One Final Season (8 page)

Then she heard Bestholme’s rather nasal tone after all and shuddered, but could hear little more until the furtive pair came closer to their side of the room and she hoped it wasn’t because of some give-away sound she or Edmund inadvertently let slip. Wondering why, if this was an assignation, they didn’t just shut the door and be done with it, or go and bother some other clandestine lovers with their unwanted presence, Kate shifted from one foot to the other to ease her cramped limbs and longed for them to leave.

‘I’m sure there’s nobody out there and I vow it’s like making an assignation with a little old lady who’s afraid of her own shadow, meeting you in secret and pretending all night that we mean nothing to each other, even if it does relieve the boredom of a very dull evening, but why won’t you do just this one little thing for me, George?’ Kate heard a distinctive husky voice murmur.

Whatever was Lady Tedinton doing here, risking whatever scraps of her tattered reputation she had left to her? And what on earth could she be asking an apology of a man like Bestholme to do for her? Deciding she was fated to overhear other people’s conversations tonight, Kate listened shamelessly, but when Edmund’s strong hand felt for hers in the darkness she clasped it gratefully and clung to the warmth and comfort he was silently offering.

Suddenly she didn’t need him to tell her the rumours of him and the unscrupulous woman standing only yards away from them being lovers were merely lies; a tale the peculiar female had no doubt thought up to puff up her own consequence. Not that Kate suddenly thought him a perfect Sir Galahad. No doubt he’d taken at least one or two willing beauties into his keeping in the past, since he wasn’t a monk or a saint, even if the mere thought of him doing so hurt far too much for comfort. There was a core of integrity about him that would not let him couple with a woman who held her husband and his family in such contempt that she didn’t care if most of society knew she’d cuckolded him repeatedly.

‘It’s a hell of a risk, Selene,’ Bestholme replied at last after considering whatever that ‘little thing’ might be for a very long moment to two listeners, forced to breathe so shallowly that Kate for one felt almost suffocated by her desire not to be heard and discovered by so unattractive a pair.

‘But I’m so very weary of warming an old man’s bed, Georgie. Please, say you’ll do this for me, lover? I so long to be free,’ her ladyship wheedled in a little-girl voice that somehow made their discussion all the more sinister.

‘No, I’m not risking putting my head in a noose to set you free in order for you to try to wed a man who has no more interest in you than a stone statue might have. Tedinton’s fortune would go to his heir anyway and I dare say your jointure would be tied up so tight not even the Lord Chancellor could get his hands on it. You’d end up worse off and alone, and I can’t afford to keep you, you’re far too extravagant and altogether costly a creature for me, my dear.’

‘That repellent brat is a minor and makes no effort to ingratiate himself with anyone and I’m certain you’re quite wrong about my jointure. Algy thinks the world of me and will leave me a rich woman.’

‘He might be a ridiculous old fool, but he’s far more possessive than you choose to realise. He won’t leave you a target for men like me after he’s gone, and the boy has a pack of embittered relations all longing to avenge the slights you’ve heaped on them these last ten years. The truth of it is that you’ve grown lazy, Selene. The world doesn’t revolve around you and what you covet for now, despite your belief you only have to scheme for whatever you want to get it.’

‘Just do this one little thing for me and I’ll make sure that high-nosed Alstone bitch has no alternative but to marry you,’ the woman cajoled and even as Edmund’s hand tightened on hers to offer comfort and denial of what the scoundrels were discussing so coldly, Kate had to put her other hand over her mouth to stop herself shouting out a protest at such a repulsive strategy and add the furious caveat that she wouldn’t marry Bestholme if her very survival depended on it.

‘And precisely how do you propose to do that?’ Bestholme asked.

‘I’ll whip up such a scandal she’ll beg you to wed her by the time I’ve finished.’

‘You don’t have the power, Selene my dear. Haven’t you realised by now that nobody as heedless as you are will ever hold sway among the
ton
? I doubt they mind your blatant peccadilloes with other men, or even the fact you married a fool for money for most of them did the same when it comes down to it, but you’re about as subtle as a town crier about your contempt for your husband and his cronies and he’s widely liked, for all he’s a senile old fool, and you, my dear, are not.’

