Twice the Temptation (13 page)

“What of Miss Rutherford?” God, he himself didn’t even know. It had been those thoughts that had kept him up all damn night. What the hell was he to do now? How was he going to repair this? More importantly was this something that could in fact be repaired? If he had the answers, he’d take up fortune telling or some other such occupation that calls for being able to predict the future with a great level of accuracy.

“Will she also be coming to London?” Caroline asked, plucking her serviette from her lap and placing it beside her crumb-filled plate. Lydia’s avid gaze watched the exchange.

Lucas drained the remainder of his coffee and set his cup down on the table harder than he intended. “I have no knowledge of Miss Rutherford’s schedule.” Which was the truth.

Caroline’s brow furrowed. “But I thought –I mean I was certain you meant to court her. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“It would appear you know my intentions toward Miss Rutherford better than I.” Both his sisters stared at him wide-eyed. He gave a weary sigh and shook his head. He owed them the truth. They weren’t children anymore. “Yes, I hoped to marry Miss Rutherford. But first, I planned to introduce her to you both properly. Unfortunately, at this time, Miss Rutherford isn’t inclined to accept my suit.”

“Whyever not?” Caroline demanded as if a woman would have to be addlepated to refuse him.

“Her reasons aren’t important.”

“But of course they are. You must make her change her mind.” The sharpness of Caroline’s tone made it an edict.

“Doesn’t she share your feelings?” Lydia, the consummate diplomat, asked quietly. While her older sister could be overly combative at times, she was the soul of temperance.

“The situation is complicated.” He had no doubt that Catherine wanted him, would’ve consented to marry him had she not learned the whole business of his proposal to Charlotte. His problem was she just didn’t trust him. A marriage could survive without trust, many esteemed marriages had. They just weren’t particularly happy marriages. And he’d witnessed enough unhappy ones in his life that he knew he would never want to be trapped in one.

“I don’t see how complicated it could be if you love her and she loves you.”

Lucas couldn’t dispute Caroline’s argument. It should be that simple. In books and fairytales that was probably the case. Unfortunately, this was real life, and with that came a myriad of emotions and complications.

Lydia pushed back her chair, stood and came around the table to his side. Leaning down, she hugged him as tightly as their positions allowed, patting him soothingly on the shoulder before releasing him. “I will always remember what you said to me when I asked you why you had to go off to war,” she said looking down at him, her brown eyes too sage for her years. She’d been forced to grow up too quickly and she’d seen too much. “You told me that if something was important enough, it was worth fighting for, sometimes worth dying for. How much does Miss Rutherford mean to you?”

If he’d been uncertain on how or if he should proceed with Catherine, with that question, his youngest sister had set him firmly back on his path.

Although his battalion hadn’t seen as much of the frontline as many others, he’d seen more than enough the year he’d been enlisted. War was dirty, deadly business and he’d been thankful to be able to walk away from it alive and in possession of all his appendages and faculties. He’d been one of the truly fortunate ones.

Lucas gave Lydia’s hand a loving squeeze. “When is the last time I told you that you are too wise for your years?”

Lydia giggled, immediately sounding as innocent as the eighteen years the calendar declared she was. “All the time.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Caroline begin to rise. His gaze snapped to her. Motioning with his hand for her to remain seated, he addressed Lydia. “I need to have a word with your sister.”

“Shall I have the maid pack our things?”

“Yes, we shall go to London. You’ll both need new dresses.” He’d give Catherine a couple days to cool down. It is alleged that absence makes the heart fonder, and he was proof of it. His feelings for Catherine were stronger now than they’d been when he’d left last year.

After Lydia quit the room, he turned his attention to Caroline, who looked slightly uneasy.

“I am having second thoughts about Lord Billings. I don’t believe you and he would make a good match,” he said tentatively. With Caroline, it was sometimes difficult to read her. When the baron had come to him to ask permission to court her, she’d appeared happy at the prospect. But to say that she felt deeply for him wasn’t something he’d go as far to say.

“Is this because you found him alone with Miss Rutherford?”

Yes. And the fact that he knew damn well the man had once courted her and still appeared to be completely taken with her. “Not entirely. I simply don’t want you to settle on the first man who expresses an interest in marrying you.”

“Do you not mean the first English
lord
because he isn’t the first man to express an interest,” she replied lightly, but there was something in her tone.

God yes, the year she’d come out, he’d been besieged with offers. Fortune hunters, the whole lot of them because the moment he’d told them he intended to place her dowry in trust until she reached twenty-five years, they’d awkwardly withdrawn said offer. Lord Billings had been the first to say his feelings were such that he’d take her without her dowry. In addition, the man had also come with a title—which is what their English-born mother wished for her daughters.

“I want a gentleman worthy of you. I don’t believe Lord Billings is that man.”

“Are you saying you’ve withdrawn your approval?”

Lucas knew he had to be careful in his reply. “What I’m saying is that Lord Billings may not love you as you deserve to be loved. Wholly and completely. My greatest wish is to see all of you happily married.”

“Does this mean you plan to send us home?” she asked, her tone almost hopeful.

Lucas frowned. “Of course not. Billings isn’t the only eligible gentleman in the country. I hoped you’d want to at least remain for the Season.”

