The Lady Who Broke the Rules (12 page)

‘Never?’ He remembered then, she’d said something similar in the Dower House that day. ‘Kate, you cannot possibly have thought that you’re incapable, cold?’

‘I don’t
know
what I think! I don’t want to talk about it. I thought it was all in the past. I thought I was over it, I thought I had dealt with it, don’t you see?’

‘No, I don’t see. You’re not making sense.’

‘I
know
,’ Kate exclaimed wretchedly. ‘None of this makes sense. For God’s sake, Virgil, you are not the only one who is scarred.’

‘What do you mean?’ Virgil snapped, immediately defensive.

‘You think I didn’t guess why you tucked your shirt back so hastily? They whipped you, did they not? Do you think I am so shallow as to find such marks repellent? The very first night we met, I guessed you could never have been anything other than a renegade slave. I did not know about the branding, but I am not so naive as to be unaware of the punishments meted out for disobedience. They whipped you and you don’t wish me to see your scars.’

She thought him vain. Or ashamed. For a terrible moment, he’d thought she’d somehow guessed at the scars he bore inside him, guessed the truth of what the physical ones represented. She had not, how could she have, but his relief was short-lived. ‘What did you mean, I am not the only one? Was it that man…?’

‘You can unclench your fists, you are five years too late. Besides, you are well off the mark. Anthony never beat me.’

Kate forced the last button through her jacket and squared her shoulders. She had not answered his question. He could see from that defiant glare that she would not. She was going. It was what he wanted, even though it was not how he wanted it. It hurt. He should have remembered that. Desire and pain went hand in hand, how could he have forgotten?

‘I appreciate the effort you’ve made with the garden,’ Kate said in clipped tones, ‘but it was not necessary. I’m sure Wright will turn up.’ She turned to go, but it was not in her nature to be so ungracious. ‘I do appreciate it,’ she said, her voice softening. ‘It was very kind of you, but there’s really no need to do any more.’

‘I’ll finish.’ Virgil summoned what most people would take as a smile. ‘It will be one less thing for you to worry about.’

* * *

Kate left him to his chopping. She felt defeated and angry. Her body, so strung out with anticipation, throbbed in protest at the anticlimax. She understood now what Polly had been whispering about. She wished she didn’t. She’d rather not have known what she was missing.

At least her frustration was understandable. Why was she so angry? For the rest of the morning, Kate worked frantically in an effort to regain her frayed temper, ticking off task after task from her list. The force of her feelings astonished her. It was not just their intensity, she realised as she supervised the village women in the final cleaning and disposition of furniture, it was the fact that they existed in the first place.

All these years she had thought herself cold, had accepted Anthony’s judgement of her, and by implication the world’s condemnation. She had come to believe herself lacking, and as such responsible, at least in part, for what had happened to her. For the past five years, she’d carried that burden of guilt unnecessarily. It was that, she thought as she discussed the ordering of supplies with the new cook, which rankled most. That, and the fact that her family, and in particular Aunt Wilhelmina, had acted as if she deserved her fate.

Five years. Five whole years! And now it turned out that she was not cold, and that realisation turned everything she thought she knew about herself on its head. She had been foolish, there was no question of that. She wished she had had the confidence to act on her instincts earlier. But that didn’t alter the fact that she had also been unfairly judged, and had unfairly judged herself.

Lord, but she was
furious
!
Virgil had unlocked a passionate nature she hadn’t known she possessed, but he’d also unwittingly let loose a torrent of pent-up emotions. Until today, if anyone had asked her—though they never had—she’d have sworn she was over it. Over Anthony, over the guilt, over the shame. She’d have said that it all meant nothing to her now, save that she was determined not to repeat her mistakes. Virgil had
seen that for the lie it was. Right from the start, when she’d told him the bare bones of her history with Anthony, he’d heard the anger in her voice. Why had not she? Why had it tumbled out this morning as it had? Was she scarred? She had thought herself healed.

For the next few hours as she worked and fumed, she was at the same time acutely aware of Virgil out there in the garden. When the women stopped for the lunch which Kate had sent over from the Castonbury kitchens, he lit a bonfire on the lawn. She watched, calmer now, from the window of the bedroom which had been prepared for the house’s new mistress, as one by one her helpers joined him. They sat, Virgil and the village women, eating game pie in the autumn sunshine warmed by the blaze of the fire. He seemed just as much at his ease as he had in the servants’ hall. She could hear the women’s laughter through the half-open window. She recognised in it the hint of admiration. She could see, from the way they looked at him, that they were as fascinated by Virgil as she. She felt excluded. She could not possibly be jealous! Kate turned on her heel and headed for the linen cupboard. There were sheets to count.

