In Love With a Wicked Man

by Liz Carlyle

  But Kate’s storm began to clear as swiftly as it had broken, and she blew her nose loudly on the handkerchief she’d shaken from her pocket.

  “Listen to me, Reggie, for you’ll hear these next two words but once,” she said through the snuffles, shoving it back in again. “I apologize. Stephen’s shortcomings were his own. No, you did not push him. Yes, you were devastated by his death. But you knew the barony would come to me, and your proposal was opportunistic.”

  “An outright lie!” cried Reggie.

  “It is not,” said Kate. “Grandpapa knew it—and he saw your disappointment when you learnt how cash-poor we were. Yes, I knew why you proposed, Reggie, and I was willing to accept it. But I will not accept a confirmed adulterer or a gazetted gamester for a husband. I have seen my mother live that life and I will not.”

  “Oh, Kate!” Reggie rolled his eyes. “Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander! Aurélie was as unfaithful as your father.”

  “Not at first,” Kate countered. “But that is neither here nor there, Reggie. What you must understand now is that I will never marry you.”

  “Kate, you don’t know what you’re—”

  “Yes, I do,” she cut in, “and further, you do not even want to marry me. Your nose is simply out of joint. I have been nothing but the ace up your sleeve for years now. You have always believed that, if it became financially necessary, you could charm good old Kate back into your arms.”

  “Yes, perhaps even back into my bed,” said Reggie nastily. “Longing for another taste, Kate? I could be persuaded.”

  “Reggie, you cad!” Kate hissed. “You seduced me. You used Stephen’s death as an excuse, and played upon my stupidity.”

  “Yes, that would be your version, my love.” Reggie flashed a snide smile. “But as I recall it, you flung yourself into my arms, begging to assuage your grief, and I merely obliged you. After that, there was no one else you could marry. Shall I tell Ned Quartermaine all about it?”

  “You would not dare,” Kate warned.

  “I do dare, and I shall,” said Reggie, “if you do not announce our betrothal.”

  “Betrothal?” Kate’s mouth fell open.

  “Announce it,” he commanded. “At dinner tonight. And do not trifle with me again, Kate, or you will learn I’m not to be trifled with at all.”

  At that, Kate drew herself up to her full height. “Well, Reggie,” she said briskly, “you had better hurry along, then. Mr. Quartermaine is off to survey his new property, and if you try, you might just catch up with him. At Heatherfields.”

  “Damn it, Kate—”

  But Kate was striding away in the direction of the rectory. “I trust, Reggie,” she said over one shoulder, “that you can make your own way back to Bellecombe. Because just now, I do not fancy sharing a carriage with you.”

  She did not turn around again, and instead marched up to the rectory and pounded on the door. Nancy came out at once, her head hung oddly low.

  “Are we ready to go?” she asked, brushing past Kate.

  Kate turned. “Yes, almost.”

  Nancy didn’t look at her as they crossed the street. Something had happened, Kate realized. Had her sister overheard the quarrel with Reggie? Or had it been the thing she and Richard had been discussing outside the church? Was it, in fact, Aurélie?

  Kate didn’t have time to press Nancy, for as soon as they crossed the street, Aurélie flew out St. Michael’s door, one hand clapped on her hat as if to hold it in place.

  “Dépêchez-vous!” she ordered, motioning impatiently. “We haven’t got all day. Julia and the others await us.”

  Neither Nancy nor her mother bothered to ask Kate what had become of Reggie. Both their minds were clearly elsewhere throughout the drive back to Bellecombe. Aurélie was looking oddly dreamy-eyed again, while Nancy just looked distraught.

  When they arrived home, Aurélie went at once to her guests. Lady Julia and the gentlemen were lazing about with their coffee in the front parlor. Absent any shooting, and the hour being as yet too early for serious drinking, or even cards, the four of them were looking dead bored. Nancy brushed past without sparing them a glance.

  “Come upstairs, Kate,” she said quietly. “I think I had better speak with you.”

  Kate cut her mother a dark glance and followed Nancy up to her private parlor. Mrs. Peppin was there before them, replacing the bottle of cordial that Aurélie had been gradually draining.

  “All right, Nancy, out with it,” Kate demanded. “Is Mamma teasing Richard? Or … or flirting with him?”

