She decided to turn the questioning around. “You have me at a disadvantage. You know all about me, and I know next to nothing about you. Surely you have a few skeletons of your own.”
“I am an open book. Ask me anything you like.”
“Hmm…” She had many questions but was too embarrassed to ask most of them. She picked an innocuous subject. “Tell me about your family.”
“No secrets there. I spent most of my youth at Sudley, the house we’re headed to now. Lived there with my father and mother, and my three sisters.”
“Three sisters? Goodness.”
“That’s how I often feel myself. Fortunately, I am bigger and older than they are, so they don’t give me too much trouble.” He paused, smiling as if at some long-forgotten memory, and continued. “After me, there’s Beatrice. She’s twenty-four and only recently married. We thought we’d never see the day.”
“I am twenty-four and unmarried.”
“I won’t hold that against you.”
She could see that he was trying hard not to laugh. Damn him. He’d made the remark about his sister’s age just to get a rise out of her. She chose to ignore it.
“Who comes after Beatrice?”
“After Beatrice is Eleanor, who’ll turn eighteen next week. She’ll have her coming out next summer. Helen is the baby of the family—she’s fourteen now.”
“That’s quite a lot to remember. But I can see that you care for them a great deal.”
Ben nodded. “Tremendously. I don’t see them as much as I’d like…only when I make it down to Sudley to visit. Get to see Beatrice even less because she’s moved to Kent with her husband, although she was at Sudley for a visit during my recent stay. She might still be there and you can meet her. I’m certain you’ll get along.”
“And why—if you don’t mind my asking—did you nearly give up on Beatrice marrying?” Kate asked curiously. “Twenty-four seems a perfectly sensible age for a woman to marry.”
Ben smiled, and behind that smile Kate thought she could detect a trace of unholy glee. “I don’t mind your asking at all, and she was actually twenty-three when she wed. But I should love it if you ask her the same question—”
“Is it a touchy subject?”
“Well, no…it’s just that Bea had a string of rather unfortunate seasons. My sister is a little too fastidious for her own good, and after a few seasons out she garnered the reputation of ice princess. I assure you that title is somewhat undeserved—it’s just that our parents had an exceptionally happy marriage, and Beazie wouldn’t settle for anything less. But then her lout of a husband came along and they’ve lived happily ever after.”
Kate suspected that she and Beatrice would get along famously. She also suspected that Ben liked his sister’s husband despite calling him names. But she didn’t pursue the subject any further. “You said your father lives at Sudley—will your mother be there as well?”
“No. She died just after Helen was born. I was fifteen.”
“I’m sorry.” Kate really meant it, feeling the greatest sympathy for anyone who lost a parent at a young age. “My mother died when I was a baby.”
He turned his head, the traces of a sad smile on his face. He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“I should warn you before we arrive that Sudley is a bit of a madhouse. My two younger sisters are usually in the midst of some prank or another, and they won’t make any exceptions because you’re a guest—be on your toes. And my father is the Master of the Hounds for our local hunt, a title he takes very seriously.”
Kate frowned slightly, not quite understanding. “Surely that’s not so unusual. Everyone needs a hobby.”
“Kate, it is not a hobby. Trust me—you will see. I presume you ride well?”
“Yes, very well.”
“Then you shall be all right.”
They drove along in companionable silence for quite a while. Strangely, Kate couldn’t remember a recent time in which she’d felt more at ease. The sun had risen fully, casting a warm, silver light on the dew-covered woods along the road, and the countryside was as beautiful as any she had ever seen. She inhaled deeply, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes.
She was in the midst of a pleasant dream. She was seven years old, standing on the seashore by her home on the coast of Dorset. Her brother was racing up and down the beach, whooping and swinging his piratical wooden sword about to send the seagulls soaring. Her father stood by her side, seeming impossibly tall. Her hair whipped about in the ocean breeze, and her father had pulled her close, opening his heavy wool coat and wrapping it around her. Oh, how she had loved that coat!
