Regency: Courtship And Candlelight: One Final Season

Kate smothered a chuckle at her ladyship’s barely masked impatience with his doglike devotion. The obnoxious female was already watching them with ill-concealed fury; presumably she wanted Edmund to share that devotion and hated Kate for being there to rescue him from her witchy wiles. If only the deluded female knew how little Edmund actually wanted Kate herself now, the awful woman would probably triumph and crow unbearably over her, she decided, sincerely hoping she could escape such an unpleasant encounter when Edmund’s engagement to some dewy-eyed débutante was finally announced.

‘What did you ever see in her?’ she asked unwarily once their host and hostess had taken to the dance floor and the music was loud enough to mask her voice from an interested listener.

‘Since you refused to become my wife more times than either of us care to be reminded, you have renounced all right to ask me that impertinent question, Miss Alstone. So I suggest you keep your arrogant opinions and any other ill-informed and ill-natured gossip you have garnered about me to yourself in the future,’ he told her as icily as he’d just set down her ladyship and Kate knew she’d be on the verge of tears if she let herself risk such a public loss of control.

Biting her lower lip to keep it from wobbling, she nodded to him regally as words deserted her, but she refused to let her steps falter under his icy silver-green gaze, or show any sign that she was even conscious of Lady Tedinton’s darts of dark-eyed resentment, as that lady barely even bothered to pretend her attention was centred on her husband or the dance.

‘I wish you a good evening, my lord,’ she managed to say expressionlessly enough as they neared Eiliane, who was gossiping happily with one of her cronies on the dark rose-coloured sofa that now reminded Kate almost insupportably of their hostess for the night.

She curtsied to him with formal grace, he bowed with almost as distant a hauteur as he’d used to depress her ladyship’s pretensions and they parted before Eiliane had even spotted them returning together and been able to come up with a pretext for keeping them so.

‘This must be one of the most tedious parties either of us ever had the poor judgement to attend, Kate,’ her mentor greeted her cheerfully, once the friend she’d been so absorbed in pumping for the more interesting secrets of the haut ton had departed to bully some hesitant youth into dancing with her débutante daughter.

‘Indeed,’ Kate managed as she resorted to the small amount of cover allowed by her fan to conceal some of her confusion.

‘You’re overset, my love,’ Eiliane exclaimed, even more concerned when the hectic colour in Kate’s cheeks ebbed as she recalled Edmund’s cold fury with her at even the mention of his rumoured amour with their hostess.

‘I’ll do well enough once I’ve got my breath back,’ she managed to say calmly enough as she wondered why on earth she’d let her tongue run away with her in such an appalling fashion just because the very idea of Edmund making love to that vixen had made her feel ill.

‘Nonsense, we’ll call for our carriage and go home. I’ll be glad of an early night and you look as if you could do with a week of them all of a sudden.’

‘No!’ Kate thought of how insufferably Lady Tedinton would triumph and smirk if she was weak enough to turn tail and go home like a whipped dog after that obnoxious encounter. ‘I would rather stay a little longer and perhaps go on to Mrs Farnborough’s as we had planned. That last dance was quite a vigorous one and I shall be perfectly fine in just a moment.’

‘Will you, my love?’ Eiliane asked shrewdly and Kate wished her a little less acute for once, but hoped her friend had no idea of the real reason why she was feeling so out of sorts and low spirited.

‘Yes, I shall feel quite restored once I’ve had a rest. It would never do if I gained a reputation for giving myself die-away airs after all, for you’d never get me off your hands then,’ she joked weakly. She refused to even consider the fact that it felt as if she’d never look at another man for the rest of her life and feel the least desire to marry him, or even stand up with him for a waltz after her bittersweet ones with Edmund had spoilt her expectations of any other partner.

She certainly refused all invitations to waltz for the rest of the evening, but brazened out the remainder of the pantomime it rapidly became to her. Seeing the daughter of the house dance with the suitable young gentleman she and Eiliane managed to throw into her path helped and, from Lady Tedinton’s petulant expression, Kate thought her new enemy was probably having an even less satisfactory evening than she was. She allowed herself a brief smile of triumph when they finally left the Tedintons’ ballroom, quite certain there was a metaphorical dagger in her back this time.