  Nancy’s eyes flared wide. “Oh, no! Nothing like that.”

  “I should leave you,” said Mrs. Peppin, turning from the sideboard.

  Nancy threw up a hand. “No, Peppie, I need you. Come, sit, the both of you.”

  Kate was beginning to sense she might need a stout glass of the cordial. “Nancy, you’re worrying me,” she said, smoothing her skirts beneath her as she sat. “What in heaven’s name is wrong?”

  Nancy was hunched forward on the end of the chaise, her hands clasped. “It’s Richard’s aunt,” she said.

  “The lady visiting from Staplegrove today?” said Mrs. Peppin, her brow furrowing.

  “Yes. Mrs. Lowell.” Nancy lifted her gaze to Kate’s.

  “What about her?” asked Kate solicitously. “I hope she’s not ill?”

  “Oh, no.” Nancy caught her lip between her teeth a moment. “It has to do with Mrs. Granger, who lives across the street from the Lowells’ church.”

  “Mrs. Granger?” Kate was mystified. “Do we even know a Mrs. Granger?”

  “A little,” said Nancy. “Mrs. Lowell introduced us at the Midsummer Fair in Taunton.”

  Kate shook her head. She remembered the fair, for it had been a beautiful June day. She and Nancy had been invited to drive out with Richard and Mrs. Burnham, and to take tea afterward with the Lowells at the vicarage in Staplegrove.

  “We met so many people that afternoon,” she said vaguely. “What about this Mrs. Granger is so distressing?”

  “You may recall Mrs. Lowell was actually gossiping about her that day,” Nancy reminded Kate. “She whispered that Mrs. Granger had moved with little explanation to Staplegrove some years ago with a granddaughter in tow.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Kate, a snippet of memory returning. “This Mrs. Granger had a child—her daughter’s child—a pretty girl, but the name escapes me.”

  “Annabelle Granger,” said Nancy. “Annie, she’s called.”

  “That’s right,” said Kate. “The mother had been seduced by the girl’s father, then died in childbed. It was a sad story.”

  “Yes, but a rich London gentleman owns the cottage Mrs. Granger lives in, and even the stables behind it.” Nancy spoke swiftly, as if to force the words out. “It’s been put about that he’s the girl’s godfather, or an uncle of some sort. Yet he rarely visits, and scarcely spares the child a word, according to Mrs. Lowell.”

  “Ah, the father,” said Mrs. Peppin sagely. “ ’Tis ever the way with rich gentlemen. They hide their troubles away in some little village.”

  “Yes, that’s what Mrs. Lowell said,” said Kate. “She was outraged. But we don’t know the truth, Peppie. Perhaps the gentleman really is an uncle?”

  Mrs. Peppin shot Kate a doubtful look. “With a story so vague as that?”

  “I know, I know,” said Kate, throwing up her hands. “You’re likely right. Human nature is ever a disappointment. But Nancy, what has this tragedy to do with us?”

  Nancy looked at her sorrowfully. “Oh, Kate,” she whispered. “Mrs. Lowell says—well, she says that man is Edward.”

  “Edward?” Kate went suddenly still inside. “She says that Edward … keeps up this child?”

  It was as if she could feel her own heart beating. As if time had caught, suspended on a silken string, as she struggled to make sense of Nancy’s words.

  “Not Mr. Edward—?” Peppie’s fingers flew to her lips, as if she might take back h
er words.

  “Mrs. Lowell recognized him at church,” said Nancy sorrowfully, “and that great black horse of his, too.”

  The horse. Kate had forgotten it.

  With Edward’s identity discovered, she’d dropped all enquiries into its origin. But one rarely rode a horse all the way from London nowadays; the train was too fast.

  “So you’re saying that … that this Mrs. Lowell claims Edward is Annie Granger’s father?” Kate managed to say. “That he owns the cottage they live in? That his money—his gaming hell money—keeps up the Granger family?”

  Nancy nodded, biting her lip again. “Yes, and the Lowells deeply disapprove of him,” she replied. “Mrs. Lowell says he comes round once or twice a year and strides about like he owns the place.”

  “Which he does, it sounds,” interjected Mrs. Peppin.

  “Yes,” said Nancy. “That’s where the horse came from. Edward pastures it there.”

