The Husband Hunt (6 page)

Catriona frowned. "Perhaps, but I fear those owls carried a more personal message for—"

She broke off as her gaze lifted to the tall man leaning against the tree, his hard-planed face amused. Words escaped her as he gave her a slow, admonishing smile. Oh, how much had he heard? And why did those gray eyes of his make her feel as if she'd been caught bare naked, her feelings for him so painfully conflicted?

"It's his lordship," the laundress said under her breath, and before Catriona knew it, the servants had abandoned her, and she was standing alone again at the pond as the English lord took a step toward her.

He whistled through his even white teeth. "What a sight. What a performance."

She did not understood why, but the mockery of this man, with his aristocratic elegance, wounded her more deeply than all the insults of her past combined. "It wasn't a performance," she said, a blush burning her cheekbones. "The stones have power."

"Is that right?"

"They're kelpie stones, some of them. Others have been cast up from Elfland."

"All the way from Elfland? My goodness."

He began to advance on her, forcing her to step back to the water's edge. "Watching that nonsense was almost as interesting as what Aunt Marigold told me about you a few minutes ago."

Catriona's mouth tightened. She considered dumping the bucket on his arrogant head but decided she couldn't reach. "I'm sinking," she whispered.

"What?"

"In the mud. I think—I believe I'm starting to sink."

He looked down quickly and saw immediately that she wasn't exaggerating. In his determination to intimidate her, he had practically walked her into the pond. "Oh, hell," he muttered, wondering what on earth he had hoped to prove.

Try as he might, he could not completely squelch the approval he felt beneath his show of anger. The servants at Rutleigh Hall were like family. He cared for them and did not hold with the current belief that the lower class did not merit kind treatment, although the state of his housekeeper's stomach did seem to be taking kindness a little too far.

He grabbed Catriona by the waist to haul her back onto the ground, bringing her body flush up against his. For an instant, he was taken aback by the shock of pleasure that he felt, his first instinct to pull her even closer. Touching her did something dangerous to his mind, not to mention his body's flagrant reaction to her tempting curves. The herbal scent of her skin invaded his senses, and he was acutely aware of how still the spring air felt, of a bee buzzing over a patch of mint thyme at the pond's edge. "Look at you," he exclaimed, glancing down in chagrin. "And me. My trousers are covered in mud."

"So they are." She tried to dart around him; she had liked being held in his arms far too much for her own good. "In fact, I'd better run inside to take off this dress before these stains set—"

"Not yet." He caught her free hand and held her still until she slowly revolved to face him. "I know you lied to us, Catriona," he said quietly.

"You do?"

His heavy brows met in a frown. "You're the
illegitimate
daughter of an earl. Roxshire apparently never recognized you."

"I forgot to mention that," she said with a sigh. "It isn't exactly the sort of thing one goes about announcing in public."

He studied her without a trace of emotion on his face. "I suppose that there are worse secrets in the world," he conceded. "Is that why you looked so frightened in the drawing room? Did you sense that your secret was about to be revealed?"

She hesitated. She had come within seconds of bolting when Howard brought word that a strange man was at the door, using Lionel's name as a reference. In her irrational panic, she thought she had been tracked down. It was too easy to imagine James, in his desperation, forcing her into that old man's arms for money, believing he had no choice. Yet for all his callous behavior, her brother was capable of the deepest affection, and she cared for him.

"Well?" Knight's voice coiled around her like a whip, commanding her full attention. He would accept nothing less than her obedience.

He seemed to sense when she was most vulnerable, watching, waiting for her to reveal another weakness, and the female in her was far too quick to respond to his male authority. "The situation of my birth isn't exactly something that I'm proud of," she said after a long pause. "Do you wish me to leave now?"

"My sister wants you to stay," he said in hesitation, sounding none too pleased with the idea himself. A rather insulting smile spread across his face. "She has taken it into her head to find you a husband."

Catriona's cheeks began to burn again. "Why is that so amusing?"

He shrugged. "Well, it's just—"

She squared her shoulders. When had she encountered such arrogance? "Just what?"

"Oh, I don't know." A devilish chuckle escaped him. "Perhaps it's because I don't know too many young maidens on the marriage mart with your particular 'talents.'"

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Well, one generally seeks a wife with a stable background and genteel skills, such as embroidering samplers and playing the pianoforte."

