Katherine jumped.
“I suggest unless you merely want to trade death by drowning for death by the wheels of a carriage, that you release the handle, madam.”
His flat, emotionless tone conveyed boredom. Why, he might as well have been commenting on the weather or offering her tea.
Katherine snatched her hand back, feeling burned by his touch. “You are a m-monster,” she repeated.
He tugged free his wet gloves and beat them against one another. Drops of water sprayed the carriage walls. “Your charge grows unoriginal and tedious, madam.”
And in that moment it occurred to Katherine just how ungrateful she must seem. The towering stranger might be a foul-tempered fiend, but he’d saved her. Her lips twisted. Whether he’d wanted to or not.
“Forgive me, I’ve not yet thanked you.” She took a breath. “So thank you. For saving me. From drowning,” she finished lamely.
His shoulder lifted in a slight shrug. “I’d hardly ruin the amusements of the day by watching you drown beneath the surface of the Thames.”
She expected she should feel outraged, shocked, appalled by those callously delivered words…and yet, something in his tone gave her pause. It was as though he sought to elicit an outraged response from her. Instead of outrage, Katherine was filled with her first stirrings of intrigue, wondering what had happened to turn his black heart so vile.
Katherine did not rise to his clear attempt at bating her. “My name is Lady Katherine Adamson.” Pause. “I imagine I should know the name of my rescuer.”
He said nothing for a while, and Katherine suspected he had no intention of answering her. She sighed and reached for the curtained window.
“Jasper Waincourt, 8th Duke of Bainbridge.”
Her eyes widened. “You are a duke,” she blurted.
He arched a single, frosty black brow at her. “You’d be wise not to make designs upon my title, madam. I’d not wed you if you were the last creature in the kingdom.”
She blinked. Oh, the dastard. Katherine jabbed a finger at him. “And you, well I wouldn’t wed you if you were the last creature in the world, and the King decreed it to spare my life.”
His lips twitched. But then the firm line was back in place, so that she suspected she’d imagined the slight expression of mirth. “It is good we are of like opinions, then, madam. We are here,” he said.
She angled her head. And then the carriage rocked to a halt.
The sudden, unexpectedness of the stop, propelled Katherine forward, and she landed in an ignominious heap atop the duke’s chest.
It was as though she’d slammed into a stone wall. All the breath left her. She looked up at him through her lids, and found him coolly unaffected by the weight of her figure upon his person.
He yawned.
Yawned!
The lout had the audacity to yawn, as though he found the whole of this day—boring.
He set her back into her seat and rapped on the door.
The carriage door opened.
She glared. She felt frozen through. She didn’t think her teeth would ever cease chattering. And she knew she should really be more grateful considering he’d risked his life and limb to pull her from the river, but he was…was…bloody miserable.
And Katherine didn’t curse.
Not when she’d found out Father had left them destitute.
Not when the creditors had come to claim every last one of her books.
Not when they’d been forced from their cottage in Hertfordshire Estate while Mother had looked on, weeping piteous little tears.
She jabbed her finger across at him. “You sir…”
“Your Grace,” he corrected.
“Are a miserable monster.” Katherine leaned across the carriage and jabbed her trembling cold finger in his chest. “Which I know is redundant…and I’m not. Redundant. Ever. But you are foul. And odious. And if you didn’t want to risk your life and limb to save me, then you shouldn’t have.” Katherine fell back against the cushions, her chest heaving from her near brush with death. The driver stuck his head into the carriage. “Not that I’m displeased with being saved,” Katherine clarified. “Because I, unlike some odious, miserable beings, enjoy being alive.”
The servant gulped and ducked his head out of the carriage.
The duke’s black brows dipped, and his eyes narrowed into deep impenetrable slits. If Katherine hadn’t had a brush with death a short while ago, she expected his expression would have terrified her a good deal more. As it was, she was, cold, hungry, and too tired to fear a duke with a black scowl. His rudeness had exhausted her patience.
“Are you finished, madam?” The words contained a satiny edge as smooth as the side of a blade.
