The Husband Hunt (13 page)

"I was wondering whether I should probably remove that hex," she said teasingly. "My uncle always told my mother you should not hex unless you meant it."

"The uncle who—"

"No. Not him. This other one is actually worse."

"I don't think I want to know the details, Catriona." He crossed his hands behind his head, unconsciously stretching the tension from his knotted muscles. "Has he killed anyone?"

"Not on purpose," she said, watching his wide shoulders lift and relax, the power beneath that casual gesture making her shiver.

"Not—never mind." He decided he did not care to pursue that subject tonight. No, he had enough startling information to digest for the time being. She was sweet, and she was strong. But what did he do with her now? She was curled into the chair in a vulnerable pose that brought out the devil in him. The candlelight caught the streaks of lire-gold in her hair. Had he ever felt this comfortable talking to a woman? Had he ever cared about one to this degree?

"Do not fall asleep in that chair," he said sternly, leaning forward to shake her arm. "I am not carrying you upstairs to have Aunt Marigold lecture me on my lack of morals. Go to bed."

She stirred, sliding her feet to the floor. His forehead creased in a frown of concern as he watched her walk to the door, where she hesitated, her own face averted.

"Did your spy say anything else about my scandalous past?" she asked.

For three years or so, it seems that the child took care of herself… The girl left charms on the doorsteps.
… He could barely control the anger he felt toward the men in her life who had failed her, her father, her brother James. The childhood of rejection and loneliness she must have endured made him want to shield her from further pain. He admired her courage and compassion, even when she dared to defy him. He understood now.

"No," he said, glancing back into the fire, his gray eyes reflective. "Nothing else."

"Oh, good."

"Are there any more secrets I should know?" he asked guardedly.

A door opened upstairs, and Olivia called down softly into the hall. "Who is it? Knight, is that you?"

Catriona gave him a wry look, then slipped out of the room. For several moments, he stayed in his chair when it was all he could do not to follow her, to hold her, to comfort her against memories he could hardly imagine. It had not escaped his notice that she had managed to avoid an answer, but for tonight he had learned enough about her. His cruel curiosity had been satisfied, and now, instead of using the secret details of her past against her as a weapon, he found that he was filled with an overwhelming impulse to protect her. And to make her his own.

The two years she had spent
at boarding school in Edinburgh had softened the unfinished edges of Catriona's character. Or so Olivia and Aunt Marigold decided as the days preceding the party sped by. She would perhaps collapse in the structured world of London. For example, Catriona could not remember a thing about the code of calling cards, the significance of a crease in the lower left corner to indicate sorrow. Nor did she appear to understand the language of flowers, for all her botanical skills.

"A young lady," Olivia explained, "must refuse a bouquet of Spanish jasmine from a suitor because it signifies sensuality."

"But I love jasmine," Catriona said, "and I don't see how—"

"Nor should she accept one of tuberose, which is In invitation to dangerous pleasures."

Still, for a country event, Catriona would have to do.

She could manage a conversation, with supervision. She could dance extremely well, after intense instruction from the demanding young dance master Mr. Edwards. She already knew the proper utensils to use during dinner, the correct form of address for her guests.

But what she did not know was why Knight seemed to be avoiding her ever since their conversation in his study. Was he ashamed of her? Had Simmons's revelation about her life shocked him? He had not struck her as a man who was easily shocked. And yet, except for the few times she had caught him watching her, he had managed to place a polite distance between them, making her heart ache for a moment alone with him.

She woke up on the morning of Olivia's party and knew in her bones that something awful was going to happen. She'd heard the owls again the night before, not near the house but deep in the woods. She wished now she had thrown that accursed stone to the bottom of a lake.

She stared across the room at the wall and felt a flush of foreboding work its way through her body. Her toes and the tips of her ears were starting to tingle. An aura of wavy lines danced across the wardrobe where Claudette's hurried creation hung, a pale aquamarine silk ball dress that shimmered in the light.

The face of the shepherdess on the flocked wallpaper had taken on a menacing leer.

"No," she whispered, turning her head. "Please, not today."

A familiar masculine shout broke the silence of the house, bringing Catriona back to herself. "Who the blazes moved my boots?"

She gave a shiver of pleasure at the power in his voice and glanced guiltily at the black boots that sat by the door. She had found an armload of natural treasures in the garden only yesterday: smooth white pebbles, a clump of cinquefoil, and a few black swan's feathers. She had only borrowed his boots to transport her loot upstairs.

"Your boots are probably being blackened in the kitchen," Olivia said calmly from the bottom of the staircase. "Please do not shout, Knight. I would like Catriona to be well rested for the ball."

"I would like my boots," he muttered, and their voices faded away only to be replaced by the thunderous vibration of him stomping up the stairs.

