Wed at Leisure (11 page)

He didn’t speak of it the next day through the hunt and dinner. But after dinner, when there was a proposal for dancing and he took Kate upon the newly bared wooden floor, he couldn’t help but question her with his touch, his eyes. He felt himself doing it. A lovesick fool.

“Stop,” she hissed when the figure brought them close together.

“Stop what?”

“
Looking
at me. It’s unnerving.”

“You are my dance partner. It is required,” he said reasonably.

“People will
talk
.”

“People are already talking.”

“About us.”

“You no longer wish for the attention?” he teased.

She narrowed her eyes and looked away. But if she did much more of that, people would talk, and wonder what they discussed.

Maybe she’d reject him yet. But he hoped not. With each passing moment, his surety grew. This was the woman for him.

P
erhaps she and Bianca had found their own
truce
, but the irreverence with which her sister and the Viscount treated the whole affair grated. In response, Kate needed to be more demure, more proper, and less the Kate of London. Through it all Peter was there, offering silent support with those gray eyes when their gazes met. There was something about the way he watched her that made her feel . . . uncomfortable . . . a way she had never felt before. As if someone cared deeply for her. Perhaps his proposal was not merely an act of charity. Perhaps he felt something besides his
dishonorable
desire. The way she felt, despite her fear of feeling it.

Through the next two days, the outing to the village market, the evening of dancing and games, the amateur theatrical production that was put on in the ballroom on a whim, she thought about his proposal. Thought about his gray eyes and his smile. About every moment she had ever spent with him.

But she could not tell him that with her guests here. Accepting a proposal at this point might seem like using him. The way she felt when she looked at him, thought of him—when he spoke to her and touched her—it was new and exhilarating and a secret she wanted to hold for herself. She wanted to keep it pure and untainted by scandal, by society’s suspicions.

When at last, she and her family saw the final guest off, she was tired. Tired of being proper, of worrying what the world would think.

She sent him a note.

The sun was high in the sky when she crossed the fields and headed for Fairview.

By way of that place at the stream. That special hidden little bend where so many moments had occurred. Where she desperately wanted to have one more.

He was there waiting for her, at that place on the border of their estates, melding each other’s lives and yet a separate world entirely.

He looked handsome and beautiful and every superlative she could think of. Her heart was full as she stared at him.

“I suppose you will return to Brighton,” he said.

It was so far from what she was thinking that she started a bit. Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he read her emotions in every gesture that she made? In every breath that she took?

“I was thinking that I would stay here awhile,” she returned with a little smile.

“The scandal will not be terrible. These last few days have done much to alleviate it.”

“Oh, I am certain that Lady Vane has already gossiped about us to the world”—he laughed and the sound encouraged her—“but that is not why.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No?”

This was it. She could say her piece or she could . . . she could go on as if it didn’t matter. But it did matter. Her heart said it did. So much had happened this last week. And he was a part of it all. She took a deep breath. No cowardice. Not now.

“By the river, you said you wished to marry me. Do you still?”

His eyes widened. He looked incredulous and she swallowed hard.

“Catherine—”

“I know your offer was impetuous,” she interrupted, terrified to hear him make some excuse. “Gallant, even, and with the brunt of the storm weathered, the time for gallantry is past.”

“It wasn’t gallantry. Kate . . .” He took her hand in his and her heart felt as if it leapt. Foolishly, perhaps, but hopeful still. He lifted that hand to his lips, never once looking away from her eyes. Her hand shook. “Bonny Kate,” he said with a slow smile, “and sometimes Kate the curst; but Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom, Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate—”

“Oh stop!” she cried, the tremulous emotion at the edge of tears turning to laughter. “Be serious, Peter.”

“I am, deeply. It was here, ten years ago, that you first offered me a glimpse of your strength.”

“My strength,” she scoffed. “I was licking my wounds while my mother was dying.”

“Her death did not diminish the wounds she caused.”

