Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

The adventure will do you good, Katie. And when you return, I’ve no doubt you’ll trounce us all at hombre.

The cold chill of powerlessness iced through her and settled in her stomach.

“As long as there’s no bloodshed,” Captain Warre said with irritation, “I don’t care what kind of reception you give him. But I’ll thank you not to make my task more difficult by losing control of your temper when I’m not present to tame you.”

Her attention shot to him. Tame her. She forced a smile. “Find your brother tonight and solve the problem, Captain, and you need never concern yourself with my temper again.”

“Nothing would please me more, I assure you.”

She glared at him, tempted to continue goading him simply as a distraction. But behind him a wispy memory lighted on the staircase—Mama with her hand on the banister, glittering and laughing before an evening on the town. One more hug, Katie, but then I must go or your father will throw me over his knee.

The great entrance made her feel small. She could not do this. She was not like Mama, sparkling and polished to London perfection. She was more like the wood the Possession was made from—burnished and solid, but showing the effects of many storms.

London would tolerate nothing less than sparkle and polish.

“Then by all means, Captain,” she said, “be on your way. We have no further use for you here.” One word and their trunks could be loaded back onto the hack and returned to the Possession. Everything inside her screamed to give the order.

He stood watching her, tight-lipped, studying her too closely. “I shall go speak with Nick and Holliswell. I’ll send word of the result.”

“Excellent.”

“Do try to refrain from anything rash in the meantime.”

“I have no idea what you could mean, Captain.”

“It’s too soon to go careening back to the ship and sailing away in the night.”

“What an imagination you have. I—”

“Mama?” came Anne’s small voice through the hall.

Katherine’s attention snapped to the bench, where Anne clung to Millicent with her feet dangling to the floor, trying to stand. “What is it?”

“I don’t feel well.”

Just that quickly, Katherine abandoned any fantasy of returning to the ship. She rushed to Anne’s side with Captain Warre a step behind her, a heartbeat away from ordering Dodd to send for a doctor.

“What hurts?” she demanded, finding Anne’s forehead and cheeks cool to the touch.

“She has no fever,” Millicent said.

“The ground feels strange, Mama.” Fatigue and distress mingled in Anne’s plaintive voice. “There’s no up and down, but I still feel the waves.”

Katherine had barely breathed a sigh of relief when Captain Warre reached past her and lifted Anne into his arms. “That’s only natural,” he told her. “Just as a sailor must find his sea legs when he first boards a ship, you must find your land legs.”

Anne made a small, whining sound and looped her arms around his neck, letting her head fall into the curve of his shoulder.

It was on the tip of Katherine’s tongue to order him to put Anne down, but Anne looked so content she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she brushed delicate wisps of dark hair from Anne’s cheek. There was no sense reminding Anne that they went through this every time they went ashore. Already her eyes were closing as Captain Warre rubbed slow circles over the back of her shoulder. She was too tired for reason.

The intimacy of Captain Warre’s touch stirred a dangerous feeling inside her. “I’ll take her up to bed,” Katherine said, reaching for Anne, but Captain Warre started toward the stairs.

“I’ve got her.”

That temper he was so anxious to escape sent up a lick of flame, but she tamped it down and beckoned Millicent to follow them up the staircase. Soon enough he would be gone.

Halfway up the stairs, her feet slowed. That old, giant portrait still hung where the staircase turned—a windswept moor cradling a massive graystone fortress at the edge of a roiling sea. It was a fortress as familiar to her as her own flesh, and the longing to go there—to walk its ramparts once more—poured up from the deepest parts of her soul.

When you are countess of Dunscore, Katie, every stone in these walls will cry out your name.

She tore her gaze away from the painting. She may have been foolish enough to believe Papa then, but she had no illusions now. The Lords could snatch Dunscore from her just as quickly as Papa had married Lady White. Just as suddenly as Mejdan had died in the night.

But Dunscore could secure Anne’s future. As soon as Anne was settled and comfortable upstairs, Katherine would begin a list of everything that would need to be done tomorrow.

Deep inside, her spirit shrank from the task.

“Miss Holliswell has taken the north rooms,” Dodd told her as they reached the top of the stairs.

“And Mr. Holliswell has taken my father’s rooms, of course.”

