The Lady Who Broke the Rules (19 page)

The child, whom John Coachman had lifted down, shrank against his mother’s skirts. ‘Yes, this is Crispin James. He is a little tired from the journey, my lord.’

Giles eyed the child with obvious scepticism. Fair-haired like his mother, he had also inherited her blue eyes, but his features had still too much of a chubby infant about them to be definitive in any way. ‘They all look the same to me at that age, he could be anyone’s.’

‘Giles! For heaven’s sake…’

‘Please, my lady—I mean, Kate—it’s perfectly natural that your brother should question.... I am sure this has been a shock to you, as indeed Jamie’s death was a shock to me. I did not expect to be coming here to Castonbury under such circumstances. It is such a—a— I find it difficult to believe that one day all this will belong to my son.’

‘
If
he is proved also to be my brother’s son,’ Giles said, unmoved by the flutter of a lace handkerchief over a pair of big blue eyes drowned in tears.

‘You must forgive my brother, he is a little overwrought,’ Kate said, putting a protective arm around the widow. ‘Now, come into the house and meet the rest of the family.’ She held out her hand to the little boy, giving him a warm smile. ‘Monsieur André, our chef, has made a special treat just for you. A sugar castle, what do you think of that?’

The child’s eyes widened in astonishment. Waiting only for a nod from his mama, he took Kate’s hand and tripped happily up the sweep of stairs into the magnificence of the marble hall, which had been opened up in preference to the usual entranceway downstairs for the occasion.

The Duke of Rothermere himself it was who had insisted on the formal line-up of Castonbury servants to greet the new heir. Kate stopped short in the doorway at the sight of the military line of menservants on one side, women on the other, and her father seated in state at the top with Aunt Wilhelmina in regal purple, not one but three nodding ostrich feathers in her turban, standing behind him like a queen consort. No wonder Giles was in a mood. Papa was making it very clear where his alliances were. Poor Giles, Kate thought. And come to that, poor Alicia, who was like to lose her precious child if her father had anything to do with it.

Chapter Ten

W
ith Alicia settled in the Dower House and her most pressing duties over, Kate wanted to escape, and decided to go for a drive. It was John Coachman who told her. ‘Snow in the north,’ he said as he got the gig ready for her. ‘That Mr Jackson’s been kicking his heels at the inn for two days now.’

‘Mr Jackson?’

‘Aye, my lady. Though it looks like he’ll be off tomorrow right enough. Weather’s turned again. You know what it’s like at this time of year.’

‘Mr Jackson is still here?’

‘Didn’t you know, my lady?’

‘No,’ Kate replied, ‘I did not. I wonder why he—oh, Alicia, of course.’

‘My lady?’

‘John, I’m sorry, I was talking to myself. I shan’t need the gig, I’ve changed my mind.’

She hurried off in the direction of the village. Virgil was still here at Castonbury. It was because of Alicia. He knew Alicia was arriving today, that was why he had not been in touch.

As she made her way along the path through the woods, it occurred to her that perhaps he had stayed away for another reason. He had not said goodbye for fear of upsetting her. He would be worried that another goodbye would be more upsetting, no doubt, but truly, he was quite wrong. Since he had left, she had been perfectly fine.

Apart from the lack of sleep, but that was nothing, completely irrelevant. Everyone had sleepless nights. Besides, Virgil would be wondering how Alicia had been received. She could reassure him and bring him up to date and say goodbye in a civilised manner all in one visit. It would be wrong of her to forego the opportunity to do so. Very wrong indeed.

Albert Moffat, the landlord of the Rothermere Arms, raked a hand through his wiry thatch of salt-and-pepper hair. ‘Mr Jackson, yes, he’s here all right. He’s in the best parlour, my lady. If you’ll wait here, I’ll go and fetch him.’

Now that she had arrived, Kate’s confidence was beginning to falter. Virgil had made his feelings quite clear, and he was not a man who liked to have his hand forced. But it was too late, she was here now, and he was so tantalisingly close she could not go away without one last chance to see him.

‘I shall announce myself,’ she told Albert, ‘I know the way.’ Without giving herself the chance to change her mind—or indeed Virgil the opportunity to refuse her—Kate ran quickly up the stairs, tapped lightly on the door and pushed it open.

* * *

‘Kate! What are you doing here?’

‘Good afternoon, Virgil. I heard you were delayed. The snow. And I thought you would wish for news of how Alicia’s arrival went. And I thought that— You did not say goodbye.’

Virgil had been trying to work. He had been only partially successful. He had never before found it difficult to concentrate; his utter focus had been one of the keys to his success. He blamed the noise of the inn. He blamed the inconvenience of the delay. It was frustrating, to be frittering his time away here. He blamed himself for having taken so much time away from business while staying at Castonbury. He was out of the habit of work, but it would come back to him if he persisted. So he had persisted. He just needed to persist a bit more. What he didn’t need was Kate, her skin flushed from the cold, looking at him with her chin tilted in that defiant way of hers, looking at him as if she was half afraid he might show her straight out the door, half wishing he would kiss her.

