The Lady Who Broke the Rules (6 page)

Virgil shrugged. ‘A while.’

‘Days? Weeks? Months?’ Kate persisted. ‘Years?’ she squeaked, disbelievingly.

‘A while.’

He dropped her hand, moving away from her, as far as the gig’s limited seating allowed. She wanted to probe, but she knew better than to do so. Whatever
a while
was, it was surprising. Astonishing that a man as attractive, as assured, as Virgil had kissed no one. Though not as astounding as the fact that he had kissed
her
! She wanted to know why. Or did she? Perhaps ignorance in this case truly was bliss. Kate untangled the reins from the brake. ‘I hope it was worth the wait,’ she said, resorting to her customary glibness.

* * *

‘Have we much further to go?’ Virgil asked some time later.

Kate shook her head. ‘We’ve been on Montague land for the past couple of miles. The farmers here are all my father’s tenants.’

‘Good God, I didn’t realise he owned so much.’

‘Well, it’s not really my father but the dukedom. The land is all entailed, so he can’t sell it, and he can’t bequeath it to anyone other than Jam—I mean, Giles. Giles is the heir. Or at least he is at the moment. That may well all be about to change.’

‘How so?’

Kate grimaced. ‘It’s complicated. I should have told you. I’ve invited you into a hornet’s nest, but I so wanted you to come with me. I didn’t really think about it last night, but—oh, God, the truth is that we’re actually in a bit of a mess,’ she said. ‘Are you angry?’

‘How can I be, when I don’t know what you’re talking about?’

‘Yes. Of course. Sorry. Well, it seems that my brother Jamie took a wife in Spain just before he—he died. We knew nothing about it until a few months ago, when my father received a letter from the woman demanding that we do right by her son who is, she claims, Jamie’s heir. You can imagine the uproar that caused. My brother Giles suspects the whole thing is an elaborate fraud but Ross—he is my cousin—met the woman, and seemed fairly convinced by her. So now Giles, who is the heir at the moment but might not really be the heir, has sent my brother Harry—who is the next in line to Giles but of course is further out if this child…well, anyway, Harry is off to Spain to see what he can discover, and in the meantime my father, who is most anxious to detach his grandson from what he has called the scheming wretch, has insisted that they both come to Castonbury.’ Kate drew a breath and laughed at Virgil’s expression. ‘I told you, it’s complicated.’

‘Extremely,’ Virgil said, amused by her method of recounting the tale, dismayed by its content.

‘The reason I had to come home today is because Giles has demanded a sort of family counsel of war.’

‘And knowing all this, you still insisted I accompany you! Surely your time will be quite taken up with these matters, and my presence in the midst of it all can only be an inconvenience at best.’

Kate slowed the horse down as they rounded a bend in the lane, pulling the gig to a halt at a large wooden gate. ‘You
are
angry. I’m sorry, I ought to have told you sooner, but I so wanted you to come to Castonbury and I was afraid that you would not, and that is the truth.’ She transferred the reins to one hand, placing her other on Virgil’s sleeve. ‘I’m glad that you’re here.’

He covered her hand with his, and smiled crookedly down at her. ‘Thank you, but I think perhaps I should not make it such a long visit.’

‘We’ll see,’ Kate said, deciding wisely not to push her luck. ‘Now, look over there.’ She pointed her whip. ‘That is Castonbury Park.’

The field by which they had stopped was on a rise, looking down on the house. Behind them, the trees which bordered the lane through which they had been driving would provide a pleasant perspective. The house itself was perfectly symmetrical with matching wings set to the east and west. In the centre of the building, a domed roof gave it a distinctive appearance, more like a classical Roman villa or place of worship than a family home. Though it was difficult to see the detail at this distance, it looked as if the architect had been an admirer of the classical style, for there were pediments and pillars, the rustic stonework of the ground floor giving way to the smooth finish on the
piano nobile
, from which a grand staircase curved down to the neatly manicured lawns. He had expected something flamboyantly grand, but the perfect proportions were so beautiful that he could not but admire them.

‘What do you think?’ Kate asked.

‘It’s not what I thought it would be. I thought the home of a duke would be more…showy.’

She gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Just wait. There is gilt and gold aplenty in the state rooms.’ She urged the tired horse into motion once more. ‘The prettiest part of the grounds is to the north, which is where the main lodge is. The smaller one you can see leads to the Dower House. And through those woods there is a path to the village, where Lily, Giles’s betrothed, lives in the vicarage.’

‘Let me make sure I have this right. Giles is your eldest brother now, and you are next in age?’