  But the entire, ugly scenario was playing out in Kate’s mind. Edward had recognized the church in Staplegrove the day they drove past it; he had not even pretended otherwise.

  This, then, was the tragedy Edward had spoken of. The story of Maria, whose parents had refused his suit.

  She died whilst I was in the army, Edward had said.

  But how could that be? Could he have been so spiteful—or so distraught—as to go away and leave her carrying his child? Or had it all been one great misunderstanding?

  It almost didn’t matter; he had hidden away a child, and more or less ignored her. It was not abandonment, no—but it was close. And Kate had truly thought better of Edward than that.

  “Miss Kate?” Peppie put an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, miss, sit up straight, lovey, do.”

  “But Edward … Edward has said nothing of this to me.” Kate realized she had slumped forward on the sofa. Nancy and Peppie exchanged speaking glances.

  “Oh, Kate!” Nancy slid to the very end of the chaise, and caught Kate’s hands in her own. “Should I not have told you? Richard is so angry! Strange as it is, he’d taken quite a liking to Edward. And he said … he said I really must tell you. Perhaps I oughtn’t have?”

  “There, there, Miss Nan,” said Peppie, but she was patting Kate’s back. “Of course you did rightly. And as Miss Kate says, there’s no knowing how this gurt scandal come about. Mayhap there’s more to it than that newsy Mrs. Lowell knows.”

  Kate gathered her wits and stood. She needed to be alone. “Thank you, Nancy,” she said. “You did just the right thing. I’m … disappointed, to say the least.”

  Left with little alternative, Nancy rose. “And are you going to confront him, Kate?” she asked. “Are you going to demand the truth? For my part, I should like to strike that handsome face of his a cracking good blow. I feel as if he has deceived us.”

  “But it’s really none of our business.” Kate forced a smile, though it cost her dear. “He’s chosen to keep it a secret for reasons of his own. I shall not pry. After all, he isn’t starving or beating Annie Granger, but merely depriving her of a father’s love and companionship.”

  “But what a cruel, cruel cut for a child to bear!” cried Nancy. “How can you, of all people, excuse it?”

  “I do not,” she replied. “Children should live with their fathers regardless of how they came into being. They should not be hidden away as if they are something to be ashamed of.”

  But Nancy’s outrage didn’t relent. “Kate, you and I know too well what it’s like to be dumped in the country and treated as an afterthought,” she said harshly. “Aurélie, for all her faults, would have stayed if Papa had let her. You know, Kate, she would have.”

  “I’m not excusing Papa,” said Kate. “But this is about Edward’s failings, not his. And we must console ourselves that Edward is doing better than many rich men in his place would do. Yes, Nan, I’m crushed. The child is likely his. But what can it matter to us? He’ll be gone soon.”

  “Not if Mrs. Wentworth has any say in it,” Mrs. Peppin warned, “since she’s taken it into her head to keep the fellow here.”

  “Then I shall tell Mamma the truth,” Nancy hotly declared. “I … I shall insist she send him away.”

  “Nan, leave it be,” Kate cautioned, rising as gracefully as she could. “He’ll go soon enough. Certainly I shall not further detain him. Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I have some letters to write.”

  She watched them trail from the room, the withering smile still planted upon her face. But at the last instant, Mrs. Peppin cast a pitying look back over her shoulder. Then Nancy, too, turned around.

  “Kate,” she said, “shall I cancel my trip to Exeter tomorrow with Mamma? I should be pleased to stay at home with you and keep you company. I do not need to go shopping, truly.”

  “Heavens, no,” said Kate. “Aurélie will have a fit.”

  But it was her sister’s simple kindness that was Kate’s undoing. As soon as the door shut, she flung herself across the divan, and began to sob.

  She wasn’t even sure why she sobbed—which made it all the worse. What had she imagined? That Edward would turn over a new leaf and fling himself at her feet? That there would be some sweet happy-ever-after amidst the wreckage of her life?

  There would not be.

  There would not be, and even Reggie, cad that he was, had sense enough to see what Kate’s life was coming to. In fact, Reggie had likely given Kate the best offer she was apt ever to have—and that had been an offer of blackmail, more or less.

  Certainly she’d get nothing better from wicked Ned Quartermaine, and on that score, Edward had not deceived her. He had made it plain that Kate could expect nothing of him beyond this; a strange bond born of a strange circumstance, and a passionate fling between the sheets.

