by Wilma Counts
“Need? No. Housekeepers have to manage their own clothing. But would I welcome help? Oh, yes.”
He knelt before her and slowly finished removing the stocking she had been working on, caressing her thigh, the calf, and then her foot.
She giggled. “I’m ticklish.”
“That’s good to know—for future reference.”
He started on the other leg, his fingers caressing, teasing the soft flesh above the top of her stocking, then probing higher.
“Jeremy.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re taking too much time.”
“I’m savoring,” he said, bending closer.
“Well, maybe you’d like to savor these too.” She slipped her chemise over her head to expose her breasts—and savor them, he did.
They made quick work of shedding what remained of their clothing and soon lay facing each other in the bed. He fondled her breasts, running his hand, then his lips and tongue over pebble-like nipples. Desire flared in her, centering in throbbing need in her nether regions. She drew his hand to the moist folds between her legs and then teasingly caressed his already hard flesh.
“Kate, you’re driving me mad. I don’t think I can wait.”
She laughed softly. “Then don’t.”
He positioned himself on top of her and she raised her hips to accommodate him as he prolonged the pleasure of entering, until at last she felt full and complete. He moved slowly at first, testing their rhythm, teasing her, his eyes reflecting her own passion as he held her gaze. Then his strokes came faster and deeper and she matched him thrust for thrust. She felt a shuddering wave of ecstasy and heard herself cry out, “Oh, yes, Jeremy, yes!”
She felt him achieve his own release and collapse against her, though he carefully rested most of his weight on his elbows. “Oh, Kate. Kate.” He kissed her, his lips tender and gentle. She felt her inner muscles still grasping, clinging to him as though to hold him forever as she fervently kissed him back. They both relaxed and he moved to her side, but continued to hold her close, spoon fashion, one arm under her head, his other hand idly caressing her body.
He nibbled at her earlobe. “I don’t know what you did with my prim and proper housekeeper, but I do like her replacement.”
“That’s nice, for you seem to have seduced her out of existence and now you are stuck with what you get.”
“I’ll take it. I’ll take it,” he said quickly, then chuckled, “though I am not all sure who seduced whom this time.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not at all, my love. Not at all.” He stifled a yawn and added sleepily, “I was right about one thing.”
“What?”
“This bed is much more conducive to this activity than the one in the nursery, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. One could get quite used to this one.”
“Count on it,” he said, reaching across her to turn the gas lamp off.
Then they both slept—for a while.
Long before the rest of the household stirred, Kate rose, slipped into her dress and shoes, and gathered up the rest of her clothing. Jeremy peeked out the door.
“It’s clear,” he said, giving her a quick kiss. “Soon enough, this won’t be necessary.”
“I know, but for now . . .” She returned the kiss and made her way down the hall to her own room. She crawled into her cold bed for another hour of two of sleep, already missing the warmth of Jeremy’s body next to hers, the scent of him, the scent of him and her together.
“Well, the die is cast,” she told herself. And if this was a taste of the rest of her life . . . well, it wasn’t going to be so very bad—not bad at all.
Later, it was hard to pretend that nothing had changed. It was especially hard at the breakfast table, for when she happened to catch Jeremy’s gaze, she knew very well they were each remembering some special nuance of the night before and she could not help smiling. Finally, she excused herself with a pretext of checking the day’s menus with Mrs. Jenkins.
Just before noon, Cuthbertson drove Kate and Lady Elinor into town to visit the dressmaker. The town of Kenrick had almost all its businesses on one street. These included the Finleys’ inn at one end of the town and a blacksmith at the other. In between were a mercantile shop that also held the post office, a bakery, a cobbler’s shop, and the dressmaker’s shop, which was run by a middle-aged woman named Madame Aubert.
“Violetta Aubert lost nearly her entire family in the Terror,” Lady Elinor explained.
“But she escaped?” Kate asked.
“She was here in England at the time with her young husband and their baby daughter. He left her and their child here while he returned to try to rescue both their families, but they were all caught and served up to the rabble in Paris.”