‘Never mind preaching me a sermon and to hell with what a pack of pompous fools think, will you do it?’ Lady Tedinton replied in her lazy, malicious drawl as if they were discussing some minor favour instead of cold-blooded murder.

‘I’m still listening,’ Bestholme replied as if bored, but indulging her.

And so am I
, Kate was tempted to shout and step out of hiding to confound the unlovely pair, but she shuddered at the very idea of confronting such a sordid pair of rogues and wasn’t it as well to know exactly what they were planning?

‘Quiet,’ Edmund mouthed a warning against her ear, but how had he known?

Kate was so busy struggling against the incendiary effect of just his breath on her ear lobe, his mouth so close against her neck she could almost feel the words form on his lips, that she missed Lady Tedinton’s first few words and frowned fiercely at him in the pitch darkness. How could she be so wrapped up in her response to his closeness that even the small matter of the murder of Lord Tedinton faded against the fierceness of the fire Edmund had lit between them with those few passionate kisses?

‘All you’ll need to do is be found with the silly chit in a scandalously dishevelled condition, then you can inform everyone you were just celebrating your engagement a little prematurely,’ she was saying in a scornful tone. ‘Even Carnwood won’t gainsay you when the silly wench is obviously in need of a husband.’

‘And you think I’m incapable of thinking up such a simple scheme myself, Selene? I’m almost insulted,’ Bestholme responded in that cold, indifferent voice Kate now knew was not an affectation, but reflected his true self.

‘You’re still being dunned and always begging so-called loans off me to pay off your endless debts, so you evidently don’t have the nerve to carry it out.’

‘Whereas you have the nerve and not the brains?’

‘Think so if you dare,’ Lady Tedinton hissed and Kate shuddered at the casual evil of it all.

‘I do dare, but that’s why you keep coming back to me, isn’t it?’ Bestholme demanded and there was the sound of a brief scuffle and then a horribly needy moan as Lady Tedinton demonstrated the truth of what he said.

‘Take me now,’ she growled.

‘No, it’s too risky,’ her lover argued and gave a low chuckle that made Kate shiver at the cold lustiness of their loathsome need for each other, ‘and I like you desperate, Selene. By the time Tedinton has pawed you all the way home and tried to mount you like a man, you’ll be glad to meet me in that very convenient summerhouse he’s had built in the garden for us, if he only knew it, and feel a real man between your legs again at last.’

‘I hate you,’ she informed him throatily and there was another of those horrible interludes as Kate heard them kiss noisily and even caught the sound of fine cloth tearing as they went at each other like beasts.

‘I like the way you hate. Now tidy yourself up, then get back to the ballroom and persuade that old fool to take you home early. I’ll go the other way and come back through the garden, so nobody will know you were with me. It’s only the fact I’m supposed to be courting a fortune that keeps my creditors off my back as it is, so who knows what they might do if they found out about you, my lovely doxy?’

‘Foreclose?’ Lady Tedinton asked as if discussing the weather and Kate felt sickened at the sound of her lover’s flat-handed slap, presumably to somewhere that didn’t show. ‘I could come to you in the Fleet,’ she offered throatily, as if violence made her more eager and Kate wondered if she might disgrace herself and Edmund by actually being sick, then considered the consequences and managed to control her revulsion after all.

‘No, try informing on me to get me sent there and you’ll rapidly discover what a mistake you’ve made. Just behave yourself and go on keeping that senile old idiot sweet, then be where I told you to be by dawn, Selene, or I’ll take my pleasure elsewhere. There are plenty of younger and more obliging mistresses than you who can be had for a lot less trouble than you cause me,’ Bestholme warned carelessly.

‘I’ll be there,’ Selene Tedinton replied urgently.

‘I know,’ her repulsive lover drawled huskily and Kate heard his footsteps recede while the light faded as he ungallantly took his candle away, leaving his mistress still in the dark.

A few moments later there was the swirl of silk and satin and an exasperated curse, then softer footsteps receded towards the ballroom until all seemed silent and empty in the room beyond this airless office they’d been trapped in.

