Cat looked back over her shoulder at the housekeeper. “I may be staying the night. You best have a room made up for me.”
“Oh, aye. A room,” Mrs. Medge said grimly, and then, under her breath, but loud enough to make sure Cat heard, “I thought he was through with all that whoring around.”
“Madame, I am not that kind of guest. I am, as I have gone to pains to inform you, Mr. Montrose’s niece.”
“Mr. Montrose doesn’t own a niece, ‘Lady’ Catherine,” Mrs. Medge declared triumphantly.
“Mr. Montrose will substantiate my claim.” I hope. “Would you really like to wager your undoubtedly superior knowledge of his family tree against his own?”
Mrs. Medge’s thin lips pursed before a wicked gleam suddenly kindled in her dark, raisin-like eye. “Shall I put you next to the master’s room?”
“No! All the proprieties shall, of course, be observed!”
“Like unchaperoned girls gallivanting about the countryside, dropping in out of the clear blue to stay with bachelor ‘relations’? Lah, proprieties have surely changed since I was in service in London.”
“I am not here alone, Mrs. Medge. My great-aunt, the dowager duchess Hecuba Montaigne White, will be chaperoning me,” Cat said with chilly formality.
Her bravado did not last long. Mrs. Medge’s mouth quivered open. She shook her head and began emitting a peculiar noise. It took Cat an instant to recognize it as laughter. Mrs. Medge’s face grew red, and her beady eyes pooled with water.
“Oh my, yes! Oh, this is too much!” She gasped for breath, pressing a hand to her stomach. “Hundreds Hecuba! A proper chaperone she’ll be!”
Catherine sputtered. “Mrs. Medge, my room, if you please.”
“But where is Lady Montaigne White? Don’t tell me she’s already found the stables… and the stable lads?”
Cat gritted her teeth. “My aunt will be arriving shortly. Now, my room, if you please.”
Mrs. Medge moved off, cackling to herself while Cat took stock of her not completely unexpected situation. Even here, in the far reaches of the Hampshire, her great-aunt’s history was still very much alive. Alive and capable of robbing her relations of that finishing touch of respectability. Well, thought Cat grimly, wait until Mrs. Medge meets the duchess.
It was Cat’s turn to smile.
The lower quarters of the house owed nothing to current trends in interior decor. There were no Continental, Oriental, or classical influences. The furnishings were simple. The two pictures hung on the walls were landscapes unlike any Cat had ever seen, painted in an entirely haphazard manner by some person named Turner.
Other than Mrs. Medge and a young girl scrubbing assiduously at a pair of andirons, there appeared to be no one else about. The small size of the house was further evinced by the paucity of its bedchambers, a mere six. Such a house did not offer separate wings for lady and gentlemen visitors. All the suites opened upon the same hall. Cat was ushered into a corner bedroom and left with the grudging promise of hot water. She wandered around, noting the same dearth of ornamentation that marked the rest of the house, until the young maid she had seen earlier appeared, lugging a basin of water.
“I be Fielding, ma’am,” the girl said, her freckle-dusted cheeks dimpling in a grin. “If you be wanting anything, you just goes round that wicked old biddy and asks me. We hadn’t ever had a lady staying here,” she finished wistfully, and bobbed a curtsey before leaving.
Cat combed out her hair and washed her face and hands before shaking the dust from her riding habit. No extra housemaid came to help her with her toilette. Luckily, Cat was unused to a chambermaid’s attentions. Bellingcourt finances didn’t extend to such niceties. Bellingcourt’s finances didn’t extend to any niceties at all. Apparently, neither did Thomas Montrose’s “estate.”
Poor as a church mouse, thought Cat. Poor as my own family. Maybe poorer. That must be why Thomas Montrose, once the reigning prince of London’s rakehells, had quit his throne and left for the Continent. More than one pink of the ton had been chased from society by a pack of creditors. The Beau himself was rumored to be nearly done in. And yet Thomas Montrose had chosen to return here after his supposedly scandalous sojourn, even if only as a shepherd, Cat thought with a certain admiration. Unfortunately, she had no need of a shepherd. She needed a rakehell.