‘No, I come after Harry. Ned was next after me,’ Kate said, ignoring the familiar lurch in her stomach as she spoke Ned’s name, ‘and then there is my sister, Phaedra, who is twenty, four years younger than me. Since my spectacular failure to make a good marriage, all my father’s hopes are pinned on Phaedra making her debut next Season but I suspect they are misplaced, for though my sister has the potential to be quite dangerously attractive, she has very little interest in anything but horses, and none at all in either parties or clothes, much to my aunt’s despair. My Aunt Wilhelmina,’ Kate explained, seeing Virgil’s puzzled look, ‘is a widow, my mother’s sister and has been at Castonbury since Mama died. Oh, and then there is my cousin Colonel Ross Montague, the one who has met Jamie’s wife. He also grew up at Castonbury with his sister, Araminta, but she is lately married. And Ross has returned to India…and very possibly ran off with his sister’s maid! And that,’ Kate said, laughing, ‘concludes the current history of the Montagues. I can see from your face that we have signally failed to live up to your expectations, and I haven’t told you half the skeletons we have in our closet, believe me. Why Papa thinks himself superior, I have no idea.’

‘Nor indeed have I,’ Virgil replied, wondering what the devil he’d let himself in for, but unable to resist returning her smile, all the same.

Chapter Three

I
t was late afternoon by the time they turned into the main entrance to Castonbury Park. Virgil watched with increasing unease as Kate tooled the gig through the iron gates, waving her whip at the gatekeeper. She continued at a smart trot along a well-kept carriageway through pretty parklands where two lakes, the larger with an island in the middle, were divided by a rustic bridge, before coming to a halt in front of the main entrance of the house.

Close up, the building looked far more imposing, the central structure fronted by a colonnaded portico worthy of the Roman senate, flanked by two curved galleries sweeping out to an east and west wing. Rows of windows gazed watchfully down. As he leapt lightly onto the gravel and held out his hand to assist Kate, Virgil told himself that it was purely fancy to think that they looked disapproving.

Inside, a rather gloomy hall dominated by a number of stone pillars and four huge empty fireplaces.

‘Lumsden, I trust you received word that I was bringing a guest,’ Kate said to a superior-looking grey-haired man.

‘Indeed, Lady Kate, I have prepared the Blue Room.’

‘Excellent. Mr Jackson’s man is travelling with Polly. I don’t expect they will be too far behind us. This is Mr Jackson, Lumsden. Virgil, this is Lumsden, our butler, who has been at Castonbury longer than any of us care to remember.’

‘Pleased to meet you....’

The butler stopped in the act of executing a bow.

‘Mr Jackson is an American,’ Kate explained.

The butler made a huge effort to pull himself together, but his protuberant eyes remained fixed on Virgil.

‘From Boston,’ Virgil corroborated, more amused than offended, for the man was looking at him as if he were about to pounce.

‘Boston,’ the butler repeated.

‘In Massachusetts. That’s New England. Though obviously I’m not originally from there,’ Virgil said helpfully.

‘Indeed, sir, I had gathered not.’

‘Oh, do stop staring,’ Kate said impatiently. ‘Mr Jackson is not going to bite you.’

‘Well, not yet, at any rate,’ Virgil said. ‘I’ve just been fed.’

Taken aback, for she had not thought him a man given to teasing, Kate suppressed a chuckle and cast Virgil a reproving look before turning back to Lumsden. ‘I take it you know about this counsel of war that Giles has called?’

‘Indeed.’ The butler looked as if he himself bore the burden of the Montagues’ woes. ‘A difficult business, my lady. Lord Giles wishes to discuss the matter in the drawing room before dinner. If I may suggest, perhaps Mr Jackson could take sherry in the library, since it is a family matter. We have the London papers there.’

‘That will suit me fine,’ Virgil said, smiling reassuringly at Kate, who was looking troubled.

‘If you’re sure? Then I shall see you in a couple of hours. Lumsden will show you to your bedchamber.’

Kate disappeared into the gloom of the vast hall, leaving Virgil alone with the old retainer, who made more stately progress in her wake. The guest rooms were in one of the wings which adjoined the main body of the house, connected by a curved corridor lined with ancestral portraits, where Lumsden slowed to a crawl, intoning: ‘the fourth earl who became the first duke’; ‘his first duchess’; ‘his second duchess’; ‘her second son’—as if he were introducing them at a party. Virgil wondered if he was expected to make his bow to each one. Their eyes followed him as he passed. He was pretty certain he could hear their affronted muttering.

Alone at last, staring out the window of the Blue Room at the lakes, he felt a wave of homesickness. This house was steeped in the kind of history he could not begin to comprehend. Though the current building was less than a hundred years old, Kate’s ancestors had lived on this land for centuries. A direct line, as Lumsden had informed him, fluffing his feathers like a proud cockerel, going back to the first earl, who had been raised from a mere baronetcy by Queen Elizabeth. The Montagues had roots so deep they were entrenched in the very soil of England. Their customs and traditions, their bloodline and heritage, hung around Castonbury like a protective cloak.

