Larissa shook her head as she sank down into the closest chair. “It’s a lie. We were told by reliable sources that her ship went down and all aboard were lost. This woman, whomever she is, is an imposter.”
Larissa’s sure tone gave Katherine a brief moment of hope. Yes, perhaps it was a mistake. A misunderstanding. Her gaze flew to Cole, but her hopes were dashed immediately. He was shaking his head with just as much determination as his mother possessed.
“No. I don’t believe she is. I trust my source completely.”
“Who?” Julia asked with folded arms. “Who could you possibly trust so implicitly that you would believe your dead wife to now be alive without even seeing her? And why did you even have an investigator on this case after so long, even after you were meant to marry another?”
Cole blanched and Katherine’s heart ached. The questions Julia asked were reasonable and deserved answers, but still her heart went out. Obviously Cole was in no condition to reply.
Julia cocked a brow when her brother didn’t answer. “You seem less than shocked by this turn of events.”
“Julia!” Larissa cried, but Cole interrupted.
“I—I—” he stammered, then took a breath and seemed to recover himself. “By God, Julia, you act as if I knew my wife was alive all along. The investigator is Father’s old man in London. He was not investigating Sarah in any way, but apparently he heard rumblings.” His eyes flitted to Katherine. “But I promise you, I knew nothing about this until tonight. Of course I would not have continued with an engagement if I thought there was any chance—”
“That is enough! This is ridiculous. Cole, you do not have to explain yourself further.” Larissa glared at her daughter. “How can we be utterly sure this is true? Even if you trust this man as much as your father did?”
He sighed heavily. “We will know soon enough if the man is as trustworthy as he once was. The woman…Sarah will be arriving the day after tomorrow. If it is true, I’m certain she’ll have a tale to tell as well.”
Now that the shock was wearing off, Katherine let out a low moan. Any minute she’d wake up. This would all be a nightmare. She even gave herself a little pinch to hurry the process along, but nothing changed. This was reality. A bitter one.
In a few days, this woman would appear. If it were truly Sarah Mallory, she would take Katherine’s carefully planned life. Of course, it had been the other woman’s life first, but the thought still made Katherine sick to her stomach.
What would she do?
“See here, Lord Harborough,” Stephan Walworth said. Her guardian’s thin fingers were jammed into fists at his sides. Though he wasn’t often an emotional man, now he looked furious. “We had an arrangement. If this mysterious woman is your late wife, what do you intend to do about Katherine?”
At once, all eyes in the room pivoted on her. Hot blood filled her cheeks. Having them look at her with such pity was almost worse than finding out the truth. The attention was suffocating.
“Yes,” Eustacia agreed with a nod of her fat, red face. “We have a responsibility to Katherine, and so do you, my lord.”
Katherine opened her mouth to protest, but Larissa was faster. “See here, Mr. and Mrs. Walworth, you certainly don’t believe any of this is my son’s fault. It isn’t as if he knew his wife was alive when he made his offer for your ward’s hand.”
Cole was growing paler with each passing moment. “Quite so!”
“Whether he knew about his wife or not won’t make a difference to the gossip mongers in London!” Eustacia snapped. “Katherine will be ruined by this scandal. Tell them, Stephan!”
The other man nodded like his head was on a hinge. “Exactly right. It isn’t as if finding her a match wasn’t hard enough.”
Katherine winced as her guardians’ statements pierced through her emotionally numb haze. Why did Stephan and Eustacia have to make it sound as if she were some toothless old maid? She hadn’t made a match earlier because she hadn’t met anyone she wished to marry. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she had no interest in reforming a rake or finding the great love of her life. And she didn’t have the kind of family ties to make a match for political purposes. No, her reasons to marry had been far different.
And Stephan and Eustacia had argued every step of the way.
“This will destroy any chances she has left at marrying well.” Eustacia let out a long sigh that made it clear Katherine’s entire life was over.