Physically, he was not at all what she had expected. The snippets of conversation she had heard from the older women during her three seasons in society had prepared her for the usual fare in roués. A rake was a rapier-slim, elegant, shining, and lethally charming man, in all, a “blade.”
Thomas Montrose was more a bludgeon: big, heavy, towering, dark. As for all the scintillating, irresistible women she had assumed would be littering his decadent hallways, well, Fielding was a pretty enough girl, but she hardly qualified as a femme fatale.
How was one to study the mannerisms of courtesans when there weren’t any courtesans around?
From what she had seen thus far, Thomas’s present situation was so far removed from his former one that Cat would wager everything she owned that his usefulness in the capacity of “rake” was nil. Unluckily, she had already gambled away everything she owned on the opposite wager. She might as well turn back home this instant and save them both the trouble of explanations.
She wondered how she was going to disinter her second cousin Emmaline from Bellingcourt. She had promised her elderly relative a fortnight of free lodging if she would act as surrogate guardian to her siblings. Emmaline had been coerced into accepting Cat’s offer by her own poverty and the promise of a tenure that made the uncomfortable trip from Wales worth the effort. She would be most unhappy to quit Bellingcourt after less than a week.
Cat would have to pass that hurdle when she came to it. Her most pressing concern was coming up with some plausible excuse for her presence here. Her concept of a rake as being self-absorbed, buffleheaded fribble had also been overturned. There had been no lack of intelligence in Thomas’s pitch-black gaze. He would never believe she had hauled herself and her great-aunt all the way from York to deliver his brother’s treatise on the habitat differentiation of common British field birds.
It had been a hare-brained scheme, she thought miserably: thinking she could just arrive at Thomas Montrose’s house, surreptitiously pick up a few pointers on seduction from the myriad glamorous men and women posing in his corridors, and hie herself off to London to captivate her would-be suitor. And it had seemed so reasonable when she had come up with the plan. Drat!
Well, she would just have to think up another plan. But first she must extricate herself from the situation, and the premises, as soon as possible. And she must do so without disclosing to Thomas Montrose the reason for her imprudent visit.
Cat thought of his swarthy face, the sweat-drenched, graying black locks, his immense size.
The poor man. Clearly, he still had his pride and Lady Catherine Sinclair understood pride only too well. He must never know she had come to Devon expecting him to still own the manners and address and polish claimed by his former reputation. It would be too lowering for him.
Having finished gathering her hair into a twist, Cat took a seat on an overstuffed chair. There she spent the remainder of the afternoon pondering credible reasons why a young woman would visit a man she didn’t know and wasn’t related to.
She didn’t come up with many.
Chapter 3
Cat’s gowns, and her aunt, had not yet arrived by the time Thomas seated her for dinner. She was uncomfortably aware that coming in to dine in one’s traveling attire, particularly when that garment was in fact a riding habit, was unforgivably vulgar.
Thomas Montrose did not appear to notice. Indeed, he was not a great deal more appropriately dressed than she. He wore black, form-fitting trousers tucked into dull Hessians. His shirt, a simple whitish linen, was topped by a hastily knotted cravat. He had pulled on some sort of jacket but neglected to don a waistcoat. He was entirely casual… as was h
is manner.
Not that he was forward or coarse. The black-visage workman of the moors was gone, and in his place was an open-handed country squire, attentive to her comfort, chatting on about crop yields and the new weaving machines. He recommended each one of the simple dishes with a good-natured eye to her pleasure and kept up an erudite, if not exactly current, conversation. Occasionally she caught a speculative gleam from under his soot-colored lashes. And yet whenever she cleared her voice to confront the issue at hand, he summarily dismissed any conversation regarding her “mysterious tome” until he had seen her properly fed.
