A Sensible Lady: A Traditional Regency Romance

by Judith Lown

  “It is no secret that I find you attractive, Miss Brampton. And I believe black suits you. But, I must say, you look exceptionally lovely this morning.”

  I must be in love with him, Katherine thought. Why else would a compliment on my attire from a gentleman with ink stains on his shirt and a half-tied neck cloth thrill me?

  “Thank you, Lord Dracott.”

  She could feel her face grow warm.

  He thrust his hands in his coat pockets.

  “It seems, once more, I must apologize to you, Miss Brampton. I have it on excellent authority that I was so cruel as to make you cry. I am very sorry, and I promise in the future to do my utmost to refrain from such outbursts.”

  “And, once more, I must admit to having acted rashly, taking an unwarranted risk.”

  Lord Dracott offered Katherine his arm. Katherine took it, light-headed with relief. The man she loved had apologized for making her cry. How did he know she had cried? She had successfully restrained herself from crying during their encounter yesterday.

  She stopped walking. Had Sally betrayed Katherine’s tears to Lord Dracott?

  “Just who, may I ask, is your ‘excellent authority?’ I do hope Sally is not speaking out of turn.”

  “You must not question Sally’s loyalty to you, Miss Brampton. She was not my informant—or should I say challenger. Miguel was.”

  “Miguel? Miguel challenged…?”

  “Miguel spoke, Miss Brampton. He challenged me with words.”

  “Miguel can speak? He talked to you?”

  “Indeed.”

  Katherine did not know she was crying until, enveloped in Lord Dracott’s embrace, she realized she was soaking his neck cloth with her tears.

  “I seem to have a knack for making you cry,” he muttered.

  Katherine drew back, sniffling and wiping her eyes.

  “What a ninny you will think me, Lord Dracott. This is by far the happiest news I could receive. I must see him for myself. Hear him for myself.”

  Katherine gathered her skirts and ran toward the small paddock nearest the stable block, Princess bounding ahead of her.

  *****

  Holding on to the saddle, Miguel was mounted on the stolid old pony, Clover. A stable lad held the lead line and Clem walked beside Miguel, giving pointers and encouragement. Katherine scooped up Princess to keep her from running into the paddock.

  Lizzie Dracott stood by the fence. Sally was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where is Sally?” Katherine asked Lizzie.

  “Cook asked her in for a cup of tea and a nice chat.”

  So much for Sally’s loyalty. Katherine was certain that she and Lord Harry would figure prominently in the “nice chat.” But servants’ shortcomings could not distress her on such a glorious morning. Miguel could speak.

  “Miguel loves to ride as much as I do, Miss Brampton.”

  Lord Dracott walked up and stood on the other side of Lizzie, hands on hips, assessing pony and rider.

  “Clem says Miguel is a natural, Papa.”

  Lizzie’s voice was wistful.

  Lord Dracott tousled Lizzie’s curls.

  “So are you, Lizzie my girl. So are you. Miguel will have his work cut out for him if he is to catch up with you.”

  “I shall need a new pony—or perhaps a horse—if Miguel rides Clover.”

  Lord Dracott regarded his daughter with an amused smile.

  “I reckoned it would not take long for you to figure that out.”

  What a wonderful father he is, Katherine thought, feeling her face flush.

  “Ride pony!”

  The emphatic command arrested Katherine’s attention. Clem, deciding that Miguel’s lesson was finished, had attempted to lift him off Clover, but Miguel would have none of it. He glowered at Clem, gripping the saddle.

  “Ride pony!”

  “I believe I shall have a word with that young man,” Lord Dracott said, boosting himself over the fence.

  Katherine could not hear the exchange. But whatever Lord Dracott said to her imperious nephew was effective. Miguel permitted himself to be lowered from Clover, and spying Katherine, ran to her shouting.

  “I ride pony, Tia Cat’rina! I ride pony!”

  Katherine dropped a wriggling Princess and, crying with happiness, hugged and kissed Miguel until he protested.

  “No cry, Tia Cat’rina. No cry.”

  “I am crying for happiness, Miguel,” Katherine assured her nephew. “Happiness that you were successful in your first riding lesson—and even more—that you are talking. You had us quite worried, you know.”

