Haymarket Ware, Katy, my girl. Haymarket Ware.
~ * ~
Chapter Six
Damon sat, chin in hand, ostensibly studying the few paragraphs he had written the day before. In truth, his mind was filled with a pert young face, kissed by a green ostrich plume that curled against her cheek, and an exceptionally fine figure straining so hard against a jacket of green twill that he had thought a button might pop. It would appear his young secretary was still growing.
At the moment, she was on the library ladder again, and he was making a determined effort not to look. The Farr Park bookroom—a central feature of his Uncle Bertram’s life—was two stories in height and ringed by a high gallery on all but the outer wall. Although the upper story of books could be accessed by a circular staircase, the top shelves beneath it could only be reached by a ladder that moved on wheels.
There was something about Katy on a ladder . . .
She was his employee, his mama’s companion, an innocent child entrusted to his care. Yet the more he attempted to ignore her, the more sternly he reminded himself of duty and honor, the more intriguing and enticing she became. Lately, she was taking on a glow—he was quite certain it was not all his imagination. She was softer, not so wary. A bud begging to be plucked.
She trusted him! Her willingness to be alone with him, day after day, was proof enough of that. Colonel Farr closed his eyes, swearing silently. He had come home to Farr Park for peace and quiet, not to endure daily torture!
A decided thump not far from his nose snapped his eyes open. For a moment he stared blankly at the book Katy had just delivered. He opened the leather binding, flipped a page. “And what,” he asked of the girl standing demurely before him, “is this?”
She raised her brows, eyes wide and innocent.
Damon’s lips twitched. Blast the girl! She refused to leave him to his sullens. “I shall answer for you,” he said. “From what little I remember of my schoolboy days, this is the first volume of Homer’s Iliad, is it not?” The little minx, still wide-eyed, nodded. “In the original Greek.” An infinitesimal nod of agreement. “And you think this soldier, ten long years after seeing his last Greek letter, might care to do research with this particular tome?”
The emerald eyes turned accusing.
“Yes, yes, I know I asked for The Iliad, but it never occurred to me you were capable of recognizing the title of the book in Greek.”
Arms akimbo, she glared at him.
Katy Snow . . . scholar? Absurd. Since the age of twelve, she had had no education other than access to his library;. Therefore, how could she possibly . . . ? Seven Dials and Shoreditch suddenly seemed impossibly distant. As much as he hated to admit it, his mama’s notions of Katy Snow’s origins were likely more accurate than his own.
And now the chit’s gaze had turned mischievous. From behind her back she produced a second thick leather volume. The Dryden translation, by God. And then the books before him faded as he succumbed to temptation and took a good look at his bookroom assistant. Damon leaned back in his chair and stared, cursing silently as the ruthless, battle-hardened soldier sprang to life, threatening to escape the bonds of civilization.
It would appear someone—Katy, his mama, his female staff?—had decided that Katy Snow’s elevation to the post of secretary required a new look. Her masses of blond curls were now twisted on top of her head, secured not only by hairpins and combs, but by what looked remarkably like some sort of lethal instrument. Protecting their precious nestling, were they? She needed it. For the difference was astonishing. In the twinkling of an eye the hint of the woman seen on horseback that morning had been transformed into a siren in his bookroom. A siren with wisps of gold framing a marvelously mobile and expressive face that, with the language of her body, were her only means of communication. And an immensely satisfying change it was from his recollections of the bored ladies of the ton whose faces more closely resembled marble statues, incapable of displaying, or perhaps feeling, any emotions whatsoever.
Damon swallowed, gulped for air. “Thank you,” he said. Ducking his head, he opened the book. The words swam before his eyes. Devil it, but the girl was a menace. At this rate his book would take as long to write as Agamemnon had taken to lay waste to Troy.
A scrap of paper descended onto the page he was pretending to read. In Katy Snow’s precise hand, three words and a question mark: “Pope and Chapman?”
