“It’s starting,” Isabel said, “in five minutes. Everyone’s got to take part, or it won’t be any fun. You and Miss Mayhew have got to join. Will you, Papa? Miss Mayhew? Will you, please?”
Kate, who’d been revived by the claret—but even more so by the heat Lord Wingate’s touch had quite inexplicably sparked within her—said, with something like her normal no-nonsense tone, “You know very well, Lady Isabel, that I can’t join you. But I shall be delighted to sit and watch you and your father dance.”
Isabel made a face as they reentered the ballroom. “Me? And Papa? Dance? No, thank you. Geoffrey’s already asked me. Papa, if Miss Mayhew won’t dance with you, you’ll simply have to find your own partner.”
Lord Wingate, Kate saw, smiled a bit enigmatically. “I shall see what I can do,” he said.
And then they were swallowed up in the crush of bodies that crowded the ballroom. Isabel, soon finding Mr. Saunders, hurried away, and Lord Wingate, Kate saw, was directly accosted by a large, heavily jeweled woman who spun around when he inadvertently brushed against her in an effort to get by.
“Wingate,” she bellowed. “I didn’t know you were here! I saw the lovely Lady Isabel, but not you. When did you arrive? How could you have come out and not looked for me?”
How the marquis bore being greeted by this overbearing woman Kate did not wait to find out Their conversation on the terrace—the whole evening in general—had made her quite uncomfortable, to say the least, and it was with great relief that she slipped away, hoping that her employer would be too distracted by his admirer to notice that Kate had gone.
But when a few minutes later she had slunk back to her seat in Spinsters’ Corner, she caught sight of him again, and found that the marquis’s penetrating gaze had followed her, despite the gaggle of splendiferously dressed women who’d gathered round him. He looked at her over the heads of his admirers—admirers who did not seem in the least concerned about the Marquis of Wingate’s reputation, violent or otherwise—and raised a hand.
Kate, staring at that hand, felt a sudden and curious rush of emotion. And then she blushed at the absurdity of her reaction. Because it was only a hand, of course, casually raised to let her know that she had not, in fact, escaped unnoticed, that the marquis had been perfectly sensible of her disappearance, and that he had troubled himself to discover where, exactly, it was that she’d slipped off to.
And yet to Kate, it was more than just a hand. It was an indication that, for the first time in a very long time, she was not alone. Well, she had certainly never been completely alone ... after all, she had Freddy. But though Freddy had always been a good friend, he had not necessarily been the most reliable—and now that she knew about his soprano, she saw why. He had certainly not been someone who, lost in a crush of admirers, would think to seek out Kate, wherever she happened to be in the room, and wave to her.
Which caused Kate to wonder what, in fact, Lord Wingate was doing at the ball in the first place. She had been under the impression that he couldn’t stand these sort of events. So what was he doing at this one? Certainly he could not be here because of Isabel. That was her duty, looking after Isabel. Had Lord Wingate harbored some doubts about Kate’s ability to handle his daughter? Had he come to the ball to see how well she fared at it?
Or was there some other reason he’d come all this way, in all this rain?
I was very much afraid something like this might happen. Those had been his words when he’d first taken her aside. Had he been afraid that she would be tempted to desert her post, as it had surely looked as if she had, when he’d first walked in and found her in Freddy’s arms?
Yet he had not rebuked her for it. He had, in fact, apologized for Freddy, believing the earl had taken a liberty.
And when Daniel Craven had accosted her, the marquis had been almost protective in the way he’d steered her from the room, sensing she was unwell ....
I was very much afraid something like this might happen.
Good God. Kate straightened in her seat, almost as suddenly as if she’d leaned back upon a pin someone had carelessly left upon the chair back. That was it. That had to be it.
Lord Wingate was looking out for her.
He was doing it this instant, right before her eyes. For though he had lowered his hand, his gaze still alighted upon her, every so often, even as he casually shook hands with acquaintances, and sipped a glass of champagne. He was keeping an eye on her. He kept an eye on his daughter, too, but ....
