The Honorable Heir (9 page)

“You want to take advantage of me to finally win a game.”

Pierce snorted. “It would be a fine change. But first I want you to tell me what you were doing out and about in the snow, and
here,
of all places.”

Tristram shrugged, winced and laid his head back far enough that he was looking at the crown molding on the wall. “I like the snow, especially when it’s fresh. As for here? Will you believe coincidence?”

“No. And neither will Georgette.” Pierce removed the dishes from the breakfast tray and began to set up the chessboard. “You paid a late call on Catherine the instant you could get away from us. I’d like to say it is none of my business, but since my sister has decided she would like to be Lady Tristram, I’m a little concerned about your interest in the lovely widow.”

Tristram was more than a little concerned about his interest in the lovely widow.

“I’ll take white this time,” he said by way of telling his friend he wouldn’t discuss Catherine.

They began to play, but Tristram forgot half his moves and lost the first game far too quickly. Instead of concentrating on the game, Tristram thought about finding Catherine there when he gained consciousness, and further back, the thrill of receiving a message saying she wanted to see him. She didn’t even know he’d gotten Georgette to visit, and Catherine asked him to call. Foolish of him to go dashing through the snow, but...

“You’re not paying attention.” Pierce began to pack up the chess set. “Mrs. VanDorn has told me by way of the butler that I may come anytime I like, so I’ll leave you to rest and return later.” He went to the door, but paused. “I’m not mentioning this incident to Georgette. She’ll be on the next train running from the city and I don’t think you want that right now.”

Tristram rested after Pierce left, and woke with a dull throb in his head instead of crippling pain—an improvement. Sometime while he had slept, a footman had appeared. The man sprang up the moment Tristram opened his eyes and offered to fetch shaving water and fresh clothes.

“The ladies would like to see you, my lord. Can you walk as far as the conservatory?”

“I can.”

It took him several minutes longer than the walk of forty feet should have, vertigo halting his steps. The view of snow-clad trees and a lake glazed with ice made the effort worth the journey.

As did the appearance of Catherine in the doorway.

She wore a dark blue dress trimmed in white lace around the high neck, and she carried a tray from which wafted the scent of chocolate. “My favorite snowy-day drink.” She set the tray on the table. “Estelle will be here in a few minutes. She and Florian have some notion that you need soothing music to heal your head. But I asked her to wait so I can talk to you about last night.” She hesitated a moment near him, then sat on the sofa cushion beside him. “If you don’t mind.”

She appeared so domestic, so calm, so lovely, he wanted to shove the distressing notion of her as a thief out of his head once and for all.

“I do not.” On the contrary, he liked having her near more than he should. He turned to face her. “I haven’t changed my mind about what I told you. Someone did strike me from behind.”

“But who and why? And why have you told me and no one else?”

“How do you know I’ve told no one else?”

“Pierce Selkirk would have the police here thinking he could blame us for it.”

“Which is why I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Again, why?”

He looked into her beautiful eyes and the answer caught in his throat. He swallowed and shook his head.

“Shall I pour some chocolate for you?” She reached for the tall silver pot.

“No, thank you. I feel bad enough accepting your hospitality under the circumstances.”

“I think the Lord wants us to extend hospitality to those in need regardless of circumstances. Love our enemies and all.” She forced out a laugh. “Not that you’re my enemy yet, seeing as how you haven’t announced to the world that you believe me to be a jewel thief.”

“That’s the problem at stake, though, my lady. It’s a bit worse than I originally thought....” His eyes felt scorched.

“What could be worse than being accused of a crime you didn’t commit?”

Tristram looked at her directly and said, “Being accused of
two
crimes.”

Chapter 9

Since it is not likely that anyone would go around the world being deliberately offensive to others, it may be taken for granted that obnoxious behavior is either the fault of thoughtlessness or ignorance—and for the former there is no excuse.

