Julia London - Regency Vows - A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

London would tolerate nothing less than sparkle and polish.

“Then by all means, Captain,” she said, “be on your way. We have no further use for you here.” One word and their trunks could be loaded back onto the hack and returned to the Possession. Everything inside her screamed to give the order.

He stood watching her, tight-lipped, studying her too closely. “I shall go speak with Nick and Holliswell. I’ll send word of the result.”

“Excellent.”

“Do try to refrain from anything rash in the meantime.”

“I have no idea what you could mean, Captain.”

“It’s too soon to go careening back to the ship and sailing away in the night.”

“What an imagination you have. I—”

“Mama?” came Anne’s small voice through the hall.

Katherine’s attention snapped to the bench, where Anne clung to Millicent with her feet dangling to the floor, trying to stand. “What is it?”

“I don’t feel well.”

Just that quickly, Katherine abandoned any fantasy of returning to the ship. She rushed to Anne’s side with Captain Warre a step behind her, a heartbeat away from ordering Dodd to send for a doctor.

“What hurts?” she demanded, finding Anne’s forehead and cheeks cool to the touch.

“She has no fever,” Millicent said.

“The ground feels strange, Mama.” Fatigue and distress mingled in Anne’s plaintive voice. “There’s no up and down, but I still feel the waves.”

Katherine had barely breathed a sigh of relief when Captain Warre reached past her and lifted Anne into his arms. “That’s only natural,” he told her. “Just as a sailor must find his sea legs when he first boards a ship, you must find your land legs.”

Anne made a small, whining sound and looped her arms around his neck, letting her head fall into the curve of his shoulder.

It was on the tip of Katherine’s tongue to order him to put Anne down, but Anne looked so content she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she brushed delicate wisps of dark hair from Anne’s cheek. There was no sense reminding Anne that they went through this every time they went ashore. Already her eyes were closing as Captain Warre rubbed slow circles over the back of her shoulder. She was too tired for reason.

The intimacy of Captain Warre’s touch stirred a dangerous feeling inside her. “I’ll take her up to bed,” Katherine said, reaching for Anne, but Captain Warre started toward the stairs.

“I’ve got her.”

That temper he was so anxious to escape sent up a lick of flame, but she tamped it down and beckoned Millicent to follow them up the staircase. Soon enough he would be gone.

Halfway up the stairs, her feet slowed. That old, giant portrait still hung where the staircase turned—a windswept moor cradling a massive graystone fortress at the edge of a roiling sea. It was a fortress as familiar to her as her own flesh, and the longing to go there—to walk its ramparts once more—poured up from the deepest parts of her soul.

When you are countess of Dunscore, Katie, every stone in these walls will cry out your name.

She tore her gaze away from the painting. She may have been foolish enough to believe Papa then, but she had no illusions now. The Lords could snatch Dunscore from her just as quickly as Papa had married Lady White. Just as suddenly as Mejdan had died in the night.

But Dunscore could secure Anne’s future. As soon as Anne was settled and comfortable upstairs, Katherine would begin a list of everything that would need to be done tomorrow.

Deep inside, her spirit shrank from the task.

“Miss Holliswell has taken the north rooms,” Dodd told her as they reached the top of the stairs.

“And Mr. Holliswell has taken my father’s rooms, of course.”

“He has, your ladyship.”

Holliswell thought to get himself a title and fortress at her expense, did he? They would see about that. She caught a flash of skirt disappearing through a doorway just as she topped the stairs. “Who is that?”

“Miss Bunsby, your ladyship. Miss Holliswell’s companion.”

“I want her out. I want all of the Holliswells’ servants out.”

“There will be time enough for that tomorrow,” Captain Warre said shortly. “Where can we put Anne?”

“The blue rooms are vacant, your ladyship.”

The blue rooms. She didn’t want to see them again, but Anne gave a whimpering sigh against Captain Warre’s shoulder. Katherine turned woodenly toward her girlhood apartment. They were only rooms, after all.

She stopped abruptly outside the threshold and let Captain Warre carry Anne inside. Through the door, the shades of misty blue Mama had chosen threatened her with the same melancholia that had consumed her in those last London days after Papa’s wedding, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, and only days before she had been sent to the Continent. The eleven years that had passed suddenly seemed like eleven days.

Now Papa was gone. Lady White, she’d received word years ago, had died in childbirth. And Katherine had finally returned to claim her birthright.

She reached for her anger like a lifeline. “We’ll need someone to move that small trunk into the adjoining room.”

“Certainly, your ladyship.”

“I’ll move it myself,” Millicent said tensely.

“You won’t,” Katherine barked back, more harshly than she’d meant to. A gulp of air didn’t quite ease the tightness in her throat. “Put her in the room adjacent.”

“Of course.”

Captain Warre was settling Anne onto the blue-draped bed where, in the years before Lady White entered Papa’s life, Katherine had spent so many nights dreaming of the adventures she and Papa would have traveling the world together. Anne’s eyes were closed, as though there were no safer place in the world than Captain Warre’s arms, and she protested when he set her against the pile of blue satin pillows. He murmured something in her ear and she sighed.

The bed was too high to be safe for Anne. There was only a small screen in front of the fireplace, and there was a great expanse of empty space in the middle of the room. Later, after Captain Warre was gone, she would move Anne. They would share a room, and tomorrow she would set about having the house changed for Anne’s safety.

The thought prompted Katherine to finally find her feet. Long-dead emotions clawed inside her chest, trying to resurrect themselves as she entered the room. She went to the bed and smoothed Anne’s forehead, leaning down to give her a kiss.

Katherine straightened and found herself inches from Captain Warre. Lips she remembered too well thinned. “You’re going to have to approach this with all the measured precision you would use when confronting a hostile ship,” he whispered. “Temper will avail nothing.”

“How do you know I ever used measured precision?” she whispered back, focusing all her attention on him instead of on the books, the trinkets, the decade-old toiletries that still lined the dressing table. The collection of artifacts that testified to a girl who—thankfully—no longer existed.

“You may leave now,” she told him. But at the thought of him going, a first trickle of panic pooled in her belly. Quickly she put distance between them by moving into the corridor where they would not disturb Anne. He followed.

“Forgive me if I’m hesitant to leave until I have some assurance that you will wait to hear from me before you take any action. It won’t help matters if you do something rash.”

“I’m not stupid, Captain.”

“But you’re angry.”

“What uncanny powers of observation you have.” Like the rising tide, panic lapped higher. She felt it washing her toward him, tempting her to lean on him. So she smiled. “I assure you, Captain, I’ve never felt more in control.”