Suzanne Robinson (22 page)

Nipping past Alexis, she avoided his arms and began to chatter.

“I really must write a letter. If I don’t attend to my correspondence, Mr. Poggs takes it into his head to deal
with my advisors on his own. And tomorrow I’ll ride over to Maitland House.”

Alexis had risen and was standing with his back to her and his head bowed. Taking a deep breath, he turned around.

“That reminds me,” he said. “We still haven’t settled the question of your provoking behavior. Everyone needs improving, Kate, and you’re no exception. I would appreciate your modeling your conduct after that of Lady Hannah.”

Kate flushed. “I never said I didn’t have faults.”

“Nevertheless, you explode at the smallest hint of criticism. If ever gentlemen have found you unattractive, it is because of your unmaidenly behavior and not because of your appearance. The gods know there’s nothing unattractive about that.”

“If you don’t like me—”

“You see. This is what I am talking about.” He paced back and forth in front of her. “I like you, but an English lady’s conduct reflects upon the man who has charge of her. To the world I am your fiancé. I am therefore soon to have the responsibility of guiding you, in caring for you and your worldly possessions, and in seeing that your manner reflects well upon the honor of my name. I won’t have you outraging the sensibilities of half the county.”

Kate said nothing. She was too shocked. He made her sound like a puppy that needed housebreaking. Afraid that she would burst out with one of the colorful swear words Patience had taught her, she turned her back on the Marquess of Richfield and marched out of the great hall.

Angry as she was, Kate paid little attention to her own progress. When she did, she found herself upstairs in the wing that contained her own rooms and those of her mother. From Sophia’s sitting room she heard her mother singing. Kate knocked and went in.

In her present mood, the room was more of an annoyance
than usual. Its furniture was covered with a dull brown fabric that depressed her, and the tables were of black marble with ornate gilded legs fashioned in the shape of fat rams standing on their hind legs. Being old and expensive didn’t make things less tasteless.

Sophia was embroidering on a love seat near a window. She rose and kissed Kate on the cheek.

“My little girl. I’m still in a tizzy thinking about how my little girl caught a marquess.”

“Don’t count your coronets,” Kate said. “I’m thinking about throwing my catch back in his stagnant pond.”

Sophia regarded Kate for a moment before answering. “You’re upset. Has something happened?”

Kate plumped herself down on the love seat. Leaning forward, she rested her arms on her knees.

“He keeps pestering me. Worse than flies on a cow pie. Sorry, Mama.”

Taking up her embroidery, Sophia sat beside Kate. “I know it’s hard being in love, but if you have troubles, my dear, you should talk to Alexis, not run away from him.”

Kate turned to stare at her mother. Hearing someone else speak of her feelings for Alexis somehow made them more real. Mama thought she loved Alexis.

“How did you know you were in love with Papa?”

Sophia put the last stitch in a knot and took up her sewing scissors. She smiled. “I didn’t know for the longest time. Your father was most annoying. He teased me, incessantly. And we quarreled, though I tried not to.”

“You quarreled with Papa?”

“Only when I was forced to. Neither of us wanted to be the first to admit our feelings, and naturally it was up to him as a gentleman to take the lead.”

“I’m glad you quarreled. I mean, that is, you see …”

“You don’t feel quite so alone?” Sophia asked.

Kate grinned, then slumped back in the love seat. “But
I’m not sure. Love isn’t something you can learn from books, and getting experience at it hurts.”

Sophia let her sewing fall to her lap and nodded. “I remember the feeling.”

“How did you know?” Kate asked.

“It took me a while to decide, and I don’t think I ever worked out a method. That’s what you want, Kate, a method like you and your father used to solve those awful mathematical problems. There isn’t one.”

“Oh.”

“I did ask myself a question, though.”

Kate perked up. “What question?”

“I asked myself whether I could face the rest of my life without your papa. What would I do if he went away, back to America, and I never saw him again? I couldn’t bear the thought.”

Sitting up straight, Kate rested her chin in the palm of her hand and unleashed her imagination. She thought of herself going home, back to San Francisco, to a big house, to the family businesses. There would be no mysteriously tortured, black-haired chimera to alternately entice and criticize her. No more verbal jousts, no more kisses and touches, and never, never, never would she be able to pull him close and try to merge her body with his as she longed to do.

