In Love With a Wicked Man (38 page)

“In either case, they count in vain, if they are counting on a scandal,” said Kate.

No, if it was a minor scandal they hoped for, Kate very much feared they were counting over the wrong Wentworth. Indeed, Kate was beginning to regret having permitted Aurélie to put off their double wedding another fortnight while they awaited the favor of Madame Odette.

Just then, Nancy left her husband’s side and came toward them, her color a little improved.

“Kate,” she said, embracing her. “Congratulations. I am so happy for you.”

Kate slid a surreptitious hand to her sister’s belly. “And I for you, Nan, I hope?” she murmured into her ear.

They came apart, Nancy blushing furiously as she glanced back and forth between Edward and Kate. “Yes,” she finally whispered. “It seems almost certain.”

Kate caught her shoulders, and set her a little away. “Poor dear,” she said. “Are you perfectly wretched?”

“Oh, yes!” said Nancy, her eyes welling a little. “Wonderfully, wonderfully wretched! Oh, Kate, I shall be twice blessed in less than a year. Thank you. Thank you for
everything
. I only wish for you my same happiness.”

Nancy kissed Edward before leaving.

“She
is
happy, my dear,” he murmured, taking Kate’s hand and squeezing it. “And just look how Richard’s gaze follows her. He’ll make an excellent father.”

“I have never doubted it,” said Kate.

De Macey had slipped away. Aurélie was still babbling effusively, this time to Mrs. Granger, who had been persuaded to attend by Richard’s aunt. Kate and Edward had welcomed Mrs. Granger warmly, and said no more. But Kate hoped that her attendance was, perhaps, the beginning of a tentative friendship.

Already Aurélie appeared to be making inroads with her irrepressible charm, though Anstruther had risen from his chair. Kate could see that his patience was at an end.

Kate shrugged, and turned to her husband. “I believe, my dear, that I should like to rest before dinner,” she declared.

“And by rest,” he murmured, “I hope you mean
not
rest.”

“Just so,” she said, curling a hand around his arm in a more proprietary fashion.

They strolled in the general direction of the door, pausing to accept the well-wishes of those few people to whom they had not yet spoken, reaching it just as Anstruther hitched his arm through Aurélie’s and hauled her from the room. Kate and Edward followed them down the passageway, the four of them alone, it seemed, for the first time in a week.

In the great hall, they chattered aimlessly while Aurélie’s coat and muff and warming blanket and hot bricks were fetched. When the bricks were found not to be ready, Anstruther simply dragged her out.

“Oh, haud yer wheesht, Aurélie,” he grumbled. “Dinna ye think I can keep you warm from here to there?”

“Why, John Anstruther, I’m sure I do not know!” she declared, jerking to a halt on the cobbles. “Sometimes you have a cold, cold heart.”

At that, he simply swept her up and carried her across the bailey. Edward helped Jasper carry out the two bags Aurélie had left waiting, while Hetty followed with Filou, who was curled up in a large wicker basket.

“Do you really think you can manage that woman?” Edward muttered once Anstruther had loaded her up into his carriage.

Anstruther grunted. “In the long run, laddie? I dinna know. But in the short of it? I’ll be sorely tempted to lay the business end of my crop to her arse.”

“I hope you won’t,” said Edward darkly.

Anstruther grinned, motioning for the dog to be handed up. “Nay, I’ll not do it,” he confessed, “but I’ll have to threaten it often enough, I dinna doubt.”

Edward opened his mouth to advise against it, then remembered de Macey’s wise words. Anstruther had been warming the woman’s bed for nearly twenty years, he decided. They both had to know what they were getting into.

“Well,” said Edward uncertainly, “good luck with that strategy.”

“Thank ye,” said Anstruther, leaping up into his carriage.

Edward contented himself to strolling back into the great hall where his bride awaited with some impatience.

“That
rest
before dinner?” Kate reminded him, tapping her tiny, silk-shod toe.

“Indeed, my love,” he said.

Then, following Anstruther’s good example, he swept up his bride and carried her—giggling and shrieking—all the way up the stairs and all the way down the corridor to her suite.

