In The Prince's Bed (29 page)

“Of course.” But the nature of their friendship would change. Even if she weren’t moving halfway across England, a respectable woman couldn’t spend hours with a male friend discussing poetry. Not if she wanted to avoid gossip.

She sighed. She would miss their talks. Still, there would be other compensations—her own home, a husband who made her laugh, children.

Children! She hadn’t even thought about that. Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have Alec’s children? Sydney was watching her with a frown. “You love him, don’t you?”

“What? No! I-I mean… I don’t know… I—”

“I know you, Kit—you’d never marry a man you didn’t love.”

“Right,” she mumbled. She
wasn’t
marrying Alec for love. She’d never be that foolish. It was a simple matter of enjoying his company and seeing the advantages to such a match. And of desiring him beyond all endurance.

She blushed. If love was a foolish reason for marrying, desire was an idiotic one. This was merely the sensible way to deal with her need for a husband. And it was purely coincidental that it was also the most
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appealing.

“Promise me one thing.” Sydney gazed down at her tenderly. “If you ever need me, if Iversley ever mistreats you, either before or after you marry, promise you’ll come to me.”

Aftershe married? She eyed him closely. “I mean to be faithful to my husband.”

His look of outrage set her straight. “I should hope so! I didn’t mean… why, I’d never come between a man and his wife, even if the man
is
a… a—”

“A scoundrel?” She laughed. This Sydney she wouldn’t miss at all, the one who disapproved of people who didn’t share his serious outlook or his love of poetry. “I’ll be all right with him, you know. You needn’t worry. Besides, you won’t even be around. You’re headed to Greece with Lord Napier.”

He stared off across the ballroom. “Actually, I’m not. I… we argued. I told him I wouldn’t go.”

“Oh, but you
should
go.” Now that she was happy, she wanted to see Sydney happy, too, and surely a trip to an exotic place with his close friend would accomplish that. “You would enjoy yourself.”

“That’s precisely why I mustn’t go.” Before she could question that enigmatic statement, he changed the subject. “So when is the wedding?” he asked a bit too cheerily, as if trying to put a good face on things.

“As soon as possible, I hope,” Alec answered from behind them. Startled, she whirled around so fast she nearly overset the glass of punch he held. Mama stood beside him, scowling her disapproval, but Alec’s expression betrayed nothing. His eyes, however, glittered a brilliant blue in the candlelight, alive with some emotion she couldn’t read. Anger? Jealousy? Perhaps a little. But there was something else there, too. It looked oddly like fear.

“Good evening, Iversley,” Sydney said. “I was just giving your… intended wife my felicitations on the announcement of your betrothal.”

“How kind of you.” Alec handed Katherine her punch. “I’m sorry we can’t invite you to the wedding. It’s going to be a private affair, just Katherine’s family. We’re marrying by special license within the week.”

Katherine nearly dropped her glass of punch. “We… we are?”

Alec’s gaze settled on her. “I assumed you’d want to marry soon. There is Mr. Byrne to consider, after all.”

“Who’s Mr. Byrne?” Sydney asked.

“Nobody of consequence.” Katherine certainly didn’t want Sydney to know how deeply Papa had sunk them into debt. She shot Alec a cool glance. “So we’re marrying by special license? I suppose you’ve chosen a gown for me as well?”

Her acerbic tone made Alec arch one brow. “Forgive me, sweetheart—I thought you’d be pleased. But if you’d rather we post the banns and marry from your home in Heath’s End, just say so.”

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“Don’t be silly,” Mama protested. “What would people think if you married like common day laborers?”

She clapped her hands to her chest with a dreamy sigh. “To marry by special license—how romantic that will be! All the ladies will envy you, my angel!”

With a glance at Katherine, Sydney asked, “What’s your hurry?”

“I see no reason to wait.” Alec cast Katherine a warm smile. “I came to London to find a wife, and now that I have, I want to go home with her to Suffolk and begin our life together.”

Katherine melted. So Mama had been wrong about that, too—Alec didn’t want a “fashionable marriage.” He only wanted
her
.

