Scandal's Child (11 page)

“I know. Isn’t it wonderful!” Willy beamed and was still very pleased with herself when Jacko and Caroline entered the room a few minutes later.

“Saw Vanderworth on the front steps. Why is he calling on me tomorrow?” Jacko laughed with a knowing smile.

“To ask for your sister’s hand, of course! Is it not exactly what dear Mariah wished for!”

“Oh, how wonderful for her,” Caroline sighed, before giving Kat’s cheek a warm kiss. “She confided to me that she had a particular fondness for Mr. Vanderworth.”

“Particular fondness! Sounds like something Mariah would say!” Jacko scoffed in true brotherly fashion. “Saw Saville at Gentleman Jackson’s, Kat. Asked him to ride in park, but he said he had business.”

For a few minutes all Kat’s problems had disappeared, but with Jacko’s words they all came rushing back. Business indeed!

His grandmother appeared pleased with the outcome of her stratagem. Lady Tutwilliger, flown with success, would further her coup by announcing Mariah’s engagement to Mr. Vanderworth at a ball on the morrow.

But tonight would be more of the same pretense he’d been forced to endure all week. Another sad crush at Lady Sefton’s. Hardly the place to try to talk to Kathryn and unravel the mystery of her sudden change of heart. But evenings were the only times he saw her, and she made certain they were always surrounded by company. All his other attempts: at breakfast, lunch, even tea had fallen lamentably flat. She was never about. Where was she spending her time?

That thought consumed his every waking moment. The door between their rooms remained locked. In desperation, hearing noises in her room one afternoon, he’d knocked. But it was only the maid tidying her chamber. She informed him, quite cheerily, that Madame had gone to see the Elgin marbles with her brother and his friends. Jules had been unable to resist driving by the museum at a time they might be exiting. All to no avail—he missed them entirely, then spent the remainder of the day berating himself for acting the schoolboy.

He had stopped his search for Trigge who appeared, like the lowlife he was, to have gone to ground.

Looking in the mirror, Jules sighed, picked up another pristine neckcloth and proceeded to do a credible job with the Waterfall; for luck he even tucked the diamond stickpin from his grandfather in its folds. He remembered he had been wearing it that evening in the gazebo with Kathryn. Jules was not usually prone to such flights of fancy, but with his wayward bride he was finding all the old rules had flown out the window.

Lifting his brow, he gave his reflection a rueful smile. There was one thing that had not changed: his determination. It might take time—God knew how much longer he could stay away from her!—but Kathryn would once again melt in his arms as she had that night he lured her to the gazebo.

“And that I promise!” he declared fiercely, startling his valet so much, that good man left a fingerprint on the left boot he’d been buffing to perfection.

Kathryn stared at her reflection in the full-length glass that stood in the corner of her room. This dress of white crepe with a crimson overskirt demanded the rubies. She lifted the necklace and held it in her fingers. Dare she wear it? The last time had been the duchess’s ball when she had shamelessly lured Jules out into the gazebo, but so much had changed since then. A fresh wave of pained betrayal dimmed her eyes, but blinking rapidly, she kept the tears at bay. Kat wasn’t sure how much more of this she could endure. She’d kept herself ridiculously busy the last week. Day after day, shopping with Caroline and Mariah, indulging Jacko’s mad expeditions to anywhere—as long as they kept her away from Culter House. No doubt Willy thought she had run mad, always popping in over there, demanding they be off again. The evenings she could not avoid Jules. His presence made her pulse beat more rapidly and filled her with such conflicting emotions she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. It wasn’t fair that he should affect her so, when she knew he did not care for her.

She sighed and clasped the necklace about her throat. Tonight she had the jitters, an odd feeling in her stomach. She’d been at Lady Sefton’s the night she’d gotten Jacko’s note … which had set her life on this course. But no doubt tonight would be totally uneventful, only another sad crush.

If Lady Sefton’s musicale had been a success, this ball was doubly so. Kat had lost sight of Jules and the duchess immediately after they entered the ballroom. Although Jules was making a push to keep her by his side, demanding her dance card and promptly claiming all the waltzes, she had been pulled off by Caroline, who required her instant attention, then promptly deserted her when Jacko appeared.

Jacko dancing! And seeming to enjoy it. Caroline was turning him up sweet. She noticed Mariah with Christian Vanderworth, looking positively radiant. They appeared every inch the devoted couple. But appearances could be deceiving, Kat knew, for she often caught Jules gazing at her with a certain expression on his face that made her heart skip a beat. He was pretending for the
ton
, because if he truly cared for her he would not have taken up with his former mistress.

