Love Stories of Enchanting Ladies: A Historical Regency Romance Collection

by Bridget Barton

  It was clear to him that Eleanor was making her secret statement, her acknowledgement of Catherine’s presence. And he knew that he ought to have done something about it, and he should have done it long before the ball.

  He knew that he had convinced himself that all would be well, that Catherine would not yet have expected him to have made an announcement of any kind to his father, let alone Eleanor. He had assumed that after eight long years she would not mind waiting a little longer. But why should she? And why had he been so foolish as to drag his heels?

  After all, when he had last met her at Stromlyn Lake and declared his love for her, Thomas had meant it with every fibre of his being. He had always loved Catherine and always would, and now it seemed very likely that he had, with his foolishness, lost her forever.

  He had kept his note to her as brief as possible since he had wanted to say everything he had to say in person, just as he had before. He did not want to apologize on paper; he wanted to apologize face-to-face. Catherine deserved that much at least, and he thought it his only hope of keeping them together.

  When she had turned her back on him at the ball, Thomas had known her to be angry and upset. He felt dreadful, knowing it was all his fault and knowing that she had every right to feel that way. Even if he had proposed to her, what woman should have to put up with the sight of a man she had loved and waited for so long in the company of another? And certainly, a woman of Catherine’s calibre should not have to put up with it; he should have realized that. He should have acted more quickly, been more forceful, taken back a little of his old personality.

  And it was that personality that he knew Catherine had fallen in love with all those years ago. If he no longer had his spirit of adventure, his determination to speak his mind and be disagreeable in front of his own family, then what was left of him for her to love?

  She would no more love him than she would have loved Pierce had she known him to be so different now.

  When had he become this man? When had he lost his spirit of adventure and his determination to fly in the face of convention? What had happened to the young man who cared so little for the opinions of his overbearing family that he had sought out the daughter of his father’s enemy, made it his business to befriend her?

  For that man was certainly not at the ball the night before. That was a very different man altogether, a man who had allowed the weight of spurious responsibility to hold him down. Even though he had fully decided that he would accept his disinheritance for love, still he had acted in a way that had tended to protect his family’s interest rather than Catherine’s.

  He had acted as the heir to the Duchy instead of the young man who had raced to Derbyshire and fruitlessly searched the county for his one true love. Where had that man gone? What had become of him?

  Thomas stopped his pacing and sat down on the grass at the side of the lake. He stared into the glassy water, at the beautiful, faithfully inverted reflection of the trees that surrounded it. He had hoped against hope that Catherine would come today, that she would meet him there in that place which had always been so very special to them both.

  It was as if the lake had been the sole witness to their burgeoning love when they had been but twenty years old and so very full of excitement, adventure, and courage.

  Could his courage really have gone forever? Or was it simply buried deep beneath the layers of guilt and duty that had overtaken his soul on the day his brother died? In his guilt, Thomas had simply become Pierce. Or at least he had been determined to take on his role and fulfill it to the best of his abilities, at any rate. Anything to assuage his dreadful guilt and honour his brother’s memory.

  But that had been before; that had been when he had thought he would never see Catherine again. Was this really what Pierce would have wanted now?

  That sad young man who had tried for month upon month to atone for the pain he had caused, would he have wanted to see Thomas just follow in his footsteps, forever trying to please an old man who could not be pleased?

  In the months before he died, Pierce had come to see through it all, even if Thomas would not acknowledge it. Pierce had come to realize that he would never gain his father’s good approval, and Thomas was sure that, in the end, his brother had decided not even to seek it anymore. If he had lived, perhaps Pierce would have made a better job of all of this. He had changed so much and grown into his own person, however short-lived that had been.

  Thomas knew that he would have made a fine heir and an even better Duke had he lived because Pierce had learned from his own mistakes; he had changed. He would have found a way to tolerate their father without bowing to his every whim, and Thomas, staring hopelessly into the lake, realized that he had not done the same.

  For all his pride in his individuality, intelligence, and wit as a young man, he had grown into a silent adult, a man who had been persuaded to take Lady Eleanor Barchester for a wife simply because she had good breeding and her father’s great wealth. He had become everything he had despised before, everything he had mocked Pierce for being.

  On the night before the ball, he had displayed his new character most completely to the only woman he would ever love. Catherine was nobody’s fool, nobody on the earth. He had never known anyone of sharper intellect and keener perceptions than Catherine Ambrose, and in that she had remained constant.

