At first he thought to dissemble, and pretend he hadn’t the slightest idea what the old lady was talking about. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he said politely.
“I think you do.” Nanny Hinkle had spooned four heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her own cup, and now, much to Burke’s disgust, she was sipping the steaming brew as if it tasted delightful. “I raised Katie from a baby, and was with her until she was sixteen. And I never in my life met a stubborner person.”
Outside, lightning flashed. Then, off in the distance, thunder rumbled. Burke glanced around the cottage. It was a pleasant enough looking place, though the raftered ceilings were a bit low for someone his height. He rather liked the idea that this, contrary to all his wild imaginings, was where Kate had been all the time they’d been separated. It was a good place to be, he thought. A safe place. Though this old woman ... she was not the kindly nanny she appeared to be, that was certain.
“I think you’ll find, Miss Hinkle,” he said, when his gaze fell on a familiar-looking tabby cat who’d draped herself across the clean sheets in the laundry basket the moment he’d lowered it, “that I can be quite stubborn, as well.”
“Not as stubborn as her,” Nanny Hinkle said, with another glance at the ceiling, “or you wouldn’t be here.”
Burke watched as the cat let out an elaborate yawn, then began kneading the sheets with her front paws. “Maybe not.” Burke couldn’t help pointing out, a bit smugly, “But she’s coming with me, isn’t she?”
“For the sake of your daughter.” The old woman bit into one of her scones. When she spoke again, she sprayed crumbs in his direction, without seeming to care in the least. “That’s all.”
Burke, irritated, and not just because of the crumbs, said, “I don’t believe that’s all. I don’t believe she’s only doing it for Isabel.”
“That,” Nanny Hinkle said, with a shrug of her spindly shoulders, “is your prerogative, of course, my lord.”
He stared at her. “You can’t put me off her, Miss Hinkle,” he said. “You can go on telling me how stubborn she is, and I’ll go right on nodding politely, but you won’t be able to put me off her.”
“Won’t I?” She looked at him, then grinned. “No, I can see that I can’t. Well, that’s a shame. You’ll only be disappointed.”
Kate’s voice came floating down the narrow staircase, sounding suspicious. “Nanny,” she called. “What are you telling him?”
“I’m not telling his lordship anything at all, my sweet,” the old woman shouted, at a volume that belied her fragile looks. Then, dropping her voice, she said to Burke, “I remember when your divorce was in all the papers.”
Burke stiffened. He said carefully, “Oh?”
The old woman waved a veiny hand in the air. “Quite the scandal, that was.”
“Are you trying to imply, Miss Hinkle,” he said, “that I am not good enough for Kate?”
She looked at him steadily. “You know about her parents, of course.”
Surprised at the blunt way she’d introduced this new topic, he nodded.
“People called that a scandal, too,” Nanny Hinkle said. “And it made all the papers, like your divorce.” She sipped her tea. “Their friends—grand people, like yourself—dropped them. None of them could go anywhere without being followed by jeers and whispers. Jeers and whispers from them that had once called themselves friends. It can scar you, something like that.”
“Certainly,” Burke agreed, not certain where, precisely, the old woman was headed.
“It scarred you,” she said. “But in a different way than it scarred Katie.”
“What,” Burke demanded, losing patience, “are you trying to tell me?”
“She won’t go back.” The old woman regarded him unblinkingly.
Burke assumed, then, that the old woman knew what he’d done, what he’d tried to make Kate. Which was embarrassing, certainly. But it was also a moot point. Because he fully intended to right that wrong.
Accordingly, he leaned back in his chair, and said, “I think you underestimate me, madam.”
The old woman snorted. “I think you underestimate Kate. But what is the point of telling you that? Why would you listen to me? I’m an old woman. And no one listens to old women.”
Kate appeared on the stairs, carrying a valise and dressed in traveling clothes. “I do,” she said. “Now, Nanny, are you going to be all right while I’m gone? I’ll stop at Mrs. Barrow’s on the way out of town, and ask her to look in on you. And there’s the meat pies from Saturday in the larder, don’t forget. And the milk comes tomorrow ....”
Nanny Hinkle’s face changed when Kate came back into the room. She became once again a sweet old nursemaid, rather than the sharp-eyed inquisitor she’d been when in the sole company of the marquis.
“Ah,” she said, as Burke rose, and hastily took hold of the valise Kate held. It was, he discovered, disconcertingly light. “But there’s one thing you’ve forgotten, my love, haven’t you? What about Lady Babbie?”
Kate, busy with her bonnet strings, said, “Oh, Nanny, I’ll be back in a few days, I’m sure. No longer.”
Nanny Hinkle shot Burke a look he construed as triumphant. It wasn’t until Kate had kissed the old woman goodbye, and accepted a bundle of hastily wrapped scones that she pressed upon her, that Burke stooped to kiss the old woman’s hand.
“We’ll be back,” he said with a hearty confidence that, in truth, he only half felt. “For the cat.”
“She’ll be back,” the old woman said, with a shrewd glance at Kate, who’d already stepped outside.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Then you,” the old woman said, “are in for a good deal of heartache.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Then you—the old woman’s words kept echoing through his head—are in for a good deal of heartache.