She ducked her head and blinked rapidly. He was right. They had merely been compounded with guilt, with loss, with a confusion she couldn’t quite dispel. And she had had no one. But now. Now, perhaps, she did.

“Shakespeare did say it best,” Peter said, his voice sliding over her, warm and secure, the way home should feel, the way she had always idealized Hopford from afar. “‘Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded, yet not so deeply as to thee belongs.’ Kate, marry me.”

“Not ‘kiss me’?” she teased, wiping away the tears. Now she was only filled with joy. For him, for the future, for a love like she had never known and thus never imagined possible.

“That, too,” he whispered, drawing her into his embrace. “Yes. Kiss me.”

But before she pressed her lips to his, there was just one more thing she had to say.

“I love you.”

“Oh my bonny Kate, I love you, too.”

Want to see how it all began?

Keep reading for a peek at

WOO’D IN HASTE.

Bianca’s story!

An Excerpt from

WOO’D IN HASTE

A
man’s life can change in an instant. Lucian Dorlingsley, Viscount Asquith, heir to the Earl of Finleigh, had heard this aphorism many times, but until that particular August morning, he had never experienced such a profound moment. Not throughout his sheltered childhood at his familial estate. Or during the more arduous years at Harrow and Cambridge. Not even during the long continental tour from which he had just returned.

Yet here, in the sleepy town of Watersham, where he was stopping briefly with the Colburns on his way home, his life had been rocked down to his very essence.

“I’m in love, Reggie!” He paced the length of the veranda where they were enjoying an al fresco luncheon. The sky beyond was a cerulean blue and the weather, for once, that rare balance of very English sunshine (and he had now seen enough of the world to know that sunshine had a different quality in different places) tempered by a delicate breeze. In other words, the perfect day to fall in love.

His friend, the younger brother of the Duke of Orland, looked at him doubtfully, a cautious smirk on his lips.

“Who is she, then? A Parisian dancer from the opera? An Italian nymph? What paragon did you meet on your travels that has you so bound up in a paroxysm of amorous emotion?”

Reggie saw the world as one large jest, and on most occasions that was one of his charms. In fact, his boisterous manner was what made him so easy to be around. Often Luc could simply follow him about and be amused without having to put himself forward in any way. It was also, at this moment, the one thing Luc did not need. Not about a matter so serious.

“No, nothing so cliché as all that. I saw her here, in the village this morning. I stopped by the apothecary and there she was.”

“And did you pledge your undying love to her?”

Luc shook his head, ignoring Reggie’s exaggerations and persistent humor for a confessional honesty. An honesty that he had with few others, including his sisters. But Reggie had been the foremost companion of his youth, his roommate at Harrow and later at Cambridge. At least for the one year that Reggie attended before he decided the pretense at study was a waste of his time. He’d been gallivanting about London ever since. Still, Luc said the words with shame. “I could hardly approach her.”

“I shall never understand how such a giant as yourself is one of the most painfully shy men that I know. One would think a Grand Tour would cure you of that.”

Europe had cured him in many ways. Out of the shadow of his gregarious father, away from the judgments of his usual society, he had been able to be more himself. But now he was back in England, and . . . this was not just any woman.

“Miss Mansfield, they called her,” he said instead. “Do you know her? Can she be mine?” Not that he had ever thought twice about marriage before this point. He was still young and most of his friends unattached. Yet the idea of such beauty being his . . . His own Botticelli. He looked expectantly at Reggie, but his friend’s usually round, smiling face looked aghast.

“What? Is she promised to someone already? Are you in love with her, Reggie? Or is Peter?” He tried to calm his sudden fears with levity. “Have I lost my heart to some untouchable?”

“Untouchable, perhaps,” Reggie choked out, taking a moment to twirl the long hair that fell over his forehead in sandy curls. “I didn’t realize Kate was back from Brighton. But listen, Luc, this one—Forget about her. She might be a success in London these last two Seasons, but everyone in these parts knows her for the brat that she is.”

