by Julia London
“Abundantly,” Digby corrected her.
“Abundantly clear,” Kate blithely continued, “that you do not approve of my friendship with the duke. I understand your concern, God knows that I do, but I … I can’t help myself.” It was the honest truth.
“You can help yourself!” Digby insisted. “If you are discovered, the prince will take his revenge and I assure you, my love, it will not be pleasant. Look at the lengths to which he has gone to rid himself of a wife! You will be treated like rubbish, Kate, tossed to the wolves.”
“I know, Digby,” she said. She did know it—she could hardly sleep from knowing it. “But he won’t know,” she added stubbornly. “I am very discreet.”
“She’s made up her mind, that’s obvious,” Aldous said, to which Digby snorted.
No one spoke. The tension between Digby and Kate was rather stifling.
“By the bye, I’ve heard The Princess has turned back to port,” Aldous said a moment later.
Kate stopped what she was doing and gaped at Aldous. “Jude’s ship? What have you heard?”
“Just that. Heard it at the quays. She was dismasted in a storm and is slowly making her way to port.”
“Do you know when the ship is expected?” Kate asked eagerly.
“A fortnight or so. They’ll be sailing into Deptford.”
Kate looked at Digby, her heart in her throat. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I might very well find Jude! I might find him, Digby!”
“You might indeed. And then you might find yourself out on the street for all your nonsense,” Digby sniffed as he gestured to her portmanteau.
Kate clucked at him and folded the brocade gown. “To think that after all this time, I may have my brother back in a mere fortnight!”
Merrick could not understand why Grayson had decided to spend a few days away. “I need you here, Grayson,” he implored.
“I’ll not be gone more than a few days, ” Grayson assured his brother. “And you hardly need me. You are very eloquent on the subject of abolition. You have Wilberforce with you.”
“You are the duke,” Merrick said irritably. “Your title carries quite a lot of weight with members of Parliament. Why must you go now?”
“Because I have business that I must tend to,” Grayson said. It annoyed him that he needed a reason, even more that he must lie about it. Was he not allowed a few days away from all the duties and responsibilities for once in his bloody life?
Apparently not, for Merrick’s frown grew darker. “I’ve heard the rumors,” he said quietly.
“Rumors,” Grayson scoffed. There were always a host of rumors about him and his family, and they were seldom true.
“I’ve heard that you’ve been in the company of the courtesan.”
That prompted Grayson to look up.
“It’s in all the on dits, Gray,” Merrick said. “Little hints about the company you keep. A certain duke in the company of a certain lady, at Montagu House, of all places.”
Grayson hadn’t read a paper in days and was surprised by the news. He glanced down at his desk, at the stack of correspondence Palmer had left for him to review. He’d left the newspapers and correspondence unread as he and Merrick had chased after votes. For once, he was living his bloody life. Why couldn’t they all leave him alone?
“I would never presume to advise you,” Merrick continued. “But we are so close to a vote, and I … I desperately need your support.”
“You have my support, Merrick. Look here, I am going to be away from London for a few days! I do not intend to be gone for weeks and I’ll be no more than two hours away on horseback. Is that so far? When I return I shall help you convince the last few doubters of the wisdom of the abolition bill. You will not need my help, but I shall offer it all the same. Do not doubt it.”
“Well then,” Merrick said with a curt bow of his head. “I suppose there is nothing left to say but God’s speed.” With that, he strode from the study.
Grayson sighed and glanced at correspondence on his desk and wondered what else he’d failed to realize. He picked up the stack and flipped through it. It was the usual assembly—petitions from his tenants, official documents from the solicitors for those businesses in which he held an interest, a slew of invitations for the upcoming Season.
In the middle of the stack was a vellum sealed with the crest of the Prince of Wales. Grayson frowned and broke the seal. It was an invitation to his annual fête. He hosted one every year to celebrate the opening of Parliament and the beginning of the Season. George had scribbled a note at the bottom:
I pray our jewel has recovered and shines brightly. You must have it adorn your arm at the fête.
