“Very good, miss,” he murmured.
After he left, Katherine faced Alec. “Must you return to Suffolk so soon?”
That caught him off guard. He’d expected complaints about the small wedding. “Believe me, I’d rather stay with you until we marry, but duty calls.” Not wanting to discuss it further, he scanned the room. “Perhaps I should eat something before I go.” He shot her a wicked smile as he headed for the sideboard. “I suddenly have an enormous appetite, thanks to our… er… vigorous activity earlier.”
Though she blushed, she ignored his insinuation as she came up beside him. “What if Mama and I were to go with you to Suffolk?”
He froze as he was picking up a plate. Blast. “That wouldn’t be wise.”
“Why not? You and I could simply marry at your estate. You want a small wedding, and Mama and I need a quick one, no matter what she thinks. There is Mr. Byrne to consider, after all. If we marry at Edenmore, that would all be settled. And we wouldn’t have to be parted.”
No, the parting would come when she saw the condition of his estate, and they wouldn’t even make it to the wedding.
Not good, not good at all. He served himself some cold roast beef, though he’d suddenly lost his appetite. “It’s not practical for us to marry in Suffolk. We’d have to return to London anyway to pay off your debt to Mr. Byrne, and there’s the solicitor to talk to—”
“Surely you could do that tomorrow morning, before you leave. And you said you already got the special license. So why not have the wedding at your home?”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but Edenmore is in no condition right now for a wedding. And I don’t have time to meet with the solicitor before I leave.”
“All right then, let us go with you for a visit. Then we’ll return to London for the wedding when you’ve finished your business. Mama and I could see your estate and meet your servants—”
“No,” he said quickly. Too quickly, judging from the suspicion flaring in her face.
He gritted his teeth. Her request was perfectly logical, so he must give her an irreproachable answer. “I won’t be able to spend any time entertaining you—”
“You needn’t worry about us—we’ll fend for ourselves.”
He averted his gaze, unsettled by the disappointment in her face. Mechanically, he heaped food on his plate, hardly noticing what he put there. It got harder by the moment to deceive her.
Yet deceive her he must. “I’m sorry, but it would be too much a distraction for me. You can take care of yourself, but your mother would be bored. And I must focus on dealing with the spring planting. I can’t manage guests right now.”
A heavy silence fell. After a few moments, he could stand it no longer. Setting down his plate, he faced her. “You do understand, don’t you?”
Her eyes were unnaturally bright. “Alec, I know you said there should be no rules between us, but I wish you’d agree to at least one rule.”
The abrupt change of subject set off alarm bells. “And what might that be?”
“That we are always honest with each other.”
Blast. “I am being honest with you.”
With an arch of one brow, she searched his face, and he forced himself to meet her gaze boldly. He was being honest, at least about this. She and her mother would be a distraction, and he wouldn’t be able to entertain them.
And they’d find out that you have no money.
Perhaps he should tell her the truth. He grew tired of the lies and evasions, of trying to think one step ahead of her clever mind. Perhaps if he laid the situation out for her, she’d accept he had no choice, and the deception would all be over.
Or she would refuse to marry him.
He dared not take that chance. “You’ll see Edenmore soon enough, you know. There’s no need to rush.”
A stubborn look spread over her face. “Alec, I need your promise. Can you swear to be honest with me and never hide anything from me after we’re married?”
That he could promise. Because after they married, there’d be no reason to hide anything—although he wasn’t looking forward to the storm that would follow all his revelations.
“Yes, I promise,” he said solemnly. “I swear on my mother’s grave that once we’re married, I’ll always be honest with you and not hide anything.”
Some of the stiffness left her posture. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Why did he suspect that his answer hadn’t completely satisfied her? “Any other rules you wish to foist on me? An agreement not to wear fustian at dinner, a promise never to smoke in bed, that sort of thing?”
A smile tugged at her lips. “No, I think the honesty thing will be quite enough.” She glanced away. “And as long as we’re being honest, I suppose I should tell you that Sydney proposed marriage to me this evening. He promised to tell his mother and everything if I would only agree to marry him.”
His gut twisted into a knot. “Did he?”
“Yes. Before you arrived at the party.”
He chose his words carefully. “And what answer did you give him?”
She shifted her gaze to his. “I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
Why was she telling him this? To remind him that she had other choices? Or show him how much she’d given up to be with him?
He chose to believe the latter. Drawing her close, he stared at her country-girl face with its sunny freckles and trembling mouth and vulnerable eyes. “Listen to me, Katherine, and listen well. I will do my best to keep you from regretting your choice. I promise to be a good husband to you. You needn’t fear on that score.”
She searched his face. “And I promise to be a good wife. I only hope that you and I agree on what that is.”
“I’m sure we do,” he said as he enfolded her in his arms.
Though she let him hold her, he wasn’t certain he’d convinced her. Never mind. He only had to keep her content until he got her to the altar, and that would come within the week.
He was in the final stretch of the race. Nothing short of an act of God could stop him from reaching the finish line now.
