Lady Catherine's Secret: A Secrets and Seduction book

by Sheridan Jeane

  He realized with a jolt of surprise that he now had two homes to renovate: his original one in Scotland and his new Savelle estate outside London.

  He’d need a second letter.

  “Madson,” he shouted. “I have some messages!”

  42 - A Plan

  “Blast it!” Stansbury crumpled the note he’d just read and tossed it onto the floor of his study, in the general vicinity of the fireplace.

  “What’s wrong? Bad news?” Attwood drawled. He’d only arrived a few minutes ago, wearing the expensive new clothing his wife had purchased.

  “The ship still hasn’t arrived. No ship means nothing to sell and no money coming in. And by now, even when it does arrive, it’ll be too late. The advantage of being early to market has evaporated. Too many other speculators made the same gamble on the same commodities. Now they’ll flood London with the same items I thought would be scarce.” Stansbury kicked his foot against the leg of his chair, causing it to tip over with a loud bang.

  Attwood turned his back on Stansbury and examined the bookcase. Most of the books that used to grace the bookshelves had been sold, some by Stansbury, but most by his father. Attwood selected a slim book from the nearly empty shelves. He leafed through it, studiously ignoring Stansbury.

  Smart man. He’d learned when to keep his head down to avoid having it bitten off.

  Stansbury turned back to his desk, and his hand shook as he sorted through his bills. His creditors were becoming more and more insistent. Three months ago, he’d used the money from the first of his investors to pay off his most pressing debts, but his other creditors were still clamoring for money.

  Fretting, he shuffled through the papers again, trying to place them in order of priority. Gambling debts, of course, must take precedence. It would be unseemly not to pay them, and his reputation would be ruined if he failed to do so. The ones that absolutely must be paid were on top, those that could be delayed a week or two came next, and any that could be delayed a bit longer went to the bottom. The remainder he chucked into the wastebasket below his desk.

  Unfortunately, the pile remained much too large, and bills requiring immediate payment made up the largest part.

  Stansbury smacked the stack of bills down onto his desk and grabbed the fallen chair, righting it with a clatter.

  Attwood turned at the commotion and cocked an eyebrow.

  Stansbury glared at him. “This situation is intolerable. Everything’s going wrong.” Walking around to the back of his chair, he shook his head. “This streak of bad luck has lasted for over a year now. One business deal after another has withered away, and to make matters worse, each heiress I offered for turned me down. Me! The Earl of Stansbury! My title is one of the oldest in England. It goes back to 1074 when William the Conqueror created it!” His voice thundered in the nearly empty room.

  He clenched the back of his chair, his knuckles growing white with the force of his grip. “Women should be begging to marry me, if only for my title. Instead, they had the temerity to refuse me.”

  “Why not marry some rich American heiress? That’s what I’d do if I had a title to peddle. At least you’d be able to offer something in exchange for the dowry. I had nothing, and that solicitor wouldn’t let me forget it.”

  Stansbury bristled. “I refuse to marry someone beneath me. I’d never debase myself by pairing myself with a lowly American or some upstart member of the middle class. I’d rather die.” He might have fallen low, but not that low. He deserved respect. “No, my wife must be the daughter of a peer. Anything less would be intolerable.” He shoved at the back of the chair as he stepped away from it, almost causing it to topple over again.

  “I can’t fault you there. Calliope is unbearable. Her father may have settled a sizable dowry on her, but she still holds the purse strings. It’s that damned marriage contract they made me sign. Now I’m forced to ask her for every penny I spend. It’s unnatural. A man shouldn’t have to degrade himself by begging his wife for money.”