“Kate?”
She looked up at her father, and he began to fade.
“Kate?” The voice came again, more insistent this time. Someone was calling out her name…
“Hmm?” She opened her eyes, blinking in the light.
“Time to wake up. We’ll arrive in a few minutes.”
Kate sat bolt upright. The sun was high overhead, and she estimated it to be midmorning. If so, she had been asleep for over an hour.
“What will you tell your family, Ben? They’ll want to know why you have arrived with a strange woman dressed in men’s clothing.”
“I believe you’re right.”
“Please don’t tell them all I’ve told you…it’s important that I keep the details of my company secret. You may tell them what happened, but please not my suspicions.”
“I’ll tell them the truth.”
“But what truth?” Kate asked, pleading with her eyes.
“That we’re getting married.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ben could not have been more pleased. For once Kate was at a loss for words, and as they approached his house he knew that she wouldn’t have time to recover before his family and twenty dogs descended upon them.
“The stables are just over the rise to your right,” he told her, nodding in the appropriate direction. “You can just see the boathouse in the distance…our lake is perfect for rowing. Perhaps we can take a boat out on the morrow.”
“Ben?”
“Ah! And here is the house.” He pulled the carriage to a stop, scanning the facade of his home. He’d always taken his family’s wealth for granted, but for the first time ever he found himself looking at his house with the critical eye of an outsider, anxious that there was nothing to find fault with.
“It was built in the fifteenth century, although the family has refurbished it here and there over the years. The main facade, though, dates from the Restoration….”
Kate had no idea what he was talking about. She just sat there stupidly, watching him climb gracefully from the carriage and waiting for him to tell her that he was only jesting. Marriage?
He held out his hand to help her down. She didn’t move. “Come now. This is no time to get shy. Give me your hand.”
Kate still didn’t budge, and Ben could see that she wasn’t about to. So he took matters into his own hands—literally—by grasping her lightly around the waist and lifting her from the carriage as if she weighed nothing. He didn’t put her down right away, but let her down slowly, sliding her down the front of his body until her feet touched the ground.
“Everything will be fine, Kate,” he said, still holding her as he spoke. She had absolutely no response. She’d been flustered to begin with, and now…oh, God, he was so close. She couldn’t think at all.
He kissed her. Not a hot, passionate kiss like the ones he’d given her before, but a kiss meant to reassure: warm, safe, comforting. Kate felt her reason return.
“I need to speak to you, Ben.”
“We’ll speak, but later. Right now I need to make introductions.”
“Hmm?” she asked, spinning around in alarm. Facing her were three girls—one about her age, two younger—and they were staring. His sisters, she assumed, noting that they looked just as dismayed as she felt.
“Ben! We’ve only jus
t got rid of you! Why are you back so soon?” Beatrice, the oldest of the three girls, asked this question with a teasing sparkle in her eyes, while the other two girls edged behind her as if hiding.
How peculiar, thought Kate.
Ben grinned, walking forward to embrace his sisters. “I’m happy to see you, too!”
Kate just stood there, forgotten for the moment while she observed the happy scene in front of her. The family resemblance between Ben and his sisters was uncanny. With the exception of Eleanor, who was petite and dark haired, all were tall and blessed with rich, honey-blond hair. And, like Ben, they were all remarkably attractive.
Even fourteen-year-old Helen, with mud on her face, stains on her dress and grass in her hair was beautiful….
Goodness, she was dirty. In fact, Helen was soaking wet. Kate hadn’t noticed it at first, so blinded was she by the striking good looks of the family, but all three sisters were filthy and dripping, looking as if they’d just come from jumping in a swamp.
Slowly, this dawned on Ben as well. He pulled away from Eleanor, looking down in bemusement at the muddy, wet impression she had left on the front of his jacket.
“What in the name of God have you three been doing? You smell bloody awful.”
