Wed at Leisure (3 page)

But at sixteen, expressing thoughts that complex in order to soothe her grief had been impossible and that failure remained with him every time he saw her again.

“Asquith—”

“Dore,” Lucian interrupted. “We’ve managed to keep my identity from the servants thus far.”

Peter laughed. “You truly believe no one has recognized you? I understand how my brother arrived at such a ridiculous scheme, but I always took you for a more serious fellow.”

“Orland,” Lucian Dorlingsley said, a bit sheepishly. “I’m in deep now. I love Bianca, and I have reasonable hope that she will accept my proposal—”

“Yours or that of
Dore
?” Peter asked.

“We are one and the same.” But from Lucian’s defensive tone, Peter knew the point was taken.

“Well, I cannot support this scheme, and I detest that knowledge of it has made me complicit even if only by the sin of omission. However, as I am unmarried, I will consider on the suitability of Catherine as a match.”

Reggie grinned and instantly Peter regretted his words. His brother would take that slight concession and run with it. It would be a very long week.

H
ome. Kate looked out from the carriage with that twin sense of dread and joy. She wished she could have forestalled this moment a few days more, only returned with company. But it was necessary to arrive in advance of their guests, to arrange for all the entertainments she and Henrietta had designed: the picnics and evening dances, afternoons at tennis and archery. And the hunt. Her father would see this unwelcome imposition as a prime opportunity to undertake the sport he loved best. Even if Kate detested it. It was one matter on which she had no influence.

“It looks just the same as always,” Kate said.

“Were you expecting the house to have changed?” Her stepmother looked at her quizzically. Then the carriage door opened and there was her father striding toward them, sending the milling servants scattering about. Henrietta climbed over Kate, met him as he reached the door, and slid down into his waiting embrace.

Kate watched for a moment and then handed her portmanteau to the waiting footman and alighted from the carriage herself. That was a relationship she did not understand. The marriage, yes. Her father had been widowed and desirous of both an heir and a companion. He had gotten one but in the last three years lost the other. After all, Henrietta was more often away than at home.

Kate passed the happy reunion and stepped into the house.

“Good afternoon, Miss Mansfield,” the butler said. “Good to have you home again.”

Kate acknowledged him with a nod but took the words for the empty nicety that they were. She knew very well that he had little liking for her. No one at the hall did.

No, she was far more interested in finding her sister. Perhaps this house party would finally be a time that they could reaffirm their sisterly bond.

Bianca.

But instead of her sister, there was only the housekeeper and a handful of footmen and maids taking charge of the luggage, hats and gloves.

A thunder of footsteps drew her eyes to the staircase where Thomas was running down, crying, “Mama!”

Kate smiled. He certainly looked healthy enough. She had been terribly worried three months earlier when her father had first written of his ill health. She had even suggested that they return home. But it was the height of the Season, and as they had made certain investments and agreed to attend certain events, Henrietta thought it best to wait until the next update to make a decision. Thankfully, the next letter had brought better news.

A few steps behind Thomas was an impossibly tall man who stopped at the foot of the staircase as her brother barreled toward Henrietta.

The new tutor?

“Look how big you’ve grown!” Henrietta enthused as she embraced her son. Then she looked up at the stranger, her smile welcoming. “And you must be Mr. Dore. My husband wrote glowingly of you.”

Yes, then. The new tutor he was. Interesting. If only his appearance had meant the end of Miss Smith’s tenure. Kate had never particularly liked their second governess.

“Mrs. Mansfield, what a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said.

“My daughter, Catherine.”

But where was Bianca?

He turned to Kate. He really was a rather tall man, with heavy features in a gaunt face.

“Mr. Dore,” she said with a small smile. Then she looked about. “But where are my sister and father?”

“In Eastbourne, to pick up the new horses,” Thomas interjected.

“They are due home any day now,” Mr. Dore added. “We thought you would be them.”

“Ah yes, the horses,” Henrietta said.

