He stepped into the room. “I went out to find a shop where I hoped to buy some new clothes for you.”
“That’s very kind of you, but you don’t have to do that. I gave this dress a good sponging this morning. As long as I do that each day, I can wear it for as long as I have to.”
“You may not have to wear it for the rest of the journey after all. I happened to meet an old friend of mine from when I was on the Peninsula, Trevor Dalton. He’s now Viscount Ellington, and his ancestral pile is only a few miles away from here.”
To his surprise, she seemed to light up, opening her eyes and lifting her head. “I know him and his wife. We stayed at his estate on our way up to Yorkshire last year.”
“Well, he’s invited us to stay as long as we like. I explained to him how you happened to be traveling with me. He’s going to send a carriage for us, along with some clothes for you that don’t fit his viscountess anymore.”
“She had a baby last summer. We’ve been corresponding ever since we first met, and she’s often invited me to visit. They have a huge library there.” She looked as if she could’ve licked her chops at that prospect.
* * * *
It was a very fine carriage, the seats covered with gold damask and tufted on the back, with matching curtains over all the windows. The ride was so smooth that Kate scarcely felt a bump or a jiggle.
Yet she still felt strange, queasy flutters deep inside herself as Nathan sat next to her. The only thing that had kept her from losing her mind this morning with apprehension that he might leave her stranded here, never wishing to set eyes on her again, was the fact that he’d left his trunk in the room. She’d worried that he must have regretted what happened last night. Maybe he still did.
She certainly didn’t regret what had happened. She still wanted him. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking of the way his lips had tightly closed around the very tips of her breasts or how his fingers had teased her most intimate spot, filling her with unbearable pleasure that even now made her tingle inside. The problem was that she knew—just as he did—that what she desired from him wasn’t possible. He couldn’t risk ruining her only days before he was to choose his bride at a ball.
Though most people would argue she’d been ruined already.
She wondered why she felt so much more forlorn than she had while trapped at Bellingham Hall, for she was finally far away from there now. She was supposed to be on the adventure of her life, the adventure she never thought she’d wanted until she saw the chance to seize it, and a highly scandalous adventure at that. Three days ago she’d never dreamed that three days later, she would be lying in a bed completely nude while the most handsome man she’d ever seen pleasured the most secret part of her body until she exploded in unimaginable bliss that even now had her wishing for more.
She certainly hadn’t considered the possibility of doing that with old Mr. Throckmorton, for all that her mother hinted that eventually he would take Kate to wife, since a stepmother to his children would be less of an expense and bother than a governess who would expect a decent wage, her own quarters, and Wednesday afternoons off.
That’s when she knew why she felt so forlorn. She realized now she wanted love. Could that mean she’d fallen in love with Nathan? A man who could have any diamond of the first water who took his fancy, so why would he ever settle for a plain, brown wren like Katherine Baxter?
If only he’d say something to her. Anything. Perhaps he was waiting for her to say something. Anything. Like go to hell, as her stepfather had once told her when he was foxed. “Go anywhere, go to hell. Just get out of my sight. I can’t stand the sight of you,” while her mother just stood there wringing her hands and making excuses for him. “He can’t help it, Katherine. He has so many worries and so many debts and can’t sell anything more because what little remains is entailed. You must find a position somewhere, before he does something drastic.”
Something drastic like wagering her, the way Freddy did with Meg?
“Much nicer than the carriage I had, eh?” Nathan said, startling her.
Well, that was something. Anything, in fact. At least he was still speaking to her, as if last night hadn’t happened. Had it been that unimportant to him? Answer him, Kate. “How odd that a viscount would have a carriage more elegant than that of a duke.”
“Would you believe I never even owned a carriage until I became the duke? I probably have a carriage for every day of the week now, each one as magnificent as this one if not more so, but they’re all in London. So I bought that old heap in Edinburgh, thinking it would be sufficient to see me all the way to my destination, though Bilby warned me I should be prepared for the occasional breakdown. Makes me wonder if our friend Freddy made it all the way back to Leeds with it.”