  Catherine had suffered exile, complete estrangement from the brother she loved; she had been the one to pay the price. And yet she was still standing, still herself after all these years. She was still courageous where he now seemed to lack. And of all the people there in the ballroom, Catherine Ambrose would have been the only one to truly see it, to know it with certainty.

  In his heart, Thomas knew that she would not come, not this time. She had given him a chance to prove himself, and he had failed her miserably.

  It had been time for him to suffer disownment, to put his love before anything else, and he had failed utterly. He had known when he had penned his letter to her that morning that there was a very good chance that she would not come to him there at Stromlyn Lake.

  “My Darling Catherine,

  I fear things did not go quite as planned last night, and I am bound to apologize for all of it. But I should not like to apologize here on paper, but rather to see you in person so that I might do it properly. We still have much to discuss, and I should have liked to have had the opportunity to speak to you last night, but it did not present itself. I know you turned your back on me with purpose and do not blame you, but I would beg that you turn back towards me now and at least meet me today at Stromlyn Lake so that I might explain.

  I shall make my way to the lake at midday and wait there in hopes of seeing you at some point thereafter. Please allow me this one opportunity to explain myself and make amends for what I know now was clearly very hurtful behaviour.

  With all my love,

  Thomas.”

  He ran over the contents of his brief letter in his mind, feeling certain that he had explained enough in it to leave her with the distinct impression that, as far as he was concerned, his proposal to her still stood.

  But perhaps it did not matter to her now if his proposal still stood. Perhaps Catherine Ambrose had seen enough of him at the ball, seen the changes in him that he was only realizing now himself. Perhaps she now thought him weak and vacillating, a shadow of his former self. Surely as she had looked upon him at the ball, pleasing his father and pleasing a young woman he had no intentions of marrying, she had seen nothing of the vibrant youth he had once been.

  She would have looked at him and known him to be no different than the rest, no better. All the clever ways and witty words of his youth seemed so far away now, and yet he knew it was all still there deep down inside him.

  Thomas knew that the root of it all was the idea that he would be disinherited. The thing that Catherine had suffered with grace, he was silently railing against. It was true that he had never particularly wanted to be the Duke o
f Shawcross, and he knew that that had not changed. If only Pierce was still alive, ready to be the Duke of Shawcross himself, Thomas would have been overjoyed.

  But that was never going to happen, and his father was never going to change. He could not imagine a single circumstance in which his father would give his blessing to any union between a Carlton and an Ambrose. He knew his father well enough to know that he would most certainly cut off his nose to spite his face and would gladly see the Duchy finally fall into the hands of distant heirs, relations he had either never seen, or not seen for years, than to forgo the pleasure of punishing his son for the crime of being his own man.

  But should any of that stop Thomas being his own man? Could he go back to being his twenty-year-old self, the young man who would have given up everything for her?

  It was no good wondering what might have been had he found her all those years ago, eloped with her and married her. And it did not matter anyway; what truly mattered was what happened now. When he compared the idea of losing his security to losing Catherine, only the idea of losing Catherine truly made him wretched.

  And it would feel even worse than it had felt all those years ago to lose her, for then she had loved him. If he lost her again and lost her by his own foolishness, he would undoubtedly lose her love also, and that was the very thing that he could not bear to think about.

  Thomas rose to his feet and brushed the dusty earth from his breeches and boots. He rose to his full height and stretched, staring up into the blue sky and squinting into the pale sun.

  He did not have any more regard for his father now than he did all those years ago; what on earth did he have to lose? For him to continue as he was doing would be to act as Pierce had done, and for what? If his brother’s death had not changed the Duke, surely nothing could.

  Thomas knew that he had to reclaim his own soul, for it was the only way to hold onto Catherine’s heart. He could not be the man that she had seen the night before at the ball, or she would be lost to him forever. He could only be who he truly was deep down, the adventurous, courageous, confident Thomas Carlton of eight years ago.

  No more letters, no more secret smiles across crowded ballrooms. Thomas was going to go right to her; he was going to untether his horse and ride him all the way to Barford Hall. He would ride right up to the front door and jump down from his horse with the old confidence.

  Whether he was welcome or not, Thomas was going to show her just how much he loved her. And he was going to show her just how worthy he would be of her love. He would be the man that she remembered, the man with the self-same character she had known him to have all the years they had been apart.

  Thomas took his horse’s reins and led him up the steep incline, scrambling all the way and wondering how his beloved Catherine, now so used to the hills and peaks of Derbyshire, might easily overtake him in the circumstances. And the man that he was, the man he had always been, would love the idea.

