The Bride Takes a Groom

by Lisa Berne

  Chapter 3

  Hugo sat down.

  For a moment he wondered which was worse: being stared at, or tripe.

  It was an unanswerable question, and instead he looked over at Kate—at Katherine Brooke—hoping he’d done reasonably well at masking his surprise at her appearance.

  Of course he hadn’t come here expecting to find a little girl, he knew she’d be all grown up, but it was rather difficult to simply see her as she was now. One’s attention was inexorably drawn to the large glinting jeweled ear-bobs, and to her dark hair, pulled up into a sort of high bundle around which strings of pearls and diamonds had been wrapped, leaving a thick straight fringe arrayed across her forehead with a stiff, crisp appearance. Also, Hugo was no judge of women’s fashion, nor was he a critical sort of man, but it did seem that Katherine’s gown had quite a lot of ruffles on it—running from her waist down to the hem, which had its own perpendicular set of them, along with multiple bands looping round the shoulders and at the wrists as well, giving Katherine overall a rather puffy look and also a sparkly one due to the diamonds in her hair and the three or four strands of them hung round her neck and which lay across her bosom in a glittering display.

  Another thing he hadn’t expected was her reaction to him.

  She hadn’t smiled, she hadn’t seemed at all glad to see him, and altogether she gave the impression of being sorry that French sharpshooter hadn’t done a better job of trying to annihilate him.

  As he looked at her, she slid a little lower in her seat, her face flushed a bright red and on it an expression of sullen hostility. Puzzled, and conscious that her mother was well within earshot, Hugo said politely to Katherine:

  “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Thank you,” she muttered.

  “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thirteen years, by my calculation.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “At my father’s funeral.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were still living next door to us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss the ocean, and the beach?”

  “I don’t know. I never think about it.”

  “Enjoy living in the country, then?”

  She shrugged.

  “Did you like London?” he asked.

  She shrugged again, and silence hung between them, almost like a physical thing. Hugo now wondered which was worse: being stared at, tripe, or sitting next to someone who disliked you.

  He tried again. “So you met my Aunt Henrietta in London?”

  “Not really.”

  “But . . .”

  Here Mrs. Brooke darted forward. “The charmante Mrs. Penhallow! Quite the first lady of London! I simply dote on her! Katherine, ma douce, I’m sure that Captain Penhallow would absolument adore seeing our new ruins. Why don’t you take him for a little tour?”

  Katherine glared up at her mother. “It’s raining.”

  Mrs. Brooke gave a little tinkling laugh. “Oh, hardly at all! A bit of rain won’t melt you, après tout.”

  “Are we to go without a chaperone, Mother?” Katherine’s tone was sardonic.

  “Oh, you and the captain are old friends, n’est-ce pas? Most unobjectionable! Do go, ma chère petite fille.” And she gave Katherine a look which made it clear she wasn’t asking, she was commanding.

  “Fine,” Katherine said dourly, then glanced at him. “If you want to.”

  It was less a question of wanting to view new ruins—and wasn’t that an oxymoron, incidentally?—than being given an excuse to leave this stuffy crowded drawing-room. Hugo rose to his feet with alacrity. “I’d love to.”

  For a moment he would have sworn that Katherine was afraid of something—him? How could that possibly be?—and then she gave a deep, annoyed-sounding, entirely audible sigh and got up also, grimacing as if something hurt her. Quickly Hugo offered her his arm. “Miss Brooke?”

  She actually leaned away from him, as if he were some kind of repulsive, bad-smelling troll she’d found lurking under a bridge somewhere, and dropped her unfurled fan onto her chair. “Let’s go.”

  As they walked away, Hugo heard from behind him Mr. Brooke saying to someone in a loud whisper, “The Whitehaven branch of the Penhallows, you know, poor as church-mice, but still, a Penhallow’s better than a duke any day,” Mrs. Brooke saying, “Such a handsome couple, ne sont-ils pas,” as well as, inevitably, somebody else commenting, “Captain Penhallow looks just like a Greek god, doesn’t he?”