  “Bah!” Stansbury’s voice echoed in the nearly empty study. The room was sparsely furnished, its former ornamental objects and valuable pieces of furniture having been sold or traded to creditors. The Stansbury fortune, built over generations, had been ravaged by his father. A grimace deepened on Stansbury’s face as he considered how his current dilemma could have been averted with the influx of some cash. “It’s that bastard, Huntley. He’s behind all this. First he scuttled my business deals, then my marriage plans. He had no right swooping in and plucking the Kensington chit from my grasp. He’s entirely responsible for my current straits. I invested two years in wooing Catherine. I had her in the palm of my hand. She was ready to say yes. I could read it in her eyes. The audacity of that man, interrupting my marriage proposal with one of his own!”

  “She’s a silly, stupid wench for choosing to accept Huntley’s proposal,” Attwood sneered, fueling Stansbury’s anger.

  “She’ll soon learn he isn’t the hero she thinks he is. He’s only sniffing around for her money. He might be wealthy, but it will take more than he has to restore that falling down estate in Scotland! Once her money fills his coffers, he’ll find a way to hide her away in that castle of his. Mark my words, he’ll be a recluse, just like his father. I’d never treat her that badly.” He pinned Attwood with a glare. “A thorn in my side. That’s what Huntley is. A thorn in my side.”

  “Didn’t you tell me that every time your business deals go bad, Huntley makes money?” Attwood smirked. “I’ve heard that the man has King Midas’s golden touch.”

  “And now that damned Midas touch has spilled over into his personal life, destroying all my plans.” Stansbury considered taking his anger out on the toppled chair by kicking it, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to break a toe.

  “Could there be more to it than luck? It can’t be a coincidence that Huntley always triumphs when you fail, can it?”

  The comment brought Stansbury up short. Could Attwood be right? Could Huntley be intentionally working against him? Up until now he’d assumed that the misfortune Huntley had caused him had simply been due to the man’s single-minded focus on making money and defeating every rival. But what if it was more than that? What if Huntley had singled him out for reprisal?

  That might be the case. The more Stansbury thought about it, the more it made sense. He approached the fireplace, its embers glowing as hotly as his anger toward Huntley. “Maybe he’s been working against me for years. Maybe this is his revenge for the fact that I plucked a couple of ripe contracts out from under him.” He chuckled. “Did I tell you about that? I was able to swoop in and steal them out from under his nose. I made quite a lot on those deals.” He scowled. “But that didn’t work for long. I thought that last shipping contract would set me up for years, but it turned out to be a bad one. Dreadful even. It wiped out all my previous earnings. I’m certain Huntley knew— he tricked me into pursuing it when he knew I’d lose everything.”

  And now the man wanted to claim Catherine.

  Catherine. Little Cat. He smiled, thinking about how the minx had squirmed so deliciously when he’d pressed her against the wall in the duke’s study. A girl like that would provide many nights of pleasure, especially when he made her scream like a cat in heat. A wildcat. He’d seen the passion in her eyes. Even now, his body responded to the memory of her lithe body. The feel of her writhing against him. God, wouldn’t she’d be amazing in his bed? Especially once she’d learned how to please him. And teaching her would be an amazing experience as well.

  But one he’d never have. Not since that cur Huntley had ruined all his careful plans. “That self-righteous ass! He thinks himself so superior.”

  “Just because he has money, that doesn’t make him superior,” Attwood said. His tone held an odd mixture of commiseration and persuasion.

  At first, Attwood’s comment barely registered with Stansbury, but when he realized the man had echoed his own words, he scowled. Was Attwood trying to manip
ulate him?

  “It’s a shame. The two of you are so similar. Why is it that where he succeeds, you fail?”

  Those words were a spark that ignited Stansbury’s ire. “Everything always goes his way, doesn’t it? Because of his grand title and his money, all but the most discerning members of society welcome him with open arms while turning their noses up at me. They’re ready to sell their daughters off to him, but they turn their backs when they see me coming. They even ignore his base connections with trade, whereas I’ve gone to extreme lengths to hide my involvement from them. I follow the rules. He breaks them. The man is detestable. How is it he’s led such a charmed life? Of course, there’s his childhood. Did you know Huntley’s father was stark raving mad?”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Maybe his rule-breaking is a symptom of his own growing madness. After all, he did hold me captive against my will.”