She was dressed more elegantly than usual. Not her customary riding habit but a dress of dark claret trimmed with black beadwork. Instead of her usual jacket she wore a full-length fitted pelisse with very tight sleeves. The simple lines suited her svelte figure. He wished he didn’t remember every lean line of her. The elegant curve of her neck. The long, supple length of her legs. Virgil got to his feet slowly. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’ Which was true, but he couldn’t find it in him to regret that she had. ‘But you’re here now. Come in and tell me the news.’

She remained leaning against the door. ‘You need not worry. I’m perfectly fine. I have not come here to—to cause a scene.’

He had to laugh at that. ‘I can think of nothing more unlikely.’

Still she did not move. ‘I am quite resigned to your going, Virgil. In fact, that is one of the reasons I’m here. To—to reassure you.’

He held out his hand. ‘I’d be more reassured if you came over here to the fire. It’s freezing out.’

Kate took a couple of steps into the room. ‘I went for a swim the other morning.’

‘And you didn’t turn into an icicle?’ She was nervous, Virgil realised. The last time they’d been together—best not to think about that. He smiled at her, more warmly this time. ‘Come over to the fire, Kate. You should have stayed away, but there’s no harm done. We’re in a public inn, we’re hardly likely to— I mean, I won’t—we won’t…’ What he had to do was stop thinking about it. ‘Tell me about Alicia. And your aunt. Is she still talking to you?’

Kate finally left the door, unbuttoned her pelisse and cast it carelessly over a chair, before sitting opposite Virgil at the fire. ‘No. She addresses everything through whoever else happens to be in the room. “Lumsden, you will inform Lady Katherine,” she says, or “Giles, you will instruct your sister not to,” and once, when there was no one else, it was, “Margaret, you will let Lady Katherine know,”’ she said with a chuckle.

‘Who is Margaret?’

‘Daisy, but my aunt will not lower herself to remembering the names of the housemaids, so she calls them all Margaret. She always has. Oh, Virgil, the day after the ball she gave me such a lecture—it was so absurd, I wish you could have heard it. According to her I am ungrateful, immoral and undutiful. I’m not exactly sure where it is I can expect to end my days in exile, but according to Aunt Wilhelmina, it is some sort of frozen wasteland full of old maids with only cats for company and gruel to eat.’

‘The Dower House, does she mean?’

‘Oh, no, that is far too close.’

Virgil cursed under his breath as an awkward silence fell. Why had he mentioned the Dower House? Now they were both thinking of that night. That bed. ‘And your father?’ he asked, grasping at the subject most likely to quench any thoughts of passion. ‘How did he receive his grandson?’

Kate rolled her eyes. ‘With all the pomp and ceremony you’d expect. He had the entire household lined up to welcome them, though he did not, incidentally, deign to speak to me. Unless I apologise on bended knee, I doubt he ever will, which is absolutely fine by me.’

‘And what do you think of her, your brother’s wife-apparent?’

Kate pursed her lips. ‘I’m not sure. She is very pretty, but she is no mere cipher. I would say she is holding her own. She was quite happy to have little Crispin—that is the child, named for my father, which needless to say has confirmed him in his belief that the boy cannot be anything other than his legitimate flesh and blood, though she could have easily picked the name by looking up the title in
Debrett’s Peerage.
Anyway, she allowed the boy to be dandled on my father’s knee, and tomorrow, I believe, the pair of them are to be given a tour of the house, but she was quite adamant that she have sole care of the child in the Dower House. The ducal cradle in the Castonbury nursery remains empty. Not but what the child is far too old for a cradle.’

Virgil began to relax. He had missed Kate’s acerbic tongue and caustic wit. He had missed her conversation, and the way she told a story. She always viewed things from a different angle, usually a wholly unexpected one. There could be no harm in talking, after all. They were only talking. He sat back in his chair and stretched his legs out towards the fire. Kate had on short boots today of black leather. He could see them peeping out from under her skirts. Her feet were narrow, high-arched. Her stockings would be black, too, he reckoned. She’d told him once they were her favourite. He caught himself just in time as he began to speculate about what colour her corsets were. ‘And was your father right? Does the child look anything like your brother?’

‘Lord, what do I know? I think one blond-haired moppet looks very much like another at that age, though naturally my aunt disagrees, and as you know, my father had already made up his mind before they arrived anyway. Alicia is having her lawyer review the trust deed, incidentally, and the guardianship too.’

Virgil raised his eyebrows. ‘Another female in the Castonbury household who will not fall into line. Your father will not be amused. Either the widow has an astute business head on her shoulders, or she doesn’t trust your family.’

‘Would you? If my father had his way—but Giles will make sure he does not. He believes that the child needs his mother, which I have to confess rather surprised me.’