Her father had been purchasing horses from the Lathams’ breeding farm for years now. Claimed they had the finest thoroughbreds in England. Now that she had spent quite a bit of time in London and among the first families of the country, Kate had heard many people claim to have the finest this or that. It didn’t really matter if they did or didn’t, because who was to say otherwise? Now when she heard anyone express something as “the finest,” she tended to dismiss it out of hand. She much preferred something that was good and stable. Reliable.

Perhaps that was why she had not yet found a husband. She shut down that thought, which was far too often present in her mind, and focused on the tutor.

“And Bianca, as well?”

Luc looked sharply at Kate.

“Yes, Bianca, as well.”

She struggled to bite down the disappointment and impatience. Frustrating as it was, she had to remember that she could not control the world, even if she wished to.

“Well, I suppose we shall just have to get to work without them,” Henrietta said. “Go on, dearest, settle in before lunch.”

Her stepmother was right. There really wasn’t any time to think on it anymore. She had a house party to plan.

A
fter a nap, Henrietta, Thomas, and Kate took tea in her mother’s sitting room, a cozy little configuration that had never happened quite that way before.

“He’s better than Miss Smith,” Thomas said, in response to his mother’s question about his new tutor. “He says we can learn just as well out of doors as in the schoolroom.”

Kate caught her stepmother’s eye over her brother’s head. However, Henrietta didn’t seem at all disturbed by this nontraditional method of instruction. Of course, one of Henrietta’s flaws was that she was woefully uneducated so it likely didn’t even occur to her. As much as Kate adored her stepmother, on occasion, she had been embarrassed at Henrietta’s lack of knowledge. However, her sweet disposition, and skill at both humor and putting others at ease, had made her popular amongst the other matrons in London.

“Well, you look quite healthy, my love,” Henrietta said, pulling him into her embrace. “You shall be at Eton in no time at all.”

“And after Eton, I wish to travel the world! Mr. Dore has been everywhere. Have you been everywhere, Mama? Has Kate?”

“Only so far as London,” Kate said. “But that is almost everywhere. Or rather, there seems to be at least someone
from
everywhere in London.”

London at that moment seemed so far away. Yet home was strange and empty with neither her father nor her sister present. Despite her initial disappointment, in some ways the space provided a relief. Allowed Kate to find a new way to be at Hopford Manor. Allowed her to try and find a middle ground between the Kate of London, Brighton, and Bath and the Kate of Watersham. Even allowed her not to feel that Thomas found her lacking compared to his other sister, who was bright and bubbly.

Not that she spent much time dwelling upon ridiculous thoughts such as those. Not when there was so much to be done. Of course, Mrs. Marshall, the housekeeper, had been preparing everything to the specifications Henrietta had laid out by post. But even so, there were so many details to attend to.

After tea, when Thomas was sent back to the schoolroom, she spent the rest of the day with Henrietta and the housekeeper. While they had both now attended a good many house parties, neither had hosted one before. Kate was, as usual, determined that if she was to do a thing, she must do it well. Perfection was the only possibility.

T
he next day, she woke early, despite a yearlong regimen of late evenings and late mornings. The scent of the country air changed her back into the girl who had loved to escape the house and wander the grounds, to find the most magical places, where solitude amongst nature would let her imagination take flight.

She followed her favorite path, down to the bend of the stream where the big oak trees and the sound of the rushing water had often hidden her. Often, but not always. When she was a little girl, she had on occasion taken Bianca here and then, later, while it had only been twice, those accidental meetings with Peter Colburn had been monumental.

Monumentally insignificant. That was better.

She stepped onto the damp, grassy embankment, looked to the left and the right. And then looked to the right again. To the figure perched on the lowest limb of
his
tree.

He was leaning back against the trunk, one knee up, foot flat on the branch, and one leg hanging down. This was not the man she had last scene in Brighton, stately and ducal despite his mismatched garments and unfortunate sense of humor.

One that seemed to depend on aggravating her.

Here he was relaxed, and simply dressed. Simply enough that there was nothing to offend.

“Your Grace,” Kate said, somehow unsurprised to see him. It was almost inevitable that they would meet here. As if fate conspired again and again for them to see each other in the most embarrassing of circumstances.

