“I want you. I do,” she told him. “But I cannot take the chance.”
“That I’d berate you? Badger you? Insult you? That’s what he did, isn’t it?”
Daily. Hourly.
Justin kissed her again, sweetly, desperately, lovingly. “Am I like him?”
“No. Never.” She put her palm to his flies, and beneath the superfine wool, she felt one piece of hard evidence that he resembled Henry Varney in no way.
He crushed her hand to his cock. “I mean to have you.”
She fought to undo his buttons. “Do it then.”
He glanced around the dim wood lined walls. “Here.”
Following his line of sight, she saw the map table. “You wouldn’t.”
“I will,” he told her and tugged her to the center of the room where a large table held maps. He lifted her and put her on it, her knees bent over the edge. “Let me raise your skirt, madam. I need to kiss your pretty pussy.”
Someone gasped.
Kitty halted. Her gaze met Justin’s.
Something plunked to the floor. A book? A shoe?
She gulped.
He seized her hand. As he pulled open the door, he whispered, “Wait. Have you left anything?”
* * * *
One ostrich feather.
Kitty let her eyes drift shut at the ribald memory of what she and Justin had done and said in that library. And what she had left there.
Oh, blast it all! The damned feather from her hat had become the subject that tickled everyone in the broad sheets for more than a week. “How many ladies wore ostrich feathers to the wedding breakfast of Lord and Lady C last Saturday?” asked one tabloid until they had a tally of three. Three women.
“One of which is me,” Kitty fretted as she sat with her sister at Lady Anna Grey’s garden party eight days later. “Now they attempt to find the owner of the fan in the Martindales’ pantry and match them!”
Adjusting her broad brimmed straw against the sun, Maggie fought hard to suppress a smile. “They’re just selling papers, Puss.”
Kitty scowled. “They should focus on discovering who the other person was in the Darlingtons’ library!”
“An assignation!” Maggie put a hand to her heart in feigned horror. “Imagine!”
“Oh, you are no help!” Kitty couldn’t stop herself from laughing.
“Just don’t go off with him here.”
Kitty froze. “He’s here?”
Maggie giggled. “Just so. Don’t look now, but he’s talking with Susanna Curtis.”
Susanna? Kitty could not resist turning to see how the two of them got on. My God. Susanna had not yet decided if she would accept Justin’s invitation to his cottage in Kent. His invitation to seduction. Though why go to Kent, when he seemed to be doing a marvelous job of it right here? Kitty wiggled in her chair while Susanna batted her long pale lashes at him, amused. Enthralled. And Justin grinned like a man enchanted.
“Oh,” she seethed, jealousy coursing through her veins like lava. “How could he?”
“Mmm. She is lovely.”
“Whose side are you on, Maggie?”
Her sister stared at her in utter exasperation. “My dearest sis, make up your mind. Do you want the man or not? Is he the man of your dreams? Rich, titled, kind, generous. Or is he simply a man whose gender alone you condemn because you’ve not the courage to see he is so different from Henry?”
Kitty considered her younger sister’s words for a long minute. “When did you grow so mature?”
“When you helped me learn to be a woman who used my head.”
“Touché.”
Kitty turned to admire dashing Lord Belmont. So changed from the privateer who captured her and saved her more than a decade ago. So very much the same man. Was she being feather brained not to admit she loved him? Wished she could marry him?
“There is the matter of money,” she said to Maggie. “His uncle demands it.”
“I don’t know, Puss, but I would say there must be a way to get round that. You said you have nearly paid off Henry’s debts with the fees you earned from Justin.”
Varney House is worth a fortune. “There is the townhouse. I could sell it.”
“As Lady Belmont, why would you need it? You’d fetch a pretty penny.”
“I could put the proceeds in trust for Hank.”
“You use your brains now.”
“I don’t know, Maggie. I do like to have my own way with money.”
“Sadly true. For one, you might give up your chef. As a widow, what need have you of four course dinners? They add only to your waistline.”
