Читать книгу Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1 - Louise Allen, Christine Merrill - Страница 49

‘Ahh!’ Katherine struggled to sit up from what had become a shockingly prone position on the grass and met the reproachful eye of her mount.

Nick rocked back on his heels and began to laugh. ‘I have never,’ he managed between gasps of mirth, ‘never, been chaperoned by a horse before. I have, however, seen uglier chaperons.’

Katherine found herself giving way to giggles. ‘He looks so shocked,’ she managed to gasp, hugging her sides. Lightning gave her a disgusted look and began to crop the grass, apparently resigned to the stupidity of humans. She looked around her, finding that they were close to the lake and that tall red chimneys were rising over a small copse ahead of them.

‘Is that the Dower House?’

‘Yes. Kat, you wanted to talk, this is probably as private as we can be.’

‘What I really want to do,’ she said warmly, ‘is box your ears for deceiving me so! How could you not tell me you were a marquis, that your father was a duke?’

‘In Newgate? Would you have believed me?’ Nick sat up and clasped his arms round his knees. ‘This view—I would dream of it sometimes, when I actually managed to sleep.’

‘Of course I would not have believed you then.’

‘I did tell you my real name, you could have looked it up.’

‘Naturally, that should have occurred to me,’ Katherine said with sarcasm. ‘I meet a highwayman and should immediately assume it would be sensible to check on his parentage and titles.’ She picked a daisy, slit its stem with her fingernail and plucked another to thread through it. ‘You should have told me afterwards, when you were free.’

‘Would you have believed me?’ He was watching her, not the view.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And what would you have done?’

‘Refused to come with you, naturally.’

‘You make my point for me.’ Nick unclasped his arms and fell back on the grass with a deep sigh. ‘Bliss. The last time I lay on my back in a field I had just had my second horse shot from under me and I was lying in a pool of mud.’

‘Waterloo? Was it dreadful? I’m sorry, that is a stupid question, of course it was.’

‘It was perfectly bloody. Literally bloody. It is not easy to speak about. Kat, you’re the only person I have ever talked about it with.’ He fell silent.

‘Any time you want to tell me more, I will listen,’ she promised. They remained without speaking for a while. Katherine threaded more daisies and, finally satisfied with the length of her chain, linked it into a circle and leaned over to drop it on Nick’s dark head.

‘What?’ He opened his eyes and reached up to feel what she had done. ‘Baggage. I suppose if I had not realised, you would have let me put my hat on top and ridden off.’

‘Possibly. Nick, how did you know how I would react when I discovered the truth about you? I might have had hysterics on the spot.’

‘No, not you. I knew you would be angry with me—you had every reason, even though I did it for the best. You would never have left London with me if you had known. I expected you to give my head a washing the moment we were alone, but I had every confidence that you would deal with a duke with every bit of the courage and aplomb you showed in dealing with a highwayman.’

‘I was too tired, too overawed to do more than accept what was happening, I suppose.’ She tucked his praise away into some secret part of her mind to take out and look at later. ‘And between you, you and your father made sure I spent much more time with Robert than with you. It is too late now to shout at you and throw the china.’ She began a second daisy chain. ‘I like you brother very much.’

‘Father remarked that when you are no longer married to me you could marry Robert.’

‘What!’ The fragile links of flowers tore in her hands. ‘Marry Robert?’

‘I believe he was trying to pique my jealousy.’

‘Oh.’ Katherine subsided, too shaken by the very thought to absorb the implications of what Nick had said. To think of marrying anyone, anyone at all, after Nick was impossible. How could she when she loved him so much and always would? Then her mind caught up with her hearing. ‘Jealous? Why should your father believe that suggestion would make you jealous?’

Nick shrugged. ‘He likes to tease us, to pink us neatly with the point of his wit and watch us dance a little. He very rightly assumes that I do not relish being reminded that my wife does not wish to remain my wife and that I am frustrated in my efforts to provide for her.’

Yes, not jealousy so much as pride, she realised. Possessiveness and the rivalry that must always exist between healthy young males, even when they are devoted brothers.

‘I am growing very fond of Robert,’ she said primly. ‘But as a brother. I would as soon marry the Duke as him.’

As she had intended, this provoked a gasp of laughter from Nick. ‘Now that would create some talk! A May and December match indeed. You are teasing me, wife; I suspect my father is a very bad influence on you.’ He got to his feet with the elegance that characterised his movements and held out a hand to her. ‘Stop sitting on that grass, which is doubtless damp, and come and tell me what you think of the Dower House.’

