A Hint of Seduction (18 page)

“No, I don’t believe I have met her,” Catherine said tightly and wondered how much longer it would be before he rose and excused himself.

J
OHN MANEUVERED HIS
curricle through the streets of Mayfair at a much faster clip than he should have been driving in the residential area, but he was eager to get to his uncle’s house. He just hoped Bentley was home. He needed to question him about Catherine’s startling possibility.

What was she going to come up with next?

Stealing his horse was nothing compared to this outrageous claim that his father might also be her father.

Just the thought of her being his sister twisted his insides. He didn’t want it to be true. He had to prove it wasn’t.

He slapped the ribbons against the horses’ rumps to speed them up so he could pass a landau and a hack that were traveling much slower than he wanted to go. The driver of the landau shouted something to him as he passed, but John paid him no mind and kept the horses running at a fast clip.

Catherine was too important to him not to seek answers immediately.

John’s life had been charmingly happy until his run-in
with Catherine Reynolds. Now he felt as if he was losing control of his life all because of one lady. A lady he had met only a few days ago.

How had that happened? He’d never cared enough before to let anyone upset his life so dramatically. Andrew had been keen enough to sense his involvement that first morning.

John had never been the kind to take matters of the heart too seriously, but last night he realized that Catherine had changed all that. He wished he could just dismiss her from his thoughts as he had every other woman in his past, but he couldn’t. She meant too much to him.

John drew rein and pulled the horses to a jarring halt outside his uncle’s town home. He set the brake and jumped down, and a footman ran out to grab the reins. As he walked toward the door, the landau he’d passed drove by and the driver yelled at him to stay off the roads before he killed someone.

John paid him no mind.

After being announced, he strode into his uncle’s book room just as he had the night before, but this time his uncle was sitting behind the desk.

“Sit down, John,” his uncle Bentley said. “It’s not often you stop by in the middle of the afternoon. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

John was restless. He would rather just stand up and blurt out what he wanted to know, but he knew it would be much wiser to proceed cautiously. He took a seat in the comfortable wing chair that stood in front of his uncle’s desk and tried to look relaxed.

He wasn’t sure Bentley Hastings would be able to help him, but his mother’s brother seemed the best place to start looking for answers since he was John’s father’s best
friend. John wasn’t sure he would like Bentley’s answers, but he had to know the truth.

“Would you like something to drink?” his uncle asked.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t use a drink. It would probably help calm him, but his stomach felt as if it had been turned inside out, and he couldn’t bear the thought of putting anything in it. He truly could not bear the thought Catherine might be his sister.

“No, I stopped by because I’m hoping you can help me with a bit of family history.”

His uncle seemed surprised. “Well, indeed I will if I can. It’s about time you took interest in your heritage.”

It wasn’t his heritage he was looking for. It was Miss Catherine Reynolds’s heritage that held his interest right now.

Bentley’s chair creaked as he sat back in it, a smile on his face. “How far back would you like to start? One or two hundred years or maybe further?”

John shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Ah, no, not that far back. Only about twenty years for now. Do you know if my father ever kept a journal or record book of any kind?”

“Well, there’s the family journal that follows the title. You should have that among your father’s books. Are they still at the house in Kent?”

John nodded, suddenly wishing he’d looked over his father’s volumes. But he’d only been fifteen when his father died, and after finishing his education John had never wanted to take the time away from his busy life in London to spend it reading books at his country estate.

“That has recordings of births, marriages, and deaths. Things like that if that’s what you had in mind. I don’t ever recall him keeping a day-to-day personal journal as I’ve
always done.” Bentley’s expression turned pensive. “Can you be more specific about what exactly it is you are looking for?”

“For reasons I’d rather not get into I’m particularly interested in the year seventeen ninety-eight.”

His uncle put a finger to his lips and seemed to ponder. “Something about that year sounds familiar. Let’s see, that would have been about twenty-two years ago and that would have made you eight or nine. Your mother had already died.”

“Yes. Did my father do anything unusual or did anything out of the ordinary happen that year?”

“Unusual? Nothing that immediately leaps to my mind. Let me see if I have anything in my own journal.”

Bentley rose from his desk and walked over to one of the bookshelves. He studied the rows, and after putting a finger on several books, he pulled one out and walked back over to his desk and sat down behind it again.

A musty smell drifted past John. He tried to stay quiet and patient as his uncle flipped through page after page of the aged yet handsome leather-bound book. John was not good at the waiting game.

“Well, it’s certain that Napoleon was on the rampage that year with quite a few successes.”

“But my father wasn’t in the military during that time, so he wouldn’t have been away on any of the campaigns, right?”