"Is that the kind of wife you want?"

He frowned. "I don't want a wife at all."

"And the idea of anyone marrying me is beyond the realm of probability?"

"I suppose more astounding miracles have been performed." He hesitated, his gray eyes twinkling with humor. "Back in biblical times."

She dropped the bucket on his foot. She hadn't meant to, but her fingers had gone numb, and her grip had weakened. When he finally recovered from the pain and stopped cursing, she looked him right in the eye. "I know you aren't going to believe me, but that was an accident."

"Get these rocks off my feet," he shouted, "or both you and the bucket are going into that pond!"

She drew back; he was scaring her now. She knew she ought not to push him any farther, but she wasn't about to retreat until she had made her point. "They're not rocks. They're—"

"Yes. Yes. I heard. Sacred stones from Pixieland." He gave her a nasty smile, bending to pluck a pebble off the toe of his Hessian boot. "Howard's spleen?"

She narrowed her eyes. "It's a heart. Although you probably have to possess one to recognize it."

He tossed a cleft stone into the air and caught it before it hit the ground. "Lungs?"

"No." She smiled archly as he ran his fingers inside the cleft. "Reproductive organs."

His eyes met hers. "I guarantee you'll have your choice of suitors if you season a conversation with a comment like that."

She bent, averting her face, before he could gauge her reaction. "What do you know?" she muttered, too upset to look at him. "I'll give my husband everything he desires, and he won't be mean like you. He'll be kind and gentle, and he won't care if I am a bastard.  He won't make a mockery of the things I believe in. He'll encourage me to help people."

He stared down at her. Damnation, he had offended her, he realized in surprise. Before he could stop himself, he knelt and began to help her collect her stones, grumbling, "Well, my teasing got the better of me, but as I said, you will have to get used to it."

"I've known worse." She glanced up, her eyes brimming with emotion. "Give me back my reproductive organs, and if you make fun of me, well, I'll show you what magic it can do."

He settled back on his haunches, trying not to laugh at the threat as she dropped a handful of stones into the bucket, her nose in the air.

"Careful," he admonished gently, glancing down. "I think you might have just put a dent in Howard's spleen. Or was that another unmentionable organ?"

"Brain," she said, biting her lip against a sudden urge to laugh. "But of course you have to—"

He grinned. "—possess one to be able to recognize it?"

"You wouldn't be the first man not to know his brain from what grows below."

One corner of his mouth curled up in amusement. The conversation was beginning to have a very unexpected arousing effect upon him. He had never met such a disarmingly honest woman before outside his own family, and found this encounter rather invigorating. "I suppose you're an expert on such matters?"

"Well, I certainly cannot claim to have
your
experience." She didn't have any, actually, unless she counted the time Lamont, her wizard-uncle's apprentice, had kissed her while simultaneously dropping a handful of earthworms down her bodice. Not exactly a soul-stirring romance.

He leaned forward, his nose practically touching hers. His voice lowered an octave to a dangerous whisper. He really was going to have to teach her a few things. "I've known you for less than two days. Who in this house is telling tales out of school?"

"I'd cut my tongue out before revealing my sources."

He stood with a frown. "It was Olivia."

She rose, not about to be craning her neck to talk to him. The man's lithe, muscular body made her feel vulnerable and insubstantial. "No."

"Wendell?"

She shook her head.

"Then it has to be Howard."

"It was not."

He stared at her for several moments. "You won't last long in my house if you take every remark to heart. My world is rather ruthless, I'm afraid."

"Hmmm." She turned to go, and before he could stop himself, he caught her by the waist and drew her back toward him. She glanced up, transfixed by the dark promise in his eyes.

"What—"

"Don't ever let a rogue make you cry," he murmured a split second before he lowered his head and kissed her.

She did not resist. Perhaps she was too surprised. He savored the sweet innocence of her lips and felt her hand lift to his shoulder, whether to push him away or hang on for balance he wasn't sure. For a perilous moment, he wanted to take this further, wanted to wield his power to subdue her. The way she arched against him, unaware of her own danger, aroused some dark sexual instinct to master her.

"Oh," she said, her head falling back, the effect of his kiss utter devastation.

He narrowed his eyes to watch her. Tentatively he touched his tongue to hers. Her body shivered against his, giving him all the encouragement he needed to deepen the kiss. He slid his arms down her back to support her, but suddenly his control was slipping away, and it was no longer a game.