Chapter Eight

‘H
ave they really gone?’ Kate whispered as quietly as anyone could whilst making a sound at all.

‘I hope so, since you’re restless as a cat and nowhere near as silent,’ Edmund grumbled back.

‘I was quiet as a mouse and resent your aspersions, my lord,’ she informed him with as much dignity as a lady could assemble whilst shut in this cupboard of a room with the unbelievably infuriating Viscount Shuttleworth and forced to listen to murder and her own forced marriage being planned outside it.

‘Then for heaven’s sake do it softly for a change.’

Kate stamped a soft-soled foot on the runner and hoped Bestholme really had left and so wouldn’t hear the faint thump it made against the oak floor underneath. If being angry with Edmund for very little reason helped keep her from falling into hysterics over what she’d just overheard, then Kate was all for it.

‘Virago,’ he chided impatiently.

‘Tyrant,’ she flashed back at him.

‘Come on, I’ve had enough of lurking in the dark like a thief,’ he growled in an exasperated masculine rumble and towed her as abruptly out of their hiding place as he’d hauled her into it in the first place.

‘Just as well they really have gone,’ Kate carped even as she clung to his hand like a lifeline. ‘We’d have been in a fine pickle if he’d stayed here in order to give her a head start for the ballroom.’

‘He’s not that much of a gentleman and we’re in a fine pickle anyway,’ he told her seriously.

Thinking back over the last however long they’d now been away from the ballroom and propriety, Kate could only agree with him. ‘How are we going to stop them?’ she asked shakily. ‘We aren’t.’

‘Then you’re prepared to let that harpy and her disgusting paramour murder her husband without even lifting a finger to stop her?’

‘No.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’

‘
We
are going to do nothing. When you cease your incessant nagging and let me think, I dare say
I
will eventually find a way to stop them without a scandal.’

‘And I just sit about simpering while you stamp about brooding and proving what a clever gentleman you are?’

‘You’re a single female with a reputation to consider.’

‘Bah! If I were a married woman without any shreds of one left to me, you’d still find a way of excluding me,’ she fired back at him, struggling to free her hand from his at last, although it felt very comfortable in the misogynistic, contrary man’s hold and part of her really didn’t want to stand alone after such an evening.

‘Yes, I would,’ he told her implacably.

‘Why? I’m not a fool or a hysterical female given to fainting and die-away airs.’

‘No, just because you’re you,’ he told her rather obscurely, ‘and you’ll be busy,’ he added by way of a diversion. ‘Busy?’

‘Planning our wedding,’ he said and Kate felt the odd sense of detachment she’d been suffering ever since he’d stopped kissing her finally threaten to overwhelm her.

‘I thought you just said “our wedding”,’ she said faintly.

‘I did.’

‘But how can I do that when we aren’t going to be married, Edmund?’

‘Because we are, Kate.’

‘Solely because you just kissed me in a private room where nobody could see us? That’s complete nonsense and nobody will know what we’ve been doing if we don’t tell them.’

‘They will when we return to the ballroom together in a state of disarray and hint very strongly that we’ll shortly be announcing our engagement. I may despise Bestholme and his whore, but I’m not above borrowing that scheme now the devil’s in the driving seat.’

‘Nonsense, if you go ahead and I follow you into the ballroom a little later, nobody will dream we were together all this time, or that either of us heard anything we shouldn’t have tonight. Nobody need be any the wiser.’

‘You have a simple-minded faith in the gossips suddenly turning incurious about all you say and do that I could find almost admirable, Miss Alstone. If only it wasn’t so misplaced and silly,’ he told her, suddenly back to the aloof and superior Lord Shuttleworth he’d been towards her since returning to town and Kate refused to ask herself why his icy tone hurt and the hard look she could imagine in his eyes cut through her so coldly. ‘You have now been absent for far too long to just shrug it aside and pretend you’ve been innocently drifting about, and I don’t want those two black-hearted villains realising you overheard their assignation,’ he went on relentlessly and Kate felt her palm itch to slap some sense back into him.

‘Then what do you suggest that I do instead, you infuriating man?’ she gritted through clenched teeth.