"I do not call that walking quietly, Knight," Olivia admonished from somewhere below him.

He grunted. "If I find out that Howard has borrowed them again to go courting, I swear I shall scalp him."

With a sigh, Catriona bolted from the bed and hastily pulled on a wrapper. She emptied her treasures onto the bed, opened the door, and carried the boots to the top of the stairs.

"Here are the missing boots, my lord. I'm the one who borrowed them, not Howard."

"You wore my brother's boots?" Olivia said, clearly startled. "How unladylike."

"I wasn't wearing—oh, never mind." She thrust the boots at Knight's chest. "Here."

She steeled herself for one of his teasing responses, which would be welcome after too many days of his hurtful detachment. Instead, he put his free hand to her forehead, frowning in concern.

"You look flushed," he said, the boots forgotten under his arm. "Are you ill?"

She shivered at the firm pressure of his palm on her forehead. She wanted to lean against him and hide, but the threat that she felt didn't come from outside. It came from a place within herself too dark to explain.

"It fell behind the hallstand," she said.

Knight pulled his hand away, puzzled by the remark. "What did you say?"

"What fell behind the hallstand?" Olivia inquired behind them. "What are we talking about now?"

A bedchamber door down the hall opened slowly. Aunt Marigold poked her head out like a tortoise, her pleasant face perplexed. "Has anyone seen my ivory fan? I can't seem to find it anywhere."

Knight and Olivia looked at each other. "Could it have fallen behind the hallstand?" Olivia asked in an uncertain voice.

Aunt Marigold came out into the hall, looking regal in her gold-tasseled nightrail. "That is exactly what must have happened. I left it there last night while the maid was dusting."

Olivia gave Catriona a strained smile. "How observant you are. I was going to let you sleep another hour, but now that you're up, you may as well spend some time with young Mr. Edwards in the ballroom. He should have been here by now."

"He won't be coming," Catriona said, shaking her head in dismay.

The young dancing master had given her four days of grueling instruction during which she had hexed him a hall-dozen times and made him break down in tears, declaring her beyond hope. Yet on their final day, when he wept, it was because she had danced with such poise and grace that he proclaimed her perfection.

"Just do not hex any young gentlemen," he begged privately as they parted. "At least, not aloud."

"What do you mean, he's not coming?" Olivia said, aghast. "Knight, did Mr. Edwards send you word last night?"

Knight frowned, obviously not following the conversation. "There are stones at the bottoms of my boots. Why is this?"

"Mr. Edwards is going to trip over a shovel in the garden and break his ankle," Catriona said to no one in particular.

Olivia's smile faded. "What fanciful talk. How could you possibly know such a thing?"

She sighed, the coldness starting to numb her. "I just do."

Olivia put her hand to her mouth. "It's one of your visions, isn't it? Oh, what dreadful timing. Come back into the bedroom, and let us review everything you are to remember for the party."

Knight caught Olivia's arm. "Perhaps she isn't ready for this."

"She's more than old enough, Knight, and we have all agreed that a proper season is out of the question."

He glanced at Catriona. "She doesn't look up to this. I think something might be wrong."

"It's nerves," Olivia said in an undertone. "Besides, this isn't a formal ball. It's a simple affair in your house. What could possibly happen to her here tonight?"

Catriona slipped back into her room as they spoke, looking so lost in her thoughts that Knight fought the impulse to follow her. What could happen tonight? Any man with an ounce of mating instinct would meet her and be instantly captivated. Worse, she could meet some charming rogue and lose her heart to him, under Knight's own nose. He would watch another man flatter her and make her laugh, and then offer his insincere congratulations, encourage a courtship that would turn his heart to stone.

Which was as it should be. He planned to go to Cornwall at the end of the week on business, anyway. In fact, he would go right now and suggest that Wendell accompany him, if they hadn't both promised to see the party through. And if he knew where Wendell was hiding. Along with his boots, Wendell, the permanent houseguest, had been missing all morning.

Catriona's voice, like a disembodied ghost, floated out from behind her door. "You'll find him in the kitchen, sampling the gooseberry tarts."

And so it went all day. Catriona warned Mrs. Evans to watch her custard, and Mrs. Evans retorted that never in her life had she scorched a trifle. But then, at the last second, a cat jumped onto the sink, and Mrs. Evans went to chase it out. When she returned to the stove, only moments later, the custard had caught.

One minute Catriona's body burned with strange sensations, the next she felt as if icicles were prickling her skin. She paced. She drew shallow breaths. She soaked in scented water with rose oil, but the tension continued to coil her nerves as it always did before a vision. The seeing came in small degrees, flashes of things she did not understand.