“Damn if I will,” Grayson muttered, and tossed the vellum onto the pile of correspondence. He moved to the windows and looked out at the park behind the mansion. What was he doing? What madness allowed him to court such dangerous consequences? He withdrew his pocket watch; it was a quarter to noon.
The coach would be waiting.
Feeling uneasy and uncertain, Grayson arrived at Charing Cross, and spotted Kate instantly when she arrived in the company of Butler. She looked small and tense as they walked down the sidewalk. When they reached the coach, a footman opened the door, and Kate smiled up at Grayson.
He felt instantly lighter, and his doubts momentarily scattered to the four corners of his mind.
She was wearing a dark blue woolen cloak and matching bonnet. Grayson signaled for the footman to take her bag. She said good-bye to Butler—who eyed Grayson warily—and then accepted the footman’s hand to enter the coach. The footman moved to shut the door, but Butler suddenly surged forward and glared at Grayson. “When will you have her back?” he asked bluntly.
“Monday,” Grayson promised.
“Aye, and if she’s not, I’ll hie myself up to that fancy house of yours and demand direction to your lodge in a manner that will have all the tongues in London wagging.”
“Aldous!” Kate cried.
“Were you a jailer at some point in your illustrious career, Mr. Butler?” Grayson asked.
“Have her back on Monday or you’ll have me to face,” Butler snapped, and shut the door.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Kate cried, embarrassed. “He’s not very cordial, I’ll grant you, but he means well.”
Grayson didn’t want to think of Butler. “How are you?” he asked.
She smiled. “Good. A bit anxious, in truth. And you?”
He smiled, too. “A bit of the same, but better now that I’ve seen you.”
Kate’s smile deepened. “Do you think anyone suspects anything?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head.
“Thank goodness,” she said, leaning back. “I’ve been at sixes and sevens all week.”
“As have I,” he agreed.
“The prince sent flowers and wished me a quick recovery,” she said. “He also wrote that he’d be at Bagshot Park with his brother Clarence.”
Thank God, Grayson thought. “Let us not think of that now,” he suggested, and knocked on the ceiling of the coach to signal the driver.
“Wait!” Kate quickly exclaimed, putting her hand to his knee. “Will you humor me and allow me one short diversion before we leave London?”
When those pale green eyes shone up at him like that, Grayson imagined he would allow her the world. “What is the diversion?”
“The market. And before you say no,” she added hastily before he could object, “there is a sweetmeat I should very much like to make for you while we are in the country, but I haven’t all the ingredients. There is a kitchen of some sort, isn’t there?”
Not only was there a kitchen, there was a cook and a scullery maid. “Yes, but—”
“I promise you will be quite pleased with this treat and wonder how you lived without it all your life. But I must have rose hips.”
“Pardon?”
“Rose hips. Don’t be alarmed,” she said hastily. “They aren’t real
ly poisonous. That’s a silly rumor.”
Grayson didn’t want to stop; he wanted to be as far from London as he could be, as quickly as possible, but her eyes, her smile …
He opened the vent to the coachman. “The nearest market,” he instructed him.
Finding rose hips proved easier said than done. They were not, Grayson quickly realized, very easy to come by in winter. They wended their way through the market stalls, looking for them.
“Are you certain this item can be found in January?” Grayson asked, batting away woolen stockings, which hung incongruently over a row of spices.
“Yes,” she said as she studied some bottles filled with dark liquids.
“And it is absolutely necessary?”
“Oh yes! They give the pastry a very distinctive flavor. And a palm reader once told me that they will ward off ague brought on by cold.” She looked up at him. “I thought that was important, given that it is colder in the country than in town.”
Grayson blinked. “Did the palm reader tell you that, as well?”
“No. Aldous told me. He hails from the country, can you believe it?”
Grayson wasn’t certain why he shouldn’t believe it as he admired the high color in Kate’s cheeks.
She paused, holding a jar of something that looked very foul, and considered him a moment. “Have you never had your palm read?”