She stole a glimpse of him and saw almost no space between the top of his head and the ceiling of the carriage. She glanced away as she saw him gazing back at her. Crimson heat burned in her cheeks as she forced her gaze out the window, wondering what he was really thinking if he was gazing at her. She thought of asking him why he was watching her. She’d enjoyed that banter last night. Was he remembering what happened afterward? Was this how brides felt on their second day of marriage? Well, maybe not all brides—certainly not Mrs. Driscoll.
But instead of flirting with him by inquiring why he was watching her, she asked, “What do they know about us—I mean, about why I’m with you?”
“I explained the situation to our host. He assured me it’ll be safe to drop the charade while we’re staying with them.”
Kate was relieved to hear that and not at all surprised. During her last stay at Ellington Hall, she’d heard the rather amusing story of how Trevor and Susannah became husband and wife. Susannah’s stepfather, a baronet who lived on a neighboring estate, had betrothed her to the grandson of the old dowager viscountess who lived in relative seclusion at Ellington Hall. Not wishing to marry a stranger chosen by her stepfather, Susannah ran away from home and hid in plain sight at Ellington Hall, working as old Lady Ellington’s companion. Through this ruse, she got to observe Trevor in secret, while he was very suspicious of her—but in the end, true love prevailed over deception and subterfuge, and they married.
“So we can be ourselves, Nathan Fraser and Katherine Baxter,” he added.
She removed her gloves. “In that case, I should return your mother’s ring.” She slipped it off her finger and held it out to him, looking not at his face but at his fawn-colored breeches and the way they fit so smoothly over his thick, muscled thighs.
“Perhaps you should keep it for now,” he said. “You may need to wear it again once we get back on the road to London.”
She dropped the ring into her reticule. “And when will that be?”
“Trevor said we could stay as long we liked. Perhaps a week or so, and then we’ll see about arranging transportation to London.”
“So you’ll still take me to London? You won’t send me back to York?”
“I wouldn’t dream of sending you back there.” He’d never sounded more earnest. “All things considered, I agree with you that you’re better off with your brother in London.”
With her brother, but not with Nathan himself. So he had no further plans with her except to take her to her brother. Not for the first time, she wondered how Anthony would react if he found out she’d been traveling in the company of a duke without a chaperone.
Surely Nathan had given the matter some thought, but she wasn’t about to ask, unless he intended for her to stay with his Aunt Verity first as her companion. She only hoped she could quit that position before the ball where he was so determined to choose his bride.
Her spirits lifted when they arrived at Ellington Hall, and their host and hostess came out to meet them. Last time Kate had been here, Susannah had been expecting a baby, and now she held the baby in her arms. Consequently she was quite plump compared to Kate.
The two women exchanged kisses. “Kate, so good to see you again!
I have a whole wardrobe at your disposal. Trevor’s grandmother insisted on buying me a complete trousseau when he married me, and I only got to wear the clothes for a short while. Meet Eddie—we named him Edmund after my father, and he’s nine months old as of yesterday.”
As Kate eagerly took the baby into her arms, she felt a strange tug in her heart. “Has your grandmother returned from Italy yet?”
“She’ll be back late this summer. She’s been enjoying the sun and warmth, but now she longs to see her first great-grandchild. And, Kate, I love how you refer to her as my grandmother, since she’s really Trevor’s.”
“But hasn’t she always been like a grandmother to you anyway?”
Susannah led her into the manor. Her husband and Nathan remained next to the carriage, discussing whatever it was men discussed when standing next to the carriage and horses while the ladies went off elsewhere. “Indeed she has, even when I was only her lady’s companion. Still, I’ve missed her sorely this past year, especially since my mother passed away from the influenza not too long after your visit last year.”