  Hugo resisted the impulse to growl at this last and all too familiar remark, and ignored the others. He and Katherine then passed an awkward mute interval in the cathedral-like Great Hall while they waited for a maid to bring her a pelisse and a hat, with the butler and his several satellites standing about. (They, at least, had the courtesy not to stare.) In the meantime, Hugo gazed up at the ceiling, which displayed an astonishing quantity of arched panels and gold leaf. This, he thought, wasn’t so much a home as a sort of bizarre museum. A damned uncomfortable place to live, if you asked him.

  In due course the maid arrived and assisted her mistress into a high-necked, crimson pelisse heavily trimmed with ermine and then placed over the high knob of Katherine’s hair a red velvet hat festooned with lace and several large artificial flowers. She had brought with her soft kid gloves as well as a pair of half-boots embroidered with so much silver thread it was difficult to see the leather underneath. “If mademoiselle would step into the salon just over there,” the maid said, “I shall help you with the boots.”

  Katherine seemed about to comply, but then she glanced up at him; an arrested look came onto her face and for several moments she simply stood there, stock-still, as if consumed by her own thoughts.

  “Your boots, mademoiselle. If you would be so good as to come with me—”

  “I don’t want them.”

  “But mademoiselle, your slippers will be ruined.”

  “Very likely.”

  “Votre maman—” whispered the maid.

  Katherine only shrugged. “Let’s go,” she said again to Hugo.

  “Mademoiselle, your gloves.”

  “No. Turpin, the door, please.”

  “At once, Miss Katherine,” and the butler signaled to a subordinate, who hastened to comply.

  A cool, playful breeze from outside whirled to meet them, causing the white lace on Katherine’s hat to flop wildly about, and together they crossed the threshold into a damp pungent world of scudding gray clouds high above, everywhere the rich smell of wet earth, and fallen leaves scattered at their feet in a wanton riot of red, orange, green, gold. They made their way along a wide, winding path toward a thickly clustered grove; once they had reached it, and followed along three or four of its long gentle curves, Brooke House disappeared from their view as if it had never existed.

  Hugo looked over at Katherine. She was frowning a little, with her gaze fixed on the muddy ground in front of her, giving the appearance of one who was mentally a thousand miles away.

  “Kate,” he said, “do you really want to be out here? With me?”

  Again he would have sworn he saw a little fearful tremor run through her, but she only replied:

  “I am Katherine now. And you should call me ‘Miss Brooke,’ you know.”

  “Miss Brooke,” he repeated, pleasantly. “Shall I take you back to the house?”

  “No.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Ha,” she said, as if she couldn’t help it.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  Well, Hugo thought, this had turned out rather badly. Not that it wasn’t refreshing to be around a woman who didn’t fawn all over him, complimenting him about his looks until he heartily desired to be elsewhere, but it was obvious that Katherine Brooke found him unappealing.

  His chances with her were plainly nil.

  It was a setback, if not an outright blow, but at least he’d
made the attempt.

  Rapidly his mind moved across his alternatives. He’d need to immediately confer with their man of business and together try to reach an accommodation with their various creditors. Remembering his offer to Mama, at thirteen, to become a sailor, he wondered now if he might make good on that. He had always loved boats, had spent countless hours at the wharves looking at them. He’d hate to ship out and leave the family so soon, and the money would hardly make a dent in the enormity of their pressing needs, but it would be a start. And wouldn’t it be jolly to climb a rigging at last?

  “There it is,” said Katherine.

  They had come round another bend in the path, and before them loomed a high, massive, flat-topped structure made of artfully worn tan-colored bricks, featuring a long series of tall graceful archways; around it had been placed great tumbled blocks of the same tan material, conveying the impression that time had, across countless millennia, slowly and gently softened their hard geometrical lines. It was an extraordinary set-piece, intended to evoke an ancient Biblical era, the exotic Fertile Crescent, turbaned people in colorful robes and dusty hemp sandals, camel trains, a blazing sun, swaying palm trees, and so forth—and it had been placed in the middle of a sylvan English wood.

