The Romany Heiress (9 page)

“Cate, you’ll be in good hands here. I must go and organize the carriages,” Giles said, catching her by surprise. The name was unfamiliar to her. She had been
Irina or Caterina all her life. She had known laying
claim to Spelthorne would change her life in multiple
ways but it was something of a blow to realize how completely her life would change right down to her name. If
she won her claim, she would no longer be, could no
longer be, Caterina Dupeski. Suddenly, Cate seemed to
fit, a cross between Caterina and Catherine-who she
was and who she’d always been.

She paid halfhearted attention to the small talk flowing about her, finding that she was having a rather difficult time tearing her gaze away from following Giles as
he went about his duties. Isabella and Cecile made polite inquiries, and she answered as best she could. After
a bit, Cecile gave up and nodded to where Giles stood
just outside the hall on the front verandah directing people to carriages. “He’s very good at sorting out people”

Cate felt herself blush. “Yes, he is.” There was no
sense denying it. She’d been squarely caught in the act.

The hall had emptied out efficiently, leaving only their
little cluster. Giles gestured to them and they trooped out
to the verandah.

“I’ve put the four of you in the landau. I’ll take Cate
up in the curricle with me,” Giles directed.

Tristan gave Giles a questioning look. “Are you sure
you wouldn’t be more comfortable with Alain and Cecile? Bella and I have wanted to try out those bays of
yours” He nodded to where a tiger held the heads of
the spirited team harnessed to the yellow curricle.

“I’ve wanted to put them through their paces, myself.
They haven’t been worked properly for too long,” Giles
said smoothly. Tristan nodded his assent, and everyone
climbed aboard their respective vehicles.

Giles handed her up onto the seat, and Cate nervously fiddled with her skirts. She felt his weight on the seat
as he settled beside her and took up the reins, clucking
to the horses.

Cate kept her eyes forward, trying not to give into the
temptation of staring at the handsome man on the seat
next to her, so close that their thighs touched as the curricle jounced down the road on its two wheels.

“Your friends think you need protection,” she commented, referring to Tristan’s offer to take the curricle
so that she and Giles would not be alone.

Giles laughed at that, a merry, loud sound that appeared to be genuine as he threw back his head and let
the breeze ruffle his hair. “Tristan’s been itching to get
his hands on these bays since June. If I’d let him drive,
he would have raced this gig all the way to Staines.
We’re all horse mad, you know.”

He gave her a jolly wink that provoked a sense of
longing deep inside her-a longing for this day with its
beautiful weather and the handsome man beside her to
be real, not merely the forced product of her actions.

“Besides, you and I need to talk. This might be the
only privacy we have all day” His words reminded her
vividly of how contrived this glorious moment was.
She was with him only because circumstances dictated
that she was too dangerous for him to be left alone.

Cate straightened on the narrow seat and tried to put a
bit of meager distance between their jouncing thighs. She
kept her tone brisk. “Telling the maid the story of my ‘circumstances’ was clever. Be assured, I listened avidly to
her chatter this morning.” He needed to be reminded that
she was no green girl of seventeen, fresh from the isolation of the schoolroom. She was a woman full-grown
who had seen much of life and knew her own mind. Any
weakness she showed him was sure to be exploited.

“There is more to it than a mishap with your vehicle.
People will want to know who you are. You are Lady
Cate Winthrop”

“Winthrop was mother’s name before she married,”
Cate said quietly, almost reverently. “Are you sure that
would be appropriate?”

“Absolutely,” Giles remarked stiffly, clearly not caring to be second guessed. “Simply, you are to be called
Lady Cate as is the custom when addressing the daughter of an earl, marquis, or duke. In this case, the daughter of an earl. On occasion, people may refer to you as
Miss Cate”

“I know who my mother was,” Cate cut in sharply.
This was a dangerous moment. She could not sit there
quietly and let him lecture her about the state of the
family. If she truly was Celeste Moncrief’s daughter,
she would know about her own mother. “She was Celeste Winthrop, daughter of the Earl of Stonebridge,
before she married father.”

Giles gave a curt nod of his head and clucked to the
horses, slapping the reins. His jaw clenched, and Cate knew she’d annoyed him with her acerbic reply. She
drew a deep breath and tried to soften the moment. He
might hate what she was here to do, but perhaps he didn’t
have to hate her.

“Who would you like me to be? Should Lady Cate be
a cousin?”

“A very distant cousin,” Giles said. “If anyone asks
for specifics, you can make an airy gesture and say
something about a far-flung branch of the family tree”

“Ah, a fourth cousin then?” She’d meant only to tease.

“No!” Giles snapped. “Do not dare to be so specific.
We cannot risk anyone being interested enough to trace
the family line.”

“Oof!” The curricle hit a rut in the road, and Cate was
tossed against Giles. She landed against the strength of
his shoulder and grabbed at his arm to right herself.

“Are you alright?” Giles inquired with gentlemanly
reserve.

Cate blew out a breath. “Only a bit jarred” In truth,
she felt more shaken from the contact with the muscled
hardness of his body than the jolt itself. The curricle
lurched again, and she clutched at his arm once more to
steady herself. “I’d much rather ride on a horse than a
buggy any day,” she said awkwardly, feeling self conscience and yet not able to trust her own balance against
the jouncing road, in order to release her hold on his arm.

She was further embarrassed to see Giles cast a disparaging glance downward to where her hand gripped
his sleeve.

“That’s another thing we must address,” Giles said sternly. “What happened in my chambers last night
cannot be repeated. As a gentleman, I need to apologize
for allowing that kiss to happen”

She should accept his apology demurely and say
nothing, but his prickly attitude and high-handed manner with which he’d conducted the entire conversation
roused her temper and left her feeling querulous. “Well,
I should think so. Being dropped unceremoniously on
one’s backside is hardly what one expects when one is
being so thoroughly seduced by a peer of the realm.”
She was tempted to add that she hadn’t been entirely
surprised since he was really a peer, but she heeded the
warning in the set of his jaw and held the retort. She had
tweaked him far enough.

“Seduced!” Giles fired a sidelong glance of disbelief
at her. “You started it.”

“I most certainly did not!” She snapped, feeling
color flood her cheeks. Had she? Come to think of it,
she couldn’t remember how it had started, only that it
had felt wonderful until the viscount had barged in and
taken them by surprise. Her bottom and ankle were
both still slightly tender from the fall.

Giles was insistent. “Regardless, we must have a pact
that such a thing cannot happen again.”

“Didn’t you like it? I thought you did.” Cate pouted
innocently and stared out across the landscape, deliberately avoiding his gaze. The traffic was picking up now
and the pennants flying from the top of canopies in the
distance signaled they were nearing Staines. The bittersweet novelty of riding with Giles and looking the part of a fashionable lady, all the while sparring with the
man beside her, was coming to a close.

Giles must have sensed the end was near as well.
Desperation tinged the edges of his voice. “Look, we
have a deuced awkward situation between us. It seems
that for both our sakes we must attempt to be allies until the situation can be resolved. To speak plainly, I cannot leave you to your own devices, so we must be seen
socially and appear to be on good terms, as one would
expect of relatives.”

Cate looked about her at the nearby carriages on the
road and noticed other women had their parasols up. Casually, she reached for her parasol and flicked it up. With
a wideeyed stare that would have done the most vacuous
of debutantes proud, Cate said, “I’m sorry, I thought you
said something about `for both of our sakes.’ I’ve yet to
hear what I get out of this. It sounds like my good behavior is important only as far your benefits”

“As long as you behave, you get to stay” Giles bit out
as he steered the curricle under the shade of a tree near
the fairgrounds. Others from the house party were
parking their conveyances nearby and dismounting.

“Hah! That’s as toothless as threats come, Giles Moncrief. You wouldn’t dare to throw me out” Cate laughed.

“Try me.”

Cate laughed again, knowing she hadn’t dared to go
any farther. She was smart enough to know when the
game was over, at least for now. “Alright, truce. We’ll
behave as you suggest. I agree, it is the clearest way to
seeing our needs met”

“Thank you” Giles tossed his reins to the waiting
tiger and leapt down. “Wait there, I’ll help you out”
He came around to her side, and Cate furled her parasol. She smiled down at him with what she hoped was
cousinly affection, although she privately thrilled to the
feel of his strong hands about her waist as he lifted her
down. He settled her on the ground and she was aware
he kept his hands on her waist a bit longer than necessary, under the guise of allowing her a chance to adjust
her skirts.

She smiled at him, sensing that a certain level of levity had returned to their banter. Her lips lifted in a teasing lilt, but the laughing words she’d thought to toss
back at him died on her lips. Over Giles’s shoulder
Lady FoxHaughton was approaching, and Cate knew
enough about women of any station to know she wasn’t
pleased at finding her man in the arms of another.

I f the situation with his newly minted `cousin Cate’
was deuced awkward, the ensuing scene with Lady
FoxHaughton promised to be something else entirely.
In this case, deuced awkward didn’t even begin to
cover it. Giles stepped back from Cate and released his
grip on her slender waist. For a man who prided himself on avoiding such unpleasant entanglements, he’d
done a poor job of it over the last eighteen hours.

Candice Wetherby, the Lady FoxHaughton, swept
forward regally and planted herself on Giles’s right side
with a proprietary air.

“Spelthorne, there you are. I knew you’d be bringing
up the back, dedicated as you are to seeing to your
guests’ comforts first.” As always, she was attired impeccably from the excellent cut of her apple-green muslin walking dress to the tips of her extravagant leather half
boots, dyed to match the gown.

Usually Giles admired her modish appearance, but
the sight of her stylish perfection did not stir the requisite appreciation within him. Today she looked like a
beautifully dressed shell against the backdrop of the
agitated yet animated conversation he’d held with Cate
on the drive.

Of course the idea that she was a shell wasn’t true.
She was a leading political hostess and intelligent in
her own right. It was those qualities along with her
sense of style that had originally brought her to his attention. Lady FoxHaughton was not a vacuous shell of
a woman, and he’d do well to remember it.

“Lady Cate is it?” The glint in her sharp hazel eyes
warned she was sharpening her claws and her tongue.
All her attention was riveted on his dubious guest. “We
did not get to converse in the hall before departing. Tell
me how you’ve come to know Spelthorne”

It took all of Giles’s self control not to leap into the
conversation and answer on Cate’s behalf. But he realized to do so would put Candice on the scent more
surely than anything else he could devise.

Cate did not disappoint. She looked Lady FoxHaughton in the eye and smiled conversationally. “I am
Lady Cate Winthrop. My carriage broke down so I did
not arrive until very late last evening.”

Giles watched Candice take in the information and
process it behind shrewd, knowing eyes. “How terrible for you, my dear,” Candice sympathized, but Giles wasn’t
fooled for a moment. “Winthrop you say? That would be
Spelthorne’s mother’s name”

He had wanted to avoid this. Candice had practically
memorized DeBrett’s peerage right down to the most
minor of baronets. He did not doubt she’d paid special
attention to the Spelthorne entry.

She tapped a long gloved finger against her chin
thoughtfully. “So you must be a cousin of sorts?”

“Yes,” Cate offered.

“Yes? Is that all?” Candice pressed much to Giles’s
dislike. “There are all sorts of cousins-first cousins,
second cousins, kissing cousins.” She laughed at her little joke, but Giles heard the ice beneath it.