Regency: Courtship And Candlelight: One Final Season

‘Nonsense, he was lucky indeed to win you and well he knows it,’ Kate responded hotly, ready to argue black was white in order to see someone she loved as much as Eiliane happy again. ‘It’s just that I can’t bear the idea of depending on someone else for my happiness, Eiliane, not that I don’t believe in the possibility of love for anyone else.’

‘Which is ridiculous if you’ll only think about it a little harder, Kate. Indeed, it’s totally illogical if we’re going to go about this in the cool way you seem to favour.’

‘I know, but I can’t seem to change my mind, even with so many examples of wedded bliss in front of me to form a corrective,’ she told Eiliane ruefully.

‘I blame myself,’ her friend replied gloomily, ‘I should have insisted on wrenching the two of you from your grandfather’s custody as soon as your sister Miranda turned up on my doorstep one morning with such woe and misery in her poor sad eyes that I knew he wasn’t fit to look after a couple of kittens, let alone three vulnerable and lively young girls.’

‘Don’t do that to yourself, love, for none of it was your fault and how could you have removed us from Wychwood without kidnapping us? Once someone eventually noticed we were gone there would have been a fearsome uproar and my aunt would have insisted we return to even less freedom than we had to start with. Don’t ever blame yourself for any of what happened when we were children, dearest Eiliane. And if not for you, we would never have been sent to school, so just think what we would have missed in dear Charlotte Wells, as we all thought she was then.’

‘Aye, that’s true, Charlotte is a darling girl and exactly the right wife for my new son, for all Ben wouldn’t thank me for naming him so, since he’s far too big and self-sufficient to stand in the least need of even an unofficial stepmother, but Charlotte couldn’t make up for the neglect of your entire family, Kate. You have such a vast capacity for love, my dear, it seems an appalling waste that it might be lost or misplaced in some insipid and bloodless marriage when you could have so much more if you let yourself believe you could safely fall in love.’

If all three Alstone sisters had been born plain as porridge and wall-eyed, they’d still be beautiful to the Marchioness of Pemberley, and only the finest gentlemen in the land good enough for any one of them, Kate thought, affection overcoming exasperation as she acknowledged to herself how lucky they all were to have her. Eiliane was wrong, though, and if Kate wasn’t to die an old maid, then she’d have to find a man she could respect in order to have the children she longed for, and what point was there in regretting what might have been?

Chapter Two

Her bridges could fairly be considered irrevocably burnt so far as Edmund, Viscount Shuttleworth, was concerned and Kate would have to look elsewhere for a convenient husband. Which was just as well, she reassured herself, considering she’d always sensed a huge capacity for passion and melodrama in herself and curbed it as sternly as she could, lest it lead her into some terrible tangle of love and fury and wanting that would damage all concerned beyond mending.

‘I intend to make a list and, when I’m sure my choice of husband is quite suitable, I’ll just have to find some way of making sure that gentleman agrees with me,’ she asserted stalwartly, not quite able to meet Eiliane’s eyes as her scheme sounded cold and rather depressing even to her when she said it out loud.

‘Why wait?’ Eiliane prompted sardonically, obviously at the end of her patience with such an implacably self-deluded idiot. ‘If you’re so very determined to go against your very nature, and God help the poor man you settle upon if you are, then why not begin straight away? Tonight’s entertainment should make an ideal opportunity for you to start such a search—considering that most of the débutantes haven’t yet arrived and those who have are still too overawed to offer you much competition. Why, you will almost have the field to yourself, my dear, apart from all the other not-so-young ladies who’ve been out too long and are desperate to catch a suitable husband, of course.’

‘I’m only one and twenty,’ Kate protested feebly, unable to keep a still tongue in her head in the face of what she knew perfectly well was deliberate provocation.

Eiliane gave an airy wave of her exquisite fan. ‘No longer a sparkling young débutante, nor yet quite a faded quiz at her last prayers. How some of those vibrant young girls just out of their schoolrooms will pity you,’ she went on relentlessly, seeming determined to provoke Kate into an argument that would disprove her claim to be chilly and passionless. ‘To be so sought after initially, then left unwed three years on argues either that you’re ridiculously finicky and far too high in the instep, or that the gentlemen have stopped asking you.’