“It’s only one of Eleanor’s plays, Ben,” Helen piped in. “She just read…what was it, Eleanor?”
“Hamlet,” Eleanor mumbled, clearly embarrassed.
“Hamlet, Ben, and she wanted us to act it out. I wanted to be Ophelia, but Eleanor said I’d be no good, so we had to…”
“Audition?” Ben supplied helpfully.
“Yes. To see who could float downstream the best.”
“And who was the best?”
“Eleanor was the only one who floated at all,” Helen said, before turning on her sister with a vengeance, “because she’s a witch!”
With that, she threw open the front door and flounced inside, slamming it behind her.
Eleanor merely rolled her eyes.
“Looks like I caught you red-handed,” Ben said, clearly amused by his sisters’ escapade.
But Beatrice wasn’t about to let him gloat. “You shouldn’t talk, brother,” she said, casting a sly glance toward Kate. “And just what is going on here?”
He turned around, seeming to have forgotten the reason that he was there in the first place. Kate smiled at him tightly, never having felt more out of place in her life.
“Oh. Beatrice, Eleanor, I’d like you to meet Kate Sutcliff. She is my friend Robert’s younger sister—you’ve met Robert, right?”
His sisters nodded in unison and continued to look at Kate curiously. Ben continued. “Well, she has most generously agreed to marry me.”
Beatrice and Eleanor looked momentarily shocked, then burst into merry peals of laughter.
“My,” Eleanor said, using her handkerchief to wipe her eyes, “that is generous.”
“I’m not in jest,” Ben responded, his firm tone telling them clearly that he was indeed serious.
Beatrice was the first to collect herself, a look of horror slowly dawning on her face. “You mean it, don’t you, Ben? Oh, goodness, how rude of us. You’re really not having us on?” At his nod, both sisters began apologizing and congratulating at once.
Beatrice stepped forward to introduce herself. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Sutcliff. I’m Beatrice, and this is Eleanor. The one inside is Helen. I assure you we’re not normally so impolite, or so…unkempt.”
Kate smiled, liking Ben’s sisters right away. “A pleasure to meet you as well—call me Kate, please. I must assure you that I, too, am not usually so…unkempt.”
“That’s quite an outfit,” Eleanor remarked, warming up to the novel situation. “I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind it…?” She leaned forward and grinned hopefully as she asked this question, her eyes aglow with keen interest.
“It will have to wait for later,” Ben cut in. “Perhaps the two of you can scrounge up something for Kate to wear? In the meantime, I need to have a word with her, and to locate Father as well.”
“He’s in the stables!” Eleanor called out as Beatrice grabbed her hand and dragged her, giggling, into the house. The heavy front door slammed shut a second time.
In the silence that followed his sisters’ exit, Ben said, “I suppose you feel as if you’ve been run over. My family can have that effect on the uninitiated.”
“I’m a bit shaken, but it’s not because of them.” She was actually a bit annoyed, not to mention hurt and confused. She hadn’t agreed to marry him at all. So why had he said that she had? “Ben, this is all very new…how can you introduce me to your family as your fiancée when we haven’t even properly discussed marriage?”
“Kate, there is no discussion. We have to marry. If I don’t marry you, no one else will. Your reputation has been thoroughly compromised.”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me continue. You need to marry, and I’m about your only prospect at this point. Plus, Robert will have my head if I don’t marry you—hell, he might have my head anyway. Surely you don’t dislike me enough to want that to happen, do you?”
He smiled winningly as he asked this question, but Kate was not about to be put off. “I don’t want your head on my conscience, no, but the fact remains that you don’t want to marry me. Not really, anyway.”
“Who says so?”
“Well, everybody says so. You’re a confirmed bachelor. I…I don’t think I would be happy if…you felt forced by the circumstances.”
Ben was silent for a moment as he considered her words. “I don’t know, Kate. I think we could get on well enough.”
“I wasn’t sure that you even liked me.”
