When Bishop lowered the bottle, he was giggling. “Do you think I’m a fool, Traherne? You think I’d tell you? Even if she hadn’t stipulated—very explicitly, I might add—that I wasn’t to tell you, no matter how hard you hit me?”
Burke laughed along with him. “But of course you’re going to tell me,” he said, “because we’re quite good friends now, you and I, and you know that I only have Kate’s best interests at heart.”
“But you don’t,” Bishop said. “I know perfectly well that you don’t. You have the same interest in Kate that I have. The only difference, of course, is that I want to marry her.”
He glared at him. “How do you know I don’t want to marry her, too?”
“You?” Bishop guffawed. “Marry Kate? Impossible!”
“Why?” Burke demanded, bristling. “Why is it impossible?”
“Everyone knows you swore off marriage forever, after your divorce, Traherne. Even Kate knows it.”
Burke looked at him carefully. “And how precisely does Kate know it? I never told her any such thing.”
“You didn’t have to. I told her. I told her you would probably only debauch her and then give her the boot when you tired of her.” Bishop nearly dropped the decanter as he turned to stare accusingly at his new drinking companion. “That’s not why she ran off, is it? Did you debauch her, you bastard?”
Burke could think of no answer to this. He had, in fact, debauched her, although it hadn’t seemed like debauchery at the time. And that was, clearly, why she’d run off. But he certainly wasn’t going to admit as much to the Earl of Palmer. He couldn’t, he suppose, blame the earl entirely for what had happened, since he had been an active participant, as well … after all, he had quite enthusiastically outlined for Kate the details for their future in sin together. When what he ought to have been doing, of course, was making wedding plans.
But how was he to have known? She had never said a word about where she’d come from. How was he to have known she was a gentleman’s daughter?
That was no excuse, of course. He oughtn’t to have treated any woman the way he’d treated Kate, gentleman’s daughter or not. But he hadn’t even entertained the idea of marriage for seventeen years. How was he to have thought of it that night?
He ought to have thought of it. If he had, he wouldn’t be sitting here amidst the wreckage of a morning room, drinking whiskey straight from the decanter on a Monday afternoon, wondering how a man who had no heart could be so certain his was breaking.
Dear Lord Wingate,
the note read.
Well, of course. What had he expected? That she’d call him by his Christian name? She had done that only once, and only because he’d asked her to. She wasn’t likely to do it in a letter telling him why she could never see him again.
Dear Lord Wingate,
it read.
I know you are probably angry with me, but I felt I had to leave. I’m afraid I cannot be your mistress. I would very much liked to have tried to be, but I know that I am just not cut from that sort of cloth, and should have made both of us unhappy in the end. I hope you will forgive me, and that you won’t mind my sending this letter to Lord Palmer to give to you. I feel it would be far better for me if I didn’t see or hear from you for a while. Please give Isabel my love, and try to make her understand why I had to leave, without, of course, telling her the truth. And do keep her from eloping with Mr. Saunders. He mentioned trying something of the sort to me once.
I can only add, God bless you, and please know that I am, and shall always remain, very truly yours,
Kate Mayhew
Burke, after having read the whole letter, looked up to the top of the page—hardly even a page, really. Half a page, written on a piece of foolscap, the kind that could be purchased in any village shop. Well, Kate wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to write him on a piece of hotel stationery, which might be easily traced—and read it again.
But no matter how many times he read it, the words remained the same.
No recriminations. Never, anywhere in the text, did she curse him. Nor was there any sign that she’d wept while writing it. The ink was nowhere blotched. He wondered how many drafts she’d written before settling on this one. She had cleverly kept from dropping a single clue as to where he might find her. And she never expressed the slightest hope—however unconsciously—that he might endeavor to do so.
Well. It was more than he deserved, he supposed. He hadn’t expected a letter from her at all. And he hadn’t quite believed his eyes when Bishop slapped it into his hand as he’d been taking his—rather bloody and drunken—leave that afternoon. In fact, he’d thought it a hastily drawn bill for all the damage he’d done to the dowager’s morning room.
“It’s from Kate,” the earl had said, his voice muffled beneath the cloth he held to his still-dripping nose. “She sent it, along with my letter. I wasn’t going to give it to you at first, but … well, looking at you now, I think you better have it.”