  “Egad,” said Hugo, having thoroughly looked it over, “that’s not something you see every day.”

  “My parents just had it built,” Katherine answered, but absently. A deep furrow had formed between her dark brows.

  “What is it, exactly?”

  “It’s supposed to be the ruins of Babylon.”

  He wanted to laugh, but instead said, “It’s certainly unusual,” feeling himself to be on solid ground with this honest observation. As she did not reply, he went on: “Well, we’ve seen it; shall we go back?” He half-turned away, but then Katherine did speak.

  “Wait. Let’s go inside.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  And so he followed her, among and past the huge artificial blocks and into the building itself, where the archways allowed cool gray light to flood the colorfully tiled interior. Against one wall was a low stone platform; on it were two high-backed marble thrones of an unpleasant ochre color reminiscent of dried blood, and, even worse, they were ringed by a threatening phalanx of large, carved wooden creatures that looked like a cross between an angry lion and a dyspeptic monkey. Katherine went to sit on one throne, and Hugo, reluctantly, sat on the other.

  “One feels like King Solomon,” he said. “Dispensing judgments and telling women to cut their infants in half. Not my cup of tea.”

  “Never mind that.” Katherine swiveled around in her seat—he was damned if he’d keep thinking of them as thrones—and looked him straight in the eye.

  “You asked if we met your Aunt Henrietta in London.”

  He nodded.

  “We didn’t meet her, precisely. We saw her at the Royal Academy of Art, and my parents tried to introduce ourselves to her—to bring me to her attention.” Katherine smiled without humor. “Hoping she’d choose me for her grandson. To have Gabriel Penhallow marry me.”

  Hugo pictured in his mind his elegant, slender, silvery-haired relative. Elderly she might be, but she was still sharp as a tack and with a posture as ramrod-straight as that of any soldier. Also she was the haughtiest, proudest, and, frequently, the most caustic person he knew. It wasn’t hard to imagine what happened when she’d been approached by what she would doubtless pronounce a set of ghastly brazen parvenus. He said:

  “Didn’t go well, I expect.”

  “No.”

  “Snubbed you horribly?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We deserved it. My parents are desperate, you see, and that’s stripped them of any subtlety they might ever have had.”

  “Desperate? About what?”

  That humorless smile of hers was still there. “Well, I’m their only hope, I’m afraid, and I’m not exactly a help, am I.”

  Oh, damn, Hugo thought, this was just the sort of conversation he hated, filled with opacities as treacherous as any fougasse, the dreaded land mines which could suddenly blow the unwary to bits. Bluntly he replied, “Their only hope for what?”

  “To establish themselves among the beau monde.”

  “Ah.” It seemed to him rather a trivial goal, but then again, he reminded himself, he was hardly in a position to judge; wasn’t he here strategically deploying the Penhallow name, after all? Then something Katherine had said looped again in his brain, and he looked at her more closely. Her skin was very white and smooth, he noticed suddenly, and her lips the exact color of a ripe cherry. Delicious, tempting . . . but not for him, alas, to taste. He pulled himself together and went on, “They see you as their only hope? Puts rather a lot of pressure on you, doesn’t it?”

  Her big, dark eyes seemed to shimmer for a moment; but then she sat up a little straighter and said, “Oh, you should save your sympathy for my parents, Captain. It’s been quite an arduous gamble for them, after all, especially since I’m of so little value—being, you know, a less than ideal commodity in their high-stakes game.”

  Well, here was another conversational land mine, especially given the reason for his visit today. Hugo wondered again how he might bring this awkward conversation to a close, and make a graceful exit. In the sudden silence that fell between them, he watched as her gaze traveled over him and abruptly she dropped her eyes; he saw her hands clenching tight in her lap. A minute ticked by, then another, and another. A red flush bloomed again on her face, spreading across the soft alabaster of her cheeks. Finally she said:

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Certainly. What would you like to discuss?”

