The Wedding Trap (10 page)

Eliza angled her book closer to the weak light trickling in through the library window. The day was dreary and cold outside, and she hugged her patterned blue and white cashmere shawl closer around her shoulders and curled deeper into her chair, grateful for the warmth provided by the logs burning in the fireplace.

Violet sat nearby, engrossed in the sensational horror novel
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus,
a story Violet had promised to loan her as soon as she finished reading it. With his canine chin resting on his immense front paws, Horatio slumbered at her friend’s feet, an occasional snuffling snore whistling from the dog’s damp black nose.

Turning a page, Eliza tried to focus her attention upon the words printed there. But after no more than a paragraph, her thoughts scattered, drifting like a handful of windblown petals to dwell on her lesson with Kit. She had scarcely thought of anything else since racing from the music room the day before.

What a perfect pea goose she was, she chided herself for the hundredth time. She had gotten carried away, that’s all, overcome by Kit’s kind attentions and undeniable good looks. If she wasn’t careful, though, she might find herself once again succumbing to his myriad charms. And that she could not afford to do.

Once, she had worn the willow for Kit, adoring him in silence, too timid to gain more than his most fleeting notice. The day he departed for the Continent, she’d thought she might shatter from the pain. For nights afterward, she had soaked her pillow in bitter tears until finally she was exhausted, with no more tears left to shed. From that moment onward, she put her stupid, useless, impossible feelings away, doing what it took to kill her love for Kit Winter.

So why, when she no longer cared for him as any more than a friend, had she run from their lesson yesterday, fleeing like some foolish green girl discomforted by a crush?

It was the dancing that had caused all the trouble, she decided. The dancing that had nostalgically reminded her of her first headlong plunge into hopeless infatuation.

Even now, she remembered the long-ago evening in all its profuse detail. The warm glow of the candlelight, the thick crowd of people, the way she had felt as she sat along the edges of the ballroom, absently listening to a cluster of gray-haired matrons gossiping nearby. Painfully alone, that’s how she had felt. Painfully alone and utterly unwanted in her ugly dishwater brown taffeta dress.

She was visually tracing the shape of the ribbons on her slippers when he appeared before her. Lord Christopher Winter in all his charismatic glory. Air wheezed in painful astonishment from her lungs as he bowed.

“Miss Hammond,” he said, “would you give me the pleasure of a dance?”

She couldn’t speak, not so much as a word, staring at him until he simply reached down and took her gloved hand to tug her gently to her feet. Sheer instinct was the only thing that kept her upright as they took to the floor, as he took her into his arms for the dance.

Then the music began and they were whirling to the strains of a waltz. Smiling and attentive, he did his best to engage her in conversation despite her near inability to respond. With her heart beating in her throat, she managed to answer a few of his questions, though to this day she could not recall a single one. By the end of the dance, she was captivated. By the end of the evening, she was utterly in his thrall.

All that night, young gentlemen approached to lead her to the floor, one after another after another. She wasn’t a fool. She realized immediately that the men were friends of Kit’s, their invitations no more than favors done for him.

Perhaps she ought to have been offended, outraged that she was somehow being mocked. Instead she realized Kit’s actions stemmed from charitable intentions, his kindness more than anyone else had shown her in a long time. And at midnight, he had asked her to dance with him a second time before taking her arm to escort her in to supper.

Perhaps someone had put him up to it, she still didn’t know, but Kit Winter had given her one of the best nights of her life.

And she had fallen in love.

A log popped, sending a shower of red cinders blazing upward into the flue. Eliza awoke from her reverie, blinking in momentary confusion at the book that lay forgotten in her lap. A quick glance assured her that Violet had not noticed her woolgathering, her friend still completely engrossed in her own novel.

Eliza swallowed a sigh as her thoughts returned to Kit. Being around him could prove dangerous, she realized. Obviously some part of her was still susceptible to his lure, however unconsciously he cast it out. But as much as a part of her longed to run and hide as she had done yesterday, a stronger part of her was determined to see these lessons through.

