The poor man wished to marry as little as she did. But unlike her, he was not free to please himself.
She still could not think of him as a suitor, obviously, but neither did she wish him ill, now that she could see that he was in as awkward a situation as she found herself.
Besides, she felt grateful to him. The trimming Aunt Twining had given her after discovering her arguing with Viscount Maldon behind the potted palm, had inspired her to adopt a new tactic.
Before coming to London, Katherine had thought that dressing dowdily would have been enough to deter prospective suitors. But by the time she ran into Viscount Maldon at Almack’s, she had discovered that the men who were determined to get their greedy paws on a female’s fortune cared nothing for outward appearances. She had been at her wits’ end, until her aunt had warned her that a young lady should never contradict a gentleman, especially not in public.
From that moment on, she developed a great many decided opinions, which always ran counter to whichever gentleman happened to be making up to her at any particular moment. She continued with her policy of repeatedly making over her gowns and wearing her gloves until they split, and gradually, people began to murmur that her aunts had exaggerated the extent of her worth in order to make their termagant of a niece seem marriageable. She still received invitations everywhere, because her aunts had the kind of connections that meant people did not wish to offend them by excluding their niece. But the suitors who had been such a nuisance at the beginning of the season had, to her complete satisfaction, melted away like swallows flying south for the winter.
The only man, in fact, who still sought her out wherever she went was Viscount Maldon. No matter how outrageous the views she expressed, he only seemed to find her posturing amusing. It was a novel and somewhat heady experience to find a man who actually enjoyed pitting his wits against a female. She had begun to think that he looked forward to their verbal fencing matches as much as she did.
Or perhaps it was only that when the task of fawning round the ten women on his list got too much for him, squabbling with her came as something of a relief.
Ah, there he was! Lounging against a pillar on the edge of the dance floor, his arms folded across his chest in an attitude that spoke of a man holding on to his temper by the merest thread.
She wished that she was bold enough to ignore convention completely and simply walk across the crowded room and ask him what was the matter.
But then, as though she had drawn his attention merely by focussing on him, he lifted his head, looked directly at her and without a moment’s hesitation, made straight to her side.
“The damnedest thing!” he blurted. “You won’t believe it!”
If his language had not been enough to demonstrate he was extremely agitated, the way he stood over her—his fists clenched, his normally cool gray eyes flashing with disturbing intensity—would have done so.
“You had better tell me,” she said, fiddling with her dance card, then smiling and making him a curtsy, as though their conversation was only what one would expect to take place between any lady and gentleman in a ballroom.
He bowed and held out his arm. But when she laid her hand on his sleeve, he did not take her onto the dance floor.
“Can’t talk while trying to remember the sequence of steps,” he muttered, steering her through a set of doors and along a short corridor. “Here,” he said, flinging open twin glass doors that led into a conservatory. “I seem to remember there are some benches along here somewhere.”
He led her along a flagged path, bordered by dense foliage. What little light there was came from the stars she could dimly make out through the glass panes of the roof. It struck her, as he flung himself moodily onto a bench and glared up at her, that this was exactly the kind of situation her aunts would have warned her she should never get into, not with a gazetted fortune hunter like Viscount Maldon. Not any gentleman, she corrected herself, sitting next to him and smoothing down her skirts primly. The place was entirely too private. Too…she craned her neck to look up at the stars, while the strains of the music floated faintly through the green misty air…too romantic!
“I see nothing to amuse you about all this,” he snapped, seeing the smile that flitted across her face at the prospect of anything romantic occurring between her and the irascible Viscount Maldon.
“Acton has betrayed me!”
“He…what? Your man of business! How?”
“Well, not betrayed me, precisely,” he grumbled, “but let me down with a display of inefficiency that only makes me wonder how much of our family misfortunes were due to my father’s gambling and how much to Acton’s mismanagement of our affairs!” He ran a hand through his fair hair, leaving his normally neatly combed locks rather endearingly ruffled.
“What has he done?”
“He wrote this damned list.…” With a grimace, he pulled the much mangled sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and waved it at her. “Seemingly with the sole intention of preventing me getting married to anyone! All of these females are completely repulsive to me—” he suddenly ripped the page in half “—and yet I have swallowed my pride and made up to them—” he ripped the pieces in half again “—when all the time, I could have been courting a perfectly charming young woman. Actually stood a chance of marrying someone I could tolerate!” Rip, rip, rip went the paper, his fingers trembling with the violence of his feelings. And then he thrust the resultant mess into her hands, as though somehow he held her to blame for whatever it was that was making him so angry.
“Do you know how I found out about her?”
When she dumbly shook her head, he went on, “I overheard some fellows talking about her in my club. Miss Susannah Hullworthy has more money than all those females put together—” he glared down at the scraps of paper she held in her hands “—and came to London with the express purpose of catching herself a title.” His voice lowered to a growl. “And Acton did not put her on my list!”
“I am sure he had a very good reason.…”
“Yes.” He laughed bitterly. “And do you know what he said it was? He did not consider her suitable, because her money comes from trade! Trade!” He clutched at his already disordered locks, an expression of anguished incomprehension on his face. “What do I care where her money comes from, when she has a delectable figure, a sweet nature and a face that has artists queuing up to paint her?”
