One Final Season (5 page)

‘No, but I dare say you have.’

‘You’d be wrong and not for the first time then, so perhaps you’d best hurry up and join me for it, before we attract even more attention to ourselves,’ he replied.

‘I never dance with noblemen who order me to do so, attention or otherwise.’

‘Then pray do us both the favour of joining me on the dance floor, before the tabbies make all sorts of mistaken assumptions about our tardiness, Miss Alstone,’ he demanded more than asked.

Seeing that he was right and they were attracting far too much notice for comfort, she took his offered hand and let him lead her onto the floor, as if she could imagine nothing more pleasant than to dance with the rude, contradictory, disturbing man. Instead it felt as if he’d just snapped the tethers of the polite pretence that should have held them both in check and left them perilously adrift in a world where she had no bearings or familiar landmarks to chart it by.

‘Why do you suddenly seem to hate me, my lord?’ she heard herself ask as soon as they were launched into the dance. She was silently cursing herself for agreeing to be held so close to him, so curiously in sympathy considering their new antipathy and the odd fact that he’d never affected her like this in the past, when he’d just been a skilful partner who didn’t tread on her toes.

‘I don’t hate you, Kate, would that I could,’ he answered her with no hint of a smile to soften his hard-eyed scrutiny of her upturned face.

‘Perhaps it would be easier,’ she agreed rather wistfully.

‘For you or for me?’

‘For both of us.’

‘Then you
are
a coward,’ he murmured, but still he held her as if she was precious and their steps harmonised with such ease it felt as if they’d been born to dance together.

‘How so?’ she managed to murmur, fighting a stupid urge to lay her head on his shoulder and dream her way through this waltz, as if all that mattered was being held so close to him nothing could come between them. At least imagining how that shocking spectacle would appear was enough to stiffen her spine and make her set a little distance between them.

‘If you ever find the courage to really look into that guarded heart of yours, Miss Alstone, you might find your answer to that question and a few others as well,’ he informed her even as he twirled and confused her in time with the dance.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, wishing she was in a position to cross her fingers against that uneasy lie, for she was beginning to wonder herself.

‘I know, that’s the pity of it all,’ he responded rather grimly and they spent the rest of the dance in uneasy silence.

Their waltz was over too soon and not soon enough, so they could step away from each other at last with more than just physical space yawning between them. Kate marvelled at herself for being such a fool as to have refused to marry him so often in the past, even as the guarded part of her drew back and whispered he’d always ask too much of her, however many times he asked and she said no. She told herself to be grateful he’d had the sense to slash through whatever bonds bound them to each other three years ago. Yet it didn’t feel right that they should now go their separate ways as if they’d never once mattered to each other. She hesitated ridiculously when he offered her his arm so distantly at the end of their dance, as though he were about to conduct someone he barely knew and didn’t much like back to her chaperon.

She laid her fingers on his immaculately tailored coat sleeve and did her best to look undaunted and serene while a flash of hot and confusing warmth shot through her at the feel of such latent power beneath her fingertips. It was utterly ridiculous to feel intrigued by even so light a touch on his muscular arm, when she’d been more or less immune to his physical allure on first acquaintanceship. She was still struggling with this odd twist to their relationship that now left her more conscious of him than he was of her when they were rudely interrupted.

‘What a delightful display that was, don’t you agree, my love?’ Lady Tedinton greeted them with apparent laziness as Kate and Edmund unwarily stepped off the dance floor and straight into her path.

‘Oh, they’ll need to practise for a few more years yet before they’re even half as good at it as you are, my dear,’ her husband replied and Kate could see how little her ladyship relished being lumped in with those who were accomplished and experienced, but no longer young, even if her husband seemed oblivious to her quick frown of displeasure.

‘Practice makes perfect, don’t you agree, Lord Shuttleworth?’ the lady responded, avid hunger brazenly obvious in her heavy-lidded eyes as she ran them over him, as if testing his power as a lover and liking the idea of taking him as her current one a little too well, whatever their past relationship might be.