“He has, your ladyship.”

Holliswell thought to get himself a title and fortress at her expense, did he? They would see about that. She caught a flash of skirt disappearing through a doorway just as she topped the stairs. “Who is that?”

“Miss Bunsby, your ladyship. Miss Holliswell’s companion.”

“I want her out. I want all of the Holliswells’ servants out.”

“There will be time enough for that tomorrow,” Captain Warre said shortly. “Where can we put Anne?”

“The blue rooms are vacant, your ladyship.”

The blue rooms. She didn’t want to see them again, but Anne gave a whimpering sigh against Captain Warre’s shoulder. Katherine turned woodenly toward her girlhood apartment. They were only rooms, after all.

She stopped abruptly outside the threshold and let Captain Warre carry Anne inside. Through the door, the shades of misty blue Mama had chosen threatened her with the same melancholia that had consumed her in those last London days after Papa’s wedding, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, and only days before she had been sent to the Continent. The eleven years that had passed suddenly seemed like eleven days.

Now Papa was gone. Lady White, she’d received word years ago, had died in childbirth. And Katherine had finally returned to claim her birthright.

She reached for her anger like a lifeline. “We’ll need someone to move that small trunk into the adjoining room.”

“Certainly, your ladyship.”

“I’ll move it myself,” Millicent said tensely.

“You won’t,” Katherine barked back, more harshly than she’d meant to. A gulp of air didn’t quite ease the tightness in her throat. “Put her in the room adjacent.”

“Of course.”

Captain Warre was settling Anne onto the blue-draped bed where, in the years before Lady White entered Papa’s life, Katherine had spent so many nights dreaming of the adventures she and Papa would have traveling the world together. Anne’s eyes were closed, as though there were no safer place in the world than Captain Warre’s arms, and she protested when he set her against the pile of blue satin pillows. He murmured something in her ear and she sighed.

The bed was too high to be safe for Anne. There was only a small screen in front of the fireplace, and there was a great expanse of empty space in the middle of the room. Later, after Captain Warre was gone, she would move Anne. They would share a room, and tomorrow she would set about having the house changed for Anne’s safety.

The thought prompted Katherine to finally find her feet. Long-dead emotions clawed inside her chest, trying to resurrect themselves as she entered the room. She went to the bed and smoothed Anne’s forehead, leaning down to give her a kiss.

Katherine straightened and found herself inches from Captain Warre. Lips she remembered too well thinned. “You’re going to have to approach this with all the measured precision you would use when confronting a hostile ship,” he whispered. “Temper will avail nothing.”

“How do you know I ever used measured precision?” she whispered back, focusing all her attention on him instead of on the books, the trinkets, the decade-old toiletries that still lined the dressing table. The collection of artifacts that testified to a girl who—thankfully—no longer existed.

“You may leave now,” she told him. But at the thought of him going, a first trickle of panic pooled in her belly. Quickly she put distance between them by moving into the corridor where they would not disturb Anne. He followed.

“Forgive me if I’m hesitant to leave until I have some assurance that you will wait to hear from me before you take any action. It won’t help matters if you do something rash.”

“I’m not stupid, Captain.”

“But you’re angry.”

“What uncanny powers of observation you have.” Like the rising tide, panic lapped higher. She felt it washing her toward him, tempting her to lean on him. So she smiled. “I assure you, Captain, I’ve never felt more in control.”

“Excellent.” Those piercing green eyes searched her with a hint of ridicule. “Then I shall go interrupt Nick’s dinner party, confident that if Holliswell slips past me, you’ll not stain all that lovely marble in the foyer with his blood. The law of the sea does not apply in London.”

“Your confidence does me great honor.” She forced her feet to carry her toward the staircase. “Of course, if speaking with your brother avails nothing—” she paused with her hand on the banister and faced him “—I will expect you to move forward with my plan.”

Amusement touched the corner of his mouth. “Naturally. I’ll send word tonight.”

“Give Cousin Holliswell my felicitations.”

His lip curled. “Certainly.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Perhaps, when I see him, I shall call him out.”

“Good God.” Captain Warre’s eyes blazed and he shook his head, turning to go. He was still windblown, unshaven, all muscle and prowess—strong and unyielding as a mainmast as his eyes met hers.

