“It is not your name,” Katherine said through clenched teeth as her hands tightly balled into fists.
He shrugged and replaced his serviette into his lap as he reached for another biscuit. “It’s not your choice. I will call you what I want to call you and you will just have to deal with that.”
“I will not answer.” Her voice was starting to grow shrill, and Katherine knew she was reaching a breaking point. It galled her that he knew how to taunt her so very well.
He offered her one more careless shrug. “Then I will continue to call you Kate and worse until you do.”
A sound so high she nearly could not hear it escaped her. “Insufferable man!” she screeched.
“Impossible woman!” he mimicked near perfectly with a smirk.
“Aren’t mornings with Derek and Katherine the best?” Colin sighed to Beverton.
Katherine gathered up what control she had remaining, and said, “Might I have a word with you in private, Whitlock?”
He grinned rather impishly. “Going to scold me, are you, Kate?”
“Katherine.”
“Whatever. Chamber pot, remember.”
“Yes, I remember,” she snapped. Then she took a steadying breath. “I need to speak with you. Alone.”
“That’s not likely,” he said as he tossed a grin to his friends, which Colin returned and Beverton did not. “I’d like to keep my head firmly attached to my body and all of my limbs too, if I can help it.”
“So little confidence in your own strength?” she retorted before she could stop herself. A duchess never reacts in haste or retaliation, came the scolding voice of her mother in her head.
That was one of her least favorite rules. Katherine was always reacting in haste and retaliation where her husband was concerned. It was the only way to behave around him.
“Bravo, Kate,” Whitlock said with a small amount of applause. “That was a brilliant retort. But as I was going to say, I will not be removing myself from this sumptuous breakfast, nor will I ask my friends to. Therefore, if you wish to speak to me you will either have to wait until I am finished or say it here in front of these two gentlemen.”
“Derek, I can…” Lord Beverton began, but he was silenced with a glare, and then chanced a look at Katherine, who was surprised by his actions. Perhaps having a wife had changed him.
Katherine looked back to her husband, who obviously had no idea what she needed to speak to him about. If he did, there was no way he would have even suggested that she do this here and now in front of his friends. But if that was what Whitlock wanted, then that was what Whitlock was going to get.
“Very well,” she said slowly, knowing that she should not, but would, enjoy every single moment of his discomfort, in spite of her own mortification, “then I will tell you now, with your friends present.”
A quick lifting of his brows was all the satisfaction Katherine needed as Whitlock’s always so carefully composed features shifted to complete surprise. Oh, this would be sweet indeed.
“I need you to stay in London for at least another two weeks,” she told him, folding her hands in front of her.
He recovered his surprise and snorted. “Whatever for? I’ve already been here three days, which is entirely too long as it is.”
She offered a very small smile, which made his eyes widen, just a touch, with worry. “I need you to stay because people think you have come into town to get me with child.”
Colin choked on his drink instantly, Beverton closed his eyes and put a hand to his forehead, and her husband merely sat there stunned, though his face went shockingly devoid of color. “How do you…?” he started to say in a very weak, very hoarse voice.
“My sister overheard some of the ladies yesterday,” Katherine said, enjoying this far too much to even feel mortified any longer. “You know Aurelia, she never lies about gossip.”
His harsh swallowing told her that he did know that. After a moment, he said, “So I need to stay because…”
“Because otherwise people will think me incapable of sustaining your attention or they will think you unable or unwilling to further your bloodlines,” she finished, waiting for his response.
He closed his eyes and shook his head for a moment, and then he looked back at her. “How long, did you say?”
“Two weeks,” she repeated, feeling victory nigh at hand. “And you would not have to come later in the year, if you wished.”
“It’s a trick,” Colin muttered aloud, not caring that she could hear him. “It’s all a trick, Derek, don’t listen…”
“Shut up, Colin,” the other two men said at the same time. Then Beverton continued, “Derek, Moira and I will stay as long as you want. She’s enjoying herself very much.”
Her husband nodded, then looked back to her. “Very well. I will stay another two weeks from today. Maybe that will quiet the rumors for some time.”
But not forever.
The unsaid words hung in the air, and Katherine and Whitlock held each other’s gaze, each sensing what the other was thinking at the moment. The time would have to come soon.
Oblivious to everything, Colin snorted. “Well, I, for one, am not staying,” he announced.
“Who asked you to?” Katherine snapped as she flicked her eyes to him.
That earned her a grin from Beverton, who gave her the barest hint of a nod in approval. Perhaps the earl would grow on her with time.
Derek ignored them all as his mind raced. He spent his whole life held to a high standard of behavior, and had been proud of the fact that his reputation was spotless and without comment, save for his unhappy marriage, which was not so surprising as many other people had them as well. But now…
He looked back to Kate. He would only think of her as Kate now, it was too much fun. She was watching him carefully, and for once, her eyes on him did not make him want to cringe.
He should have met with her in private.
“I think we should talk in private,” he told her, his voice hoarse still.
“What?” Colin gasped in horror. “Why?”
