“Is that why she left ye?”
“She did not leave me. She merely went on holiday.”
“Without telling ye where she was going?” Jack shook his head with a little sneer. “Perhaps she wisnae as fond of ye as ye believe.”
“She is my wife, my lord. Mine!” Hayes pushed out of his chair just as Jack did his, until they were nose-to-nose in the middle of the room. “She is mine and I will do whatever it takes to keep her. Anything!”
Haddington lifted the man by the lapels and stared him straight in the eye. His brogue was unaffected now, dark and threatening. “She isnae yers any longer, Hayes, and I am warning ye right now, if ye so much as lay one finger on her again, I will take an extraordinary amount of pleasure in killing ye myself.”
“We’ll see about–”
“What is going on here?” The men broke apart to find Kitty glaring at them, both of them, in clear disapproval. “Well?”
Jack set Hayes back on his heels and released him, brushing down his crumpled lapels. “Nothing, my love, all is well.”
Kitty sniffed inwardly, amused by his casually bored tone. “Obviously.”
“Katherine, my darling,” Hayes’ voice was fervent as he approached her and reached out to take her arm, when her frosty gaze stopped him momentarily, “I have waited to escort you home…to our home,” he emphasized for Jack’s benefit. “Come, let us leave. We have so much to talk about.”
Taking a breath deep with resolve, Kitty glanced back at Mr. Jensen. “Sir, might I have use of your office for a moment, for a private word with Mr. Hayes?”
“Of course.” He bowed slightly and gestured to the room. She made to reenter the room when she felt Jack’s restrained response. “Just for a moment,” she assured him, knowing he wouldn’t want her to be alone with Hayes.
She watched Freddie enter the room and close the door behind them. She faced him for the first time without fear. The end was near for her. Her divorce would be complete very soon. When he found out what she had done, there was no saying how he would react. But she was becoming her own woman now and was feeling strong and confident. She stared him right in the eyes and held her focus there, without hesitation, for perhaps the first time in their married lives.
“Where have you been, Katherine?” he asked plaintively, trying to ignore the obvious irritation in her gaze. The cold fire in her green eyes fascinated him. Her color was high. She was lovely in her ire. “I came back from my business trip to California and you were gone. Not a word of where you were. Your parents didn’t seem to know anything about it. No one in Boston either. I have had a private investigator looking for you for almost a month. You were nowhere to be found. Where did you go?”
She shuddered to know he had been searching so extensively for her. She felt a bit hunted. But of course, she could tell him now. It didn’t matter anymore, now that they had been forced to return. “I went to Scotland…to Eve.”
“Why?”
She stared at him with incredulity, for he truly seemed puzzled by her departure. “I have filed for a divorce, Freddie. Mr. Jensen is representing me.”
Hayes was startled by her words but recovered quickly and predictably with overblown anger. “Never! I won’t allow it! You cannot just tell me you have filed for a divorce and think it will pass without words?”
“I had hoped that we might both approach this as adults, Freddie,” she argued reasonably, but could not help but shift back from him just a step.
“Adults?” he sputtered, as he gripped her fingers with an iron fist until she tried to wrench them free with a whimper of pain. “Who do you think you are? I was prepared to overlook your disgraceful behavior, your abandonment, without reprisal, out of my love for you. And this is how you thank me? You disappear without word of where you are…”
“To get away from you, Freddie,” she informed him, trying to pry her hands away. “To leave you!”
“Leave me? I own you. It is my right as your husband under the law. You cannot leave me. Why would you leave me?”
Kitty took a deep breath, finally wrenching her fingers free. She flexed them to renew the circulation. “I did leave you, Freddie. I left you because I could bear your jealousy and abuses no longer.”
“My jealousy is all your fault, Katherine,” he blamed her viciously, before dropping to his knees, wrapping his arms around her hips and pressing his cheek against her as she tried to squirm away. “If you had just kept your attention where it was meant to be, I would never have any need to become jealous. To remind you of your duties. I love you, Katherine. I have always loved you. You are mine! My wife!”
His fanatical behavior astounded her in its madness. There had always been an unnatural intensity in his declarations of love, but this was simply insane. How did one deal with insanity? “If you love me, Freddie, just allow me to go.”
“To that man out there? Your good friend?” he sneered, standing while trying to keep her in his arms. “Is he your lover? He wants to be, I can tell. He is, isn’t he?
“No, Freddie, he is not.”
Not physically, anyway, but he was her lover at heart and some of that truth must have spoken in her eyes, because his narrowed viciously.
“I think, perhaps, it is time we reassert just whom you belong to.”
Hayes pulled her to him and ground his mouth down on her. Stunned, since Freddie usually started with violence before moving on to lust, Kitty tore herself away from him and turned away. He reached for her again. Running across the room, she sought refuge, putting a small chair between them as he approached. Hayes shoved the chair out of the way and caught her sharply across the cheek with the back of his hand.
His fist was returning for another strike when it was caught in midair.
Chapter 26
The most part of all princes have more delight
in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.