Kate recalled how fractious Susannah’s relationship had been with her cold, distant mother, who’d caught her husband in a compromising position with her daughter, only to accuse Susannah of trying to seduce him, when in fact he’d been forcing her. Kate was thankful that at least her stepfather, for all his other faults, had never done something so heinous. “Did you ever manage to resolve your differences with her, or reach some kind of rapprochement?”
Susannah shook her head. “I wish I could say we did, but I’m afraid not. She remained implacable to the end. I was hoping marriage to a viscount—not that that’s why I married Trevor—and the prospect of her becoming a grandmother, might have thawed her hardened, old heart, but alas. I couldn’t even shed a tear when she died. I’ve often wondered if that makes me a wicked person, but Trevor assures me it doesn’t.”
“Of course it doesn’t.” Eddie began fussing in Kate’s arms and clawing at her bodice. “Oh dear, I think he wants his mama back.”
Susannah took her son and held him snugly against her shoulder as they entered the grandeur of Ellington Hall, infinitely more splendid than Bellingham Hall, which had long since been stripped of most of its treasures to pay the debts of Kate’s stepfather.
“You came here just in time,” Susannah said as she led Kate into the drawing room. “We’re having our first ball this Friday evening and everyone in the district is invited—even my stepfather. We sent him an invitation simply out of courtesy, but we don’t expect him to show up. Do sit down, Kate, and tell me about you and Nathan. Trevor told me he won you in a card game, only to forgive the debt, yet you insisted on honoring it to teach your stepfather a lesson?”
Kate chortled as she sat on a sofa upholstered in an elegant, gold damask very similar to that in the carriage that had brought her and Nathan here. “As if my stepfather will ever learn his lesson when it comes to gambling. No, Nathan won another young woman from someone else, but I persuaded her to trade places with me at the last minute.”
“What place were you trading with her?” asked Susannah as she sat at the opposite end of the sofa with Eddie on her lap.
Kate grimaced. “My mother persuaded me to take a position as governess to a widower with half a dozen children in York. I was so bored at Bellingham Hall that I agreed because I thought anything had to be better than the situation I was in. Still, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d rather go to London, where my brother lives with his new wife and twin babies. I thought trading places with Miss Hathaway would allow me to do that, though there have been several moments in the past few days when I feared Nathan would send me back to York.” She told Susannah the whole story up until they arrived in the village with the newlywed Driscolls.
Susannah lowered her voice to a whisper. “Dare I ask if the two of you will be marrying?”
“He hasn’t offered, for all that we’ve been posing as husband and wife. But he wants us to drop that charade as long as we’re here at Ellington Hall. Which means separate bedchambers in separate wings if possible.”
Susannah tilted her head to one side. “Kate, you can tell me. Has anything happened between the two of you? And don’t act as if you don’t know what I mean, because I think you do know exactly what I mean.”
Kate sighed plaintively. “Let’s just say not everything has happened.”
Susannah stopped bouncing the baby on her lap and leaned toward her guest. “But something has happened?”
Kate bit her lip for a long moment before saying, “Yes, but I still think he and I should be kept far apart. I’m sure he’ll agree wholeheartedly with me.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help? Any advice I can give?”
“I don’t know. I’m worried I might be falling in love, but that he doesn’t reciprocate.”
“There’s nothing so unusual about that. I should think it’s quite rare, even unheard of, for two people to meet and instantly fall in love at the same time. Speaking of time, that’s really all you need right now—and you should have plenty of it here, for however long you decide to stay. The two of you are welcome for as long as you please.”
“Nathan mentioned something about staying a week. And I know I won’t be as bored here as I was at Bellingham Hall. You have a very extensive library, as I recall.”
Kate didn’t see Nathan again until dinner that evening. He looked very handsome and very much like a duke in an elegant coat of black superfine. His dark hair was smoothly brushed back from his freshly shaven face, with no stray locks dangling over his brow. On his left pinky finger was a signet ring Kate had never seen before.