“Certainly not,” he said instantly. “That’s a lot of nonsense.”
“It’s not!” she insisted, her skin radiant in the cold sunlight. “That very same palm reader told me that I would one day live in a fine house, and now I do. How do you explain that?”
“Quite simply. She saw a beautiful woman and knew that some day, not only would a man lift that beautiful woman out of her situation and put her in a fine house, but that the beautiful woman also would be divested of her coin in the hopes of being told as much. She didn’t read your palm, Kate. She read your lovely face. Are those rose hips?”
“Pig’s feet.” She put them down. “You’re awfully skeptical about things, aren’t you?”
“Skeptical?”
“Yes, skeptical,” she said absently. “Oh here! Rose hips!” she cried, finding a bottle among several. “How much?” she asked the woman.
“Tuppence, mu’um.”
Grayson reached for his purse, but Kate put her hand on his. “If you please, sir, this is my creation and I have my own money.” She handed a coin to the woman behind the table. “There!” she said, and turned to Grayson, obviously pleased with her purchase. She looked as if she meant to speak, but an intolerably filthy woman suddenly appeared and put her hand on Kate’s arm.
Grayson instinctively moved forward to put himself between the old woman and Kate, but Kate startled him with cry. “Agnes Miller!” she cried. “Lud, where have you been, old girl?”
Grayson recoiled—she knew this hag?
“Here and there,” the woman said, eyeing Grayson up and down from the corner of her eye. “I lost me place on St. Katharine’s street and I had to go to the almshouse till I could find work. Filthy sties, those charities. Aye, but ye’ve done well for yerself, ain’t ye, Katie? I knew ye would, pretty lass that ye are. Wasn’t hard to know. Ye heard ’bout Fannie Breen, eh?”
“Fannie! Not a word! I looked for her a year or so ago and couldn’t find her about town. How is she?”
“I’ll tell ye how she is, lass—she’s cocked her toes up, she has! Aye, she tried to take a baby out of her belly.”
Kate gasped. Grayson was revolted by the mere mention of it.
“ ’Twas the rat catcher’s wife who done it. I was very surprised, I was, for she’s typically quite good.”
“Fannie,” Kate whispered, and looked at Grayson. “Fannie helped me at a time when no one else would,” she said softly.
“Here now, Katie, ye gots something for an old friend, hasn’t ye?”
“Ah. Yes,” Kate said, and reached once more for her reticule.
“Kate—”
She smiled thinly at Grayson as she fished a few coins from her reticule. “I haven’t much,” she said to the old woman. “But you may have what I’ve got.”
“Kind of ye, Katie. But then again, I’s always kind to ye, weren’t I?”
Kate looked as if she might disagree with that, but placed several coins in the woman’s palm.
Agnes looked at the coins in her hand, then slyly shifted her gaze to Grayson. “What ’ave ye got, gov’na?”
“You’ve got your coin, old woman. Off with you now.”
She gave him a toothless grin and put the coins away with the practiced ease of a thief and shuffled away.
“Well … well, good day, Agnes!” Kate called after her, then looked at Grayson with wide green eyes. “Poor Fannie Breen.”
“It is a gruesome tragedy, to be sure,” he agreed, and took Kate firmly in hand and steered her in the opposite direction. “Are you in the habit of giving all your money to beggars?”
“She wasn’t just any beggar, Grayson,” Kate answered evenly. “Agnes and I worked alongside each other in the cloth halls, and everyone needs a helping hand now and then.”
Grayson supposed some people took advantage of helping hands.
Kate had come from a very cruel world, and as they made their way out of the crowded market stalls, he realized that knowledge made him uncomfortable. Kate was a beautiful, vibrant woman, but her circumstances couldn’t be any worse. She didn’t belong in his world. Nor did she belong in that world.
Honestly, Grayson didn’t know where, exactly, Kate belonged, and the doubt was beginning to eat at him.