Brat? Luc couldn’t reconcile that word with the image that still lingered in his mind. Honey-blond hair framing a rosy-cheeked countenance. Eyes as blue as today’s perfect sky. A paragon of quiet English beauty, in fact.

“She seemed quite well liked. She had a charming smile and manner. Brat seems like an unfair epithet.”

“Not for Kate, but oh! Perhaps it was Bianca. Your Venus, was she fair or dark?”

“Fair.”

“Aha, the mystery is cleared,” Reggie said with a smile, slapping his knee. And then the smile faded. “I would be more than happy to introduce you to Bianca Mansfield, younger sister to the cursed Kate, but it wouldn’t matter in any event. In fact, her father would likely not let you near if he thought you a suitor.”

“She
is
taken.” Of course, she would be.

“Quite the opposite. It’s very clear, Luc, that you know nothing about the family. If you’d been in London these last two years instead of traveling across the Continent, you would know all about Catherine.”

“It isn’t Catherine I want.”

“But Catherine is unmarried and refuses to allow her sister to have a Season this year and upstage her in London.”

That sounded ridiculous, impossible, and positively Shakespearean.

“And their father allows this?”

“Mr. Mansfield has allowed Catherine her own way ever since their mother died. And his current wife seems to support the situation, as well. Not that Bianca has ever been seen to complain. In fact, as best I know, she couldn’t care less and is completely immersed in her books.”

Books. That little insight added slight shading, a rounded curve to his previous image of her. What kind of books did she prefer to read? Poetry? Minerva’s Press? Greek philosophy? His own preference was modern philosophy. Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Herr Kant. Not that he read every word of any given tract. He’d done quite enough of that during his rigorously classical education. No, now he preferred a looser approach, to simply catch the gist of an author’s argument. And really, when it was all about ideas, who needed to have all those extra words?

“How do you know this?”

“The servants, of course. I don’t know how your father thinks you’ll ever make a proper earl. You, my friend, are the embodiment of naiveté.”

A social reticence, Lucian would admit to, but naïveté was a different matter and the words rankled. Especially as Lucian had spent two years abroad gaining a continental education while Reggie had never once left England’s shores.

Yet, ultimately, the slur to his worldliness aside, Reggie had given much food for thought. Lucian sat down in his chair somewhat dejectedly. Naturally, when Cupid’s arrow finally struck, the object of his desire would be unattainable.

“I can still introduce you to her,” Reggie offered. “You never do know. Perhaps her father will be so impressed by your ancestry that he will risk strife in his own home.”

“T
homas Mansfield, that is not how gentlemen sit when they take tea!” Charlotte Smith scolded. Bianca sat up straighter herself at the governess’s strident tones. Not that there was anything wrong with her posture, at least at the moment. Lottie (Bianca had only been allowed to use that familiar name two years earlier) had ensured that over the last ten years.

“It’s how Father sits,” Thomas rebuffed. He was eight and, ever since recovering from the illness that kept him from attending Eton with his closest friend, he had been increasingly obstreperous. But he was still too weak to be sent off this quarter.

“If you wish to not be a laughingstock, you will learn basic manners.”

Wisely, Lottie had not addressed the issue of Bianca’s father, who was a country gentleman through and through, and very happy with his hunting and sport.

“Go on and read it. It is simply ink on paper and can hardly bite you.” This chastisement was in fact addressed to Bianca, and she looked down at the letter in her hands. While Bianca and Kate were not close, had not been since the day Bianca watched their mother die and been unable to do a thing to stop it from happening, Kate always sent regular letters when she was away from home. They were usually long, and fraught with details about clothing and society events, about people of whom Bianca knew nothing. As if she was taunting her with the life she refused to share.

Not that Bianca cared.

In fact, there were only three things in the world that she did care about: books, music, and Thomas. She had decided several years earlier, while still a child, that the rest of her family wasn’t worth worrying about, from her sister’s constant demands and histrionics to her father’s inability to refuse Kate anything.