by Merry Farmer
Cece’s smile dropped. “Oh, dear.”
Instantly, Katya regretted the barbed comment. She regretted a lot more than that. “I’m so sorry to eclipse your special day, my dear,” she sighed. “Today should be all about you.”
“I don’t hold any ill will toward you, Lady Stanhope,” Cece assured her, resting a hand on Katya’s arm. “Yes, it’s exciting to meet the queen, but everyone knows that the purpose of coming out is to announce your availability on the marriage market. I have no need to do that.” She blushed, glancing down modestly.
A whole new kind of fear rose up in Katya’s chest. She placed a heavy hand on Cece’s shoulder. “Please don’t tell me you already have an understanding with my son.”
Cece’s blush deepened and she peeked up at Katya. “It isn’t a formal understanding,” she admitted. “He hasn’t proposed or anything like that. But I believe we both know what we want.”
“My darling, no.” Katya gripped both of Cece’s shoulders and faced her squarely. “You’re only eighteen. Don’t do that to yourself.”
Cece blinked at her in surprise. “I would have thought….”
Katya shook her head. “I was given away in marriage within weeks of my eighteenth birthday, and I gave birth to Rupert before I was nineteen. I wouldn’t wish that life on you for all the world.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Cece said, her expression flashing between sheepish and determined. “But Rupert and I are in love.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Katya said. “Listen to me.” Cece met her eyes. “There is so much more to life than being someone’s wife. That’s what your father doesn’t understand. You have a life of your own, and you deserve to live it. You have mountains to climb, oceans to sail, fields to plant and sew. You have a whole world to conquer.”
“But there are so few things that a single woman can accomplish,” Cece argued, so like her father. “The law prohibits us from doing just about anything.”
“Those laws can be changed,” Katya insisted. “The more women stand up to defy them, the more we cherish our own lives and independence instead of depending on a man for our identity, the more we’ll be able to change the world. I’m not saying you shouldn’t marry Rupert,” she rushed on. “I will rejoice when the day comes that I can call you my daughter in earnest, as confusing and muddled as that will be for all of us, what with your father and I. But don’t be so quick to give up your youth and your power for the title of ‘Mrs.’ Once the babies start coming, and they will, sooner than you can imagine, your whole life will change. Live that life first. There will be time for the rest later.”
Cece opened her mouth, but before she could reply, a steward near the front of the hall declared, “Ladies, the time has come.”
He launched into an explanation of what the girls could expect as the procession line tightened and began to move forward. Katya and Cece moved with it.
“He will forgive you,” Cece whispered as they drew near to the doorway of the throne room. “Papa will forgive you. As long as you forgive him.”
* * *
Malcolm watched Katya and Cece retreat into the palace, at war with himself over whether to charge after them and demand more answers or to charge off in the opposite direction, washing his hands of the whole thing once and for all. He didn’t know what more Katya could say to him, or rather, he dreaded what other secrets she was keeping. Did she have more children hidden around the countryside? Ones that weren’t his? Had she secretly married one of her numerous suitors behind his back? Or was he a damned fool for making her into more than a woman fighting to protect her children in his mind?
“Sir, if you could please step aside,” the palace footman said, gesturing for Malcolm to move.
He did more than that, he swayed into motion, marching away from the palace entrance, through the line of carriages waiting to disgorge more debutantes or to travel on to the mews where they would wait, and headed for the gate.
“Where are you going?” Natalia shouted after him.
Malcolm winced, stopping a few yards into the courtyard, his boots crunching on the gravel. He wouldn’t have stopped for anyone else, but Natalia was a whole new complication in his life.
Natalia followed his path, picking up her skirts and dodging between carriages to reach him. Bianca and Rupert followed closely behind. “You’re my father,” she said when she reached him.
“Apparently so.” Malcolm didn’t expect the awkwardness that crept up his spine, making him restless. “Sorry.”
