by Pam Roller
“Lady Katherine Seymour, may I present our neighbor, Mistress Agnes Cooke,” Elizabeth said. She anchored both hands on the chair arms and sank onto the seat.
“More than just a neighbor I would hope, Lizzy,” Agnes replied, and arched blond brows.
“Yes...forgive me. Agnes is also my friend.” Elizabeth lowered her eyes and plucked at her dress.
“To you and to Alexander,” Agnes said.
Katherine forced herself to maintain a pleasant expression. Although Agnes held a sweet smile, her words denoted possessiveness. She must be betrothed to Lord Drayton. Why else would she refer to him in such an informal manner?
Katherine’s gaze again slid to the heavy drapes. Feeling smothered in the dimness, she took a deep breath to calm herself, and this brought on the familiar long, drawn-out cough that had assailed her since the fire. Swallowing hard and relaxing her shoulders, she forced herself to concentrate on the two women before her.
“My family will dine here tomorrow,” Agnes announced after a moment.
Elizabeth’s hand stilled with her cup halfway to her lips. Her voice barely carried. “Yes, I am aware of this.”
“Edward is quite smitten with you, Lizzy,” Agnes said.
A blush crept up Elizabeth’s cheeks. “He is nice enough.” Her cup clattered a little as she set it onto its matching saucer.
Agnes tapped a finger to her lips. “I do hope his feelings do not change upon meeting Lady Katherine.”
Elizabeth shifted in her seat. “That would be Edward’s choice, of—of course.”
Katherine frowned. Who was Edward? And what was Agnes implying?
Agnes again turned toward Katherine, her brows creased in apparent compassion. “Lizzy has informed me that you lost your voice in the fire. What a pity. Were the situation different, you could tell us of your interest in the curtains.”
Elizabeth looked up quickly. “Agnes, please.”
Rude woman. Katherine’s body tensed, but she lifted her chalk to explain. Perhaps Elizabeth could ask a servant to open them.
Agnes waved a dismissive hand. “No need. I have always found reading an unnecessary burden for a true lady.”
Katherine returned her slate to her lap and lowered her head to hide her smirk. True lady, indeed.
At a soft knock on the door, Elizabeth, with clear relief in her voice, bade entry.
A servant entered and curtsied. “Lady Katherine’s things have been taken to her room. She has no maid.”
Elizabeth turned to Katherine with wide eyes. “No maid? Certainly you did not make this trip alone!”
Embarrassment heated Katherine’s face as she wrote, No, borrowed servant. She returned to London. Ellis Potts, her ex-betrothed, had spared all expenses and not bothered to procure a maid for her when he sent her away.
Elizabeth read the words aloud, slowly.
“Well, that is quite odd,” Agnes said with a laugh. “I suppose you will have to curl your own hair and lace your own shoes. Do your dresses button in the front? Gads, I cannot imagine doing anything without my maid, can you, Lizzy?”
“You are in need of a lady’s maid,” Elizabeth said, her sudden decisiveness surprising after her former hesitation. “I will accompany you to your bedchamber and try to remedy this. If you will pardon me, Agnes, I will return shortly.”
Katherine rose on stiff legs. The two-day jostling of the coach during her journey from London to Chiswick had taken its toll on her body, and a short rest would surely quell her weariness. Perhaps later she could request a warm bath.
Despite Agnes’ friendly smile, Katherine shivered with a wary chill as she passed.
The servant walked ahead of them back through the Hall toward the stairs, her pace slow to accommodate Elizabeth’s limp.
Katherine imagined Lord Drayton at his desk. The memory of his broad shoulders and the heat of his powerful masculinity even now triggered something unbidden deep within her.
She scoffed at herself. How shameful and improper that her body should respond in this way to a man who resented her presence.
Her reaction, she knew, stemmed from the profound forlornness she’d seen in his eyes despite his terse manner. Perhaps the widower had loved his wife and missed her very much.
The servant led them up the wide staircase and then down an oak-paneled passageway that stretched in both directions, interspersed with an occasional bench or table. Closed doors stood like shadowy sentinels as the women passed by them.