Chapter Twenty-three
Remember that women are unpredictable.
Just when you think you have them under
your thumb, they will appear where you
least expect, wagging their tongues.
—Anonymous, A Rake’s Rhetorick
“You know that you’ve lost your mind, don’t you?” Katherine’s mother said two days later from across the hired carriage.
“I know.”
She really did. The closer they traveled to a tiny village called Fenbridge, the more insane this trip seemed. Yet she had to make it. She had to find out what Alec was hiding.
Because she knew he was hiding something. Otherwise, why not let them go with him to Suffolk?
Her stomach tightening with every mile, she stared out at the forest they passed. His reluctance simply made no sense. If he was so eager to bring her home with him to begin their life together, why not do it at once?
Unless his trip to Suffolk had nothing to do with the spring planting.
She shook off the thought that plagued her constantly. She’d made the mistake of leaping to conclusions before— she wouldn’t do it again. But neither would she head blithely into marriage to a man she couldn’t trust. Until she was sure she knew all his secrets, she couldn’t marry him. And the only way to do that was to go to his home and see what he seemed determined to keep hidden.
“Really, my angel,” Mama said as she bounced on the uncomfortable seat, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. First you insist upon our visiting some fellow at the Stephens Hotel yesterday. Then you spend our meager funds to hire a coach, rouse me before dawn, and drag me on this trip across two counties… and all to appear at an estate where you’re clearly not expected. Faith, you’d think you didn’t want to marry his lordship.”
“Of course I want to marry him,” she said mechanically. “I just want to
be certain whom I’m marrying.”
“The Earl of Iversley, of course. Surely you’re not confused about that.”
“It’s not his title I’m confused about, Mama.” Katherine had grown tired of going round and round on the same subject. “It’s his character.”
“Character, character… you’re obsessed with character. Most girls would be happy to marry an earl with an estate of twelve thousand acres. But not you, oh no. You must run him down at his home, whether he wants you there or not. You’ll ruin all your chances with him yet,” her mother predicted.
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take.”
Ever since the night he’d left her at the town house with a kiss and a promise to return within the week, she’d fretted over his odd behavior. Especially after she’d gone to speak to the owner of the Stephens Hotel the next day. She’d told him that she wanted to retrieve The Rake’s Rhetorick while Alec was off in Suffolk.
“Jack” had been more than happy to sing Alec’s praises once she’d made it clear that she knew Alec had been living in his establishment. But though he’d professed to know she was Alec’s betrothed, he’d politely refused to let her into Alec’s room to look for “the book she’d lent him that he’d forgotten to return.” And when she’d asked for Alec’s direction so she could send him a note, he’d flatly refused to give it to her.
That had only deepened her suspicions. Alec hadn’t given her his direction, either—what if she needed to reach him? Clearly, he’d intended to keep her in the dark.
Combined with Alec’s peculiar reaction to her request to go with him—and his strange insistence on taking care of estate matters in person—it had been enough to send her on this quest.
It had taken her half the afternoon yesterday to coax someone at the hotel into telling her exactly where Alec was headed. Even then, she’d only managed to get the name of the nearby town. But if he was as well-known a landowner as her mother thought, then someone could direct them from there.
One way or the other, however, she intended to surprise him at his estate.
“What exactly do you expect to find out?” Mama asked her peevishly.
“I don’t know.” And that was the God’s honest truth.
“If you surprise a man in his own home, you’d best be prepared for what you find. Men often dismiss their mistresses just before they marry, you know.”
She did know. And it shouldn’t bother her if he was getting rid of a mistress. It was certainly better than keeping the mistress after they married. But it did bother her, and it boded ill for their life to come. She refused to marry a man with Papa’s morals.
Of course, he might be hiding something else entirely. Or perhaps she was being unduly cautious again. No, she didn’t think so. She only prayed she didn’t get more than she’d bargained for by surprising him like this.
They traveled in silence a while as thick forests of ash and elm turned to clay hills, and the sun slid toward the horizon. It was nearly dusk when Katherine saw a signpost that said, fenbridge—2 miles.
Her heart began to pound. “We can’t be far,” she told her mother.
“It’s not too late to return to London,” Mama retorted. “Why risk it when you have so much to lose?”
“Because I must.”
She spotted a farm laborer driving a cart ahead of them. As they came alongside, she ordered the hired coachman to stop.
The laborer, a weathered man with an unusually tall brow and long-fingered hands, reined in as well, turning a pair of suspicious eyes on her. “Lost, are ye?”
Katherine flashed him a smile out the open window. “Indeed we are. We’re looking for Lord Iversley’s estate. Edenmore.”
The man jerked his head to the field that ran by the road. “You been driving by it for a good bit. You can see the house from the road up ahead—it’s a big ‘un.”
“Thank you,” she said, and offered him a coin.
With a derisive snort, he ignored it and clicked his tongue to send his odd-looking horse clopping on down the road.
