One Final Season (9 page)

‘Short notice, gossips bound to twitter like starlings in an apple orchard,’ his taciturn friend warned sagely and Edmund gave an expressive shrug before looking significantly about him at the eagerly whispering throng.

‘I’ve waited long enough,’ he said loudly enough for most to hear him and enjoy a fresh wave of delighted speculation.

He smiled wolfishly at Kate, hoping his eyes conveyed a warning to back him up now this was all but irrevocable. She really had the most extraordinary eyes, they were truly ultramarine, he decided distractedly, savouring the word on his tongue as he almost murmured it aloud. Very blue, he translated, and was in grave danger of falling into the wondrous depths of them and not caring where it took either of them. Most blue, he corrected in his head, and freed himself of their spell just in time to stop himself kissing her passionately in public.

‘Well, here’s a fine to do,’ Lady Pemberley observed, apparently torn between laughter, delight and a chaperon’s duty as she hurried towards them. ‘Impatient children,’ she chided as if mildly exasperated.

‘You could hardly expect me to be patient when Miss Alstone finally agreed to wed me at last, my lady,’ he responded, fervently hoping Kate would play up to his act and not revert to that contained sceptical aloofness she used so often to set the world at a distance just at the wrong moment.

‘Yes,’ she managed rather lamely instead, ‘his lordship is
most
impatient.’

‘So I see,’ Eiliane Pemberley responded drily, with a comprehensive scrutiny of Kate’s wildly curling hair and scandalously creased gown before her sharp eyes met Edmund’s with a challenge.

‘Perhaps we should send that notice to the
Morning Post
and so on soon, Lady Pemberley?’ he asked with apparent satisfaction before she could speak it.

‘I believe that might be for the best,’ her ladyship agreed blandly, despite the dagger look his Kate shot her. ‘Imperative even,’ Eiliane added implacably, giving Kate just as sharp a warning look in return. ‘It’s high time we ordered Kate’s bride clothes to be made up and St George’s, Hanover Square, isn’t at all easy to book at this time of year, even for you and this haughty young woman, if that’s where you decide you both want to marry in the end.’

‘I’m not haughty,’ Kate protested hotly.

‘No,’ he drawled, caressing her hand as it rested in his with a rightness he hoped she wouldn’t deny any more, even when they were alone. Playing with her gloved fingers absently, he smiled with sleepy-eyed approval. ‘You’re very far from it if I remember rightly, and I have an excellent memory,’ he murmured intimately.

‘Forgive us, ladies and gentlemen, but all will become clear to you when a certain announcement is published shortly. I cannot say more now, I fear,’ Edmund announced to nobody in particular with as elegant and ironical a bow as a gentleman might with his tawny locks still awry from his lady’s fingers and his neckcloth askew.

‘Since you wicked children decided to pre-empt proper formalities, perhaps you should have your betrothal dance now?’ Eiliane suggested just loudly enough for the cool clear sound of her voice to rise over the hubbub.

Lady Wyndover looked as if she might be considering the unlikelihood of it all, then nodded, before indicating the orchestra should play a waltz for her scandalous guests. Kate let her steps shadow Edmund’s as closely as usual. She was so confused by the suddenness of it all she couldn’t say what her feelings were at gunpoint, but most of their fellow guests evidently thought it a love match.

‘Keep dancing,’ Edmund scolded softly as her steps began to falter as weariness threatened to make her wilt like an overheated lily. ‘Don’t you dare flag and let Bestholme and that witch suspect everything is not exactly as it should be between us,’ he berated in a stern whisper.

Sympathy might have made her collapse in his arms and require to be taken home, but he could be a little gentler, Kate decided. He was looking at her now as if it was only a matter of time before she swooned or did something equally feminine and therefore foolish, so she glared at him instead.

‘You’re the most irritating male I ever came across, Edmund Worth,’ she informed him even as she smiled up at him as if the sun rose and set in his eyes.

‘At least I’m pre-eminent at something, then,’ he drawled back, as if he found her stubbornness and bad temper mildly irritating and amusing all at the same time.

‘I really and truly hope that you’re one of a kind then, my lord, for I’d hate to think the human race was afflicted with two such.’

‘Didn’t your long-suffering relatives teach you it’s rude to abuse your acquaintances in such a forthright fashion, Kate?’

‘You’re not an acquaintance, you’re my betrothed.’

‘I can see why you put off gaining one until now if this is how you intend to treat me from now on,’ he countered, giving her a supposedly warm smile even while his cool willow-green eyes warned her he wasn’t joking.

‘I could jilt you at the altar if you’d like me to,’ she offered half-seriously.

