‘What news, Lady Kate?’
Alicia was looking at her expectantly, and Kate realised she had been daydreaming again. A new habit. ‘We have had a letter from my brother Harry. As you know, he’s in Spain.’
‘Trying to discover what happened to my husband.’
‘Jamie. Yes. Harry writes from Madrid, but he is on his way to Seville. There is a man there, Pablo Garrido, who was apparently in command of the unit to which Jamie was assigned. Harry’s letter says—Harry believes that this man Garrido may be able to put him in touch with the man who was actually with Jamie when he died.’
Alicia’s hands fluttered to her breast. ‘You mean Xavier Sanchez?’
‘I believe that was the name. You know this man?’
‘No, no. Only—I have heard his name. I— Jamie must have talked of him.’
‘Jamie discussed his mission with you?’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ Alicia leapt to her feet and picked her child up, folding him in a tight embrace, ignoring his protests. ‘I meant—I merely meant that when Jamie died, it was no secret that man Sanchez was with him.’
‘Of course, it’s only a slim chance, but if Harry can speak with Sanchez, perhaps then we can find out the details of how Jamie lost his life. And then there will be the proof of death that we need in order to sort out the estate.’ Kate smiled encouragingly. ‘It could even be that Jamie talked to Sanchez about you.’
‘About me?’ Alicia repeated, the colour draining from her face. ‘Why should he?’
‘Mama, Mama, you’re hurting.’
The child set up a wail. Alicia got to her feet, kissing the boy’s golden head. ‘It is time for his nap,’ she said to Kate.
There was no mistaking the dismissal in her voice. ‘I’m sorry to throw this at you so suddenly, only Giles and I felt that you should know. We have not told anyone else. You understand, Alicia, my father knows nothing of it.’
‘You need not worry, I won’t say anything to the duke. Jamie is dead. What do the details matter?’ Alicia said flatly. ‘Excuse me, Lady Kate. I must see to my son.’
Walking back to the big house, Kate felt rebuffed. Recounting the meeting to Giles, who had been waiting for her by the bridge, her natural sense of justice restored her. ‘It was a shock,’ she told her brother, ‘that much was obvious. She must have cared a great deal for him. It’s just too painful for her to hear the details.’
‘Well, you told her. She can’t accuse us of not keeping her informed,’ Giles said. ‘Kate…’
‘What is it?’
‘Kate, Virgil Jackson is here.’
‘What?’
‘He arrived half an hour ago.’
‘Is there something wrong? Has he been hurt? Why didn’t you tell me? Where is he?’
‘Why the devil should you think he was hurt? He looked perfectly healthy to me. He’s in my study. I thought it best—no one knows save Lumsden that he’s here. Kate…’
‘What is it, Giles?’ Kate was almost dancing in exasperation. Virgil was here. ‘What?’
‘Devil take you, Kate, you know damn well what! I can’t stop you. If you love him—Lily says you do, and she’s—well, God help you.’
Under any other circumstances, Kate would have found this disjointed speech utterly fascinating. She didn’t think she’d ever seen her brother beyond words, but right now she didn’t give a damn. Picking up her skirts, she ran across the lawn at full tilt and did not stop until she burst into Giles’s study, when the sight of Virgil standing there made her heart flip.
‘Kate!’
‘Virgil!’
‘You look tired.’
‘It’s been a long journey.’
Kate closed the door and leaned against it. She was out of breath. Her hair was falling down. She was shaking. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Post chaise. I hired a carriage. Four horses. I asked for six but they said not even royalty could harness six horses to a hired chaise.’
He looked quite dishevelled. His neck cloth looked as if it had been tied without the aid of a mirror. His boots were splashed with mud. He looked anxious. Nervous. Worried. She had missed him so much. Giles seemed to think—but she would not let herself hope. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I had a speech,’ Virgil said. Kate hadn’t moved from the door. She looked wary. He didn’t like that look. ‘I had a speech,’ he said again. He couldn’t remember a word of it. He crossed the room to stand beside her. There was only one bit of what he wanted to say that mattered right now. ‘I love you, Kate.’
