childish fantasies and so much more besides. Kate walked down the aisle of Wychwood Church on her newly made husband’s arm and marvelled how the rituals and heady frivolity of the joyous family wedding she’d thought she would never have until a few weeks ago had meant so much to her. At last she was very much married to the potent gentleman strolling at her side like a sleek-limbed predator, agreeing to be tame only in so far as he chose to be. The feel of Edmund’s firmly muscled arm under her fingers reminded her that, in marrying him and agreeing to all this, she’d given all she was and could become into his keeping, and what a powerful and passionate lover she was getting in return, she recalled with a delighted shiver that had nothing at all to do with wedding-night nerves or being cold.

‘Don’t worry, Kate,’ Edmund reassured her with a wry smile. ‘You’re not as easy to read as you seem to think, so I dare say almost half the congregation don’t yet know you’re wishing them at the devil so we can be rid of them all the sooner and be alone once more.’

‘I’m not that transparent,’ she told him with a fine imitation of her old vexed frown. ‘I’m not really, am I, Edmund?’ she added, hating the idea of hurting her nearest and dearest, even if she did want to be alone with her new husband rather badly after three whole weeks of not being lovers in aught but her memory.

‘No, love, you’re managing to disguise it very well from most of them.’

‘Kit knows, even if he’s said nothing to either of us. I swear he knew what I was about from the very instant I set out to compromise you beyond all hope that night I came to your house and lay in wait for you like an overeager houri.’

‘You looked more like a scandalously ardent lady, recklessly in love and totally unashamed to admit it to me,’ he chided proudly as they paused on the threshold of the church by mutual consent. ‘And I was never more pleased to see anyone in my entire life,’ he added wolfishly.

‘Luckily I’d never have wed you if I wanted a tame husband,’ she joked back, but there was too much reality in her words and she wished she’d learn to stop her hasty tongue with him of all people. Now he’d finally freed her from even wanting to be the once cool and detached Miss Alstone, who thought all she deserved from life was an arranged marriage and a complacent husband, her impulsive nature seemed poised to get her into trouble at almost every turn.

‘I don’t think, oh, dear wild wife of mine, that you would have wed anyone else when it actually came down to saying your yea or nay,’ he murmured and lowered his head to kiss her and halt the eager throng behind them with a sentimental ‘ooh!’ that Kate was far too preoccupied to hear for eagerly kissing him back.

Far from blushing and becoming pricklingly conscious of so many eyes riveted on them from within and without Wychwood Church, she rose on tiptoes to meet him mouth for mouth, lip to lip, and press herself so close that they were body to body as well. He was quite correct, of course, and had been all along; she would never have wed anyone but Edmund George Francis St Erith Standon-Worth, Viscount Shuttleworth, when it came to the stark fact of actually having to do so.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ she conceded as he reluctantly raised his head. She noted with distracted surprise that she’d so far forgotten herself as to raise hands covered in fine white kid gloves embroidered with silver to muss his immaculately cut and ruthlessly smoothed hair into the curling pelt she loved so much, making him look very different from the grave young lord who presented a composed public face to the world. She was beginning to realise how wildly that image flew in the face of his truly passionate and headstrong nature, but not as wildly as hers once had in the face of one equally wayward and just as wild.

‘Don’t expect me to meekly agree with you all the time, though, from now on, will you, Edmund?’ she warned him unnecessarily.

‘Now, where would be the fun in that?’ he asked with his face alight with anticipation, as if he could already taste the joy of making up after the fiery quarrels they’d surely have.

‘There wouldn’t be any, not without you, my love,’ she told him happily.

‘Are you two going to stand there blocking the doorway all day?’ her chief bridesmaid interrupted impatiently and Kate turned to give her little sister a smug look, for she was so full of insufferable pride in her own achievement after finally netting the love of her life and the most eligible ex-bachelor of the
ton
that she didn’t mind who knew it today.

‘Just you wait until it’s your turn, Isabella Penelope Alstone,’ she warned. ‘Then perhaps you’ll know why we’re doing it.’

‘I shall certainly manage the whole business far more handily than you two have done and not take three years to get myself to the altar,’ her sister told her briskly. ‘Now, are you finally going to move out of the way before I get crushed from the back by this charge of well-wishers behind me?’

‘Aye,’ said Edmund, just as smugly, towing his bride out of the church door and into the warmth of the glorious June day before she and her sister could start pulling caps and then standing with her to proudly show the world what a fine and fair viscountess he’d caught on his wedding day.

Laughing as he answered the cheers and frankly expressed encouragement of the wedding guests and the many spectators who’d turned out to wish Kate and her groom well, he bowed to his newly made wife and smoothed his own dishevelled locks, before solemnly resuming his fine top hat at a rakish angle. Then he seized her hand again and placed it in the crook of his elbow as if he had no intention of letting it go for a very long time.