Emily Price Post

F
or a moment, Catherine could barely comprehend what the man had said. And then, in a rush, it came to her and she sprang to her feet.

“Lord Tristram, are you suggesting that
I
am the one who struck you on the head?”

He looked her in the eyes, then turned away. “I considered it.”

“You considered it? You thought, even for a moment, that I am capable of—of—” Catherine slid to her knees beside the sofa. A lifetime of training kept her back straight when she wanted to bow forward under the weight upon her shoulders. “If you weren’t too injured to be traveling on these roads, I’d tell you to leave.”

“And I would rather not abuse your hospitality.” He sounded so sad, she levered herself back onto the sofa and faced him. He gazed down at his hands clasping his knees. “I have been wrestling with this for hours. To take your kindness and then think something so heinous is unconscionable. I had to say something to you.”

Unable to remain near him any longer for fear he would see the tears pooling in her eyes, she shot to her feet and stalked across the room to the window, where she could see the tree that had broken his fall. No footprints remained. Snow had drifted into the impressions and the sun had glazed over the surface, making it appear like icing on a wedding cake. She rested her forehead on the cool glass. “I saved your life. If I hadn’t come out there when I did, you would have frozen to death.”

“Precisely. You went out there when you did.”

“You think—” She couldn’t breathe. Spots danced before her eyes, and she pressed a hand to her chest, gasping as though someone had knocked a fist into her solar plexus.

“I didn’t send you a note.” She managed to choke out the words. “Yet you think I did so to draw you here and hit you over the head?”

“It made more sense when I wasn’t with you.” He spoke from right behind her, and she jumped. He curved one hand around her shoulder. “I had to be honest with you, as I am about the fact that my hunt for the missing jewels always leads back to you.”

“You being struck in the head and left to perish in the snow leads you back to me.” Her voice sounded thick, as though her high-boned lace collar were too tight. “I suppose that would make sense from your side of the matter. But I know I’m innocent and think perhaps there’s someone else leading everything back to me.”

“Who?” His tone was soft, gentle, warm enough to melt the snow on the lawn below them. “Do you think I like suspecting, even for a moment, that a lady as kind and lovely and generous as you is capable of harming me?”

“You think I’m capable of theft.” Her words merely rasped past her lips though she wanted them to emerge with force.

“Can you give me evidence to prove me wrong?” He used a fingertip to gather tears from beneath her eyes, then curved his hand around her cheek and turned her face toward him. “Please?”

“I don’t know how.” Through a veil of more tears, she gazed into his beautiful green eyes. Her mouth went dry. “You can’t possibly want to...to...”

But he could. He did. He smoothed his hand down her cheek to her chin, tilted it up and kissed her.

She was a widow, and yet in that moment, she doubted she had ever been kissed, not with such tender warmth. Her knees wobbled, and she grasped his lapels for support. She inhaled his scent, and tasted bergamot and orange picot, and when he raised his head, she read wonder and confusion in his face. He blinked, gave his head a quick shake and flicked his glance from her to the windows and back.

His lips parted, and she braced herself for the humiliation of his apology, his words of regret.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that?” It sounded more like a query than a statement.

“It’s rather improper.”

“Rather.” He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and looked past her again.

She drew her brows together and sighed. “Just say it, Lord Tristram. You’re sorry you kissed me. You regret forgetting that I’m a lady and therefore untouchable.” She forced a smile to her lips. “All right, then. Apology accepted. Now may we get back to the business at hand?”

“No, I do not think we can.” He brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek. “My lady—Catherine—I regret a number of interactions in our brief acquaintance. I regret having to investigate you. I regret thinking for one second you were behind the incident last night. But I do not regret kissing you.”

If a woman could fall in love in so short a time as they had known one another, then she fell in love in that moment. Even the idea of it robbed her of speech, of coherent thought. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and rest her head on his shoulder. She wanted to have him hold her and assure her they would find the person truly guilty. She wanted him to take her home, despite the fact that home, to him, was another English manor.

