Promise Me Heaven (35 page)

Strand came to her side, stopping to plant his lean legs apart and clasp his hands behind his back in a military attitude of respect.

“Lady Catherine,” he said.

“Lord Strand. I am pleased to see your return to London was a safe one.”

“Yes. I arrived yesterday.”

“How kind of you to visit me so soon after your arrival,” Cat teased gently. “Such haste must be exhausting. Won’t you please be seated?” She motioned him to a chair.

He seemed taken aback by her cajoling tone, his eyes widening. “No, thank you.” He cleared his throat. “I trust you are well?”

“I enjoy unremarkable health, yes.” Cat was increasingly amazed by the change in the man. His usually impeccably groomed hair was tousled. Tension tightened a physique she had become used to thinking of as indolent. His lazy, bored expression had become sharp and focused.

“Good,” he said. “Your well-being is important to me.”

“You are kind.”

“No.” For the first time a familiar look of amusement appeared on his lean face, his sardonic humor colored by self-deprecation in his tone. “No, ‘kind’ is a word few would apply to me. Including myself. ’Tisn’t kindness which prompts my visit.”

Cat questioned him with a raised brow.

Giles took a deep breath before continuing. “Lady Catherine.”

“Yes?” she prompted.

“I know this is sudden on my part, but these things are often understood between two parties before…” Giles trailed off, muttering a soft epitaph.

A sudden explanation for Strand’s extraordinary behavior horrified Cat. Giles had heard the rumors about her. It should have been amusing. All of her well-laid plans, her carefully thought-out stratagems, her lessons with Thomas, had never garnered her the intense interest with which Giles was now watching her.

Her goal had finally been achieved. It had taken the malicious tongues of society to pique Strand’s interest and bring him to the point of making an offer. But not the offer she had sought. Giles, Cat suspected, was going to offer her carte blanche. And it was
not
amusing.

Cat felt the blood drain from her face. “Please, Lord Strand, do not—”

Lifting a hand to forestall her, Giles smiled wryly. “Besides, what with your erstwhile parent gallivanting about the world, I might well be in my dotage were I to await a personal reply to my suit.”

Cat stared at him, now utterly confounded.

Her shocked expression apparently dismayed him. He ran a hand through his tangled golden hair. “I’m going about this badly, ain’t I, m’dear? I would look as shocked myself if some disheveled brute burst into my sanctuary spouting inane chatter. Let me begin again.”

My God! Cat thought in a daze. Giles Dalton, Marquis of Strand, was going to offer for her hand. His brilliant silver eyes were alight with tenderness, his hesitancy suddenly explicable. She knew she should be fair swelling with triumph, delight, joy even as she knew the only emotion she felt was… pity. What did she know of Giles Dalton? She had pursued him with as little regard for his thoughts, concerns, or future happiness as the most hardened of social roués. She was ashamed.

He was saying something else now. She had to stop him. Bursting into his soft recitation, she said, “Lord Strand, speaking in a purely hypothetical manner, I could not imagine a greater honor than to have you circumvent convention on my behalf. But I can also not conceive of any situation in which you might wish to do so.”

She waited, her heart in her throat, praying he would understand and relinquish his as-yet-unvoiced suit.

His eyes narrowed slightly in his handsome face, and his silence lasted a long heartbeat. “Well done, m’dear. Well felt.” They were by far the most intimate words he had ever spoken to her. “Is it Montrose?”

Unprepared for that name coming from Strand, Cat brought her head up and she knew that in that instant her heart was clear in her eyes.

“I thought as much. It is hardly unexpected. Thomas alone seems able to surprise you into candor. I have seen you all but yawn at some of the most celebrated wags, but say Montrose’s name and you fair blaze with emotion. You have never even spoken my given name, and yet you are no end filled with exclamations of ‘Thomas.’ ”

“Surely you overstate the case, Lord Strand.”

“No,” Giles said thoughtfully, “I think I state it very plainly. To society you are Lady Catherine Sinclair. To Montrose you are ‘Cat,’ and ‘Lady Cat,’ and any number of possibilities. And to you, Thomas Montrose is not merely a rusticating peer bored with the ton. I never stood a chance against a mentor, a co-conspirator, a playmate, a friend… a lover.”

Her chin rose at that.

Giles smiled grimly. “The ultimate physical act is, when all is said and done, merely that. It is not essential, though desirable.”

Seeing Cat’s blush, Giles hurried on. “Forgive me,” he said. “I have been unconscionably forward. Thomas would call me out if he knew I had caused a stain to rise on your lovely cheeks. Regardless of his reputation, he is the most doggedly honor-bound man I have the pleasure of calling friend.”

She froze. “Are you saying you know Thomas? How long have you known him? Do you know him well?”

“Well?” Strand asked, cocking his head. He gave a short laugh. “I would have said so. We were at Salamanca together. It was he who asked me to keep an eye on you in Paris.”

“In Paris? Thomas asked you to be my escort? He arranged it?”

Strand noticed the color flushing her cheeks. “Of course. He told me not to leave you unattended under the direst of penalties. Not that I needed much persuasion. I confess, I was suspicious at first he was trying his hand at matchmaking. I know better now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I know Thomas very well. But then, I had thought I knew you, Lady Catherine. You have saved us both from a grave mistake. You would make a delightful marchioness, if only Montrose were a marquis.”