‘Banish the idea from your mind right now that you can escape this marriage, Kate, or I’ll walk off and leave you standing here with your mouth open. You made an idiot of me once too often three years ago for me to let you do it again.’

‘I never meant to make you feel an idiot then, my lord,’ she said and a heavy feeling of regret chilled the pit of her stomach as he looked unconvinced.

He looked at her austerely, as if seriously wondering what she was currently using for brains. ‘That’s moot, but there’s no going back for either of us after tonight, so all we can do is get on with it,’ he said brusquely.

‘I’ll do my best to make you a good wife,’ she said stiffly.

‘And that’s all a convenient husband can ask of his lady, is it not?’ he seemed unable to resist saying as the dance finally came to an end and he bowed over her gloved hand as gallantly low as if he was utterly besotted with her and thought her a queen amongst women.

‘Quite,’ she replied repressively and just about managed not to kick him soundly on the shin, or tread very deliberately on his toe.

The noble effort it cost her must have shown on her face if only because he was close enough to see more than anyone else. He grinned at her, that old, infectious grin she’d once taken so carelessly for granted, and it gave her a bittersweet heartache for the ease there could have been between them, if only she’d been less of a fool when they’d first met.

‘I wish we could be friends again,’ she said wistfully, only to see laughter fade from his unusual silvery green eyes and the chill return, as if she’d no right to ask.

‘I want you, Kate. I’ll be faithful for as long as you return the compliment, but I’ll never be your lapdog again.’

‘I can’t imagine you as anyone’s willing slave nowadays, my lord, but I would have us be comfortable together at least.’

‘Do you think your elder sister and her husband find mere “comfort” in their marriage?’ he asked her as if the very word offended his mouth.

‘No, I think they each consider that the sun rises and sets in the other,’ she informed him steadily, ‘but I doubt they’d thank me for saying they were anything so mundane as merely comfortable together.’

‘Then why should we settle for less?’

‘Because we’re not in love,’ she was goaded into declaring exasperatedly.

‘My point exactly,’ he murmured in her ear as they returned to Eiliane’s side and she couldn’t glare into his challenging eyes, for fear of letting the world see this wasn’t the fairytale romance they’d just been at such pains to pretend it was.

‘You don’t fight fair, my lord,’ she murmured instead as she met his eyes with every appearance of dewy-eyed wonder.

‘No,’ he breathed for her ears alone as he raised his hand to let it whisper down her cheek in a regretful, lover’s salute as if he couldn’t bear to completely let her go whatever the conventions, ‘that would be because I fight to win, Miss Alstone.’

‘Win what?’ she asked with genuine puzzlement as he let his hand drop and she shivered as her every nerve seemed on the alert and desire almost made her shake with the effort of resisting a foolish driving compulsion to be in his arms again.

‘You, Miss Katherine Alstone, body, heart and soul,’ he murmured as he once more leaned towards her as if he might kiss her and Kate was sure she heard several of the ladies huddled nearby to get the best view of them sigh sentimentally.

‘First you’d have to want me,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, I most certainly do, sweet Kate, make no mistake about that,’ he drawled and she could see the truth of it in the flash and burn of such raging hot desire in his eyes that it made them look intensely green all of a sudden.

Involuntarily her mouth opened and her lips were so dry she just had to lick them, watching him gaze at her tongue as if he wanted to catch it with his own and then… Best not to think of that then, not with such a very interested audience hoping to see the self-possessed Miss Alstone melt into boneless idiocy in front of their eyes.

‘I suppose we’ll see you tomorrow then, my lord?’ she said foolishly, so muddled by the mix of fiery passion with that edge of angry desire that kept flaring between them that falling back on platitudes was the only option open to her.

‘You can be very sure of that,’ he replied, ‘but the night isn’t over yet.’

‘It is for me. Do you think we could leave now, Eiliane? I’m so very tired,’ she turned and asked her friend, eager for some peace and quiet in which to gather her scattered thoughts.

‘And at least I can accompany you home without arousing speculation, now we’re engaged all bar the shouting,’ Edmund said with an ironic smile.

‘Oh, I suspect there might still be shouting,’ Lady Pemberley said, evidently considering Kit Alstone’s reaction to the news that his sister-in-law and former ward had behaved so scandalously. ‘But, yes, we can go home now and your escort is always welcome, Lord Shuttleworth, especially in these strange and uncertain times.’

‘What it is to be wanted,’ he said with a smug look of
faux
self-importance that made Kate smile and Lady Pemberley inform him she’d always known he wasn’t the straightforward young man he too often pretended to be.