She swallowed, and tugged his jacket free. “Here,” she said. “I’d not care to impose any more on your hospi…” A squeak escaped her. “Wha-what are you doing?” she stammered as he tossed the thoroughly rumpled garment back over her shoulders and picked her up. “Your Grace…” He leapt from the carriage, holding her as though she weighed no more than a mere babe.
A vein pulsed in the corner of his eye. He stopped and glanced at the row of stucco townhouses.
The servant cleared his throat and gestured to the modest white front townhouse she now called home.
The duke strode onward, up the steps, and rapped on the door.
“Y-you m-may p-put me down, Your Grace.”
He rapped again.
“I said…”
“I am not deaf, madam.” He raised his hand to knock again when the butler opened it suddenly.
Ollie’s small blue eyes went wide in his ancient, heavily wrinkled face. “Lady Katherine,” he boomed.
The servant, fast approaching his seventieth year insisted on retaining his post. “Ollie,” Katherine murmured.
The duke’s frown deepened. “May I enter?” Mocking condescension underlined that question.
Oh the ba…lout, she silently amended.
Ollie blinked. “Enter?” His high-pitched voice thundered. “Er, yes, right, right,” he stepped aside and motioned the duke forward.
His Grace swept through the front doors as though he were in fact the owner of the modest townhouse.
Katherine looked up and swallowed at the sight of her mother descending the long staircase in a flurry of burgundy skirts. “Ollie, whatever is…?” Mother’s words ended on a gasp. “Whatever has happened?” she asked, her tone well-modulated, perfectly ladylike to match her sedate, unhurried pace.
Katherine sighed. Mother had always been a stickler for the rules of decorum. A lady must never run.
Not even if one’s daughter should appear in a stranger’s arms, thoroughly bedraggled, rumpled, and near death.
“Your daughter took herself off to the Frost Fair, unchaperoned, and was rewarded for her efforts by nearly drowning in the Thames.”
Well, that was a rather methodical, emotionless recount of her day by the duke. Accurate, but unappreciated.
“Mother…” Katherine began.
Mother glared her into silence.
Katherine burrowed closer to the duke, accepting support in the unlikeliest of places.
He glanced down the bridge of his hawk-like nose at her. Katherine’s breath caught and for the first time, she truly noticed him. Several inches well beyond six feet, his broad chest and arms were thickly chorded with powerful muscles, so very different than the gentlemen of the haute ton. Not one to be considered handsome by conventional standards, the angular planes of his face would be considered too harsh, his narrow lips too hard, his…
He quirked a brow.
Katherine felt the first real warmth that day and it came in the form of the mortified heat that stained her cheeks. “Er, well…”
“Might we know the name of the gentleman who so gallantly rescued my daughter?”
His mouth tightened, and for the slightest moment Katherine thought he might ignore her mother’s request, turn on his heel, and leave.
<
br /> “Jasper Waincourt, 8th Duke of Bainbridge.” That was all.
No bow. No polite discourse. Just five words, one number, and a cold, unfeeling tone.
He seemed to realize in that moment that he still held her in his arms. His body froze, and it was as though he’d turned to granite. He glanced around, as if searching for someone to relieve him of his burden.
Katherine frowned. It didn’t matter that he appeared desperately eager to be rid of her. She should want him gone posthaste from her foyer.
She should.
She did.
As if a cue had been delivered, the tall footman came rushing forward to relieve the duke of his burden.
The duke hesitated, turning his black glower on the handsome footman, Thomas, and then he turned Katherine over to the servant.
“Your Grace, allow me to extend an invitation to din—”
“No.”
Her mother blinked several times. However, as the Countess of Wakefield and not easily cowed, even by a powerful peer, Mother was undeterred. “Surely you must allow us the courtesy of—”
“Madam, the only thing you might do for me is to keep a more watchful eye upon your daughter.” He sketched a brief bow. “Good day,” he said curtly and without another word, turned on his heel, and made his way to the front door.
Ollie had the good sense to pull the door open, and the duke continued forward, his stride unbroken.
