Indiscreet

by Mary Balogh

  And so she procrastinated.

  Lady Baird, with her maid in tow, had called on her during the morning. So had Miss Downes, bringing a book of sermons that her father had always enjoyed and recommended to his daughter’s consolation. Perhaps Mrs. Winters would be comforted by them?

  There seemed no one left to call, then. But someone knocked on the door late in the afternoon. Perhaps Mr. Adams? He was an extremely kind gentleman, though he had not been able to work the miracle in the village that he had promised. Catherine’s feelings for him had grown during the week from respect to something resembling affection.

  For just the merest fraction of a second after she had opened the door, she thought it really was Mr. Adams. But of course it was not. She hastily tried to shut the door. But his forearm shot up and held it open. They stared at each other for several silent moments.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded at last. It was only at that moment that she realized Lady Baird was standing behind him.

  “Pitting my strength against yours to hold the door open,” he said in his usual bored, rather haughty tone. “It is a battle you cannot win, Catherine. Let us in?”

  She looked from him to Lady Baird, who was biting her lip and looking unhappy.

  Toby was frisking about, panting but not barking, enjoying the company of three of his favorite people.

  Catherine let go of the door and turned to lead the way to the parlor. But Lady Baird’s voice, just behind her, stopped her.

  “No,” she said. “You are more comfortable in the kitchen, I know, Mrs. Winters. I shall make myself comfortable in here. You go into the kitchen with Rex.”

  Catherine turned without a word.

  She was standing staring down into the fire when she heard the kitchen door close quietly behind her.

  13

  “WELL, Catherine,” he said.

  In just over a week she had changed. She appeared to have lost weight. She had certainly lost color. She looked gaunt.

  Of course, it was worse even than Claude’s letter had indicated. It was not just the gossip and Clarissa’s spiteful visit—not that Claude had called his wife spiteful. Apparently Catherine had been ostracized by almost all the community and she had been banished from the church by the Reverend Lovering and even publicly denounced by him on that first Sunday. It was true that Claude had insisted on an apology to Catherine, but the harm had been done. Besides, forced apologies were not worth a great deal.

  She was standing now before the fire, her back to him, shapely and beautiful, and looking rather fragile. He hated being here. He hated this whole situation. He felt so damned guilty. Consequently, unfair as he knew he was being, he resented her. He almost hated her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, as she had asked him at the outer door.

  He could have said that he was standing in her kitchen as he had said earlier that he was holding her door open. But the time for facetiousness had passed.

  “The answer should be rather obvious,” he said. “I have come to do the honorable thing, Catherine. I have come to marry you.”

  He was surprised to hear her laugh, though it was true there was little amusement in the sound.

  “What a wonderful, romantic proposal,” she said. “Am I now supposed to rush into your arms and gaze at you with stars in my eyes?”

  “Not unless you wish to,” he said curtly. “We can hardly pretend that this situation is to the liking of either of us. But it is there and we must deal with it. We will marry.”

  She turned to face him then. She looked at him without saying anything for a few moments. There were faint blue circles under her eyes. The eyes themselves seemed darker, more brown than hazel. Her lips were almost as pale a color as her cheeks.

  “You must put very little value on marriage,” she said at last, “if you can be prepared to enter into it with so little feeling.”

  Good God! He could remember thinking only a couple of weeks or so ago that perhaps in a way he was even more romantic than Claude, who had married for love at the age of twenty. He himself had almost tumbled into marriage a few years ago, of course, but since then he had given up any thought of marrying. He could marry only if he found the perfect love, he had decided, but the older he got, the more he realized that there was no such thing as perfect love.

  Yet now he must marry because animal appetite had made him indiscreet and he had compromised this woman.

  “Feelings hardly matter,” he said, “when one considers the circumstances, Catherine. I gather you have become the scarlet woman of Bodley-on-the-Water.”

  She did not look scarlet. She had grown paler if that were possible.

  “That is my problem,” she said. “And I have not given you leave to use my given name.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Do try not to be ridiculous,” he said.

  She swung back to face the fire and dipped her head. Despite annoyance and frustration and a reluctance to be where he was, doing what must be done, he found himself admiring the elegant arch of her neck. At least, he thought with unwilling resignation, he would have a beautiful wife.

  Wife! The very word in his mind was enough to bring on a wave of panic. But he should be used to the word by now and the idea that he was to be a married man. He had known it for almost a week.

  “Go away,” she said. “I want nothing to do with you or your offer.”

  It would serve her right if he took her at her word and never came back, he thought grimly. And yet he could not order her to confront reality. Her face was evidence enough that she had already done that. He looked around the kitchen, which she had made so cozy. Only her dog was missing from the rocker—he was with Daphne in the parlor. He had destroyed all this for her.

  “Claude and Daphne tell me that you are planning to go to relatives,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said after a moment’s silence.