She could succeed, she told herself. She
would
succeed, taking care to treat Kit as no more than a friend and teacher. If she did that, her heart would remain her own. But just to be safe she supposed she ought to give these lessons her best effort, work hard and push herself to learn everything she needed to know as rapidly as possible. The sooner she did, the sooner she could find a husband and get on with her life.

Unless she could make Kit want her.

She froze, astonished by the very notion.

Kit as her husband, her lover. How sublime. How idiotically impossible. It could never happen, and yet…

She was still debating the possibilities when Adrian strode into the room.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said. “You both look cozy as a pair of cats, snuggled up with your books and your shawls. I almost hate to interrupt.”

“Then pray do not,” Violet said, marking her page with a finger. “The monster has just gone on a rampage.”

Adrian grinned. “He’ll still be rampaging by the time we get back from our ride. Or did you forget you promised to let me take you out in the new phaeton this afternoon?”

She cast him a sheepish smile as she climbed to her feet. “I confess I had forgotten, probably because of this gloomy weather. Just let me run and get my warmest cloak and muff and I’ll be right back.”

“Ten minutes or I am coming up after you.”

Violet strolled to him and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’d better not. Remember what happened the last time you came looking for me while I dressed.”

His eyes heated, gazing at her as if he wanted to kiss her. “Nine minutes now, minx, so you had better get moving.”

Violet laughed and went on her way. Horatio lumbered to his feet to follow.

Eliza quickly looked away and pretended that she hadn’t heard a word of her friends’ intimate exchange.

Adrian strolled forward and took a seat in his wife’s abandoned chair. Eliza glanced up at him, struck as she often was by the marked resemblance he shared with Kit. Both men were dark-haired, broad-shouldered and handsome, leaving no doubt they were related. She suspected Kit would come to look even more like his older, more powerfully built brother as the years went on.

“And what is it you are reading?” Adrian inquired.

She flipped the book over so the fine leather cover showed. “Oh, a volume of Keats’s.
Endymion.
Have you read it?”

He nodded. “I have had the pleasure, although a few of the critics have been less than kind. I hear he is to issue a new volume soon, perhaps it will prove a better success. A shame about recent reports concerning his health, though. Consumption, or so I am given to understand.”

“Oh, I had not heard. How very dreadful.”

She and Adrian sat for a moment in contemplative silence.

“Perhaps we should speak on a more cheerful topic,” Adrian said. “How go your lessons with my little brother?”

“Is that more cheerful?” she blurted.

He laughed.

“P-please d-don’t misunderstand me. The lessons are going well, though we have only had one so far.” Her nerves jittered at being so abruptly reminded of Kit and her recent musings about him. “But I fear that his kind efforts may yet be in vain. I am rather hopeless at making small talk and polite conversation.”

Adrian smiled. “You and I are talking now. I suspect you are rather better at conversation than you imagine.”

“Oh, but I know you, your Grace. It is strangers who prove my undoing.”

“Then you must strive to make everyone your friend.”

She gazed at him, struck by the unique wisdom of his statement.

Footsteps rang out in the hallway.

“Ah, that must be Violet returning.” Adrian stood, casting a glance toward the library casement clock. “You made it with one minute to spare. Well done, my dear.”

Violet crossed into the room. “You are most welcome, love. I thought I owed it to you for nearly forgetting our outing. We mustn’t tarry, though. Georgianna won’t sleep much above an hour, and I know she’ll be hungry when she wakes.”

“Then we had best depart. I don’t want you or Georgianna to suffer any ill effects.”

As soon as Adrian and Violet said their good-byes and left, Eliza turned once more to her book. She actually managed to put Kit from her thoughts long enough to read a few stanzas, when a discreet knock sounded on the door.

March glided on soundless shoes into the room. “My pardon, Miss Eliza, but a gentleman has arrived. Your
cousin,
he says.”

She scowled. “My cousin? Mr. Pettigrew, do you mean?”

March inclined his graying head. “I have put him in the main salon.”