He voiced a mild concern—it could hardly be called a rebuke—after she lost count of the number of times the poker-faced footman, Bob, filled her wineglass. Cat smiled, acknowledging her appreciation of his misplaced concern, but held her glass out for a refill. Her uneasiness seemed dispelled by quaffing wine so excellent as to be rare in her limited scope.
At least, she thought, he has maintained the palate of a connoisseur. And it wasn’t his fault his circumstances in the world have come down so much. One must remain compassionate, regardless of one’s own misfortune.
For his part, Thomas was completely confounded by his uninvited guest. She was lovely. Extremely lovely. But he had seen lovelier. She was poised and graceful. Again, gratifying but unexceptional. She was a pleasant dinner companion. And that was all.
Thomas had expected to be “captivated” by his young female petitioner. He had expected a wondrously—and scantily—clad vision to hang on his every word, to dart languid glances between demure, if drawn out, sips of wine, to laugh at his most feeble sallies and find some excuse, any excuse, to lay beseeching hands on his person.
Seeking to save himself the embarrassment of such a tawdry scene, Thomas had adopted his most bucolic persona. He had dressed with such carelessness that his former valet would have killed himself had he seen him in such a state. He expounded, ad nauseam, on every rural invention of the past decade. He exuded avuncular bonhomie. All, only to find that he needn’t bother building walls; she already had one firmly in place.
Lady Catherine Sinclair had come to dinner, not in provocatively draped satins, but in her dusty riding habit. Her lovely, aristocratic visage was stamped with a decidedly doleful expression. She fixed him with a candid, gray-green stare when she spoke. She drank her wine as though she needed it. And she never came closer to him than the width of the table that separated them.
“… at a rate of yield exceeding four times the expected,” Thomas finished saying.
Cat calmly cut in. “Apparently the Tories’ proposed Corn Laws will soon be instituted. I cannot help but believe such measures can only prove provocative.”
Aware his mouth was in the process of dropping open, Thomas snapped it shut.
“What with land rentals escalating so during the war, I realize some aid must be given to those producing our crops,” she was saying, “but to impose a tariff on imported grain would have economic repercussions we can ill afford. Industry increasingly becomes an international arena in which England must be competitive. Raising wages to laborers so they might afford English grain does not seem to be the best means to insure our success in that area.”
“How would a young woman know about international markets and Corn Laws?” Thomas asked.
Cat waved a hand dismissively. “I have read the text of all speeches pertinent to the problem. As for international markets, it is an interest of mine. What do you, as a landowner, think?”
He did not know what to think. Young women of his acquaintance usually had different interests. Very different.
She answered his dumfounded silence with a sigh and blithely steered the conversation back to more conventional grounds. Thomas was acutely aware of having further disappointed her. She made little attempt to conceal it; good manners demand she ignore it.
As the evening wore on, he felt sure her request for funds must be imminent. But each time she appeared to be coming to the point, she would fix him with that absurdly level gaze and waver.
Perhaps pride forbade a direct request, he thought, trying to make her as comfortable as possible. He was fast becoming impatient to have it out and over with. Having recognized the timeworn ploy of fortifying oneself with liquor, he was concerned the chit would slide senseless beneath the table before ever having the chance to divulge the reason for her visit. In some concern, he finally dismissed the footman that he might regulate her consumption himself. She was watching him now, a disheartened expression on her face. He felt the moment ripe to draw her out. But she spoke first.
“You do have a great deal of bald-faced charm,” she said thoughtfully, her voice husky, slurred with alcohol.
“Thank you,” he said, wondering if, from her tone, he should be thanking her at all.
“No, really,” she said quickly, trying to interject an enthusiastic note. “I can see, I really can, how at one time you would be quite pleasant company for a lady.”
“At one time?”