Chapter Five

‘There it all is then, shipshape and neat as you like,’ Ben Shaw, the other half of the firm of Stone & Shaw Shipping that he and Kit Alstone, now the latest Earl of Carnwood, had set up long before his lordship even dreamt of inheriting the family wealth and titles, informed Edmund the next day. As this came after an exhaustive tour of the warehouses and the new enclosed dock Stone & Shaw were building by the side of the one they’d already outgrown, then a return to the elegant offices they now kept in the City for a résumé of the firm’s finances and projections for future profit, Edmund could only agree with him.

‘Even I can see that for myself, thank you,’ he told his formidable friend and business associate and wondered why Ben Shaw thought he needed reassurance that, while he was at the helm, Stone & Shaw would turn a fine profit for any investors lucky enough to be admitted into the select ranks of their stockholders.

‘If you didn’t come and see it all for yourself every now and again, I wouldn’t have much respect for you as a man or an investor, and I dare say we’d never have done business together in the first place,’ Ben told him.

‘So long as I don’t try to interfere in the way you run the enterprise from day to day, I presume?’

‘Aye,’ Ben admitted wryly, ‘you’ve the measure of me on that front, my fine young lord, and that’s plain to see.’

‘Not as young as I was,’ Edmund defended himself automatically, although such teasing bothered him much less than it had when he was first admitted into the august boardroom of Stone & Shaw, probably because he had been thought likely to become part of the family Ben Shaw protected and loved as fiercely as if they truly shared ties of blood, by marrying Kate Alstone.

Would his refusal to become part of that family, now he’d finally returned to the ton with the aim of taking a suitable wife who wasn’t Miss Alstone, mean an end to such an unexpectedly comfortable and profitable friendship? If so, he’d regret it deeply, Edmund decided, and settled down for an excellent glass of burgundy and a companionable cigarillo, determined to enjoy them and this unlikely friend while he still had the chance.

‘Speaking of your relative youth, or lack of it, when are you going to get down to the business of finally wedding and bedding that stubborn girl of ours?’ Ben came straight out and asked the question Edmund had been dreading all morning.

‘I’m not,’ he admitted bravely, considering Ben was the largest and most formidably tough man Edmund had ever encountered and could probably mill him down without even having to break his stride.

Coming under the steady examination of a pair of grey eyes that suddenly looked as if they were determined to see into the very depths of a man’s soul wasn’t the most comfortable experience of Edmund’s life, but he held his ground and managed not to sigh with relief when Ben sat back in his chair and watched him blandly instead of reaching for his neckcloth and attempting to strangle him with it. ‘Because?’ was all Ben said while considering this new state of affairs.

‘I can’t imagine a worse fate than being in love with a woman who merely tolerates me, especially if we were to be bound inextricably together for life, can you?’ Edmund replied, thinking of the Tedintons and barely managing to hide a shudder at the idea of being trapped inside a marriage like that one.

‘No,’ Ben admitted, ‘but it beats me why you’ve now decided she won’t do when last time you were in town you were so madly in love with her you couldn’t even consider wedding anyone else.’

‘Beats me as well, but maybe I finally saw the truth of the matter, before she got so bored with turning me down that she decided to accept me just for a change of scenery.’

‘I think you would have discovered you had underestimated her if she did so,’ Ben said sagely and Edmund wondered if the unconventional giant did indeed know Kate Alstone far better than he did. He’d once lavished such minute attention on her every mood and gesture that it seemed a sad reflection on Edmund’s judgement and so-called powers of observation if he’d failed to understand her after all that effort.

‘No, for I won’t ask her again, so the situation will not arise,’ he insisted, denying himself the luxury to hope that he was wrong about her after all. ‘I lost my taste for being a tame lapdog to her some time over these last three years.’

‘Then if she weds another man, you’ll be entirely indifferent?’

No! The certainty of it roared through him like a sudden bitter tempest on a summer day. He’d hate her, and the cur she married, until his dying day.

‘Not entirely,’ he admitted out loud.