~ Thomas More
Jack glared down into Hayes’ startled blue eyes and drawled, with cool arrogance, “Hayes, old chap, I believe we discussed this verra thing no’ a moment ago, did we no’? Perhaps I did no’ make myself entirely clear on the matter.”
He shoved Hayes away from Kitty, sending him spinning and caught him with a left hook to the stomach followed by a hard right to the jaw that set the offender back on his buttocks on the floor. Scrambling up, Hayes charged low, catching him in the midsection and throwing them both to the ground. Easily flipping him around, Jack gained the upper hand, landing a hard blow to the stomach and another to the jaw again as he straddled the smaller man, pinning him down. Hayes returned with a glancing blow to the brow.
Trying to get between them, grabbing at Jack’s arm, Kitty screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”
The men pushed her aside to continue their battle, passing shots as they regained their footing and began sparring in earnest. Jack was clearly the more accomplished boxer of the two, throwing practiced combinations that soon had blood trickling from Freddie’s nose and brow. His muscular physique packed more force than her husband’s slighter frame. Hayes, however, fought with the tenacity of a bulldog after a bone, throwing his punches low or at the neck. It was clear after several minutes, though, that there was no chance he could defeat Jack as he took blow after blow to the face and midsection, leaving him bent over like an old man.
Finally, the earl pinned Hayes flat against the top of Jensen’s desk and drew back his fist for a wallop that would certainly render the other man unconscious.
“Jack!”
Merrill turned away from his opponent with some aggravation. “What?”
“Clearly Freddie is done in. Please, sto—watch out,” she cried, as her husband raised a letter opener and plunged it into the earl as he turned. Instead of catching him in the back as he had so clearly planned, he caught Haddington deep in the shoulder.
“Jack!” She ran to him as he pulled the dagger-sharp opener from his shoulder and turned to stare in amazement at
Hayes. “How could you?” she screamed at Freddie, pushing him away as she ran to help Jack.
Jensen ran to the door and called for the secretary. “Jones! Jones! Summon the police at once!”
“Police?” The lawyer’s words shook Hayes from his fascination with the damage he had caused. “Yes, I want him arrested.”
“Not him, you fool,” Kitty bit out as Jack leaned against her. “You! You have attacked an earl.”
“He hit me first,” he responded in outrage at her accusation.
“You stabbed him!”
“Assault with a deadly weapon,” Jensen agreed calmly, with a nod. “Two, perhaps three years if convicted.”
“I’ve got witnesses,” Jack quipped faintly, before slumping to the side with a dazed look upon his face. Kitty and Jensen caught him, lowering him to the ground.
“Perhaps you should call for a doctor as well, Mr. Jensen.”
“Indeed.” He rose and they realized Hayes had fled the room.
“Could he truly have been arrested for assault, Mr. Jensen?” she asked after Jensen called for the doctor.
“Unlikely,” he admitted. “My lord Haddington did strike first.”
“Did he? I don’t think I saw it that way at all.” She rolled her eyes and gave her attention to her semi-lucid earl, stopping the blood flow the best she could.
* * *
Kitty’s voice brought him slowly back to consciousness. “Jack! Wake up, please? Please, wake up!” She slapped his cheeks sharply, causing him to hiss in his breath.
“A kiss might do the job a bit better,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Jack, you’re alive!”
“There’s no accounting for the devil’s luck.” He raised himself up on his elbows and rubbed the back of his head. He had been moved to a settee and his chest was throbbing. “I can’t believe that idiot stabbed me.”
“Slowly, Jack.” Kitty jumped in to help him sit up. “You’re hurt.”
“Just a scratch.” he replied, as she pulled at his clothes to find the wound. “That eager to get me naked, my love?” She punched him in the stomach hard enough to earn a grunt and a chuckle. “Some savior I turned out to be. Knifed with an envelope opener.”
“Good thing you’re built like a brick wall, isn’t it?” she teased, though she was worried by the amount of blood seeping from the wound.
“Keep running your hands all over me like that and there will only be one part of me built like a brick wall.” He reached up and drew her face down to his, kissing her soundly and leaving her breathless. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, just a bruise or two.” She caressed his cheek tenderly, savoring the feel of his whiskered, roughened skin under her palm. “Thank you for coming to my rescue. Freddie will be a mass of bruises and in a lot of pain by morning, I’m sure.”
“I did warn the chap not to touch you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He craned his neck to get a look at his wound, pushing her hands out of the way. She tried to reapply the compress to the wound. “Doesn’t look too bad. Hurts like hell though.”
“Mr. Jensen has called for a doctor.” She wrung the cloth out in the bowl of water Jensen brought to her and reapplied it to the seeping wound. She had been terrified when Jack collapsed, whether it had been from pain or shock she wasn’t sure. “You’ve lost quite a bit of blood, but I don’t think the wound is too serious. It will need to be stitched though.”
“I passed out over this? How humiliating.” He sighed and lay back against the settee cushions.
“If it helps at all, I don’t think you were completely unconscious.”
“Nay?”
“No,” she assured him. “It was more as if you were deeply inebriated. You helped me lay you down and muttered on and on about how you were going to avenge yourself on Freddie.”
