Wedding Night With the Earl (12 page)

“Lovely as can be.” Her aunt picked up a serving tray from the dressing table and placed it across Katherine’s lap.

Katherine looked down at the dainty teacup filled with chocolate, a slice of toast, and a serving of preserved apricots. “You haven’t brought me breakfast in bed for several years now, Auntie. I’m quite suspicious of this act of kindness.”

“No need to be,” she answered, leaning a hip against the bed. “I haven’t done it recently because I haven’t needed to. You haven’t fallen down in a long time.”

“It’s been years.” Katherine smiled and shook her head. “I thought we’d settled some time ago that I was way too old to be coddled any longer.”

“Don’t be preposterous. You are, and I’m doing no such thing. I’m being nice and inquiring about how you feel because I’m concerned. I don’t want you coming belowstairs until I know your leg is all right and not going to buckle beneath you.”

“Then rest assured it is in tip-top shape and so am I, Auntie. I told you last night I didn’t harm myself.”

“But you haven’t put any weight on it yet, dearie. You don’t know if it’s hurting anywhere.”

“I do. I don’t have a twinge,” Katherine insisted.

“Hmm.” Auntie Lee picked up a spoon from the tray and started spreading a generous amount of the preserves on top of Katherine’s toast. “But you did fall,” she said without looking at Katherine. “I mean, that is why you were in the earl’s arms, isn’t it?”

Katherine studied her aunt’s unreadable face. So now they were getting to the heart of the reason her aunt was in her room, treating her as if she were nine years old and had broken her leg again. And it was as Katherine had suspected—the earl.

In a way, she could understand her aunt’s keen interest. A young lady’s reputation was about the only thing she had that truly belonged to her. And it was her aunt’s duty to protect that valuable asset until Katherine was safely wed.

“Yes,” Katherine said with a clear conscience in spite of the passionate kisses she had shared with the earl. And it was the truth. Just not all of it and maybe not in the correct order of things that happened. “And Lord Greyhawke picked me up. My story is not going to change.”

“I didn’t expect it would—but I wanted to be sure.” She handed the toast to Katherine, who promptly laid it on her plate. “Did you know that Lord Greyhawke hadn’t left the house when you asked to stay outside and—look at the moon?”

“No.”

“But you had reason to believe he hadn’t.”

Hearing no real censure in her aunt’s voice, Katherine picked up her chocolate and took a sip. “I had no idea who or if any gentlemen had left the house. You know I was in the drawing room with you until we walked outside.”

“I do know.” She took her time and unfolded Katherine’s napkin and gave it to her. “So you say it’s mere coincidence that Lord Greyhawke, who sat beside you at dinner and captured your fancy when all others have failed, just happened to be the first gentleman out the front door after you fell.”

Katherine stared into her aunt’s eyes, which looked so much like her own. Her aunt didn’t seem to be chiding her, or even questioning her, but Katherine couldn’t be sure. Lady Leola was much too clever to reveal what she was actually thinking. Her facial features remained stoic, not expressing condemnation, acceptance, or even disbelief.

Still, Katherine suddenly had a feeling her aunt knew the earl had kissed her. Kissed her long, deeply, and passionately. But there was no way her aunt could, unless she’d been watching out a window.

Katherine couldn’t see her very proper aunt doing such a thing.

“You aren’t insinuating the earl and I arranged an assignation, are you, Auntie? I can assure you we didn’t.”

“I’m not implying anything, my dear,” she countered pleasantly, relaxing more fully against the bed. “I’m simply asking. And you do know, of course, if you are interested in the earl, you don’t have to meet him in secret. The duke will be more than happy to make a match with him for you. I’ll go so far as to say he would love to.”

For some reason that suggestion made Katherine’s pulse race, but she quickly insisted, “Auntie, I didn’t meet him in secret. I have no plans to meet him—”

A knock sounded, and Katherine looked over to see her two uncles standing in the doorway, looking like two splendidly dressed sentinels. Both men carried themselves with all the power and privilege that had been theirs by birth.

“May we come in?” Uncle Quillsbury asked.

“Of course,” Katherine said, feeling once again as if she were returning to the days of her youth, when her aunt and uncles stopped by her room each morning to check on how she was feeling before they began their day. “And before you ask, I am wonderful and was in no way harmed by the incident last night.”