But sorting bed linen did not occupy her mind nearly enough. Virgil’s scars were certainly real. The whipping he had received must have been vicious indeed to have raised such long-lasting welts on his back. How many years ago? How many times? He was such a confident man, such a powerfully attractive one, she was taken aback by his self-consciousness. Like the brand, she supposed his scars were symbolic of a past he wished to forget.

Kate added another pillowcase to the pile of darning. She had thought she had forgotten her past. No, not forgotten, but come to terms with it. She thumped her fist down on a pile of table linen. She had worked so hard to deny Anthony the power of having hurt her, but it was still there, after all. She
was
scarred. The words, said in an excess of defensiveness, were true. Scarred and scared. And since she was being soul-searingly honest with only the linen for company, she was also perversely wishing she had not called a halt this morning. Virgil had proved Anthony wrong there. She was certainly not incapable of pleasure. Virgil made her body thrum. Her body’s thrumming terrified her almost as much as it excited her. If she could somehow reconcile the one over the other…

The doorbell clanged in the hall, breaking into this tangle of thoughts. Kate leaned over the banister and saw that some of her new sister-in-law’s staff had arrived. Alicia herself would be at Castonbury a couple of days after the dance at Buxton, and Virgil said he would go before then. She didn’t want him to go, though she knew he must. He would go to Robert Owen’s model village and then he would return home to America and she was very unlikely to meet him again. As she descended the stairs, Kate decided that that was probably the most melancholy fact of all.

Chapter Six

K
ate returned to the house hoping for some time alone before dinner, but her plans were scuppered by a summons from her aunt. Word on Cousin Ross had finally reached Castonbury. It was therefore with her mind still in a state of turmoil that she tapped on Aunt Wilhelmina’s bedchamber door.

‘He is married! He has actually married that—that maidservant.’ The disgust in Mrs Landes-Fraser’s voice could not have been exaggerated had her cousin married one of Polly’s former associates, Kate thought ruefully.

‘I hoped he might,’ she said. ‘He and Lisette seemed to be deeply attached.’

Aunt Wilhelmina had been lying prone on her bed clutching her sal volatile, but at this she sat up. ‘Surely, Katherine, you do not condone this match?’

‘It is not for me to condone or condemn. Ross is of age and, luckily for him, of independent means. If Lisette makes him happy, then I am happy for him. Do they intend to make their home in India?’

‘Yes, I thank goodness.’ Mrs Landes-Fraser gave a shudder. ‘At least we will be spared the shame of having him set up home with a servant in England.’

‘She is not a servant, Aunt. I am not quite sure why she was forced to play the part of Araminta’s maid, but she was clearly gently bred. And whatever were her origins, she is now Ross’s wife. If she is good enough for Ross, she should be good enough for all of us.’

‘I believe I have had cause in the past to remark upon your unorthodox tendencies. I had not quite appreciated that they encapsulated your own kin.’ Mrs Landes-Fraser rose from her bed to loom over her niece, who was seated by the window perusing her cousin’s letter. ‘I do trust, Katherine, that you have not been similarly unorthodox in your dealings with that American?’

Her aunt’s gaze was sharp and Kate had never been adept at lying. ‘I have barely seen Mr Jackson,’ she said, keeping her eyes on Ross’s strong, slanting script. ‘He has spent the better part of his stay in Giles’s company, as you well know.’

‘I know he was not with Giles today.’

Kate said nothing. She knew her brother well enough to guess that he would not willingly have disclosed Virgil’s whereabouts to their aunt. Giles never willingly disclosed anything to anyone. It was one of his strong points, and one of his most infuriating ones.

Mrs Landes-Fraser sighed, and sat down beside her. ‘You understand, Katherine, that while your acquaintance with this man is tolerated at Castonbury because Giles is here to lend you countenance and because your misguided attempts to educate the villagers make you too well-liked for malice, but were the world at large to discover you had been spending time alone with such a man it would be impossible to protect you.’

Kate bridled. ‘Protect me from what, precisely? Thanks in no small part to you and my father, I have very little reputation left to protect.’

Her aunt’s lips tightened. ‘Had you listened to my advice, your reputation would be spotless.’

It was too much. She had not planned to give vent to her feelings, but she could not, after such a pointed remark, rein them in. ‘Had I listened to your advice,’ Kate said grimly, ‘I would have married a man who blackmailed me into doing his will.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t exaggerate.’ Mrs Landes-Fraser threw herself to her feet and began to pace the room. ‘You make it sound as if poor Anthony was some sort of criminal. You were to be his wife, Katherine. He had every right to expect your—your co-operation when it came to doing your matrimonial duty. If you had not been so unaccountably eager to do that same duty in the first place…’

‘I may never have discovered that the man I was planning to marry was a bully,’ Kate interrupted bitterly.