“When I am fully out from mourning, I’ll host bigger dinner parties,” she sniffed, defending her love of French pastries and sauces.
“What fun to do that alone.”
“Sarcasm does not become you.”
“Neither does this attitude of yours, Kitty. Do away with your blend of perfume from your perfumier in Grasse! And what of your dressmaker? He could go. I dare say you have more gowns in your wardrobe than a princess royal.”
Kitty narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Be careful where you tread.”
“I’ve done that for too long with you, Puss. Now you must get on with your life. Buck up. The man you care for could be ugly. Or poor.” She stood, imperial in her new found wisdom. “I think I will engage Lord Belmont for a few minutes. Shall I bring him to you, hmm?”
“You will, whatever I say,” Kitty laughed and waved a hand in dismissal.
“Quite right.”
Kitty watched her sister approach Justin and assessed their conversation with growing amazement. They were, no doubt about it, friends. They spoke easily, laughing. They conferred quietly, nodding and deliberating. When had their relationship begun? How had it blossomed? Did they share more than one subject to bond them in such congenial ways? And if so, what were their interests?
By the time Maggie strolled forward with Justin at her side, Kitty gazed upon them with new eyes. “Good afternoon, Justin,” she bid him.
“May I leave him with you, sis, without you eating him alive?”
“I think he will be safe with me, Maggie.” Kitty shaded her eyes from the sun to see his face haloed by the light. “Do sit with me, Justin. I would enjoy talking with you.”
He took the chair opposite, but his demeanor was nothing like it had been these past weeks. He sat, one leg crossed over the other, his back straight, his eyes on everything and everyone but her.
“How have you been?” she asked at last, attempting bright conversation.
“As well as can be expected.”
She glanced away, unable to keep her composure when he acted so detached. “You’ve seen the conjecture about my ostrich feather?”
His generous mouth curved up at the corners. But his eyes did not smile as they slid to hers and away to the guests. “Who could miss it?”
“May we take a stroll in the maze? Talk privately?”
He gave a short sad laugh. “No. I will lose my mind once more and want you naked. I’ll not do that again to you. Or to me.”
She stared at him, stunned, confused by this turn of his nature. “But Justin, I have much to say to you, darling.”
Her endearment made him wince.
“Call at my home tomorrow. Please. Shall we say at two o’clock?”
He shot to his feet. “No. Thank you for the invitation. Pardon me, but I must refuse, Lady Varney.”
Chapter Five
When her hired carriage idled before the massive front door to Belmont Abbey, she sat for overly long picking at her gloves. Picking at your nerve, more like it.
It had taken her a week to recover the shock of Justin’s indifference at Lady Grey’s garden party. Another week to worm out of Maggie a confession of her months’ long collaboration with Justin. Another four days to bring herself to this precipice.
She had taken far too long to confess to herself her passion for Justin. Enormously long to admit her love for him. A relatively sh
ort day and a half after Maggie’s revelations to her that she had realized she had acted like a ninny with him. And that she had been not only foolish, but rather childish.
Dire measures called for bold actions.
She winced. And now you must pay the price, Puss. Present yourself before the ailing Earl of Belmont and inquire if you might, please, be permitted to propose marriage to his nephew, his heir, Justin Simpson Belmont.
She squared her shoulders and rapped on the carriage door with her parasol. In a minute, she was down from her spot, met by the butler, shown to the reception room while her request for an audience with the eighth earl was approved. Or denied.
The butler reappeared within ten eternities of minutes. His expression, when he stood before her, was dour. To say the most.
But she was shown upstairs and round to a private sitting room. “Wait here, my lady. His lordship has received no one save his nephew since his confinement months ago. He does his best to prepare to meet you.”