A few hours later, Burke was still hearing those words, over and over again. Well, what did she know about it, anyway? So she had known Kate forever. So what?
True, he did not know how much Kate had told her nanny about what had actually transpired between herself and her employer. But that didn’t mean he was destined for failure. Because there was plenty he knew about Kate that Nanny Hinkle didn’t.
He knew, for instance, that when her lips were pressed together—as they had been for most of the time he’d been sitting across from her in the enclosed carriage, several hours of hard riding, and very little conversation—that she wasn’t necessarily angry. In fact, sometimes it merely meant that she was thinking about something.
He felt it most likely that she was thinking about Daniel Craven. She had asked for an account of events leading up to Isabel’s elopement, and had listened quite patiently while he gave them—well, an abridged version of them, anyway, since he could not tell her what Isabel had said concerning his relationship with her former chaperone. Kate had nodded, expressing her confidence that in Isabel’s revealing in her note that they were headed to Gretna Green, she was surely hoping they find her before the wedding took place. “Why else,” Kate asked, “would she have mentioned where they were going?”
It was a strategy for how, precisely, she was going to handle Isabel in the face of this crisis, he assured himself, that Kate was concocting at that very moment. He could see her face quite plainly, though the storm clouds overhead had rendered the sky above the carriage as dark as if it were dusk, even if according to his pocket watch, it was only just past four o’clock. She was dressed—quite becomingly, in his opinion—in a plain brown cloak, and matching bonnet, against which her blond hair looked very light, indeed. And her cheeks, though they were well out of the wind, were still very pink. As, of course, were her lips.
It seemed possible to him that she might keep those lips of hers closed for the entirety of their journey. She had never been a chatterbox, but nor had she ever been this quiet.
She’s angry, he told himself, again. And she has every right to be. It was a
ll his fault, this silence. He had to do something about it. He had to do something about it or go mad.
He said, speaking loudly enough to be heard above the rumble of the carriage wheels and rhythmic clopping of the horses’ hooves, “I’m sorry, Kate.”
She wrenched her gaze from the passing landscape, upon which it had been fastened, and said, obviously startled, “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry. For what happened. That last night in London. I didn’t realize ... I thought it was Bishop in the garden with you. I didn’t know it was Daniel Craven—”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he wished them unsaid. He had sworn to himself he wasn’t going to mention anything that might give her cause for pain.
Her cheeks seemed to go up in flames. She looked quickly away, and said in a voice that sounded strangled, “Please just forget it.”
“I can’t forget it,” he said, wishing she would look at him. “How can I forget it, Kate? It’s all I’ve thought about ever since. Why didn’t you say anything?”
She shook her head, her gaze locked on the window. “It wouldn’t,” she said, “have made any difference.”
“What do you mean? It would have made all the difference in the world. Kate, if only you’d told me some little part of your past ....”
She did look at him, then. She turned her head to look at him with eyes shadowed beneath her bonnet brim. “But I did,” she said. “I told you about the fire.”
He was up off the seat opposite hers and onto the one beside her before the words were fully out of her mouth.
“But not,” he said, reaching for her hand, “the whole story. Not about what happened, who you were—”
“What would have been the point?” she asked, tugging on her fingers.
“Because if I’d known who your father was—”
Her mouth popped open, and he was offered a tantalizing glimpse of her tongue before she remembered herself, and shut it again.
“Are you telling me,” she said, “that if you’d known my father was a gentleman, you wouldn’t have—”
“No,” he said hurriedly. “No, I’m quite certain we still would have ... but Kate, if I’d known, I’d have done then what I intend to do now.”
She eyed him. “And what’s that?”
“Well, ask you to marry me, of course.”
Every bit of color drained from her face. Then she gave her hand a wrench, trying to pull it from his. “Let go of me,” she said, in a voice he didn’t recognize.
He tightened his grip. “No. Listen to me, Kate—”
“I heard you,” she said, and he realized then that the reason he didn’t recognize her voice was because it was filled with tears. “Please let go of my hand, and go back to your seat.”
“Kate,” he said, trying to speak gently, “I know you’re angry with me, and you’ve a right to be. But I think—”
“If you do not let go of my hand,” Kate said, sounding as if she were choking now, “and get back to your seat, I shall tell the driver to drop me at the nearest crossroad.”
“Kate. I don’t think you understand. I—”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, her voice shaking every bit as violently as her fingers had shaken when they’d been taking in the laundry. “I will open that door and jump, so help me God, if you don’t do as I ask.”
He felt, for a moment, that he might like to open the door and jump. Or at least throw something through it. But since this would accomplish nothing whatsoever, he did as she asked instead, and retired to the opposite seat, where he sat, his arms folded across his chest, staring at her perplexedly.
What in God’s name was wrong with her? Here he’d tried, to the best of his ability, to rectify the situation, and she had reacted as if he’d ... well, as if he’d suggested that she become his mistress again. She had a right to be angry at him for that, God only knew. But why was she angry with him for asking her to marry him? It was his understanding that women considered marriage proposals worth more than diamonds, and prized them accordingly. Was she miffed, perhaps, because his hadn’t been accompanied by a ring? Well, he hadn’t exactly had a chance to stop and get one yet. He was in the act of trying to stop his daughter from eloping with a scoundrel, and hadn’t time to think these things through.