“That’s good, my dear,” Uncle Willard said.

“Still,” Uncle Quillsbury added, stopping at the foot of her bed, “it might be good for you to stay right where you are for a day or two and rest. Don’t you think so, Lady Leola?”

“Whatever you suggest, Your Grace.”

“No,” Katherine said, more loudly than she’d intended the word to come out, so she added a smile. She couldn’t allow her aunt and uncles to rekindle their hovering over her every step as they had for so many years. “I will not be made an invalid again, Uncles,” she continued, speaking loudly enough for Uncle Willard to hear every word. “I will rise and don my clothing and accomplish my morning duties as soon as all of you have left my room. I will keep my appointment with Viscount Rudyard and go for a ride in the park with him this afternoon as we planned.”

“Does this insistence on carrying out your plans today with Lord Rudyard mean a gentleman has finally caused you to take second notice of him?” Uncle Quillsbury asked.

Yes, one had, but it wasn’t the viscount; it was Lord Greyhawke. But Lord Rudyard was on her list of possible husbands, and right now, the earl was not.

Katherine smiled at her uncle. “It means there is nothing wrong with me and no reason I shouldn’t go and enjoy myself.”

Uncle Quillsbury looked over at his sister. She shrugged lightly and said, “If she says she is feeling wonderful, we will have to accept that and let her do as she pleases.”

“You must not fret over a little tumble, Uncle. I am not as delicate as I used to be when I first came to your household.”

The duke looked down at her with serious brown eyes and clasped his hands together behind his back. He leaned toward her and said, “I will not fret at all once I have you safely wed and under the responsibility of a husband. Is that likely to happen soon?”

“The Season has just started, but I promised to be more diligent in my efforts to settle on a husband by the end of it, and I will.”

“Good. Time is running out. This is your fourth Season, my dear,” he added pointedly.

Katherine bristled slightly but hoped it didn’t show. It was never her intention to argue or correct her uncle, because he’d always been so good to her. Still, she couldn’t let the wrong information stand, so she said apologetically, “It’s only my third, Uncle.”

“First, third, fifth,” he said, and straightened. “Doesn’t matter when you pass the first Season without a match. After that you start your journey to becoming a weed on the shelf. You have rejected a duke, a viscount, four barons, and two wealthy counts from Italy while swearing to me you must have love. I won’t mention the gentlemen who weren’t titled who asked for your hand, or the ones who were too old or too light in their pockets for me to even contemplate a match for you. And that doesn’t take into consideration the ones that approached you directly that I never heard about because you were so disinterested you never even told me about them. I am sure there are plenty of those, too.”

“No. I mean, there weren’t that many, Uncle. A few, maybe.”

His almond-shaped eyes narrowed to slits. “You need only settle on one. Need I remind you that being your father’s only heir and my niece has made you one of the most sought-after young ladies since your debut?”

“That is because all the gentlemen are interested in me for my dowry, and none of them for love.”

“You are fetching, intelligent, more educated and well-read than you should be, and you have a handsome dowry as well, so would you please tell me what there is about you not to love?”

Katherine smiled. “I have no argument against that, Your Grace.”

“Nor should you.”

“But if he doesn’t love me, I at least want him to be strong, handsome, loyal, and love children.”

“Great heaven of mercies!” the duke grumbled as his bushy eyebrows drew together so tightly, they almost touched. “That’s too much to ask. There is no such man. Or if there is, I’ve never met him and you’re not likely to, either. But if you have somehow managed to discover this paradigm of manhood, nothing will get my old bones to moving faster than the prospect of posting the banns immediately so that I can consider my debt to your father fulfilled.”

“No,” she said regretfully. “I haven’t found him.” Though Lord Greyhawke might come close. He was strong and handsome. And if he’d been so distraught as to smash things in his house after his wife died, he must have been fiercely loyal and he must have loved her very much.

“So I thought,” her uncle said. “I know you are as persnickety as that pampered Cheshire cat that eats from the Prince’s dinner table, but would you reconsider all of your previous discards who found favor with you and do your best to find an acceptable gentleman to fall in love with this year, my dear, since that seems to be your main criterion? I am not getting any younger, and I’d like to see you wed before I pass from this earth.”