She’d had just about enough. “Now—” she began.
This time, Cole cut her off and he looked livid. She’d never seen her fiancé’s rage before. It seemed a force to be reckoned with. His normally placid, handsome face twisted with ugly emotion and darkened with heat.
“There is no need to raise your voice at me, Mr. Walworth! This is an untenable situation for us all. I certainly didn’t wish for it to turn out this way.”
“But it has! She’s ruined! Ruined!” Stephan said, his voice going up on each and every word until the room rumbled with his declaration of her social demise.
“I’m not—” she said, before being interrupted yet again.
“Don’t you think this will touch our family, too?” Larissa said in an icy tone that put everyone in the room in their place whether they had been out of order or not. “Good Lord, a wife returning from the dead, a fiancée thrown over. The Mallory name will be a laughingstock for years.”
“We had an arrangement. We shook hands on it as gentlemen.” Stephan folded his arms. “And now this damage must be repaired. How can we do that?”
“What if she married someone else right away?” Larissa offered after a brief pause. “I’m sure with our family connections we could find someone who will be happy to receive her fortune”—she glanced at Katherine with an apologetic expression, though it was obviously an afterthought—“and her charms as well. It will reduce the damage to us all.”
“That’s enough!” Katherine finally cried out in a voice no one could ignore or interrupt. The chatter in the room ceased as everyone looked at her, really looked at her, not through her. “I will not be married off to just anyone simply to make you all feel as if you’ve done right by me. I remained an unmarried woman for three seasons in order to choose the kind of man I wanted as my husband. You will not push me off on just any man.”
To her surprise, there was a harsh bark of laughter behind her. She hadn’t realized anyone else was in the room. Spinning on her heel, she nearly fell over when she realized the man who laughed at her plight was the same one who had approached her on the terrace.
“My, my, my,” he drawled in that gravelly voice that brought her body to full attention. “This Kat has claws.”
Heat filled her face again, but it wasn’t from embarrassment this time. No, some other emotion made her blush, though she had no name for it, or for the shaking that accompanied it. This man was mocking her, but still all she could do was stare into his gray eyes and be sucked in by his presence.
The room had gone into a shocked silence again. Why? Except this stranger was now intruding on what was obviously a family moment. Worse yet, he seemed to be enjoying it. There was a devilish twinkle in those eyes that raised her ire.
“Who are you?” she asked with as much icy disdain as she could muster.
He smiled. “Don’t you know? I thought for sure you must.” He mimicked her words from the terrace and her blush grew hotter.
Cole stepped forward to place a possessive hand on her arm. “Katherine, this is Dominic.” As he spoke, the two men’s eyes locked in a hostile gaze. “My derelict brother.”
Katherine let out the gasp she’d been unable to express when she heard her fiancé’s wife was alive. This was Cole’s brother?
Over the past year, she’d heard references to the man, but never met him. Cole had led her to believe Dominic Mallory was a black sheep who was cut from the family tree with little regret. Larissa left the room whenever he was mentioned. Only Julia spoke of her youngest sibling with any affection.
Now this man who had no place in his own family was staring at her, drawing her in. And she could not turn away. He was nothing like she’d pictured from her fiancé’s description. In fact, he was completely different from the rest of the fair-haired Mallorys. No, he was dark, square-jawed, and looked hard. And uncommonly handsome.
Dominic responded to her shock with a cocky half-smile. Straightening her back, she turned away. But despite not being able to see him any longer, she still felt him behind her. Like the heat from a blazing fire, his presence seeped through her.
Ignoring the shocked stares of the Mallory family, which had now shifted from her to Dominic, she tried to return the focus to the problem at hand, but Eustacia was faster.
“Katherine, watch your tongue! Lady Harborough was only trying to consider your future and you should, too.”