Disturbed by the feelings her thoughts evoked, Kat absently took a glass of champagne from a waiter and wandered away from the ballroom. The foyer was crammed with guests. Kat was stopped again and again by acquaintances, so it was quite some time before she made her way to the antechamber door. She knew this room was sometimes used for a rendezvous so she opened the door with some trepidation and breathed a sigh of relief on finding it empty. The quiet beckoned to her; for just a moment she would indulge herself. She sat down on the couch. As always, when Jules was nearby, her thoughts were chaotic. She’d been avoiding the problem—she needed time to think, to plan.

The tiny room was furnished with nothing but the red velvet couch. Hardly a romantic setting. Could the memory of that night, which now seemed so long ago, have drawn her here? What if she hadn’t stumbled upon Sir Edmund and Caroline in this very room; probably she would not have gotten involved on the packet boat. Thus Sir Edmund would not have threatened them all, and Kat would not have lingered at Jules’s château. If she had not stayed, would she have fallen in love with Jules? One thought suddenly crystalized: she had always been meant to fall in love with Jules. From that first moment on the bed at the Blue Boar Inn it was fated. Now what was she to do?

Her mind was so filled with Jules that when the antechamber door slowly opened her heart beat quickened, sure that her thoughts had called him to her. Then her heart stopped for a breathless moment. When it began to beat its fast pace had an entirely different cause.

Sir Edmund Trigge, his mouth twisted in a smug smile, clicked the door shut behind him.

Quickly, Kat rose to her feet. “What do you want?” she demanded, thrusting up her chin.

“Why, to have another of our delightful conversations,” he drawled in that hated oily voice.

“I assure you that is not my wish,” Kat declared, moving toward the door.

He refused to step aside to allow her to pass so Kat was forced to retreat. He followed her, that terrible smile growing more threatening.

“I’ve been watching you, you know, Countess.”

“Oh, really? How surprising. I thought you
de trop
at most
ton
gatherings, Sir Edmund,” she retorted with more bravado than she truly felt.

Scarlet stained his cheeks and the smile turned into a sneer. “You and Saville think you’ve been so damn clever, don’t you! Well, I’m here to tell you I’m not finished with you yet! You might have vanquished Marietta, but not
me,
my pet.” He chuckled, flicking her cheek with his finger.

His touch repulsed her, but his words brought her up short. Marietta vanquished? How? When?

Throwing back her head, she met his glare bravely. “Really, Sir Edmund, such an ineffectual ploy to throw the contessa at Jules’s head.” Kat shrugged dismissingly. “She and Jules were a thing of the past, long before we met.”

“So it appears, but it was worth a try.” He laughed harshly. “Jules thinks he can ruin me over your so-unfortunate encounter with footpads in Champagne. But I can hurt him even more. See how easily I got to you, Countess,” he boasted with quivering excitement, moving so close she caught the scent of sour wine on his breath.

Sick to her stomach, Kat covered her mouth with her hand, moving back, no longer able to maintain her bravado.

“Yes, Kat, be frightened. I owe both you and Jules. And I’m a man who always gets even.” He reached out to touch her again just as Kat opened her mouth to scream.

“
Don’t touch her!
This is between you and me! Let us settle the score here and now, Trigge!” Jules stood in the doorway looking for all the world like an avenging dark angel.

Sir Edmund whirled in surprise to confront him. In that instant Kat sank slowly onto the bench. She wasn’t so much weak with relief that Jules had come to her rescue, but prostrate with the realization that she had just spent the most miserable week of her life for nothing. Nothing! Jules had not renewed his association with the contessa. Whatever she had seen, she had misunderstood. How could she regain the comfortable relationship they had just begun to enjoy?

Edmund’s drawl broke into her thoughts. “What do you propose we do, Saville? Duel here and now at Lady Sefton’s? A first, no doubt,” Sir Edmund preened in satisfaction. “Not sure even your vaunted relatives could cover up such a scandal. Particularly when your wife and I have been in this room alone for quite some time.”

“Not a duel,” Jules drawled, striding forward. “This!” he bit out, landing a punch on Sir Edmund’s slack jaw. Trigge crumpled to the floor at Kat’s feet, and she hastily removed her skirt from his vicinity.