‘Only until that perfection is achieved, my lady,’ he said with a supremely elegant bow Kate thought was more an attempt to distance himself from the woman than offering her even a hint of encouragement.

‘But if it’s not properly maintained, even perfection can fade away from lack of application,’ the lady murmured and Kate wondered at her daring, at the same time as she marvelled at her husband’s wilful blindness to her true nature as she tried to joust with a potential lover under his very nose.

‘A little imperfection always seems so much more human to me,’ Edmund replied with a surprisingly warm look in Kate’s direction that she decided was his way of subtly informing Lady Tedinton she was much less to him than she thought herself to be, since he’d just put Kate ahead of her and everyone knew they were no longer even friends.

‘Yet no doubt surprisingly tedious after a while. A person of taste and refinement, not to mention experience, cannot find it easy to be burdened with a bungling amateur forced to strive for mastery of a set of skills that comes to others with almost instinctive ease. It must be tedious indeed to endure such gauche fumbling at such times,’ her ladyship responded.

How so much malice could be directed at her with one heavy-eyed, apparently amused glance was almost beyond Kate. She was tempted to shrug her shoulders and make a polite excuse before drifting away with an absent farewell, but she owed Edmund more than that, even if he was confounding and confusing her more than she’d dreamt he could when she was three years younger and even more foolish.

‘If one takes lessons from a fine teacher, they can be enormously stimulating for both pupil and educator in my experience,’ she managed to defend herself as coolly as if she had no idea their three-way battle concealed a nasty set of double meanings that were all going straight over Lord Tedinton’s head.

‘Since I hear that your former governess used her position in a noble household to gain a rich and powerful husband, one can only suppose the less wary gentlemen among the
ton
need to be very careful indeed of those lessons, Miss Alstone,’ her ladyship said with a faux smile only her husband would ever trust.

‘Would it be her position as my governess, or that of the only grandchild and sole heiress to the Duke and Duchess of Devingham you intend to cite, my lady?’ Kate said with such apparent pleasantness she was sure she heard her adversary’s perfect white teeth snap together with impotent fury.

‘Since the odd creature foolishly renounced the latter, then it must be the former, and what a very fine scheme it turned out to be,’ Lady Tedinton said, letting temper flash out recklessly, as if she sensed her most coveted lover slipping out of her grasping fingers when Edmund’s eyes iced over in obvious contempt.

‘Sometimes,’ he said with such chilly calm even Kate shivered, ‘it takes an inveterate schemer to spot a careful plan where none ever existed, my lady.’

Since he also bowed to the apparently noble couple with ceremonious elegance and an empty social smile, Lord Tedinton laughed and seemed as unaware of his lady’s fury as he was that she was being subtly accused of being devious and spiteful.

‘Indeed it does—now, are you going to honour me with that dance or not, my dear?’ he said as brightly as if they were all getting along famously. ‘After all, you lured me away from our duty of greeting belated guests on the promise of one, so we’d best join the next set and let them see exactly why we deserted them, eh?’ he urged his wife indulgently.

Kate smothered a chuckle at her ladyship’s barely masked impatience with his doglike devotion. The obnoxious female was already watching them with ill-concealed fury; presumably she wanted Edmund to share that devotion and hated Kate for being there to rescue him from her witchy wiles. If only the deluded female knew how little Edmund actually wanted Kate herself now, the awful woman would probably triumph and crow unbearably over her, she decided, sincerely hoping she could escape such an unpleasant encounter when Edmund’s engagement to some dewy-eyed débutante was finally announced.

‘What did you ever see in her?’ she asked unwarily once their host and hostess had taken to the dance floor and the music was loud enough to mask her voice from an interested listener.

‘Since you refused to become my wife more times than either of us care to be reminded, you have renounced all right to ask me that impertinent question, Miss Alstone. So I suggest you keep your arrogant opinions and any other ill-informed and ill-natured gossip you have garnered about me to yourself in the future,’ he told her as icily as he’d just set down her ladyship and Kate knew she’d be on the verge of tears if she let herself risk such a public loss of control.