‘If I were that simple, I’d have stayed on my estates nursing my broken heart and missed the prospect of a lifetime of marital strife with your lovely charge, Lady Pemberley,’ he parried lightly.

‘Just as well you didn’t, then,’ Eiliane replied as he handed her into the luxurious carriage her husband had brought on the occasion of their marriage.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said with such cordiality Kate eyed him with suspicion.

‘My love?’ he prompted with such bland patience she once more felt her foot itch to kick him as she looked at him with a sharp question in her eyes. ‘Could you get into Lady Pemberley’s splendid equipage before the horses collapse from boredom or one of us catches an inflammation of the lungs, do you think?’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ she replied, doing so with such haste she nearly fell over her own feet. ‘I’m so clumsy that I seem to constitute a danger to myself and others tonight. It really is most irritating.’

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured as he managed to climb into the carriage with all the grace she’d failed to find. ‘I quite like it, and perhaps it’s a sign that I’ve finally knocked that exquisite balance of yours out of kilter at long last.’

‘And that’s something about tonight’s events I certainly need to hear about in more detail, my lord,’ Eiliane informed him in her sternest chaperon’s voice.

‘Later, if you please, my lady. We have a great deal to explain and only a short carriage ride to do it in, if you won’t consider letting me come inside to enlighten you properly when we get there,’ he cautioned and Kate could feel the tension in his powerful body as he sat opposite her, but evidently couldn’t bring himself to relax into the generous squabs of Eiliane’s carriage.

Chapter Nine

‘I
f I were a proper chaperon I’d probably occupy the whole drive back with a stern lecture about your disgraceful behaviour,’ Eiliane said ruefully and then fell silent.

Kate thought of all that had happened since she’d left her temporary home tonight and all hope of relaxation left her in a heavy sigh she hoped was inaudible above the noise of the horses’ hooves and the rattle of iron-rimmed wheels on cobbled streets. Obviously not, because Edmund’s strong fingers reached for hers and his hand engulfed hers to offer simple comfort before the sound of it had hardly left her lips. She felt at least some of the horror of hearing two conscienceless rogues scheme murder, then almost couple with each other, subside under the warm reassurance of his touch as he massaged the chill stiffness from her fingers.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured as they drew up outside the Marquis of Pemberley’s town mansion.

‘No need for thanks when I intend enjoying a very thorough exploration of everything about you before we’re very much older, my Kate,’ he breathed into her ear before he jumped down to hand them down with such elaborate ceremony she wondered crossly if he was trying to infuriate her, or if it just came naturally to him.

Considering the smug look he gave her after she stiffened her shoulders and marched up the shallow steps in front of him, she concluded he knew exactly what he was doing. Nobody watching them would suspect she’d suffered anything more shocking than an impetuous engagement tonight, and she swept into the cosy and private sitting room Eiliane had annexed for her own use, unsure whether to be grateful or furious that he’d manipulated her so easily once again.

‘You’re clearly a master of strategy, my lord,’ she informed him when the door was finally shut and that fact alone made her realise that Eiliane already thought of him as family.

‘Edmund,’ he corrected as if it really mattered. ‘But I’d never lay claim to so much guile,’ he denied with an unreadable look she found oddly disturbing.

‘Never mind that, I demand an account of your adventures,’ Eiliane said with a sharp look at Kate’s dishevelled gown and Edmund’s disordered locks, ‘or should I say
mis
adventures?’

‘The latter,’ he affirmed. ‘Tonight Kate decided to wander off and explore Lord and Lady Wyndover’s personal rooms, with far too little consideration for their privacy I feel I must point out, as that fact seems to have escaped her.’

‘I
was
being harried unmercifully by Mr Bestholme,’ she argued.

‘You could have looked to me to remedy that, but you risked far worse instead of lowering your pride. I found her sitting in his lordship’s book room in the pitch dark, Lady Pemberley, where we had a slight altercation before I heard someone padding furtively about in the proscribed fashion for the evening,’ he explained, then raised an eyebrow at Kate as if waiting for her to argue. He nodded when she didn’t, as if that confirmed an idiocy she plainly couldn’t defend and proceeded to explain whose tryst they had overheard to her shocked chaperon.

‘Oh, heavens above,’ Eiliane gasped, ‘what did the two unprincipled rogues say while Kate was listening to every word?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Eiliane, I’m not a child,’ Kate protested.

‘You are an unwed female,’ Edmund answered as if that explained everything.

‘But not an unfledged one,’ she argued.

‘So you might think, Miss Alstone, but I beg to differ.’

‘Really, my lord? Pray what would you ask of a
fully
fledged lady then?’ she asked with as much irony as she could fit into a few short words.

‘I’ll tell you after we’re married.’