‘Not in the least, you young fool,’ Ben informed him roughly. ‘Had my Charlotte even threatened to promise herself to another man, I’d have torn him apart limb by limb and danced on his lousy body, then taken her to bed and loved her until she saw some sense. So either you don’t love Kate and never have, or you still do and owe it to yourself and her not to end your life in Newgate dangling on the end of a hangman’s rope. Although, I suppose in your case, my lord, it would be a jury of your peers and a silken noose at Tyburn instead of a hempen collar.’

Despite Ben’s mockery of his rank and what he’d make of the stern resolution Edmund had made to find himself a suitable wife this year and forget Kate Alstone if he ever found out about it, Edmund didn’t feel excluded from the select ranks of Ben Shaw’s friends. Either the unconventional giant didn’t believe Edmund could turn his back on his passion for the wretched female he’d once thought so firmly lodged in his heart he’d never shift her, or Ben was determined to stand his friend, irrespective of those other loyalties.

‘I’ve no taste for martyrdom,’ he admitted at last.

‘As well Kit Alstone’s occupied elsewhere, then, for he’s a damned idiot when it comes to his precious family and those he truly loves. He might decide you’ve dishonoured Kate’s good name and challenge you to a duel if you don’t wed her after all, for if ever I met a hot-headed fool when he’s in a temper, it’s my lord Carnwood.’

‘She’s the one who turned me down time and again, not the other way around,’ Edmund protested.

‘Well, I did say he was a damned fool, didn’t I?’

‘And you think me one as well?’

‘I never claimed to understand any of you great lords of creation and I can’t say that a closer acquaintanceship with the two of you has improved what I already had very much.’

‘And I don’t see how you intend to get away with that hackneyed line any more, considering we all know who your father is now,’ Edmund said with rash courage, for it was also common knowledge that Ben Shaw was no respecter of titles and ancient privilege.

‘Let’s hope the Marquis of Pemberley stays so busy with his new wife that he won’t interfere with your plans then, whatever they are, for he’s devilish fond of Kate as well,’ Ben warned, discussing his natural father with an ease neither of them had ever thought to hear when he’d still been so convinced he hated his lordly sire.

‘Aye, it’s bad enough having his wife’s attention fully fixed on me, without adding Lord Pemberley’s eagle-eyed scrutiny to the mix—along with Lord and Lady Carnwoods’ thrown in for good measure,’ Edmund admitted ruefully.

‘Don’t delude yourself I’m too busy to interfere myself, will you?’

‘I never delude myself that badly, but what beats me is why,’ Edmund said.

‘Because I don’t believe you can really turn your back on the headstrong minx after you fell in love with the little devil at first sight, and don’t forget I was there to see you behaving like a mooncalf when it happened, so don’t try to deny it. I’ve met men who could cut themselves off from a woman they once cared for like that, as if she’d never existed or was cold in her grave, but you’re not one of them. Kate cares for you more than either of you seem to know, and I don’t think you’re fool enough to turn aside from the magnificent female she’ll become if she weds the right man, if only she’ll just throw caution to the wind and accept you at long last.’

‘Thank you for thinking I am that man, but I’d have to be fool enough to ask her first. So what holds her back from being that woman anyway then, Ben?’

‘And you once claimed to be in love with her?’ Ben said with a hint of scorn in his deep voice that made Edmund flinch, despite knowing it was Kate who had been so set against falling in love once upon a time rather than he. ‘I can’t but marvel at fine young gentlemen who call infatuation love, then flit from girl to girl, like strutting peacocks waving their tail feathers, with not a worthwhile thought in their silly heads.’

‘I certainly thought myself in love with her three years ago, until she convinced me it was hopeless; if that makes me vain and idle, then so be it.’

Ben gave Edmund another of those searching glances, then nodded as if making up his mind about something. ‘I never really thought you guilty of those vices, so Kate obviously made a fine fist of whistling your mutual happiness down the wind, but have you ever stopped being furious with her long enough to wonder why?’

‘No, I just realised my one-sided love would make our lives a farce, even if I managed to persuade her to say yes instead of no in some moment of weakness.’

‘If you really loved her, you wouldn’t have given up at the first hurdle.’