The door closed behind him with a firm click.
Mother’s brown eyes widened, giving her the appearance of an owl. “Well,” she said on a huff. It was certainly not every day the Countess of Wakefield was left speechless.
Katherine stared at the door where Jasper Waincourt, the 8th Duke of Bainbridge, just exited.
Well, indeed.
Chapter 4
A sharp rap sounded on Jasper’s office door. He didn’t pick up his head from the ledger atop the surface of his desk. “Enter,” he barked.
The door opened. “Your Grace, the Marquess of Guilford has asked to see you.”
“I’m not receiving callers.” Jasper dipped his pen into the ink and marked several columns.
“I explained you were not receiving callers.”
“But I explained that I’m not merely a caller, but rather a friend,” Guilford drawled from the doorway.
Jasper dipped his pen and made another mark. He scanned the first three columns, and then tossed his pen aside. “What is it?” he asked, impatiently. He waved off the butler, and the older servant bowed and hurried out.
Guilford strolled into the room. He stopped beside the sideboard filled with crystal decanters. He studied several bottles and then picked up the bottle of brandy. He poured himself a glass. With the patience better reserved for one of the cloth, he strolled over to Jasper’s desk, and sat in the lone chair, directly across from him.
“Really, Bainbridge,” he said, after he’d taken several sips. “You ask ‘what is it’ as though you didn’t create quite the stir with your heroic rescue of a mysterious young lady from the Thames River.”
A growl worked its way up Jasper’s throat, and he reached for his pen. He dipped it angrily into the ink well, and completed the next row of tabulations. The last thing he desired was to become gossiped about by the bloody ton. He’d imagined after three years as the Mad Duke, Society had forgotten about the Duke of Bainbridge and his now dead wife, Lady Lydia.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead and buried. Cold in the grave.
Jasper lashed at himself with the reminder of it. He accepted the stark remembrance of Lydia’s smiling visage, and then replayed her face contorting with the pain of being torn apart by their unborn child.
The pen snapped in his hand. Ink smeared across his previously immaculate page. Jasper tossed the pen aside. “I don’t hear a question there,” he snapped. He appreciated Guilford, but many times he wanted to send his only friend to the devil. This happened to be one of those times.
Guilford folded an ankle across his knee. “Imagine my shock to find you gone.” He waved his hand. “Oh, I’d briefly considered perhaps you’d gone to help yourself to another tankard of ale, but then thought you’d never do anything even remotely emotional as to indulge in too much drink.” Suddenly, Guilford leaned forward. “Therefore you can imagine my absolute shock to discover you’d gone and done something so very public as to risk your life to save an unknown woman.”
The woman, Lady Katherine Adamson, slipped into his mind. With her snapping eyes, the tart edge to her words…his initial opinion of the young lady held true—she was no great beauty. And yet, there had been something very intriguing about this woman who’d not been at all cowed by his presence. Jasper refused to rise to his friend’s bating. Instead, he sat back in his chair, and folded his arms across his chest.
All the air seemed to leave Guilford. “Blast and damn, does nothing I say or do manage to get a rise out of you?”
Jasper scowled. “Is that what your intentions are? To get a rise out of me?” It would take a good deal more than his friend’s ineffectual attempts to bait him to rouse any emotion in him. Again, the ice princess, Lady Katherine, slipped into his mind.
And you, well I wouldn’t wed you if you were the last creature in the world, and the king decreed it to spare my life. Yes, Lady Katherine Adamson was no grand beauty; brown hair, brown eyes, and the faintest dusting of freckles along her cheekbones. And yet…her slender frame, well over a foot shorter than his own six-foot-five-inch figure, had possessed remarkable curves that had layered very nicely against his body. With her body atremble from the cold, and her teeth chattering uncontrollably, he’d imagined her near death experience would have dulled her spirit. Instead, her snappish tone had put him in mind of a hissing and spitting cat cornered in the street.
Guilford continued to sit there in silence, seeming to study Jasper over the rim of his partially emptied glass of brandy. He took another sip. “Who was she?”