That didn’t sit well with Mama. “What? Go home? But it’s the middle of the season! We’ll have to arrange a ball at your town house, at the very least.”

“There’s no need for all that,” Katherine put in to cover Alec’s grimace.

“Of course there is! There should be parties to celebrate the marriage and breakfasts and a soiree…

what can you mean, to be scampering off to the country now, my lord? People will think something is amiss.”

“We don’t care what people think.” Katherine moved to Alec’s side to lay her free hand on his arm. He covered it with his own and squeezed.

Any lingering objections to a hasty wedding went right out the window. This, after all, was what she wanted from marriage—two people joined against the world, ready to stand firm against the frivolous Mamas and the nay saying Sydneys. Two people who understood each other. Sydney stared down at their joined hands, and his lips tightened. “Well, then, I shan’t intrude on this cozy family scene any longer.” He cast Alec a resentful glance. “I assume that you’ll accompany the ladies home tonight?”

Alec nodded tersely.

Sydney turned to Katherine. “Remember, if you ever need anything—”

“Yes, thank you,” she broke in, feeling Alec’s hand stiffen on hers. As the baronet walked off, Alec glared daggers into his back. Fortunately, Alec had no time to ask what Sydney’s last words had meant before Mama commanded his attention again. “Now see here, my lord, you simply cannot drag my daughter off to the country without so much as a warning.”

Which meant,
you can’t remove my only excuse for being in London
. A perverse mischief seized Katherine. “I believe he can do as he pleases once he marries me, Mama.”

Alec raised an eyebrow at Katherine, but merely added, “I’m sorry, I can’t stay in London just now. My father neglected Edenmore for years, and I must be there to turn things around. But of course if Katherine prefers to remain here—”

“I don’t,” she said. “I’m looking forward to seeing your country estate.”

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Alec smiled at her, then her mother. “You’re welcome to stay withuswhenever you like, Mrs. Merivale, if you don’t mind the workmen and interruptions of tenants.”

“No, indeed,” Mama said hastily. “I shall stay right here in London, if you please.”

That same urge for mischief pressed Katherine on. “Someone will need to oversee Merivale Manor now that I won’t be doing it, Mama. Unless you intend to take over my letter-writing duties?”

The pained look on her mother’s face nearly made her laugh aloud. Mama loathed writing letters as much as she loathed being packed away to the country.

Katherine could almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

But really, it served Mama right to have this happen. By promoting the earl’s suit, Mama had probably not realized she would lose Katherine’s management skills. Whereas if Katherine had married Sydney, she might have been able to continue her activities from the nearby Lovelace estate. Thank goodness she was marrying Alec.

Chapter Twenty-two

Even the cleverest rake cannot ensure the

smooth running of his plans. Learn

to be flexible.

—Anonymous,
A Rake’s Rhetorick

You’ve nearly made it, Alec told himself later in the evening as he and the Merivale ladies waited for his carriage.
Another week at most, and you’re safe
.

Unless they found out about his finances in that time, but that was unlikely. Of course, once he got Katherine back to Edenmore, there’d be hell to pay. But by then it would be too late for her to escape the marriage—and he sincerely hoped he could eventually make her not want to escape.

Lady Purefoy’s footman approached them with a frown. “My lord, I cannot seem to rouse your coachman. If you can suggest—”

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“It’s all right.” Alec pressed a few coins into the man’s hand, hoping his companions didn’t notice how few they were. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

Mrs. Merivale gazed at him in horror. “Didn’t you bring your own footman, my lord? Can’t he rouse the coachman?”

“I left my footman at your town house,” Alec explained, “in case you returned before I caught up to you. But it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll rouse him.”

“
We’ll
rouse him,” Katherine put in.

Though Mrs. Merivale grumbled at the indignity of having to don her pattens to keep from soiling her dancing slippers, she went along with them to where the carriage was parked a short distance from the Purefoy town house.

“John, wake up,” Alec said sharply as they approached.

The coachman’s loud snore was his only answer.

“John!” Alec said more loudly, punctuating the command by jiggling the coachman’s leg. John shifted his position on the perch and resumed his snoring. Not that Alec blamed the man, after the day they’d had.