Biting her lower lip to keep it from wobbling, she nodded to him regally as words deserted her, but she refused to let her steps falter under his icy silver-green gaze, or show any sign that she was even conscious of Lady Tedinton’s darts of dark-eyed resentment, as that lady barely even bothered to pretend her attention was centred on her husband or the dance.

‘I wish you a good evening, my lord,’ she managed to say expressionlessly enough as they neared Eiliane, who was gossiping happily with one of her cronies on the dark rose-coloured sofa that now reminded Kate almost insupportably of their hostess for the night.

She curtsied to him with formal grace, he bowed with almost as distant a hauteur as he’d used to depress her ladyship’s pretensions and they parted before Eiliane had even spotted them returning together and been able to come up with a pretext for keeping them so.

‘This must be one of the most tedious parties either of us ever had the poor judgement to attend, Kate,’ her mentor greeted her cheerfully, once the friend she’d been so absorbed in pumping for the more interesting secrets of the
haut ton
had departed to bully some hesitant youth into dancing with her débutante daughter.

‘Indeed,’ Kate managed as she resorted to the small amount of cover allowed by her fan to conceal some of her confusion.

‘You’re overset, my love,’ Eiliane exclaimed, even more concerned when the hectic colour in Kate’s cheeks ebbed as she recalled Edmund’s cold fury with her at even the mention of his rumoured
amour
with their hostess.

‘I’ll do well enough once I’ve got my breath back,’ she managed to say calmly enough as she wondered why on earth she’d let her tongue run away with her in such an appalling fashion just because the very idea of Edmund making love to that vixen had made her feel ill.

‘Nonsense, we’ll call for our carriage and go home. I’ll be glad of an early night and you look as if you could do with a week of them all of a sudden.’

‘No!’ Kate thought of how insufferably Lady Tedinton would triumph and smirk if she was weak enough to turn tail and go home like a whipped dog after that obnoxious encounter. ‘I would rather stay a little longer and perhaps go on to Mrs Farnborough’s as we had planned. That last dance was quite a vigorous one and I shall be perfectly fine in just a moment.’

‘Will you, my love?’ Eiliane asked shrewdly and Kate wished her a little less acute for once, but hoped her friend had no idea of the real reason why she was feeling so out of sorts and low spirited.

‘Yes, I shall feel quite restored once I’ve had a rest. It would never do if I gained a reputation for giving myself die-away airs after all, for you’d never get me off your hands then,’ she joked weakly. She refused to even consider the fact that it felt as if she’d never look at another man for the rest of her life and feel the least desire to marry him, or even stand up with him for a waltz after her bittersweet ones with Edmund had spoilt her expectations of any other partner.

She certainly refused all invitations to waltz for the rest of the evening, but brazened out the remainder of the pantomime it rapidly became to her. Seeing the daughter of the house dance with the suitable young gentleman she and Eiliane managed to throw into her path helped and, from Lady Tedinton’s petulant expression, Kate thought her new enemy was probably having an even less satisfactory evening than she was. She allowed herself a brief smile of triumph when they finally left the Tedintons’ ballroom, quite certain there was a metaphorical dagger in her back this time.

Chapter Five

‘T
here it all is then, shipshape and neat as you like,’ Ben Shaw, the other half of the firm of Stone & Shaw Shipping that he and Kit Alstone, now the latest Earl of Carnwood, had set up long before his lordship even dreamt of inheriting the family wealth and titles, informed Edmund the next day. As this came after an exhaustive tour of the warehouses and the new enclosed dock Stone & Shaw were building by the side of the one they’d already outgrown, then a return to the elegant offices they now kept in the City for a résumé of the firm’s finances and projections for future profit, Edmund could only agree with him.

‘Even I can see that for myself, thank you,’ he told his formidable friend and business associate and wondered why Ben Shaw thought he needed reassurance that, while he was at the helm, Stone & Shaw would turn a fine profit for any investors lucky enough to be admitted into the select ranks of their stockholders.