“My lady, I’m sorry if my answer was sharp,” Katherine began with an apologetic glance for Larissa. Her ladyship hardly seemed to be attending as she stared at her youngest son. “But I still insist that I don’t need—”
Cole placed a hand on her forearm to silence her. “Katherine, this is a very upsetting situation for all of us. Nothing is set in stone as yet. Let’s leave the arguments for later, shall we?”
His touch was the same as ever, but now she found it lacking. Especially when compared to the heated form of his brother, whose presence she still felt throughout her. And he wasn’t even touching her.
“Cole—” she began.
He shook his head. “Why don’t you go back to your chamber and rest. This news must be troubling to you.”
She drew her arm away to stare at him with wide eyes. “Troubling?”
What was she, a child who needed placating when her toy was taken away? The word troubling was an insult to her roiling emotions.
He nodded with a sympathetic smile. “In a while, I’ll call on you and we’ll try to find a solution to this mess that is acceptable to all parties involved.”
Cole turned away before she could respond and faced his brother. The gentleness that had always been in his eyes disappeared, replaced by a hard edge Katherine had never seen before. She couldn’t help but step another few inches away from him, not that he even noticed her anymore.
“I need to speak privately with my brother,” Cole said. “I believe he has some reason for being here.”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to be shoved aside so Cole could explore some lifelong rivalry with his younger brother. She wanted to sit down with him and discuss what they should do. To be treated like an equal in this terrible turn of events, rather than some child.
“But Cole—”
“Later.” His voice was cold and clipped.
Finally, Katherine dared to do what she’d been trying to avoid. She looked at Dominic Mallory over her shoulder. Like Cole, he had a dark, angry look on his face. But Dominic used that look with more skill than her fiancé…former fiancé.
She shivered as she drew away from them both. There was more going on between the two than she understood. And she didn’t want to know for now. Not when her own world and future were in such danger.
“I believe Colden is correct,” Larissa said with a worried glance between her sons. Still, she did not greet Dominic. What had the man done to deserve such censure? “Come along, I’ll accompany you and the Walworths back to your chambers.”
With a gentle hand, Larissa hustled Katherine’s caretakers from the room. At the doorway, she turned back. “Come.”
Julia gave her a sympathetic glance as she, too, departed. “I’ll start moving the guests toward their carriages. There’s no use continuing an engagement party now, I suppose.”
Katherine frowned as she attempted to lock eyes with Colden, to get some kind of sign from him that all of this would be resolved. But he refused to meet her questioning stare. He hardly acknowledged her at all except to place a soft hand on her back and give her a little shove toward his waiting mother.
Stunned at his chilly dismissal, Katherine turned back to ask him to reconsider, but Dominic was there, closing the door in her face. As the barrier moved closer, she made the mistake of looking up into his eyes. The gray steel drew her in, warmed her in a way she’d never felt before.
Then, to her utter surprise, the grin returned and he gave her a saucy wink.
And then he was gone, and she was only staring at the solid wood between them. And trying to control the way her knees threatened to buckle.
Chapter 2
“D rink?” Cole asked with a thin smile for Dominic.
As desperate as Dominic was to dull his emotions with liquor, he shook his head. He’d learned from years of bitter experience that he couldn’t give his older brother even the slightest edge. A clear head was the only way to face Colden. To demand what he’d come home to take. Later he could indulge to his heart’s content.
Especially if the meeting didn’t go well.
“No.” He remained standing just inside the doorway while he watched his brother mix a drink for himself, then stroll over to the desk and settle in.
Cole raised his brown eyes and Dominic had a sudden flash of their father. Harrison Mallory had called Dominic into this very room for lectures so many times over the years, he’d lost count. And for punishment. His gaze automatically flitted to the fireplace, but the thick switch Harrison once kept there was gone.
Cole smiled maliciously. “I put it away. No use having it there until I have sons of my own.”
“As if you ever felt a blow from him in all your years,” Dominic returned with more heat than he intended. Immediately, he cursed himself for showing any emotion, even anger, and quickly tamped it down.