“Colin, if you want to be welcome in anybody’s house any further, you need to stop talking,” Nathan ordered firmly. “In fact, I think we have stayed long enough. Let’s leave some breakfast for Lady Whitlock, and Derek, we will meet you at the stables.”
Derek nodded, but Kate shook her head. “Thank you, Lord Beverton, but it is not necessary. I have quite finished with what I have to say, and I think my husband needs the distraction.”
Derek looked at her in confusion. Was she actually being nice to him?
She looked far too smug, and he felt his heart resume normal pacing. No, she was just being Katherine the Terror, everything on her terms, in her way. For all he knew, she had started the rumors herself just to spite him. “Well, I was going to oblige you,” he sneered at her, feeling rather angered by her cavalier attitude towards the whole situation, “but if you would rather I go, then absolutely, I will do so.”
“I do want you gone,” she told him, her eyes flashing, but at least the smugness had vanished. “I never wanted you here in the first place.”
“Then you shouldn’t have sent for me!” Derek yelled, knowing full well that he was not nearly as composed as he preferred to be in her presence, but not particularly caring at the moment. How dare the Society of London think they could gossip about what did or did not go on within his bedchamber? He had quite enough to be going on with.
“We have already been over this!” she returned, her cheeks coloring with indignation. “I never meant for you to come!”
“Then why the hell did you even write, Kate?” he bellowed, shooting to his feet, upending his breakfast plate all over Colin, who squawked faintly in protest.
“Some of us,” she retorted loudly, “maintain an air of sophistication and respectability and decorum regardless of how distasteful the subject may be.”
“Oh, come off it, Kate!” Derek said in disgust. “Sophistication and decorum
? Nobody would have known if you hadn’t told me about the great tragedy of your mother’s death. You had no cause to even inform me, and order me here I might add, if you didn’t want me. Lord knows I wouldn’t have come on my own for that hag, believe me.”
“You go too far,” Katherine whispered as her eyes clouded with a sheen of tears, but Derek was beyond caring.
“Forgive me for that,” he said sarcastically with a dramatic bow to her, “since you have always been so kind and deserving of considerate treatment, and never say things beyond the bounds of respectability. What a horrible example I will be for our children.”
“If we ever have any,” she spat, even as her face paled at his words. “At the moment, I do not know if I would rather bring anything with your bloodlines into this world or spend an eternity being the brunt of every joke and gossip in London.”
“Well, you don’t see me carting you off to bed, now do you?” he retorted as he headed towards the door. “The world has enough harpies in it without your help.”
“How dare you!” she screeched, rooted in place as she was, watching him go, and his friends following, both of them entirely silent.
“Oh, I dare whenever, however, and with whomever I please, Kate,” Derek said with one last look at her, his tone low and dangerous, “and I do not need to refer to you or to any other person on this earth to do so.” He turned away, and muttered, “Bloody whore,” under his breath to his friends, neither of whom found it amusing.
“Derek,” Nathan hissed as he took his hat and gloves from the maid, “that’s hardly called for. What if she heard you?”
“Then may I joyfully rot in hell,” he barked as he brushed passed them both and headed for Dennison’s stables, walking briskly and recklessly, not caring if either of them followed behind.
“Well, it is a beautiful animal, but I just don’t think…”
“What did you do, Derek?”
All of the men silenced at once and froze at the terrifying cry of one Moira Hammond, Countess of Beverton. Slowly, they all turned to face the approaching threat, who was marching very purposefully towards them, her expression murderous.
“Moira?” Nathan asked tentatively, but she silenced him with a look.
“Darling, I will speak with you in a moment. Currently, I only have business with Derek.” She flicked her gaze to him, and the other men around Derek each took a large step away from him, as if to protect themselves from the fire in her eyes.
“Hello, Moira,” Derek offered with a half-smile, his voice steady, even as his knees trembled just a touch.
“What. Did you. Do.” There was no hint of a question in her voice, and Derek could not help but swallow involuntarily.
“When?”
“Just now.”
His brow furrowed. “I’ve been here, Moira. We came over early to check on your stables and the horses.”
“Before.”
“Before?” He had a nagging sense about what she was trying to get at, but he would feign ignorance as long as he could. Much as he liked, respected, and, yes, feared Moira, he was not about to discuss his wife with her.
“Would you like me to elaborate and refresh your memory, since you have obviously lost the ability to recall your actions this morning?” Moira asked, folding her arms, her blue eyes lancing into his green ones.
“Please.”
“Derek,” Nathan warned softly, looking at his wife with anxiety, but Derek ignored him.
Moira snapped her brows together. “I went over to your house just now, as I have every morning and afternoon, to call upon your wife and ask after her. I, unlike so many others, present company included, feel sorry for her and for what she must be going through.” Her tone was harsh and scolding, and Derek rather imagined this was what her children would experience when they came along and misbehaved. She would be a very good disciplinarian. “When I was told, yet again, that she would not see anyone as she was still mourning, I asked if the butler thought there was anything I could do to lessen her grief. He confided to me that he did not know, as Lady Whitlock had been crying in her room since breakfast, and nobody had seen her since.”