She couldn’t possibly . . . “What about them?” Damon growled. Katy pointed to a top shelf at the far end of the room, just beneath the gallery. “I own them?” he asked, incredulous. Katy shrugged, and with a heart-quickening flutter of her lovely long lashes, regarded him expectantly. “By all means,” he said, “let us look at all the translations available.”
His gaze followed hungrily as she walked toward the towering bookroom ladder. His tethers of honor, best intentions, common sense, disappeared, as if at the wave of a magician’s wand. Nothing could hold him to his chair. As silent as Katy herself, Damon followed her across the room. He stood at the foot of the ladder as she climbed, entranced by a flash of lace from the hem of her petticoat, the glimpse of neatly turned ankles above the leather slippers on her astonishingly small feet. He closed his eyes, desire and conscience locked in battle. When he opened them again, Damon gulped, discovering he was eye level with Katy’s delightful derrière, as, oblivious to his presence, she had found the books she wanted and was descending the ladder straight into his arms.
What was a man to do? He seized her, books and all, turned her neatly to face him, swooped in for a kiss.
Positioned as they were, Katy’s knee did not have far to go. Colonel Farr gasped, stumbled backwards, swore with heartfelt vehemence as he doubled over in worse agony than suffered with either of the wounds he’d taken on the Peninsula. Only later, as he sat with his head in his hands, cursing jumped-up chambermaids, the war, the army, and even his mother, did he wonder how he could have been so woefully stupid, so pitifully weak that he had strayed from noblesse oblige straight into droit de seigneur.
Katy Snow’s fault, of course. Tempting little morsel that she was. And who among the fine officers and gentlemen he knew would even think of resisting such a succulent plum when it was dangled before their noses?
Would she come back? He doubted it.
He could order her to serve him. He paid her salary, not his mother; he had checked the household accounts to be sure. Katy’s fine clothes came out of his mother’s jointure, but the girl’s wages came from Farr Park funds. She was his, to do with as he pleased. Droit de seigneur. Right of the Master. And in Medieval times that right had included taking the place of the groom on the wedding nights of the fairest maidens. Ah, yes!
He was an officer and a gentleman. Far above such things. Or should be.
Perhaps he’d wring her neck, instead.
Colonel Farr picked up the heavy volume of Homer in the original Greek and shied it across the room, where it made a most satisfactory thump against the black fireplace grate. Staggering to his feet, he limped across the room to retrieve the precious volume, his head awhirl with contradictory thoughts. Behind him, the translations of The Iliad by Pope and Chapman lay where they had fallen at the foot of the bookroom ladder.
Supper that night was as much of an agony as Colonel Farr anticipated. Katy stalked into the dining room behind his mother, radiating belligerence and animosity. How the blasted girl managed to convey her feelings so clearly was astonishing. And she’d tucked some kind of scarf into her décolletage, but it did little good. His imagination, the colonel discovered grimly, was quite capable of stripping her bare.
“Damon! Wool-gathering at table? Surely your book does not occupy your thoughts every moment of the day and night?”
“I beg pardon, mama. Would you kindly repeat your question.”
“Not a question, dearest. I merely said that I have had a letter from Ashby. He wonders that you have not visited him.”
Guilt. How coul
d he possibly tell her that not only did he wish to be alone, but he did not want to face his too perfect, ever infallible elder brother because Ashby thought him a hero. A hero, by God!
“’Tis true, the two of you are as different as chalk and cheese, but you always dealt well together. At least . . . so I thought.” The countess’s voice trailed off into a question.
Ashby, the Noble. Pattern card of an English lord. Possessor of every virtue. Except, evidently, the sense to choose a wife who would suit his mama.
As if she read his thoughts, the countess interjected a familiar theme into her plea for a visit to her eldest child, the Earl of Moretaine. “Even if the poor boy was foolish enough to marry that horrid creature, he is still your brother; you, his heir.”
“That poor boy is four and thirty, mama.”
“And still childless. It begins to seem likely your son will be Moretaine.”
The colonel swore, begged pardon. “I assure you Ashby is more likely to have sons before I,” he stated grimly. “I have no thought to marry.”