No, she thought distantly. Escape wasn't a choice. His strong body molded her to him in an unbreakable hold, not that she possessed the wherewithal to go anywhere. It had happened too fast, and she had to concentrate on breathing, on not allowing her legs to give out on her. When his large hand brushed lightly against her breast, she felt as if her body had caught fire.

"And don't," he added in a low, ironic voice as he drew his mouth from hers, as composed as she was shaken, "let a rogue kiss you, either."

There was barely time to recover. The sound of footsteps on the path to the pond broke the dangerous tension between them, and just as well, too. Catriona had no idea how to react. He had completely flustered her control. She took a shaky breath as he drew back a respectable distance. Her entire body felt achy and flushed with the most unsettling feelings. In fact, she could not remember a time in all her past humiliations when she had been tempted to resort to the supernatural for help. The man had no idea how fortunate he was that she had exercised such remarkable restraint. Or how deeply she regretted that the wonderful kiss had ended.

Olivia burst upon them like a child
finding a hidden treasure in the garden. "Oh, there you are, making friends. I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you together like this."

Knight straightened, belatedly offering his hand to help Catriona step away from the pond. The fact that she ignored his help seemed completely to escape his sister's notice. Olivia saw what she wanted to see, which was her beloved brother and her beloved husband's cousin caught in a friendly conversation. She would fly into the boughs if she dreamed what sort of conversation they had actually had.

He folded his arms across his chest and let out a loud sigh to express his resignation. He could feel Catriona stealing a look at him from the corner of her eye, and at first he was amused that she was still upset at him. But then he began to wonder if she was afraid that he was going to send her away. Did she even have a home, or was the talk of her half brother in the castle a lie? Certainly, the new earl had not been obligated to take in his father's illegitimate daughter.

He looked down into her face, noting the distress that clouded her features. And then, once again, he glimpsed a shadow of Lionel in her beautiful eyes. It caught him by surprise—a wilder, secretive, female version of the friend he grieved for. And he knew that whatever her flaws, there must be strength of character in her, too, which only enhanced her sensual allure to an alarming degree.

"Is Aunt Marigold gone?" he said, lifting his gaze to Olivia.

"No." She was obviously too excited to sense the storm clouds of emotion that charged the air. In fact, Knight was taken aback by the change in her, her mood brighter than at any time in recent memory. "She's staying the rest of the month to help me plan the party."

"Party?" he said with a frown. "You're giving a party?"

"No, Knight," she replied sweetly. "You are."

He groaned. "I thought we came to the country for peace and quiet. Besides, none of our friends except Wendell is willing to travel this far for a party."

"Not those people," Olivia said. "I'd only hoped to invite the locals. Everyone did like Lionel. Besides, I wouldn't dream of overwhelming Catriona with society yet." If ever, she added silently, noting the disgracefully muddied state of Catriona's attire. And Knight's pantaloons, too. Goodness, what had the pair of them been doing, making mud castles?

Catriona shook her head. "I can't possibly allow you to hold a party in my honor."

"Why not?" Olivia asked.

"Perhaps she prefers a quieter sort of entertainment," Knight said in a pensive voice. "She doesn't exactly share our upbringing."

Olivia refused to be deterred from her mission. "Then we shall serve as her guides. I nearly expired myself the first time I faced the dragonesses of Almack's. Her education must begin today. None of us is getting any younger, and one's prospects do dim with time."

Knight did not know what to say. Only a few days ago, he would have given his right arm to have Olivia so frivolously occupied, alive again. Anything to erase the horror of coming upon her with a pistol in her hand and the realization that her grief had become too much to bear. And now, well, hell, his wish had apparently come true, but with complications he could not possibly have foreseen.

"Fine. Give your little party, Olivia. I suppose there is no harm in it." He should have known that the moment the words left his mouth, fate would step in to bedevil him.

She threw a victorious smile at Catriona.
"Your
party, Knight. It isn't quite appropriate for me to be entertaining in your house."

He released another sigh.
"My
party."

"I think she'll need some new dresses."

"No, really," Catriona said, "all this fuss is quite unnecessary."

Olivia frowned. "All this fuss is
essential.
In fact, I have already sent for the dressmaker. You remember, Knight, the pretty Frenchwoman in the village who likes to flirt with you?"