I’m afraid. The words winged through her mind and perched on her lips.

His eyes followed them there and darkened with desire. She bit her tongue to keep from spilling out her fears and asking for his reassurance. This was Captain Warre! She would use him, yes, to ensure her place in society.

But she would never lay her head in the crook of his neck and let him lull her to sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MELANCHOLIA. JAMES CONTEMPLATED the self-diagnosis a short time later as the hack rattled past St. George’s and a light drizzle began to fall and he tried to dredge up some kind of emotion about finally being home again but couldn’t. His ship’s surgeon had never suggested melancholia, but it would explain everything.

By God, as soon as he settled this business tonight he would order his coach and set out for Croston. He would arrive there tomorrow and sink into blessed oblivion, where he would remain for as long as it took to renew himself.

He would forget Captain Kinloch. Forget that he’d ever touched her. Forget that haunted look in her eyes while she stood paralyzed at the threshold of her childhood apartment—

Christ. If he did not end this tonight, she would be his undoing. She drove him mad, made him furious, enslaved him to that baser nature she scorned so mightily, reminded him of the man he should have been but wasn’t.

Where Captain Kinloch was concerned, he clung to control by an unraveling thread.

The hack lurched to a stop in front of his town house. It was a devil waiting for admittance at his own door, but Bates opened quickly, and James headed straight for the dining room, leaving Bates standing slack-jawed. He thought of his borrowed breeches and jacket and his wigless, sea-ravaged hair, and he curled his lip. Let them be shocked. That bill would receive its deathblow right here. After tonight, there would be no question who held title to the Dunscore estate and who didn’t.

And, for that matter, who held title to Croston.

By the time Bates recovered his senses enough to follow, James was nearing the dining room. From the sound of things, it was a small party.

“May I just say, it’s very good to see you, my lord,” Bates said from close behind him.

“Thank you, Bates. It’s good to see you, as well.” That wasn’t at all what Bates meant, of course.

He walked into the dining room.

Voices fell silent. There was a heartbeat, then a shriek. “James!” Honoria launched herself out of her chair and threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sobbing into his shoulder. “James!”

He closed his arms around his little sister, and his throat constricted. There was an uproar of disbelief and the clatter of silverware hitting china as the guests realized what was happening.

“Good God.” Nick came ashen-faced around the table, gaping as though James had just emerged from the tomb in his burial linens. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

James inhaled deeply past the tightness of his throat, taking in Honoria’s tears and Nick’s damp eyes. Their mourning clothes. Their grief was part of the equation he hadn’t factored in.

The moment he set Honoria aside, Nick hugged him fiercely despite the onlookers. “My God!” Nick said, nearly squeezing the breath from James’s lungs. “It can’t be!”

“I say!” one of the guests exclaimed. “Extraordinary!”

So this was what resurrection felt like.

Nick stepped back, and Honoria quickly took his arm. “Sit! Eat! La, you look an absolute fright. Tell me you didn’t sail all the way home on some awful merchant ship—”

A jumble of speculation went up as everyone began to fire questions at once. James held up his hand. “Enough!” Under his breath to Nick, he said, “I need to speak with you privately.” And then, to Honoria, “I have business to take care of, Ree. As soon as it’s done, I shall be entirely yours. I promise.” He offered a slight bow to the guests. “My apologies. If you’ll excuse me.” On his way out, he paused to whisper to Bates. “Tell Lord Pennington not to let Mr. Holliswell leave.”

In the library, Nick gave him another rough embrace. When they broke apart, James felt a stab of raw emotion that matched the look on Nick’s face. It was a face much like his own—hard mouth, sharp cheekbones, dark brows over Mother’s green eyes. Nick’s wig hid whether the Croston gray had begun to plague him, and there was no trace of the dimple Mother said Nick had inherited from her paternal grandmother. They were all so fragmented now—James at sea, Nick and Ree here, none of them with children. For a moment his throat was too tight to speak.

The slightest change in events, and he might have perished and never seen Nick again.

“By what miracle did you survive the wreck?” Nick asked thickly.

By the miracle of Captain Katherine Kinloch. James inhaled deeply, shoving away thoughts of waves and wreckage.