The wait did not improve her nerves. In fact, she had no recourse but to imagine herself tending her rose garden at Varney House. Or Justin’s at his wedding cottage. The one that’s meant for me. She bit her lip, fighting tears at her deplorable predicament. A lady of her status and breeding, her lineage and social accomplishment facing a man who was once the ton’s most notorious rake and womanizer, asking for approval for his nephew’s hand in marriage.
“Lady Varney, his lordship,” proclaimed the butler, “awaits you.”
She followed the earl’s man in to his sitting room, a large wood-paneled expanse where a huge fire raged in the July heat.
For a man who had once stood as tall and imposing as his younger nephew, the earl was a shriveled, gnarly creature who sat in his overstuffed wing chair and beckoned her toward him with a wave of his feeble hand.
“Come closer, gel. Closer! Closer!” He peered up at her, his watery eyes slim dark orbs flowing over her like a butcher over a shank of beef. “Henry’s wife. Always wondered who he’d get. Heard you were—” He coughed and hacked into a handkerchief. “An Incomparable. Now then. Pull that chair closer to me, William. I must see more of her.”
She folded her hands in her lap and faced him in the opposite oversized chair that threatened to swallow her whole. “You are most kind to receive me, my lord.”
“You were…” He coughed and sputtered. “Vague about coming. What ails you, madam?”
She found his choice of words odd, but no matter. The man was dying. He was allowed peculiarities. She would rely on her prepared speech. “I have met your nephew.”
“Eleven years ago.”
Shocked he knew or, in his debilitated state, remembered how they had met, she moved onward. “I have met him often recently.”
He laughed until he hacked up phlegm and doubled over with the effort. Wiping his mouth with a huge handkerchief, he gave what she would best describe as a rasping laugh, pushed himself up and said, “I heard about the butler’s pantry. Good one, I must say! And the map table in old Darlington’s library! Ha! Yes, indeed.”
She took a moment to find her voice. “You have heard of these meetings. I suppose from the broadsheets.”
“Good stories, too. Best I’ve heard in years. You are a sport, my gel!”
A sport?
“A woman who loves to fuck is a priceless piece.”
Her mouth dropped open. Her cheeks flamed. Her heart picked up a tattoo. Who had told him that Justin and she had…become intimate? She would kill them in the morning. Meanwhile, she must deal with this ribald old gentleman who had no presence of mind to deal with her like a lady who never, ever fucked. “My lord, I have come to discuss your stipulations for possible brides for your nephew.”
“Have you now?” He grinned, his yellowed teeth bared to her in a satisfied grin. “Go on.”
She cleared her throat. “It is my understanding that you have demanded your heir—”
“Justin.”
She nodded. “Justin. That he find a young woman who is an heiress.”
“Quite so. A woman of blood. The Belmonts fought with The Conqueror, you see. Though we did not rise up in the world until Henry Tudor and a Belmont were good friends. Old Bess liked us too. Made the man a belted earl.”
“Yes, well, I see, sir, why lineage is important to you.”
“Good. Good.” He pursed his thin lips and gave her a once over, smiling at what he saw. “What else?”
“Well, I also hear that you wish the woman to be well respected among society.”
“Cannot buy respectability. Nor inherit it. Must have it though to make your way these days. People are more petty than they ever were.”
“This brings me to the last point.”
He folded his hands and twitched his nose at her. “Which is what, dear lady?”
Why did she have a feeling he was enjoying this tremendously? She, on the other hand, was shaking in her new, uncomfortable shoes. “Your demand that he marry a rich woman.”
“Do I?” He shot a glance at his butler who had stood by stoically during the entire affair. “Did I say that, William?”
The butler nodded once.
“I must have done so, then. What about it, madam?”
“I do wonder, sir. That is, I had hoped, sir, that you might—well….”
“Spit it out, madam. What?”
Just how ill was the earl? He seemed more irascible than terminal. “I wondered if you might consider waiving this requirement?”
“Why? Money is a precious commodity. The more you have, the better you live.”
“True, true.”
“And from what I hear and read, you, madam, like money very much.”