“Blast it, John,” Alec grumbled as he shoved the coachman hard. Too hard, apparently, for John fell off the other side, hitting the ground like a sack of barley. At least that woke him up. “Thieves! Robbers! Watchman, ho!” John cried as he scrambled to his feet. Then he spotted his master. Turning a sickly pale, he hurried around the coach. “Oh, m’lord, beggin‘

your pardon, I didn’t mean to doze off… It won’t happen again, I swear.”

“It’s all right, John,” Alec said.

“Truly, m’lord—” He caught sight of Katherine and Mrs. Merivale. “ ‘Odsfish, you’ve got the ladies with you, too. Please forgive me, madam, miss. It’s just that we been on the road for days, seems like, and this last trip from Lord Draker’s in Hertfordshire was such a mad rush.”

“Lord Draker’s?” Katherine looked at Alec. “Isn’t he the one they call—”

“The Dragon Viscount, yes,” Alec said irritably. “Doesn’t anybody ever use the man’s name, for God’s sake?”

She blinked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize he was a friend of yours.”

“Well, he is. Come on, let’s get in.” Alec glanced to John. “Can you getushome without falling asleep on the perch again?”

“Yes, m’lord.” John bobbed his head even more furiously because of the ladies watching him. As soon as they set off in the carriage, Katherine shot Alec a curious glance. “How do you know Lord
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Draker? I understand he doesn’t go into society.”

“He’s an old family friend,” Alec muttered. What would she say if she knew the truth? Would it bother her? “If you like, I can introduce you to him.”

“Heavens, no!” Mrs. Merivale retorted. “He’s not the sort of man we’d want to be associated with.”

“A man with a well-ordered estate, happy tenants, and contented servants?” he snapped. “
That
is the sort of man you would avoid?”

Mrs. Merivale gaped at him, but Katherine merely said in a soft voice, “Mama, you’re speaking of his lordship’s friend. We know nothing about the man but gossip, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.” She cast him a sweet smile that reminded him why he preferred her to any other woman he’d met in London.

“Thank you,” he answered.

At least Katherine could appreciate Draker’s admirable qualities, buried deeply though they were. Mrs. Merivale and her ilk could never appreciate them; those fools looked only at appearances. A fortune hunter pretending to be rich was accepted in an instant, but God forbid a respectable, responsible gentleman like Draker, who’d made a few mistakes years ago, should darken society’s doors. Alec couldn’t wait to be away from such hypocrisy and out in the country with his beautiful new wife, who shared his opinion of society.

“You know, my lord,” Katherine remarked, “this is the first I’ve heard of any of your friends, other than Mr. França. And you haven’t said much about your family either. I don’t even know what your parents looked like. Was your mother dark-haired, too? Or do you get your coloring from your father?”

“I resemble my father to a marked degree, actually,” he said, trying to keep the irony from his voice. Thank God she wouldn’t see a portrait of the old earl until after they were married. “Except for my hair. That I did indeed get from my mother.”

She looked wistful. “I wish I could have met them.”

“Mother would have liked you. As a timid woman, she envied women who could speak their minds.”

Perhaps if she’d spoken her mind to Prinny, she wouldn’t have succumbed to his seductions and carried his bastard. But then Alec wouldn’t have been born.

A loud snore sounded in the carriage. Glancing over at her dozing mother, Katherine flashed him a wry smile. “I would have loved your mother for being timid. Lord knows I’ve endured the opposite long enough.”

“That reminds me—earlier you mentioned your letter-writing duties. What exactly did you mean?”

She shrugged. “I’m the one who corresponds with the housekeeper at Merivale Manor about the children. I choose where our meager funds should be allotted, authorize all expenditures, and approve any requests by the servants for time off or leave to visit family or whatever.”

“In other words, you run the household.”

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“Such as it is, yes.”

“When your mother said you always worried about such things, I didn’t realize you were the
only
one to do so.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Did you think Mama would do it? Not likely.”

“But surely in your childhood,
someone
must have done such things.”