‘Then why do they still do so in such numbers, I wonder?’ Kate defended herself absently, her eyes once again on Lord Shuttleworth as he seemed almost as if he’d felt her gaze on him and decided to allow her a closer look.

‘Because the unattainable is always so very alluring,’ Lady Pemberley replied, a little too seriously for Kate’s taste, ‘and I don’t want you to become a target for the less scrupulous rakes of the ton, my love. Better if only you’d accepted Shuttleworth years ago rather than take that primrose path to misery, I suppose. At least marriage to him would put the predators off until you presented him with a couple of heirs. Not that he’d make anyone a complacent husband,’ she ended with a warning nod at the fascinating masculine figure they’d both been watching.

‘Please don’t turn all intense and Celtic on me just now, Eiliane dear,’ Kate said absently, most of her attention on the nobleman forging a path towards them. She wondered fleetingly if he still felt more for her than he’d have her and the rest of the world believe—which only went to show what happened when she listened to her friend’s ridiculous ideas about love.

‘No, my love,’ Lady Pemberley replied meekly and Kate shot her a rueful, exasperated glance, before going back to surreptitiously watching his lordship.

If only Shuttleworth had still been inclined to fall at her feet and beg her to marry him, they could be wed by the end of the Season and then nobody would be able to lecture her on the subject of love matches ever again. Except this older, grimmer Edmund Worth looked very unlikely to agree to an affectionate alliance with her, based as it would have to be on mutual interests and polite friendship instead of the flash and burn of love he’d once promised her. It seemed impossible to picture living at his side in such a temperate style, but was she capable of offering more even to him?

‘Lord Shuttleworth,’ she greeted him, oddly chagrined when his expression became more guarded rather than less so.

She smiled awkwardly in the hope of establishing a polite sort of acquaintance between them, since nothing else seemed likely, and he eyed her cautiously, as if she might launch into a mad jig at any moment and embarrass him in front of the assembled company.

‘Is it time for our waltz already then, my lord?’ she asked clumsily and groaned inwardly at her own ineptitude. Obviously she wasn’t very good at actually encouraging gentlemen, even if it was only to be a little more civil.

‘And if only this next dance were to be one, how delightful that would make my evening,’ he replied with an unforgivable glint of amusement in his grey-green eyes. He pointed helpfully to her dance card, which stated unambiguously that she was to honour another gentleman with the quadrille. Lord Shuttleworth must have been merely passing when she had made it impossible for him to do so without snubbing her even more crushingly than even he seemed prepared to do.

There was no point in stuttering and apologising, so she sent him a weak parody of a smile and stood silent and embarrassed, wishing she could think of a way to banish the suggestion of mockery playing about his mouth. It wasn’t quite a sneer or altogether a smile and she found it flustered her ridiculously in a man who had once been her devoted cavalier. Anyway, she really didn’t want him to kiss her—well, not that much—and, even if she did, it was probably out of sheer, perverse curiosity. He’d grown into a much more formidable man than she’d ever dreamt he would. What a shame if he’d cooled toward her just when her interest in him had sharpened, she decided, with an odd jar of panic in her stomach. And where had that ridiculous idea come from in the first place? Why on earth would she want this man-icicle to kiss her, ever? She must have run mad without anyone noticing if she thought being kissed by Edmund Worth would bring her anything but confusion and distaste, swiftly followed by their mutual embarrassment and an even chillier estrangement between them than there was now.

If only she hadn’t had to leave him enjoying the company of her devious duenna far more than he did that of her charge, Kate might have found her dance perfectly agreeable. Her partner was an excellent dancer in direct defiance of the air of world-weary cynicism he seemed to think marked him out as a pink of the ton. Instead, she missed steps in her attempts to watch Eiliane and Lord Shuttleworth having a comfortable coze and silently dreaded what that unconventional lady might be saying to his lordship.