“How awful.”
“She and her daughter, Jeanne, are both very talented with a needle. They can copy any of the latest fashions, and Jeanne also makes quite attractive bonnets.”
“I take it you are assuring me I will be in good hands?”
“Very good hands.”
The shop was bigger than Kate had judged from the exterior that faced the street. Besides examples on dress forms of the handiwork available here, there was a long counter for laying out fabrics and packaging purchases. In addition to the mother-daughter proprietors, two other young women worked on garments. Two large screens were arranged on opposite sides of the room to afford privacy for fittings. A cheval glass stood in front of each. Three tables with straight chairs and fashion magazines allowed clients some comfort in their decision-making. Three other customers, young women in fashionable dress, occupied one of the tables. Kate and Lady Elinor were already in the middle of the room before Kate recognized that one of those occupants was Charlotte Mortimer. Kate took a deep breath.
“Hello, Lady Elinor,” Madame Aubert trilled. “How nice to see you. May I offer you a lemonade or tea?”
“Tea would be nice,” Lady Elinor said, leaning on her cane. “I have brought my house guest, Lady Arthur Gardiner, to you for some new garments.”
Madame curtsied to Kate, then clapped her hands and a young maid appeared from another room. “Tea, Mirabelle.” Then she indicated an empty table. “Perhaps her ladyship would like to look at some of our fashion plates.”
Kate guided Lady Elinor to the table and sat herself so she would not be facing Miss Mortimer directly. Lady Elinor looked around, squinting her eyes. Then she leaned toward Kate to whisper, “Is that—?”
“Yes,” Kate whispered back.
“Oh, dear. Do you want to leave?”
Kate lifted her chin. “No. I will not be so intimidated.”
Lady Elinor patted her hand. “That’s our girl.”
The maid brought the tea and Kate settled into perusing fashion plates, vaguely aware as she did so of the buzz of conversation at the other table. Finally, she chose three patterns she thought suitable. She signaled Madame, who hurried over.
“These will do nicely,” Kate said. “Two day dresses and an evening gown.”
“Those are nice choices,” Madame cooed. “And perhaps you would like a bonnet or two to match the dresses?”
“My dear Kate!” Lady Elinor chided. “That will not do at all. Jeremy specifically charged me to see that you are properly outfitted.” She turned to the French woman. “She must have at least five day dresses and two evening gowns to start with. And bonnets. Oh—and a cloak.”
“And perhaps a wedding dress?” Madame said. “One hears rumors, you know.”
“That too, of course.”
Kate started to protest, but suddenly the discourse at the other table rose in volume and it was quite apparent that the three women there wanted to be overheard while pretending to a private conversation.
Charlotte Mortimer’s voice was unmistakable. “—no better than she should be. I just think it really terrible that an honorable and noble man can be trapped into an unsavory marriage with a conniving female of a certain
ilk just because she happened to convince him she had been compromised.”
Knowing full well that she was the topic at the other table, Kate was profoundly embarrassed. She knew Charlotte Mortimer to be spiteful and pretentious, but she was also keenly aware that this young woman was a fixture in the Kenrick community while she, Kate, was a relative newcomer and unknown.
Miss Mortimer’s companions tried to shush her, but she went on in the same loud tone. “No. I will not be silenced. I am not the sort to tolerate injustice when I encounter it and seeing a good man forced into a lifetime of unhappiness—well, it just fairly breaks my heart. It’s just tragic. That’s what it is: tragic.”
“All right, that’s it.” Lady Elinor grabbed her cane and pushed herself out of her chair. She was halfway to the other table before Kate realized what she was about.
“Miss Mortimer,” Lady Elinor said in a voice of authority Kate had never heard from her before. “I assume it is my nephew whom you are seeking to champion in an unseemly public manner and whom you would rescue from—how did you put it? Ah, yes, ‘a tragic lifetime of unhappiness.’ A tragic lifetime of misery is precisely what his lot would have been had your boorish father succeeded—with your full knowledge and complicity, by the way—in his ill-conceived plan to buy you a titled husband, thus putting you in the company of Covent Garden ware, in my opinion.”