Virgil had not thought of himself as rootless until now. Gazing around the Blue Room, at the tapestry depicting a naked woman bathing surrounded by nymphs and exotic creatures, at the Chinese porcelain on the carved mantel, at the rich silks of the bed hangings and the thick oils of the paintings in their heavy gilt frames which hung on the walls, and the soft pile of the rug which covered the polished wooden boards, he felt as if all of it was conspiring to remind him that he had no place here. The antiques screamed of wealth and position, of traditions so well established as to be inviolable.

He ran his hand over the embroidered coverlet. Black skin on celestial blue silk. His being here was a violation of something entrenched. Though Kate did not think so. She had welcomed his touch. The contrast of his skin against hers seemed to fascinate her. In another world, the differences in their skin colour would not matter. Virgil stared at his image in the long mirror which stood by the nightstand. ‘Not another world, another planet,’ he muttered.

A gentle tap on the door made him snap to. He was here now, and he was damned if he would allow these blue-blooded aristocrats and their haughty servants to look down on him!

* * *

‘Ah, Katherine. So good of you to join us. Finally.’ The Honourable Mrs Landes-Fraser swept into the drawing room, the puce feathers in her turban waving majestically, the demi-train of her evening gown swishing violently, while the fringes of her shawl caught on the crook of a Dresden shepherdess perched atop a card table, causing the maiden to skitter across the polished rosewood before coming to rest just short of the edge.

Deigning to accept her customary glass of very dry sherry, a libation ideally suited to her extremely dry humour, Mrs Landes-Fraser disposed her wraith-like person upon one of the large blue damask sofas. The sofas, ornately scrolled and gilded, were adorned by a blatantly naked sea creature on each arm, a feature at which Mrs Landes-Fraser took personal affront each time she sat upon them. With a flair born of practice, she flicked her shawl expertly over the exposed bosom of a mermaid. ‘I am sure,’ she said, looking down her Roman nose at her niece and speaking in a tone which made it clear she was no such thing, ‘that your hasty visit to Staffordshire was necessary, but it was most ill-timed. Though I am aware you do not think so, I believe that your family have first claim on your time, particularly in a crisis. I cannot quite believe that you have, under the circumstances, inflicted a guest upon us. Really, Katherine, it is most thoughtless of you. You must get rid of the person as soon as possible. Giles will agree with me, I know.’

Her nephew, who was leaning his tall frame against the mantel, shrugged impatiently and sipped on his Madeira. ‘This is Kate’s home—she’s perfectly entitled to invite guests.’

‘But this man is apparently an American,’ Kate’s aunt said with a shudder. ‘Bad enough we have to put up with one outsider…’

‘If this woman’s claim proves to be true, then she is not an outsider but family,’ Giles said shortly.

‘Well, I, for one, have no intention of treating her as such until her claim
is
proved,’ Mrs Landes-Fraser declared.

Giles shrugged. ‘I expect she’ll find a friend in Kate. Aside from her tendency to support the underdog, my sister will most likely form an alliance, if for no reason other than to oppose our father,’ he said, casting his sister a sardonic glance.

‘You do me an injustice, brother dear,’ Kate retorted. ‘I would support any downtrodden female. As to Papa—I believe my refusal to consider that old goat Sir Nathan Samuelson as a husband set me well and truly beyond the pale.’

Giles gave a harsh crack of laughter. ‘I told him it was a bloody stupid idea. I’m glad you gave it short shrift.’

Kate smiled. She and Giles were almost always at outs, since he would never deign to explain or discuss anything and she regarded his reticence as arrogance, but they shared a dark sense of humour. ‘I gave him shrift so short it was barely detectable,’ she replied.

‘And you will rue the day, Katherine,’ her aunt said witheringly, ‘for you have now quite firmly confined yourself to the shelf of spinsterhood.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Aunt, the man is a buffoon,’ Giles said, throwing back the remains of his Madeira and thumping the glass onto the marble mantelpiece. ‘We have far more important matters to discuss than Kate’s matrimonial prospects.’

‘My niece has no matrimonial prospects, thanks to her imprudence,’ Mrs Landes-Fraser intoned, always determined to have the final say. ‘Were it not for her lineage, even Sir Nathan would carp at taking on soiled goods.’

‘Aunt Wilhelmina! Whatever do you mean?’ Phaedra, who had been sprawling on the opposite sofa, flicking through a stud book, looked up. Seeing her aunt’s pursed lips, her brother’s scowl and her sister’s blush, her interest, normally reserved solely for horses, perked up. ‘Kate? What does Aunt Wilhelmina—’

‘Damn it! This is no time to go raking over
that
matter.’ Giles glowered at his aunt. ‘Lumsden will be ringing the bell for dinner before we know it. Just for once, can we discuss something in a civilised manner without squabbling like cats?’