He and Trevor talked and joked a great deal about their recent, unexpected elevations to nobility—Trevor when it was discovered that his cousin, who’d been the previous Viscount Ellington and had since sailed to America to escape massive debts in England, was actually the by-blow of a butler, while Nathan became Duke of Loring when his much older brother was fatally shot by a mistress last summer without having sired an heir of his own.
“I can’t say as I was really surprised the dukedom finally came to me,” he admitted over the savory roast beef. “My brother was over forty years of age and still hadn’t shown the slightest inclination to ever marry. So while I halfway expected to become Duke of Loring, I certainly didn’t expect to inherit so soon.”
“Why did he never marry, do you suppose?” Susannah wondered aloud.
“It seems in his youth, he was in love with a lady who either died or married someone else, and I suppose he decided if he couldn’t marry her then he wouldn’t marry anyone.”
“That sounds rather romantic, but sad,” Susannah remarked.
Kate studied Nathan from across the table, the view framed by a pair of epergnes holding up two pyramids of fruit. He was clearly grimacing, and not because the food disagreed with him in some way. This was the best roast beef Kate had eaten since she’d last been in London.
“Apparently you don’t consider it romantic or sad,” she ventured to say.
He met her steady gaze, his blue-gray eyes almost piercing the lenses in her spectacles. “I can’t say as I have a great deal of compassion for his supposed heartbreak.”
Kate found that puzzling when he had so much compassion for others less fortunate, like the thankless Freddy Hathaway, who returned the gesture by stealing Nathan’s carriage and horses and taking Polly back to Leeds with him. Or even for Kate herself. As long as he believed she was Margaret Hathaway, he was all in favor of sending her back to her family. But once he realized that she was, in fact, Katherine Baxter, niece of the Marquess of Carswell and stepdaughter of the Earl of Bellingham, he’d agreed to take her to London.
Because she was the niece of a marquess and the stepdaughter of an earl, and ergo more worthy of his consideration than the less well connected Miss Hathaway? But if her family connections were so important to him, then why did he do the things he did last night, only
to not offer marriage to her?
“I for one can certainly understand that,” Trevor commented. “After what happened, I would feel the same way.”
“What did happen?” inquired Susannah with furrowed brow.
Nathan flicked a large hand in her direction. “Oh, ’tis a very sad tale, my lady. Not the sort of thing to brighten up a fine dinner with equally fine ladies, who I’m sure have been looking forward to a bit of gaiety this evening.”
Kate toyed with the carrot slices on her plate. “Actually, I heard there was a lady the previous duke hoped to marry, but only because she was the daughter of the lady he loved. Yet she did not return his regard because she loved someone else.”
Silence hung over the room. Kate swept her gaze around the table. Trevor was busy eating, whereas Susannah looked highly intrigued.
Nathan, however, stared back at her thunderstruck. “Where did you hear such a thing?”
She sipped her claret. “From my brother’s wife, who’s the sister of the Earl of Whitbourne. ’Twas on Whitbourne’s estate that your half brother died.”
He nodded. “That much I know. I was told only that he was shot at Whitbourne Park by a spurned mistress. She must have been jealous of this lady he was hoping to marry. Who was the lady?”
“She’s the only grandchild of Viscount Barrington, and she’s now happily married to a young man whose father was a squire, and whose ancestral pile is adjacent to Bellingham Hall,” Kate explained. “They came over for dinner once last fall. She’s much younger than me, but she reminded your brother of her late mother, whom he loved, and that’s why he plotted to marry her but only ended up getting shot.”
Nathan drained his wine goblet. “That’s an interesting tale, yet I can’t say any of it surprises me. Do you really want to hear my own sad tale about him?”
“I wish you would, unless it makes you too sad.” Kate felt a flutter in her heart at the prospect of Nathan opening up to her a little more.
“It doesn’t make me as sad now as it did at the time it happened,” he assured her.
Wagered to the Duke (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 18