He was undoubtedly the most infuriating, self-satisfied, would-be superior male she’d ever come across and with a brother-in-law and guardian like Kit and his best friend, Ben Shaw, lurking like a man-mountain in the background, she’d met a fair few of them.

‘Never mind quarrelling, what did they actually say?’ Eiliane asked and Edmund explained distractedly, as if his mind was suddenly busy elsewhere. ‘What a truly awful person that woman must be at heart,’ Eiliane said hollowly.

‘My reaction exactly,’ Kate said, getting to her feet with a resentful glare at her newly affianced husband, who ignored her and solicitously poured Eiliane a restorative glass of brandy.

Considering the stark contrast between his gentle way with Eiliane and his abrasive manner towards her when she’d actually heard the whole horrid conspiracy for herself, Kate blinked back inexplicable tears and eyed his broad back resentfully.

‘I should have chosen my words more carefully,’ he reproached himself as he handed Eiliane the glass.

‘I don’t see how it could be wrapped up comfortingly, but could you see them, Kate?’ Eiliane asked shakily.

‘No, because, if you remember, I was immured in pitch darkness in little more than a cupboard with Lord Shuttleworth,’ Kate explained patiently. ‘If I had known how densely populated his lordship’s book room might become tonight, I would have stayed in the ballroom and endured the evening more gladly.’

‘A lot of nonsense is talked about premonitions and portents,’ Edmund said rather grumpily, as if hurt by the idea that she would rather have come home tonight a free woman than his affianced bride in all but a few formalities.

‘Forgive me for finding my situation less than enjoyable, my lord,’ Kate replied sarcastically, for suddenly she felt very tired and didn’t know how much longer she could endure his impatience when all she wanted to do was nuzzle her head against his shoulder and seek any comfort he cared to give her.

‘I might if I wasn’t part of it,’ he explained with a rueful look that understood too much about her ragged emotions.

‘I didn’t ask you to declare yourself in front of several hundred people,’ she defended herself wearily.

‘I suppose you expected me to just abandon you to the condemnation of all those who thought you’d gone sneaking off to meet some lover? I was the one who compromised you, after all.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said, trying her best to get him to see that it was his loss of freedom she found so intolerable, not her own.

‘That’s odd, because it felt as if it was to me,’ he said with a flash of sardonic humour that warmed her, despite her resolution to resist his charm, at least for the rest of the evening.

‘Aha!’ Eiliane said with what sounded to Kate like rather a contented sigh for a supposedly outraged chaperon to utter. ‘So you forgot to tell me the most pertinent details of the whole affair, did you? Somehow I thought you might have done.’

‘Maybe,’ Kate admitted warily, seeing the I-told-you-so glint in her friend’s eye.

‘Almost certainly, considering the state you were both in when you appeared out of the garden looking as if you’d taken up where Adam and Eve left off, Katherine Margaret Alstone,’ Eiliane scolded.

‘We are engaged,’ Kate defended herself recklessly, ‘so surely Edmund and I can kiss each other without you and half the
ton
getting all of a-flutter about it.’

‘You were certainly
not
engaged, nor anywhere near it until tonight and well you know it, my girl.’

‘That’s a private matter between the two of us, don’t you think, Lady Pemberley?’ Edmund said gravely and Kate wondered how her friend felt about being on the chilly side of his exquisite manners for once.

‘It might be if you hadn’t made such a fine show of it in public, young man,’ Eiliane parried bravely, but Kate could have told her from the resolute set of his jaw that she’d get no more from Edmund about their more intimate affairs.

‘Do you actually want us to wed, your ladyship?’ he asked coolly.

‘It’s been my dearest wish since I first set eyes on you together, my lord, for some odd reason that escapes me just at the moment,’ Eiliane admitted.

‘Then why not leave best alone, ma’am?’

‘Because Kate and her sisters are the daughters of my heart, despite their headstrong ways and knack of getting into any trouble that’s brewing.’

‘And we all love you so very much, Eiliane,’ Kate assured the woman who’d done her best to mother her since her own mama died.

‘Something in my eye,’ Eiliane explained gruffly to Edmund as she returned Kate’s fierce hug. ‘I hope you intend to make her very happy, my lord.’

‘It will be my duty as well as my pleasure,’ he promised quite solemnly.

‘Then I’m content,’ she said, as if he’d just made a vow she intended to hold him to for the rest of her life, and that she might even come back and haunt him if he broke it after she’d gone.

Edmund nodded and tried not to wish Kate was resting her fiery head so trustingly against his shoulder instead of Lady Pemberley’s. Maybe one day she would be that unguarded with him, but for now he had her promise to wed him, and her passionate response to every sensual demand he’d made so far.

