Promise Me Heaven (33 page)

Her eyes flew open. Her half brother Marcus stood before her.

“Marcus!” She held up her hands and he grabbed hold of them, gripping tightly, and settled himself next to her. “How is it you are here?”

Marcus’s grin turned wry. “I’ve been sitting in Brighton, twiddling my thumbs, for nearly a week. Montrose sent word I was to meet you and Great-Aunt Hecuba here. He couldn’t give me an exact time but urged me to be here to meet any incoming ships from mid-month on.”

“He did?”

“Yes. Quite adamant he was, too. Must have sent the damned—excuse me, Cat—dratted thing before he even left the country. Good heavens, Cat, I
am
glad to see you.”

His obvious joy warmed her. Of all her variously sired siblings, Cat had always been closest to Marcus. Most probably because she fretted so over him. He seemed to feel the irregularity of their family, as well as their financial situation, so keenly. He took his responsibilities so seriously. There was too little time in his young life for the pleasurable pursuits of most young men of his age and station. So typical of Marcus, to fly from Bellingcourt to make sure he had fulfilled Thomas’s instructions to the letter.

“Thank you, Marcus,” Cat said, her obvious pride making him blush.

“Not at all, Cat. My pleasure. But where is my great-aunt? Preaching to the serving girls already?”

“Not exactly.”

Marcus sobered immediately. “Is she all right? A strenuous journey such as you have just undertaken might well render the heartiest physique ill.”

“No, no,” Cat said hurriedly. “She’s fine. I think.”

“You
think
?” Marcus’s brows rose. “Oh Lord, Cat. Don’t tell me she remained in France to carry the Church of England’s word to Napoleon’s hordes!”

Cat laughed. “Oh, Marcus! Quite the reverse. Hecuba has eloped with a French marquis. She had hied herself off to the border when last I heard.” Her giggles erupted anew as Marcus’s expression became one of stunned incredulity.

“Never say!”

“I swear to it.” She solemnly raised her hand.

He stared at her a moment and then threw back his blond head, laughing. “The old faker!”

“I believe that is exactly what I said.”

They smiled at each other in fond approval a moment before Marcus said, “You must be done in, Cat. I admit, after hearing all the reports of your social success in Paris, I am a bit confounded to think French mode insists on that black wool thing sagging around you.”

Cat haughtily tilted her chin, staring at Marcus as though through a lorgnette. “The reports of my success were, no doubt,
under
emphasized. And this is bombazine, not wool, and it is about to be revived as the epitome of au courant fashion.”

“No wonder I have never wanted to go into society.”

She laughed and looked down at her dress. Soaked in perspiration from her bouts with seasickness, it had wilted. She became distinctly aware of an unpleasant aroma. “I am a fright.”

“Yes.” The fondness of his tone robbed it of insult. “And I am a boor to keep you hanging about a public lobby while a bath awaits for you in your suite upstairs.”

“A bath? A suite? How?”

“I heard Montrose ordering the manager to see to it immediately. The suite has been held in readiness for days.”

Cat’s head swung to where she had last seen Thomas. He was not there.

Watching Cat’s reunion with her brother had been a harmless, vicarious pleasure. The animation so absent during the past twenty-four hours—no, Thomas corrected himself, so absent from his life for the last seven months—had reappeared. Her eyes gleamed with a teasing light. Her laughter rippled like low, throaty music across the lobby.

She had looked like this any number of times in the few short weeks during which he had instructed her.
He
had made her laugh like that.
He
had provoked the devilish gleam in her eyes.
He
had drawn out the quick wit, the naughty observations. It had all been for
him
.

He was jealous of Cat’s gangly eighteen-year-old brother. If it weren’t so damned laughable, it would be sad. As sad as watching her slip from his scope like a woodland sylph disappearing into the dawn mists, leaving only her laughter to taunt her mortal lover with a taste of eternally denied pleasures.

He turned to sign the various registration papers the manager had slipped beneath his hand. At least he had done his honorable, chivalrous, damned duty by her. She was properly delivered to the inexperienced hand of her brother, Viscount Eltheridge. She could sail about Brighton under the perfectly acceptable auspices of his protectorship, such as it was. What matter if Marcus was even more a boy than Cat was a girl? The two of them ought to have a grand time of it, tweaking society’s nose.

I am acting like a sulking schoolboy
. He forced himself to amend his evaluation. The lad did not seem the nose-tweaking sort, and Cat? Well, Cat was circumspect. Practical. Canny.

In point of fact, Cat needed male guidance and protection less than any woman Thomas had ever known. It had taken an impending war to offer him a chance to be of use to her, and even here he was not at all certain she wouldn’t have escaped and made it back to England quite as well without his aid. Cat was self-reliant, independent, and wholly desirable. And he would go mad if he pursued these thoughts.