  “Who?” he asked. “Where? Your husband’s family or your own?”

  “That is none of your concern,” she said.

  “As far as Claude knows,” he said, “none of them have ever visited you here and you have visited none of them. In—five years, is it? You must be a very close family for the bonds to have held through such a long separation. Are you quite sure they will be willing to take in a scarlet woman?”

  “I am not that,” she said. “You know it. Besides, they love me.”

  She must have suffered quite badly during the past week and a half. If there were a family, loving or otherwise, would she not have gone to them before now?

  “There is no family, is there?” he asked.

  She hunched her shoulders but did not answer him.

  “If you leave here,” he said, “where will you go? What will you do?”

  She would start all over again, he supposed, in another village, knowing no one. It would not be easy. He wondered why she had done it five years ago. Had there been some quarrel with her husband’s family or her own? Or was she one of the unfortunates who really had no family at all? And yet, surely there must have been some friends, of her own or of her husband’s.

  Catherine Winters, his future wife, was certainly something of a mystery.

  She did not answer his question.

  “You have no choice,” he said. “You will marry me, Catherine. As the Viscountess Rawleigh no one will dare ostracize you. If any do, they will have me to deal with.”

  She was hugging herself with her arms. “I do have a choice,” she said.

  He made a sound of impatience.

  “You are right,” she said. “There is no family to go to. And if I leave here, I will lose— I will have no means with which to support myself.”

  What the devil? He frowned.

  “I will not marry you,” she said. “But I was offered employment not so long ago. I might take that now if the posit
ion is still open.”

  “What position?” He should be glad that some solution seemed about to present itself, one that would leave him free. He should not be feeling this irritability.

  “Mistress,” she said. “You offered me the position more than once.”

  He stared at her back incredulously. “You will not marry me?” he said. “But you will be my mistress?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was quite firm.

  “Why?” For some reason he felt furiously angry.

  “It would be a business arrangement,” she said. “It could be ended at any time by either of us. I would just ask, please, that there be some settlement agreed upon if you are the one to end it—provided I have given good service, of course.”

  Provided— Devil take it, she sounded as if she was applying for the position of housemaid or secretary. And he had offered to make her his wife!

  She turned to face him again and looked him calmly in the eye. “I need employment,” she said. “Is your offer still good?”

  His sister was across the narrow passageway, a mere few feet away, waiting for the official confirmation of his betrothal. His brother was waiting at Bodley for the same news. All of them were preparing to go into action as soon as this formality of an offer was over with, letting it be known that his relationship with Catherine Winters during his stay at Bodley had been a courtship, that his short absence had been for the purpose of traveling to London for a special license so that his nuptials would not have to be delayed one day longer than was necessary.

  They were to be depicted as a couple deeply, perhaps not too cautiously in love. Head over ears.

  And she was calmly offering herself as his mistress.

  “Yes.” He strode toward her. “Yes, by God, it is.” He grabbed her none too gently by the waist—she surely had lost weight—and jerked her against him. He took her mouth rather savagely, thrusting his tongue deep inside, moving it in a deliberate simulation of copulation.

  By God, if she was going to be his mistress, she would earn her keep. He was furious with her.

  She was not impassive. She bent her body to his. Her arms came about him, one about his waist, the other about his shoulders. She held her mouth wide for him. Her eyes were closed. But her temperature did not soar with his own. She was already a mistress, performing her duty.

  Damn her!

  “I will return tonight,” he said, looking down into her eyes without releasing his hold of her. “Be ready for me and get some rest before I come. You look as if you need it. We will discover how good you are and how quickly you learn.”

  She did not flinch. He did not even realize that he had spoken deliberately to make her do so until she did not.

  “I will be ready, my lord,” she said.

  “Rex, damn you.” He never swore in the hearing of women.

  “Tomorrow we will leave,” he said. “I will set you up in London with your own house and servants and carriage. You are going up in the world, Catherine Winters. You will like London.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “No,” she said. “Not London.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Not London?” he said. “Where, then, pray?”

  “Not London,” she said.

  “I suppose,” he said, “you expect me to take you to Stratton Park and set you up in a cozy apartment there. It would be wonderfully convenient, I must confess, but a trifle scandalous, perhaps. I might find that I had put myself beyond the pale. Or perhaps you think to stay here? You would expect me to travel to Derbyshire every time I wish to bed you?”

  For the first time her face had flushed. “I know what is expected of a mistress,” she said. “But not London, please.”

  Was that fear he saw in her eyes for a moment? She lowered them immediately and dropped her arms rather awkwardly to her sides. He released her and crossed the room to look out the kitchen window at her back garden and the river beyond. He had expected this all to be accomplished within a couple of minutes at the longest. Daphne must be wondering what was taking so long.