‘It does not occur to you that it was your own actions which caused him to treat you with such a lack of respect? After all, by your own admission, you gave him freely what you should have kept for the wedding night.’

‘It was not so freely given in the end, Aunt. I told you that.’

‘And I told you that you must bear the consequences of your ill judgement.’

Kate clenched her fists beneath the folds of her gown. Not since the day she had announced she was putting an end to her betrothal had she felt such unbridled anger. ‘Indeed,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘you ensured I would suffer, you and my father.’

Her aunt froze. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know perfectly well what I mean!’ Kate jumped up from the window seat, glaring at her aunt across the room. ‘You could have stood by me. You could have denied the lies Anthony was spreading. You could have tried, just for once, to see things from my side of the fence.’

‘Katherine! What has got into you? Why are you bringing this up now, after all this time? We discussed this five years ago.’

‘But we did not resolve it! He all but forced me, Aunt. I know you have chosen to think that I jilted him because I did not enjoy what he did to me, but it wasn’t that. I did have expectations that were not fulfilled, I did think that our—relations—should have been more…but it wasn’t that. He blackmailed me. Coerced me. Call it what you will, he bent my will to his in order to have me do something I no longer wished to. If he could act in such a way before we were wed, what more would he do to me with the bonds of marriage to back him up?’

‘Lord Anthony Featherstone is a gentleman,’ Mrs Landes-Fraser said haughtily.

It was a shame, Kate thought, that Anthony had never treated her as a lady, but she held her tongue. Her aunt would never understand. She could not possibly be as cruel as she seemed, though she was certainly utterly misguided. ‘I doubt we will ever agree upon the subject,’ she said wearily.

But, as ever, Aunt Wilhelmina must have the last word. ‘What about the others? There have been several less eligible but, under the circumstances, wholly acceptable offers for your hand, yet you have not even made a pretence of considering them, Katherine. You are surely not going to tell me that you thought each and every one of them a bully! Why, you were hardly acquainted with some of them.’

‘I had no wish to be further acquainted with any of them.’ Kate had thought her anger abated, but it flared up abruptly again. ‘It
hurt
,
can’t you see that? You hurt me. Anthony hurt me. Even my father hurt me. It was all so unfair. How do you think I felt, all those whisperings, those turned shoulders, while Anthony was welcomed with open arms? Why was it acceptable for him to have taken me to bed, but not acceptable for me to have allowed it? I did not deserve the half of it, but that does not mean I think myself innocent. I behaved stupidly. I knew, deep down, I knew that I did not want to marry Anthony, but I allowed myself to be persuaded, and when I was still uncertain I thought to persuade myself. You say I deserved to be treated without respect—well, you will be pleased to know, Aunt, that I agree with you. Not because I anticipated my wedding vows, but because I did not trust my own judgement.’

Kate broke off, her chest heaving. Her cheeks were overheated. She could feel the burn of tears at the back of her eyes, and was determined not to let them fall. All this rage, she had not realised she had bottled it up so much. ‘I do not know how we came upon this subject,’ she said shortly, ‘but I think we should let it go before either of us says something we may regret.’

Mrs Landes-Fraser dropped onto the edge of the bed. ‘We came upon this subject, as you put it, because I wished to warn you about your acquaintance with that American.’

Aunt Wilhelmina sounded shaken. Was her complexion paler than usual? After all these years, had she actually listened? Kate tried to believe it, but the hurt went too deep for her to be generous enough to do so. More likely she was simply outraged at her niece’s insubordination. ‘Mr Jackson is leaving soon,’ she said wearily. ‘Before our new relative arrives, as you well know.’

‘That is as well. You will oblige me by keeping out of his company until then. It is ridiculous, of course, for you are a duke’s daughter, when all is said and done, and he is a—a…’ Mrs Landes-Fraser caught Kate’s eye, and obviously thought the better of however she was about to describe Virgil.

‘If it is so ridiculous, I wonder why you put yourself to the bother of warning me.’

Kate’s aunt smiled thinly. ‘We are never likely to see eye to eye. Certainly my sense of duty and yours rarely coincide, but my promise to my sister was not made lightly. I told her I would do my best by her children, and I would not be doing my best if I did not caution you. However, I see it is unnecessary. You have made your sentiments regarding the opposite sex quite clear. You and I are cut from the same cloth in many ways, Katherine. I myself found the physical side of my marriage most…unpleasant. Perhaps if you had been able to disguise your disgust as I did, Lord Anthony would have treated you better.’

This astounding insight would have silenced Kate, were it not for the underlying implication. Upon one thing alone she and her aunt could agree: they would never see eye to eye.

‘You may leave me now, the bell has long gone to dress for dinner.’ Aunt Wilhelmina got to her feet. ‘I am glad we cleared the air. I trust we understand each other a little better.’

