Lady Talmadge prodded. “This was after your father’s death?”
Those last years had been difficult, but Kate dismissed the temptation to self-pity with a shrug. “Yes, but his death was unimportant. You can have no idea how little he and my brother impinged on our lives. Shameful though it may sound, it had been so many years since I had last seen Humphrey that I did not recognize him when he arrived for my mother’s funeral.” A bitter laugh could not be restrained. “So you can see why I sometimes forget how much power he has over my life. It was barely a month that I spent with him in London, and he used it to destroy me.”
“What utter nonsense.” Ashleigh strode into the room. “Destroy you. Really. You must get over this tendency to melodrama. I fear it will be quite exhausting over the breakfast table.” He bent over to drop a light kiss on her cheek before moving on to the tea table. “Ah, good. I was told that Cook had made strawberry tarts and I am glad to see you have left me some. You will not mind if I finish them off.”
“Much good it would do me to object.” Lady Talmadge watched with amusement as the last of the tarts vanished into her brother.
With a contented sigh, he dusted off the crumbs of pastry and turned back to Kate. “That is something you will have to remember. I am exceedingly fond of strawberry tarts and I hope you will have Cook make them frequently when strawberries are in season.” He smiled at her look of confusion. “Little attentions like that are important in a marriage.”
The exasperation returned. How could he simply ignore everything she had told him? “Your Grace, you persist…”
“Indeed I do, Miss Russell, indeed I do.”
“You seem to have forgotten my situation…”
“No, my love, you seem to have forgotten that I am a duke. Or perhaps you do not entirely realize what that means. If I stand in the middle of London and say that this morning I saw the sun rise in the west, I will be surrounded by people who swear they saw the same thing. I assure you that once you are my duchess, the entire world will have forgotten your family.”
He had called her “my love”. Those two words were all she heard, at first. But eventually, the rest of his words penetrated. Kate was torn between hope and despair, but anger trumped them both. “What arrogance. You are a duke, and rivers will part for you, tides will turn for you, and all the world will leap to do your bidding.”
He blinked in surprise. “Well, hardly that,” he began.
“Precisely that,” she interrupted. “Do you realize that is exactly Farnsworth’s attitude? He is only an earl, of course, but I warrant you his assurance is almost equal to yours.”
“You cannot possibly compare me to that, that vile creature.” He flushed with anger. “You know I would never hurt you.” He stopped abruptly, realizing that he had hurt her.
Her anger subsided as quickly as it had flared up. “No, I know you have never meant to harm me, or anyone else. You try to protect us all. But you don’t seem to realize that you are vulnerable, too.”
“Vulnerable? Me?”
“Yes, you. If nothing else, Farnsworth will create a scandal,” she warned, “and that will harm you if you are in any way connected with me.”
“Farnsworth may try, but he will not succeed. I can protect myself and I can protect you.” He put his hand to her cheek and turned her to look at him. “You are safe now. Safe from your brother, safe from Farnsworth, safe from everything. I swear it.”
She wanted to believe it, she truly did, but she could not and tried to turn her face away.
He stopped her. “If you do not believe it yet, you will. Stephen is with your aunt, helping her to oversee the packing, and he will escort her here. I will send the announcement of our betrothal to the London papers this afternoon…” He broke off and, ignoring Kate’s protest, turned to his sister. “Shall I send the announcement for you and Stephen at the same time?”
Lady Talmadge started slightly at the question, but then smiled. “You have decided to stop being an ass then?”
He smiled back, shamefaced. “I was twenty-seven different kinds of an ass yesterday…”
“At least.”
“… but I do wish you and Stephen all happiness. He is one of the finest men I have ever known.”
“Thank you.” She kissed her brother on the cheek.
“And you will be married from here? It would give me great pleasure.”
“If you do not think it will distract from your own celebrations. Kate, would you mind?”
Kate felt as if she had fallen into a whirlpool. She had completely lost control of her life. This was not right. “No,” she said. “This will not do.” Then she saw the look of hurt on Lady Talmadge’s face, and jumped to her feet to grasp the older woman’s hands. “No, no, I do not mean that… I am making a muddle of everything.” She turned to the duke. “I mean that I cannot marry you, Your Grace.” There, that was said as firmly as she could manage.
Ashleigh stood there looking at Kate, an uncertain smile on his face. “Alice, could you excuse us for a few minutes?”
“Peter, you are not to bully.”
“Sister mine, you may choose to make your proposals in front of an audience, but some people prefer privacy.” His eyes remained fixed on Kate.
Lady Talmadge raised a hand in mock surrender. “Very well. Just remember, Kate, you can leave whenever you choose.” Then she leaned over to whisper in Kate’s ear. “A weapon. Think of him as a weapon.”
Think? When he was looking at her that way? She could not even turn her eyes away from him.
“Kate?” His voice, so strong and cheerful a few minutes ago, now sounded strained. “Kate, yesterday you said you loved me. Did I destroy that? I know I was a fool. I behaved like a brute, a swine, the worst sort of blackguard.” He had seized her hands and was holding them over his heart. “Can you forgive me? Can you let me try to redeem myself? I swear I will do everything within my power to make you happy. Let me try.” He raised her hands to his lips and pressed kisses on them.