  “You.”

  Katherine didn’t dare look at Hugo Penhallow any longer, for fear she might actually do what she urgently wanted, what her traitorous body was yearning for her to do, which was to go over to him, put her hands on those broad shoulders, lean close and—oh, lick his face, rub her face against the dense gold of his hair, put her mouth hard on his, and more . . .

  No.

  No.

  She took a deep, calming breath, could almost feel herself cooling down into that reassuring block of ice. Oh, better. She looked down at her feet, and registered with pleasure the fact that her slippers were indeed muddy and ruined, precisely as Céleste had warned her they’d be.

  Back there in the Great Hall, she’d been just about to obediently change her slippers for the half-boots, but then she’d let herself glance up at Hugo—at that magnificent face, with its proud straight nose, perfect mouth, those extraordinary blue eyes filled with light—and inspiration had come to her, so fast and so dazzlingly it felt like there were fireworks inside her head.

  She had an idea.

  Sitting in this ridiculous building, on this absurd marble seat, it suddenly occurred to her that the young Katherine-that-was would have invited Hugo to play at being kings and queens. Would have pretended that those bizarre wood creatures surrounding them were their courtiers, or their servants, or their enemies, or their children, or—

  She broke off this distracting train of thought, wrenched herself back into the present, and looked again at Hugo, pleased at how steady and firm she felt. She said:

  “I heard Father talking as we left the drawing-room, Captain. Is it true that you’re poor?”

  “Yes,” he said calmly.

  “And were you telling Mother the truth, that you’re not affianced elsewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  Katherine nodded. Oh, damn, her heart was hammering hard within her, as if it were a caged animal trying to burst free. To combat it, to bring herself back into coolness, into her mind she summoned an image, a certain passage from one of her hidden history books, this one about the ancient Romans. Cornelius Tacitus had written in 97 a.d. about the Sitones, a tribe in northern Europe which was believed to be a matriarchal society.
Among the Sitones, Tacitus said, the women were powerful; the women chose their mates.

  It was a wild, a radical idea back then—disapprovingly had Tacitus commented upon its harmful effects—and it still was, of course, seventeen hundred years later. Even in this modern era, in which civilization had evolved with things like the printing press, steam engines, inoculations, gas lights, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Herschel’s great telescopes, women were still supposed to demurely sit around, waiting for some man to ask her to be his wife.

  But an hour ago, Hugo Penhallow had unexpectedly strolled into her parents’ drawing-room, and maybe, just maybe, they could effect a trade to their mutual benefit. It was not, to say the least, a romantic proposition, but it had been a long, long time since she had indulged in girlish dreams of love, a soulmate, happily ever after.

  And here, right in front of her, was an opportunity to escape Brooke House.

  So to Hugo she said, in a voice that was only a little bit breathless:

  “Marry me.”

  She saw his blue eyes widen, and the look of surprise on his face. And then—and then—

  He laughed.

  And Katherine shrank back in her chair, almost as if he’d pushed on her chest with one large, strong hand. To her horror, it felt as if her face was crumpling, giving her away, showing too much, and quickly she brought her hands to cover it. Her fingers, she noticed distantly, were icy. I should have worn my gloves, what a stupid girl I am. And what was I thinking, asking him such a thing? I deserve to be mocked. Out loud she said in a low choked voice, “Go away.”

  “Kate,” he said, not laughing now, “oh, Kate—”

  “I’m Katherine!” It was a shriek, but muffled by the hands she still pressed hard against her face. “Go away!”

  Then, startling her, his own hands were upon her bare wrists, and with enormous care he drew them away and onto her lap; he was kneeling before her, his expression one of deep contrition. “God, but I’m an oaf. I wasn’t laughing at you, Miss Brooke, I swear it.”

  Pleasure at his touch, at his warm hands upon her cool flesh, shivered through her, and just as quickly came the old devastating fear. Misinterpreting that shiver, perhaps, he released her wrists, but remained on his knees before her. She said, rather roughly: