Secret Fire (27 page)

“
L
ady Katherine, are ye receivin’ this mornin’?”

Katherine glanced up from the tally books with a sigh. “Who is it this time, Fiona?” When would her neighbors stop being so blasted nosy?

“She said she was the Duchess of Albemarle.”

Katherine simply stared at the girl while the color slowly receded from her face. Dimitri’s grandmother? Here? Did that mean… No, if Dimitri were in England, he would have come himself. Wouldn’t he?

“My lady?”

Katherine focussed on the maid again. “Yes, I’ll see her. Show her into the— Wait, she is alone, isn’t she?” At Fiona’s nod, she said, “Very well. On second thought, show the lady in here. My office is more informal. And bring some refreshments too, Fiona.”

Katherine didn’t move from behind her desk. She sat there, worrying the tip of her quill between her teeth, and growing more and more nervous by the second. Why was Dimitri’s grandmother coming to see her? There was no way she could know anything. No one knew the truth, not even her father.

The Earl had been so understanding in the one letter she had received from him before she left Russia, but that was in answer to the letter she had sent him, which was composed of elaborate lies meant to calm his concern and assure him she was fine, just not ready to come home yet.
She couldn’t tell him the truth, for a father’s duty was to avenge his daughter’s honor, and she wanted none of that.

The tale about being kidnapped by mistake and ending up in Russia was as close as she came to the actual truth. She made use of the excuse she had given the Ambassador by claiming that she
had
written immediately upon reaching Russia, but the letter must have become lost and she had only just learned that no one knew what had happened to her. And then in her indomitable way she informed him that as long as she had been forced on this trip, she was going to take advantage of it and travel a while more. He wasn’t too happy about that, but he wished her well and had included a tidy sum to see to her expenses.

Yes, he had understood, until she had arrived home with Alek three weeks ago. Alek he didn’t understand at all, nor why she refused to make excuses for him, saying simply that she had fallen in love and children were the usual result of such happenings. The biggest bone of contention between them was that she wouldn’t name the father, said only that she had met him while traveling through Russia, and no, she simply didn’t want to marry him. What were they to tell people? Absolutely nothing.

Katherine wasn’t the first to bring home a baby from her travels, but she wasn’t about to claim it was an orphan she had found. That excuse had been given so often by other highborn ladies that it simply would not have been believed. Since Katherine St. John wasn’t considered the type to indulge in an affair, she trusted that the rumors and speculation about her wouldn’t be too dam
aging. She was proved right. The general opinion, though she wasn’t aware that dear Lucy had started the rumor, was that she was a widow now, so devastated by her husband’s death that she refused to talk about him.

This amused her. It allowed her to ignore all inquiries about her son’s father without the least bit of embarrassment. Not that she was ashamed. She was, in fact, so proud of her son that she delighted in showing him to anyone and everyone who asked to see him. But anyone and everyone did not include Dimitri’s grandmother.

Alek unfortunately had that notorious Alexandrov face, as well as his father’s coloring. Not that Katherine wasn’t delighted with the way he looked, but he was too obviously Dimitri’s son. The Duchess would have only to look at him to see the resemblance. In some future meeting between Dimitri and his grandmother, Katherine’s remarkably Alexandrov-looking son would be mentioned, and then Dimitri would know that she had left him, knowing she carried his child; that she had refused to marry him, knowing she might be denying him his heir. He wouldn’t take too kindly to that. He might even try to wrest Alek from her. She could not take any chances.

At the sound of a throat being slightly cleared, Katherine jumped to her feet nervously. “Your ladyship, please come in.” She indicated the chair opposite her desk. “I understand you are acquainted with my father. He’s in London, if you came to see—”

“I’m here to see you, my dear, and please let us dispense with formalities. I would like it if you would call me Lenore.”

Lenore Cudworth wasn’t anything like Katherine might have expected, though what she had really expected she didn’t know, except that some ladies of the Duchess’s stature and age clung to the old ways, even to wearing outdated clothes, some even still powdering their hair. Lenore was dressed in a stylish traveling suit, vivid in color, her only concession to her age being her hair, which was done up neatly in an older style that quite suited her. It was silver-gray, though her face bore few wrinkles. She was still a very handsome woman, and Katherine was unnerved to see from where Dimitri got his dark brown eyes, for hers were exactly the same, if a little warmer, with infinitely more laugh lines surrounding them.

“You mustn’t be nervous.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Katherine quickly assured her. Blast, she was off to a bad start. “And please call me Kate. My family does.”

“And what does Dimitri call you?”

Katherine’s eyes flared, giving her away before she could ask, “Dimitri who?” “Why have you come here?” she asked instead, bluntly, fearfully now.