  Stansbury immediately latched onto the idea. “I hear that as a boy, he was raised in that falling-down castle in Scotland, mostly ignored by his own father. Could that have sown the seeds of insanity within him? When the old marquess finally tipped up his toes, everything was in ruins.” Stansbury shook his head. “But I still don’t know how he does it. How did he build his shipping business when he started at such a disadvantage? He created it from nothing.”

  “Not from nothing. Didn’t you say he had timber to sell?”

  “That’s right, I did. I’d forgotten that.” Stansbury glanced at his sparsely furnished room. He’d had things to sell as well, but only in bits and pieces. “But I still don’t understand how he did it. I tried to do the very same things, but everything I touched turned to dust. How is it that things turned out so differently for me?”

  Was it better to have a drunken madman as a father, like Huntley, or a drunken gambler? His own father had usually been absent, but when he’d been around, he’d been intoxicated. And he’d been a mean drunk. At an early age, Stansbury had learned to disappear when Father was home and remain as invisible as possible.

  Mother had normally provided a diversion, distracting Father away from him; however, it had never been intentional, but simply a byproduct of her mercurial moods. She’d been an unstable woman. She’d be happy and laughing at one moment, screaming the next. When Father was home, her anger had a focal point, and she directed all of her frustration with her life at the man she held responsible. But when Father was gone, she became despondent, and her focus would shift to her son.

  “So his father ignored him and his mother was dead?” Attwood asked.

  Stansbury shrugged. He wished he’d had the same benefit. It had been worse with Father away, because then Mother threw things at him. But he could always duck out of the way of flying shoes and teacups. The worst was when she’d lock him away in a room. If not for the servants, she’d probably have forgotten him, leaving him to starve or die of thirst. He was fairly sure that was what had happened to his pet cat. It had disappeared one day after annoying Mother, never to be seen again. He’d always suspected she’d locked it in a trunk and then forgotten about it. He’d never risked caring about an animal again after that.

  As a child, he’d learned to avoid his parents because he was better off when they forgot about him. Nannies hadn’t been willing to endure the chaos in their household for long, so after the fourth one left, his parents had given up. He’d become so good at remaining invisible that nobody ever bothered with his education until he was about twelve. Around then, Father finally took enough notice to send him away to school.

  “I knew Huntley at Eton,” Attwood said, interrupting Stansbury’s thoughts. “He got me expelled.” He plopped down on the sofa and a puff of dust burst from it, drifting in the weak sunlight.

  “What? He went to Eton?” Stansbury hadn’t attended such a lofty school. Since his education had been neglected for such a long time, he’d been enrolled someplace less demanding, but even so, he’d found himself at an appalling disadvantage. The other boys and the teachers made him feel the fool, always struggling to catch up to where he should have been. When the other boys had free time, Stansbury was either holed up in his stifling room studying or closeted with an annoyed teacher who was trying to teach him things he should have already known.

  He hadn’t been able to mingle with the other boys because he was always studying, always working. At first, sensing his weakness, the other boys had teased and bullied him, but they had stopped. He’d made them stop. He’d already taken more than his share of abuse at home. He refused to endure it at school as well. He still looked back on that part of his life with a mingled sense of triumph and shame. Nobody had been able to prove he’d started those small fires, but the other boys left him alone after that. It had been an easy matter to sneak into his tormentors’ empty rooms and set them in flames while the boys were out with friends. He’d gloated over their misfortune in a way that left no doubt in their minds that he was the culprit. They’d never accused him though, and he’d been able to finish his education in relative peace.

  Setting the fires achieved his goal, but at great personal cost. He’d never known he was capable of causing so much pain and damage until he’d unleashed his pent-up anger on those boys. Provoking their had proved to be an effective solution, and it had left him feeling powerful. Perhaps he could employ a similar solution with Huntley. He’d love to see that man quake in terror. Anything to bring him down.