‘Do
you
think she’s a fraud?’ Virgil asked.

Kate shrugged. ‘Like Giles, I find it very difficult to believe that Jamie would have married without telling us. He is—he was—the heir to a dukedom, and no matter how pretty and astute she may be, Alicia is, in my father’s terms, a nobody.’

‘Perhaps your brother was in love?’

‘And knowing that my father would forbid the match, he simply decided not to ask for permission? It’s possible, I suppose, only from what I gather they had not known each other very long.’ Kate pursed her lips. ‘Alicia does not talk like a woman in love—at least, she most certainly does not go starry-eyed when she mentions Jamie, and she does not actually mention him very often.
Can
you fall in love upon such short acquaintance?’

The question hung in the air between them for a few seconds, before Kate rushed on. ‘It is different in wartime, I expect. Under normal circumstances—but there is no point in speculating about it for it is quite beside the point and— Oh, the funniest thing, when I was discussing the matter with Giles and I asked him if he had sought Papa’s permission to marry Lily, he said, “Of course not! Who I marry is my own business” in that snappy way of his.’

‘Why
has
Giles not married Lily yet? I had the impression he was very eager to tie the knot. What is he waiting for?’

‘The resolution of Jamie’s affairs. At present Giles is still nominally the heir, and so tied to Castonbury. Neither he nor Lily wish to make their home there, and so until matters become clearer they have chosen to wait. It is one of the many things which makes my brother ill-tempered, but I cannot blame him. He must feel as if his life is suspended, and not his own.’

Her voice trailed away. She was nervous again, looking not at him, but into the fire. Her hands smoothed her gown. She always did that when she was thinking. What
was
she thinking? Virgil wondered. ‘So, Giles is still determined not to allow this child to step into your brother’s shoes, then? Even though the last thing he wishes is to inherit himself?’

‘He certainly doesn’t want to live there after he is married. Jamie loved the place, he was raised knowing it would all be his one day. It’s different for Giles,’ Kate said, still staring into the flames.

‘He told me once that Castonbury stifles him.’

‘Did he?’ Kate looked up. Her smile was crooked. ‘I can certainly understand that. I know it’s fanciful, but there are times when I feel that every one of our ancestors in those portraits which line the guest corridor are looking at me disapprovingly.’

‘I don’t think you fanciful at all—they do the same to me. Kate, you won’t let them turn you into…’

‘Aunt Wilhelmina? Can you see me in a turban?’

‘Don’t joke, you know what I mean.’

She nodded slowly. ‘You asked me before, remember? That night at the Dower House, you asked me, and I said I would try. And I will, Virgil, but I cannot pretend it will be anything other than a battle. I think—I can see now, mostly thanks to you, that there are different ways of fighting. I can never be what they want me to be, but I don’t have to be so confrontational about it, and I certainly don’t have to feel guilty about it. You were right about that—despite what I thought, I do still wish to please my father, and it’s an impossible task.’

‘What of your aunt?’

‘
That
is not so clear-cut. She is neither malicious nor a despot. I do believe that she means well, but she will never really understand me. Perhaps we can reach a détente, I don’t know.’

‘You will be happy, Kate?’ It was only as he said it that Virgil realised how much it mattered to him. If he could know she was happy, it would make it easier to go. He had no doubt he was doing the right thing—it had not crossed his mind that there was any other way—but if he could be sure that Kate felt it too…

‘Kate?’

‘You ask a lot of me. I have never been one to lament what I cannot change. I mean my situation,’ she added hurriedly, ‘not you. I shall keep on with my own projects, but I cannot ignore the fact that I owe my father my bread and butter and, while Castonbury is my home, I still have a duty to perform at least some
auntly
tasks. I shall be content enough. What about you, Virgil?’

Now she did look at him directly. Her eyes were more blue than grey today. When she looked at him like that, he always felt she saw too much. ‘I shall be content enough,’ he said, choosing to echo her own words. ‘When I return to Boston, I’m planning to make a fresh start on my plans. Once I’ve seen New Lanark for myself, I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do. And there is the new business with Josiah too. I will have plenty to keep me occupied.’

He sounded bleak. Why did he sound so bleak? He needed to get on, that’s what it was. All his plans, he was anxious to put them into motion. He didn’t like the way Kate was looking at him. As if she didn’t believe him. As if she felt sorry for him. Why should she feel sorry for him? Perhaps if he told her about his business in Glasgow, then she’d understand that he really was making a new beginning. Then she would see, as he did, that he was putting the past behind him and building a whole new future. She needed to be reassured, that was all. He could do that quite easily.

‘I haven’t explained,’ Virgil said, getting to his feet, ‘what it is that takes me to Glasgow.’

‘You said it was business.’

‘There is always business,’ he said with a grin, ‘but it’s more than that. Wait here.’ He returned a moment later with the locket from his portmanteau, and handed it to her.