Never see him again.

“What am I going to do?”

Sophia patted her hand. “What is it that you quarreled about?”

“He wants me to be like Lady Hannah.”

“Ah.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Kate put her hands on her hips.

“Now, Kate, being stubborn and trampling over conventions hasn’t gotten you far.”

Slumping forward again, Kate covered her face with her hands and groaned.

“I haven’t wanted to interfere,” Sophia said. “But if you continue to embarrass such a proud and well-bred young man, you may drive him away. No gentleman wants a wife of whom he’s ashamed.”

Kate lifted her head and gazed at her mother. “Really?” She clasped her hands in her lap and studied them. “You think he’s ashamed of me?”

“I’m afraid so,” Sophia said. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you for years. You drive men away. Kate, it is a woman’s place to bend, to comply with a gentleman’s wishes, to make a home where he can retreat from the world and feel cherished. In return, Alexis will give you his love and his protection.”

Kate pressed her hands together. “I didn’t realize he was ashamed of me. I thought he was being nasty.”

Perhaps she had been wrong. After all, so many women believed as Mama did, and men too. A horrible thought occurred to Kate. No one else agreed with
her, so
might it be that she was mistaken, that everyone was right about Lady things and she was wrong? An even more horrible idea came sliding in on the heels of the last one. Was Mama right? Was she driving Alexis away? Her thoughts stopped then, out of fear.

All her life it had been the same. She would do something that came naturally to her, like talking about mathematics. Sophia would react as though Kate had stripped naked in church. When Kate saw her mother’s reaction, she would feel ashamed and worthless. She believed Mama’s threats about how no man would want her if she behaved in such a manner, and because she believed her mother, she hid her fear behind bravado and hostility. Oh God. She couldn’t bear it if Alexis were ashamed of her.

“I guess I’ll have to do things a little differently,” she said.

“It’s the only way, my dear. After all, you don’t want him going back to that awful Beechwith creature.”

Several days after he’d chastised Kate about her unmaidenly behavior, Alexis stood beside an ivy-covered tree near the ruins of Thyme Hall and scowled at Carolina Beechwith. She’d drawn him away from the others in their riding party. Iago was snuffling at the base of the tree, and Theseus was tethered to a sapling along with Carolina’s mare.

Carolina had proved unexpectedly tenacious. Since she’d heard about Kate, he’d endured nearly a week of hysterical reproaches, pleas, and bawling. Now she was going to cry again. When Carolina wept, her face writhed like an insect in its death throes, and her accompanying wails and shrieks put him in mind of banshees, wraiths, and lost souls. Alexis covered his ears with his gloved hands, for it was about time for a shriek.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Iago’s head came up. His ears pricked—as much as their great weight allowed. At the onset of another wail, he lifted his nose in the air and howled in sympathy. The horses began to stir. Alexis closed his eyes.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.” (Carolina) “Oooooooooooooo.” (Iago)

Carolina was sitting on a ruined wall. She kicked at it with her heels and opened her mouth wide.

Alexis rushed to her and clamped a hand over the beginning of another shriek. “That’s enough. You’ve been crying so long you’ll become ill. And you’re hurting Iago’s ears, and the horses will bolt.”

“You
hic
love her
hic.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Alexis said. He slapped his riding crop on the palm of his hand. “I told you it was a temporary arrangement. I can’t marry.”

“I don’t believe you. A temporary convenience doesn’t make a man follow a woman’s every move. It doesn’t require a man to litter his conversation with a woman’s name until he creates the impression of a besotted youth.”

Reason wasn’t one of Carolina’s attributes. Alexis gave up trying to convince her to apply it. Casting aside the riding crop, he yanked her to her feet, intent on leading her to her horse. She opened her mouth, and he could see another bawl coming.

“Shut up, Carolina.”

Her mouth snapped closed, but she wasn’t startled for long. She threw herself at him, clutching him around the neck.

“You don’t want a wife,” she said in between nips. “You said so. You want me.”

A familiar metal-on-metal whine caused them both to wince.