“Lady Elinor—” Miss Mortimer started to rise in an exaggerated show of shocked outrage.
“Sit back down there. I’m not finished,” Lady Elinor snapped. Miss Mortimer sank back down and her companions cringed. Lady Elinor tapped her cane against the floor. “Marriage to some cit’s daughter—a chit whose only interest is his title and elevating herself in society—that would be misery, indeed. Instead, though, Kenrick is getting a woman who loves him for himself. What’s more, he happens to be very much in love with her—a condition he could not ever have known with you.”
“Well, I never—” Charlotte Mortimer fairly sputtered. She stood and grabbed her reticule from the table. “Come, Fanny. Judith. I am leaving. I will not stay here to be abused so.”
Her companions looked embarrassed and apologetic, but they rose and left with her.
Lady Elinor returned to her seat. “Oh, my. That felt good.”
Kate gave a shaky laugh. “I must say, I had no idea you could be such a—a tigress! I do thank you for coming to my defense—even if you did rather overstate the case.”
Lady Elinor lifted an eyebrow. “Hardly. I see better and more than you—or Jeremy—think I do.” Her expression turned a bit sheepish. “However, my tirade is likely to become the talk of the parish. Ah, well . . . back to business. Really, Kate, five day dresses and two evening gowns to start. We shall discuss the wedding dress later.”
CHAPTER 24
For Kate, time the next few days became a curious blend of routine and waiting during the day, and sheer bliss every night. On Sunday, the Reverend Mr. Packwood read the banns for the first of the requisite three readings to announce to all and sundry the forthcoming marriage of Katherine Emma Newton Gardiner and Jeremy Michael Chilton, Seventh Earl of Kenrick.
She felt a twinge of sadness as she sat in the church pew listening to the formal words. She remembered sharing the secret of her elopement years ago with her sister Beatrice and would have welcomed sharing her happiness with her again. After the service, she and Jeremy were besieged by well-wishers. On the way back to the Hall, they shared the carriage with Lady Elinor and Ned and Cassie. Then there was dinner to which the Packwoods and Dennisons had again been invited, so that, what with entertaining guests and seeing to the welfare of the children, she and Jeremy had scarcely any time together. The entire household had finally retired when she let herself into Jeremy’s room. Both of them were already dressed for bed.
“Hello, stranger,” he said softly and hugged her close.
“Hello, yourself.” She lifted her face for his kiss.
“Come. I’ve poured us some port.” He nudged her toward the couch. Two glasses of wine sat on a low table in front of it, the dancing light from the fireplace shining through the red liquid. He sat next to her, his arm loosely draped over her shoulder.
“What is it, Kate? Something has been bothering you all day.”
“Oh, nothing, really.”
“Yes, there’s something. I sensed it in church this morning. I do hope you are not harboring doubts about—about us.”
She smiled, aware that there was little gaiety in her expression. “No. No doubts about us.”
“But?”
“It—it’s so foolish.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“It’s just that this is the second time I will have married with none of my family in attendance. Arthur and I eloped, you know.”
“You miss them, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. You’d think after all these years . . .”
“Some things do not change greatly just because time keeps ticking away.”
“Thank you, Jeremy, for understanding.”
“What are husbands for?”
“You are not my husband yet.”
“Lovers, then. Speaking of which . . .” He stood, pulled her to her feet, and nudged her toward the bed, where they managed to banish the troubles of the day.
In addition to a wedding, the Earl of Kenrick, his family, and his guests were also waiting for the wheels of justice to grind inexorably on. Phillips and Lawrence were anxious to return to their respective homes, but they felt obligated to stay until the magistrate’s hearing regarding the duke’s attempt to abduct Ned and Cassie. Kate and Jeremy both wanted a sense of closure on this chapter of their lives. In the end, the hearing was both dramatic and anticlimactic.