‘Civilised, Giles? That will be a first for you,’ Kate said softly.

Her brother had the grace to smile, but as he threw himself onto the sofa beside Phaedra, his expression darkened once more. ‘This is serious. Our father is—to be frank, I fear our father has become slightly deranged.’

‘Giles! His Grace—’

‘Aunt Wilhelmina, His Grace has more or less suggested that we separate his purported grandson from his mother by force if necessary,’ Giles interrupted in clipped tones. ‘He is willing to bring the full weight of the law to bear in order to do so, and if that fails, he talks of kidnap.’

Mrs Landes-Fraser clutched at her meagre breast. ‘I feel sure you exaggerate.’

‘And I feel sure he does not,’ Kate said tersely. ‘Behind that feeble front he uses to his own advantage, our dear papa has a will of iron. This woman—what are we to call her, Giles?’

‘Until proved otherwise, I suppose she is the Dowager Marchioness of Hatherton,’ her brother responded with a shrug.

‘Lord, we can’t call her that,’ Phaedra piped in, ‘she’s no older than you, Kate. Her name is Alicia. Ross says she’s very pretty.’

‘I fail to see what that has to do with anything,’ Mrs Landes-Fraser said acerbically.

‘Knowing Jamie, it has everything to do with it,’ Kate retorted. ‘If she were fubsy-faced and plump, we could at least be certain that she was a fraud.’

‘True,’ Giles agreed, ‘but quite beside the point.’

‘No, the point is that our father seems to believe his title puts him above the law of the land,’ Kate agreed. ‘What is to be done, Giles?’

‘She’s agreed to visit, though of course I didn’t invite her on the terms our father suggested, which was that she deposit the child into the hands of a nanny and disappear.’

‘There is no nanny,’ Phaedra interjected.

‘Because I won’t be party to my father’s ridiculous conniving. He’s had the old nursery redecorated in preparation, can you believe it? Yet he won’t contemplate having a room prepared for the mother—though what he thinks we are to do with her, I don’t know. Suggest she sleep in the stable block, I suppose.’

‘There is no room there, unless she shares a bed with old Tom Anderson, and I don’t think he’d be best pleased by that,’ Phaedra exclaimed. ‘In fact, I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. I don’t want to upset him because that would upset the horses and—’

‘And of course there is nothing so important as keeping the horses happy,’ Kate said, laughing. ‘He was joking, Phaedra.’ She turned back to Giles with a frown remarkably like her brother’s. ‘It seems to me that we ought to do nothing precipitate until we can prove the claim—or disprove it. Assuming what this Alicia says is true…’

‘Which seems more likely than not,’ Giles interjected.

‘Then we must act accordingly and offer them a home. There can be no question of separating them.’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Faced with three disapproving faces, Mrs Landes-Fraser twitched at the fringe of her shawl. ‘Provided she knows that her son is being cared for, what possible objection can the woman have?’

‘You don’t perhaps think that the child—who is a mere two years old—would prefer his mother to a complete stranger?’ Giles asked incredulously.

‘Aunt Wilhelmina, how can you say that to us?’ Phaedra said indignantly. ‘Do you think we would wish the poor little boy to be raised as we were?’

‘What can you mean?’ her aunt asked, bristling. ‘Your mother was no absent parent.’

‘She was to me. She died before I could even remember her.’

‘Well, I remember her,’ Kate said. ‘Mama may have been a presence at Castonbury, but she was not a presence in any of our childhoods. Were it not for the fact that we were no longer paraded in front of her in the drawing room once a week, I doubt very much that we’d even have noticed she was gone.’

‘Katherine! How dare you slander my sister in such a way? Your mother—’

‘For goodness’ sake, Kate, leave it,’ Giles interjected. ‘Not but what she ain’t right,’ he added, looking pointedly at his aunt, ‘but we have once more strayed from the point and we are no further forward. I should have known better than to try to get some sort of consensus. Let us just forget it, I shall think of something. I always do.’

Struck by the weariness in her brother’s tone, Kate felt a pang of guilt. With their father living in cloud cuckoo land half the time, the weight of managing the estate fell on Giles’s shoulders, a burden he was very far from welcoming despite what Papa and Aunt Wilhelmina might think. She cast her mind around desperately for something to help him out, and it came to her that she had actually pointed out the solution to Virgil that very afternoon. ‘I have it,’ she exclaimed, ‘the Dower House. It’s been empty since old Cousin Frederica died, save for the dratted cats she left behind.’

Giles’s brow cleared. ‘Do you think it will suffice?’