Across from him, Kate had wedged herself as tightly into her corner of the carriage as she could, and turned her face as far from him as she was physically able, to keep him from seeing her tears. The rain had started, a hard, pelting rain, accompanied by a good deal of lightning, and thunder that grew louder with each clap. Raindrops streaked the glass in the window. But as she was incapable of seeing anything, thanks to her tears, this hardly mattered. What she was doing instead was thinking, What have you done? Kate, what on earth have you done? The man asked you to marry him—something you’ve been waiting to hear him ask for the past three months, and you say no to him? Why? Why?
She knew why, of course. Because she was a perfect fool, that was why. She’d been a perfect fool to accept a position in his household in the first place. She’d known from the start it was a bad idea. Look at him! Just look at him! Wasn’t he everything she had come to despise? Wealthy and arrogant and entirely sure of himself ....
And she’d been right. Look what had happened.
The worst. The only really sensible thing she’d done in the past six months, she told herself, was leave him before her feelings for him became too impossibly tangled for her to extricate herself.
Not that she was extricated even now. When she’d pulled down that sheet and found him standing there, it was as if no time at all had passed since she’d last seen him—except, of course, that he looked so very different now, so deliriously vulnerable and hurt.
But that, of course, was due to worry over Isabel, not, as she’d initially thought, with the first flicker of hope she’d allowed herself since the night she’d left, because he’d been heartbroken over her abandonment of him. It had taken all the strength she had to keep herself from throwing her arms around him, and kissing him a thousand times, as she’d fantasized every single night since she’d left London.
But then she’d remembered.
When she’d first shown up at Nanny Hinkle’s door, the evening after that sleepless, heavenly—but in the end, utterly wretched—night with the Marquis of Wingate, she had felt only sorrow. But when the days crawled by, and formed into weeks, and then the weeks formed into months, and he didn’t come ... well, that was when she realized how extremely fortunate she’d been, how narrowly she’d escaped something that, in the end, would have only turned out wretchedly.
And then he had appeared. As suddenly as if the wind had blown him to her.
But it hadn’t been the wind. It hadn’t been the wind at all. It had been Daniel. Lord, what could Daniel be thinking? He couldn’t possibly be in love with Isabel. Men like Daniel were incapable of feeling love for anyone but themselves. So what was he up to? What could he be hoping to accomplish? The girl had money, yes, but then, so did Daniel, now that his mine had paid out. So if he hadn’t stolen Isabel for love or for money, then why?
Something cold was gripping her heart, had been gripping it since Burke had first uttered the words “Daniel Craven” back there, by the wash line. Because Kate had a terrible feeling that she knew what Daniel was up to. She hoped she was wrong. She hoped against hope she was wrong.
But no other explanation made sense.
She wouldn’t, however, share her fears with Burke. No, he had enough to worry about. Better that he think Daniel really intended to marry his daughter, than that he knew the truth ....
Lord. The truth.
He’d found out the truth—one truth, anyway—and now he wanted to marry her. Because he had found out who her father was. Because he had found out she was a gentleman’s daughter, he wanted to do what he ought to have done no matter whose daughter she’d been.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t—w
ouldn’t—allow it.
The only problem, of course, was that it wasn’t going to be easy to keep that in mind. Even now, as he sat opposite her, his jade-green gaze fixed unblinkingly on her, she couldn’t help noticing the backs of his hands, which were bare. The backs of the Marquis of Wingate’s hands were covered with the same coarse black hair that covered the rest of him, the parts only she—well, and half the actresses in London—had ever seen. Seeing that hair now reminded Kate of the time when she’d seen him without the hindrance of clothing, and that put her in mind of something she’d been deliberately trying to forget, the night they’d spent together, the only time in life she’d ever felt fully alive. He’d made her feel things that night that she knew she would never feel again.
Which only made her cry harder.
“Kate,” he said, from the duskiness of his corner. It had grown steadily darker outside as the rain grew heavier. Now it pounded down upon the roof of the chaise, which had slowed to a crawl, due to the mud on the road, and the fact that the driver surely couldn’t see where he was going.
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t reply. She was crying silently, hoping it had grown too dark within the carriage for him to see her tears. But she couldn’t speak without giving herself away. She didn’t dare.
“What I don’t understand,” he said, ignoring her silence, “is why you felt compelled to run away. If you didn’t want ... if you didn’t want to be my mistress, Kate, why didn’t you just say so? It wasn’t as if I would have tried to force you. You surely can’t think me as base as that.”
She bit her lower lip. His voice, coming out from the darkness like that, was gentler than she’d ever heard it, soft as velvet.
“I can understand,” he went on, when she did not reply, “your being angry with me. I’m only asking that you try to understand. I didn’t know what I was saying that night. I’m not just saying it now because I know you’re a gentleman’s daughter. I should have said it to you that night—I would have said it to you the next morning, I swear it, if you’d stayed. I realized as soon as you left that I was in love with you—”
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