A small, guilty feeling started in Derek’s chest and with each beat of his heart, it stretched further and further outwards until it encompassed just about every part of him. “Well,” he said uneasily, “perhaps she simply wanted some peace and quiet and to not be disturbed. She is in mourning, after all.”
“That is why she stays at home, Derek,” Moira said with a slow shake of her head, her eyes never leaving his. “Why is she staying in her room, Derek?”
“I don’t know,” he lied, trying to appear confused.
Moira flicked her gaze to Colin first, who flushed a bit and looked away, then to her husband, who steadily met her gaze, but it was clear he was uneasy. For a long moment, she continued to stare at Nathan, and he at her, as if they were communicating silently. Then Moira looked back to Derek. “I think you had better tell me, Derek.”
“I don’t think it is your business, Moira,” he said tartly, though without malice.
She snorted. “Nor is it Colin’s or Nathan’s, and yet they know all. And you had better tell me yourself, or I will have Nathan tell me later.”
Derek’s eyes widened. “He wouldn’t…”
“Oh, he would,” Moira interrupted with a smile that was not kind. “He doesn’t approve of whatever it was, and even if that were not the case, I have ways of making him talk that I cannot employ with you.”
Fighting the impulse to look to Nathan for confirmation, Derek swallowed and gave in with a nod. He very briefly told her what had transpired that morning, and, along with the occasional add-in from Colin, who possessed a keen memory for exact words, the story was told without variation.
When he had finished, it seemed that everybody stood yet further away from him. He glanced around and found Duncan and Geoff, who had not been privy to the details looking at him in shock. Colin and Nathan had no expression at all.
“Well,” Moira said finally, as she glanced to Nathan, who nodded his affirmation of the details, “that was enlightening.”
“Was it?” Derek could not help but asking.
“Yes. Now I understand why Katherine cannot stand you.”
Though the group had been silent before, the air became quieter still at her words, and nothing in all of creation moved.
“I beg your pardon?” Derek asked softly, his voice taking on that dangerous tone that seemed its habit of late.
“Oh, don’t you think you can put on airs with me,” Moira said with a shake of her head, her eyes bright. “I do not care how rich you are, how important you think you are, or that you have any title at all, let alone a high ranking one. If I could slap you right now, I would do so. But I don’t think I could stop with just one, and I am really not in the mood to be hauled off by my husband for beating the sense out of you in front of all your friends.”
A number of his friends choked back a laugh, but they were all stifled rather quickly.
Derek put his tongue over his teeth for a moment, and focused on breathing. “What gives you such righteous indignation, Moira?”
“The notion that you would treat Katherine in that way, that you think so little of her and her situation to attack her in such a way. I know I don’t know her,” she said as she raised a hand to the protests that she somehow knew were rising in him, “but did you even think what it meant for her to come and face you after hearing those words?”
Derek suddenly felt his throat tighten, and he could not have spoken should he have wished to.
“Knowing how the two of you feel about each other,” Moira continued, “I can only imagine how it must have felt for a woman who is as proud as she is to come and tell you that she needed you to stay. Did she really say that it was about your reputation?”
He nodded slowly, his mind working as though through mud.
A smile flickered across her lips. “I doubt she really thought that.
Everybody knows how Society feels about you. It wasn’t about you at all, or at least, very little. She told you it would involve you because she couldn’t admit that she would be the only one affected, and considering the arrangement you have, she would be left here all alone to deal with the shame and the gossip and the rumors.”
Derek opened his mouth, but Moira went on without giving him opportunity to answer.
“She just lost her mother, Derek. Her mother. Yes, she was, by all accounts, a horrible woman, and nobody else misses her, but did you ever consider that Katherine might? I don’t care if she is the spawn of Hades, she deserves a little understanding from her husband, of all people.”
“Moira,” Nathan said softly as he watched Derek.
“I’m almost finished,” she assured him, still looking at Derek as well. “I’m not saying that she is blameless, Derek. But the fact remains that at this moment, your wife, whom you consider a tyrant and a cold-hearted witch, is upstairs in her room, refusing everything and everyone. I am asking you to put aside your need to spite her just for a while. Show her that there is a man with a heart inside her husband.”
Derek could not move, could not breathe. He had never felt more ashamed of himself in his life. While he knew perfectly well that he was exactly the same height and weight and stature that he had been only moments before, at the moment he felt about three feet tall and barely the weight of a blade of grass. She could have knocked him over with a whisper.
He felt Moira’s hand on his arm and found himself looking into those eyes of hers again. “I wouldn’t say these things if I didn’t like you, Derek,” she said with a smile. “You know that, right?”
He nodded almost mechanically, but he did know it, and he liked Moira in return. He could not say it at the moment, though his throat worked as if it wanted to anyway.
“But don’t think I won’t smack you later,” she said, her grin turning impish. “A good whack on the back of the head can do wonders for a man.” She looked around at the lot of them, then winked at her husband, who smiled broadly. Then she turned on her heel and left without looking back.
Married to the Marquess Page 6