“Well, no, let’s see, here we go—oh, yes. Wait, I remember now. How could I have forgotten?”

“What?” John asked, moving to the edge of his seat in anticipation with fear and hope.

“That’s the year we took you and spent the summer touring Scotland.”

John’s heart rate increased. “Scotland. Yes, I vaguely
remember being there, and you say it was seventeen ninety-eight? Are you sure of the date?”

He rapped on the book with his knuckles. “I have it recorded right here.”

“How long were we gone?”

He thumbed through the yellowed pages more quickly, scanning the top portion of each page. “It appears we left as soon as the Season had ended and didn’t return until just before Christmastime.”

John’s breathing was laborious with excitement. “And my father was with us all the time?”

“Yes, I just said so. There is no doubt about this.” He closed the book and pushed it toward John. “Take it with you and read it all for yourself. It tells all the places we visited and mentions you and your father. I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten everything. I would have remembered if your father had left the trip early.”

If they were gone from summer through the end of that year, Catherine couldn’t possibly be his sister. Relief drenched John.

Some other man was her father.

John rose and picked up the book from the desk. “I’ll get this back to you.”

His uncle looked up into his eyes. “No hurry. What is this about, John?”

“I would confide in you if I could, but there are other people’s feelings to consider. Suffice it to say I was made aware of something that happened a long time ago and there was a possibility—” He paused and drew a heady breath. “A slight possibility that my father had been involved in something, but since you are certain he was in Scotland with us, then there is no way he could have been involved.”

“That’s good to hear. I’d hate for anything to tarnish your father’s good name.”

“It won’t.”

“While you are here, John, I’ll mention something I’ve been reluctant to bring up lately, but maybe with this incident and the one with the horse I should.”

“What’s that?”

“You need to think seriously about your responsibilities and duty to the title. And I don’t say that because I have an interest in it. You know I don’t. But your father has been gone a long time now and you are past thirty.”

John nodded. “You needn’t say more on the subject. I’ve been recently thinking about the same thing myself.”

“Good. I won’t say any more.”

“Thank you for understanding, Uncle. I’ve always appreciated that you’ve let me be my own man.”

Bentley sat back in his chair and smiled. “How could I do it any differently? You are the earl even if I am the elder.”

“And far wiser than I.”

John walked out with the book under his arm, anxious to read for himself what the journal said.

Twelve

“A racehorse needs only a touch of the whip; a clever man needs only a hint.” But what does Lord Chatwin need to tell us who rode his horse? Bets are on the rise as to the identity of the mysterious lady rider. More than twenty pounds was recently placed on Lady Veronica, the lovely phantom who prowls the darkened hillsides searching for Lord Pinkwater’s ghost.

Lord Truefitt
Society’s Daily Column

“D
ID ANY OF
you see Lord Truefitt’s column this afternoon?” Rachel Dawson asked the group of five ladies who were standing with her at Lady Waverly’s soirée.

“No, what did it say?” The bright-eyed Beverly Moorehouse responded first.

“They now think it was a lady ghost riding Lord Chatwin’s horse in the park.”

A collective gasp came from all the ladies, but none of
them was as loud as Catherine’s. All that nonsense about a lady ghost was printed in the scandal sheets? How outrageous.

“A ghost?” Margaret Anderson exclaimed, her dark eyes wide with disbelief. “You must be teasing us.”

“I’m not. It’s true. Gentlemen are already placing bets that she’s the lady rider. You’ve heard of the phantom Lord Truefitt referred to, I’m sure. It’s Lady Veronica. Some say she was once Lord Pinkwater’s lover. She now roams the hillsides at night looking for him. She wants their souls to be united.”

Catherine remained amazed as she stood among the young ladies and listened to them converse. Candles glistened, music played, and people chatted and laughed throughout the large home in Mayfair. Everything was perfectly normal except this unfortunate spreading of the story of the ghost and John’s horse.

Where on earth could such a bizarre idea have come from? The story of who rode John’s horse should be old news by now, but it seemed to be growing bigger and more preposterous every day instead of fading away.

This latest addition was lunacy.

“Did you see the article?” Rachel turned to Catherine and asked.

“Ah—no, I didn’t,” she answered, trying not to sound as astonished as she was.

And she could only hope John hadn’t seen it. She’d thought he was just beginning to forget about her taking his horse that morning, but he never would if the gossips wouldn’t stop. How could something so utterly unbelievable have gotten started?

And to think men were placing bets on it.

“I don’t believe it because I don’t believe in ghosts,”
Margaret said disdainfully and sniffed into her lace handkerchief.

“I don’t know whether or not there are ghosts, but if there are, can they ride a horse?” Beverly asked as she looked from one lady to another.