Taken aback by his knowledge of her proclivities for fashion and cuisine among other things, she swallowed her outrage and offered a wan smile. “I do.”
“I wonder how you manage to afford your frivolous accoutrements? Hmm?”
All right, she was done being coy with this very alert man. “I have a business. For gentlemen. Men who seek wives come to me. For a fee, I arrange to have them meet ladies who are compatible. Lately, I have earned a large sum and—“
“And I understand you managed to pay off all of Henry’s debts.”
“Close enough. Five thousand more and I shall be free of him.”
“Commendable of you.”
“Thank you,” she responded with surprise and pleasure.
“You are welcome. I know this must have been difficult for you to survive his debtors. You see, I knew Henry. Very well. For decades, he ran with me. In fact, I used to take him to the tables and clean his pockets for him myself. Dastardly thing for me to do, but it was so easy. Too easy. I had to stop, told him so, too, because to win from him was nigh unto robbery. He was such a n’er do well for so many years, I was shocked to hear he had married. And Downey’s daughter, at that.”
At the mention of her father and how she had married Henry, she glanced at her hands and then at the earl. He was more awake and aware now. His skin pink. His pale eyes bright. “When I heard he had married the girl whom the sheets declared had been rescued by an American named Belmont, well, I had to send for him and learn if he belonged to us.”
“Naturally, you did.”
The old man nodded. “Justin was a good man. He is still.”
“A fine man.”
“A very noble man, my dear, in more ways than I ever was. And in all the ways that a man should be.”
“You are proud of him,” she said, with pride of him herself, and had to fish for a handkerchief in her tiny purse to blow her nose. “I am, too. What he did for me, my lord, eleven years ago was extraordinary. Honorable and very brave. I shall forever be grateful to him.”
“So then tell me why you and I discuss him, Kitty. I may call you Kitty, may I not?”
“Yes, sir.” She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “I have come today to ask you to reconsider your stipulations for a bride for Justin.”
&nbs
p; “Intriguing. And why should I do that, Kitty?”
“Because, my lord, I want to marry him. I want to ask him to marry me.”
He pursed his thin lips. “Why?”
“I love him dearly. I have loved him since the first days he rescued me, and I shall love him until the day I die. I want to ask you to allow me to propose to your nephew, my lord.”
The old codger seemed to float and gloat. “Wonderful. A woman who finally knows her own mind.”
She tipped her head, confused. “Finally? My lord, what–?”
He waved a hand at her. “Why must I waive the stipulations?”
“Because I do not fit them all.”
He hemmed and hawed. “You are an heiress in your own right.”
She nodded.
“You are well received, well regarded. Provided, of course, no one ever learns about what happened in the pantry and the library.”
“I am. And no one will learn of it. They have not yet, and so I doubt it will come out.”
“And the last stipulation?”
“The dowry. The money. You must know, my lord, I have little. Henry left me nothing but the house in Cavendish Square. And for you to require Justin to marry a rich woman—”
“In my position, would I not look the idiot if I did not insist on money for my heir?”
“Well—”
“Every man worth his salt declares it to be so. Don’t you agree?”
“I do, but—”
“And a man should also insist on his wife being prudent with his money.” He stared at her, then smiled. “Come, tell me about your finances.”
“Oh, well, I–” She hesitated over that. Then realized any delay now was not only foolish but also counterproductive. About the need for Justin’s bride to be an heiress, had she succumbed to a presumption? One that did not exist? “I have paid off Henry’s debts with my earnings, and I live from moment to moment. But I plan to sell the house. If Justin will have me, I will not need it. I could bring that amount of money to the marriage, if he likes. And also, I will promise Justin to temper my spending on bonnets.”
“And perfume?”
Had she no secrets at all? Good God! Maggie had told Justin so many of her foibles, but clearly in turn, Justin had shared quite a few with his uncle! Oh, hell. Best to give in and get on with it! “Absolutely. No perfume or French chefs or silk negligees.”
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