“Yes. I’m sure you were a very nice escort.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. Polite understatement. She was obviously aware of his sordid reputation and was seeking assurance that those past transgressions would not be reenacted here. “Let us be frank, Lady Catherine. You have heard the rumors—”
She cut through his disclaimer. “Yes. Yes. Let us be frank.” She slapped her open palm on the tabletop. The china danced. “I have heard the rumors. Lah, sir, we were more or less weaned on them. People could hardly wait to tell us of your escapades, seeing how our mother had married your half brother.”
“I am sorry.” Indeed, he was. Some of the stories that could have reached those innocent ears were unfit for even the most sophisticated listeners.
“So am I,” she lamented woefully. “I shouldn’t have been so naive. I, of all people, should have realized how one little transgression, oft-repeated, snowballs into fantastic proportions. My great-aunt, you know.”
Montrose let his breath out, unaware he had been holding it. Obviously she had taken it upon herself to exonerate him of culpability. He certainly wasn’t going to inform her that, in all probability, what she had heard had been the truth. He regretted the licentiousness that was the hallmark of his youth and was profoundly grateful some disease had not been his just reward.
“I should have known,” she was saying, almost to herself as she stared into the wineglass, “that a reputation as a heartbreaker of almost mythic proportions could only be manufactured. No one could possibly live up to that reputation.”
“Indeed, yes,” he said with relief.
Encouraged by this understanding and rustic giant, unable to hide the disappointment of watching her carefully laid plans dissolve into nothing, Cat continued. “I mean, look at you! Even taking for granted that your… bulk has increased somewhat in the past years, and your manners are very nice… for the country… you are hardly the deadly combination of sensuality and suavity a rake is reported to be.”
“My bulk?” Thomas paused, arrested in the act of lifting his glass to his mouth. But Cat was beyond paying close attention to her pleasant rural companion, being well launched into her theme.
“Aye,” she said blithely, “your mass. Your size. You are huge. Why, just the thought of you doing the pretty at some crush is enough to bring tears of laughter. Don’t you agree?”
“Quite.”
She should have listened. Had she not been four sheets to the wind, she would have sensed the import of that telling softness.
“I mean really, can you imagine yourself swinging some fair thing in the waltz? I can. You’d probably launch her out a window during the first turn!” Here Cat had the misfortune to giggle, but, remembering her manners, was instantly contrite. “Not so many years ago, when you were more concerned with the fribbles of the ton…” she added hastily.
“I remember. ’Tis a bit vague, being so many years back, but I do seem to recall carrying a bit less bulk.”
&nb
sp; “Exactly!” She fell back in her chair, relaxing. “And I’m sure your manners were wonderful and that a great number of women found you the best of company. Some of them probably really did pursue you.”
“I have distinctly fond memories of one or two,” Thomas replied laconically. “But it was so long ago, one wonders if one is merely rewriting history to warm one on a dull evening.”
“Oh, no,” said Cat, “I’m sure there were. Really.”
“How good of you to see back to the days of my long past youth and surmise, from this countrified hulk you have seen fit to dine with, the dim shadows of my insignificant career as a rake.”
“You are too modest. I’m sure it wasn’t altogether insignificant. My, what an easy man you are to talk to.”
“It did much to further my reputation.”
“I’m sure it did,” she agreed, drunkenly polite.
“And since I do listen so well, perhaps you will now tell me the reason for your visit.”
“Well, I don’t know. I spent all afternoon trying to come up with some plausible excuse for coming here. It wasn’t your brother’s bird book.” She stared at him with an equal mixture of candor and contrition.
What a confoundedly forthright woman, thought Thomas in exasperation. Mayhaps now we can dispense with all my amusing shortcomings and finally come to the point.
“I rather thought not,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me the real reason you are here?”
“Should I?” she asked brightly. “Well, perhaps that’s best. You’ll think it rare amusing, no doubt.”
She dimpled at him. His face remained a smooth mask of polite interest. “No doubt.”
“All right then, I came precisely because of your past notoriety as a rake.”
Promise Me Heaven Page 2