But he was also looking out for her chaperone.
It was ridiculous, of course. Ludicrous, even. Here was a man who had the worst reputation imaginable: he had divorced his wife, and tried to kill her lover; he had kept the product of their union from her in an effort to punish her for loving another man; he’d dueled with Lord knew how many men, and had had affairs with women all over Europe, and had even, shortly upon making her acquaintance, attempted to make love to her ....
And yet, here Kate sat, feeling a rush of warmth and gratitude and—she might as well admit it—liking for her employer.
How could she? How could she possibly like a man like that? How could she, Kate Mayhew, whose head was planted so firmly upon her shoulders, possibly like a man like Burke Traherne, who was, in every way imaginable, so thoroughly lacking in morality? What was the matter with her? What was she thinking?
But she knew exactly what she was thinking. And what she was thinking—what she couldn’t help thinking—was that it had been a terribly long while since anyone had troubled themselves to look out for her, even a little.
Oh, certainly Freddy did, when he remembered to, which tended to be whenever his mother was out of town. But the marquis had come down, on his own accord, for the express purpose of seeing how Kate was faring. He had even apologized to her for what he had perceived as a slight against her by one of his set.
And it had been a long time—a very long time—since anyone had apologized to Kate for anything. The fact that the marquis had done so made her feel ... well, it made her feel as if she belonged.
It was a little thing, a ridiculous thing. But there it was. She felt as if she belonged ... not necessarily to someone, but to something ... a family. And not the pages-and-binding variety, which she had only just a few hours earlier explained to Isabel was the only kind of family she had anymore. But a real family, of flesh and blood.
She had never felt as if she belonged to any of the other families with whom she’d lived since the deaths of her parents—not the Piedmonts, or the Heathwells, or, God forbid, the Sledges. It didn’t do, Kate knew, for someone in her profession to get to feeling too close to her charges. Children grew up, and then there was no need for a governess—or, in this case, a chaperone. It had already happened to Kate several times, even in her relatively short career. The only thing for it, really, was to put on a brave face, and sally on to the next assignment. What else was there for her to do?
Oh, she could marry Freddy, she supposed. She could always marry Freddy ... providing, of course, she could put up with his mother.
And the soprano, of course.
But Kate wasn’t ready to give up, and if she married Freddy, that would be precisely what she was doing. Somewhere out there, she was convinced, was the man for her, and even though, at twenty-three, she was advanced in age for the marriage market, she wasn’t going to allow herself to surrender without a fight. After all, she’d known girls of eight and twenty—even over thirty—years of age, who’d found love and marriage. Why shouldn’t she?
So there was nothing for it, really, but to carry on, and work to earn her keep, and face each day as another opportunity at finding the love she was certain was waiting for her. For everything she had ever read had assured her that love came to those who were patient, and good at heart. And she trusted that she was both things. Love was surely just around the corner for Katherine Mayhew. She simply had to find the right one.
Corner, that is.
But in the mea
ntime, it seemed, she had found a family. A fractured one, to be sure, but still, something to which she felt she belonged.
And that feeling of belonging was what was making her feel so warm. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in quite some time. It was a feeling she quite liked.
It was a feeling she very much feared she could get used to.
Chapter Thirteen
“No,” Lady Isabel Traherne said petulantly. “That isn’t what I asked for. I asked for sugared orange slices, not peach.” She fell back against the pile of pillows behind her, raised a lace handkerchief to her red and running nose, and moaned, “Oh, take it away. Just take it away.”
Brigitte, Lady Isabel’s personal maid, shot Kate, who was sitting a few feet away, an aggrieved look. Brigitte was taking her mistress’s illness quite hard. She had been working ceaselessly at trying to find ways to amuse and cheer the invalid.