‘Hardly that.’ Edmund was stung into justifying himself as he looked back over that wild springtide when they’d both been painfully young and he’d been alternately effervescent with hope and cast into the depths of despair by Kate’s inability to see how finely suited they could be, in bed and out, if only she’d open her eyes and see the rich possibilities of it all.

‘I grant you she’s stubborn and can be damnably difficult to either drive or lead at times,’ Ben conceded.

‘Difficult? She’s nigh impossible,’ Edmund told him with a bitter exasperation he thought he’d conquered, but it seemed that his friend was right and he still had strong feelings toward Kate Alstone, even if foremost among them was currently vexation, closely followed by something darker and angrier and born of three wasted years apart that he refused to examine more closely right now.

‘There are one or two good reasons why she’s not exactly the easiest female to live with at times,’ Ben said almost apologetically, which in itself was enough to render Edmund momentarily speechless.

He shook his head over what those reasons might be and must have looked as puzzled as he felt. ‘I can’t imagine what they might be,’ he replied at last.

‘Then apply the brains God gave you and use your imagination, Edmund. Have you ever stopped to wonder how you might feel if you were brought up as a much-loved and indulged child of a happy family instead of a noble and indulged orphan? Then imagine that, one by one, you lost every person in the world who was dear to you one way and another, all but your little sister, whom you then had to fight like a tiger to protect from the suddenly hostile world around you. Kate and Isabella Alstone lost their parents, their brother and, to all intents and purposes, their elder sister in quick succession when Kate was little more than ten years old. Their grandfather, who should have protected them both and loved them all the more, was so wrapped up in his own selfish grief and fury at the fates that he abandoned those two little girls to the so-called care of his daughter, Lady Ennersley, and her daughter, and I wouldn’t trust either with my pet dog, let alone the comfort and education of two innocent and supposedly helpless young girls.

‘Take my word for it, Edmund, those two unnatural females are the worst harpies I ever met, and I was brought up near the rookeries and certainly know a harpy when I see one. They constantly belittled and even beat Kate and threatened to do the same to her little sister, except Kate used to get in their way so they couldn’t reach her, which of course meant that they chastised her instead. They also robbed them of all those two little girls held dear, refusing to let them even see Eiliane Rhys as she was then. I know my darling stepmama tried time and again to wrench them both out of their icy grasp, but old Carnwood ignored the plight of his own grandchildren and refused to do anything to stop his daughter or the devil’s spawn she gave birth to making their lives a misery for far too long.

‘Those two heartless witches told them he hated them for living when his son and then their brother died and maybe they were even right, for he never made any effort to look to their welfare until it became more comfortable to act on Eiliane’s constant nagging to at least send them to school rather than to refuse to do so. Their aunt and cousin also managed to convince Kate that nobody but the servants cared what became of them, and that even they only gave a damn what happened to them because they were paid to. If not for my darling wife, Shuttleworth, those girls would have remained alienated and adrift even at the school their old fool of a grandfather eventually sent them to, solely to get them out of his way and to stop Eiliane’s constant letters and enquiries about them, and calm the hornet’s nest she stirred up among his wider family to shame him into action.

‘Now I respect Charlotte’s judgement and my own instincts well enough to be certain there are very deep and passionate feelings hidden behind Kate’s cool façade, even if you can’t see it. To the wider world she’s a confident and desirable young beauty with riches and privileges at her fingertips most young women would envy her, but if that’s all you see when you look at her, Edmund Worth, maybe you don’t deserve her after all. You might be better off with a less complex and difficult woman if you’re merely in search of an easy life with a conformable wife who’ll exclaim over your cleverness hourly and give birth to a pack of spineless brats you can hand your wealth and titles on to before you finally die of boredom.’

Perhaps as a fortunate, if often lonely, orphan he had been guilty of envying Miss Katherine Alstone her loving family and so had failed to look beyond the cool indifference with which she met the eyes of the world. He knew better than to dismiss the counsel of a man he respected, Edmund decided, and neither could he ignore the opinion of Ben’s wife, a woman of such extraordinary character, integrity and unusual looks that he couldn’t help but admire her, from a safe distance.