‘If you didn’t come and see it all for yourself every now and again, I wouldn’t have much respect for you as a man or an investor, and I dare say we’d never have done business together in the first place,’ Ben told him.

‘So long as I don’t try to interfere in the way you run the enterprise from day to day, I presume?’

‘Aye,’ Ben admitted wryly, ‘you’ve the measure of me on that front, my fine young lord, and that’s plain to see.’

‘Not as young as I was,’ Edmund defended himself automatically, although such teasing bothered him much less than it had when he was first admitted into the august boardroom of Stone & Shaw, probably because he had been thought likely to become part of the family Ben Shaw protected and loved as fiercely as if they truly shared ties of blood, by marrying Kate Alstone.

Would his refusal to become part of that family, now he’d finally returned to the
ton
with the aim of taking a suitable wife who wasn’t Miss Alstone, mean an end to such an unexpectedly comfortable and profitable friendship? If so, he’d regret it deeply, Edmund decided, and settled down for an excellent glass of burgundy and a companionable cigarillo, determined to enjoy them and this unlikely friend while he still had the chance.

‘Speaking of your relative youth, or lack of it, when are you going to get down to the business of finally wedding and bedding that stubborn girl of ours?’ Ben came straight out and asked the question Edmund had been dreading all morning.

‘I’m not,’ he admitted bravely, considering Ben was the largest and most formidably tough man Edmund had ever encountered and could probably mill him down without even having to break his stride.

Coming under the steady examination of a pair of grey eyes that suddenly looked as if they were determined to see into the very depths of a man’s soul wasn’t the most comfortable experience of Edmund’s life, but he held his ground and managed not to sigh with relief when Ben sat back in his chair and watched him blandly instead of reaching for his neckcloth and attempting to strangle him with it. ‘Because?’ was all Ben said while considering this new state of affairs.

‘I can’t imagine a worse fate than being in love with a woman who merely tolerates me, especially if we were to be bound inextricably together for life, can you?’ Edmund replied, thinking of the Tedintons and barely managing to hide a shudder at the idea of being trapped inside a marriage like that one.

‘No,’ Ben admitted, ‘but it beats me why you’ve now decided she won’t do when last time you were in town you were so madly in love with her you couldn’t even consider wedding anyone else.’

‘Beats me as well, but maybe I finally saw the truth of the matter, before she got so bored with turning me down that she decided to accept me just for a change of scenery.’

‘I think you would have discovered you had underestimated her if she did so,’ Ben said sagely and Edmund wondered if the unconventional giant did indeed know Kate Alstone far better than he did. He’d once lavished such minute attention on her every mood and gesture that it seemed a sad reflection on Edmund’s judgement and so-called powers of observation if he’d failed to understand her after all that effort.

‘No, for I won’t ask her again, so the situation will not arise,’ he insisted, denying himself the luxury to hope that he was wrong about her after all. ‘I lost my taste for being a tame lapdog to her some time over these last three years.’

‘Then if she weds another man, you’ll be entirely indifferent?’

No!
The certainty of it roared through him like a sudden bitter tempest on a summer day. He’d hate her, and the cur she married, until his dying day.

‘Not entirely,’ he admitted out loud.

‘Not in the least, you young fool,’ Ben informed him roughly. ‘Had my Charlotte even threatened to promise herself to another man, I’d have torn him apart limb by limb and danced on his lousy body, then taken her to bed and loved her until she saw some sense. So either you don’t love Kate and never have, or you still do and owe it to yourself and her not to end your life in Newgate dangling on the end of a hangman’s rope. Although, I suppose in your case, my lord, it would be a jury of your peers and a silken noose at Tyburn instead of a hempen collar.’