“Where would you get that idea?”
“Well, I’ve had several very strong indicators, foremost being that you were avoiding me. You already compromised me—several months ago, remember? I know it wasn’t your fault, Ben, but it happened all the same. Only you disappeared while I had to suffer the scandal out alone.”
“I disappeared because I promised not to touch you again.”
“What does that have to do with—”
Ben cut her off with a kiss. “I stayed away because by the time I happened upon you in the park I had realized that I wouldn’t be able to help myself, Kate.”
“Oh.”
“Are you satisfied?” He hoped to God she was. He hadn’t planned on suggesting they marry. The idea had simply occurred to him, and the second the thought came to his mind, he’d spoken. Yet he didn’t regret his impulse…oddly enough, he found himself trying to talk her into it.
He certainly wouldn’t accept a refusal.
“You might ask me,” Kate said tentatively.
Ben looked at her, filthy and clad in Billy’s ridiculous woolen trousers. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Will you marry me, Kate?”
It sounded so strange, that question coming from him. She thought it over for a minute. There was nothing she’d like better, if only she could be confident that he meant what he said. Could she really say yes?
“Yes.” There. She’d said it. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it.
He kissed her once more, long and slow, not caring that they were still standing in the driveway where anyone could see them. They were oblivious to the world, knowing only the taste of each other, their feel.
Until the world downright intruded.
“Watch out, Kate. Out of the way, quickly,” Ben said, yanking Kate to the side as his father rounded the corner of the house to descend upon them. The ninth Viscount Sinclair galloped up at full speed and leaped from his horse before even bothering to slow down, much less to stop. In one swift motion, he’d engulfed his son in a hearty bear hug.
“Congratulations, my boy! The girls raced to the stable to tell me the news! I never thought I’d see the day—where is she?” He pounded Ben on the back and scanned the area as he asked this question, his eyes passin
g over Kate without pause.
“Has she gone inside already? Here, your groom can take my horse and we’ll go inside to find her.” The viscount handed Kate his reins, still without looking at her. He put his arm around Ben’s shoulders and began to head toward the door. Ben didn’t move.
“Um, Father?”
He stopped to turn inquiringly toward his son.
“Father, you seem to have overlooked her. She’s right here—I’d like you to meet Kate Sutcliff. Kate, this is my father.”
When the viscount turned to look at her, a blank expression of disbelief on his face, Kate wasn’t there, not really. Her feet may have been firmly rooted to the ground, but her mind and spirit wished her far away. To keep from crying, she began to make a mental list of things that were worse than her present situation.
Like being mauled by a tiger in India.
Or being stranded on a desert island and forced to marry its cannibal king.
Hell, at least she wasn’t naked.
As Kate smiled weakly and offered her hand, she consoled herself with the knowledge that it could be worse, although not by much.
The Sinclairs’ butler, Henley, had shown Kate to her room, a sun-filled chamber at the far end of the west wing of the house, allowing for windows on three of the walls. From these windows she could see one of the Sinclairs’ immaculate gardens. Ben’s father had informed her that they had over one hundred acres devoted to gardens alone, including a kitchen garden, a rose garden, an orchard and a formal knot garden that dated back to the seventeenth century. Part of her wanted very much to explore the grounds, but another part of her was reluctant to do so. It hardly seemed real that this immense and beautiful estate would soon be her new home; she didn’t want to get too attached to the notion, lest she suddenly awake and find she was dreaming.
The supper hour was approaching, and Kate knew that she was expected downstairs very soon. But she just couldn’t bring herself to open the door. She didn’t want to face Ben’s family again…not that they weren’t all very nice. Ben’s father, once over the initial shock of his son’s sudden decision to marry and Kate’s rakish appearance, had gone out of his way to charm her—an easy enough feat given his lopsided grin and tawny hair, almost untouched by gray. His resemblance to his son was uncanny, and Kate could tell from him that Ben would age well.
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