Once inside, he kicked the bedchamber door open and dropped her, still laughing, in the middle of the bed. Then, going back into the parlor, he extracted a long, thin box he’d hidden behind the divan.

Carrying it back into the room, he presented it to his bride with a de Macey–like flourish. “Lady d’Allenay,” he said, “your wedding gift.”

She squirmed back upright, the ivory silk bunching most delightfully around her derriere. “It is an oddly shaped box,” she teased. “I thought I was getting platinum and sapphires?”

“Not exactly,” he said tucking himself beside her. “Something infinitely better.”

Eyes dancing, Kate opened the box.

“Oh . . . my,” she said a little blandly.

Inside lay what could only be described as a ring of utterly hideous proportions; a great, jagged stone that looked like nothing so much as a lump of blue-black coal, and mounted in a thick setting made from a metal so lacking in luster it could not possibly have held any value. Scrolled inside the ring, however, was a document.

Slipping the ring off the scroll, Edward took Kate’s hand and slid it onto her finger, kissing her cheek as he did so. “As I said earlier today, my love, with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

“How touching.” Kate waggled her fingers a little, then held the lump to the light. “Well, it is certainly original in its design. I rather doubt any other bride has ever seen the like.”

“I’m sure they have not,” he said, “for I shall have you know, Baroness d’Allenay, that that is the famous Wentworth sapphire.”

“Is it?” Kate looked at him and giggled. “I never heard of the famous Wentworth sapphire. And it is still rather ugly, my love, but I shall treasure it all the same.”

Edward kissed her, then removed the ring from her hand, smiling. “It is ugly, my love, because it is uncut,” he said, holding it to the sunlight “And it will be called the Wentworth sapphire, for it shall be your choice how it is cut, and yours to hand down to your Wentworth daughters.”

“My Quartermaine daughters,” she corrected.

“As you wish,” he said. “But the ring is deservedly yours, nonetheless, because it is one of the finest purple-blue sapphires ever to come out of Ceylon. I know, you see, for I mined it myself.”

“Yourself?”

“Well, not literally,” he said. “But I told you I went to Ceylon to make something of myself, you will recall. One cannot do that entirely on an officer’s pay. So one of the things I did there was to purchase—using more of Hedge’s ill-got gaming revenue—an interest in a mine which, at the time, didn’t look like much.”

“And now?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“And now it looks like a rather great deal,” he admitted. “Little by little, I’ve channeled the club’s profits into the place, and gradually bought out the other investors. I must say the old place is becoming quite a profit engine, and it’s how I learnt what I know about mining.”

“I see,” she said, her eyes widening with amazement. “I wondered about it at the time.”

“And this,” he said, tapping on the stone, “will likely be a pure, perfect sapphire to exceed one hundred and twenty carats when cut, my love—larger than even the famous Stuart sapphire in the Queen’s Imperial State Crown. It is, in short, nearly priceless.”

“Good Lord,” she murmured. “And the unique setting?”

“Is pure tin,” he said.

“Tin?”

He extracted the paper from the box. “From your new tin mine,” he said, “in Cornwall. The one you and Anstruther have been lusting after this age.”

At that, her eyes turned to saucers. “You . . . you
bought me a tin mine
?” she said. “As a wedding gift?”

“I did,” he confessed. “Was that utterly unromantic of me? It seemed the only thing you truly wanted.”

“Besides you?” she said on a laugh. “No, Edward, it is actually the most romantic gift ever given, for it is the gift of a husband who truly knows his wife, and does not mind if she is plain and pragmatic.”

“My girl, you are nothing close to plain,” he chided. “As to pragmatic, if you wish, I shall manage the mine for you,” he said, “but only if you wish. Indeed, I can look after all your industrial concerns,
if
you wish. After all, you will have your hands full with the estate, and Anstruther . . . well, Anstruther will have his hands full with Aurélie.”

“She may
not
interfere with his work!” declared Kate, who had put the ring back on, and was turning it this way and that to admire it. “It is out of the question.”

“Well, good luck with that strategy,” said Edward—the same words he’d spoken to Anstruther himself mere moments earlier. He didn’t expect either of them to fare well with the task.