“Alexis deeeeeeear boy, where are you?”

Now he knew how a damsel in distress felt upon being saved from a dragon. “Mama Dinkle,” he said with a chuckle.

Carolina jumped away from him, straightened her hat, and snatched up her discarded whip. Bounding for her mare, she hardly glanced at Alexis until she was mounted. He stood back from helping her and gave her a mocking salute.

“Why the hurry?” he asked.

“Don’t be annoying,” Carolina said. “We have to rejoin the others from different directions.”

“Kate would have invited the Dinkles to sit with her in the ruins.”

Carolina looked down at him. “Kate Grey isn’t a lady. I am.”

Grinning nastily, Alexis watched Carolina kick her mount into a trot. “Oh yes,” he called after her. “I forgot.”

Iago barked at him, and Alexis dropped to his knees.
The spaniel always perked up when Carolina went away. His nubby tail was wagging rapidly.

“Happy, old fellow?” Alexis sank back to rest on his heels while he stroked Iago.

His campaign to win Kate’s favors was progressing more slowly than any he’d ever mounted before. There was an obstacle: her mind. Kate had a busy, frighteningly quick intelligence that never went to sleep. Several times he’d thought he had succeeded in lulling it into a sexually induced doze, only to have it rear up and snap at him. She was responding to his tactics, though.

He’d known from the beginning that asking for her body would be a mistake. It was almost always a mistake to ask. And she didn’t like flowery compliments or gifts. Nor would she believe gushing devotion. So he winnowed his way into her affections with language, beautiful, enchanting words designed to arouse and launch the soul into the sky.

Iago lay down, and Alexis sat beside him with his fingers buried in white fur. Few women loved words and images the way Kate did. Oh, they sometimes went into dizzy raptures over Byron or Wordsworth. When he shared a passage with Kate—always under the guise of literary conversation—she would listen quietly. Her gaze became unfocused, her breathing shallow, and he would know that she was inside the images created by the words. It was a world he knew also, a world engendered by language, so real he could almost feel it. Seeing her so transported made him want to give that feeling to her with his body, to show her a place as devastating as the words she loved.

Iago snuffled at him. Alexis put his nose level with the dog’s and chanted to him. “ ‘My soul is an enchanted boat,/Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float/Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.’ She likes that one, old boy.”

In attempting to win Kate, he had learned humility and patience. It wasn’t only the pursuit that tried his patience. His equanimity was also tested in his battle to improve her behavior. His admonishments were bearing fruit, however. During the last few days there had been no more writing to Mr. Poggs, no unwomanly discussions of the price of building lumber and designs of clipper ships.

To his surprise, Kate had even put aside her split riding skirts. Yesterday she’d shocked him by wearing a corset and crinoline. Lace and bows appeared on her dresses. He wasn’t happy with the bows, however. Somehow Kate and bows didn’t go together. It was like putting clothes on a cupid.

Theseus whinnied. Alexis pulled out his watch, looked at it, and got up. “Come on, old fellow,” he said to Iago. “It’s time to check on my fiancée’s progress. I left her with Hannah, and if I don’t put in an appearance, Kate will be using the poor woman’s scent bottles for target practice.”

Alexis found Kate and Hannah in the courtyard, their two figures dwarfed by the surrounding castle walls and drum towers. The women had taken shelter from that enemy of Ladies, the sun, beneath the ancient oak that stood before the keep. As he walked across the courtyard lawn toward them, he saw Hannah wave her hands at Kate. Kate began to walk back and forth in front of her. She took short, hesitant steps and her hands hung limply from her wrists.

Alexis choked on a laugh. Hannah must have objected to the way Kate walked. His young lady moved with decision and confidence, taking swift, driving steps. When she walked, one knew that she was certain of her destination and that she wouldn’t let little things like mud puddles and cobblestones get in her way. Where most women cultivated the impression that they had no legs and floated
instead of walked, Kate charged forward without bothering to try to hide the sound of her footsteps. No, Hannah wouldn’t like the way Kate walked.

Alexis quelled his urge to laugh again when Kate made a turn and pitter-pattered back to Hannah. She dribbled to a halt in front of her tutor.