Estelle bursting into the conservatory with her banjo tucked under one arm kept Catherine from doing anything more stupid than she already had when she’d let him kiss her.

“I’m sorry I kept you all waiting, but Florian sent around a message asking...” Estelle trailed off and glanced from Tristram to Catherine then back again, before grinning. “Did I interrupt something?”

“Nothing that cannot be renewed later.” Tristram bowed. “How do you do, Miss VanDorn?”

“Quite well, thank you, but you look rather wobbly. Perhaps you should sit down.”

“If you ladies will join me.” He stepped back so Catherine could precede him.

Cheeks too warm to escape Estelle’s notice, Catherine stumbled back to the sofa and collapsed onto the cushions. She picked up the teapot to pour, felt it tremble in her hand and set it down again. “Will you do the honors, Estelle? You need practice.”

“So do you.” Estelle was practically choking on suppressed laughter. It danced in her eyes and emerged as little coughs and sharp caught breaths. “Milk? You don’t need sugar.”

“Are you going to entertain us?” Catherine demanded more than asked.

“I will.” Estelle set a cup in front of Tristram. “So what brought you out in a snowstorm?”

Tristram settled beside Catherine, keeping a proper six inches away. “The end of the storm. I needed fresh air after nearly a week in the city.”

“But Florian says you work in the city—in London, that is.” Estelle settled on the seat adjacent to Tristram.

“You work?” Catherine posed the question before she realized how foolish she sounded.

She had let him kiss her—she had kissed him back—and she knew so little about him. It wasn’t the sort of behavior Mama had instilled in her. It was the sort of behavior that had given her a reputation for being fast and landed her in an English prison called a manor house.

“I don’t know if I would call it work.” Tristram shrugged off the subject. “A few other former officers and I work with men who were wounded in the Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion, and help them find work, get their pensions, learn new trades if they can’t do the old ones. Most of them end up in the London stews, so that’s where we go.”

“How kind of you.” Catherine gazed at him in awe. “I wish I’d known you when I was in England. I could have helped you raise money. I’m getting quite adept at organizing charity events.”

“This operation is rather new, and my father has been generous.” He ducked his head, but failed to hide the flush of color along his cheekbones. “I expect to make up for my failure as an officer.”

“That’s not what I heard it was.” Estelle exchanged her teacup for the banjo she had tucked behind her chair, and began to pluck idly at the strings. “Ambrose told me—”

“A great deal of balderdash, I expect.” Tristram raised a hand to the cowlick on his head, right above where he had been struck the night before.

“Estelle,” Catherine said in haste, “why don’t you entertain us from farther away. You tend to get a little loud.”

“Especially once Florian gets here.” She rose, still playing, and strolled to another grouping of chairs on the other side of the room.

Catherine touched Tristram’s arm. “Do you need to return to your room?”

“Not yet.” He clasped her hand and, still holding her fingers, lowered it to the cushion between them. “We need to talk.”

“We do.” Her fingers trembled beneath his. “Your father will take away the funds to your charity if you don’t find the jewel thief.”

“Yes, and more. Even if I inherit, if my brother’s widow bears another girl, Father will give her all the money and property not entailed to the title. I will have an enormous estate to run without the money to run it.”

“How irresponsible of him.”

“Indeed.” He tried to flatten his cowlick again but it sprang back into a tiny corkscrew curl Catherine fought not to reach up and smooth herself. “I can guess how many people that is.”

“Nearly a hundred people potentially punished because my father is so ashamed of me he can see nothing but how to hurt me.”

“Why such antagonism toward you? I mean, surely you couldn’t have done anything too terrible in South Africa.”

“In my role as a military officer I did. And my behavior as an officer is all that matters to my father. He’s willing to damage his family lands and my charity work in order to show the world he doesn’t tolerate me, either.”

“That’s horrible.” She ached for him, but she ached for herself as well and extracted her hand from his hold. “Thus you need an heiress.”