  “You see, Miguel, anything at all can make a lady cry,” Lord Dracott said. “Anything at all.”

  He took Miguel’s hand and started for the stables. Lizzie and Katherine followed.

  “I shall show you where Clover’s stall is, Miguel. Soon you must learn to help care for him,” Lord Dracott said.

  Lizzie lagged behind, for once not obsessed with horseflesh.

  “Were you really crying for happiness, Miss Brampton? Are you really happy? Not just about Miguel riding Clover and talking, but about everything? About marrying Papa and living here and being my mama?” Lizzie beseeched, unshed tears in her eyes.

  “I so want you to be happy, Miss Brampton. I prayed and prayed that you could be my mama, and now you will be. I want you to be my mama even more than I want a pony—or even a horse.”

  A tear glistened on Lizzie’s cheek.

  Katherine knelt and gathered the little girl into her arms. Katherine had been so preoccupied with her own worries—how she could manage marrying a gentleman whom she loved but did not love her—that she had forgotten the gift of caring for his daughter, who loved Katherine as much as Katherine loved her.

  She kissed Lizzie’s forehead, blinking away a fresh flow of tears.

  “Being your mama is as great a joy as I could ask for, Lizzie darling. But you must never think I want to replace your own mama. I do understand that you will always love her.”

  Lizzie wiped her cheeks and nose with the backs of her hands.

  “I s’pose I love her and my little baby brother. But they’re in heaven, Miss Brampton, and they can’t love me back.”

  Lord Dracott emerged from the stable with Miguel, having returned Clover to his stall.

  “You will observe, Miguel, that ladies do a good deal of crying. I suspect it is because they know their tears can be quite disconcerting to gentlemen.”

  Lizzie stopped crying, and smiled up at Katherine.

  Lord Dracott grimaced, apparently realizing that he had unwittingly handed his daughter another weapon in her arsenal of manipulation.

  “Lizzie, my dear, please take Miguel up to the nursery for some biscuits and lemonade. Take Princess, too. Sally can bring Miguel back to the Dower House when you’ve finished, but tell her not to hurry. I need to have a word in private with Miss Brampton.”

  “That’s because they’re getting married,” Lizzie confided to Miguel as she took his hand and headed toward the Hall.

  *****

  Katherine and Lord Dracott started back for the Dower House in silence, without distractions of horses, ponies, dogs, or children. Katherine could hear the thud of her own heartbeat.

  Lord Dracott took her hand and played absently with her betrothal ring.

  “I did not tell you everything Miguel said to me this morning.”

  Katherine looked up. Lord Dracott was regarding her with a raised eyebrow and a half smile.

  “What…what more did he say?”

  Lord Dracott stopped walking and turned to her.

  “Miguel accused me of not loving his Tia Catarina. I find Catarina a most charming name. Would you object if I call you Catarina from time to time? You will have to call me Harry. I cannot imagine being Enrique—or Dracott, for that matter. More the fashion, I know, but…impersonal.”

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her finger just next to the ring he had given her.

 
; Katherine resisted an impulse to throw her arms around his neck. It was easier to deal with Lord Dracott when he was angry with her than when he was… She really could not accuse her betrothed of toying with her affections, could she?

  Katherine did not trust herself to look directly at him, but concentrated on the ink stain on his shirt. Lord Dracott might be happy to gloss over his inability to love her, but Katherine knew she needed to face reality. Otherwise she would permit herself to hope—and hoping for his love would only end in pain.

  “You must make allowances for Miguel. He is just a child. Love is a simple thing for him. He should not be expected to understand that your love for Lady Angela prevents you from loving…his Tia Catarina…or any other lady, for that matter.”

  Lord Dracott’s arms fastened around Katherine like steel bands.

  “My darling girl, my sweet, sweet Catarina. How I have wronged you.”

  He whispered the words into the top of her head, kissing her hair as he spoke.

  “I do not understand.”

  He took her face in his hands.

  “I love you, Katherine Brampton. I must have loved you from the moment I saw you skipping stones that glorious September morning.”