He saluted her and, bowing sharply from the waist, took his leave of her.

Thomas fair flew to Brighton, pushing his gelding to a punishing pace, desperate to outdistance the rumor of his claim. Claiming her as his wife was the only thing he could have done, he told himself. Cat—practical, systematic Cat—could be convinced it was the only sensible course to follow. A part of him was enraged because, through no fault of her own, she was forced to this pass. But the intoxicating joy that surged through him at the thought of making her his wife left little room for noble sentiments.

Stopping at his rooms only long enough to change his linen and rid himself of the travel dust, Thomas sought Cat at the Castle Inn. It was still early. Few people were about. Thomas took the stairs two at a time in his eagerness to find her. In his haste, he nearly knocked over Marcus at the top of the stairs. Thomas nodded, intending to hurry past the boy, but a terse voice stayed him.

“Well. Cat’s all sorts of popular today. How kind of you to remember her, Mr. Montrose.”

“Of course I do. What the bloody hell is this?”

“How splendid and miraculous. For no one else does! No one else remarks her very existence!”

“I haven’t the time or the inclination for this now, boy. Your outraged sense of family honor is very commendable, but I won’t be offering you any explanations,” Thomas said, leaving the angry youth behind him.

Rapping on the door, Thomas felt his heartbeat quicken in response to Cat’s voice, bidding him enter. She stood before the window, the soft light lining her voluptuous elegance with incandescence and teasing a coppery sheen from her tresses. She held a small silver shear and was ruthlessly beheading the blossoms in an enormous vase of roses. He smiled at the picture she presented. Though she adopted an attitude of regal composure in society, he well knew that the private Cat was an active one, given to very physical displays of emotion.

“Something has not gone well?” he queried softly.

Cat stiffened at the sound of his voice.

“Why should you say that?” she asked without turning. Her voice was collected, even.

Here was certainly no vaporous miss lying prostate with the horror of social ignominy. But he hadn’t expected there to be. “The grim testimony is scattered about your feet.”

“The spent blooms merely take up room,” she said meaningfully.

He heard the gravity of her tone and dropped his own cajoling one. “Oh?”

She turned at last, and Thomas read the anger in her tight lips.

Cat’s gaze flew to the livid wounds scoring his dark cheek. “What has happened to your face?” she demanded.

“My face?” He furrowed his brow in obvious confusion.

“Yes, your face. The thing that looks as though it has been attacked by a drunken chef with a fillet knife.”

Thomas briefly touched the wound. “A mishap with a headstrong horse and some low-hanging branches.”

“Pish.”

“I swear, Cat, I have grown to loathe that expression with an unparalleled passion.”

She stepped back from him even as he stepped forward. “Strand has just left.”

“Strand?” Thomas repeated dumbly.

“I applaud you on finally pronouncing his name correctly. How timely of you, Thomas. But timing is a rake’s milieu. And that is what not only society but your own words assert you to be, is it not?”

He narrowed his eyes, attempting to discern the reason for her obvious ire.

“Is it not?”

“I do not give a damn what society chooses to call me.”

“How happy a circumstance for you. Would that I were so fortunate as to disregard an entire community, to serve my own whims.” Cat held up her hand to stop whatever he would have said. “So, society be damned. Do you not claim the title seducer? Libertine? Debauchee?”

How quickly those words killed what had been the first stirring of hope in his jaded heart. How conveniently he had forgotten that those very titles she now flung at him were the same ones she had first sought him out for. But she had not forgotten, nor lost sight of the purpose that had led her to his home—and into his heart—months ago.

“What is it, Cat? Has our association impeded one with Strand?” He came toward her, his advance slow, deliberate, until he stood before her, his size obstructing her view of the rest of the room. “Or is it something else? Has Strand had the temerity to suggest that you and I are—”

“That we are what?” she flung out. “Lovers?”

“I would have thought better of him,” Thomas murmured, adding, “There will be no further misunderstanding. I will see that he retracts his suggestion.” He turned to leave, but she reached and clasped his wrist.

“Strand has proposed.”

So she has finally gotten what she wanted, he thought. It was good that he was looking at her fingers. It was good, because he was not sure what he would do if he saw the triumph in her eyes. Yes, much better to see her hand. How pale it looked against his darker flesh.

“It is deemed bad form to congratulate a prospective bride. But in your case, m’dear, I can think of nothing more appropriate.” He was relieved the words sounded so even.

She snatched her hand from his arm. “I do not want your congratulations.”

Still he did not look at her. “My best wishes then.”

“Nor your best wishes.”

His smile was tender. “But I have nothing left to offer you, nothing I have not already given.”

And then he was gone, and his absence was more tangible than any other man’s presence.

Chapter 29

B
loody cold, isn’t it, Strand?” Thomas said without turning from his hotel window overlooking the street. “Last year the Thames froze over. But this seems just as cold. I cannot remember a more brutal winter.” He heard Bob promise Strand a hot cup of tea, and the door click shut. He continued staring out of the window. There was no sound behind him.

“Napoleon chose a damn chill time to escape Mediterranean climes,” he finally said. “I hear Castlereagh has sent for Wellington. The wisest choice. Surprising that he’s capable of wise choices. After all, he precipitated this altogether avoidable situation.”

Still Strand did not answer him, and Thomas sighed. Strand had not come to discuss Wellington’s command of the allied forces being mustered.