His sister’s only reticence in accepting Billings’ suit was that she would have to leave New York for England. A compromise had been reached where they would live four months of the year in New York until the children came.

The truth of it was he didn’t trust their mother to guide and protect his sisters’ interests. Lord only knew what kind of men she’d permit them to associate with. If he was going to be living on this side of the Atlantic, he selfishly wanted them close. Which meant they would need to marry English gentlemen.

“I doubt I’ll fare any better here than in America,” she stated dryly. “You had such high hopes for Lord Billings and look how that has turned out.”

“At least the mistake was caught before you married the man. Look, I know you miss home but I’d like you to give England a little longer. At least promise to stay for the Season. Come May, there will be all sorts of balls and parties. Grander than anything we have in America.”

Caroline regarded him in silence. For so long a time, he began to grow uneasy. Reading her expression grew harder than ever.

Eventually, she let out an audible breath and rose from the table. “You are probably right. You’re usually right about these things. And in matter of Lord Billings, I shouldn’t like to be in a marriage where my husband is secretly in love with my sister-in-law. I mean you are my brother and it is not as if we could avoid seeing the two of you. The situation is simply not to be borne,” she exclaimed in a breathy voice, sweeping the back of her hand across her brow in a gesture of melodramatic theater.

She smiled then and gave him a look that said,
Surely you didn’t think me so blind that I could not see what was right in front of me?
With a facetious curtsey, she gracefully quit the room, leaving Lucas deep in thought.

T
he next three days passed tortuously slow. Catherine missed her weekly visit to see Meghan and Olivia. She took the evening meals in her bedchamber, ate breakfast when she was certain Charlotte and Alex had vacated the breakfast room. The midday meal, she tended to skip entirely. She was as close to a hermit as she’d ever been.

But she couldn’t help it. Her heart was broken. The dreams she’d only just begun to build had already collapsed around her, its foundation as solid as the shifting sands at high tide. She hadn’t even known how much she’d counted on Lucas being the “one” for her. Her own knight come to carry her off and give her the things that had thus far evaded her in her life. Someone to love, someone who evoked within her a passion she’d never felt before. And as his wife, they would start a family. Those two things had been everything to her. A family of her own. A family like she’d never known. Hers.

On the fourth day, she dragged herself out of bed right after the maid came in her room to draw the curtains and refresh the coal in the fireplace. Esther came in five minutes later and looked surprised to see her out of bed.

“’Morning, miss. I didn’t ‘spect you to be up ’an about so soon.”

“I thought it was about time I returned to the living. I’m too young to waste away in this bedroom. Today, I think I’ll even go outdoors. Maybe I shall go and see how construction on the school is coming along.”

“The missus ’as been asking ’bout you. I’m to tell ’er if you aint eating.”

Catherine smiled faintly. Charlotte had been checking in on her at least two times a day since her self-imposed exile. “My sister worries needlessly. I’ve merely been suffering the normal monthly issues. A couple days of rest was all I needed. I’m hardly ailing in the real sense of the word.” The onset of her monthly courses could not have come at a better time. It had given her a valid excuse to remain in bed for she did suffer from stomach cramps during that period.

Judging by the look Esther gave her, Catherine could tell her maid wasn’t convinced that had been the reason for her prolonged stay in bed. Before Catherine was forced to deal with more questions, she quickly asked, “Where is my sister now? Once I’ve finished dressing, I shall go to her and put her mind at ease regarding the state of my well-being.”

“The last I saw of ’er, she was on ’er way to the nursery.”

Nodding, Catherine slipped out of bed. She’d given herself three days to wallow. But now she had to set her mind to moving on from Lucas Beaumont…again. And she’d do it even if she had to do it one shaky step at a time.

H
er sister wasn’t in the nursery and neither she nor Alex had been in the breakfast room when she’d peered in there and found the place empty.

Catherine resumed her search upstairs in the separate wing that housed the master and mistress suites.

Although accustomed to unrestricted access to her sister’s domain, she always knocked when the door was closed. Her sister and brother-in-law didn’t always wait for the veil of darkness for their intimacies. The door, however, was not closed but stood wide open. Catherine stood on the threshold and peered in. “Lottie, are you here?”

The upstairs maid, Annie, poked her mob-capped head around the corner that led to the heart of the bedroom. “The mistress will be back in a minute to change. I’m finished in ’ere now.”

Catherine entered the anteroom that held a low-boy chair, a gold settee and a lamp that sat a redwood side table. She ventured farther in and watched as Annie collected her cleaning rags and pail, then tucked the broom and dustpan under her arm. She smiled and nodded deferentially as she passed Catherine on her way out.

The place was spotless, not an item out of a place. The four-poster bed should have dominated the room by the sheer size of the mahogany bedstead but the space was so large, it didn’t quite manage it.

No canopy for Charlotte. She’d once confessed that Alex wasn’t particularly fond of them and since her husband spent an inordinate amount of time in her bed... Likewise, the rest of the furniture in the room was large, including a wardrobe with a beautiful scene of wildflowers and a meadow painted on the doors. The dressing screen was equally as elaborate and colorful.