Claybourne was obviously not happy. But then neither was she. She needed him to see that Frannie was learning, because Catherine was growing desperate for him to take care of the problem of Avendale. But Frannie wasn’t cooperating. She was acting as though she knew nothing. And Claybourne had his dratted elbow on the table. He looked as though he was going to slip out of his chair.
“We are hosting a proper dinner. One does not lounge during a proper dinner,” Catherine finally told him.
He sipped more wine. “It is Frannie who needs the lessons, not I.”
“That is hardly evident by observing your behavior now. We either do this properly or not at all.”
“I vote for not at all. I’m bored with this endeavor. I’m certain Frannie has grasped the gist of the occasion.”
Catherine had gone to the trouble of dressing properly for the occasion. For these people, she’d put aside the nightly reading to her father who was weaker and paler than ever. She’d spent the afternoon reassuring Winnie that Avendale wouldn’t kill her. She’d met with her father’s man of business only to discover that some of the investments he’d recommended were not going to pay off as well as he’d hoped—they weren’t going to pay off at all. She’d heard not a blasted word from her brother, and when he finally did return to England’s shores, he might do so only to discover that he no longer had a source of income, that the estates were in decline—because of ventures she’d approved.
And now Claybourne was bored! He was fortunate a length of table separated them or she’d reach out and slap the boredom right off his face. Since she couldn’t reach him, she threw words at him.
“You seem to have little understanding of the aristocracy. Do you believe everything we do is for our pleasure? I can assure you, sir, that it is not. We do it because it is required. We do it because it is a duty. We do it because it is expected. How much more difficult it is to do things because they are right, proper, and required. How much easier life would be for all of us if we could go about and do things willy-nilly, however we pleased. It is the very fact that we understand responsibility and adhere to it that raises us above the common man. I am becoming quite weary of your mocking me.
“Do you think this is easy for me? These ridiculously late hours? Perhaps you can lounge about all morning, but not I. I have a household to oversee.”
She was suddenly aware of the tears washing down her cheeks.
“Catherine?” Claybourne was no longer lounging. He was coming up out of his chair.
“Oh, forgive me. That—that was not polite at all. Please excuse me, I need a moment.” She rose and walked out of the room.
Luke watched her leave. He’d been insolent and rude. He was upset with Frannie for not trying harder. He was angry with Catherine for having the habit of touching the tip of her tongue to her top lip—just a quick touch, barely noticeable, but he noticed—after each sip of wine as though she needed to gather the last drop. He was angry at Bill for smiling at Catherine, for pretending to have an interest in the amount of rain that was falling on London this summer. He was furious with himself because he wanted to gather that wine from Catherine’s lips with his own. He was furious because he was intrigued with Catherine, because he was noticing so many things about her—the way the light captured her hair, revealing that it wasn’t all the same shade of blond. Some strands were paler than others. He told himself that his interest in Catherine was only because he didn’t know her well, while he knew everything about Frannie. They’d grown up together. There was little for them to learn about each other. But Catherine was another matter entirely.
He looked at Bill and Frannie. “I should check on her.”
“Of course, you should,” Frannie said, “more than a moment ago as a matter of fact.”
He strode from the room and looked in the parlor. She wasn’t there. Dread tightened his stomach. What if she’d left? What if she was out walking the streets? What if she’d put herself in harm’s way?
Walking into the library, he found her standing by the window, looking onto the garden as she’d been that first night in his home. Only this time she didn’t jerk around in surprise by his presence. When she faced him, he saw the fury and disappointment in her eyes. She didn’t give him time to say a word before she continued her tirade.
“You say you are willing to do whatever necessary to have Frannie as your wife, but I do not see you doing everything required. I see you doing only what it pleases you to do and calling it sufficient to gain what you want. Whereas I must—”
He’d covered her mouth with a blistering kiss before he’d thought it through. He could tell himself that he was bored with the dinner, bored with the conversation, but the reality was that it was driving him mad to watch her sip wine, to gaze at her slender throat and shoulders, to see her smiling at Bill when Luke wanted her to smile at him.
As he swept his tongue through her mouth, he knew it was wrong, but he wanted her, wanted her in a way he’d never desired Frannie. He wanted Catherine rough, he wanted her tenderly. He never thought of taking Frannie to his bed. He thought of marrying her, he thought of having her as his wife, but carnal images of them together never filled his mind. With Catherine, he saw a kaleidoscope of their contorted naked bodies.
Tonight he could feel the need rising in him, felt it rising in her as she rose up on her toes and wound her arms around his neck, her fingers scraping into his hair. Her teeth grazed his bottom lip, tugged—
He groaned, considered the location of the nearest settee—
Shoving him, she scrambled back into the shadows of the draperies. “My God,” she rasped. “Your betrothed is down the hallway—”
“She’s not my betrothed yet, and I have doubts that she’ll ever be. Do you think if I asked her tonight that she’d say yes? Have you convinced her that she can handle being a countess? She doesn’t even want to be the hostess over a bloody dinner!”
