by Joan Wolf
Edmund’s large gray eyes suddenly sparkled. “I doubt if Lady Lochaber’s face ever put anyone off,” he said.
Ian grinned. “True. It’s a great trial to me.”
“I’m sure it is,” returned Edmund drily. And Ian laughed.
* * * *
As the days went by, Catriona became more and more unhappy. Being at Evesham only made it worse. The marquis was very deeply in love with her; she realized that more clearly with each passing day. And the realization, instead of reassuring her, only added to her wretchedness. She had let him think that she loved him quite as much as he loved her and she felt herself in an increasingly false position. She remembered what Frances had said about feeling guilty all the time and she perfectly understood.
Richard didn’t belong at Evesham. She felt oppressed by his presence, his natural assumption of his right to be with her. But she didn’t want him. Evesham belonged to her and to Edmund. Richard was an intruder. It was a terrible way to feel about the man you were going to marry.
And then there was George. He acted as if she had betrayed him by becoming engaged. They had had one very uncomfortable scene, and since then he had gone around glaring with open hostility at the marquis. Richard appeared to find him amusing.
“George doesn’t know many other girls and so he’s fancied himself in love with me,” she explained to her fiancé one afternoon after her cousin had been particularly obnoxious. “I’ve never done anything to encourage him.” She felt a pang of conscience and resolutely squashed the memory of a kiss.
The marquis took her hand. They were sitting together in the garden; George had just gone stalking into the house after Lord Hampton had given him a gentle set-down.
“I know, darling,” he said. “It’s not your fault. It’s the sort of thing that’s going to happen to you all your life, and if I let it bother me, we shall both be miserable. I shall just have to take a leaf out of Lochaber’s book.”
She kept her eyes on their clasped hands. “He trusts Frances,” she said. “He knows she loves him.”
He raised her hand to his lips. “And I trust you.”
She looked up into his smiling blue eyes and felt the now familiar pang of guilt. “Richard,” she said and stopped. What could she say?
“And you love me,” he went on, the smile in his eyes turning to something else.
He was so sweet, Catriona thought. He would take care of her, protect her from herself. “Yes,” she said. “Of course I love you.” And she let him pull her into his arms.
* * * *
Edmund, contrary to Lord Lochaber’s advice, did arrange a few entertainments for the benefit of his guests. One of his schemes was a picnic on the shore of the very pretty lake that was one of the features of the Castle’s park. There were two boats available for those who wanted to go out on the water, and a picturesque walk through the woods and across a small waterfall for those who enjoyed quiet and lovely scenery. There was also a very substantial luncheon provided by Gaston, the duke’s French cook.
It was a very warm June day, and Catriona had awakened with a slight headache which the heat was not improving. She felt out of sorts, and her usually good temper was sorely tried by the high spirits of all her companions. All she wanted, she thought fretfully as George teased her to go out in a boat and Richard urged her to come for a walk, was to be let alone. She ate too much lunch, which made her feel worse.
Everyone was still sitting on the rugs the duke had provided against grass stains when Catriona got up restlessly and went down to the edge of the water. The sun was hot on her head, and she had a sudden desire to splash her face with cool water. She looked at the picnic group, caught George’s eye, and signaled to him. He jumped up immediately and came over to her.
“Would you mind terribly getting me a napkin or something, George?” she asked. “I’m so hot. I want to splash some water on my forehead.”
“Of course, Kate,” he said and moved with alacrity to do her bidding. She smiled at him when he handed her the linen napkin.
“Thank you.” She bent down and dipped the napkin in the lake water. It felt very cool and wet against her hot skin. “That feels marvelous.”
She handed the napkin to George. “Do you want to try it?”
“Yes.” His fingers shook slightly as he took the wet linen from her hand and laid it against his face.
There was a bustle of activity behind them. Margaret and Mr. Halley were going back to the waterfall. Ian wanted to walk around the lake, and after receiving a meaningful glance from Edmund, George offered to go with him and show him the path.
Frances said quite firmly, “Good-bye. I’ll see you later,” and her husband laughed and went off without her.
Silence fell among the four who were left at the picnic site, then Frances said sweetly, “I should so love to go out in one of those darling boats. Would you row me, Lord Hampton?”
The marquis looked a little surprised, but good manners made him say, “Of course. Lady Lochaber. It will be a pleasure.” The two of them got up and went down to the lakeside.
They were well out on the water when Edmund turned to Catriona. “It would be a kindness,” he said acidly, “if you would refrain from tormenting poor George.”
Her eyes widened. “I? Tormenting George? Whatever do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” he answered furiously. “He isn’t your pet errand boy, and you oughtn’t to exploit his infatuation the way you do.”
Her head was beginning to pound. She went very pale. “Don’t dare speak to me like that,” she said, quite as furious as he.
“You aren’t married yet,” he responded. He had opened the neck of his shirt against the heat, and above the crisp white cotton his pulse was beating very fast. “You are still under my charge. And if I see you behaving like a—a heartless flirt—then I’ll damn well tell you about it.”
“If that’s the way you think of me, then I can’t wait to get married and away from here.” Her voice was shaking with hurt and with temper. “I don’t even want to talk to you,” she said and lay back on the rug and shut her eyes.