  “Bollocks! I detest that bloody Huntley!” Stansbury felt a warm glow of pleasure as he thought about making Huntley squirm. And Lady Catherine... he’d love seeing her squirm too, but in an entirely different way. “Maybe she can still be mine,” he mumbled, half to himself. “I can’t simply let her go, not with the money she’d bring to the marriage.” And not with knowing what I do about her secret life, he thought. There simply has to be a way to use the information to my advantage. But this was one secret he didn’t want to share with Attwood. At least, not yet.

  “If you could dispose of Huntley, she couldn’t marry him. She’d be free to marry you.” Attwood said, dripping the poisonous, honeyed words into Stansbury’s ear.

  Stansbury shot Attwood a skeptical look. He didn’t trust the man. He was altogether too smooth and manipulative. He’d begun to wonder why he’d thought it wise to enlist him in his vendetta against Huntley. “Why do you care who I marry?”

  “He got me expelled from Eton, he kept me a prisoner, he helped that lot force me to marry a woman I detest and who keeps me on a leash like a pet. Isn’t that enough? I want to hurt him in every way possible. I want to destroy him. If you win Lady Catherine, then all the better.”

  Stansbury grunted and continued to scrutinize Attwood. Eventually, he decided the man was being truthful. He detested Huntley just as much as Stansbury did.

  He mulled over the idea. With Huntley gone, Catherine would no longer have a protector. His own offer of marriage would become her only recourse if she didn’t want to risk being exposed.

  At least he’d been able to raise doubts about Huntley’s financial situation. He’d been spreading rumors for over a month that Huntley was overextended and needed cash. He’d hoped to undermine the man’s success and was pleased when the rumor he’d created had taken hold.

  “I like you, Attwood. You have a devious mind. Let’s see if we can put our heads together and devise a plan to destroy the marquess. Perhaps we can even arrange circumstances so that we can line our pockets in the process. It would be the perfect revenge if we could steal both the man’s money and his lady.”

  43 - Less Than a Week

  On Monday afternoon, less than a week before Catherine’s wedding, she and her mother called on Mrs. Tidwell. Apparently they came on the heels of another pair of callers.

  The foyer was dim after the bright winter sunlight, and Catherine was momentarily blinded.

  “Catherine. What a wonderful surprise.” Elizabeth’s delighted voice greeted her.

  Catherine reached out to take Elizabeth’s hand,
fumbling in the dim light, and gave it a squeeze before removing her cloak. She was relieved to have a friend here to break up the monotonous series of afternoon calls.

  Elizabeth linked arms with her, and they walked into the drawing room together, followed by their mothers.

  “Welcome, ladies,” Mrs. Tidwell said. “And Lady Catherine. I hope you’ll allow me to extend my felicitations on your upcoming marriage.”

  Catherine murmured her thanks.

  Elizabeth pulled her to one side while the three older ladies talked, saying, “Let’s take a turn around the room, shall we? I need to speak to you.”

  Catherine cocked an eyebrow and then looked around the small space pointedly. “Don’t tell me you need to stretch your legs. That could be a challenge in here.” The small room was bursting with knickknacks and furniture, not leaving much room to maneuver.

  “I wanted to ask you about your engagement to Huntley,” Elizabeth said in a hushed voice. “Are you happy about it? Are you certain of your decision?”

  “What? Of course I’m certain.” Catherine said emphatically, causing Mother’s gaze to snap toward them. Catherine noted her attention and smiled reassuringly at her.

  Unfortunately, they also attracted the attention of some of the other young ladies in the room. Lydia Larchmont and her compatriot, Mary Givvens, were also paying a social call.

  “It must be a love match,” Lydia said languidly. “Why else would she marry him unless she wanted the title? Everyone knows that his estate in Scotland is a disaster. That ridiculous house he just purchased will consume the entirety of his funds.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes grew wide. “Lydia!”