Natalia blinked. “What do you have to be sorry about? You didn’t do anything.” She blinked again, her shoulders dropping and her brow knitting into a frown. “Well, I suppose you did do something.”
Malcolm writhed with discomfort. Most girls Natalia’s age wouldn’t have a clue about what he’d done to contribute to her birth, but Natalia was Katya’s daughter, and Katya was far too free with knowledge.
He cleared his throat. “It was a long time ago.”
“Sixteen years, I suppose,” she said. “Or thereabouts.”
“Quite,” he said with a sharp nod, then glanced around for a way to escape. Nothing about the day, or about his life, had turned out the way he’d expected it to. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to happen next, but standing around Buckingham Palace waiting for a deceptive lover who didn’t trust him with his own business was not it.
“You could be a little bit happy,” Natalia said, a distinct note of disappointment in her voice.
Malcolm flinched. “I’m sure I will be, once I get over the shock,” he admitted. If Katya was brutally honest with her girls, he could be too.
“I wonder why Mama kept me a secret from you for so long,” Natalia went on, glancing to her brother and sister as they joined them. Their small group was drawing a great deal of attention from the stream of people attending the presentation.
“Probably because she knew he’d be an ass about it,” Rupert grumbled.
Malcolm’s eyes shot wide. “I beg your pardon?”
Rupert held himself with all the arrogance of a young man who had just come into his inheritance without a lick of experience to back up his attitude. “Mama tells you something wonderful and you fly into a temper. Of course she hesitated to tell you sooner.”
“Is that what you think?” Malcolm asked with a humorless laugh.
“Mama wouldn’t have stayed silent for so long without a very good reason,” Rupert went on, holding his own.
Underneath his anger, Malcolm knew the boy was right. Katya never did anything without a reason. The bigger the secret, the stronger her reason. That didn’t stop the fury from rising in him.
“You have a lot to learn about your mother, boy,” he growled. “I’d wager there’s a whole side to her that would turn your hair white if you knew.”
“I am aware of the rumors,” Rupert said through clenched teeth. “And I may know more than you suspect about whether or not they’re true.”
Malcolm wanted to challenge the whelp, but Bianca cleared her throat, looking decidedly worried.
“People are watching us, you know,” she said. “Mama is always going on about discretion, and I don’t think we’re being discreet at the moment.”
“No, we aren’t,” Malcolm admitted with a nod. “Which is why I’m leaving.” He turned to go.
“You aren’t going to just leave me like this, are you?” Natalia called after him.
A chill shot through Malcolm’s blood. Her words echoed those of her mother nearly sixteen years before. He had walked out on her—walked out after Peter had informed him a nasty rumor was making the rounds that he was carrying on with a married woman mere months after Tessa’s death. A rumor started by Shayles, who had been convinced Malcolm would return to his old ways. Once a bounder, always a bounder, Shayles had teased him. Hatred for the man had pushed him to try his hand at leading an upright life, but now Malcolm knew the greater price he’d paid for letting a rumor get under his skin.
&
nbsp; “I have to go,” he told Natalia, his words eerily similar to his excuse all those years ago. “You don’t want me to stay right now.” He started walking again.
“But—”
“Let him go, Nat,” Rupert told his sister. “It really is for the best.”
A bitter smirk twisted Malcolm’s lips. That’s what the boy thought, did he? Perhaps he was right. He’d only have mucked things up if he had stayed.
Chapter 9
Malcolm pushed past the guards at the palace gate and stormed across Green Park, his feet taking him automatically toward Mayfair. He couldn’t shake the strangling squeeze of betrayal that Katya’s confession caused. She should have told him. That was all he could think about as he stomped past unwary bystanders, nearly plowing into a few of them in his temper. She should have told him right from the beginning, before Natalia was even born. If he’d known he would have…he would have….