Despite Ben’s mockery of his rank and what he’d make of the stern resolution Edmund had made to find himself a suitable wife this year and forget Kate Alstone if he ever found out about it, Edmund didn’t feel excluded from the select ranks of Ben Shaw’s friends. Either the unconventional giant didn’t believe Edmund could turn his back on his passion for the wretched female he’d once thought so firmly lodged in his heart he’d never shift her, or Ben was determined to stand his friend, irrespective of those other loyalties.

‘I’ve no taste for martyrdom,’ he admitted at last.

‘As well Kit Alstone’s occupied elsewhere, then, for he’s a damned idiot when it comes to his precious family and those he truly loves. He might decide you’ve dishonoured Kate’s good name and challenge you to a duel if you don’t wed her after all, for if ever I met a hot-headed fool when he’s in a temper, it’s my lord Carnwood.’

‘She’s the one who turned me down time and again, not the other way around,’ Edmund protested.

‘Well, I did say he was a damned fool, didn’t I?’

‘And you think me one as well?’

‘I never claimed to understand any of you great lords of creation and I can’t say that a closer acquaintanceship with the two of you has improved what I already had very much.’

‘And I don’t see how you intend to get away with that hackneyed line any more, considering we all know who your father is now,’ Edmund said with rash courage, for it was also common knowledge that Ben Shaw was no respecter of titles and ancient privilege.

‘Let’s hope the Marquis of Pemberley stays so busy with his new wife that he won’t interfere with your plans then, whatever they are, for he’s devilish fond of Kate as well,’ Ben warned, discussing his natural father with an ease neither of them had ever thought to hear when he’d still been so convinced he hated his lordly sire.

‘Aye, it’s bad enough having his wife’s attention fully fixed on me, without adding Lord Pemberley’s eagleeyed scrutiny to the mix—along with Lord and Lady Carnwoods’ thrown in for good measure,’ Edmund admitted ruefully.

‘Don’t delude yourself I’m too busy to interfere myself, will you?’

‘I never delude myself that badly, but what beats me is why,’ Edmund said.

‘Because I don’t believe you can really turn your back on the headstrong minx after you fell in love with the little devil at first sight, and don’t forget I was there to see you behaving like a mooncalf when it happened, so don’t try to deny it. I’ve met men who could cut themselves off from a woman they once cared for like that, as if she’d never existed or was cold in her grave, but you’re not one of them. Kate cares for you more than either of you seem to know, and I don’t think you’re fool enough to turn aside from the magnificent female she’ll become if she weds the right man, if only she’ll just throw caution to the wind and accept you at long last.’

‘Thank you for thinking I am that man, but I’d have to be fool enough to ask her first. So what holds her back from being that woman anyway then, Ben?’

‘And you once claimed to be in love with her?’ Ben said with a hint of scorn in his deep voice that made Edmund flinch, despite knowing it was Kate who had been so set against falling in love once upon a time rather than he. ‘I can’t but marvel at fine young gentlemen who call infatuation love, then flit from girl to girl, like strutting peacocks waving their tail feathers, with not a worthwhile thought in their silly heads.’

‘I certainly thought myself in love with her three years ago, until she convinced me it was hopeless; if that makes me vain and idle, then so be it.’

Ben gave Edmund another of those searching glances, then nodded as if making up his mind about something. ‘I never really thought you guilty of those vices, so Kate obviously made a fine fist of whistling your mutual happiness down the wind, but have you ever stopped being furious with her long enough to wonder why?’

‘No, I just realised my one-sided love would make our lives a farce, even if I managed to persuade her to say yes instead of no in some moment of weakness.’

‘If you really loved her, you wouldn’t have given up at the first hurdle.’

‘Hardly that.’ Edmund was stung into justifying himself as he looked back over that wild springtide when they’d both been painfully young and he’d been alternately effervescent with hope and cast into the depths of despair by Kate’s inability to see how finely suited they could be, in bed and out, if only she’d open her eyes and see the rich possibilities of it all.

‘I grant you she’s stubborn and can be damnably difficult to either drive or lead at times,’ Ben conceded.