“Who was who?” Jasper replied, and tugged open the front drawer of his desk. He withdrew a new pen, and touched his fingertip to the point.
His friend gritted his teeth loud enough for the sound to reach Jasper’s ears. “Don’t be an ass.”
Jasper kept his gaze trained on the ledger in front of him. He turned the page, and dipped his pen in ink. “Lady Katherine Adamson.”
Silence.
“Ahh.”
Jasper’s jaw clenched. He counted to ten, making a desperate bid not to feed that ‘Ahh’. And failed. “And?” he barked. “Do you know the lady?” Jasper didn’t know why it should matter if Guilford knew the spirited creature. It didn’t, he assured himself. It didn’t matter who the hell she was.
Guilford uncrossed his leg, a grin on his lips. “There is an elder sister.” His brow wrinkled. “I believe Lady Aldora. She’s been recently wed to Lord Michael Knightly.”
Lord Michael Knightly. The second brother to the Marquess of St. James purported to be as rich as Croesus, and ruthless in matters of business.
Jasper had heard of the man; knew there was some scandal or another attached to his name, but it went back years ago, to a time when bits of information such as that might have interested Jasper. No longer.
Furthermore, Jasper didn’t give a damn about Lady Aldora.
His friend must have followed the unspoken direction of his thoughts, for he continued.
“It is my understanding that Lady Katherine has a twin sister. A lovely creature, far more beautiful than the lady you fished from the river. They made their Come Out this year. Both remain unwed.”
And you, well I wouldn’t wed you if you were the last creature in the world, and the king decreed it to spare my life.
His lips twitched in remembrance of her spirited outburst.
“I say, did you just smile, Bainbridge?”
Jasper growled. “No.”
Guilford downed the remaining contents of his glass and then leaned over, placing it with a loud thunk
upon Jasper’s mahogany desk. The usual easy smile worn by his affable friend now gone, replaced by a somber set to his mouth in a show of pity that was neither wanted nor appreciated. Jasper had seen that look those three years ago. He gripped the arms of his chair hard enough that his nails bit into the wood and left marks upon the surface.
“She would not want you to live like this, Bainbridge.”
His grip tightened.
Guilford seemed unaware of the volatile emotion thrumming through Jasper, for if he was, he’d surely have known to cease his barrage.
Instead, he continued. “Lydia loved you. She would want you to be happy.”
Jasper looked at a point over Guilford’s shoulder, flexing his jaw. “You dare presume to know what Lydia would want?” Not a soul had known another so well as Jasper had known his wife. From her smile to her gentle spirit, he knew her better than he knew the lines that covered his palm.
Guilford shifted forward in his seat; the aged leather cracked in protest. “Then you tell me, Bainbridge, you who knew her better than any other. Would Lydia be so cold and cruel as to want to see you live your life as this hard, unforgiving, empty man you’ve become?”
“Go to hell,” Jasper snapped.
His friend inclined his head. “I believe your response shall suffice as an answer.” Guilford climbed to his feet, and fished around the front of his pocket. He extracted a small book, no larger than the span of his palm and dropped it onto Jasper’s desk. “Consider it a bit of an early Christmastide present,” he murmured.
Jasper dropped his gaze.
Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
“It is the story of a world-weary man looking for meaning in his life,” Guilford went on.
“I don’t—”
“Read poetry. I know. But you used to, and I thought perhaps as it is Christmastide, and a time of hope and new beginnings, that you might find a renewed love for the written word.” Guilford opened his mouth as if he wished to say more. Instead, he sketched a short bow. “Good day, Bainbridge. I shall see you tomorrow.”
“You needn’t come by,” Jasper barked when his friend grasped the handle of the door.
“I know. But that is what friends do.” He paused. “Oh, and Bainbridge?” He reached into the front pocket of his jacket once more and fished something out. He tossed the item across the room. It landed with a solid thump atop Jasper’s desk, coming a hairsbreadth away from his ledgers. “I managed to retrieve Lady Katherine’s reticule. I thought you might return the item to your lady.”
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 14