After a rush of delighted kisses for her and congratulatory pats on the back that he weathered manfully, Edmund stood ready to hand Kate up into the open carriage the estate workers had decorated with hoops of lush flowers and ribbons and the odd wedding favour that should have made her blush, but didn’t. Who would have thought when she went about her reluctant husband hunt at the beginning of this Season that she’d come home with the love of her life instead? Not her, she realised with a wry smile of self-knowledge, as she watched his eyes go silver-green with the very sight of her so frankly besotted with her newly wed lord.

‘You really are a very
convenient
husband, Edmund,’ she told him wickedly.

‘Climb into this carriage and stop tantalising me and I’ll show you just how wrong you are about that epithet, darling Kate,’ he offered with a lecherous leer that made her laugh like a schoolgirl.

‘I do love you, you know?’ she told him very seriously as she moved her hand in his so he could help her up at last.

‘Yes, I do know that at last, and rather better than you did yourself at times, if I remember rightly. Now be quiet, woman, and hurry up and throw that infernal bouquet at someone so I can kiss you properly.’

‘Your wish is my command, husband,’ she told him with mock humility and hurled the lovely thing with apparent carelessness straight at Amelia Transome, her second adult bridesmaid, who blushed and tried her best not to look at Edmund’s best man, even as Mr Cromer managed to look conscious and proud and resigned to the direction his future happiness was to take all at the same time.

‘Why not Isabella?’ Edmund asked with only vague interest as the carriage pulled away and they waved to their many well-wishers.

‘Because she can look after herself from now on. If she wants to marry, I dare say she’ll do as she says and go about it in her own way, and if she doesn’t, then she’ll manage that just as she pleases as well. She asked me when she came to town to leave her to live her own life now and just get on with mine, Edmund, so I’m going to take her at her word and do just that from now on.’

‘You did a very fine job of guarding her from harm when she needed you to, Kate. You were painfully young when you were left to protect and bring up your little sister virtually alone by those who should have looked after you instead, but she’s a wonderful, bright and happy young woman now and that’s mainly thanks to you. So here’s hoping we make half as fine a fist of raising our own daughters when the time comes.’

‘I like the sound of them, Edmund, so long as you give me a son or two to spoil and chide and love as well,’ she murmured and felt her heart sing at all the lovely possibilities in front of her and her new husband as they finally drew away from the village and could concentrate on kissing each other at last.

‘How long will it be before they all go home, do you think?’ he asked huskily as they emerged from that protracted and passionate interlude to find they were already at the Court and the horses were still and the coachman impassive, as if they’d all been waiting some time for the bride and groom to come to their senses.

‘Well, they probably mean to stay for several days and celebrate the birth of Kit and Miranda’s son and heir in proper style, now they’re all assembled and more than ready for a family party,’ Kate replied with an affectionate glance behind her at the laughing, joyously smiling guests piling out of their carriages behind them.

He groaned and looked hunted at the very idea of being called upon to forsake their marriage bed so often, or even put off getting into it in the first place for what seemed likely to be far too many hours. ‘I love your family, Kate, I adore both your sisters and esteem Ben and Charlotte Shaw as if they were your true family as well, and that’s not to forget Eiliane and her marquis also, of course, but when can we finally quit them all for the time being and go home, my love?’

‘In about three hours, Miranda and I thought,’ she said, taking pity on him and herself, for it sounded more like three days to her as well just now when she wanted her husband nearly as urgently as he obviously desired his wife.

‘Thank heavens for that, then,’ he answered brusquely and Kate loved him even more when he was being such a man and refusing to admit how much having all this fuss and family around them while they made the most important promises of their lives had meant to him.

‘I might need to change out of all this finery after an hour or so, though,’ she offered with not very believable innocence, because three hours sounded far too long after three interminable weeks of abstinence to her as well.

‘And I’m working on my skills as a ladies’ maid, so I might even manage to master that row of hooks I can feel running down the back of this infernally proper creation if you keep still long enough.’

‘Later, my love, and my very impatient lover,’ she chided softly, then squeaked with surprise as he seized her and ran up the steps with her as if she weighed far less than she knew she really did. ‘Put me down, Edmund, it isn’t even our threshold,’ she protested.

Edmund grinned and continued to cradle his new wife in his arms while he got his breath back, then turned to watch his host with a laughing challenge written all over his face.

‘Feel free,’ Kit told him equably from where he stood with his arm about his own wife, who looked about as joyful as a woman could be without actually weeping for it, and Edmund for one was profoundly glad she’d refrained from doing that. ‘She’s all yours, Shuttleworth,’ Kit told his new brother-in-law with a wave at the flushed, distracted, lovelorn Kate Worth who was trying not to laugh as she squirmed in her husband’s strong arms until he bent his head to snatch a quick kiss and she stilled to kiss him back with a passionate concentration he very obviously appreciated.

‘At long last!’ Edmund shouted back. ‘At very long last, my love,’ he murmured far more softly in Kate’s ear and carried her over the threshold to pause once more and kiss her very thoroughly indeed with a silent promise never to let her out of his arms for long, ever again.