Deborah Simmons - Regency - Courtship And Candlelight

‘Thank you, the confounded woman is a damned nuisance at the best of times and this isn’t one of them,’ he said grimly. ‘Sometimes I’d like to strangle her.’

‘Better marry her as soon as possible instead—obviously made for each other,’ his friend said with understated irony that was currently wasted on Edmund as he fumed at Kate’s protracted absence.

‘I’ll think about it,’ Edmund said tersely and with a casual look about him to locate the Marchioness of Pemberley and Bestholme, who was, luckily for him, still in the ballroom and not pursuing Kate around the half-lit gardens or goodness only knew where else she might be hiding herself.

Satisfied Kate’s chaperon was engrossed with old friends now and blissfully unaware that anything was amiss, he left by way of the card room as if he hadn’t a care in the world, even as he fought an irrational fury that Kate hadn’t come to him for help instead of bolting for the shadows. After searching the quieter rooms of their host’s residence, he was beginning to think trouble existed in Miss Transome’s overheated imagination when he caught the faint, unmistakable scent of Kate Alstone lingering in an otherwise deserted corridor leading towards his host’s library. He stilled his already near-silent footfall and listened for any further sign of the elusive, overly independent female.

Despite knowing very well she should return to the ballroom and prepare to endure a whole evening of dodging Bestholme as stoically as she had it in her to manage, Kate had wandered furtively on through private rooms she knew very well she shouldn’t intrude into. The farther she got from the ball, the more she felt like a hind with the noise and threat of hounds and huntsmen fading behind her and the harder she found it to turn about and go back. She scoured a dark room for unexpected fortune hunters and allowed herself a huge sigh of relief once her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she still found no sign of the repulsive creature—nor any hidden galleries or dangerously secluded corners he might spring out from.

Sinking into a snug high-backed chair by the unlit fire, she wondered if the lady of the house sat there to embroider or read whilst her husband laboured over his speeches in the House of Lords, which were apparently earnest, detailed and well intentioned, but guaranteed to empty that august chamber almost as fast as a cry of fire. It made a rather appealing picture of two lives entwining over the years so that, even if she didn’t share his interest in politics, her ladyship sat and kept her lord company whilst he pursued one. Shifting in her chair, Kate wondered if Eiliane had been right all along. Maybe marriage wasn’t a military campaign from which all emotion must be sternly banished and all hope of anything better shorn ruthlessly away in case it proved false.

Too late for such a conclusion to make any difference to her situation, she decided sadly, but she still felt irrationally betrayed by Edmund’s defection when she had absolutely no right to. Such a shame that she’d spurned him so emphatically during her first heady Season, when she’d been too young to realise just what wonderful possibilities were being offered her and grab them with both hands. Now he was so indifferent to her it felt as if some long-anticipated treat had been withdrawn and her life was suddenly limited and dry for the lack of it. Squirming in her comfortable seat, Kate braved an answer to so many of the questions troubling her and it only made matters worse. Edmund, who no longer wanted her, who despised her for turning him away, who seemed determined to court a sweet and suitable wife not in the least bit like Kate Alstone—somehow he mattered uniquely to her and it was obvious to anyone who had two eyes to see with that she no longer meant a thing to him.

Cursing her younger self for refusing to see that he’d make her an ideal husband and lover, Kate felt unable to just sit and contemplate her own idiocy and jumped to her feet to pace restlessly. She couldn’t put her hand on her heart and admit it was irrevocably his and therefore broken beyond mending and, as he now watched her with hard disillusionment instead of adoration in his silver-green eyes, that was just as well. Yet Kate had an uncomfortable suspicion she’d been testing Edmund’s devotion from the moment they first met, and considering it had proved such a chimera, maybe she’d been right not to trust it enough to agree to marry him.

Doing her best to be honest with herself now her future looked bleak, Kate stopped her perambulations and tried to face her own faults as unflinchingly as she was prepared to pick over Edmund Worth’s. Impatient with herself for being unable to consider him, or her feelings for him, with dispassionate coolness, she was about to pace her host’s fine Persian carpet when a sound in the corridor outside made her freeze in her tracks. Just making out the soft tread of a gentleman’s evening shoes on the marble floor outside, Kate muted a huff of impatient fury and turned to face the wretch who’d been chasing her all evening with defiant determination and the fireside poker.

‘Preparing to beat me off with more than just words this time, are you, my dear?’ the intruder asked her blandly and relief and something far warmer than that ran through her at the very sound of Edmund’s voice. It made her feel young and silly all of a sudden as she had to put her hand over her mouth to stifle a chuckle.

‘Only if you really annoy me, Lord Shuttleworth,’ she said, her heartbeat thundering in her ears for a very different reason now and her fear flying as wild curiosity about darkened rooms and their unknown possibilities took its place.

‘Maybe you should carry it at all times to fend off importunate suitors then?’ he said as he took it gently from her and returned it to its stand.

‘I can think of at least one person I’d like to leave with a few good bruises,’ Kate said darkly and saw him frown even in the semi-darkness.

‘Just say the word and I’ll do it for you.’

‘And then be forced to meet the repellent man at dawn as if he deserved to be rated a gentleman after all, my lord? I rather think not,’ she told him crossly and just the thought of him risking all he was to a pistol ball made her insides go as cold as if she’d swallowed an icicle.

‘I can take care of myself,’ he told her abruptly.

‘I dare say you can, but I’ll manage without your assistance on that front all the same. I do like to sleep at nights, you see?’

‘So do I, although you’ve robbed me of a great deal of that commodity since we first met,’ he informed her softly and Kate realised how close he suddenly was to her only at the instant when he slid a strong arm round her waist and pulled her against his muscular frame so easily it hardly even occurred to her that she might resist him.

‘Have I? How very inconsiderate of me, Edmund,’ was all the response she seemed able to offer, which was very odd of her, considering she’d come in here to avoid similar attentions from another man.

‘Yes, it was. So don’t you think it’s high time you shared a little of my sleeplessness to make amends?’ he murmured huskily.

‘Maybe …’ she began, but it was too late and he stopped her mouth by the simple strategy of kissing it until she forgot what she was going to say and almost everything else as well.

At the advanced age of one and twenty Kate had experienced only the most respectful of chaste salutes to compare this one with and they were no help at all, she decided hazily. She supposed having such a powerful guardian hovering like Nemesis in the background must have kept her ignorant of such dangerous delights until now. If Edmund had kissed her like this three years ago, she’d almost certainly have been married to him virtually ever since, but had either of them been ready for such heady enchantment then? It was a question she’d never be able to answer since he hadn’t kissed her until her wits were shot and her body singing with some wild hope she didn’t dare name until tonight. Abandoning any effort to reason with herself, she snuggled even closer to him, whilst raising too-willing lips to lure him back to her the moment he seemed about to recover his senses and back away.