Tears were welling up in her eyes—she could feel them, and willed them not to fall. She was falling apart but she needed to be strong. All she wanted was to lean against him, to have him wrap his arms about her, holding her safe. But she could not. If he was going to be her shield and her weapon, she could not let him misunderstand. “Your Grace”—she felt him stiffen—“Peter”—his eyes lifted to look into hers—“you know I love you. That’s why…”
She was unable to say anything more. He was pressing kisses on her eyes, her temples, her mouth, nibbling on her ear, then moving along her jaw and returning to her mouth. His hands were caressing her, holding her close. The knowledge that she should pull away was of no use. She was lost in the joy of being held in his arms. She melted against him and returned kiss for kiss, caress for caress.
How long their embrace lasted neither could have said. Ashleigh was the one who finally pulled back, though his hands were still on her shoulders. “No, I will show you that I am not without honor. I will show you that I am capable of restraint—though very little of it, where you are concerned.”
Shaking her head seemed to have no effect on his smile. She had to speak. “I cannot marry you, Peter.”
The smile did not diminish as he heaved a sigh. “And what is the problem now, my sweet? You did say you love me, did you not?”
“That is precisely why I cannot marry you. I know you think that Farnsworth cannot touch you, and perhaps you are right. But he can create a scandal that will touch me.” Peter chuckled, so she struck him on the chest. “Why will you not listen? You must pay attention to me.”
“Where did you acquire this yearning for martyrdom, my sweet? You are making a remarkable mountain out of a very small molehill.”
“You keep laughing at me, but it is no laughing matter. You yourself told me how you hated the scandals your parents created.”
“And what scandals have you created?”
She pushed away and stalked across the room bef
ore turning to face him, arms akimbo. “Have you already forgotten? My brother tried to sell me, to use me to pay his gambling debts.”
“Deplorable, dastardly, utterly beneath contempt, but hardly a scandal of your creation. Indeed, not scandalous at all until it becomes generally known. And that, I think, is unlikely to happen.”
“I ran away and made my way here from London alone.”
“Dangerous, though necessary, but brave and honorable rather than scandalous.”
“My father…”
“There is not a family in the ton that does not number a witless gambler in its ranks.” He had been coming closer and closer and now enfolded her in his arms once more. “Trust me. We will see you safely free of your brother and his friend. Then, if you truly do not wish to marry me, I will not hold you to it.”
She was in his arms, the place she wanted to be, the place she always wanted to be. She leaned against him—she could not help it—feeling the strength of him, breathing the clean scent of him. This was where she felt safe, the place where she felt more complete than ever before. He thought she might not want to marry him? She did not know whether to laugh or weep. “The problem is not my wishes, as well you know. I must be certain that I will not bring you harm. You must promise me that you will not try to force a marriage between us if I will bring scandal and dishonor in my train.”
“You will not…”
“You cannot know what will happen. My brother is a fool and Farnsworth is dangerous. There is no way to know what they may do between them. I must have your promise.”
His jaw was tense as he looked away, and he could not answer at first. Finally, he said, “I do not think I can make that promise.”
“You must,” she said insistently. “I will not be responsible for your ruin.”
He gave a stiff nod. “Very well, I promise that I will not hold you against your will. If, when this is finished, you wish to leave, I will not stop you. Will that do?”
She nodded in return. It would have to do. The problem was that she was not at all certain that she would be able to find the strength to leave if she needed to.
*
After dinner, they all gathered in the library. Although she had been in this room a number of times, Kate found herself once more awed by its grandeur, to say nothing of the hundreds—no, thousands—of books that lined the shelves.
“You’ll grow accustomed to it.” Peter grinned at her. His good humor or his arrogance—she was not sure which—had returned.
She settled herself primly in the small armchair he led her to. “I am not sure I like it that you can so easily read my thoughts.”
Leaning over her, he whispered, “Can you read mine?” Her blush brought a smug look to his face and he sat down beside her, his chair close enough to hers that his leg brushed her skirt and his fingers on the arm of his chair were not an inch from hers.
His proximity did not put her at her ease. Instead, her body was far too aware of his nearness, and his every glace raised the temperature of her blood. It was as if she had left her common sense behind when she left Hawthorne Cottage.
Seated nearby, Franny remained tense, as if she had not entirely recovered from the shock of the morning. Stephen, however, seemed somehow larger than he had been before. One could never have called him timid or diffident, but he had always somehow held himself in reserve. Today, when he was sitting beside Alice, they both seemed alive with happiness.
It was Stephen who began by asking if there was any plan for dealing with Farnsworth and Newell.
“Not a plan, precisely,” Peter said. “I thought the first step should be to have the announcement of our betrothal in the paper.”
“Without seeking her brother’s permission? I hardly recognize my punctilious brother.” Alice looked at him with fond amusement.
“I assure you, I asked Franny’s permission with all due ceremony.”
Franny was busily shaking her head and clenching her hands. Now that Kate had calmed down a bit, she seemed to be the one most affected by the morning’s events. “I really do not understand what you think this will accomplish, Peter.”