“I will, too.”
Damn right he would! Sniveling almost-back-stabber would get what was coming to him in spades…as soon as he could swing a hard right again without bleeding. Jack looked up at Kitty hovering over him with concern. It was nice to have someone care for your well-being, he thought. Well, other than a sister. She brushed his hair back from his brow and kissed his forehead.
* * *
After dinner that evening, Kitty sat in the sitting room on Fifth Avenue with her mother, reading a book while her mother worked on a bit of embroidery. Jack had tried to come down for dinner, determined, she knew, to assure them he was unharmed. When Eve announced her desire to retire for the evening, claiming nausea and fatigue, she had bullied him up the stairs before her, stating that even if he didn’t need the rest, Jack was exhausting the rest of them just by looking at him.
She was thankful for Eve’s intervention, as she knew he’d be in a great deal of pain after his ordeal and merely putting on a show of indifference. Francis followed his wife up, leaving Maggie and Kitty alone.
The ticking of the clock passed the minutes slowly as Kitty scanned the novel in her hand, too distracted by the events of the day to pay it any real attention. Her mother’s voice broke the oppressive silence of the room.
“Is there any chance you will tell me what is going on?”
She lowered her book to find her mother still focused on her stitching, looking for all the world as she hadn’t a care in the world beyond that. “What do you mean, Mother?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, young lady!” Maggie set her work in her lap and delivered her daughter a look that would have had her confessing all as a child. “What is going on between you and Lord Haddington?”
Nonchalantly waving her book, Kitty offered breezily. “I told you before, the earl is a friend of Glenrothes. They grew up together. Now he is a friend of mine, and Eve’s as well.”
“Friend, indeed! That doesn’t explain many things, including why he’s here, why he looks at you as he does, or why he stood to your defense against Mr. Hayes,” her mother sniffed, awaiting a more reasonable reply.
Remembering how Eve had said Jack looked at her as if he wanted to eat her up, Kitty couldn’t help but blush, wondering if her own mother saw the same.
“Or, more to the point,” Maggie went on, “it doesn’t explain why you looked so distraught when you arrived home from Mr. Jensen’s office. Come, my girl, confess. There is more going on here than simple friendship.”
Stubbornly, Kitty shook her head in denial. “He is my friend.”
“That is why you fussed over him all evening and why he appeared so pleased by your concern?” Maggie wrinkled her nose. “I know you refuse to consider it, my dear, but I do know a thing or two about romance.”
“Mother!” Kitty straightened in her chair. “It is not a romance.”
“Pish-posh, Katherine,” Maggie dismissed her protest. “Fine then, you don’t have to say anything, but I know what I see, and what I see is not friendship alone. That man wants more and I’m just curious if you are planning to give it to him.”
Kitty moaned into her hands. “Mother…please!”
“I can see I will get nothing further from you on the subject so I will only say that having another earl as a son-in-law could be nothing but beneficial to me, since I will soon be subjected to the scandal your divorce from Mr. Hayes will bring,” the older woman went on. “Have you any news on that front from Mr. Jensen?”
“Yes, Mr. Jensen told me today that the divorce should be finalized in a matter of days,” she confessed, grateful for the change of subject. “Did you…do you understand why I am doing this? I assure you that it is not solely to torture you.”
Though her initial telegram had laid out the problem in only the most basic terms, given the lack of privacy involved with telegraph use, she’d written her parents a letter right away, explaining her reasons for the divorce so they might truly understand her needs. Though it had been easier to write the words than say them, she had not been able to go into any detail, providing instead just a general summation of her marriage; that
Freddie was prone to violence through the years of their marriage and Kitty feared for herself and the Prestons’ granddaughter. Much had been left unsaid.
Maggie Preston met her daughter’s gaze levelly, showing she was aware of the truth, the flighty society matron now tucked away beneath concern for her child for the moment. “Yes, we received your letter a couple weeks after your sister first wired Mr. Preston with your request to start the divorce. I am sorry that your marriage was not a pleasant one, Katherine. Neither your father nor I had any idea things were not good between you. You should have come to us sooner.”
“I couldn’t.” Kitty’s gaze slid away. “It’s just too…”
“I understand.” Maggie cleared her throat awkwardly. “Is there anything in particular you would like me to know?”
Wishing that she might put it into words, Kitty merely shook her head.
“Well, best to put it all behind you now, though you still have the scandal to face and that will be no easy task. But I will stand by you, I promise you, as difficult as it will be,” her mother vowed.
“Thank you.”
“I love you, Katherine. Very much,” Maggie said softly. “I hope you know that.”
“Oh, Mother!” Kitty sighed and slipped off her chair to the floor at her mother’s feet, resting her head in Maggie’s lap as her arms slipped around her. “I love you too, Mama.”
“I still think there is more than meets the eye with this earl, though.” She chuckled under her breath. “I wager he would make a fabulous lover for you.”
“Mama, really!”
Chapter 27
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it.
…mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give, and much less take,
What I shall die to want.
~ William Shakespeare from The Tempest
Near Kilberry Manor
All You Could Ask For Page 76