At the end of the corridor, the servant turned right and headed down another. It seemed strange that Katherine’s bedchamber would be so far from the main stairs. Perhaps the doors they passed opened to rooms for overnight guests. Lord Drayton must entertain often.
The thought did not cheer Katherine, whose former lively banter with the other courtiers at Whitehall Palace had been reduced to listening to the talk around her. By the time she added her comments to a conversation on her slate, the subject had moved on.
“Your room looks out at the front,” Elizabeth said, panting slightly with her uneven steps. “I do hope you will enjoy it.”
Ahead of them, the maid’s shoulders tensed. She stopped at the end of the passage and opened a door.
The chamber was spacious, but the gloom made it difficult to see many details. Katherine rolled her eyes in frustration. Was every window in this home darkened with heavy curtains? What was so wrong with letting in some light?
Without delay, she set her slate on the writing table near the door, crossed over to the window, and grasped the drapes. The metal loops skating across the rod sent a relishing ring throughout the room.
Although gentle rain still fell, the grim daylight added a measure of brightness to the room. Katherine hadn’t realized just how tense she had become in this gloomy fortress until relief washed over her. She turned with a smile, and then stared in dismay at the monotony before her.
Gray tester around the bedposts. Mud-gray quarterpane. She glanced at the rug. More gray. And surrounding her, plain walls with no hint of decoration save for a thin border of pale yellow flowers that seemed to cry out in desperate cheer.
Katherine winced at the dreary sight. Had a blind person decorated the room?
“Lady—Lady Katherine,” Elizabeth stammered from the doorway. She stood wide-eyed, her white hands pressed to her lips.
Unasked, the servant ran to the window. The metal loops clanged as she jerked the drapes closed.
“You must never open them,” Elizabeth choked out in a whisper. “Never!”
Katherine’s heart lurched at Elizabeth’s frightened expression. What was she afraid of? Or whom? Nervously, she retrieved her slate and wrote, What is wrong?
“There are reasons, but I am forbidden to discuss them.” Tension filled Elizabeth’s voice. Exasperation trickled through Katherine’s unease. All families had their secrets. But to keep the drapes closed at all times? What the devil was going on?
“Now, we will discuss acquiring a lady’s maid for you.” Elizabeth raised her chin and turned to the servant, but her voice still trembled. “Millie, you were Lady Drayton’s personal maid, were you not?”
Millie nodded. “Yes, m’lady, until the melancholy—” She gasped and stepped back. “Forgive me. I meant no offense.”
Elizabeth’s hand fluttered to her throat. “Take heed of what you say, Millie.”
“Yes, m’lady.” Millie sounded close to tears.
Katherine’s fervent curiosity had flared. She wished to know more of Lord Drayton and his late wife, and Millie was her best hope.
“Well then,” Elizabeth said, her voice again hesitant, “I will leave Millie with you and return to Lady Agnes. We eat a light meal at five of the clock.”
After Elizabeth left, Millie removed and shook out Katherine’s dresses one by one from her large trunk and placed them on her bed. Katherine had brought none of her black mourning dresses from London. She wanted to forget the past—the fire, her family’s deaths, and the callous man
she foolishly thought had loved her.
“So beautiful,” Millie murmured, holding up a crimson satin gown with gold lace over its pink frilly underskirt. “Lady Drayton had a new dress made every now and then, but none were as fine-lookin’ as these.”
Katherine nodded her thanks at the compliment and carried her hairdressing case to the table.
“She was never happy. But she wasn’t at fault.”
Surprised, Katherine turned toward Millie, who stood holding a dress of sapphire silk.
The maid’s gaze roamed the room. “So sad, these colors. This was her room.”
Lord Drayton made his wife sleep in this drab bedchamber? What was wrong with him? Shaking her head in disgust, Katherine removed her curling iron and brush from the small case.