“Well,” she pointed out—quite reasonably, she thought, “what is to stop you from courting her now?”
“Now? When I have made myself odious, fawning over a batch of females no self-respecting man would look twice at! Thrust my way into the mob that hang around her already, and try to convince her I am marriage-worthy when everyone in town knows I am not only tainted by the Maldon Madness, but have sunk to the level of becoming one of your insincere, oily, grubby…”
Katherine had grown accustomed to hearing him unload some of his feelings regarding the progress of his ten concurrent courtships. But never had she seen him prey to such flat despair.
“Not grubby,” she put in, hoping to re-awaken his indefatigable sense of humor. “Never grubby.”
He bowed his head, his hands clasped tightly together between his knees. “It is too late in the season now to fix my interest with her. Too many others ahead of me in the game. Any minute now, she could up sticks and head for Brighton, where I simply cannot afford to follow. I have wasted all these weeks.…” He groaned.
Katherine put out a hand and patted him gently on the hunched shoulder he was presenting to her.
“It is never too late,” she said gently. “From my experience of the kind of men that must be hanging about her, you will seem like a godsend. You are quite good-looking, you know, and if she really wants a title and has the least particle of common sense, she will fall head over heels for you within ten minutes of making your acquaintance.”
He raised his head, frowning up at her. “Do not mock me.”
She
smiled. “No, really, even I can concede that you are quite handsome, when you are not scowling. I know that you can be charming, too, when you put your mind to it.…”
“The answer to every maiden’s prayer, in effect.” He sneered.
She flinched, removing her hand from his shoulder to toy with the pieces of paper that had scattered over her skirts when she had reached out to him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “That was uncalled for. I meant no disrespect.”
“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” she replied frostily.
“Oh, come now, Katherine. We have become too close for me to pretend any longer. I know you are not a virgin.”
“Who told you?” She gasped.
His face softened. “You did, you sweet idiot. The very first time we met. You knew exactly what your behind had come into contact with. You understood exactly what I meant when I referred to withering foliage. And far from acting outraged, you chose to find it amusing.”
“You have known from the first?” Her face grew hot. “All this time…”
“Perhaps not quite from the first,” he admitted. “But when I thought about your strange behavior at Almack’s that night, it was the only explanation that fit. The only reason why a girl with your wit, your vibrancy, your connections, would wish to avoid marriage.”
“Fustian!” she snapped. “There may be plenty of good reasons why I do not wish to marry!”
He shook his head in reproof. “Do not think you can lie to me now, Kitty Kat. I know you too well.”
“What is this? Are you trying to threaten me?”
He looked hurt. “How can you even think that? Let alone say it? After I have kept your secret all these weeks?”
“Have you?” She leaned forward and grasped his wrists. “Have you truly kept my shameful secret to yourself?”
“Is it so shameful?” he asked gently. “I find it hard to believe that you were anything but the innocent party in a seduction.”
“No! No, it was not like that! We loved each other. We were going to marry, only…”
“He abandoned you.” His face turned grim. “I should like to meet the bounder who seduced and betrayed you and made you feel unfit to marry anyone else. That is why you will not accept any man’s suit, is it not?”
“Yes.” She sat back, regarding him in wonder. He knew, without her having to spell it out, that she could never accept a proposal from a man she liked, because it would mean having to confess her guilty secret. And knowing the pain of seeing his regard turn to disgust. And what was the point in agreeing to marry a man who did not respect her?
“But he did not abandon me.”
“Then where is he?” he asked harshly. “Why did he not marry you?”
“He died,” she said bluntly, averting her face when she heard his gasp of surprise.
“We grew up together. We were always close. He was not very well off, but he thought, once he had made his way in the world a bit, perhaps got made up to a captain, he could ask my father for my hand in marriage. I would have waited for him. Especially after we…well…did what we did the night before he went away to join his regiment….”
Viscount Maldon seized her shoulders and spun her upper body round so that she faced him. “If any man toyed with any of my sisters, as that boy did you, I would horsewhip him! What kind of man seduces a girl for his pleasure, then abandons her to bear the consequences alone? He could have got you with child!”
“It was not all his fault. The prospect of being parted, for who knew how long, was too much for both of us. Our feelings overcame us. I could have stopped him. But…”
“Oh, yes, I know. He made you believe that if you loved him, you would not refuse.”
She blinked up at him in consternation.
“That is what he did, is it not?”
She went pale. “We simply could not help ourselves,” she insisted. “We loved each other so much, what happened was inevitable. It was as much my fault as his.…”
“In cases like that, it is always the man’s fault. He knew what he was doing was totally, completely unacceptable, and—what the hell…?”
Two large tears were rolling down Katherine’s pale cheeks. “I hate you,” she breathed. “I have always, always, treasured the memory of how he made me feel that night. It was w-wonderful. B-beautiful. But now you—” she hiccupped “—with your nasty, cutting, c-cynical observations—” she drew in an enormous, ragged breath. “You have ruined it all!”