‘You should go to bed and rest,’ he told her abruptly and wasn’t surprised when she raised her head to glare at him as if he’d suggested she take poison.

‘Why?’ Kate asked, standing up in order not to be towered over. ‘I’ve only endured the revolting attentions of a fortune hunter, overheard his repellent clandestine assignation with a so-called lady of my acquaintance and then been forced to listen to their murderous schemes, before narrowly escaping ruin by a man who would rather marry virtually any other woman in England than me. So the last thing I want is to sleep while you and Eiliane plan my life without so much as a by-your-leave.’

‘I wouldn’t like to wed any of the royal princesses,’ he said with unpardonable levity and Kate seriously considered throwing the contents of Eiliane’s glass at him, since her friend had left it untouched, but she decided he didn’t deserve even that much acknowledgement of his ill-timed humour and drank it off in one swallow instead. ‘Can’t take her drink very well, can she?’ he observed as Kate choked and spluttered on that reckless gulp of fine cognac and incandescent fury.

‘I should be thankful for small mercies if I were you,’ Eiliane advised sagely, ‘and if you intend to go on like this, my lord, I’d learn to duck very swiftly indeed if I were you,’ she warned, with a cautionary look at Kate’s flushed cheeks.

‘I shall not lower myself to throw anything at
him
,’ Kate snapped even as she felt the warmth of the strong spirit seep into her cold belly. ‘He thinks he’s going to get his way by making me so furious I’ll forget to be horrified by what I overheard tonight and storm off to bed so you can arrange my wedding without any interference from me, and it’s
my
future, too,’ she ended. Yet even she had trouble following the logic of her own argument.

‘Did it work?’ Edmund asked with what looked like academic interest.

‘Nearly,’ she gritted between white teeth and forced them apart as she willed her hot temper to die down and her fists to unclench. She
wouldn’t
be ruled by her passions. No, that hope didn’t work after tonight. She’d lived by them all evening and there was little prospect of getting them back in a neat box and throwing away the key.

‘I’m perfectly recovered now, so shouldn’t we be discussing this rationally?’ she managed to ask as if she thought it was true.

‘I suggest we send appropriate notices to the newspapers and hope Carnwood won’t take offence when I explain what took place tonight,’ Edmund said far too calmly, considering she was still in turmoil.

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it,’ she snapped.

‘Planning to jilt me even before I manage to get our names on a special licence, my dear?’ he asked and met her eyes with a bland look before shaking his head. ‘Not possible, I fear. We could have a pair of potential murderers on our tails as well as an assured scandal if we don’t go through with it.’

‘This isn’t what I meant by rational discussion of our future and you know it.’

‘I long ago gave up on being rational with you, my dear, so let’s return to our plans, shall we?’

‘We could if only I knew what they were.’

‘I suggest getting ourselves up the aisle before the tabbies have time to work themselves into a frenzy and Bestholme realises we might not have been seducing each other the entire time we were absent from the ballroom tonight should be our priority.’

‘And if he does realise it, then it will all be for nothing.’

‘Oh, surely you exaggerate? I can say without undue vanity that you’ll be marrying to advantage before the end of this Season. Which is exactly what you planned to do at the outset of it, rather than endure ending another Season unwed, is it not, Miss Alstone?’ he observed coolly and Kate blushed under his ironic gaze.

Was she so transparent, so lacking all subtlety? She felt bitterly ashamed of her scheme to secure a convenient husband even as she was asking herself why. After all, arranged marriages were often made between eligible
partis
—except they were usually made by the families and not the victims. Now why had that damning word suddenly sprung into her mind?

‘I would have been just as advantageously wed three years gone by if you’d had your way at the time,’ she pointed out.

‘Oh, the follies of extreme youth, Lady Pemberley,’ he said, unfairly dragging Eiliane into their argument and Kate had no doubt which side of the line that turncoat would jump. ‘Moonstruck young cubs such as I was then should be ordered out into the world to discover the realities of life, instead of being left to make idiots of themselves at the feet of capricious young ladies, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe if the Continent had been less chaotic, we could have sent you on a grand tour until Kate came to her senses,’ Eiliane replied.

‘Traitor! We could send him on one now instead,’ Kate muttered darkly.

‘In the hope you’d escape your fate when I came back?’ he said sardonically.

‘No, in the hope you wouldn’t come back at all.’

‘This is no time for petty quarrels,’ Eiliane chided and Kate fumed all the more.

‘No, we have the rest of our lives to indulge in them after all,’ Edmund replied.

‘How I look forward to it,’ she replied with an artistic sigh.