‘Difficult? She’s nigh impossible,’ Edmund told him with a bitter exasperation he thought he’d conquered, but it seemed that his friend was right and he still had strong feelings toward Kate Alstone, even if foremost among them was currently vexation, closely followed by something darker and angrier and born of three wasted years apart that he refused to examine more closely right now.

‘There are one or two good reasons why she’s not exactly the easiest female to live with at times,’ Ben said almost apologetically, which in itself was enough to render Edmund momentarily speechless.

He shook his head over what those reasons might be and must have looked as puzzled as he felt. ‘I can’t imagine what they might be,’ he replied at last.

‘Then apply the brains God gave you and use your imagination, Edmund. Have you ever stopped to wonder how you might feel if you were brought up as a much-loved and indulged child of a happy family instead of a noble and indulged orphan? Then imagine that, one by one, you lost every person in the world who was dear to you one way and another, all but your little sister, whom you then had to fight like a tiger to protect from the suddenly hostile world around you. Kate and Isabella Alstone lost their parents, their brother and, to all intents and purposes, their elder sister in quick succession when Kate was little more than ten years old. Their grandfather, who should have protected them both and loved them all the more, was so wrapped up in his own selfish grief and fury at the fates that he abandoned those two little girls to the so-called care of his daughter, Lady Ennersley, and
her
daughter, and I wouldn’t trust either with my pet dog, let alone the comfort and education of two innocent and supposedly helpless young girls.

‘Take my word for it, Edmund, those two unnatural females are the worst harpies I ever met, and I was brought up near the rookeries and certainly know a harpy when I see one. They constantly belittled and even beat Kate and threatened to do the same to her little sister, except Kate used to get in their way so they couldn’t reach her, which of course meant that they chastised her instead. They also robbed them of all those two little girls held dear, refusing to let them even see Eiliane Rhys as she was then. I know my darling stepmama tried time and again to wrench them both out of their icy grasp, but old Carnwood ignored the plight of his own grandchildren and refused to do anything to stop his daughter or the devil’s spawn she gave birth to making their lives a misery for far too long.

‘Those two heartless witches told them he hated them for living when his son and then their brother died and maybe they were even right, for he never made any effort to look to their welfare until it became more comfortable to act on Eiliane’s constant nagging to at least send them to school rather than to refuse to do so. Their aunt and cousin also managed to convince Kate that nobody but the servants cared what became of them, and that even they only gave a damn what happened to them because they were paid to. If not for my darling wife, Shuttleworth, those girls would have remained alienated and adrift even at the school their old fool of a grandfather eventually sent them to, solely to get them out of his way and to stop Eiliane’s constant letters and enquiries about them, and calm the hornet’s nest she stirred up among his wider family to shame him into action. ‘Now
I
respect Charlotte’s judgement and my own instincts well enough to be certain there are very deep and passionate feelings hidden behind Kate’s cool façade, even if you can’t see it. To the wider world she’s a confident and desirable young beauty with riches and privileges at her fingertips most young women would envy her, but if that’s all you see when you look at her, Edmund Worth, maybe you don’t deserve her after all. You might be better off with a less complex and difficult woman if you’re merely in search of an easy life with a conformable wife who’ll exclaim over your cleverness hourly and give birth to a pack of spineless brats you can hand your wealth and titles on to before you finally die of boredom.’

Perhaps as a fortunate, if often lonely, orphan he
had
been guilty of envying Miss Katherine Alstone her loving family and so had failed to look beyond the cool indifference with which she met the eyes of the world. He knew better than to dismiss the counsel of a man he respected, Edmund decided, and neither could he ignore the opinion of Ben’s wife, a woman of such extraordinary character, integrity and unusual looks that he couldn’t help but admire her, from a safe distance. ‘Maybe I’m
not
the man you take me for, and perhaps I don’t deserve Kate Alstone as I should if I can’t gain her love, but I never managed to knock down that wall of touch-me-not indifference you claim she’s hiding behind, Ben, even when I was trying my damnedest to demolish it.’