  And now she had to face the fact that Edward was not at all the sort of man she’d imagined—this, on top of the fact that she’d somehow convinced herself that owning a gaming hell might be forgivable. But to neglect one’s daughter? That struck too near the heart for even Kate to contrive to excuse.

  Oh, such men inevitably had a dozen pretty reasons. Certainly her father had; by the time Nancy had come along, with his marriage already strained, James Wentworth had ceased to spare his daughters a passing glance, and packed them off permanently to Somerset. And that abandonment, she fully realized, was precisely why Nancy was so angry with Edward.

  But if challenged, Edward would doubtless say that his occupation made him unsuitable to rear a child. That men were temperamentally incapable of understanding daughters. Or, like Kate’s father, that children needed fresh, country air.

  But children—especially daughters—needed fathers. Someone to teach them how to ride a pony and wield a cricket bat. Someone to tell them that they were pretty, even if they were not.

  Even if they were plain as a pikestaff, and gangly as a beanpole.

  A child needed a father’s love. And to deny it was selfish beyond reason.

  On another wave of self-pity, Kate curled into a ball on the divan, and let her head sink into the pillow. Just then her door creaked open a crack, and then a little wider. Filou came waddling and snuffling across the carpet, his rheumy eyes solemn.

  He simply stood at the edge of the divan, gazing up at her in what seemed to Kate like sincere sympathy.

  “Oh, very well.” Kate sighed, and patted a spot beside her.

  Filou leapt up, his hind legs kicking and flailing for purchase. She reached out and hefted up his rump, and the pug flopped against her on a wheezy exhalation. She wrapped an arm about him, and snuggled him close.

  He sighed again, gave a tremulous doggy shudder, and then began to snore.

  Well, this is it, thought Kate. This is as good as it gets for me.

  A flatulent, asthmatic dog. Or Lord Reginald Hoke, extortionist extraordinaire.

  Kate chose the dog.

  She put her arm around Filou, and drifted off into something like sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  Mi
ss Wentworth’s Dilemma

  Kate managed to avoid Edward for the remainder of the day, and with very little effort on her own behalf. In fact, she saw almost no one.

  According to Mrs. Peppin, Nancy was closeted with Aurélie for two hours, planning their grand shopping excursion. Declaring the trip to Exeter too taxing to even contemplate, Lady Julia curled up in the library with a novel. Sir Francis and the Comte de Macey decided to take a long walk along the moor, while Reggie spent the whole of the afternoon in the billiards room with a bottle of Bellecombe’s best brandy.

  As to Edward, Kate heard no more of him, and supposed he spent the remainder of the day with Anstruther. So, after sending down her excuses at dinner—a headache, entirely real—Kate went straight to bed, only to be roused from a long, dream-fraught night somewhere near dawn by Mrs. Peppin, who was gently jostling her shoulder.

  “My lady, wake up, do!” she was saying as Kate surfaced.

  “Umm?” Kate levered up onto one elbow, dislodging poor Filou, who had, for once, forsaken Aurélie. She pushed the hair from her face to see the housekeeper standing over her bed in a pool of yellow light, her lamp raised high.

  “Peppie? What’s wrong? Is it Mamma?”

  “No, no, lovey,” she said, putting the lamp down on Kate’s night table. “Young Tom Shearn’s in the bailey. He says Jenks has a heifer breeching down in the byre, and another calf behind it.”

  “Blast.” Kate dragged a hand through her hair. “One of the Devons?”

  “No, one of the new Herefords, lovey,” she said, “and too expensive to let die, Jenks says.”

  “Jenks is right.” Kate flung back the covers. “Blasted overbred racehorses. What does Anstruther say? The Herefords were his notion. Did anyone send to Taunton for the veterinary surgeon?”

  “Aye, but Jenks thinks there’s no time,” Mrs. Peppin reported. “And Anstruther’s dressing to take Mrs. Wentworth to Exeter, says Tom, and dares not disappoint her. He said Tom was to come for you, and ask what might be done.”

  “Exeter?” Caught in the midst of filling her basin with cold water, Kate turned, incredulous, the pitcher held aloft. “And shopping takes precedence over a forty-guinea Hereford? My God, has Mamma run the whole world mad?”