Instinctively, Burke had flipped the note over, checking the seal. Bishop, still quite drank, had let out a bitter laugh.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I didn’t read it. Didn’t want to. Whatever the hell happened between you two …. Well, to tell you the truth, I just don’t want to know.”
Burke quite agreed with him. He didn’t want to know, either. He wanted to forget. He wanted to forget everything that had happened since that foggy night he’d first encountered her. Which was why, six hours later, he was sitting in his study—not the library. He had not been able to bring himself to go into the library since the night he and Kate … well, that was another thing he was trying to forget.
He sat there, drinking his own whiskey, reading and then rereading her letter. This activity, he knew, was not particularly conducive to forgetting her, but he could not seem to put the letter down, since it was the only thing he had of hers with which to remember her. Well, with the exception of her nightdress and peignoir, which he had rescued from the library floor before they could be found by one of the maids, and which he now kept balled beneath his bed pillows.
Sentimental? Yes. Insufferably maudlin? Quite so.
And yet he would not part with them, or the letter, for all the money in the world.
It was as he was reading her letter for what had to be the hundredth time, hoping some line in it would change, that the door to his study was thrown open.
“Excuse me,” Burke rumbled, without looking up. “But I closed that door for a reason.”
“And I opened it for a reason.” Isabel, dressed in her evening wear, stood before him with tears glittering in her eyes. Her hair was too tightly pulled back, and then burst into some kind of explosion of curls at the back of her head. It was not a flattering look. It was not a hairstyle Kate would have allowed her to leave the house wearing.
“I walked into Miss Mayhew’s room a moment ago,” Isabel said, her voice filled with something that was just barely suppressed, “to return a book of hers I borrowed, and what do you think I found there? What do you think I found?”
Burke lifted his glass to his lips and drained it. Never mind. He had plenty more whiskey in a bottle right at his elbow.
“She’s gone!” Isabel’s voice throbbed dramatically. “Papa, she’s gone! The books are gone! Miss Mayhew is gone!”
“Yes,” Burke said, pouring himself another drink. “I know.”
“You know?” Isabel cried. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”
Burke said, in a toneless voice, “Miss Mayhew has found that her relative—the one that was ill—needs her more than she feels we do, and so she has regretfully tendered her resignation.”
He glanced at her to see how well this lie had worked. It seemed to have gone over well enough. Isabel was pale, certainly. And tears were gathered beneath her long black lashes.
But she did not look angry. At least, not just then.
“But I don’t understand.” Isabel shook her head. The explosion of curls at the back of her head trembled. “Papa, Miss Mayhew had no relatives. She told me so. Who is this ill relative of hers?”
Burke sipped his drink. There was something about whiskey. It numbed one so pleasantly. And when he woke in the morning with a headache, all he would need to do was drink more of it. Headache gone. If he could just ensure that a steady supply of whiskey was poured down his throat, morning, noon, and night, he might be all right.
“Wait a minute.” Isabel’s green eyes narrowed dangerously. But he was too drunk to see the danger. At least just then.
“Wait a minute,” Isabel said again. “You’re lying.”
Burke lifted an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. You’re lying to me, Papa. Miss Mayhew isn’t with any sick relative.”
Burke said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Isabel. She wrote you herself—”
“She was lying, too,” Isabel declared. “No one writes in a letter that a relative is sick. They write ‘my aunt,’ or ‘my cousin,’ or ‘my grandfather’s brother’s wife.’ They don’t say ‘my relative.’ Miss Mayhew was lying, and so are you.”
Burke leaned his head against the back of his leather chair, and sighed. “Isabel,” he said.
“Tell me,” Isabel said. “You must tell me. I am not a child anymore. I’m a grown woman, practically engaged to be married—”
“You are not,” Burke said emphatically, “practically engaged to be married. Not until I say you’re practically engaged to be married.”
Isabel said, “Fine, then. I’m not engaged to be married. But I am still an adult, and I demand that you tell me. Where is she, Papa?”
Burke studied the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he said simply.
Isabel’s voice rose. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Where were her books sent?”