He swung away from her, didn’t want to see that he’d frightened her. Frightened Catherine who’d faced a ruffian with a knife.
He plowed his fingers through his hair. “My apologies. My behavior was abhorrent. I don’t know what got into me. It won’t happen again.”
He heard a hesitant footstep, then another. Feeling the touch of a hand on his shoulder, he stiffened. He wanted to spin around and take her in his arms again.
“Frannie told me you’ve never kissed her.”
“I don’t think of her that way.”
“You don’t think about kissing her?”
“She’s not a carnal creature.”
“You are.”
He moved away from her, before he proved her point. “Yes, well, I’m quite capable of restraining myself when the situation warrants.”
“And I don’t warrant restraint?”
He faced her. “I want to marry Frannie, but I think of you day and night. I’m sitting at that bloody dinner table wondering about the taste of you with wine upon your tongue. And when you vent your fury at me all you do is make me want you more. But it is only lust, Catherine. It is only the physical. I am with you every night. It stands to reason that my body would react to your nearness. It has grown accustomed to it.”
It didn’t help matters at all that the scent of her lingered in his bed.
“Do you ever do anything with Frannie?” she asked.
The change in subject seemed abrupt, strange, but he was grateful to turn attention away from his acting badly. “What do you mean?”
“Do you ever take her to the theater or the park or boating? Do you know her outside of Dodger’s?”
“Well, yes, of course.”
“What’s something you’ve done together?”
“When we were children—”
“Not when you were children. Recently. Since you’ve been adults.”
He considered her question. Everything always seemed to involve Dodger’s. And before that Feagan.
“I can’t remember the last time we did anything.”<
br />
“You should do something together, don’t you think?”
It was embarrassing to admit that he’d never done anything with a lady that wasn’t questionable. “What would you suggest?”
“Have you been to the Great Exhibition?”
He could hardly fathom that she was speaking to him with enthusiasm about an outing with Frannie, as though he’d never kissed Catherine. He realized that she was putting up a wall. After all, she was the daughter of a duke, a woman with noble blood. And they both knew nothing about him was noble.
Frannie was the woman he’d marry. He needed to concentrate on winning her over.
“I’ve not been,” he told Catherine.
“Neither have I. They say Queen Victoria has gone five times already. Can you imagine? I’m hoping to go tomorrow. Perhaps you could take Frannie there sometime. It would be a nice outing.”
“I’ll consider it.”
She nodded, her tongue darting out to lick her lip the way it did after she drank wine. He wondered if she was tasting him. She cleared her throat. “We should probably return to our guests.”
“Probably.” Only he didn’t want to. Dinners were tedious.
“We shall forget what happened earlier, and I won’t allow it to happen again,” she said.
He studied her in the shadows of his library. “Do you mean the kiss?”
She nodded, and so he nodded as well. She might be able to forget it, but he doubted that he ever would, that he would ever forget the smallest detail about her.
“Have you ever known anyone to stand up to him like she does?” Bill asked, before sipping his wine.
Frannie smiled. “No. And I don’t think he quite knows what to make of her.”
“He’s always loved you, Frannie. Why are you making it so blasted difficult for him? You’re not meek, you’re not cowardly. I daresay if you wanted all this, nothing would stop you from acquiring it.”
“That’s the thing, Bill. I don’t want all this. It’s too grand, it’s too…well, it’s simply too much.”
“Think of all the good things you could do.”
“I can do them now. I am doing them now.”
“But you could do so much more. As Luke’s wife, you’d have influence, you’d—”
“Be snubbed at every turn. I don’t understand why he stays in this world. I truly don’t. I see how they look at him at the club. He has no friends among the aristocracy. They spurn him.”
“Do you not see the irony? You judge them as harshly as they judge us. What do you truly know of them? Don’t you like Catherine?”
She pursed her lips. “You’re determined to make this difficult.”
“You worry about what the aristocracy thinks of you.”
“Don’t you?”
“No. The one thing I learned in my youth as a grave robber was that everyone looks the same when they’re dead. We’re all equal then. So when I meet a chap, sitting on his high horse, I imagine him dead. He’s not quite so intimidating then.”
She giggled. “You’re awful.”
He smiled at her. He had such a beguiling smile. He’d always been so very quiet, keeping to himself. When she’d first met him, she’d been afraid that she would die if he touched her. She thought all the children had been afraid of him, or at least in awe of him. He was the first one they’d ever known who didn’t fear the dead.
A young man came to Luke’s residence shortly after dinner to inform Bill that one of his patients had taken a turn for the worse. Bill quickly took his leave.
It was left to Luke to take both ladies home. Because he wasn’t quite ready to trust himself alone with Catherine, he took her home first. Frannie didn’t give the impression she suspected that anything inappropriate had happened while Luke and Catherine were out of the room. But then she’d never suspect the worst of him.
After he escorted Catherine to the back gate, he was left alone in the coach with Frannie. It was strange to realize on how few occasions they actually traveled together. When he and Catherine traveled each evening they talked about a great many things. Perhaps it was because they were new to each other’s lives and knew so little about each other, whereas he and Frannie had grown up together. They knew everything about each other.