Though Cole’s eyes sparkled with delight that he’d gotten a rise out of his younger brother, to Dominic’s surprise he made no further comment. Cole rarely let a shot go untaken.
His brother motioned to the chair across from his desk. “Sit.”
Dominic’s first urge was to refuse, but he reined in his rebellion. Let Cole feel drunk with power for now. It was only a temporary state.
“So what do you want?” Cole asked as he took a slow sip of his drink. “Or have I already guessed?”
“Perhaps I’m here to celebrate your nuptials.”
Dominic arched an eyebrow as he waited for his brother’s response. Any response. It was as if Cole had forgotten Sarah was alive and he was going to have to find a way to compensate for Katherine Fleming’s soon-to-be-public humiliation.
“You?” Cole sneered. “Offer me congratulations? That’s a rich joke.”
Dominic remained silent as his brother’s ugliness faded and his twisted face relaxed.
“No,” Cole continued. “I think you’re here to talk to me about Lansing Square.” He leaned forward. “To beg me about Lansing Square.”
Dominic bit the inside of his mouth until the taste of blood tainted his tongue. “Judging from the mess I just witnessed a few moments ago, you’ve got more pressing problems.” He shrugged. “I am here to talk about Lansing Square, but it can wait.”
It was a lie and his mind revolted with a silent scream of protest. It couldn’t wait. It had bloody well waited for three years. Long years when the estate had invaded his dreams and been his sole obsession. The idea of putting off his final demand for access actually pained him. But rationally, he was aware that his only real hope was to stay his assault until Colden was most open to his wishes. The only chance Dominic had to win the prize was to play his game wisely.
He settled into the chair as if years and hatred didn’t separate him from his brother. “I can’t believe Sarah is alive,” he said in the most conversational tone he could muster.
“Hmmm.” Cole’s brown eyes went distant as he rotated his glass in a slow circle. The amber liquid within created a whirlpool. “Yes, my wife’s reappearance is unexpected. But now that she’s returned from the dead, I find myself in a bit of a situation, don’t I?”
Shock and confusio
n moved through Dominic. How could his brother remain so damned calm? Cole and Sarah had certainly made no love match all those years ago, but their union had always been full of high emotion. For his brother to sit so coolly when he believed his wife was back from the dead made no sense.
Dominic leaned back, determined to stay as detached as Colden somehow managed to be. “A situation. I would say so. You now have both a fiancée and a wife. If, indeed, this woman is Sarah.”
“I’ve no doubt she is who she claims to be.” Cole met his gaze evenly. “I trust my source implicitly. And I suppose we’ll all see firsthand when she arrives.”
“How can you remain so composed?” Dominic asked in wonder. This certainly wouldn’t be his reaction if the situation were reversed.
His thoughts turned to Julia’s earlier comment. She’d said Cole didn’t seem shocked by the news. Was his brother simply stunned into numbness…or was it possible he had known of Sarah’s existence before tonight, despite his protestations to the contrary?
The calculating cruelty of that idea made it hard for even Dominic to believe.
Cole laughed. “Unlike you, my dear brother, I’m able to control my emotions. What good would panic do at this moment? No, what I need right now is a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
Dominic shoved his doubts aside as he realized this was the first time he’d had any semblance of polite conversation with his brother in what had to have been eight years. Under normal circumstances, Cole would have started a fight by now. Suspicion sluiced through him. His brother wanted something.
“I need a plan for Katherine’s sake, of course. She’ll be ruined by this.”
Dominic nodded. For the first time since she left the room, he allowed himself to think about his brother’s beautiful fiancée. Katherine hadn’t reacted to the news of Sarah Mallory’s impending return the way many of her contemporaries would have. There had been no swooning, no tears or hysteria. In fact, she had enough wits about her to argue with his mother, of all people.
And now she would be free.
Scandalous Page 2