‘How do you know?’
That made him laugh. He should have known her reaction wouldn’t be what he expected. ‘What you said, about never being free. When I was burying the locket, I realised you were right. Millie had a choice too. I made it difficult for her to live, but I didn’t make it impossible. Once I saw that, I saw lots of other things too.’
‘Such as?’
‘I was afraid to care. I thought that love and loss went hand in hand. I didn’t want to love you because I couldn’t bear the idea of losing you, but then I realised that never having tried, regretting not trying, would be so much worse.’
‘Like Louisa Gordon and Malcolm Jackson,’ Kate said.
Virgil took her hands in his. ‘Exactly. And more. I couldn’t understand why you were so impossible to resist. I see now that it was you. It could only ever have been you. I love you, Kate. I don’t know what you feel, but I’m asking you to give me a chance. It won’t be easy. Your father will disown you. Even in Boston, a marriage like ours would be—there will be many people who will never accept us into their world. But if you love me, we could make our own world, Kate.’
A single tear escaped her and rolled down her cheek. He still hadn’t touched her. He was afraid to touch her. He was terrified he had left it too late. ‘Don’t cry, Kate.’
She sniffed. ‘I’m not.’ She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. ‘If that was your speech, it was the most beautiful one I’ve ever heard.’
It took a moment for her words to sink in. ‘I’m not too late?’
Kate shook her head.
‘You love me?’
‘How could you doubt it?’
‘And you’ll marry me?’
‘Oh, Virgil, I thought you’d never ask!’
He kissed her so hard then that if she had not been leaning against the door she would have fallen. He kissed her desperately, clinging to her, murmuring her name, his hands feverish on her. He really had thought he’d lost her.
‘You would never have been too late,’ she whispered, kissing him back, pressing herself as close as she could against the delightfully hard, solid bulk of his body. ‘Never, never, never. I love you more.’
‘No, me more.’
‘No, me. More.’
They were laughing and kissing at the same time. A wild euphoria ripped through them, turning their laughter into passion. Kate reached behind her to turn the key in the lock, saying a quick apology to her brother for the use they were about to make of his private room.
‘We can’t,’ Virgil said as she rubbed herself quite blatantly against the length of his erection. ‘It would be wrong.’
‘All the more reason,’ Kate said, stroking him through the leather of his buckskins. ‘Think how outraged my aunt would be,’ she said, slipping down onto her knees before him and undoing the buttons of his falls.
‘We should wait. Until we are married. That’s what I planned. Oh, Kate…’
With a sigh of satisfaction, she freed him and wrapped her fingers around him. Silky and potent and hers. She tasted the tip of him, relishing the way it made him shudder, drawing a groan from deep inside him. She was hot. Wet. ‘I don’t want to wait,’ she said, slanting a mischievous look up at him before tasting him again. ‘I don’t think you can wait, my love. Doesn’t it add a certain something, knowing what my family would think? This isn’t wrong. It couldn’t be more right, could it?’
Virgil dropped down onto his knees beside her. ‘Nothing could be more right,’ he said, cupping her face. His kiss left her utterly certain. ‘Nothing could be more right than this,’ he said, tilting her back onto the floor and kissing her again.
‘And this.’ He pushed her skirts high, parting the legs of her lacy drawers. ‘Do you know, there is something about the curve of your knee which fascinates me. And here, the crease right here, where your bottom curves into your thigh. And here.’ He cupped her sex, gazing deep into her eyes as the pressure of his palm on the swollen core of her brought her to a frenzy.
‘And this.’ The tip of his shaft stroked over her, throwing her over the edge as he entered her. She pulsed around him, panting and clutching at him, urging him on, harder.
‘I love you, Kate,’ Virgil said, and he exploded, staying inside her, holding her, shuddering against her.