“Oh, I have a plan,” said Kate, “to keep Aurélie busy. Trust me. But first, let me kiss you, my darling. I’m sure these are the most famous wedding gifts a bride ever received.”

She did kiss him, and very thoroughly, too. And Edward kissed her back. Eventually the box tumbled to the floor, the deed to the tin mine soon following. And when, sometime later, all the kissing and tumbling was done, Kate still wore the ring, if nothing else.

Edward pulled her back against him beneath the bedcovers, spooning her so that he could set his chin atop her head. “So tell me this grand plan to keep your mother in line,” he said. “I have little confidence, honestly, that you shall pull it off.”

“Well,” said Kate, “I think I shall prove you wrong. If you’ve no objection, Edward, I mean to ask Anstruther to take over the west wing of the castle that extends beyond the walls. It is a complete house with its own entrance and bedchambers—quite ample, really, save for the kitchens being a tad minimal. And in that way, I will be able to keep an eye on Mamma.”

“This sounds to me as if Aurélie will simply have more of an audience,” Edward warned. “And what will you do with South Farm? Anstruther is keeping up the manor house.”

“Well, I thought perhaps we might put Annabelle and Mrs. Granger there,” she suggested, “until Heatherfields has been properly done up. It is larger and finer than any cottage, and it will give Mrs. Granger status. It will move them into our sphere, and into Richard’s parish. She already knows him a little, and knows his aunt well. And now he is your brother-in-law.”

“Kate, that is . . . brilliant,” he murmured. “As in,
Aurélie
-brilliant.”

“Yes, manipulatively brilliant, I think you mean,” said Kate a little smugly. “Mrs. Granger will get used to us, Edward. And in time, it will seem the most natural thing that Annabelle should drop in here, or that I might go there in passing. We will wear Mrs. Granger down with kindness, I feel sure of it. We will become normal to her. Ordinary, even.”

Edward kissed his bride’s cheek. “You are the very best of wives, Kate,” he said, “and we have been married only—what, four hours? But I still think Aurélie will be underfoot.”

“No, I think not.” With that, Kate pulled his hand down to her belly. “No, given the pallor of Nancy’s face today, and the unsettling event I have recently suffered, I think Aurélie will be spread thin.”

“
Ohh
,” said Edward, making a slow circle with his hand. “Oh, Kate. Oh, my God.”

“She’ll complain bitterly, of course, that she’s far too young to be a grandmother,” said Kate, wiggling back against him. “After all, she has not yet come to grips with being a mother. But mothering is hard work, whereas
grand-
mothering consists primarily of doting and entertaining and pampering.”

“Ah!” said Edward, understanding dawning. “I begin to see the logic in this.”

“Indeed,” said Kate. “Was ever anyone more knowledgeable about what is required to pamper and dote? Did ever anyone appear more entertaining to you?”

“Indeed not, my love,” said her husband. “Aurélie will be Grand Empress of Grandmothers, I do not doubt.”

“Yes,” said Kate on a snicker, “and when she takes them out in their prams, she can tell the cooing passersby that she’s their elder sister.”

“Kate, my love, your plan is brilliant,” he said. “My hat is off to you.”

“Oh, not just your hat,” said his wife. “Under these bedsheets you’re as naked as God made you—which was very fine indeed, by the way.”

He pressed his lips to her hair again, and made another slow circle on her belly. “Kate,” he said quietly.

“Yes?”

“Are you perfectly sure you’re carrying my child?”

“Well, I’m perfectly sure I’m not carrying anyone else’s,” she said a little tartly. “But am I absolutely, totally sure? No, not . . .
quite
.”

“Good, then, we should make
absolutely totally
sure
,” he murmured, sliding his lips slowly down her neck. “Because, old Reggie once pointed out, I’m not the sort of man who likes to sit on a mere profit when a little effort might turn it into a windfall . . .”

About the Author

A lifelong Anglophile, LIZ CARLYLE cut her teeth reading gothic novels under the bedcovers by flashlight. She is the author of over twenty historical romances, including several
New York Times
bestsellers. Liz travels incessantly, ever in search of the perfect setting for her next book. Along with her genuine romance-hero husband and four very fine felines, she makes her home in North Carolina. Please contact her at
www.lizcarlyle.com
.

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