Kate, on the other hand, found it exceedingly difficult not to laugh at Lady Isabel’s theatrics. She managed to keep a straight face this time only because she’d had some little practice over the course of the past week, during which Isabel’s cold—and it was, the physician had assured them, only a spring cold—had gone from bad to worse.
Kate’s belief that she had finally found a place in which she belonged had not lessened, even as her charge grew more and more irritable, and less and less likable, as her cold progressed. For now that they were not constantly at the opera, or a ball, or a card party; not attending the races, or a luncheon, or hopping from milliner shop to milliner shop in quest of the perfect bonnet, Kate had come to know the rest of the household quite well, and had developed a thorough liking for almost all of the inmates of 21 Park Lane.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Cleary, was a clever and sensible woman, who seemed to worship Kate for her ability to discipline the headstrong Isabel—whom, Kate learned, had run quite wild before she’d taken up residency. The butler, Vincennes, was everything that Mr. Phillips had not been, and a good hand at chess, besides, and was forever hovering about, asking Kate if she had time for a game. Even Brigitte, the French ladies’ maid, whose head was filled with little more than giggles and gossip, was a thoroughly pleasant companion, though Kate suspected the only reason she’d taken so to her mistress’s chaperone was that Kate spoke a little French, and Brigitte, missing her mother tongue, enjoyed conversing in it once again.
Really, the only person at 21 Park Lane about whom Kate had any misgivings whatsoever was her employer ... and that was only because she saw him so very rarely. For a man who—according to his own daughter—loved nothing more than a good book, it seemed to Kate as if Lord Wingate was never at home to enjoy one. Kate had been forced to spend much of her time during Isabel’s illness trolling her father’s library for material with which to amuse her, and never once had she encountered him there. She had seen him a good deal oftener before Isabel’s illness, when she’d looked out from Spinsters’ Corner, and glimpsed him in the crowd, one eye invariably on his daughter, and the other inevitably turned in her direction.
Which she hadn’t minded. She hadn’t minded it a bit. Truth be told, running into Daniel Craven the way she had that first night had thoroughly unnerved her. She could not say why, precisely. The rational part of her mind told her that Daniel could in no way have had any part in the tragic deaths of her parents. But another, deeper part of her insisted that he had. It was a thought she routinely pushed down, but it had a tendency to rise now and then ... especially in her dreams, which, since seeing him again, had tended more and more often to revolve around the fire.
She had thought herself done with nightmares. They had haunted her almost every night for the first year after her parents’ deaths. But after seven years, they had ceased almost completely. Until, that is, she’d thought she’d seen Daniel Craven on Park Lane ... and then actually had seen him, across a ballroom.
Now the nightmares returned, not with any regularity, but more than just occasionally. And in them, she was once again trying frantically to reach her parents, trying to cross that burning hallway, and once again, something—someone—pulled her back. In her dreams, she never saw who that someone was.
Waking, however, she knew. The name Daniel Craven, Daniel Craven, Daniel Craven, echoed through her head every morning like church bells, ringing out the time.
Fortunately, after that first night, she did not see him again. She looked for him—she would always look for him, now that she knew he was back in England. But fortunately, it appeared he was not invited to many of the same parties as the daughter of the Marquis of Wingate. Which suited Kate just fine. Though she had not, she felt, handled their first interview at all well, she did not feel anxious to prove herself in another. The farther Daniel Craven stayed from her, the happier she felt
This was not the way she felt, however, about another gentleman who seemed to be avoiding her. She knew perfectly well that she ought to have kept her mouth shut over Freddy’s soprano, but somehow, one night, it had simply slipped out. They had been standing about, watching Isabel whirl across the ballroom on the arm of a boy who was not Geoffrey Saunders—which had consequently caused Mr. Saunders, who was standing close by, to complain, “I don’t understand it She promised me all her dances, first thing when she arrived this evening, and then every time I look, some other bloke’s got her.”
Pleased to see the young man so discomfited, Kate had remarked, lifting a glass of champagne from the tray a footman offered her, “ ‘A woman is always a fickle, unstable thing.’ “
Freddy had flicked an amused glance in her direction. “Surely not the Bible, Kate?”