Kate wrapped her arms tight around him. Her hair streamed out across the ancient rug. The leg of a chair was sticking into her shoulder. There was a large cobweb suspended from the cornicing above her. ‘I love you, Virgil.’ She had never been happier.
Epilogue
His Grace the Duke of Rothermere was predictably outraged by his eldest daughter’s choice of husband. Having met Virgil just once, His Grace was completely unprepared for the astounding news that his wayward daughter had fallen in love and accepted a proposal from a man who, as far as he was concerned, barely existed. That the man was an American, albeit one of that country’s richest inhabitants, was bad enough. That he was a commoner, and ex-slave with a lineage which could be traced back precisely one generation and only on one side, made the marriage, as far as the duke was concerned, simply impossible.
He was incandescent. When it became clear that Virgil was not actually asking him for his daughter’s hand but telling him that he had already been accepted, consent was refused. When it was pointed out to His Grace by his outspoken daughter that his consent was not required, the duke informed her that she would be cut off without a penny.
‘My dowry was settled on me by my mother. You cannot actually deprive me of it,’ Kate said with satisfaction, having made a point of checking the matter with Giles.
‘As a matter of fact, we have no need of Kate’s dowry,’ her future husband said.
‘But it’s mine. I’m entitled to it. I can’t come to you with nothing.’
‘You are all I need.’
At this point, the duke’s daughter committed the ultimate sin of expressing her emotions in public by throwing her arms around her betrothed and kissing him. His Grace, realising nothing could be done to prevent the match, decided that nothing could make him accept it. Informing his daughter that he never wanted to lay eyes on her again, he sank onto his couch, closed his eyes and opened them only when his valet presented him with a glass of cognac and informed him that Lady Katherine and the American had gone.
Thus relieved of the duty of trying what she had always known would be a vain attempt to bring her father round, Kate set about happily making plans. Virgil, who had at first been inclined to consider using monetary measures to bring the duke on to their side, was persuaded by her complete and utter happiness not to do so. That her brother, sister and even her aunt seemed, respectively, reconciled, happy and inured to Kate’s choice was more than Virgil had bargained for.
Though he missed her desperately, he was persuaded that he could leave her to make arrangements for their wedding while he made his arrangements for their departure to America and finished his business in London with Josiah Wedgwood. The potter was so delighted with the news that such a unique couple had been introduced at his own dinner party that he promised to design them their very own dinner service.
Lady Katherine Mary Cecily Montague became Mrs Virgil Jackson on Christmas Eve. It was a private ceremony in the family chapel at Castonbury. The Reverend Seagrove officiated. The groom was represented, most irregularly as Aunt Wilhelmina pointed out, by the bride’s brother. This left the bride herself with no one to walk her up the aisle until she hit upon the idea of asking her aunt to give her away.
Mrs Landes-Fraser was torn. Never before had she heard of such a thing. But since it was a private ceremony, her niece pointed out, no one would ever know. And if they did, Aunt Wilhelmina should remember that this was the wedding of the Duke of Rothermere’s daughter. Where a Montague led, others would follow. Would not Aunt Wilhelmina wish to set a precedent all by herself?
Mrs Landes-Fraser was flattered.
Kate, existing in a bubble of happiness, pressed home her advantage. It was what her mother would have wanted, she said, disregarding without a qualm the fact that she barely knew her mother, and was fairly certain that she would have spent her eldest daughter’s wedding day in protest alongside her husband rather than in the church. But Aunt Wilhelmina was swayed. In honour of the occasion, she purchased a new turban in a particularly regal shade of puce and proudly walked her niece the short journey up the aisle, thus finally proving to Kate that her affection, though well-buried, was sincere.
All the more sincere, Phaedra, the only other person present, whispered later to her sister, since Aunt Wilhelmina had chosen to support Kate against the express wishes of their father, who was notable by his absence.