Katherine waited to see if he would remember the daisy chain. He did, hooking it out of his dark hair and holding it dangling from his fingers for a thoughtful moment. ‘I should be giving you jewels, Kat.’

‘No, you should not,’ she retorted, gathering up Lightning’s reins and concentrating on holding them as he had shown her. ‘I do not want to be indebted to you for anything more than I can possibly help.’

Nick boosted her up into the saddle, checked her seat was secure and went to mount the black gelding. ‘I know. I do wish you would let me look after you Kat.’

‘You are doing so, very well. At least,’ she added doubtfully as Lightning pricked up his ears and started to take more of an interest in the open parkland in front of them, ‘at least you will be if you can stop this animal going any faster than a slow crawl.’

‘You just have to show him who is in charge,’ Nick said encouragingly.

‘That is the trouble, he knows.’

Nick laughed at her gloomy tone. ‘Never mind your fierce steed, what do you think of that?’

That was a perfect little gem of a house, all soft grey stone and sparkling windows, nestling in a fold in the hillside, protected by a grove of trees and with its own miniature lake reflecting it back to itself.

‘Oh, Nick, it is enchanting!’

‘I think so,’ he agreed gravely. ‘I am glad you like it. Wait until you see the inside.’

‘Are there staff in residence?’ There was no smoke rising from the tall chimneys.

‘No, I sent to have it opened up this morning, but it is completely unoccupied now.’

Katherine stared as they approached, trying to absorb every detail. Something about the little house tugged at her. Was it just that Nick was so obviously in love with it?

He halted in front of the portico and swung down from the saddle, looped his horse’s reins over the railings and came to lift her down.

Katherine slid out of the saddle as his hands clasped her waist. She expected to be set on her feet, but, instead, no sooner had her boots met gravel than he swung her round and into his arms.

‘Nick! What on earth are you doing?’

He strode up the two shallow steps to the front door and applied a shoulder to the panels. It opened smoothly on to a sunny hall with a gracious staircase winding upwards and dove grey and white tiles on the floor.

‘Nick?’ He was holding her very tightly. Katherine considered wriggling, then decided it was undignified. The fact that being held like this gave her a delicious sense of danger, of being mastered, she fought to ignore.

‘I am carrying my wife over the threshold; a good old English custom that I fear would have caused an uproar if I had attempted it at the House. And, in any case, this is my home.’

‘Yes, but we are over the threshold now,’ Katherine felt compelled to point out.

Nick simply ignored this observation and strode across the marble and up the staircase. Any gently bred young lady should be protesting at this point, remonstrating with the gentleman and, if necessary, struggling; Katherine was quite well aware of that. On the other hand, any young lady who did not revel in the fact that the strong arms of the man she loved were carrying her as if she was as light as a feather was devoid of all romance. Beside, to struggle on the stairs was an unsafe thing to do.

He would stop and put her down on the landing, she told herself, only to gasp as Nick simply pushed open another door and walked into a bedchamber. It was deliciously, sensuously feminine, a confection of amber silk and cream lace, warm old panelling and pretty furniture apparently gathered together with an eye to comfort and charm, not formality and status.

Nick lowered his burden reluctantly until Kat stood in the circle of his arm, gazing round at the room.

‘I thought—’ He broke off, surprised to find his voice husky when he had imagined it had recovered. ‘I thought you would like this as your bedchamber.’

‘Oh.’ What was she feeling? Her eyes were wide, the pansy-brown depths of them reflecting back the amber light. She moved back against him as she half-turned to look around her, the unexpected contact affecting him as even the feel of her in his arms just now had not. He felt his body tighten with desire and made himself breathe deeply to contain it. He must not frighten her at this moment, too much hung in the balance.

‘Nick, it is lovely, so very lovely. Look at the view!’ Kat half-ran to the window, heedless of the swirl of green skirts that followed her. He stayed where he was, looking at her.

‘I am.’

‘But you can see better here.’ Then she turned and saw his eyes on her and blushed deliciously. But she had become self-conscious now, and watchful. ‘It is all quite lovely, but of course I cannot stay here, Nicholas.’

So, he was ‘Nicholas’ all of a sudden. ‘Why not?’ Nick made himself lean against a bedpost rather than yield to the temptation to cross the room and show Kat precisely why she should stay.

‘Because of the annulment,’ she said, wearily. ‘How will it look if I live with you here, in such an intimate household?’