With a grunt, Edmund struggled to one knee before launching himself at Jules. Both men fell to the floor, rolling over and over, fists flailing, until they came to a halt against the curtained wall. Kat looked around for some weapon, anything to help, but could find nothing, and was reduced to hated helplessness.

Finally Jules rose, lifted his opponent by his shirt front and landed one more jaw-cracking blow before letting him fall limply to the floor.

Breathing deeply, Jules turned to her, the diamond still winking in the center of his cravat. His lean face was flushed from exertion, but as yet no bruise marred his skin. With long fingers he brushed back his mussed hair and flicked his slightly askew coat into place. “I believe, Kathryn, it might be wise if we took our leave. Come,” he demanded, extending his arm. “We must find the duchess before she misses us and sends up an alarm.”

Wordlessly, Kat tucked her trembling fingers into the curve of his arm, threw one last look at Sir Edmund moaning on the floor, and allowed her husband to escort her from the room.

Somehow, Jules guided her through the crush, found the duchess holding court in the midst of the dowagers, soothed Lady Tutwilliger’s alarm at their early retirement, and got them all into the coach before Kat could think of a word to say. It wasn’t shock at what she had just witnessed so much as a total inability to make conversation with Jules’s stony facade. Even his grandmother was forced into an inhabitual quietness by his stern refusal to discuss their abrupt departure.

The moment they arrived at Culter House Jules stalked into the library, closing the door firmly behind him.

The duchess faced Kat squarely. “I believe this is something to be settled between the two of you. But I will not allow you to hurt my grandson any further. If that is your intent I shall march into that room with you,” she declared with brutal frankness. “It has not escaped my notice that there has been a strain between you two this past week. Whatever it is, Jules is worth fighting to keep, Kathryn.”

Even though the duchess was glaring at her with her most haughty visage, Kat wasn’t in the slightest undone. They
had
been at odds all week and apparently for nothing but her own foolishness. It was up to her to rectify the situation.

“I assure you, Your Grace, that I shall do everything in my power to make Jules happy,” Kat said with such feeling her voice caught.

She was rewarded by an embrace; her first. “My dear girl, you have no idea what this means to me!” Stepping back, Jules’s grandmother gave her another commanding look. “Well, go on. He’s been pouting in there long enough!”

Jules wasn’t exactly pouting, Kat found when she stepped noiselessly into the library. He was sprawled in the wing chair with a decanter of brandy in one hand and a half-empty glass in the other. She was nearly to him before he glanced up and deigned to notice her. He drained the brandy glass.

“Kathryn, you look scared out of your wits. Sit down. We need to talk.”

It suddenly occurred to Kat that Jules had consumed a prodigious amount from that decanter while she and the duchess had delayed in the foyer. Jules was not drunk, or even close to it, but there was a fine edge to his tone that she hadn’t heard since that night in the Blue Boar Inn. Kat sat down, unsure of herself for the first time since her come-out ball.

She remained perfectly still in the chair across from where he sprawled, gazing into the fire. Her eyes studied his thick, black hair where it fell across his forehead, and the long, thin fingers that brushed it back. His eyelid was half-closed and she saw how his heavy black lashes neatly fanned his high cheekbone.

Suddenly he lifted his head and stared at her.

“How did you find yourself in that antechamber with Sir Edmund?”

It was not what she had expected him to ask so she hesitated a moment too long.

“You didn’t have an … an assignation with him!” he barked out.

“Of course not! Although this is not the first time he has accosted me,” she said quietly.

“What are you talking about, Kathryn?” Jules bellowed, lunging out of the chair, the glass and decanter forgotten on the floor beside it.

She rose to confront him. Kat had always faced her problems squarely and honestly. If she had done this in the first place perhaps Jules could have been spared the attack in Champagne.

“I am saying that since we left the boat this is my second, well, perhaps I should say, third encounter with the man.”

“Would you please be so kind as to explain to me, in detail, what transpired on each of these occasions?” he asked, deadly quiet, although his gaze burned with anger.

“The first was in the garden of that French inn where we stopped for the night. He … he wanted me to know he would not forget my interference with Caroline. The second … well, the second…” she stumbled over the words, not quite certain how to go on.

“Yes?” he drawled, that devilish eyebrow raised.

“The second was when he sent the Contessa Primavetta to the opera box while you were in the hall,” she rushed on, fearing his reaction. “And the third was tonight.”

He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Kathryn, I—”