“I think Bill works far too hard,” Frannie said after a while.
“Who among us doesn’t?” he asked.
“I suppose you’re right. I rather like Catherine.”
“You made it difficult for her tonight.”
“I think we all did, but I just really wasn’t in the mood for a formal dinner. I’ll do it properly when it matters, Luke.”
“I know you will. It seemed tedious to me as well. I doubt we’ll entertain often.”
She lifted the curtain, glanced out. “Jim was telling me about the Great Exhibition. He was rather impressed with it.”
“Would you like to go?”
She dropped the curtain back into place. “I would, yes.”
“Will tomorrow serve?”
She smiled softly. “Tomorrow will serve very well.”
“Splendid.”
Once they arrived at Dodger’s, he escorted Frannie to her rooms. Then he walked down the stairs and through the back door that led into Dodger’s. He walked down the hallway to the room where he knew he’d find Jack. A footman with meaty fists nodded at Luke and opened the door. Luke knew he was more guard than servant. His presence signaled that Jack was counting his money.
That’s exactly what he was doing when Luke walked into the room. Jack looked up from his neat stacks of coins and paper currency. “How was your fancy dinner?”
“Tedious and not so fancy.”
Jack reached back for a glass, poured whiskey into it, and pushed it to the edge of the desk. Luke sat in the chair, grabbed the glass, downed its contents, and put the glass back. Jack immediately refilled it. Luke assumed his face revealed that he was a man in need of a drink or two.
“What’s troubling you?” Jack asked.
He was the only person Luke knew who was better at reading people than Luke was. “Have you ever loved anyone?”
“You mean besides my mum?”
Luke was dumbfounded as he stared at Jack. He knew his friend’s story. “She sold you when you were five.”
Jack shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. Just means she didn’t love me.”
Sipping his whiskey this time, Luke pondered Jack’s words. He’d always assumed because he loved Frannie that she loved him back. Could love have only one side to it and still be love?
Had anyone ever loved him before he was unofficially adopted by Feagan and his merry brood? If they had, wouldn’t he remember?
“That night you found me in the alley, behind the garbage, did I say anything?”
“Like what?”
Luke ran his finger around the rim of the glass. “Something that might have given you a hint as to what I was doing there.”
“I didn’t need you to say anything to give me a hint. It was obvious. You were dying.”
“But how did I come to be there?”
“Looked to me like someone had kicked you out. You were skinny, your clothes torn. Do you really want to know the truth of it?”
Luke rubbed his forehead as pain began to throb. The late hours, the encounter with Catherine were taking a toll.
“You’re not thinking you’re really Claybourne, are you?” Jack asked.
Luke shook his head. Claybourne, the real Claybourne, would have been worthy of Catherine. Something Luke would never be. She was a lady, and he was a scoundrel.
“Has Lady Catherine taught Frannie what she needs to know?” Jack asked.
Luke sighed. “It’s as though she’s taught her nothing.”
“Is that why you look like a man who’s lost his best friend?”
Leaning forward, Luke dug his elbows into his thighs and held the glass between both hands, studying the few drops that lined the bottom. “I’ve been with seve
ral women through the years, Jack. No matter what I did with them, I never felt disloyal to Frannie. With Catherine, I feel disloyal to Frannie by simply speaking with her.”
“No harm in just speaking to her.”
He wasn’t going to confess that he’d done more than speak to her.
“Sometimes I worry that Frannie doesn’t love me, and just doesn’t know how to tell me.” He studied the way Jack drank his whiskey. “If that were the case you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you knew? You wouldn’t leave me to make a fool of myself.”
“Love is a stranger to me, Luke. Other than my mum, no woman has ever held my affections.”
“Not even Frannie?”
“I like her well enough, but that’s not love, is it?”
Luke was fairly sure that Jack was lying. He certainly wasn’t being honest about something.
Luke set his glass on the desk and stood. “No. Like isn’t love.”
Neither was lust. And that was all he felt for Catherine, a deep, almost uncontrollable lust.
When he returned home, he was walking toward the library for a bit of whiskey to help him settle into the night when his gaze fell on the envelope sitting on the silver slaver on the table in the entry hallway. He recognized the hand that had addressed it—even though it was not quite as neat as usual. Catherine no doubt once again inviting him to one of her silly balls.
He wondered if she’d left the invitation before or after their encounter in the library, wondered if she was expecting him to bring Frannie.
With a sigh, he headed to the library. Her latest invitation was simply one more that would go unaccepted.
From the Journal of Lucian Langdon
Few came to the old gent’s funeral. Until that moment I’d not realized what it had cost him to take me in, to announce to the world that I, the suspected murderer of his second son, was in fact his grandson.
A week after his passing, I attended a ball. I knew it was in bad form, that when one is in mourning one does not attend affairs that exhibit gaiety. But I also knew that gentlemen were often forgiven for not adhering to the strictures of society.
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