‘Be thoroughly compromised by me, or prepare to embrace life as a social outcast,’ he informed her so laconically she felt that odd sense of not being quite connected with the real world threaten her again.

‘You can’t do this, Edmund, you’ll be dragooned into marrying me if we appear together in such a state as you suggest and we both know that you don’t want to wed me any more,’ she protested in a fierce whisper.

‘Better that than risk that unsavoury pair realising you were wafting about listening to out-of-the-way conversations, Kate,’ he declared not very encouragingly.

‘How flattering,’ she told him crossly, wishing she could turn her back on the infuriating monster and walk away.

‘Find a bit of steel to stiffen your backbone, for goodness’ sake, Miss Alstone,’ he chided like some large and handsome gadfly sent to plague her by a malign fate.

‘Why should I resign myself to such a fate when you obviously don’t have the least desire to marry me?’ Kate managed to say in defiance of her inner idiot, who was demanding stridently that she accept eagerly and be glad he felt honour-bound to marry her after being so sternly set against it.

‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ he said coolly and must have decided he was done with useless words and it was time for action before things got worse.

He hustled her out of a side door and into the garden proper before she could find breath or words to protest with and urged her inexorably closer to the long windows of his lordship’s fine ballroom, but not close enough for propriety, of course. The further they got from that darkened room the better, even if it was leading them closer to marriage, Kate decided numbly, and cursed herself for not fighting this more strongly. It was hard to fight temptation when it beckoned so wickedly.

‘You could leave me here alone,’ she whispered softly in defiance of her own eagerness for any sort of marriage with him, even this forced one.

‘So you could be quizzed from now until next Christmas on the identity of your cowardly lover?’ he murmured back, and anyone watching them would probably mistake them for fellow moon-led idiots lured out here by such promising darkness, she decided crossly. ‘Go back in that room alone after spending such a long time away from it and your chaperon, and you’ll be ruined without anyone having to plot against you,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘and in acute danger once that harpy realises you could have overheard her plot to murder her husband, whilst you wandered about in the shadows so carelessly that anything might have happened to you.’

‘And being a perfect gentle knight you’re sacrificing yourself instead?’

‘No, being a pattern-card of perfection was so dull that I gave it up,’ he declared flippantly.

‘Along with me?’ she murmured, then could have kicked herself for letting him know how much his recent rebuffs had hurt her.

‘I thought I’d save myself the pain of enduring another crushingly polite refusal,’ he told her and Kate hurt at the careless apology in his deep voice. ‘I dare say marrying you won’t be so bad once I get used to the idea again,’ he added.

‘And if you think I’ll stand by idly while you have affairs with other women you will be sorely disappointed, Edmund Worth,’ she informed him in a fierce undertone.

‘That’s entirely up to you, dear Kate. If you keep me otherwise occupied, I probably won’t have the time or the opportunity to stray,’ he observed and silenced her with another mind-stealing kiss.

Furious, she did her best to bite him, so he deepened his kiss and dared her give whatever she might have had the wits to withhold until now. Defeated by her own need of him, her body seemed to meld itself to Edmund’s powerfully lean one of its own accord and wild heat burst into instant life again. She angled her wanton mouth to his in a way she should think appallingly fast but didn’t.
Never mind fast
, her deepest buried instincts warred with her training,
he’ll still marry you now, even if he doesn’t really want to
.

She couldn’t make herself break away, even with that chilly thought in the back of her mind, but she clenched her hands at her sides and refused them the luxury of his lithely muscled body. It didn’t abate the searing wildfire flaming through her like a force of nature, but it made her feel a little better about herself and the self-control she’d once prided herself upon.

Unimpressed, his hands ran over her in an unashamed exploration and she loved it. She’d always denied being capable of deep feeling, in her ignorance of how elemental and out of control she would be with the right man. Now he let his wicked hands find a way between them, despite her body’s ridiculous efforts to plaster itself against him like a poultice, and Edmund ran an approving thumb over a raised nipple that immediately hardened and begged for more without permission from her. She had to fight not to moan and cry out a frantic demand for more, for everything. If not for the half-painful gnaw of need, the half-wondrous goad of heat at the heart of her, of course she would put distance between them and escape the purely physical spell he’d cast over her, yes, that was just what she would do, in a minute.