The sun was shining directly on her, and she threw an arm across her eyes to protect them. She could feel perspiration forming on her forehead and upper lip. Her thin dress was sticking to her body. After a few minutes she opened her eyes a slit and looked at Edmund under the protection of her arm.
He was staring at her, and the look in his eyes made her stomach suddenly clench. It was an expression she had come to know well in the last few months, but she had never dreamed of seeing it on Edmund’s face. At least not for her. But it was there, and she knew what it meant. Catriona shut her eyes again. Her heart was pounding so hard that she was sure he could hear it. She stayed as still as she could for another minute and then slowly lowered her arm. Edmund was looking at the water, and all she could see of him was his exceedingly aristocratic profile. She ran her tongue across her lips to moisten them.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “About wanting to get away from here.”
“I know.” His voice sounded as if it were coming from a great distance. He did not turn to look at her. He seemed as far away from her as the moon. But she had not mistaken the expression on his face. She had seen it too often on Richard’s—and on George’s as well—to fail to recognize it.
There was the sound of voices coming closer, and then Margaret and Mr. Halley appeared from their walk in the woods. Catriona turned to look at her cousin and felt a pang of envy. Meg looked so uncomplicatedly happy. Catriona looked down at the flowered pattern of her thin muslin dress. Her mind was in a whirl. Edmund, she thought. What could it mean?
“Did you have a nice nap, Kate?” It was the marquis back from his boating excursion with Frances. He sat down next to her on the rug.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice. Then, “I’ve got the most awful headache, Richard. Do you think we could go home?”
He was instantly all sympathy.
“Of course, darling. Why didn’t you say so earlier?” She smiled at him a little wanly, and he went over to Edmund. They talked together for a few minutes, and Catriona saw Edmund glance at her sharply. Then Richard was back and in a few minutes he had her in his phaeton and they were returning along the path to Evesham Castle. He held the reins in one hand and put an arm around her. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“What do you think about pushing up our wedding date to next month?” he asked after a few minutes.
She sat up. “Why?”
His mouth curved in a rueful smile. “Because I’m finding this business of being engaged a very great strain.”
“Oh,” she said. And swallowed. “I don’t think Grandmama would like it if we disrupted her plans,” she offered after a minute’s intensive thought.
The set of his mouth now was grim. “I suppose not.”
“It hasn’t really been that long an engagement,” she said weakly.
“It’s been an eternity,” he said and stopped his horses. The road was private and shaded by the great beech trees that grew on either side. He turned her face up and began to kiss her.
This was different from the way he had kissed her before. She felt his urgency, his desperation, but could conjure up no rapture of response. It just wasn’t there, and there was no longer any way she could fool herself into thinking it would come. After a minute he put her away from him and took up his reins. “That is why I would like to push up the wedding date,” he said a little shakily.
“I—I’ll talk to Grandmama,” was all she could say in reply.
Chapter Twenty-two
Once they had got back to Evesham, Catriona pleaded her headache and went up to her room to lie down. Her mind was in a whirl from which a single thought stood out clearly. Edmund did not regard her as a little sister. One did not look at one’s little sister the way he had looked at her this afternoon.
He wanted her. What she had seen on his face had been desire, pure and simple. Why, then, had he never given her any indication, why had he allowed her to become engaged to Richard?
Because he couldn’t marry her. The answer too was pure and simple. Catriona had never been more conscious of her illegitimacy. Richard had overlooked it, but Richard was not the Duke of Burford. Edmund’s position was very different from Richard’s; that had been made clear to Catriona during these last months. Edmund was almost royalty, and as such he had a great responsibility to choose a wife of impeccable background and impeccable behavior. Catriona could boast of neither. And so Edmund was allowing her to marry the Marquis of Hampton.
And what would happen in the future when she was protected by Richard’s name? What would happen if the desire she had read on Edmund’s face this afternoon ever came out into the open?
She would go to him. She knew-it instantly, unequivocally. She would forget her marriage vows, forget Richard’s kindness and love, and give to Edmund whatever he wanted from her.
I can’t marry Richard.
The thought that had been in her mind for weeks now became now a solid conviction. She remembered Frances’s words, “What would I have done if I had been married to Rob and Ian came back?”
She could not marry Richard. But how was she to tell him? What was she to say? She went to the window and impatiently looked out across the drive. She needed to talk to Frances.
* * * *
“You’ve made the right decision,” Frances told her, when Catriona had finally managed to get her alone and confide her problem. She had said nothing about Edmund, only that she had come to the conclusion that she must break her engagement to Richard.
“But how am I to explain?” Catriona almost wailed. “I’ve given him every reason to believe I’m in love with him.”
“You must simply tell him you mistook your feelings,” replied Frances serenely.
“But it will hurt him so terribly.”
“I daresay it will. It would hurt him a great deal more, however, if he discovered your feelings after you were married.”
“I know it would,” replied Catriona glumly. “That’s why I’ve got to do it.” She sighed. “He asked me today to push up the wedding date.”