How singular,
she mused.
Philip Pettigrew here? What can he want?

Ordinarily, with Violet and Adrian absent from the house, it would be most improper for her to entertain a gentleman caller. Even Kit was away, out visiting with some friends, she assumed, since she had canceled their lesson this morning, pleading lingering effects from yesterday’s headache.

But Philip Pettigrew wasn’t really a caller, she reminded herself. As her cousin, Pettigrew was family, distasteful as the connection might seem. Through the years she had done her best to be civil and pleasant when in his company, though truth be told, she had never liked her aunt’s son. She still recalled how he used to collect spiders and toads when they were children, leaving them in unlikely places for her to find.

For years she had been afraid to reach into her sewing basket for fear of discovering something that crawled or hopped. And once when she was thirteen, he had slipped a cricket into her dress pocket at church. When she found the creature, her screams had shaken the walls of the stone chapel, the commotion upsetting the entire congregation and ruining Sunday service.

Even now, she cringed to remember the whipping she’d received when she arrived home, her aunt refusing to listen to a single explanation, certain Eliza had played a deliberate prank.

No, she had never liked Philip Pettigrew.

Fighting the urge to have March turn him away, she set her book aside and rose to her feet. “Thank you, I will attend to my cousin directly.”

“Shall I bring refreshments?” the majordomo inquired.

“Yes, I suppose you ought.” Though really she wished Pettigrew wouldn’t stay long enough to drink tea or eat cakes. But maybe fiddling with the tea tray would provide her with some welcome distraction.

Smoothing her deep purple skirts, she made her way to the salon.

Pettigrew turned at her entrance, his black hair slicked straight back from his thin face to hang just a bit too long and lank around his collar. She had always thought
scrawny
the best word to describe him—scrawny and humorless, gravely serious as if a smile might do permanent damage to his face. Not that he had any looks to protect, she mused, his hooked nose and lantern jaw enough to send a shudder through any unsuspecting child.

In fact, as Eliza recalled, Pettigrew had made more than a few toddlers burst into fits of messy tears in his time, the tots terrified by his fearsome countenance and grim demeanor. Eliza was thankful Noah, Sebastian and Georgianna were tucked safely away in the upstairs nursery or he would surely have set them to wailing too.

Garbed entirely in black—his preferred color even before his mother’s death—he reminded her of a crow. A carrion crow come ready to pick flesh off bones. A shiver rippled just below her skin as he approached, his large, faintly yellow teeth displayed in something that was not entirely a smile.

“Cousin Eliza, how pleasant it is to see you. It has indeed been far too long since last we met.”

Had it been? She rather doubted his statement, since the last time they had seen each other was at the reading of Aunt Doris’s will—cold rage radiating from every inch of his body after he learned he’d been entirely cut out of the inheritance.

What, she wondered again, did he want? She couldn’t believe this was just a friendly social call, though perhaps she was being unfairly harsh in her assumptions. Maybe his initial anger about the will had cooled over the intervening weeks. She supposed in deference to their familial connection she ought to at least hear him out before passing judgment.

Pettigrew extended a hand for her to take. She hesitated, loath to touch him. To cover her revulsion, she pretended not to see his offered palm as she brushed past on her way to the sofa. She sank down and gestured to the armchair opposite. “Won’t you have a seat, cousin?”

His arm lowered to his side. To her relief, he made no comment, seating himself where she suggested.

“I am sorry the duke and duchess are not here to receive you,” she said, running a finger along a seam in her skirt. “They left shortly before your arrival. A ride in the park in the duke’s new phaeton.”

“How unfortunate my timing was not more propitious. Though to be truthful—”

A tap came at the door. Grateful for the interruption, Eliza watched March enter the room, laden tea tray in hand. His presence surprised her since she had expected him to send in one of the housemaids as usual. Was he worried about her? Had he decided to personally perform the task in order to assure himself of her well-being within her cousin’s unctuous company? Her spirits lightened at his thoughtful concern, a wide smile of appreciation on her face. “Oh, this looks lovely. Thank you so much.”