The church, which had been built and rebuilt by the Montague family on the same site since the thirteenth century, provided any number of Kate’s ancestors in the form of effigies and tombs, to make up for the absent duke. Kate, dressed in a vermillion gown cut quite inappropriately low across the bosom, didn’t care. There was only one person whose attendance was vital, and he was right there at her side, placing a gold wedding band on her finger. Reverend Seagrove said later that he had never heard a couple make their responses so firmly. Aunt Wilhelmina declared that the church must be in need of airing, for the dust had made her eyes positively stream.
Though the bridal couple wanted no formal party to celebrate their nuptials, Giles insisted that there was one tradition which could not be dispensed with. The Yule log had been hauled in that day, and sat in the fireplace in the huge marble hall. Monsieur André, the French chef, had produced a sugar cake which was an exact replica of Castonbury Park itself, in honour of the occasion. The entire Castonbury staff save His Grace’s faithful valet were there to greet Lady Kate and her husband. Most of them were very happy for her. Polly, who was joining her mistress in the New World, was nothing short of ecstatic.
To Kate fell the honour of lighting the fire with kindling formed from last year’s Yule log. To Virgil fell the task of proposing a toast to his new bride. Looking around at the sea of faces standing under the gilded domed ceiling in the cavernous and astoundingly beautiful hall, he caught her hand. ‘Are you sure you really want to leave all this behind?’
‘This is the old world, Virgil. I will miss it, but I can live without it. I can’t live without you.’
Every time he looked at her, he thought it wasn’t possible to love her more, and every time he looked at her again he realised it was. Virgil kissed his wife’s hand and raised his glass. ‘To Kate,’ he said, ‘who is all the world to me.’
* * * * *
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Read on to find out more about
Marguerite Kaye
and the
series…
Born and educated in Scotland, Marguerite Kaye originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honours and a Master’s degree. A few decades a
fter winning a children’s national poetry competition, she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write and submitted her first historical romance to Mills & Boon. They accepted it and she’s been writing ever since. You can contact Marguerite through her website at: www.margueritekaye.com
Previous novels by the same author:
THE WICKED LORD RASENBY
THE RAKE AND THE HEIRESS
INNOCENT IN THE SHEIKH’S HAREM*
THE GOVERNESS AND THE SHEIKH*
RAKE WITH A FROZEN HEART
OUTRAGEOUS CONFRESSIONS OF A LADY DEBORAH
And in Harlequin Historical Undone! eBooks:
THE CAPTAIN’S WICKED WAGER
THE HIGHLANDER AND THE SEA SIREN
BITTEN BY DESIRE
TEMPTATION IS THE NIGHT
CLAIMED BY THE WOLF PRINCE**
BOUND TO THE WOLF PRINCE**
THE HIGHLANDER AND THE WOLF PRINCESS**
THE SHEIKH’S IMPETUOUS LOVE-SLAVE*
SPELLBOUND & SEDUCED
*linked by character
**Legend of the Faol
Author Q&A
What is your heroine’s favourite childhood memory of Castonbury Park?
As children, Kate and her siblings used to escape to the island on the big lake. They kept a chest hidden in the undergrowth there, with kindling and blankets, and would often picnic together. Both Kate and her sister Phaedra are strong swimmers and as adults go to the island with their heroes, where those younger days are specifically recalled and the contents of the chest re-used for much more adult purposes!
Which stately home inspired Castonbury Park and why?
We chose Kedleston Hall for Castonbury (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/kedleston-hall.) This was for a number of reasons, but primarily because two of our group had visited it and so could give us some really great inside information about the layout of the place. We had a floor plan, pictures and a guidebook to work from, which was really important because the house and its grounds are vital characters in every book and we wanted to make sure that we were consistent. When we added things—such as an island into the lake, a fountain, a bath house under the fishing pavilion—we could be very clear, referring to the real house and where they were in relation to what we already knew, and when we were describing some of the key rooms—dining room, drawing room, marble hall—we could all be consistent.
The Lady Who Broke the Rules Page 21