He felt Catriona turn to stare at him again, one sleek eyebrow raised. The fact that her mouth looked faintly red and swollen from his kiss only aroused him all over again. "I don't remember anything of the kind," he said irritably. "But a dressmaker is getting a bit ahead of ourselves, don't you think? Shouldn't she at least learn how to dance before she makes a debut?"

Catriona tried again to insert her opinion. "But I—"

"A mock debut," Olivia said with a negligent shrug of her shoulders. "Stop being such a stickler for details, Knight. This isn't London. In the country, the rules are rather more relaxed. Anyway, I've already found someone to teach her to dance. And—"

Cat said, "I—"

"His name is Mr. Edwards," Olivia went on. "When I mentioned him, Marigold made the most brilliant suggestion that we find a mock suitor for Catriona's mock debut, someone patient and experienced with women to show her the finer points of our social rituals."

"Seeing as how the men and women in Scotland dance in the raw around a fire before clubbing each other senseless," Catriona thought aloud, highly annoyed that she was being viewed as such an uncivilized creature.

Olivia's face turned bright red. "Oh, my dear. I didn't mean—but
do
you know how to dance a cotillion?"

Catriona gave a shrug. "No, and I don't particularly want to, either."

"And has a man ever paid you court?" Olivia asked even more gently.

She shrugged again, glancing up at Knight as if she defied him to laugh. "A few have."

"But you do wish to find a husband?" he said dryly.

"Aye. On my own terms. Preferably one who is rich, doesn't drink himself into oblivion or spit, and is kind to animals. I miss my dog."

Olivia closed her eyes, trying to hide her chagrin at such an unacceptably frank admission. "Oh, dear. We
do
have our work cut out for us, don't we, Knight?"

"We?" he said in a horrified voice.

She smiled up at him. "As the elder male of the family, her brother being either incapable or unwilling to fulfill that duty, it is your obligation to protect her reputation."

"It is?" he said bleakly.

"It is. After all, you are seven years older than she."

He frowned. "And exactly how am I to do this?"

"Yes, how?" Catriona demanded, looking ready to drop her bucket on his foot again.

Olivia clasped her hands. "By playing the mock suitor in the mock courtship that Aunt Marigold and I just dreamed up in the drawing room. Isn't it the most perfect plan?"

Knight summoned Catriona to his office early the following morning. For several minutes, he did not even acknowledge her, determined to finish the accounts for the local Devon pottery firm in which he, Lionel, and Wendell had invested considerable money and time. A gentleman need not work, but these days Knight enjoyed the challenge of using his mind in a more productive outlet than playing cards or racing his curricle.

He studied her from the edge of his eye as he worked at his desk. She was dressed in a striped mini-green gown, another of Olivia's castofls, and her heavy mass of hair had been brushed to a coppery sheen. She looked undeniably pretty and almost presentable—until the moment she hiked up her skirt and began to climb the ladder to reach the uppermost row of his bookshelf.

He threw down his pen and stared for several moments at her legs, lithe, with well-defined muscles, no stockings. No shoes. In fact, he was certain she was trying to distract him, and he refused to take the bait. After kissing her senseless yesterday, he ought to do penance. He returned his attention to the figures in the ledger, but in his mind he saw only a shapely female form and felt a deep stirring of sexual attraction that unsettled him, sparking a fantasy of her naked on the ladder—

"Look out!" she cried a split-second before an enormous book tottered off the pile she had gathered and threatened to crash in a cloud of dust directly onto his desk.

He looked up in alarm as she caught the falling volume and vaulted to the floor, her face half hidden behind the heap of dusty books she clutched in her arms. "That was close," she said. "I thought I was going to brain you."

He rose, tugged the books from her arms, and slammed them down onto his desk. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

"Entertaining myself while you ignore me. I'm really sorry about shouting like that. You must have nerves of steel not to have jumped through the roof."

"I was engrossed in my accounts, Miss Grant."

"So I noticed."

"That is my Latin collection you are in the process of disordering. Sit down."

He returned to his desk and studied her in dispassionate silence. He found to his annoyance that his heart was beating harder than usual, and the image of her standing naked on the ladder refused to dissolve. What was it about her that had gotten under his skin? Those eyes of hers again, perhaps, managing to look wounded and dangerous, fierce and entirely female at the same moment. She had a way of intruding on a man's thoughts.