“Several things.” He grinned happily. “First, it will announce our betrothal to society without any mention of Kate’s brother, and I think he is not well known to society, is he, Alice?”
His sister shook her head. “I had never heard of him. Farnsworth, however…” She made a moue of distaste. “I never met him, but his name was occasionally mentioned, not with admiration. Even Talmadge considered him too disreputable to know, so he would never have been introduced to me.”
“Well then, people’s first notice of Kate will be as a young lady of good family from Yorkshire. They may have heard of her father as a gamester, but there is nothing unusual in that. Her brother, we will simply ignore.”
Kate could not stand it any longer. He seemed to be actually enjoying this. “That is all very well and good, Your Grace, but there is no guarantee that my brother will ignore me.”
“Now, now, Kate, I thought we had done with that ‘Your Grace’ nonsense.” He was definitely enjoying himself. “There are two possibilities. The most likely is that your brother and Farnsworth will acknowledge themselves defeated and creep back into their holes like the curs they are. The other—and this is a possibility only if one or both of them are somewhat deranged—is that they will make another attempt to kidnap you. That, we can foil easily enough, and simply making the attempt would be enough to land them on a ship for Van Diemen’s Land.”
She glared at him. “You want it to be the second.”
He returned grin for glare. “I confess, it would give me great pleasure to thrash both of them. But I fear they will not be so foolish as to give me the opportunity.”
“Yet you insisted that Aunt Franny and I stay here for safety’s sake.”
“And I still do.” He held up a hand to halt any protest from Franny. “They do not yet know that you are under my protection, nor do they know of our betrothal. I will sleep easier knowing you are safely under my roof, even though I think any danger from them is unlikely.”
Chapter Eighteen
The ducal household was awakened in the early hours of the morning by a hammering on the door. By the time Ragwell, the butler, had made himself sufficiently presentable to appear in the front hall, a large disreputable creature was standing there grinning. Ragwell blinked. The disreputable creature, who seemed to be streaked with soot and smoke, and whose clothes were torn and filthy, bore a remarkable resemblance to James, one of the footmen. But James normally stood at attention in the hall in pristine glory.
Ragwell did not have a chance to demand an explanation. The duke, wrapped in a banyan of scarlet silk embroidered with dragons, came hurrying down the stairs, calling out, “James, what has happened?”
“They came back, Your Grace, just like you said they might. Tried to burn the house down. We put it out easy enough, and we caught one of them.” He was grinning proudly. “The other got away, though, and we could hear a carriage driving off.”
“Good lad.” The duke clasped the footman’s filthy shoulder, much to Ragwell’s horror. “Where have you put him?”
“We tied ’im up, and Will’s keeping watch over ’im in Mrs. Darling’s garden shed,” said James, losing his aitches in his excitement.
By now, most of the household had arrived, and James was basking in the attention. He winked at one of the parlor maids and turned to Franny, whose eyes had widened at the mention of her garden shed. “No need to worry, Mrs. Darling. They tossed lamp oil on the back door and set it afire, but we beat it out before it could catch ’old. No damage, or nothing that a fresh coat of paint won’t put right.”
“They set my house on fire?” Franny sat down abruptly on the stairs. Kate and Alice hurried to join her. Alice wrapped her shawl around the older woman before turning to her brother to demand an explanation.
Ashleigh was grinning again. “Just as a precaution, I set some men
to keep an eye on Hawthorne Cottage.”
“You knew this would happen?” Kate sounded aghast.
“Knew? Certainly not. I thought nothing would happen, but it seemed only sensible to be forehanded.”
Franny was pale and shivering despite the shawl and Kate’s arm about her. “If you had not insisted we come here, we could have been burned alive. And if you had not left men there to guard it, my home would be ashes. We are greatly indebted to you.”
“Nonsense, Franny. Let there be no talk of debts between us. I have ever thought of you and Andrew as more parents to me than my own ever were, and we will soon be related by marriage as well.” With a hand on each one, he drew Kate and Franny to their feet. “Now, may I suggest that you ladies all retire to your rooms and sleep peacefully for the remainder of the night while Stephen and I have a talk with our intruder?” Kate opened her mouth, but before any sound could come out, he said, “And no, you may not come with us. You would be a hindrance, not a help.”
Kate looked rebellious but Alice came over and spoke softly. “He’s right, you know. If you are present, they will be obliged to behave like gentlemen and that will likely get them nowhere.” As she ushered Kate and Franny up the stairs, she spoke over her shoulder. “You will, of course, tell us all in the morning.”
“But of course.” Ashleigh swept a courtly bow.
Everyone disappeared, leaving James with Ashleigh and Stephen, who looked at the duke with no small degree of surprise. “You are enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Ashleigh cocked his head and considered. “You know, I do believe I am.”
*
In the morning, the ladies of the household were up with housemaids, much to the consternation of the housemaid who had just opened the curtains in the breakfast room and had no idea how she was supposed to dust and sweep with the room occupied. At least it was too warm to need a fire. She snatched up her brush and dust pan and tried to blend into the woodwork, hoping they were just passing through.
A Debt of Dishonor Page 20