“It’s not like that, Catherine. If you think that’s why I kissed you, you’re wrong.”

“You thought you could lure me into revealing my secrets?”

“I thought I could do something I’ve wanted to do since you walked into that ballroom and ruffled feathers with that dress. You were so reckless, so defiant, so scared, I wanted to know your secrets.”

“If only I had some to tell.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t. Everyone knows my husband neglected me. Everyone knows that old Mrs. Selkirk has convinced society that I, and thus my family, am too immoral for the good people of the Tuxedo Club to receive.”

“She hasn’t been particularly successful.”

“This is a small enough community that that little is enough to hurt Mama and bar Estelle from certain gatherings where she should be seen.”

“I do not think she cares.”

Estelle perched on a chair with her head tilted back, her eyes closed and her fingers moving over the strings in a blur. She looked anything but distressed that she wasn’t the belle of the season her elder sister had been.

“She saw how little good it has done me.” Catherine fumbled in the pocket of her skirt for a handkerchief. It was black-bordered, as were all her handkerchiefs. Sapphire had sewn the edges upon Bisterne’s death and Catherine hadn’t purchased more.

Before she touched it to her eyes, Tristram took it from her and exchanged it for a larger linen square, plain white save for his initials in the same green as his eyes—
TBW.

“Black doesn’t suit you.” He tucked her handkerchief into his coat pocket.

Catherine dabbed at her eyes. “What is the
B
for?”

“Baston-Ward.”

Catherine spun around to face him again. “You’re Florian’s cousin?”

“And yours, by marriage. Very distantly.”

“So there’s more to this jewel-hunting than your father’s old friend needing aid.”

“It’s my mother’s family. Whatever else one might say about my father, he loved my mother. He’s been different since she died, less patient, less forgiving of human frailty, which I, according to him, have in an overabundance.”

“Because you chose to leave the army?”

“No, my dear. I didn’t decide to leave. I disliked the service, but it was my duty as the second son, so I took it. I ended up in South Africa and...I was allowed to leave rather than be court-martialed.”

* * *

Her face paled, and Tristram suppressed a twisted smile. He was used to that action of withdrawal, polite remoteness. A man wounded and leaving the military because of it was one thing. One allowed to resign his commission out of respect for his father’s title and the number of Wolfes and Baston-Wards who had served before him, was quite something else. A court-martial would have meant he had let his country down.

She would regret kissing him now, if she didn’t already. Her remark about him needing an heiress made that clear, though only moments earlier, she had looked utterly besotted—the way he felt. It had distracted them both from the thoughtless way he’d accused her of bashing him over the head in the snow. He shouldn’t have spoken that suspicion aloud. The evidence was only circumstantial.

All the evidence against her was circumstantial. Besides, she cared about him. She had learned how to control her outward expression of emotions well, but not perfectly. Even as she lashed back at his accusations, she looked hurt, not angry. It was longing he saw in her eyes, not contempt.

Until now. The blow on his head must have weakened him enough to tell her the truth. Or perhaps it was giving in to the desire to kiss her that had loosened his tongue. It was a gamble, and her face told him it was not a gamble that would pay off.

“Insubordination, not cowardice.” He may as well get it all out. “It was a horrible, unnecessary and unjust war and I despised my superior officers for how they were treating the people of the country. They herded them into camps like animals. Sheep ready for the slaughter were treated better. So I refused to destroy the village I was ordered to subdue and let the people escape to safety. One of them thanked me with a blow to the head, which truly was a gift. It gave the army a reason to let me resign.”

The liquid notes of Estelle’s banjo filled in the silence like water seeking a channel between two rocks. Catherine stared at him with those wide eyes that made him want to drown in their velvety depths. His mouth dry, he reached for his tea, now cold with a skim of milk clouding the surface.

“Don’t drink that. I’ll ring for more.” She jumped up so quickly electricity crackled from her wool skirt against the velvet cushion.