“The reason I survived,” he said carefully, watching for Nick’s reaction, “the only reason, is because I was pulled half-dead from the water by Katherine Kinloch.”

Nick’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he made the connections. “Bloody hell.”

James stared at him. He tried to keep his voice calm. “It was an amazing coincidence of timing, really. I had been drifting for days on a piece of decking, you see, and she happened to be sailing for Britain to defend her estate against a bill of pains and penalties.”

“Bloody hell.” Nick turned away, bracing his hip with one hand and his forehead with the other.

“I would have thought ‘It’s a miracle’ would be the more appropriate phrase,” James said sharply.

“You think I don’t know that? Bloody hell!” He raked his fingers into his hair and came away looking as if he were the one who had just spent weeks at sea. “Katherine Kinloch? Are you certain?”

James raised a brow. “After four weeks—”

“Christ, never mind.” Nicholas gestured away the inanity of his question. “And so now I have her to thank for your return. This gets more bloody entertaining by the day.” He gave a mirthless laugh.

“Explain to me what ‘this’ is. A debt to Holliswell, I presume.”

This time Nick’s laugh sounded more like a strangle. “A hurricane in the West Indies, pirates off the horn of Africa, an entire cargo’s worth of repairs paid on bottomry to some opportunistic Boston shipwright—the value of nigh on our entire operation and investment, gone in one perfect coalescence of disaster.”

James stared at him in disbelief. “And in the time you’ve believed you had the title you haven’t paid him off?”

“You know me better than that,” Nick snapped.

“Sometimes I wonder if I know you at all. You’re part of the Croston lineage, Nick—not some yeoman’s son. Christ. Solving a problem in the most convoluted way possible—never mind throwing an innocent to the dogs in the meantime.”

“An innocent!” Nick stalked up to him. “Look here, James. If Katherine Kinloch made a successful escape from Barbary, why did she not go to our consulate? Why did she not write her father? Come home to Dunscore? Not only are her escapades in the Mediterranean disloyal to the Crown, they’re disgraceful to society and a downright bad example to our young ladies.”

James barked a laugh and hoped it was enough to hide his sudden urge to grab Nick by the throat. So much for the maudlin homecoming. “I hardly think captaining a ship will become society’s next vogue for young ladies. Are you trying to repay a debt, or have you launched a crusade for female propriety?” He cut to the chase. “I want you to end this business you’ve brought up with the Lords. Withdraw your support for the bill and find another way to repay Holliswell.”

“Drop my support for the bill?” Nick’s eyes darkened with raw emotion, then hardened. “Very well. Just as soon as you find another way to convince Holliswell to allow me to marry Clarissa.”

“That had bloody well better be a joke.”

“I’d planned to talk to him tonight—” He broke off. The rest of the sentence, before I learned I didn’t hold the title, hung in the air. But it was clear the cold single-mindedness in Nick’s eyes had nothing to do with the title and everything to do with Clarissa Holliswell.

“If Holliswell’s consent depends upon you being an earl, then there’s little I can do. I’ll not snuff myself out to further Miss Holliswell’s cause.” He went to the door and called Bates. “Send Holliswell here,” he ordered.

“Don’t be an ass. Damn it all, James, I don’t want to fight with you. Ten minutes ago I thought you were lost forever, and now—” He closed his eyes and cursed again. “If it’s a choice between Miss Holliswell’s future or Katherine Kinloch’s, I don’t have to tell you which I’ll choose.”

“The Dunscore title in exchange for Miss Holliswell’s hand and forgiveness of the debt you owe. Is that the arrangement?”

Nick stared at him. “Unlike Katherine Kinloch, Clarissa actually is an innocent. And fragile. It would be the easiest thing in the world for a man to crush her.” His jaw worked, and his eyes looked coldly through James to some imagined horror beyond. “I always thought men were fools to be taken in by blue eyes and pretty faces, but God—I can’t even look at her without wanting to do everything in my power to keep her safe and make her happy, which she bloody well won’t be if Holliswell marries her off to someone like Oakley.” Nick’s lip curled. “I can see you understand my predicament.”