And then she buried her face in her hands and began to sob in earnest.
“Katherine, no, don’t cry,” he pleaded. “I take it all back. I am sure he loved you to distraction. He was just a boy, faced with the prospect of fighting and probably scared of dying…”
“It is no use trying to take back what you said now! He did die!” she wailed. “And of course he loved me!”
“Oh, hell.” He groaned, putting one arm round her shoulders, and gently running his other hand up and down her arm, while she sobbed. “Of course he loved you. What red-blooded male would not love such a passionate, giving, warmhearted girl as you?”
“You are just saying that!”
“No,” he replied, looking somewhat startled. “I really do not think I am. Katherine…Katherine…”
He tipped her face to his, by placing one finger under her chin, and stared, as though stunned, into her eyes for several heartbeats. And then, to her complete astonishment, he cupped her face in his hands and began to wipe away the tear tracks on her cheeks. And there was something in his eyes that took her breath away.
And when she gasped, his eyes fixed on her parted lips. In that instant, everything between them changed irrevocably.
When he lowered his head to kiss her, gently, almost tentatively, she felt as though she had been waiting for this moment ever since he had taken her in his arms and crushed her against his aroused body in the entrance hall of Almack’s.
The mourning she had worn in her heart for David, her first love, fluttered from her like a cloak sliding from her shoulders as she reached up and put her arms about his neck.
It was all the encouragement he needed. With a low groan, he wrapped his arms about her, crushing her to his chest and kissing her with an ardor that made her blood roar through her veins. For the first time in years, she felt alive, truly alive. And so beautiful and desirable, to have roused a man as handsome and fastidious as this to such unrestrained ardor.
His hands swept the length of her back, coming to rest on her bottom. He kneaded and squeezed at her softness, making her breath hitch in her throat, her head loll back in an expression of pure sensuality. He ran his hand down the side of one leg, tugging insistently at her.
He was going to haul her onto his lap.
And she was going to let him! Because she wanted to be close to him. As close as it was possible for two people to be.
She had never felt so completely out of control. Not even with David! He had been tentative about touching her, hesitant in expressing his desire. And she had responded partially out of an impending sense of loss. She had taken him into her body, in a vain attempt to staunch her misery. The whole thing had been a bittersweet experience.
There was nothing sweet about what Viscount Maldon was making her feel. It was hot and intense, born of passion, not the sort of tender, romantic feelings she’d had for her childhood sweetheart. His excitement stoked her own responses almost to fever pitch. She forgot that they were only a few yards away from a crowded ballroom. All she knew was the magic of his hands, the heat of his mouth on her throat, the hardness of his body.
The way he was panting for breath as his lips scorched a trail of blazing kisses down the length of her neck. The heat of his erection against her thigh that summoned an answering warmth, throbbing low in her pelvis.
She knew exactly where this was leading, and she was willing to go there with him. More than willing. Eager.
But then a wave of cold air swirled into the hea
ted conservatory as the doors crashed open. Katherine spun round, to see both her aunts standing in the doorway, identical expressions of horror on their faces.
“Katherine!” Aunt Twining shrieked, clutching at the doorpost for support.
“You cannot mean to fob us off with excuses about studying botany this time!” roared Aunt Berry.
Since she was sprawled half across his lap, her hands still clinging to his broad shoulders, while his own were firmly clamped to her bottom, there was no denying anything.
“Not botany, no,” Viscount Maldon replied calmly.
Katherine shut her eyes, hoping that he would come up with some really, really good reason why they should be embracing each other in this darkened, secluded room.
“It was marriage we were discussing.”
“Marriage?” she heard Aunt Twining say faintly.
No! She attempted in vain to wriggle out of his hold. He had to think of something better than that!
“Yes,” he replied, tightening his grip on her bottom. “Miss Malahithe has just done me the very great honor of agreeing to become my wife.”
“Oh, Katherine, no! Not Viscount Maldon!” protested Aunt Berry.
But before Katherine could explain that marriage had been the very last thing on either of their minds, Viscount Maldon tipped her over his arm, so that she had to cling to his shoulders or tumble to the floor.
And kissed her again.
So thoroughly that both aunts turned and fled.
Chapter 3
Katherine leapt to her feet, causing the shredded paper to flutter to the floor like a cloud of confetti.
And as her eyes were drawn to the remains of Acton’s list, she saw the whole scene in an entirely different light.
She had thought Viscount Maldon had come to care for her so much he could no longer contain himself. She thought he had been as carried away by his feelings as she.
Instead, this whole evening had been a piece of cold calculation on his part.
He had admitted he had heard gossip at his club about other heiresses. He had mentioned the name of another girl whose money came from trade, but had entirely glossed over the part where he had learned of the wealth she had been desperately trying to downplay ever since arriving in London. Taking advantage of what she had looked upon as a friendship, he had lured her to a spot that was the perfect backdrop against which to carry on a spot of seduction, and sneakily coaxed her most intimate secret from her. She rounded on him, fists clenched at her sides. “I really do hate you.”
Notorious Lord, Compromised Miss Page 3