Interest in the case ran high because it involved such a high-ranking member of the peerage, so it was moved from the magistrate’s usual domain—a room on the first floor of the town hall—to the assembly room on the floor above. Getting the duke up two flights of stairs had posed a bit of a problem, but the blacksmith and the duke’s valet managed to get his wheeled Bath chair into the temporary courtroom, with the chair’s occupant complaining all the while.
The Kenrick party—Jeremy, Kate, Robert, Lady Elinor, Phillips, Lawrence, and Rosie—had followed Wynstan’s slow progress up the stairs. Chairs had been arranged in rows on the dance floor. The magistrate’s desk, along with a small table and chair for the court recorder, and a witness chair, were arranged on the musicians’ dais.
Twenty minutes past the announced time for proceedings to begin, the magistrate finally rapped his gavel and said, “One man is dead, another and a child were seriously injured, and the lives of several have been profoundly disrupted as a result of actions taken by the principals in this matter. Therefore, this hearing is instituted as an investigative procedure to determine whether further legal action might be or should be undertaken and against whom such action should be directed.”
The Kenrick party sat behind a table manned by Mr. Phillips and Sir Frederick Dunbar, a barrister with whom Phillips often worked in London. Dunbar had arrived two days before and stayed closeted with Phillips in the Kenrick library most of that time, though often conferring with members of the household. Wynstan too was represented by able legal counsel from the city, chiefly his barrister, Sir Algernon Stephenson.
“The barristers have both been knighted. That helps keep them on equal footing,” Lawrence observed when Squire Dennison, in his capacity as magistrate, read out their names.
Dunbar quickly established the facts of the case to which Wynstan’s counsel acceded, but insisted they were irrelevant as the duke was merely asserting his time-honored right to protect his heir. Dunbar overrode this argument by calling upon Lawrence, Phillips, and Kate to establish that the boy’s father had clearly provided otherwise. Moreover, the duke’s intentions regarding his grandson in no way made him less culpable in the abduction of Lord Kenrick’s daughter. The legal questions then turned on who was culpable in
terms of the overall picture—that is, who knew what, when? To this end, Sir Eldridge Mortimer was called to explain his involvement.
“My involvement?” he expostulated. “I had nothing whatsoever to do with this mess. I merely extended the hospitality of my home to the Duke of Wynstan when he was stranded in our neighborhood.”
Dunbar took a different approach. “Wynstan’s codefendant here, Miss Cranstan, has been with you for many years, has she not?”
“Yes.”
“Practically a member of the family, would you say?”
“Why, no. She was a paid employee, that’s all.”
“She says otherwise.”
Mortimer shifted in the witness chair. “Well, she is either lying or laboring under an insane misapprehension.”
Miss Cranstan burst into loud sobs in her seat near Wynstan’s wheeled chair. “Oh, Sir Eldridge, how can you be so cruel?”
The spectators murmured and the magistrate rapped his gavel for order.
Mortimer went on without looking at Miss Cranstan. “She abused my trust. Servants sometimes do, you know.”
“But you encouraged me to help the duke. I was the only one who knew the plan of Kenrick Hall,” she said, sending a gasp through the room.
The magistrate pounded his gavel again. “Miss Cranstan, it would be in your best interest to restrain yourself.”
She subsided to whimpering sniffs, her head down, a handkerchief pressed to her face.
“See?” Mortimer said. “She is delusional. I have no vested interest one way or another in his grace’s relations with his family.”
“Miss Cranstan is employed by you, is she not?” Dunbar asked.
“Not anymore. I cannot have my name—my family—tainted by such sordid, not to say criminal, behavior.”
Miss Cranstan jumped to her feet, raised her fist, and cried in obvious frustration, “Oh. Oh. You—you—”
“Miss Cranstan!” the magistrate said, “sit down and be quiet or I shall have you removed from these proceedings.”
“You’re not helping,” the duke told her.