  At last he kissed her full on the mouth. Katherine wrapped her arms around his neck, not certain she could ever bear to let go. He kissed her eyelids, an exquisitely sensitive place on her neck, her ear.

  She ran her finger lightly over the scar running along his jaw, thinking how close a Frenchman’s sword had come to depriving her of this moment. She shuddered, realizing he might have died on some sun baked Spanish plain.

  Lord Dracott drew back, a question in his gaze.

  “It is so wonderful that you were spared…to come home…to love me. You must never concern yourself for fear I am jealous of your love for Lady Angela. I do understand that she was your first love and never can be entirely replaced.”

  The bleak look that Katherine had seen fleetingly at other times returned to Lord Dracott’s face, as did the years he had seemingly shed. Katherine’s heart contracted, but before she could apologize for inflicting such pain on him, he took her hand and strode purposefully toward some destination unclear to her.

  “The matter of Lady Angela needs to be settled between us without delay, and I do not think a lane where anyone might pass by is the place to discuss it.”

  Katherine wondered how a discussion of Lady Angela required more privacy than what they had just been doing, but she concentrated on keeping up with Lord Dracott’s long strides. When he turned off on a barely discernable path leading to Dray Stream, she knew their destination.

  A few blue blossoms of forget-me-nots had opened on Trinket’s grave. Symbols of hope she dared not dream of the day she had planted them. Lord Dracott had told her he loved her, she reminded herself, as he sat next to her on the fallen log and turned to her, grim faced. He did not so much as take her hand.

  “It has never been my love for Angela that has kept me from telling you that I love you—or admitting it to myself.”

  His voice was like the growl of a wounded animal. She reached for his hand and he took hers with the strength of a drowning man grasping the last lifeline.

  “I did love her at first. I thought myself the luckiest man in England—perhaps in the world. The most beautiful lady—and she was my wife.”

  His grip on her hand eased, but he did not let go.

  “I do not know if it was love or pride, but I could deny her nothing. When, at last, it became clear she was playing me false, I refused to admit it to a soul. At least she was discrete and word of her infidelities never reached Dracott Hall. Both my parents died believing Angela was a devoted wife and mother. They believed I fled to Spain out of heartbreak. Disgust, not heartbreak, was what drove me.”

  Katherine wondered which of her jumbled feelings: pity, anger—and yes, relief—might be showing on her face. But Lord Dracott seemed too immersed in his story to notice.

  “Lizzie is my child. The infant buried in St. John Chrysostom’s is not. I promised myself, swore by all that is holy, never again to play the fool for a beautiful woman. Never again would I give my heart.”

  He raised her hand to his lips.

  “Then, on the morning I came home, back on Dracott land—my land—full of the hope of starting fresh—there you were—a beauty who would forever put Angela’s beauty in the shade. I acted without thinking. I gave you my heart that day, and try as I might, I could not retrieve it.”

  He put his arm around her and kissed the corner of her eye.

  “The evening Miguel appeared, translating your words to him made me want to howl. You were saying words to him that I wanted you to say to me. What I was translating for Miguel, I really longed to say to you.

  “ ‘Te quiero mas que nada.’ I love you more than anything in the world. ‘Siempre te cuidare. Siempre podras vivir conmigo.’ I will take care of you always. You will have a home with me always. ‘Siempre.’”

  He smiled and drew a line down her cheek and across her lips.

  “It would have helped considerably if you had declared yourself to have been compromised the morning of our encounter by the lake. I could have married you, telling myself I was obliged to do so, avoiding all the messiness of facing my old demons.”

  He stood, pulled her up, and framed her face with his hands.

  “But you, my darling, are incapable of duplicity. It will take some getting used to—being married to a most beautiful lady, knowing I can trust her.”

  “Perhaps knowing I love you will make trusting me easier.”

  Katherine laughed at the shock on Lord Dracott’s face before she kissed him.

  “Whatever did I do to win your heart?”

  His voice was husky in her ear.

  “You removed innumerable burrs from a suffering spaniel’s coat—with great gentleness and patience. A gentleman who will do that might speak thoughtlessly in anger, but a lady can trust him with her heart. You have my heart always. Siempre.”

  “Siempre, my darling Catarina.”