His mind failed to conjure up what he would have done all those years ago, with Robert still alive, Katya firmly married to him, and Tessa fresh in her grave. He damn well would have done something, though. He would have done something if Katya had told him the truth after Robert’s death. But no, she’d kept her secret and squandered her time jumping in and out of the beds of half the men in London. Had she done that simply to punish him for coming to his senses and leaving her to her husband?
His angry thoughts were still swirling when he found himself at the door of Peter’s townhouse. He vented some of his frustration pounding on the door, then glaring at Peter’s astonished butler.
“Is he in?” Malcolm growled, pushing past the man into the entryway.
“If you could wait here, I’ll check—”
Malcolm ignored the man, storming down the hall toward Peter’s study. “Peter,” he shouted. “Where the devil are you?”
He rounded the corner into the study, finding it empty. At the same time, footfalls sounded on the stairs, so Malcolm returned to the hall.
“What in God’s name are you doing, barging into my home and causing a racket?” Peter asked, coming down the stairs. He was in his shirtsleeves and looked as though he hadn’t shaved that morning.
“Did you know Natalia Marlowe is my daughter?” Malcolm demanded with enough anger in his tone to suggest Peter had been in on the secret.
Peter nearly stumbled down the last two stairs, his eyes going wide. That was all the answer Malcolm needed, but Peter answered, “No,” in an astonished tone anyhow. “She is?”
Malcolm’s fury abated by a hair. At least he wasn’t the only fool Katya had duped. “The girl figured it out based on…evidence.” He wasn’t about to explain that he’d spent the night in Katya’s bed and been more or less caught by their children. The young people might have figured things out, but he and Katya had been damned sure to keep the nature of their association a secret from their meddling friends.
Another secret. Malcolm did his best not to flush with ironic guilt as Peter let out a breath and approached him.
“I take it Katya has known all along,” Peter said.
“Evidently. Though how she can be sure it’s mine with the way she carries on is….”
His words died on his lips at the censorious scowl Peter gave him. The bastard even crossed his arms and shook his head like a scolding father.
“Katya might have enjoyed herself, but she’s never been careless,” Peter said, striding past Malcolm and gesturing for him to follow down the hall to the study. “Otherwise there’d be far more little Marlowes running around London. Ones that couldn’t claim even a shred of legitimacy.”
“Are you defending her?” Malcolm snapped, heading straight to Peter’s liquor supply as soon as they were in the room.
“No, I’m….” Peter let out a breath and rubbed his forehead. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“You’re defending that deceptive tart?” Malcolm sloshed scotch over the lip of one of Peter’s tumblers.
“Good God, Malcolm. Listen to yourself.” Peter crossed the room to snatch the decanter from Malcolm’s shaking hands, pouring himself a small glass. “You’re insulting the woman we all know you love, and why? Because she hurt your feelings?”
“My feelings have nothing to do with it,” Malcolm growled, immediately hiding his lie by gulping scotch. The liquid burned its way down his throat but only served to turn his stomach more. “I had a right to know about my own child.”
“I’m sure you did,” Peter said, putting the stopper back in the decanter with a clink. “But it’s all water under the bridge now. Why are you really angry with Katya?”
“Because she’s a lying bitch,” Malcolm snapped, but the ache in his heart told him that there was a world of other reasons, each more painful than the last, that had been building up for over a decade.
Peter sent him a flat stare. “Katya is Katya. Yes, she can be a bitch, but can you blame her? Look at what she’s up against on a daily basis.” He gestured toward the window, as though the male hordes of London were waiting on the other side to put all women in their places. “She wouldn’t be who she was if she didn’t fight tooth and nail for her pride. And I mean that in terms of a lioness protecting her young as well.” He pointed at Malcolm with his tumbler, then took a sip.
“I have only ever loved that blasted woman, and look how she’s treated me?” Malcolm grumbled, pacing as the scotch slowly took effect.
“How has she treated you?” Peter asked with a wry grin.