“To Lord Palmer’s,” Burke said to the ceiling. “He’s sending them on to her, wherever she is.”
“What do you mean, wherever she is? You don’t know where she is?”
He shook his head. “No, I told you that. She won’t say.” Then, looking at her finally, and seeing her stricken expression, he added, holding his hand out toward her, “I’m sorry, Isabel.”
“You’re sorry?” Isabel’s voice rose another octave. The emotion which had been suppressed now broke through the surface, and overcame her. That emotion was, as near as Burke could tell, hysteria. “You’re sorry? What did you do to her, Papa? What did you do?”
He couldn’t tell her, of course. He could only shake his head some more. Then, to his surprise, Isabel flung herself down upon her knees before his chair, and let out a heart-wrenching sob.
“You did something,” she said, pounding on his thigh with a fist. “The night in the garden, when Mr. Craven came, you did something to Miss Mayhew. You lost your temper. You lost your temper with her, didn’t you? You’re the one who made her go away. You’re the one. You did it.” She shook her head with such violence that the explosion of curls came tumbling down about her shoulders, just as tears were tumbling down her cheeks. “How could you, Papa?”
Burke stared down at her miserably.
“Isabel,” he said. “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry.”
She reached up and wiped away her tears with a bent wrist—a gesture that so reminded Burke of her childhood that he had to blink, thinking, for one drunken moment, that she was four years old again. “Of course you are,” Isabel said, in a more reasonable tone. “Poor Papa.” She sniffled a little, then blinked at him. “Are you very sad? You look sad.”
What he was, of course, was very drunk. But he couldn’t tell her that. Much as he couldn’t tell her the real reason behind Kate’s sudden departure.
“I am very sorry for you, Papa,” Isabel said, reaching up to stroke him on the cheek. But she quickly pulled her hand away again, as if she had burned it. Which, in a way, it turned out she had.
“Papa,” she said chidingly. “How long has it been since you shaved?”
Burke said, “I don’t know.”
“You are very untidy.” Isabel reached up to adjust his cravat. “And how did you get that cut upon your eye? Papa, have you been fighting again?”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“You are a very bad papa,” Isabel said, drawing a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, and applying it gently to the cut. “Very, very bad, not to take care of yourself. What would Miss Mayhew think of you, if she were to come back?”
Burke said, “She isn’t coming back, Isabel.”
Isabel made a sound with her tongue. “Now, Papa, you don’t know that. She says that now, because she’s angry with you—deservedly so, I’m sure. You can be very wicked, indeed, when you get into a temper. But Miss Mayhew loves you, Papa. Of course she will be coming back.”
Burke leaned forward, and eagerly grasped her by the shoulders. “Did she tell you that? Did she tell you she loved me?”
“No,” Isabel said, and then, when he let go of her, and slumped back into his chair, added, with a little laugh, “Silly Papa. She didn’t have to tell me she loves you. Anyone with any sense could have seen that she did. Almost as much as you love her.”
Burke eyed her from the depths of his chair. “What makes you think,” he asked carefully, “that I am in love with Miss Mayhew?”
Isabel rolled her eyes. “Oh, Papa,” she said. “Of course you love her. Everybody knows it.”
“Who,” Burke asked suspiciously, “is everybody?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Isabel said. She tossed the bloodied handkerchief aside, lifted the hem of her gown, and climbed back to her feet. “Are you trying to tell me you’re not in love with Miss Mayhew? Because if you are, I’ll be more than happy to point out to you the dozens of instances in which you made it perfectly obvious that you were, starting with the fact that you were willing to pay her so much just to get her to come here in the first place—”
“That,” Burke said, hurling himself from the chair, and placing a good distance between himself and his daughter’s accusation, “was because you were driving me to distraction with your constant nagging!” He raised his voice in mocking imitation of hers. “‘I want Miss Mayhew as my chaperone. Why can’t I have Miss Mayhew as my chaperone.’ You left me no other choice!”
“And how,” Isabel said, folding her arms across her chest, and observing him with a slight smile upon her lips, “do you explain the fact that after you hired her, you continued to attend all of the balls and parties you’d claimed to hate so much, just so you could stand in a corner and spy on her?”