Millie continued, albeit in a faltering voice. “Lord Drayton never wanted to hear her name again after she died. And Lady Elizabeth will not talk about her because she fears him so. He is not the same as he used to be.” The maid removed the last dress and set it on the bed, where it settled with a rustling sigh of silver lace and turquoise satin. She looked toward Katherine, but did not meet her eyes. “The quarrels between my Lord and Lady Drayton...loud and fierce they were. My lord got to be as broodin’ and angry as a bull pawin’ the ground. And over the years, every time Lady Drayton’s babe died in her womb, she blamed him.”
Katherine dropped the pearl hairpiece she had been holding, and stared at the maid.
“Just her talk, mind ye,” Millie said with a shrug. “Each time she got with child—four times it was—the babe would die. She had a wanderin’ womb, y’see.”
Katherine had heard about this occurrence, when a mother’s womb rose to her head and caused mental fits of hysteria. Still, she couldn’t shake the idea that perhaps Lady Drayton had been in some kind of danger. Morbid curiosity riveted her attention to the maid’s conspiratorial whisper.
“And then, one night after she started screamin’ that he was tryin’ to kill her...she fell.”
Katherine followed the maid’s pointed gaze to the window. She touched a hand to her throat and tried to swallow the sudden dryness that had settled there.
Dear God. Had Lord Drayton pushed his wife from the window?
Millie sighed and closed the trunk lid with an echoing bang. “Take care, m’lady. Ye’ve come into only sorrow here at Drayton Castle.”
Chapter Three
“Bloody hell!” Alex shoved around the papers on his desk.
Misplaced letters needed responses. His ledgers contained inconsistent numbers. The documents he’d tossed onto the nearby table for later perusal were only building upon themselves like grains of sand in an hourglass.
Damn his steward, who’d pocketed much of Drayton Castle’s profits before getting himself killed last month in a drunken brawl at the tavern.
Alex had only himself to blame. His inattention to household matters during Mary’s sickness and the months after her death had necessitated all management of his books to the steward, and the man had taken advantage of it.
The lack of order and mistakes could be remedied over hours of careful study, but Alex had little patience for bookwork. What he wanted to do, right now, was find the missive from the king.
He already knew about Katherine’s circumstances. Her father, the noble Thomas Seymour, had died in the London fire. During rebuilding last month, a trunk had been found in the cellar of his burned townhouse containing treasonous documents and gold for bribing.
Alex wasn’t concerned with this information. His only reason for finding the letter was to read the king’s description of Katherine. Had His Majesty mentioned anything of her astounding beauty?
She must have used those wide brown eyes and full lips to try to convince Charles not to send her here. But of course, he would have conceded to Lady Castlemaine, who governed his political affairs as she did his body.
A lying wench, was Katherine. Since Alex would see her tonight, he’d have to work hard to go along with her pretense that she knew nothing of the reason she was here. After all, she surely waited in fear for him to vent his rage on her.
He would have to settle her mind, but that meant he would have to speak to her. Alone.
With a scowl, he shot up from his chair and stormed toward the door, but paused when he heard a faint knock. It could only be Elizabeth. No one else dared bother him while he was working.
Elizabeth shrank back when he jerked opened the door. Her clear gray eyes, so like his mother’s, stared up at him.
She used to have such mettle when she was younger, before the disease of rickets had twisted her back. Although she’d come to live in his house over three months ago, she still held some bizarre fear of him.
“Come in.” He gestured to a brown leather chair. When she hesitated, he added gruffly, “I am sorry if I startled you. I was already at the door when you knocked.”
She hobbled into the room and sat, taking a fold of her pale yellow dress in one hand and kneading it. “Agnes awaits you in the parlor,” she murmured.
Alex gave an inward groan and crossed his arms. “Has her family arrived?”
“No. I believe she—she arrived early to see you.”
“I am busy.” He indicated the piles of papers on his desk. At least the mess gave him an excuse for avoidance. “Is Katherine in there with her?”
“Yes.”
The question had been offhand, but Alex’s feet moved toward the door as if on their own accord. “Come, then,” he said, ignoring the heated ball of anticipation in his gut. “We will converse with them while we await the rest of Agnes’ family. I am sure you are looking forward to seeing Edward.”