“She refuses to marry me,” Malcolm admitted. He hadn’t told any of his friends about his numerous proposals and Katya’s refusal to answer them. And yet Peter didn’t look the least bit surprised. “She continues to defy me and make a fool of me, in public and in private.”
Peter chuckled. “You do a fairly good job of making a fool of yourself.”
“She flaunts her conquests in my face when I love her more than any of them ever could,” Malcolm nearly shouted, the words sharp with emotion.
Peter finished his scotch and set his tumbler back on the tray. “So you’re telling me that you’re angry because a woman whom you love but have no binding claim to continues to live her own life and enjoy herself, and that she has gone to great lengths to protect her children from what would certainly be a social disaster if it were widely known? This is what has you so irate?”
Malcolm turned away from his so-called friend, downing the last of his scotch with an exasperated gulp. He was being an ass. His own children—both of them, God help him—were being more rational about the situation than he was. If any of his friends behaved as he was, he’d laugh them into oblivion. But it was his heart on the line, dammit. He’d sacrificed everything for love—with Tessa and with Katya—and he’d come up a loser both times.
“All I’ve ever wanted is someone who would love me with as much devotion as I love them,” he murmured, half hoping Peter wouldn’t hear him.
“Katya does love you,” Peter said in an equally somber tone. “She always has. But she loves you on her terms, not yours. If you had accepted those terms from the start, your story would have been a very different one.”
Malcolm clenched his jaw, wanting anything but for his friend to be right.
“Tessa loved you too,” Peter said, quieter still. “No matter what happened at the end.”
Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn’t block out the horrific scene of her deathbed—the pain she’d been in after a difficult birth, the hysteria that had overcome her when she lay there bleeding to death, and her final, horrible words. It hadn’t been fair. None of it had been fair. He’d come within a hair’s breadth of ruining his name and fortune to extract Tessa from Shayles’s clutches and to help her to obtain a divorce, and within a year, she was gone.
He would still exact his revenge for that, for the life Tessa deserved but never got, but first things first.
“There are certain things a man deserves to know,” he said, turning back to Peter. “Who his own children are, for example. How wo
uld you feel if Anne had had a child that she didn’t tell you about?”
Peter’s expression hardened to cold stone. “You know full well Anne was incapable of bearing children and that trying to bear one killed her,” he said in a hush.
“I’m sorry.” Malcolm hid his slip-up by returning his tumbler to its tray. Peter’s first marriage had been a source of heartbreak for him for twenty years. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“The trouble is, Malcolm, you never are.” Peter shifted his stance as though shaking off the demons of his past. “You say you love Katya, but you demand she change to suit you.”
“I do not,” Malcolm argued.
Peter merely raised a doubtful brow at him.
“I just want her to be honest with me, to stop humiliating me by running around with every young buck who strikes her fancy,” Malcolm went on.
Peter crossed his arms. “And who does she have her sights set on now?”
“That dolt, Christopher Dowland.”
Peter let out a breath and shook his head. “He’s far too young for her. Besides, the only man she’s looked at with genuine interest for years is you.”
Malcolm scowled at his friend, inclined to think Peter was a trusting fool. Katya looked at every man who crossed her path with interest. And who knew whose bed she was in when she wasn’t in his?
At the same time, a nagging doubt whispered at the back of his mind. Was she really as big of a flirt now as she’d been fifteen years ago? She smiled and flirted, all right, but it had been ages since rumors of her proclivities had found their way to him. But why would he hold on to such certainty about Katya’s lack of loyalty toward him if she wasn’t so loose with her affections?
“Look, friend,” Peter cut through the gloomy silence of his thoughts. “I’m just packing to head back to Starcross Castle for a week. Mariah is due in a month, and in spite of my duties in Parliament, I intend to be there for this child as I was with the first one if I possibly can.”
“Yes,” Malcolm sighed, rubbing a hand over his face in an attempt to clear his thoughts. “Go. Be with your wife.”