‘Come now, Miss Alstone,’ the gentleman beside her chided, finally losing patience with such an inattentive partner, ‘either dance with me or pretend to be overcome by the heat, so we may be quit of each other and this dance without causing a scandal.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir; I must be a little distracted by all this noise and bustle after so many months in the country, but I shall do better from now on,’ she excused herself rather feebly.

‘Good, for it does nothing for a fellow’s good opinion of himself to dance with a lady whose attention is so patently on another man,’ he told her with a frankness she found surprising in one she’d always thought dandified and affected.

Kate was very careful to mind her steps for the rest of the dance while she wondered if she had truly seen any of the gentlemen who had habitually sought her out at the balls and parties of the London Season. Until tonight she’d been able to flatter herself she was a reasonably intelligent and well-educated female who was also independently wealthy and up to snuff. So what hope was there of her finding that perfect husband for herself when she’d clearly misjudged herself so very badly?

‘Thank you, Miss Alstone,’ her partner said as the music faded and he bowed to her with jaded grace, ‘you know how to depress a gentleman’s pretensions most effectively,’ he told her quietly and calmly. ‘I shall not be troubling you with them again after tonight.’

‘Sir, I have no idea of your meaning,’ she protested rather faintly as that sense of nothing being quite what it seemed tonight haunted her again.

Was she asleep and in the grip of a nightmare where everything seemed normal, but in truth nothing was quite as it should be? Unfortunately not, for her dance partner was continuing and she doubted she’d allow him such an air of disillusioned cynicism in her dreams.

‘Not your fault, Miss Alstone. I should have had the sense to listen to fair warnings when they were given me. Had I done so, doubtless I wouldn’t feel so disenchanted now I’ve discovered they were correct.’

As they’d reached the sofa Lady Pemberley had annexed by the end of that crushing speech, the disillusioned gentleman bowed and took himself off to the card room to join his cronies, no doubt to confirm that Miss Alstone was a shameless flirt who lacked the courtesy to keep her attention on her conquests once she’d made them in order to eye up her next one. Kate’s mind reeled. How odd that she’d got up this morning believing that she was a pleasant enough person to be with.

‘Now this is our dance, is it not, Miss Alstone?’ the cause of it all informed her suavely, getting to his feet as she approached and looking as if exchanging Eiliane’s lively company for her own was a sacrifice he was most unwilling to make.

How did this confounded man ever delude himself he wanted to marry me so desperately when he’s clearly revolted by the idea of spending half an hour in my company nowadays? Kate asked herself wordlessly as they joined the couples on the dance floor for a waltz that seemed more in the nature of a penance to him rather than a pleasure. ‘So why did you keep asking me?’ she finally questioned aloud, startling herself and shocking him into actually looking at her. His arm went across her back to take her other hand and a cool shiver of something untamed with an edge of warning ran through her like wildfire.

For an instant she felt strangely shaken by the intimacy of their locked gaze and the fluid, familiar movements of their bodies as his warmth engulfed her, taking the sense of chill and alienation out of her evening for a blissful moment as their bodies at least recalled how well they’d always danced together. She was strongly tempted to lean into his arms and let him guide her expertly around the floor without making much effort on her own part. Instead she made herself whirl and turn and glide as actively as he did himself, partly because he was a superb dancer and it seemed a waste not to, and partly because it gave each of them time to think of all the changes three years had made in the other whilst he considered that appallingly crass question she couldn’t believe she’d actually asked him out loud.

‘Maybe because you dance superbly,’ he finally said with a faintly mocking smile, taking her remark at its lightest value and lobbing it back at her with a neatness that made her heart skip a beat in what felt oddly like panic.

Not because he’d once wanted to be with her above any other female then, or had dreamt of holding her in his arms from one waltz to the next, one ball to another? Not because he’d missed her sadly through all the long weary summers and winters since the last time he’d held her so close and danced with her, so superbly matched to every step as they had been so very long ago and ironically still seemed to be now when everything else was different between them?

‘Thank you, my lord,’ she replied a little stiffly. ‘Luckily I can return your compliment without the least risk of flattery. Lord Shuttleworth has always been rated one of the finest dancers to grace the ton.’

‘Now isn’t that fortunate for him?’ he parried sardonically, but his only response to her implied challenge was to make their dance even more energetic, perhaps to stop her finding breath to ask him any more inconvenient questions.