“Good Lord, no.” She took a sip. “That was Virgil.”
“I say, Kate,” Freddy said, moving closer to her. “There’s Traherne, over there by that potted palm, lookin’ right at you. What’s he doin’ here, I wonder? I wouldn’t think this was his sort of thing. Is he here to spy on you, d’you think?”
Kate said, with a shrug, “I rather fancied it was you he was staring daggers at. After all, you’re the one who’s always dragging his daughter off to turn a reel, aren’t you?”
“Only because you won’t turn one with me,” Freddy said, wounded. Then, as if it had only just occurred to him: “I say, Kate. Did he say anything to you about me that night he caught the two of us dancin’?”
“About you manhandling me, you mean?” Kate asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry about that. Don’t know what came over me. I was caught up in the moment, and all. I don’t suppose I’ve a head for dancin’.”
“No,” Kate said. “His lordship didn’t say anything about your manhandling me.”
Nor had Kate said anything to Freddy about Daniel Graven being back in town. Freddy hadn’t noticed him that evening at the ball, having become embroiled in another heated argument over horses with the young Mr. Saunders. Which was, Kate figured, just as well: Freddy had been one of the many people who’d believed her insistence that she’d seen Daniel Craven the night of the fire a symptom of the smoke inhalation she’d suffered, a sort of a hallucination. Her practically fainting at the sight of the man seven years later would only have confirmed Freddy’s belief that her antipathy for Daniel Craven was ill-founded. After all, what had he done at the ball, but greet her with perfect civility? And she’d gone and fainted.
Instead, she said, mischievously, “Lord Wingate did, however, wonder what you were doing there, and ventured that she must have been busy that night.”
Freddy stared down at her. “That who must have been busy that night? My mother, you mean?”
“Certainly not.” She took another sip of her champagne. “Your Viennese soprano, of course.”
Freddy’s jaw had dropped. He’d shot a look in the marquis’s direction that, had he noticed it, might have caused Lord Wingate some little discomfort.
“That devil,” Freddy had said quite vehemently, beneath his breath. Then, to Kate, he’d said, “Listen to me, Katie. She means nothing, I swear it. S
he was just a way to ... Well, it isn’t as if you’ve been giving me any encouragement and ... and ...” Freddy had darted a murderous look in the marquis’s direction. “I’ll kill him,” she’d heard him murmur. “I swear I will.”
To which Kate had responded by striking him lightly on the arm with her fan.
“Oh, Freddy, stop it. I’m delighted to hear that you don’t spend every moment you’re away from me pining for my company. It’s a blow to my ego, I’ll admit—and I’m disappointed you never told me about her, since I thought we shared everything with one another”—well, not quite everything, she’d amended guiltily to herself—“but I suppose I’ll live.”
Freddy had been much too appalled to say another word. And his effrontery over what she’d considered merely light-hearted bantering must have been extreme, since Kate heard mighty little from him after that. He seemed to avoid all of the functions at which he thought she might be in attendance, and he certainly never came calling for her of a Sunday, her only day off.
Kate, surprised, supposed the soprano had meant rather more to Freddy than he’d let on.
And, strangely, even though his daughter was ill—a trifling illness, surely, but an aggravating one, nonetheless—Lord Wingate was rather scarce himself, and from his own home, no less. Oh, he peered in first thing after breakfast, to see how Isabel had fared during the night, and occasionally looked in at the end of an evening out, but nothing more than that. Kate supposed he had found a replacement for Mrs. Woodhart, with whom, she understood from Isabel—who knew far more than was good for her about her father’s romantic life—he’d split. But this idea Isabel dismissed with much disgust. He had not found a replacement for Mrs. Woodhart, and would not, if he knew what was good for him. It was time he married, and the sooner the better, according to Isabel, since Geoffrey Saunders was bound to propose any day.
A little scandal Page 14