‘Maybe I’m not the man you take me for, and perhaps I don’t deserve Kate Alstone as I should if I can’t gain her love, but I never managed to knock down that wall of touch-me-not indifference you claim she’s hiding behind, Ben, even when I was trying my damnedest to demolish it.’

‘I suppose you know what they say about faint heart not winning fair lady?’

‘All very well, but three years ago my doglike devotion did nothing to win her affection or convince her she can trust me. I hope you don’t expect me to sit at her feet for another three, risking being kicked aside every time she wonders if another pet might not suit her better.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want a pet in the first place, then.’

‘What does she want then, man? I’m damned if I know any more.’

‘Just that—she wants a man and not a lapdog. She’s a sensible female and finds them pettish and yappy and who can blame her? I’m relieved my wife has never shown any sign of falling for the breed.’

‘From what I can tell she just adopts strays, and the larger and uglier the better.’

Edmund recalled his visit to their eccentric household last week with a reminiscent grin. Mrs Shaw had lately taken in a hound of very mixed breeding and huge size, who bayed at all her visitors and buried his bones under her best furniture, whilst protecting her and hers from all and sundry, even though she didn’t actually stand in need of any protection so far as he could see.

‘My point exactly,’ the lady’s husband agreed smugly.

Edmund wondered what the ton would make of the son of a marquis, even one born the wrong side of the blanket, who smugly claimed kinship with a mongrel of the most mixed variety and dubious origins. Possibly Ben’s very indifference to his own blue blood, and most of his father’s peers along with it, explained why he wasn’t just tolerated, but lionised by all but the most stiff-necked of them. It seemed to him that there was nothing quite so intriguing to most of the ton as someone so genuinely unimpressed by their elegant show and lofty traditions as Ben Shaw appeared to be.

‘So next time I call on Miss Alstone, you think I should growl menacingly at all other visitors who dare to enter Lady Pemberley’s drawing room?’ Edmund asked with a rueful grin. ‘Then perhaps I could pin any gentlemen I don’t like the look of up against the wall with teeth bared, whilst I attempt to bay loudly at the same time and dribble down their shirt fronts or all over their precious Hessians while I’m doing it?’

‘If you could leave out the drooling, that will probably go down better,’ Ben said with a reminiscent shudder and Edmund almost pitied him that aspect of the overenthusiastic Prometheus, as Charlotte had christened her latest waif.

‘Maybe, but I am what I am, Ben, and have never been good at pretending to be otherwise, I’m afraid,’ Edmund admitted ruefully, almost ashamed of himself for lacking the guile to storm and bluster sufficiently to gain Kate’s attention at last.

‘No need, you’re rich, titled and personable, Shuttleworth, so why would you need to be other than what you are? Just show Kate how much you’ve grown up since you fell all of an adoring heap at her feet three years ago. Make her see that you’ve become your own man while she wasn’t paying attention before you give up on her, that’s all I’m suggesting.’

‘All?’ Edmund echoed faintly, but he grinned at his unexpected mentor just the same and left after an interesting as well as an enlightening morning in a thoughtful frame of mind.

It might have been possible to set his face against the very idea of loving Kate and abhor her inability to see what was in front of her pert nose when he was a hundred miles from her and spare her incendiary presence, Edmund admitted to himself as he walked away from Stone & Shaw’s neat offices. He might even have found a sweet and biddable wife to put in her place if only she’d stayed away this Season. Kate was too near now; too real and right in front of him night after night, proving how much less life with that sweet little wife would be than one with her. Maybe it wouldn’t be fair to offer another woman so little when she might find an untainted young spark to make little paragons with instead. And how could less ever be good enough, despite his three-year-old resolution never to let Kate Alstone trample roughshod over his dreams again?

Despite the vow he’d made to himself to forget her, he still yearned for her in his bed and at his board night after night in his dreams and in his deepest, darkest fantasies. If he couldn’t beat his obsession with her, why not use it to trap her with her own scheming? He’d seen her summing up the young bloods and even the personable widowers in search of a wife to look after their restless and motherless broods and had wanted to strangle her for looking about her for a suitable, coldly selected, unloved husband. Still, he might be able to use her stubborn misreading of her own character and get her up the aisle before she realised they could never be so little to each other if they both lived to be ninety.