Nick refrained from pointing out that a few days ago she would never have dreamed of referring to a Queen Anne Dower House boasting fourteen main bedrooms as intimate. ‘How is your virtue any more at risk here than it is up at the house? All the servants will know by now that you slept in my bed last night; you cannot keep that sort of thing secret. And you were going to rely upon medical evidence if necessary, I recall.’

‘Yes.’ She winced. He could imagine just what an ordeal it was even thinking about that.

‘Let me show you round some more,’ he coaxed. ‘We will have a full household of servants, there will be room for John and Jenny …’ She was through the door into the dressing room, then through another door and into the master bedroom without baulking. Nick eyed the green brocade of the bedcovering, imagining white limbs against it, before he put a hard hold on his imagination and ushered her out on to the landing. The tension that vibrated from her was tangible, he felt it on his skin like the approach of a summer thunderstorm.

‘It would be kind if you would help me with the refurnishing,’ he said as they descended the stairs. Kat was visibly more relaxed away from the bedrooms and talk of furnishings seemed to help.

‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘Oh, Nick, all these rooms are so lovely! They only need the lightest touch, but perhaps they are a little over-furnished and some of the hangings are rather heavy.’

Watching her moving gracefully around the salon, her fingers trailing over the backs of sofas, adjusting the position of an ornament, twitching a curtain, he began to relax. He had caught her with the charm of the house. Love my house, love me. He froze, eyes focused painfully on the green-clad figure. Love me. Is that what he wanted? Her love? Was that what he felt for her? Not just liking, not just desire—certainly not gratitude.

It had crept up on him so gradually he had not noticed, had not recognised it from that long-ago attack of calf love that had led to his exile. And he had managed to fall in love with one of the few women in the kingdom who could recoil at the thought of marrying the heir to a dukedom, a woman who fought tooth and nail for the right to bear her own burdens, however heavy and unfair and however easy it would be to surrender them.

Kat had stopped exploring and came back to stand in front of him, a frown between her brows. ‘But twenty-four days is not long if I am to order fabrics for you.’

‘Twenty-four days?’ He blinked at her. ‘Ah, until you leave.’ Over my dead body. ‘There is probably no need to order anything, just take what you want from the House. If you talk to Mrs Arbuthnot, the housekeeper, she will show you hoards of treasures, I am sure. I will ask Father which staff we can borrow for the meantime. I see no reason why we could not move in tomorrow.’ He watched the play of emotions on Kat’s face and decided to keep things light. ‘I am certain Mrs Arbuthnot will be over here with a positive army of maids to set about airing the bedchambers if that is what is worrying you.’

‘No, that is not what is worrying me,’ she retorted with that sudden flash of kitten claws that always enchanted him. ‘Although naturally the thought that you may succumb to rheumatics is a concern. Nick, I have never been in charge of more than six servants in my life—how am I going to manage however many this house will require?’

‘Appoint Jenny housekeeper.’ It was the first thing that came into his mind and it worked magic.

‘Oh, yes, Nick, how clever of you. Between us we can manage, I am sure of it.’ Suddenly she was relaxed and happy again, threading her hand through the crook of his elbow and urging him towards the front door. ‘We must go back now, I have so much to think about.’

Nick let himself be hustled out, suppressing the grin that was threatening to break out. It was a secret, dangerous delight being managed by his wife. The trick was to ensure this lasted a lifetime and not a mere twenty-four days.

‘Jenny!’ Katherine whirled into her bedchamber, causing her maid to jump and to drop a pile of freshly laundered chemises.

‘Look what you’ve made me do now, Miss Katherine,’ she grumbled, stooping to pick them up again. ‘I’d just folded them all as well … What is it? You look so happy.’

‘I have seen the Dower House and we will be moving in there tomorrow. Oh, Jenny, it is delightful. And I would like you to be housekeeper. Will you do that? On an appropriate salary, of course.’

Jenny made a little flapping movement with her hand, dismissing the money. ‘For how long, Miss Katherine?’

‘Oh,’ she said flatly. ‘Oh, just the remainder of the time I will be here—twenty-four days.’

Jenny was refolding underwear with an exasperated snap and slap. ‘But that’s how long the master said you must wait before he would agree; it will take goodness knows how long after that. Where will you go then?’

‘I do not know,’ Katherine said wearily, all the fizzing excitement of her ride and the Dower House ebbing away. ‘I must think of something. And, Jenny, I do not know how I will be able to keep you and John on either. I am so sorry. I will quite understand if you want to start looking for a new position right away.’