“Has it occurred to you,” said the dowager countess with some care, “that Ashby may, by now, be aware that he ruined his life when he married that woman? That he may be in need of support from his only brother?”
With some deliberation, Colonel Farr laid his fork onto his plate. For some reason—force of habit?—he glanced at Katy Snow. Their confrontation evidently forgiven, she was staring at him, her beautiful green eyes full of concern . . . offering encouragement.
“Very well, mama. I will write to Ashby today, asking him to set a convenient time for a visit. You will come, too, will you not?”
“I must, of course.” The dowager sighed, then offered her younger son a loving smile. “Fortunately, I see Ashby in town during the Season, and thanks to your generosity, my dear, I have not had to live next or nigh the witch these many years.”
Damon raised his napkin to his lips, hiding a smile. His mother had a more than ample jointure and lifetime use of the dower house on the grounds of Castle Moretaine, yet she had snapped up his offer of a home at Farr Park. She was fond of him, he knew, but he suspected that, when escaping Drucilla Moretaine, witch of Castle Moretaine, his mother had rather enjoyed the notion that she was practicing the economies of widowhood. Instead of a fine townhouse in Bath, she was spending the funds she had saved on Katy Snow!
With relief, Colonel Farr watched his mother lead his nubile and distracting secretary from the room. He reached the port.
“It ain’t right,” declared Jesse Wiggs, glowering at the other members of the Farr Park staff as they gathered round a long pine table for their evening meal. “It just ain’t right.” Jesse was a tall, broad-shouldered young man, as a footman should be, his honest, indignant blue eyes making a fine contrast to the white of his wig.
“What ain’t right?” Jedadiah, the second footman asked, picking up his cue.
Knowing full well he should keep his tongue between his teeth, Jesse Wiggs threw a belligerent glance at Humphrey Mapes at the head of the table, before stating, “Our Katy shut up every morning with the colonel, that’s what. Her nothing but a babe, and him come back from doing God knows what in heathen lands.”
“The Spanish are Catholic, not heathen,” said Mapes sternly.
“Don’t make no never mind. He’s a good man, the colonel, but my daddy was a soldier, and many’s the time he’s told me men forget themselves in a war. Learn things they oughtn’t to know. Don’t think the colonel should be in there, all alone, with our Katy. Enough to tempt a saint, she is. And our Mr. Farr was never that.”
“He is your employer,” Betty Huggins, the Cook, burst out. “An officer and a gentleman. You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, Jesse Wiggs, else you’ll find yourself on your backside in the dust, with not so much as a character.”
“Perhaps a stint in the army would do you good,” Mapes suggested blandly. “For don’t think I haven’t seen you staring your eyes out at our Katy. I daresay the green-eyed monster has you in its grip.”
“She’s not for the likes of you,” Mrs. Tyner, the housekeeper, declared indignantly, joining the conversation for the first time as guilt had kept her silent. She, too, had been wondering about the propriety of Katy Snow spending hours alone with Colonel Farr for as much as six days a week.
“Ain’t for the likes of the colonel neither,” returned Jesse Wiggs, scowling fiercely.
“I think maybe,” Clover Stiles ventured, “Lady Moretaine wants to put her in the master’s way—”
“That’s enough, Stiles,” Mrs. Tyner snapped.
“You don’t think there’s any hope of a m—?”
“Hold your tongue, girl!” Mapes barked.
With soft sounds of resignation, the Farr Park servants applied themselves to their food. After several minutes of silence near bursting with unspoken speculations, Mapes raised his voice to reach the housekeeper at the far end of the table. “Mrs. Tyner, perhaps you might be good enough to speak with our Katy . . . ah—make sure all is well with her.”
“Of course, Mr. Mapes.” As if she hadn’t planned on doing that very thing!
With a collective sigh of relief, general conversation broke out around the table, although mostly in whispers, with the various servants darting quick glances at Jesse Wiggs and Clover Stiles. Katy was one of theirs. They might sometimes envy her rise, but mostly they only recalled she had come to Farr Park with nothing, not even a voice, and had become the darling of the house. She was Katy Snow, their Katy, and nothing and no one would be allowed to harm her.