  “This will just not do, Catherine,” he said. “If I come here tonight, someone is bound to see me. I am sure your cottage has become a favorite focus for watchers. That is why I brought Daphne with me this afternoon. And the fact of my return will not have gone unnoticed. If you drive away with me tomorrow morning, many people will see. Your reputation will be gone without recall. That cannot be what you want.”

  She laughed but said nothing.

  “I cannot allow it,” he said. “I compromised you. I must make amends. No, I will not take you as my mistress. Only as my wife.”

  There was silence behind him.

  “Well?” he prompted at last, half turning to look at her.

  She was standing where he had left her, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes closed.

  “My choices have all been taken from me, have they not?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  And his own too. But he had known that his had all gone as soon as he had read Claude’s letter. He was almost accustomed to the fact by now. Almost, but not quite. He was to live the rest of his life in a loveless marriage. It was not a thought to be dwelled upon.

  “That seems to have been settled at last, then,” he said briskly. “We will be married tomorrow. Here. By the Reverend Lovering. It will be necessary for the restoring of your reputation.”

  Her eyes widened. “Tomorrow?” she said.

  “I brought a special license with me,” he said. “I realized the necessity of marriage before I came here. It will be here tomorrow in the presence of my brother and sister. There is no one you wish to invite?”

  She had paled again. “Your special license will be invalid,” she said.

  What now? He frowned at her.

  “You had to have my name on it?” she said.

  “Of course,” he said. “Catherine Winters, widow. Catherine with a C. Correct?”

  She looked down at her spread hands for a moment and then directly at him again. “I am not a widow,” she said. “I have never been married. And my last name is not Winters. It is Winsmore.” Her eyes watched his warily.

  Good Lord!

  She was a lady, very obviously. What the devil was a single lady doing living alone among virtual strangers? And masquerading under a false name and a false status.

  A lady he was about to marry.

  “Perhaps,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “you would care to tell me your story, Miss Winsmore.”

  “No,” she said. “That is all you need to know. You may withdraw your marriage offer if you wish. I will not hold you to it. It was made, after all, to someone who does not exist.”

  He stared at her for a few moments before striding to the door, jerking it open, and calling to his sister, who was talking to Toby—or herself.

  She came immediately, the dog trotting happily at her heels, and looked questioningly from him to Catherine.

  “Daphne,” he said, “I would ask for your congratulations. This lady has just now done me the honor of betrothing herself to me. You will wish to make her acquaintance. Meet Miss Catherine Winsmore.”

  She gave him a look as if he had two heads and then turned to look at Catherine. “Winsmore?” she said. “Catherine Winsmore?”

  Catherine was flushed again. And still wary. “Yes,” she said.

  Daphne darted him a strange look before returning her gaze to his betrothed. “Oh,” she said. And then she appeared to give herself a mental shake and smiled brightly. “Well, it took the two of you long enough to come to that satisfactory conclusion. I am very pleased. Catherine—may I call you Catherine?—I am delighted. We are going to be sisters.”

  She crossed the room with light steps and hugged Catherine, who looked at him over his sister’s shoulder and bit her lip.

  “
Thank you,” she said.

  “You must call me Daphne,” his sister said, and then she turned to him and hugged him tightly too. “Rex, I am delighted for you. You are going to be happy. I know. The wedding will be tomorrow? We are going to have to be frantically busy for the rest of the day.”

  “Not tomorrow,” he said dryly. “I have to return to London. The name I have on the license is the wrong one.”

  Daphne looked at him closely. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “How awkward. How will we explain yet another journey to London?”

  “My eager and tyrannical sister and brother and their spouses insist on elaborate preparations,” he said briskly, watching Catherine’s face. “The impatient bridegroom cannot endure the unexpected wait for his wedding and his bride and has therefore been banished to the home of friends for a week.”

  “It will do,” Daphne said thoughtfully. She smiled. “Catherine, we are going to have enormous fun for the coming week. We have a wedding to prepare. I have it, of course!” She clapped her hands. “You must move to Bodley House for the week. That is why poor Rex must leave. You can return here for the night before your wedding, after his return.”

  “Well, Catherine?” he said. She had been very quiet.

  “It will be as you wish,” she said.

  The submissive bride. He hoped she was not going to play the part of submissive wife when they were married. He would be bored within a week.

  “Well.” He went toward her. “I shall leave early in the morning and see you on my return.” With Daphne watching, he did not know quite how to take his leave of her. But she played her part. She smiled at him.

  “Have a safe journey,” she said.

  He did not know if she lifted her face for his kiss or merely so that she could look into his face. But he kissed her, lightly and briefly, on the lips before turning away.

  “Come, Daphne,” he said.

  They had come in his carriage—so that no one in the village could possibly miss his visit or misunderstand its purpose. He handed his sister inside, climbed in after her, and closed the door. The door of the cottage, he noticed when he turned his head, was already shut.