As they passed him, Katherine gazed at the cleared fields he’d indicated and felt a moment’s unease. Three men toiled in them with horses much like the odd one she’d just seen—short, barrel-bodied, and devoid of the thick hair usual to the legs of draft horses. They were turning the earth in nice, neat rows… with shiny new tillers.
What if Alec had been telling the truth? Might he get angry enough at her distrust to toss her aside, as Mama feared?
Then where would she be? She couldn’t go back to Sydney—not unchaste as she was. And even if Sydney would have her, she’d already realized he wasn’t the man for her. Indeed, she greatly feared that no man could make her feel what she felt for Alec.
But what did she feel for Alec? Did she dare give a name to the dizzy pleasure she felt when he entered a room? The way his teasing always brightened her day? She could say anything to him, and he understood. Even around Sydney she’d always had to censor her more… reckless thoughts.
So why couldn’t she trust Alec? Why did she still hold a piece of her heart back from him?
Just as she wondered if she should turn back to London after all, she caught sight of the house the laborer had described, and her heart leaped into her throat.
This was to be her home, this huge house of red brick and a hundred glass windows, with an elm-lined drive they now entered, and a fishpond and flower gardens and long lawns…
But they were overgrown flower gardens, choked with weeds. And the fishpond was covered with a thick green scum. And of the hundred windows, a good third of them were boarded up, turning what had once been a beauty of a house into a pockmarked crone.
“He wasn’t lying when he said the place was in no condition for a wedding,” Mama remarked.
Katherine glanced over to see her mother scrutinizing the place with a frown. “Don’t you remember, Mama? He said his father neglected the place for years. That’s why he wanted to be here rather than in London.”
No wonder Alec had spoken so fiercely of his poor home. What sort of unconscionable creature had his father been, to let this beautiful old building fall into such disrepair?
“This is more than neglect, girl,” her mother said. “This doesn’t look good to me, not good at all.”
Katherine ignored her mother as they drove up before the front entrance. Of course it didn’t look good; that’s what happened when a man didn’t do his duty. And it wasn’t as if there’d been much time for Alec to turn things around.
It was odd, though—Alec had mentioned workmen, yet there were none around. No one repaired the sagging eaves, no one pulled the weeds in the beds of rosebushes gone wild, and no groom ran out to greet them as they approached.
Indeed, even after they disembarked, it took several moments to get any response to their knock at the front door. When at last it opened, the aging fellow who greeted them seemed confused by their appearance. “May I help you?”
Katherine forced a smile, though her unease increased by the moment. “I’m Lord Iversley’s intended, Miss Katherine Merivale. My mother and I have come to see him.”
There was no mistaking the poor man’s alarm. “All the way from London?”
“Yes. If you could just announce us—”
“Forgive me, miss, but his lordship isn’t here at present.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Where is he?”
“He’s… er… in town. So you’ll have to come back later.” He actually started to close the door, but she was too quick for him and thrust her foot in the opening to block it.
“Then let us in, and we’ll wait for him to return,” she said.
“Oh, no, miss,” the man said, so violently she feared he might keel over in shock right there. “You mustn’t come in. But if you’d be so good as to wait outside with your carriage—”
“We will do no such thing.” She pushed past him into the house. She’d been right all along—Alec was hiding something. Scarcely noticing the
frayed carpets and sparse furnishings, she turned a dark scowl on the man. “Now where exactly has he gone?”
“Wait here, and I shall send for him at once.”
That was the last thing she wanted—for this fellow to warn Alec. “Never mind. I’ll find someone else to tell me.”
Hearing voices upstairs, she headed for the main staircase. Mama followed right behind her.
So did the annoying servant. “I beg you, miss,” he said as he struggled to keep pace with her, breathing hard, “do not go up there. I know that his lordship would prefer that you wait while I fetch him—”
“Oh, I’m sure he would,” she retorted, her steps more resolute the farther she marched up the stairs.
If she hadn’t been so upset, she might have noticed the lack of other servants coming to the man’s aid or the shaky banister that clearly needed repair. But her entire focus was on the laughter coming from upstairs. Because she recognized it. Alec was up there, along with some female. The masculine laughter was interspersed with decidedly feminine giggles.
As she reached the next floor she caught sight of beds through open doors. This was where the bedchambers were, and the laughter was coming from the one at the end of the hall, probably the master bedroom.
She stalked toward the sound of laughter, growing sicker by the moment. How many times had she gone to fetch Papa, only to find him with some tart he tried to pass off as a servant? How often had she had to turn away while he fumbled with his breeches even as he lied to her?
Now she could make out the voices, and they only spurred her on.
“What do you think?” said the voice she definitely recognized as Alec’s. “Is it too wicked?”
There came that feminine giggle again. “Not for a bedchamber, master.”
Some grunting ensued. “Is that all right?”
“It’s fine.”
“I don’t think it belongs there.”
“It’ll be fine if you put it more to the back.”
In the Prince's Bed Page 24