She pursed her lips. "Well."

"What?"

"Did you summon me for any particular purpose, or are we to stare at each other all day?"

His mouth firmed at the reminder that she had addled his thoughts again. It was one thing for him to be distracted by her, another to be caught at it. "After a sleepless night, I have arrived at the conclusion that my sister's welfare must come first in this matter."

She examined him in open admiration as he spoke, half listening. She was quite lost in his velvet rumble of a voice which sent little shivers down her nape. She imagined he could be quite persuasive when he put his mind to it. She wondered what he looked like when he laughed, really laughed from deep inside, and what effect it would have on his strong, angular face. And he was concerned about his sister's welfare, which reminded her sadly of James. She wished someone would care about her like that.

"This is a beautiful library," she said. "I love the smell of books."

He looked faintly bewildered. "What?"

"Lovely collection of literature, sturdy desk." She thumped her bare foot on the floor. "Nice carpet."

He drew a breath. "Have you heard anything that I've been saying?"

She leaned back in her chair. That rich voice had deepened into a growl, and she decided that it would take more than a few compliments to elicit a belly laugh from this man. "Would you mind repeating it?" she asked politely.

"I am not in the habit of repeating myself."

Or of laughing, either, she thought, compressing her lips.

"I was, in fact, delivering a warning to you," he said

She glanced up. "About disordering your books?"

"About upsetting my sister."

Her eyes widened in distress. "Why would I do that?"

"I do not know." His face looked devilishly dark and intense in contrast to his casually knotted white neckcloth. "I don't know what you want, or even who you really are, or why you came here."

"Perhaps you ought to lock away the silverware."

"Why did Thomas leave you here?"

"My brother has been feeling a bit down lately." As in the bottom of an ale barrel.

"Is he coming back to claim you?"

Olivia popped her head around the door before Catriona could answer. "I couldn't resist. How is our first lesson proceeding?"

Catriona stared down at the carpet. "We're having a wonderful time."

"Couldn't be better," Knight said with a total lack of enthusiasm.

"Would either of you care for coffee?" Olivia asked, looking from one to the other.

"Brandy might be preferable," Catriona said in a wry undertone.

Knight lifted his brow at her. "Laudanum is better at numbing the pain."

Olivia stepped into the room, her hands planted on her slim hips, her stride energetic and full of vigor. "Perhaps what I ought to do is find a professor to teach the pair of you proper diction. I cannot understand a single word either of you said."

"Which reminds me," Knight said, swinging his long frame out of the chair to rise. "Did Mrs. Evans locate the nursery primers I asked for? I suppose we need to make sure Catriona can even read a dance card before we launch her out onto the social seas."

"I don't need a nursery primer," Catriona said, looking up indignantly.

"Your father paid for private instruction?" he asked, sounding skeptical that a nobleman would invest that much trouble in a love child.

"No, but I attended—"

"The primers are on the floor behind your desk, Knight." Olivia paused behind Catriona's chair to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "I shall return in a little while. Aunt Marigold is calling me."

Knight straightened, eyeing Catriona askance as he lifted the well-worn books from the floor to his desk. "All right. Let us begin. I do not have all day."

She folded her arms across her chest. "This is an absolute waste of time."

"Probably. But it makes Olivia happy. Look," he said, thumbing through the yellowed pages. "Can you read any of this?"

She sauntered over to the desk, her head barely coming to his powerfully muscled chest.

"Read this," he said. "It's a nursery rhyme."

She glanced down at the book and yawned.

He shook his head. He didn't want to insult her, but perhaps she needed more help than her pride would admit. The Scots he knew had strong wills and stubborn principles. He dug deep inside himself for patience. "All right. Then we shall try something even simpler." He took pen and paper and scribbled several words on the page. "Try this."

She hunched over the paper for what seemed like an eternity, her foot repeatedly hitting the carpet.

"Stop doing that," he said.

She glanced up. "What?"

"That banging with your foot. It annoys me. Good God, can't you read even those basic words?"

"Did I say that I couldn't?"

"Then read them."

"I did."

His face darkened. "To me."

"Don't you know how to read them yourself?" she asked innocently.

"I wrote the damned things, didn't I?"

He straightened. So much for being patient. He was so tempted to bring his hand down on her backside, propped up in the air, that he had to turn away. "Read," he said in an ominous voice. "Before I lose my temper."