Thomas had never indulged in regrets before, considering them to be emotionally destructive. He had always accepted what he had been. Which is why he was damned if he could figure out why his objectivity had deserted him now. Why now his past taunted him with details he had thought long forgotten.

Any excuses he came up with for hanging about Brighton were fabrications he built for the single purpose of being near her.

The manager broke through Thomas’s absorption, asking if he, too, required a room. Thomas looked back to where Cat sat, her hands closed tightly around one of her brother’s, her head tilted at an inquiring angle. How could he leave her?

However could he stay?

Chapter 27

T
homas’s influence was evident in the alacrity with which the staff of the Castle Inn sought to make Cat’s stay as pleasant as humanly possible. A maid and a footman were miraculously employed by the following morning. Her suite was the most opulent the hotel had to offer. Exotic, out-of-season hyacinths and roses perfumed the air. Fine-textured linens were daily replaced on the huge canopied bed and the driver of a private hack stationed himself at the entrance to the lobby, her destination his sole concern.

But Thomas had disappeared.

Over the next several days he sent a few notes, as often addressed to Marcus as to Cat. They were brief, impersonal inquiries as to their health and requirements. These notes so infuriated Cat with their remote politeness that she tore them up, consigning them to the flames in which she wished to send their author.

Cat knew Marcus had seen Thomas. There was no other explanation for her brother’s knowledge of the details of her escape. Marcus advised her to claim that she had been accompanied by a loyal French maid—whom she had left happily enriched at Dieppe—when she recounted her adventure. The suggestion sounded like something Thomas would have concocted but she obeyed.

And then, a day later, Marcus returned with a thick packet of bank notes, his young countenance troubled. Thomas had insisted on making them the loan, he explained. Cat’s first impulse was to send the money back, along with a bouquet of his bloody roses. But practicality forbade such a dramatic, albeit noble, gesture; she couldn’t go about Brighton dressed in Hecuba’s sorry outfit.

Her sojourn in France having sharpened her eye, Cat assembled a wardrobe of extravagant chic. Madame Feille, only too happy to get firsthand accounts of the most à la mode fashions, promised to dispatch a few of the simpler gowns within a day.

By the end of the week, Cat and Marcus had rejoined society. Cat’s thrilling if mysterious flight from Paris secured them invitations everywhere. Forthwith, she became a minor celebrity. With each laurel, Cat inwardly cringed. Each commendation brought a denial to her lips. The ton considered her modest reticence further grounds for tribute. Accordingly, she was courted, her adventure the main course at many a fashionable meal. Each time she was asked to relate the tale, she was afraid she would look up in mid narration and find Thomas watching her in mock admiration.

He never was.

If not for the flowers, the notes, and Marcus’s occasional, unexplained absence, Cat would have thought Thomas had quit Brighton altogether. She decided to ignore him as thoroughly as he ignored her. But, God help her, she missed him.

And then, suddenly—inexplicably—it was over. The invitations stopped with humiliating abruptness. Women who had clutched their hands together in open admiration not twenty-four hours before averted their eyes in confusion when Cat entered a room. And men, with sad smiles, turned from her without uttering a word.

Cat knew what social ruin looked like. She had seen it from the fringes several times. It was not always ugly, vicious. It could be sad, inexorable, and apologetic. Like this.

She half suspected—and God forgive her, she more than half hoped—Thomas would come to her now. But wishing did not make it so. Even poor Marcus was undone by Thomas’s apparent defection. She knew her brother had finally sent a note to Thomas’s address. She knew, from the pale, strained expression on his far too youthful face, that it had gone unanswered.

There were many things to be taken care of, details to be ironed out, documents to be secured, debts to be called in. Thomas handled them all with grim resolve.

The reports sent by Marcus had not exaggerated; Cat’s reputation was destroyed. And Thomas was going to find the root of the evil rumors.

He made the rounds of places he had not been in years, gaming hells and houses of pleasure. His ears open, his eyes watchful, he spoke with men he had not passed words with in half a dozen seasons. Nothing much had changed. Some familiar faces were older, but younger ones had surfaced. The expressions were the same: sly, knowing, rapacious. Winks greeted Thomas’s arrival at Raggert’s clubhouse on the Steyne. Allusions to “exotic pleasurable devices” were pitched loudly enough to ensure he overheard them. The disreputable companions of his past clapped him on the back as he passed, welcoming him back into the fold.

He endured it all, seeking the source of the gossip. And after he found it, Thomas went to London.

To find Hellsgate Barrymore.