“To meet you. To satisfy a curiosity. I have only just learned that you have returned to England, or I probably would have come sooner.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you the type to sniff about for a scandal, your ladyship.”

Lenore laughed despite herself. “Oh, my dear Kate, how delightfully refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t mince words. But no, I assure you I’m not a scandalmonger. You see, I received a rather long letter last year from Dimitri’s aunt on his father’s side—we will agree you
know my grandson?” When Katherine didn’t so much as blink, Lenore smiled, undeterred. “Well, at any rate, Sonya, Dimitri’s aunt, does so love to complain to me about his many amorous peccadilloes. For years she has written, undoubtedly trying to disillusion me into believing the poor boy is a lost cause, which I have never believed for a moment. I would have discouraged her letters if they weren’t so amusing. But this particular letter wasn’t amusing at all. She told me that Dimitri was now bringing his…women, shall we say? That he was bringing his women back from England now and that he had gone so far as to install one in his own home.”

Katherine had gone quite pale. “Did she happen to mention her name?”

“I’m afraid she did.”

“I see.” Katherine sighed. “She never understood why I was there, you know. It certainly wasn’t what she thought. And I doubt Dimitri ever did own up—oh, this is beside the point. You—you didn’t bring this information to my father, did you?”

“Whyever would I do that?”

“To relieve his mind. For a while after I disappeared, he thought I was dead.”

“You mean… I’m sorry, dear, I had no idea. I was aware of your absence from England but not that George had no clue to where you were. It was assumed you had gone on a tour of Europe. But wasn’t that rather thoughtless on your part? I realize Dimitri is quite the ladies’ man, but to just run off with him—”

“I beg your pardon,” Katherine interrupted sharply, “but I didn’t happen to have a choice in the matter.”

The Duchess actually blushed. “Then I truly am sorry, my dear. And it appears I have come here under the wrong impression. I thought—rather I assumed—that you had had an affair with my grandson and that the son you came home with might be his. You see, I have heard about the child, and I had hoped, actually I still do… What I mean to say—”

“Alek is not Dimitri’s son!”

Lenore sat back, surprised by the emphatic denial. “I didn’t mean to imply… Well, yes, I suppose I did. Forgive me. But considering most women find my grandson rather irresistible, it was natural to assume… Oh, dash it all, Kate, I would like to see the boy.”

“No. I mean, he’s sleeping and—”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

“But he hasn’t been feeling well. I really don’t think it would be a good idea to disturb him.”

“Why are you putting me off? This is my great-grandson we are talking about.”

“He isn’t,” Katherine insisted angrily, not at all liking this corner she was backing into, but quite unable to think clearly in her anxiety. “I told you Dimitri isn’t his father. Why, he left me at Novii Domik for months. Do you know how many men there are at Novii Domik? Hundreds. Need I say more?”

Lenore smiled. “All you needed to say, my dear, was that you had never been intimate with Dimitri, but you didn’t say that, did you? No, and you won’t convince me you are the type to go flitting from one man to another either, so don’t bother trying. The boy doesn’t know, does he? Is that what you’re afraid of?”

“Your ladyship, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Katherine replied stonily.

“Very well, my dear, you win for now.” Lenore’s voice was still pleasant. She didn’t succumb to emotion the way the young so often did. Yet she was quite firm in her added prediction. “But I’ll see your Alek eventually. I won’t be denied my first great-grandchild, even if I have to bring his father here to settle the matter.”

“I wouldn’t advise that,” Katherine replied, exasperation taking over. “Do you realize how furious he would be if you brought him here for nothing. And it would be for nothing.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“
W
ell?” Dimitri demanded.

Vladimir entered the dining room with considerable reluctance. “She wouldn’t accept the flowers, my lord, or your letter. Both were returned to me, the letter unopened.”

Dimitri slammed his fist down, spilling his wine and knocking over the candelabrum in the center of the table. A footman rushed forward to grab it before a fire started. Dimitri didn’t even notice.

“Why won’t she see me? What have I done that was so terrible? I asked her to marry me, didn’t I?”

Vladimir said not a word. He knew the questions weren’t being asked of him. He had heard them asked a hundred times before. He had no answers anyway. He didn’t know what the Prince had done, unless it was the same thing he had done, and Sweet Mary, how often he had asked himself how he could have been so stupid, so blind, so incredibly perverse in his judgment. How Marusia had rubbed it in and gloated, because she had known all along, while he had doggedly stuck to his misconceptions about Lady Katherine.

“Perhaps if you—”

Vladimir got no further, the footman at the door interrupting with the announcement: “The Dowager Duchess—”

That fellow got no further either, as Dimitri’s grandmother pushed him aside and entered the room. That she was quite out of sorts was obvious, though Dimitri, rising swiftly, didn’t notice in his surprise.