Curiously Jenny flushed a rosy pink. ‘Don’t you worry about that, Miss Katherine, we’ll be all right. Now, let’s get you out of that habit. Did you have a nice ride?’

Katherine was still subdued and preoccupied when she came down to dinner. Earlier she had waylaid Heron and enquired which newspapers the household received. “The Times, the London Recorder and the Leeds Intelligencer, my lady. Plus, of course the various journals to which his Grace and Lord Robert subscribe. Would you wish me to place an order for some ladies’ journals, my lady? La Belle Assemblée, perhaps?’

‘No.’ Katherine hesitated, then recalled what Nick had said about the extent of the servants’ knowledge of what was going on. ‘Heron, I would like to take you into my confidence.’

The butler bowed slightly. ‘I would be honoured, my lady. Might I suggest we step into the Blue Salon?’

Once in private, Katherine clasped her hands together and sought for words, feeling far more like an errant chambermaid than the lady of the house. ‘Heron, you are aware that his lordship and I are seeking an annulment?’

He inclined his head, but did not comment.

‘When I leave here I must seek employment as I have no resources.’

Now he did look shocked. ‘But, my lady, his lordship will naturally provide for you.’

‘I know that, but I do not wish him to, Heron. Now you understand why I need to see the newspapers; I wish to scan the employment vacancies.’

‘I will secure the daily papers as soon as his Grace has finished with them, my lady. I will also place an order for the local newspapers that we use when advertising for staff. Those, that is, which advertise positions of a genteel nature.’

‘Thank you, Heron, I appreciate your assistance.’

‘My lady, I can assure you that anyone in this household would do their utmost to be of help to your ladyship.’ He bowed stiffly and went out, leaving Katherine somewhat taken aback.

Now, entering the Chinese Salon, a further uncomfortable thought struck her. Could she hide her marital history from a potential employer who would very likely consider it shocking? And what about references? She could hardly ask Nick or the Duke for a recommendation. A sudden bizarre notion flashed into her mind and she could imagine Nick penning a letter to some elderly lady who had wanted a companion.

I can recommend Miss Cunningham most highly as an accomplished pursuer of highwaymen. She is skilled in assaulting magistrates and is capable of conversing with such varied members of society as the Governor of Newgate prison and Will the Fly …

‘You are looking very cheerful, my dear Katherine,’ the Duke remarked as she entered.

‘Good evening, your Grace. Just a foolish thought that entered my head.’

‘Not so foolish if it can bring a smile to your lips. Now, my dear, allow me to introduce you to two members of our household who have been away from home visiting the Bishop. Mr Crace, our learned archivist …’ Katherine exchanged polite bows with a tubby little man who beamed at her ‘… and the Reverend Rossington, our equally learned chaplain.’ A large, rather shambling man with bushy eyebrows and bulging pockets.

‘Mr Crace, Reverend. I do hope you had a pleasant journey back from Bishop’s Auckland.’ She smiled, inwardly wondering what, if anything, his Grace had told the two men about her position in the household.

The Duke took her elbow and steered her towards a chair by the fire, murmuring, in uncanny echo of her thoughts, ‘Mr Crace is also our lawyer and Mr Rossington will be able to advise on the ecclesiastical aspects of your proposed course of action, Katherine. I have already apprised them that you are considering an annulment, and they stand ready to advise you and Nicholas at any time. I thought you might be more comfortable knowing exactly what the extent of their knowledge was.’

‘Thank you, your Grace,’ she said. That at least solved the problem of seeking legal advice, which had been exercising her greatly. If Nick chose to be difficult, she shrank from the thought of revealing such a sensitive matter to a strange lawyer.

Nick and Robert entered on the thought, both of them with the vaguely guilty air of schoolboys late for dinner. After greeting the other men, Nick made his way over to her chair. ‘And what, madam wife, is causing you to smile your cat at the mousehole smile, might I ask?’

Katherine tipped back her head to look at him. ‘You and Robert looked about fourteen coming in just now, as though you had been out playing and had come in late for dinner.’

He grinned. ‘True enough. One of the things that can still fill me with a healthy dread is Father’s wrath at unpunctuality.

And, yes, the two of us have been out schooling that grey horse, Xerxes.’

‘Did you enjoy yourselves?’ ‘Very much. Robert fell off three times, I fell off—’ ‘I have been thinking,’ the Duke announced with a sublime confidence that every other conversation in the room would cease. ‘And I have decided that, to announce to local society that my elder son has returned, I will hold a ball.’