“I’d heard you’d returned. I’d planned to call upon you this afternoon.” That news, however, was a surprise.

“How kind of you?”

“What? Never say you don’t care for my company, Kate.”

That mocking tone that he’d so perfected irritated her. What had she ever admired about him?

“I don’t.”

“But I received this charming invitation—”

“From Henrietta. Because you and Lord Reginald are our neighbors and we would never think of being unneighborly.”

But
he
had. He had been very unneighborly. Or perhaps a little too neighborly. She couldn’t quite say, just as she had never been able to fully make sense of the incident from four years earlier other than to ascribe it to the fact that spirits made a man ridiculous. She’d very carefully turned down the marriage offers of three men whom she knew to be more often in their cups than not.

Of course, that was half the men of the ton. They all seemed to carry their flasks with them and drink liquor like they were trying to coat a second skin. At balls, sometimes the men smelled of perspiration, cologne, whisky, or port. As much as she adored the crush of a well-attended event, she’d had to escape to the gardens to catch a breath more than a few times when those scent mixtures threatened a faint.

He stood, brushed the leaves and other bits of plant off of his clothes.

“Come, Kate, let us call a truce.”

She stared at him in disbelief. It was the first time he had ever referred to the antagonism between them. They had settled into covering the real source of displeasure up with witty insults, some subtle and some not as much. But a truce . . .

“A truce?”

“You know, when men lay down their arms, agree to a cease-fire, attempt to live peacefully amongst each other,” he said rather sardonically.

She raised an eyebrow. “I know what a truce is. But apparently, you do not know how to broker one.”

He leaned slightly toward her, his full lips lifting up to one side, a wavy lock of hair falling down over his forehead somewhat rakishly.

“Show me.”

Kate sucked in her breath.

She had heard stories about Peter in London. Before his father’s death, when he’d still been simply the Earl of Bonhill. Apparently he’d cut quite a swath through the town, developed a reputation for being anything but the honorable, earnest man who had earned his honors as a war hero. Then he’d inherited the duchy and for the most part, that reputation had been put to bed. But before her now, he seemed like the man who would place a bet on White’s books simply for the sake of betting.

“Why?”

His lips curved up more and he moved infinitesimally away, but just enough that she could breathe normally again.

“Because this antagonism is pointless. Amusing, in its way, but it achieves nothing.”

“No one forces you to follow me about.”

“I hardly—”

“You most certainly do. Take Brighton, for example.”

“Yes, well.”

“Exactly.”

He smiled. “Then forgive me.”

She studied him for a long moment but she couldn’t discern the expression on his face.

“You are . . . apologizing . . . for everything?”

“I most abjectly regret anything I have done to cause you misery.”

Ooh. There he went, being a sneaky wordsmith. But to what purpose? Was he merely bored? Spent so much time in London that he’d developed ennui?

“I’ll shan’t forgive you, Your Grace,” she said. “But I’ll accept a truce.”

“Excellent!” he said, seemingly unperturbed by her lack of forgiveness. He took her arm and slid it over his. She was too surprised to object and when he started walking, she tripped along beside him. “Now then, let us discuss the terms.”

W
hen she’d stepped out onto the bank of the stream, Peter had felt the strongest sense of déjà vu. He hadn’t expected for her to be present, though he had thought of her as he’d walked there. But the memory of that day ten years earlier when she’d broken through the thicket and let out her primal cry still haunted him. Of course, he didn’t remember every detail anymore. Mostly he remembered how she looked kneeling on the ground, tear-stained face skyward, agonized. He also remembered that she’d had a sharp tongue, though what she had said exactly now eluded him.

But something else had stayed with him, some sense that she might understand him, the way he suspected he understood her. It was likely a foolish fancy, but it was the one that drew him to her again and again, that made him nearly willing to agree to Reggie’s stupid plan, that made him offer a truce. Because of necessity a man, no, a duke, must be an island—people always wanted something of him, whether it be funds, political favors, or social cachet. But every once in a while, he wished to feel not quite so alone, to know that his title did not define him entirely.