Yes. But Katherine was in a predicament, as well. “You really imagine that once Holliswell has the title, he’s going to—”

“Uphold the bargain? Perhaps not. But I know for a fact he won’t allow the marriage without it.”

James went to pour brandy from what he would always think of as Father’s snifter. Maybe Nick was right about Clarissa. Probably he wasn’t. The effect was the same for Katherine either way. “I could loan you the money,” he said.

Nick laughed bitterly. “Exchange one creditor for another?”

“Give it to you, then.” Hell. If that was the cost of his debt to Captain Kinloch, it was a small price to pay.

“Even if my pride would allow me to accept, it would avail nothing. Holliswell wants the title.”

There was no opportunity to say that he wasn’t going to get it, because Holliswell came through the door. He spotted James and curved his mouth into a plump, greasy smile, but his eyes glittered with fury. “Your lordship,” he said with an obsequiously deep bow. “I cannot begin to describe our joy at your return.”

James moved away from the snifter and toward Holliswell, deliberately failing to extend an invitation to drink. “You will be relieved as well to learn that your cousin the countess of Dunscore has also returned,” he said, and fixed his eyes on the hard lines of Holliswell’s face. “As it happens, it was she who pulled my half-drowned corpse from the sea. It’s no understatement to say I owe her my life.”

Holliswell’s expression barely flickered. “What happy news. A miracle, no less.”

James set his glass on the desk and looked Holliswell in the eye. “You will not return to Lady Dunscore’s house tonight.” In fact, he would send a footman to follow them and make sure. “Tomorrow, you will send your people to collect your things. And in the future, you will remember that you are not the Earl of Dunscore, and you will act accordingly.”

Holliswell smiled pleasantly. “Given Lady Dunscore’s lengthy absence, I never expected she would return, nor did I expect she would care about the house. Naturally, my daughter and I will find other accommodations until everything has been settled.”

“Naturally,” James said coldly.

Holliswell turned to Nick. “You’ll understand, of course, if my daughter and I take our leave early. You...didn’t have anything you wished to discuss, did you?”

Nick’s jaw flexed. “We’ll speak tomorrow.”

“No doubt we will.” Holliswell smiled. “No doubt at all.”

* * *

THE MANTEL CLOCK in the yellow guest apartment made a tiny chime as Katherine scratched out a list for tomorrow. Half past eleven, and still no word from Captain Warre.

Mrs. Hibbard quietly slipped in with a tray. “I brought you a fresh pot,” she whispered, and replaced the tea service on the cart next to the writing desk. Katherine leaned forward to look through the door into the bedroom. Anne stirred a little in the big bed, not quite settled after being moved from the blue rooms.

“And I brought a few slices of Cook’s raisin bread. And some butter.” Mrs. Hibbard poured Katherine a fresh, steaming cup of tea and stood there with the teapot cradled in her hands, staring at Katherine through brown eyes filled with emotion. “It’s such a joy to have you home, Lady Katherine.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hibbard.” But this was not home, and she was Captain Kinloch, not Lady Katherine anymore, and if she ate anything now, she would probably throw it back up. “Please go to bed—there’s no need to trouble yourself further.”

Mrs. Hibbard frowned, and her plump fingers tightened on the teapot. “I intend to stay at your service as long as you need.”

“I’ll be retiring shortly.”

The old housekeeper looked a little distressed. “I’ll order the blue rooms cleaned top to bottom tomorrow, Lady Katherine. I assure you, they’ll be fit and proper before you’re up and about, and your things will be moved first thing in the morning.” She glanced at Katherine’s outfit. “You’ll need a lady’s maid—”

“No. I won’t. That will be all.”

Mrs. Hibbard stepped back. Damnation—this was not a ship, and Mrs. Hibbard was not one of her crew. Katherine softened her tone. “My apologies. I shall occupy these rooms while I’m here. Anne shall take the pink rooms as soon as they are free.”

“Of course.” Mrs. Hibbard bobbed an awkward curtsy. “Everything as you wish.” She set the teapot on the tray and folded her hands in front of her. “If you need anything in the night, just ring.”

When she was gone, Katherine inhaled deeply. Exhaled. She did not want to feel sixteen again. Being in London did not mean she had to fall helplessly back into her old life—as if that would even be possible. She’d seen too much of the world since then.