Katherine knew Uncle Quillsbury wouldn’t consider his debt paid to her father until she married. Since the afternoon she’d curtsied before the Queen, the duke had had only one goal in mind, and that was to make an acceptable match for her. The problem was that Katherine had rejected every gentleman he’d suggested and the ones who’d pursued her, too.

Her uncle was getting older and more cantankerous by the day. Both her uncles were. She knew the duke was eager to see her married. Her only issue with him was that he didn’t seem to care whether she was happily wed as long as she was properly wed.

“You know I’ve already promised I will, and I won’t let you down,” she said. She was seriously trying to consider some of the gentlemen who had shown interest in her in the past, but she wasn’t close to making a decision. Still, she tamped down her worries about that and said, “I’m committed to being betrothed by the end of the Season.”

“Then that is all I ask,” he said, and turned and walked out. Uncle Willard, who hadn’t spoken a word during her exchange with the duke, and probably hadn’t heard much of what they’d said, followed quietly behind him.

Katherine suddenly felt wretched. She hated disappointing the duke. And it wasn’t as though she didn’t want to marry. Of course she did. Even more so now that she knew the thrills of kissing. And she hoped married people did a lot of kissing.

“I shall go, too, and leave you to your thoughts and your toast,” Aunt Leola said. “I’ll send your maid up in a little while and then I’ll see you belowstairs later today.”

“Thank you for bringing in the tray, Auntie. I didn’t mean to seem as if I didn’t appreciate your kindness.”

“I know. I wish it weren’t so that a young lady had no goal in life other than finding a husband. Sometimes it doesn’t seem right that getting married should be her only purpose. But that is how it is, and I don’t see it changing. I think I probably said some of the same things to the duke you said to him just now when he arranged my marriage more than thirty-five years ago.”

“Did you love your husband?”

“Of course not. But I respected him. I honored him and in turn he was very good to me.”

“And it mattered not about love because you had the love of your children?” she asked, hoping her aunt would confirm her reasoning.

“Always. Those are the things that matter. A lifetime can truly be a long time. So when you do choose, my dear, choose wisely.” She smiled, turned, and left the room.

Choose wisely.

That was what she was trying to do, but time was so short. The Season was already under way.

Groaning at her weakness, Katherine picked up her cold chocolate and sipped the sweetened drink. She would already be married if any of the gentlemen the duke had mentioned had stirred and disturbed her senses and her sensibilities the way Lord Greyhawke had last night. She had no idea what she’d been missing by never having been kissed, but she couldn’t say she’d ever wanted any of the other gentlemen to kiss her. It had been different with the earl. Allowing him to kiss her had felt like the perfectly normal thing to do.

For some reason, she suddenly saw herself and Lord Greyhawke sweeping across the dance floor in the beautifully decorated Great Hall. She was twirling, skipping, and tiptoeing in time with the music. She wore a flowing, shimmering, golden-colored gown and a sparkling tiara on her head. She felt warmth, strength, and possessiveness in the earl’s hands as he moved her through the steps, just as she had felt his power last night when he’d held her so tightly and kissed her so deeply. Her mind flitted from him gliding her through the intricate and fast pace of a swift quadrille to the intimate and sensual movements of the waltz.

And through it all, Katherine’s legs never tired and her feet never missed a step.

She chuckled to herself and sipped from her cup again. It was lovely to imagine something so wonderful; however, dancing was only a daydream for her and would never happen in real life. Her injury set her apart from other young ladies in that regard, but it didn’t keep her from having the same dreams of one day falling in love with a dashing and slightly dangerous gentleman such as the Earl of Greyhawke.

Most of the young ladies who’d made their debut with Katherine were already married. Some were holding sweet, chubby babes in their arms. And Katherine? She was one of the members of the Wilted Tea Society and still unwed.

With two Seasons behind her and another under way, hope for that elusive and magical emotion called love had faded and must be put aside. She would pay close attention to Viscount Rudyard on their afternoon ride. He was the youngest of the gentlemen she was considering and probably the most handsome, too. Except, of course, for the earl.