‘Very,’ she gasped and decided to wait for anything more until they stopped spinning about the room in this dizzying whirl.

He moved with a poise and latent strength she couldn’t recall noticing before and a tingle of awareness shot through her when he tightened his grip on her to guide her past a dab of candle wax on the highly polished floor. Kate had to remind herself she was looking for a courteous and undemanding husband, not a disdainful and probably very demanding lover, and that Shuttleworth clearly didn’t want to occupy either position in her life anyway. Her body remained unconvinced by such logic and troubled her with the most outrageous fantasies which her mind shied away from while they waltzed in apparent harmony. Kate did her best to ignore her own baser instincts and Shuttleworth’s unspoken disdain while she smiled at nothing in particular as if her life depended on it.

Edmund George Francis St Erith Standon-Worth, keep your head, that gentleman silently demanded of himself as he held the ravishingly lovely Miss Katherine Alstone in the crook of his arm and tried not to think her being naked and passionately willing as she danced in his arms to an even more intimate tune, preferably without the interested gaze of the cream of fashionable society upon them, of course.

What on earth did the copper-haired torment mean by staring at him across the ballroom as if she’d never set eyes on him before, as if he’d finally come to her attention as something more than a dancing, talking marionette and she was intent on beckoning him to her side by sheer force of will? Could anything good be flying about her busy brain? he wondered, as he tried his best to pretend she was merely a polite acquaintance, despite the fact that his disobliging body and most of society knew he’d been besotted with her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her three years ago. Unfortunately she knew it as well and, try as he might, he couldn’t relax and just enjoy this dance with a graceful and accomplished partner who should now mean absolutely nothing to him.

He’d been far too boyish and silly to hide his infatuation with her three years ago. When she’d carelessly turned him down that last time as if she was waving away an annoying fly or a brash young puppy pestering her with unwanted adoration, he’d told himself his stupid obsession with her had been a youthful folly he would very soon grow out of, and that one day he’d look back on it with astonishment that he’d ever been so young and gullible. Well, he’d made it so at last by cutting her and all the dreams he’d had of her painfully and painstakingly out of his heart so he could come here again to find the woman he could marry and live with for the rest of his days, and that woman was not Katherine Alstone.

This spring, he’d assured himself as he travelled from his very substantial estates in Herefordshire to his impressive house in Grosvenor Square, he’d look about him for a quiet and biddable female to become his viscountess. Marrying the too-clever, tricky and far-from-biddable beauty his heart had once been set on so uselessly would have been a disaster on both sides. He’d told himself blithely that he was grateful to her for saving them both from such a fate and he should thank her on his knees for refusing him again and again.

It had seemed such a sensible plan when he was still at Cravenhill Park, where Miss Alstone had refused an invitation to stay for the summer and get to know him better with a sweet, distracted smile and a brief assurance that they were too young and probably wouldn’t suit anyway.

How would she know? he silently quizzed himself as he struggled with a strong urge to shake the slender, curvaceous, infinitely desirable and utterly contrary female until her perfect white teeth rattled even now, when both of them were three years older and supposedly wiser.

He shifted uncomfortably to avoid making yet closer contact with her and inflaming himself even further and caught surprise in her blue, blue eyes as she turned to look up at him questioningly. Turning the movement into a demand that she spin fluidly past a less sure couple, he fought a whole pack of demons at the feel of her body so close to his, moving so gracefully to the steps of the dance and reminding him, as if he needed reminding, exactly who he held in his arms at last, warm and desirable and all too real.

No, he ordered himself as his body responded instinctively to hers and he fought the magic fiercely, he was done with self-inflicted torture. He’d wrung Kate Alstone from his thoughts and routed her from his heart and never again would he spend restless nights tossing and turning as he was driven distracted by a bitter yearning for her in his bed, at his board and for ever by his side. Knowing, for the simple reason of having tried it in the throes of youthful desperation, that making love with a demi-mondaine he’d fooled himself looked just like her would never satisfy his ridiculous fantasies of Kate, warm and shameless in his bed, with every inch of her velvety skin and stubborn will in tune with his desires at last, he utterly refused to become the besotted, driven idiot she’d once made of him ever again.