Frances looked thoughtful. “Now, that might be an opening, Catriona. Tell him you’re not sure, now that the wedding is so close. Put him off. Be sweet and apologetic but inflexible. You know.”
Catriona realized that she was receiving advice from an expert. She looked at the incomparably lovely face of her friend and nodded. “Yes. I see.”
“Put off the marriage indefinitely. And then we shall see what happens.”
Dinner that evening was not very pleasant for Catriona. She sat next to Richard and tried to act normally but she was feeling miserably guilty and uncomfortable. The glowing warmth in the marquis’s blue eyes when he looked at her only made her more wretched.
She didn’t get a chance to talk to Lord Hampton, because after the men came into the drawing room, Edmund drew her aside. “Come out on the terrace with me for a few moments, Catriona,” he said gravely.
She glanced fleetingly up into his face. There wasn’t a hint of passion in his cool, composed features. She had a sudden, sinking conviction that she had dreamed the whole episode this afternoon. She had seen on his face what she wanted to see, not what had really been there. “All right,” she almost whispered and followed him out the French doors.
The lawn was bathed in moonlight, and Edmund rested his hands on the stone balustrade and gazed out at the white-lit expanse of grass and fountain. She went to stand next to him, and her eyes followed his. “Hampton tells me you desire to be married next month,” he said.
Catriona’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know he was going to speak to you,” was all she managed to get out.
“Is it because of what I said to you this afternoon?”
“No!” She looked up at his beautifully etched profile. “No. It was entirely Richard’s idea. In fact”—and here she swallowed and her voice dropped—”I’m not sure that I want to marry him at all.”
“What!” He swung around to regard her incredulously. “Are you serious?”
She nodded miserably. “Yes, Edmund, I am. I—I mistook my feelings.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.” She winced at the note in his voice. “Do you realize that that man is desperately in love with you? And that you have been encouraging him for weeks to believe that his feeling is reciprocated?”
“I know. Edmund, I’m most terribly sorry. I thought I did love him. I wanted to love him. But I don’t. I can’t.” The last sentence came out on a swallowed sob.
His face was bleak in the moonlight. “I would never have believed this of you, Catriona. I thought your behavior to George was bad, but this is unpardonable.”
He was right. Catriona bowed her head and let his words pour over her. Everything he said was true. She was a selfish flirt. She had no thought for the sufferings of others. She was heartless. But she was not heartless. Her heart belonged to him, only he didn’t want it. He hated her. She was a despicable person. It was all woefully true.
When he finally stopped talking, she looked up out of shimmering green eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Should I marry him anyway?”
“God, no!” He spoke so violently that she jumped. “Eventually you’d meet a man you did love, and I have no desire to see you in the middle of a messy scandal.” He looked disgusted. “Under those circumstances, I have very little opinion of your ability to remain true to your husband.”
He was right again. She was totally worthless, weak, a wretched person. How could she possibly ever have dreamed that Edmund could love her? He saw her only too clearly.
She stared down at her hands on the balustrade, willing the tears not to fall. “What shall I do?” she whispered.
“You’ll have to tell him,” he said.
Catriona thought of the tenderness in Lord Hampton’s blue eyes. “I can’t,” she said miser
ably. She looked up at him and sniffed. “Edmund, will you?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “You’re the one who misled him, you’re the one who promised to marry him. Now you’re the one who’s going to tell him the truth.”
“Edmund!” came the duchess’s voice from the room behind them. “My dear, Kate doesn’t have a shawl. I don’t want her to catch cold.”
Without a word the duke opened the French doors and stepped back so that Catriona could precede him into the room. She didn’t dare look at him as she went by.
“Goodness,” said Frances lightly to George as he sat next to her an hour later over tea, “whatever has gotten into the duke?”
“He had a fight with Kate,” George said positively. “She’s the only one who can make him lose his temper.”
“Is that so?” Frances looked thoughtful. “Do you mean that he is never angry with anyone else?” She looked up at George and smiled bewitchingly.
George blinked. His heart belonged to Catriona, but Frances Lochaber was incredible. “No, I don’t precisely mean that, Lady Lochaber,” he said. “He’s certainly gotten angry with me.” He went on in a rush of confidence, “In fact, one of the things I hate most in the world is an interview with Edmund when he’s caught me out. He can be so—unnerving.”
Frances looked at the austere and aristocratic face of her host. “I can imagine so,” she said sympathetically.
“He’s always so reasonable, do you see, and quiet. That’s what makes it so terrible.
"I perfectly understand,” Frances assured him.
George grinned. “But Kate drives him mad. The rest of us are all a little in awe of Edmund, but not Kate. Meg told me she called him a hypocrite and a whited sepulcher—to his face.” George looked awestruck, and Frances laughed.
“Good for her.”
“Kate is capable of anything,” George said wistfully and looked over at his cousin.
Frances followed his gaze. Catriona was staring somberly into the fire. The corners of her mouth curved slightly downward in a way that was quite surprisingly erotic. Her eyes were veiled by their outrageously long lashes. Her great grandmother called her name, and she turned, her head moving gracefully on its lovely long neck. Frances leaned back in her own chair and smiled with sweet satisfaction.