Chapter Twenty-six
Grayson was subdued on the drive to Hadley Green. He spoke politely to Kate, but he seemed distant to her.
Something felt out of sorts between them.
The tension diminished somewhat once they were outside of London and Kate began to see the countryside. The land beyond London stretched out before them in quaint little patches of farmland, dotted with cattle and sheep and thatched roof cottages and barns with smoke curling out of the chimneys. They rode over stone bridges, through narrow, cobblestone lanes in picturesque villages. Children rushed out and ran alongside the coach, calling out to them. They rode over frozen rivers and past thick stands of trees and green hedges and empty fields.
What amazed Kate most of all was the sky. Buildings, the tall masts of ships, and the ever-present haze crowded out the sky over London. This sky was so vast, the azure color of it so rich and bright that it seemed to swallow the world.
Kate kept her face glued to the window, calling out what she saw, making Grayson look and explain the things she was seeing. That was a cistern. The big thing in the field was a plow, and those animals were oxen. A whole new world was opening to Kate, and in every corner there was beauty, bathed by brilliant winter sunlight.
When they neared the village of Hadley Green, Grayson told her they would be at the lodge shortly. Minutes later, they turned through a narrow stone gate that bore a sign that Kate could not read quickly enough. “What does it say?” she asked.
“Kitridge Lodge. It once belonged to my mother’s uncle, but was given to my father’s family as part of her dowry,” he explained as they rolled past a field where horses grazed.
When the lodge came into view, Kate was surprised to see that it was not the pile of stones Aldous had claimed it would be, but a small castle. It reminded Kate of the paintings they’d seen at Montagu House. An ivy-covered round tower stood at one of the front corners, anchoring the L-shaped building. A high stone fence swept off to one side, but through an open door, Kate could see fields beyond it.
As they pulled into the drive, the front door of the small castle opened and seven people in servant’s dress hurried out and stood in a line. “This is the hunting lodge?” she asked uncertainly.
Grayson chuckled. “You were expecting something grander? I suppose most of them are.”
“No, I—”
T
he coach door opened before she could finish her sentence. Grayson went out first. Kate stepped out self-consciously. If the servants noticed her, they gave no indication; their eyes were fixed on Grayson. The men bowed, the women sank into deep curtsies. Grayson spoke to each of the servants as he led Kate past them, thanking them for preparing for his visit on such short notice.
The small door that was apparently the entrance to the lodge opened onto a deceptively large hall. Kate gaped at her surroundings as the servants bustled in behind them, carrying their bags. There was a variety of animal heads with impressive antlers hanging high on the walls, as well as the Darlington coat of arms, painted on a very large wooden crest.
“Mr. Noakes,” Grayson said to a gentleman in buckskins and a tweed coat, “allow me to introduce Miss Bergeron. Is there any particular set of rooms to which I should show her?”
“I would suggest the Queen’s room, Your Grace,” Mr. Noakes said, bowing his head.
The Queen’s room! Kate was awestruck. “Thank you,” Grayson agreed. “Have someone bring up her baggage.”
“Very good. May I inquire as to when you would like supper served?”
Grayson looked at Kate. “Would eight suit?”
She hadn’t thought of supper being served—she had thought to serve it. “Of course,” she said softly.
The room Grayson showed her to was not as large as she would imagine a queen’s room to be, but it nonetheless had a lovely view of the park behind the lodge. The lawn was pristine in spite of it being winter, and the large stone fence Kate had noticed on their arrival stretched as far as she could see and disappeared over a rise. “It’s beautiful,” Kate said of the room. “Why do you call it the Queen’s room?”
“Queen Anne was a guest, I believe,” he said idly, as if queens were quite often guests in his house. He put his arm around her waist and held her against his body as she gazed out the window. Kate closed her eyes. His touch seemed to bridge the distance she’d been feeling between them.
“I had forgotten how peaceful it is here,” he said.
Kate leaned her head against his shoulder, and Grayson tenderly kissed the top of her head. She turned in his arms, lifting her face to his. Grayson kissed her—