Once he’d let himself see the gaping chasm between heated dream and chilly reality, he’d contented himself with his estates and the odd trip to Bath to see his elderly aunt, until the blessed day when he had finally got himself under strict enough control to be indifferent to Kate Alstone. By some benign fluke, it was in that elegant and usually middle-aged spa town that he’d met Therese, a lush and lovely widow ten years his senior, who took him to her bed and taught him there were other women in the world besides Kate, however little his heart wanted to admit it at the time. Then, after what he’d thought was a mutually satisfying association, Therese decided to marry again. So she’d wed a man ten years her senior after declaring herself quite ineligible as the next Viscountess Shuttleworth when he offered to make her so.

‘You are too young, my love, too idealistic and intense to be happy in such a lukewarm arrangement,’ she’d told him that last time they were together. ‘We have been happy, but it’s time for us to part. I shall wed my colonel and make him an excellent wife, but I’m not the woman you dream of when you cry out her name in your sleep. Either convince that one to marry you, dearest Edmund, or tear her out of your heart before you wed some poor girl who’ll be for ever second-best.’

He’d protested, of course. Assured her that if she married him she and the family they could make together would always come first. But Therese had chided him for offering what he couldn’t deliver and he’d hesitated too long before she gave him a sad smile and left to plan her wedding to her still handsome and rather rich colonel and to settle three counties away, which was probably just as well for all three of them. Therese was a fine woman with a quick wit and a kind heart and she now had a settled life with a man who adored her. Edmund liked and admired her, but he didn’t adore her. Though nor, he told himself sternly, did he adore the redheaded beauty who’d once driven him half-mad with headlong, youthful love and longing for her.

So this year he’d quit Cravenhill for London, determined to find himself a wife who wouldn’t drive him to the brink of insanity every time she smiled at another man. With her he would retire to his acres, where they’d live a life of quiet contentment and usefulness, spiced by an occasional visit to the capital to catch up with old friends. Such a pity that it all sounded so deadly dull just now.

No, it wasn’t dull, it was sensible. He wanted to be at peace in his own skin and he wanted children, not just to inherit his title and lands, but because he’d been a lone, noble and therefore very privileged orphan ever since he learnt to walk. And he wanted sanity and routine and a sense of rightness about his life, not insanity, uncertainty and a mess of passion, frustration and exasperation that Kate Alstone would offer her long-suffering husband, when she finally condescended to admit one to her bed, if not her heart.

Easy enough to weigh his hopeless passion for Kate against that yet-to-be-born tribe of children and the faceless, sweet and loving Lady Shuttleworth, who would give them to him and love every single one as much as she adored him, and be quite certain he was cured. Now none of it was quite so clear-cut and he felt thoroughly out of sorts and nearly as deeply exasperated with Kate as he was with himself.

Curse the contrary female for looking at him tonight as if she liked the man he’d become far more than the foolish boy he’d once been. Trust her to reawaken the slumberous, wanton siren he’d once made of her in his obsessed, Kate-tortured dreams and remind him how lifeless his sweet wife sounded by the side of the rich and passionate promise Kate could offer a potential husband. If, of course, the lucky devil succeeded in awakening the sensuality she managed to hide so well from herself. For he doubted she had any idea with what heady promise her delightfully curved lips and very pleasing form tantalised an idiot like him.

‘She—is—not—what—she—seems,’ he intoned under his breath, enduring the feel of her delightfully formed body brushing his tension-tightened muscles as he shifted her for the final turn and prayed for a rapid end to this torture. She is everything she seems and more, the faint waft of her rose-perfumed skin in his oversensitive nostrils taunted him back, the soft shift of woman-warmed silk tantalising his guiding fingers even through his supple evening gloves, as if every sense he had was uniquely attuned just to her. But she’s not for you; she’s not part of your domestic idyll. She doesn’t want to love you, the argument began again in his head and he was relieved when the music finally wound down and he could let his hand drop with what might seem unflattering haste to someone who couldn’t read his mind.