“
Babushka!
”

“Don’t you ‘
Babushka
’ me, you thoughtless, irresponsible man,” Lenore said tartly, slapping away the arms that tried to embrace her. “Do you realize what an embarrassment it was for me to be asked what you were doing back in London so soon when you had been here only a few months ago, and I didn’t know you were here now or then? What do you mean by coming to England and not paying me a visit, not even telling me you are here, not once, but twice?”

Dimitri had the grace to flush. “I owe you an apology.”

“You owe me more than that,” she retorted. “You owe me an explanation.”

“Certainly, but sit down. Take a glass of wine with me.”

“I’ll sit, but no wine.”

And she did, and immediately began drumming her fingers on the table, waiting, angry, impatient. Dimitri waved the servants away and returned to his seat, feeling quite put on the spot. What could he tell her? Certainly not the truth.

“I was coming to see you,
Babushka
,” he began.

“Three weeks late?”

So she knew he had been here that long. He was just wondering what else she knew when she added, “I wrote you no more than a month
ago, and I know very well you couldn’t have received my letter yet, so that isn’t why you’re here. Now, out with it. What are you doing here, and why must I be the last to know about it?”

“You wrote me? Was it anything important?”

“You’re not putting me off, Dimitri. I demand to know what you’re up to. Why, you have my own son keeping secrets from me. He must know you are here, or you wouldn’t be using the townhouse.”

Dimitri sighed. “You mustn’t blame Uncle Thomas. I asked him to say nothing for the present, because I knew you would insist I join you in the country for a visit. But what I am doing is just too important… I have to stay in London,
Babushka
. I have to make sure she doesn’t disappear again.”

“Who?”

“The lady I want to marry.”

Lenore’s brow shot up. “Oh? As I recall, you said you would be married by the end of last year. When that didn’t come about and when I received your news about your half-brother’s return from the dead, I assumed you were no longer in any great hurry to tie yourself to any one woman.”

“That was before I met Katherine.”

“Not Katherine St. John!” Lenore gasped.

“How did you know? No, don’t tell me. I suppose I have made a complete fool of myself. With as many times as I have been turned away from her door, the whole town must know. And chasing her down Piccadilly was a piece of lunacy, especially when she managed to elude me anyway.”

“Very well, I take it you have followed Lady Katherine here, and that’s why you’re here now. But what about earlier this year?”

“I was looking for Katherine then too. I thought she had returned here, but I was mistaken. The most I could find out then was that she was supposedly traveling on the Continent, where, no one knew exactly.”

“You could have at least come to see me for a day or two, as long as you were here,” Lenore complained.

“I’m sorry.
Babushka
, but I wasn’t very fit company at the time. I was in fact quite out of sorts when I found Katherine wasn’t here, as I thought she would be, and I had no idea where to look for her next.”

“Desperate, were you?” Lenore smiled now for the first time. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you were in love.”

Dimitri frowned. “Is that such an impossibility?”

“No, of course not. It’s just that I’ve met Lady Katherine and she’s a formidable lady, for all that she comes in such a small package. You won’t find her jumping to do your bidding, my boy. You won’t find her agreeing with your every opinion either. She’s been too long running things her own way and won’t be easily adaptable to a subservient role, if indeed she is adaptable, which I highly doubt. She’s a lady who knows her own mind, not exactly the type I would have expected a man of your temperament to want for a wife.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“I’m not, eh?” Lenore chuckled.

She could tell him a thing or two, but she decided not to. Why give the boy ammunition he didn’t need? He had had things too easy all his life. It wouldn’t hurt him to have to put forth a little effort to get what he wanted this time, and if little Kate gave him a hard time of it, so much the better. Of course if he failed to win the lady in the end, that would be a different story. Lenore was
not
going to be denied her first great-grandson.

“You say Katherine won’t see you?” Lenore asked now. “Why is that?”

“I wish I knew. When we were last together, we argued, but then we often argued, so that was nothing out of the ordinary. She had just become my—well, that is neither here nor there. The point is, she ran away, disappearing completely, and now that I’ve finally found her again, she refuses to speak to me. I have much to make amends for, certainly, but she won’t even give me the chance. It’s as if she’s afraid to see me.”

“Whether she is or isn’t is beside the point. If she’s the one you want, my boy, you’ll just have to find a way, won’t you? And I think I’ll remain in London awhile to keep tabs on your progress. You will of course remember to invite me to the wedding, if there is to be one.”

Dimitri remained where he was after his grandmother left him, her humor much improved, his much worse. If only he didn’t have the feeling that she knew something he didn’t.