  All he had to do now was to find her, not to beg for forgiveness or try to persuade her but show her that he was the man he had always been. They were meant to be together, and he did not care where they ended up living, it mattered not.

  He loved Catherine with all his heart and, as he finally climbed up onto his horse’s back and heeled him away, he was absolutely determined to have her.

  Chapter 29

  “I am sure if you take one of the horses and ride out there now, he will still be there,” Celia said and not for the first time.

  “Aunt Celia, I know you want the best for me, but I cannot ride out to Stromlyn Lake, not this time. I will not meet him in secret anymore. I will not do it.”

  “But there is nothing to say that he would wish to meet you in secret forever. Perhaps a little secrecy is just necessary now as you work it all out between you.”

  “After eight years, Aunt Celia, and a very great deal of heartbreak, I am not inclined to fall in with the plans of anybody. I make no secret of the fact that I love Thomas and have done for so long. But I have managed without him all these years, and I will continue to manage without him. I will not share secret glances in the hopes that his father might be kept in the dark; I will not be a secret. I am worth more than that; I know I am.”

  “And I am sure that Thomas knows it too, my dear. I cannot help thinking that he is in a very awkward situation at the moment, something which must be carefully negotiated.”

  “But why? When he is as sure as I am that his father will disown him, what is to negotiate? Either he loves me and has the courage to announce it, or he does not. It is as simple as that, you see, no negotiation required.”

  “When you say it like that, my dear, I cannot find an argument to counter. And yet I cannot help thinking that if you could climb over this last obstacle, it would be the last. You see, I have watched you these last years and seen everything your tender heart has gone through. I cannot bear the idea that so much pain and torment has been in vain, to no purpose. Especially when you are so close to your happiness, Catherine.”

  Philip had quietly entered the drawing-room as Celia spoke and padded noiselessly across the thick ornamental rug to take a seat opposite his sister.

  “You have determined not to meet him?” he said gently.

  “Please tell me that I am not to disappoint you too, Philip,” Catherine said feeling suddenly exhausted.

  She knew that her brother and aunt wanted the very best for her, but she dearly wished that she could have followed her Uncle Charles and Henry and gone down to the lake to fish for a while. She did not enjoy the occupation, but she would have found Charles’ company very easy on a day when her own spirits were so low.

  And to spend the day with Henry would have reminded her just how much she did have in this life, so much so that she could live it all without the wonder or worry of marriage. If she had Henry, she had everything she would ever need.

  Her aunt and uncle had allowed her so much, had helped her to keep the child with her that in any other circumstances would have been raised in an orphanage. She knew she would be grateful to them for the rest of her days and glad to spend her life in Derbyshire.

  “Catherine, all I want is for you to be happy. I would not wish to pressure you into anything. But perhaps there is some sense in what Celia says.”

  “There is sense in what Celia says, Philip. But I am the person who has lived the last eight years, the person who cannot make the same mistakes again.” Philip looked crestfallen, and Catherine wished that she could say something that he wanted to hear.

  Philip had a good heart, as did Celia, and she knew that both of them wanted to see a happy ending to all of this. They wanted to see a young family reunited, a child legitimized, and a woman returned to her rightful place.

  What she could not tell Philip was that she almost wished she had never returned to Hertfordshire. As much as she loved and missed her brother, seeing Thomas again had made a life which she had simplified as best she could into something very much more complicated.

  Catherine wanted more than anything to pack up their things, load the carriage, and return to Ivy Manor. She wanted to spend her mornings teaching her son everything he needed to know to progress in the world and her afternoons worrying as she watched him climb higher and higher in his favourite tree.

  She wanted to go back to the High Peak and stay there forever, never to return and never once to hear how Thomas Carlton got along in his life. As far as she was concerned, he could marry the neat, spiteful little Eleanor Barchester, finally become the Duke of Shawcross, and have as hollow a life as it was possible to have. She would not concern herself with it anymore.

  Thomas was not the man she had once known; she had seen that last night. When he had looked at her across the ballroom, she had seen a man who had lost his courage somewhere along the way. But what a thing if she had lost her courage, if she had not fought all this time. Her beloved child would be living in dire circumstances somewhere, and she would have run headfirst into the nea
rest suitor who would have her, purely and simply out of fear.

  No, she had never wanted for courage. And since she had never wanted for courage, she would not stand to look at it in him.