Olivia reassured her that this reaction was perfectly normal. Every young woman felt so before her first dance. And Catriona sat in misery, unwilling to explain that she had attended dances before. True, they had been mere country dances on the village green, and once even a ceremonial dance in her brother's castle.

They had not been elaborate affairs, but she remembered the flush of excitement, the thrill of being admired, the agony of hoping a young man would choose her as a partner.

But she never breathed a word of her distress to Olivia, who was the kindest human being she had ever met. Tonight meant so much to the woman, and Catriona could not bring herself to warn her dear mentor that she would probably end up bringing disgrace to the family.

But perhaps she would be lucky for once—perhaps she could hold her tongue and the threat would pass. Perhaps if she bottled up the visions and didn't let them out, they would dissipate and go away forever.

She ran to the bedchamber window and peered outside at the twilight woods. No owls, thank heaven. But then the house was lit up with so many lanterns that it blazed like a bonfire, and, yes, the mass of gray clouds that had appeared above the estate that morning had not moved an inch.

A storm was about to break over her social debut.

Olivia burst into the room an hour later, her cheeks flushed. "What? Not even a candle lit, and why are you gazing out that window? Hurry up, Cat, there are carriages already coming up the road. Oh, goodness, where did I put that jeweler's box?"

It was downstairs in Knight's study, but Catriona didn't say so, or how she knew. She was doing her best to pretend everything was normal.

"Sit down at the dressing table," Olivia said, her diamond pendant glittering in the dark.  Louise is coming to help with your hair." Her voice dropped on a troubled note. "And, by the way, you were wrong. Mr. Edwards did not break his ankle."

"He didn't?" Relief spread across Catriona's face. Oh, to be wrong, for once.

"He broke his leg."

They stared at each other in the mirror, and Catriona wanted to warn Olivia that this was only the beginning, but the door opened, and Louise, Olivia's maid, bustled in with a tray of cosmetics and personal accessories, exclaiming about the lack of proper light.

The two women set to work with an unflappable concentration that even Catriona's sighing and wiggling on the stool could not break. Olivia wanted this evening to be a success more than anything she had wanted in a long time. As a tribute to Lionel, she would do everything in her power to find his unconventional little cousin a good husband, and she had the perfect man in mind, a suitor no one had considered before. One who shared a similar background to Catriona's and who could accept her endearing flaws.

Knight stood transfixed in the upstairs hallway as he saw her leave her room. The underskirt of the pale silk dress shimmered like an ocean wave, aqua, turquoise-blue, with pearl undertones and hints of golden thread. The high-waisted creation accentuated her graceful curves in a way that made him want to shield her from public view and keep her for his private pleasure.

"Well," he said, stepping out of the shadows, "now I believe in miracles."

She smiled, basking in his approval. The sight of him always uplifted her heart, even if, more often than not, he provoked her to tears. "Then I pass inspection?"

"Let me see." He took her gloved hands and twirled her around, a peculiar emotion tightening his throat. "No stones, weeds, or other noticeable weapons. Are we wearing our shoes?"

"We are."

"Then heaven help the young men whose hearts you will break tonight." His gaze drifted over her delightful form, and he thought,
including mine.

While he held her hand, Catriona did not feel afraid. The warmth and male vitality that flowed from him seemed to keep the darkness inside her at bay. If he would stay beside her, his presence protective, then perhaps the evening would not be ruined.

"Don't leave me," she whispered impulsively.

"What?" His handsome face looked startled in the candlelight. She was mortified. She had said the wrong thing. She always said the wrong thing. "I'll be downstairs, Catriona."

"I meant in the ballroom. Don't leave me alone if no one asks me to dance. I will die of shame after all the trouble everyone has gone to."

He grinned. "It's only a dance, Catriona."

"Aye." That was what he thought.

Olivia prodded her in the back as she hung back in the middle of the stairs. "Come along. Arabella and Anton are already here, and I can hear the musicians in the gallery."

Catriona's fingertips turned to ice as she looked down the stairs. This was all for her, and what had she done to deserve it? In a few hours, the guests would be whispering about the Scottish debutante who had revealed herself to be an aberration of nature.

"Do relax, dear." Olivia smiled warmly at her, wanting to banish her fears. "These are my friends and neighbors."

"But if I embarrass you—"

"No one will remember a tiny social gaffe next year."

But they'll remember tonight,
Catriona thought, shivering lightly.
They will talk of it for years to come.

Olivia pried her away from the balustrade. "I broke the heel of my slipper at my first dance and bumped an elderly countess into a potted palm."

I should be so fortunate,
Catriona thought, half listening as Olivia launched into a barrage of last-minute advice.

"Don't forget. If Lord Salisbury shows up, you are not to stare at the birthmark on his nose. One pretends to ignore physical infirmities."

"But I
am
to ask Lady Salisbury about her gout?"