The dowager arranged her indigo silk gown over an elegant settee upholstered in leaf green damask, then waved her young companion into a matching armchair close by. “Katy,” she declared, “what has happened? If one could make a meal of tension, we might have dined in splendor this evening. Katy?”
Avoiding Lady Moretaine’s penetrating gaze, Katy hung her head. Her hands were clasped tight in her lap.
“He has snapped at you,” the dowager declared. “Treated you as a tweeny.”
Katy shook her head.
Lady Moretaine frowned. “He has made unreasonable demands. Expects more than you are trained to do.” The only response was a sharp shake of Katy’s head. What pride the child had! Any insinuation that she was unable to be of help to her son was rejected with scorn.
Katy hunched her shoulders, drawing farther into herself.
The countess did not care for what she was beginning to suspect. Dear God, surely not.
She should have thought, should have considered . . .
Oh, but she had. She had known quite well what she was doing when she thrust the child in her son’s path. A man so long at war. A girl in the full perfection of youth and beauty. But she had not thought far enough. She had allowed herself to forget Katy’s origins. By treating the child as a family connection rather than a lost waif rescued from a snowstorm, she had come to believe the fabrication—even to the extent of vague dreams of a closer alliance. Something she should have examined with more care, recognizing it for the absurdity it was.
Men of noble birth did not marry the Katy Snows of this world, no matter how fine their manners, how beautiful their embroidery and flower arrangements, nor how exquisitely they played the piano. Even a governess might occasionally dare to hope for such an exalted alliance, but not a girl of no name and no family. A foundling who did not talk.
The Dowager Countess of Moretaine clasped her hands together as tightly as Katy’s own. “My dear,” she began softly, “it would seem I may have made a dreadful mistake. Has my son attempted to molest you?”
An infinitesimal shrug.
“Katy! That is not a proper response. Tell me at once—did my son touch you, attempt to kiss you?”
Katy’s lower lip jutted out. The toe of her slipper traced a flower on the thick Axminster carpet.
“Very well,” said Lady Moretaine, looking grim, “since you do not attempt to deny it, I shall assume it is true.�
� For a moment, the countess seemed to study the fire that had been lit in the white and gold marble fireplace to take the chill off the late September night. “My dear, I believe we must remove to Bath. You would like that, I am sure. You would have an opportunity—”
But Katy had sprung to her feet, her lovely face contorted with horror. Her blond head was shaking so hard a long strand of gold came loose, tumbling over one ear.
Lady Moretaine’s eyes widened. “Sit down,” she commanded in a tone of voice she had not used to Katy Snow in many a year. Reluctantly, Katy resumed her seat. “Although I am loathe to lose you to marriage,” said the countess, “I have come to look upon you as a member of my own family. I am obliged to do what is right for you, even though that may not be what either of us wishes. Do you understand me, child? In Bath, you may meet eligible young men. You cannot aspire to a great house or a fine title, but you should find some young man willing to accept you for what you are.”
Katy returned to examining the deep colors in the carpet.
“My son is heir to an earldom,” declared the countess baldly. “He is not for you.”
Even after Lady Moretaine’s long acquaintance with Katy Snow, she found the sudden lift of girl’s head, the lightning flash of those green eyes, startling. There was defiance, fury, outright rejection of her warning.
“Child,” the countess gasped, “you cannot think to have him. It is quite impossible, I assure you.”
Fists clenched, Katy bounced to her feet, stalking toward a tall, unshuttered window to gaze out at the lingering twilight.
Their impasse was interrupted by the colonel’s entrance. Katy turned . . . and was caught in a dizzying maelstrom of yearning and repulsion. Colonel Farr’s burgundy jacket lent warmth to skin tanned by weather and lined by cares. His dark hair gleamed in the lamplight; his lean soldier’s body was silhouetted in ramrod stiffness as his gaze moved from his mother to Katy, and back again. He opened his mouth, snapped it closed.
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