****
“Do tell me, what is your strange fascination with the curtains?” Agnes asked Katherine. Then, she gasped in apparent surprise and flashed a contrite smile. “Oh, yes. I forgot that you cannot speak.”
Katherine gritted her teeth and gave the woman a cold stare. She wanted little to do with Agnes. How could Elizabeth have befriended her? She was like a cat—always waiting for a chance to pounce on her prey.
Now, her feline stare traveled over the sloping shoulders and full sleeves of Katherine’s satin gown. “Your dress—I must say that peach color is stunning. And so very fashionable. The lace over your underskirt is exquisite. It must have cost a fortune.”
It had, but she wasn’t about to let Agnes know this. After the fire, Ellis had bought her a new wardrobe. Keeping the expensive garments after he broke the betrothal had been Katherine’s only means of reprisal.
“How on earth did you pay for such a dress?” Agnes asked. “Have you a...friend?”
Katherine jumped to her feet, temper blazing. How dare she speak thus?
Voices outside the parlor doors heralded the arrival of other guests. Katherine froze, chest heaving, fighting the mounting cough-tickle in her throat. Lord Drayton might enter at any second. Since they hadn’t crossed paths since their first meeting yesterday, it wouldn’t do for him to see her coughing into one hand while raising the other to slap his betrothed across her white, cerused face.
“Gramercy! Alexander is coming in and I am a mess.” With a satisfied pucker of her lips, Agnes smoothed her blue dress and patted her shining curls.
Katherine dropped back into her chair and attempted unsuccessfully to control both her temper and her cough. Lord Drayton had little taste in women if he courted this one.
Seconds later, a young man dressed in bright blue petticoat breeches and matching embroidered jacket strolled into the room with Elizabeth. Following were a thin older gentleman and a short, wide woman, both of them dressed entirely in green. A stalk of celery with an artichoke, Katherine mused.
Lord Drayton entered last, tall and arresting. Indeed, a most pleasing sight.
His gaze stopped and remained on her far too long, his eyes sending a silent question that she couldn’t discern.
Her heart’s leap had nothing to do with seeing him again, of course. He wa
s most certainly a passionless man, full of wasted virility—even if he did emanate a primal strength that made her quiver. To regain her poise, she studied his attire.
His taste in clothes confirmed his status as a country dweller. That dark blue shirt needed more lace at the wrists. He’d bothered with neither waistcoat nor petticoat breeches, but instead wore another pair of those plain leg-hugging breeches, these the color of dead weeds.
Not one ribbon festooned him. Even his golden hair hung unbound. And in those ancient brown leather boots, he would be laughed out of Court.
Yes. He was an unruly savage, completely lacking in fashionable taste.
Had he really had something to do with his wife’s demise? The rumor had to be simple servant gossip, else these perfumed vegetables wouldn’t be visiting.
When at last she could tear her eyes from him, her gaze happened upon Agnes, who had brightened, cocked her head, and set a charming smile to her red lips.
“How do you do, my lord?”
A smile touched Lord Drayton’s lips when he answered, “I am well, Mistress Cooke. And you?”
“Very well, thank you.” Agnes’ predatory eyes shone with some emotion. Lust, perhaps.
There. Agnes and Lord Drayton must be, if not betrothed, in earnest courtship.
Katherine fought to relax her throat when Lord Drayton again turned his attention to her. He seemed to take in all of her with that penetrating gaze, as if she were the only other person in the room with him.
“Lady Katherine, may I present Sir Robert and Lady Sarah Cooke, and their son, Mister Edward Cooke,” he said.
She gave each of his guests a polite nod. Edward’s smile was friendly but cautious, whereas his parents regarded her as if she were an animal on exhibit. A silence ensued while they seemed to decide how to deal with her.
Katherine had grown used to others’ awkwardness toward her lack of speech, but it didn’t ease the deep pain within. She was different now, something curious to stare at—or ignore.
Again the cough threatened, and again she desperately swallowed it away.