This
was the wild and passionate Kate he’d always known existed beneath that façade of serenely composed beauty. Edmund managed to find enough willpower from somewhere to put a distance between them and convince himself painfully that he’d discovered enough about her most secret passions for now, in public or almost public as they were. He forced his hands away from her delicious body before his fascination with it broke his self-control. She was flushed and breathless, her soft gasps for air drawing his attention to her lush, but firm, young breasts, rising and falling rapidly against the low neckline even a single lady could wear by her fourth Season without being considered intolerably fast.

Her eyes were wild and more beautiful than he could ever recall seeing them even in his dreams as they blazed with feelings he would give half his fortune to read fully. Her lips parted as she fought to get her breath back and his eyes lingered on them with hungry fascination as she slicked them with her sharp little tongue. If he wasn’t to throw himself on her and ravish her on the lower terrace of his hostess’s garden, he must get their engagement rolling relentlessly on before she lost that starry-eyed, just-kissed look and remembered all the doubts and fears that inhabited her contrary thoughts whenever he wasn’t in a position to haze them with merciless passion. An image he’d best not dwell on if he wanted to get the next few minutes over with without causing an even bigger scandal than the one he had in mind.

‘Come,’ he ordered brusquely as he towed her back to the shark-infested waters of the
ton
, before she balked.

‘I still can’t see why…’ Miss Alstone seemed about to take over from his wild Kate, so Edmund summarily tugged her into the ballroom and put an end to her nonsense.

‘Good heavens!’ Cromer exclaimed at the sight of a stormy-eyed, very thoroughly kissed Kate on Edmund’s arm and just managed to suppress a grin. ‘They’re quite right about that dangerous moonlight,’ he mumbled as he stepped back to let the company see what it had done to so cool and collected a couple.

‘Good heavens, indeed, and yes, very right,’ Edmund replied calmly.

‘I don’t think they had much to do with it,’ his Kate mumbled tartly and Edmund wondered if he was suffering from shock and hallucinating when she didn’t just tear herself away from him and flounce off. It wasn’t every day a man heard murder plotted, and with Kate pressed so close he’d struggled to listen to a word of it. He’d wanted her so mercilessly and now he nearly had what he’d longed for so deeply within his grasp at long last, what had happened so far tonight almost seemed unreal to him for a few moments.

‘I hope you’ll congratulate us, Cromer, for I refuse to wait any longer after three years of waiting for a yea instead of a nay, even if her former guardian and brother-in-law hasn’t agreed to it yet,’ he said with a possessive look at Kate.

‘Carnwood cutting up rough, is he?’ Cromer asked obligingly, managing to look astonished while his eyes told them he didn’t believe a word.

‘You see? Everyone thinks I’m your ideal husband,’ he whispered in Kate’s ear and felt her tense, as if she might jump away and deny every last truthful hint of how they’d been amusing themselves since they left the ballroom that he was building up so carefully. ‘Try it and I’ll kiss you right here,’ he threatened softly.

‘I hate you,’ she told him between clenched teeth and he met the heat and fury of her furious glare with a satisfied smile.

‘Hate away, my fierce Kate,’ he murmured and heard a sentimental sigh from somewhere close by.

‘Mountebank!’ she condemned in a spitting undertone, but still made no effort to pull away or give his apparent devotion the lie.

Looking as if he was trying very hard to come down to earth, Edmund considered his friend’s previous question. ‘No,’ he replied to the clever lead, ‘but I can’t tear myself away long enough to go up to Derbyshire and ask him.’

‘Should think you’ve obtained his permission often enough in the past,’ Cromer said.

‘So I keep telling Miss Alstone, but it took me until tonight to convince her I can’t endure to wait and be wed with the full fanfare and fuss of a grand wedding. I’ll have to go and beard Carnwood in his lair now she’d agreed at last that our wedding must be soon, then maybe we can get on with being my lord and my lady at long last.’