Kate studied her aunt’s countenance, but she could see no trace of irony there. ‘What of Ross’s letter?’ she asked, at a complete loss. ‘Has my father seen it? What does he have to say?’

‘Obviously he will have nothing more to do with his nephew. Were it not for the imminent arrival of this putative grandchild, I suspect His Grace would say a lot more, but as it is, your father is somewhat distracted.’

‘You will be pleased to know that I am confident the Dower House will be ready in plenty of time for our new relative,’ Kate said with satisfaction.

‘Save for the gardens, of course. I am afraid Wright cannot be spared at present, the orangery is taking up all his attention,’ Mrs Landes-Fraser retorted.

‘Oh, I got someone else to take care of that.’ Kate headed for the door.

‘How so? Wright would not have sanctioned an outsider coming to tend his garden.’

‘He didn’t. And it wasn’t.’ Kate smiled sweetly at her aunt. ‘Mr Jackson saw to it.’

* * *

As a result of Ross’s letter, Giles dined with his father, and Aunt Wilhelmina’s presence was required in the duke’s suite, too, after dinner. Though she was obviously loath to leave her nieces alone with ‘the American’, Mrs Landes-Fraser could not bring herself to refuse His Grace. In point of fact, it was His Grace’s valet, Smithins, who communicated the request, but though the words were framed as an invitation, no one in the drawing room could be in any doubt that Mrs Landes-Fraser had been summoned.

Though she tried, before quitting the room, to persuade her nieces that a quarter before nine was more than past their retiring time, neither paid her any attention. The door had barely closed on Aunt Wilhelmina’s trailing fringes when Phaedra leapt to her feet.

‘Thank goodness she’s gone. Now I can go down to the stables to check on Isolde. My bay mare,’ she explained to Virgil. ‘She was quite out of temper this morning, and though Tom Anderson says it is nothing to worry about, I just want to make sure.’

‘Phaedra, it is dark outside.’ But her sister had already whisked herself away. Kate shook her head. ‘I swear, if she thought she could get away with it, Phaedra would sleep in the stables.’

Virgil ignored this remark, getting up from the gilded sofa to look out of the window. ‘I take it you and your aunt view your cousin’s marriage rather differently,’ he said. ‘Is that why you quarrelled?’

Kate stiffened. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘The atmosphere at dinner was positively frigid.’

‘We did have a disagreement, but it was nothing to do with Ross.’

‘It was about me, then.’

‘Not directly.’ Kate tried to smile, but her mouth refused to co-operate. The contretemps with Aunt Wilhelmina had left her drained, and she had not even begun to work out how she felt about this morning.

As if he read her mind, Virgil left his post at the window to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘Kate, this morning— I am not accustomed to explaining myself. It’s been so long since I— But if I’ve upset you…’

‘You haven’t. No, I mean you did. I was angry with you, but it wasn’t really your fault.’ Kate rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It obviously does, but I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t like to explain himself,’ Virgil said, taking her hand.

‘I guess,’ Kate said with a faint smile. ‘You’ll be leaving soon,’ she added after a moment’s silence. Did this make it more or less easy to discuss how she felt? Her hand was lost in his. His clasp was warm, reassuring. ‘Do you know, I think this is the first time we’ve ever been alone together in this house.’

‘I reckon if you open the door you’ll find Lumsden about two steps away. Your aunt will have asked him to make sure I don’t ravish you in her absence.’

‘You will be pleased to know that my aunt no longer fears any such thing.’ Kate smiled abstractedly, smoothing the sash of her gown with her free hand. ‘That’s how it started, our quarrel before dinner, if you really want to know. She did set out to warn me against being seen too much in your company, but by the end of our conversation she had decided that it was quite unnecessary, for not only are we worlds apart, you and I, there is the fact of my being frigid to be taken into account.’

‘Frigid!’ Virgil looked at her searchingly. ‘Is this your English idea of a joke?’

‘No, I was perfectly serious and so, it seems, was my aunt.’

‘So it’s a pretty safe bet that we weren’t spotted this morning,’ Virgil said.

‘Is that
your
idea of a joke? Was that what was worrying you? Was that why you stopped?’

‘It was you who stopped.’

Kate had been studying their clasped hands, but now she met his look squarely. ‘If I had not, you would have. How long has it been, Virgil?’

He released her hand and moved a little further away from her on the sofa. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Ah, but it obviously does,’ Kate said, quoting his own words back at him. She began to smooth her sash again, frowning down at her feet as she did so. The urge to confide was strong, for she desperately wanted to make sense of her jumbled feelings. It did not come naturally to her, trusting anyone with her innermost thoughts, but of everyone she knew, Virgil was the least likely to judge her, the most likely to understand her. She wanted to be understood. She wanted to understand herself. She wanted
him
to understand.