Even though she had assured him it could not be done in a billion years.
That assurance, of course, had merely goaded him on.
“It was a waltz Monty danced last evening,” Stephen said after the visitors had left. “With Kate. He dances as well as he seems to do everything else. I could not waltz, alas. I was obliged to sit out with Miss Acton because she has not yet been granted permission to waltz.”
Constantine was looking steadily at her, Katherine was aware. She turned her head and smiled more fully at him.
“And Monty brought his half sister to call upon you this afternoon,” he said to her, shaking his head slightly, “even though she has not yet made her come-out. I can remember warning you against him once a long time ago, Katherine. Nothing has changed, you know. Monty is one of my closest friends, but if I had a sister, I would not allow her within five miles of him unless she had a chaperone chained to each wrist.”
She laughed.
So did Stephen.
“Constantine!” Margaret said reproachfully. “Lord Montford is a gentleman. His manners are more than pleasing. And his fondness for Miss Wrayburn is to be commended.”
“I am no green girl, Constantine,” Katherine said-just as she had said last evening to Lord Montford himself.
“I suppose not,” Constantine admitted. “I forget that by now you are almost elderly, Katherine. You are… what? Three-and-twenty? Do remember, though, that he is not safe company for any unescorted lady.”
“And you are, Constantine?” she asked with a laugh.
He winced deliberately. “Sometimes,” he said, “it takes one rakehell to recognize another. Not that I am making any admissions that might incriminate me.”
She loved him dearly-he was a second cousin they had discovered late in life. He had always been kind to them. Yet she was aware that she really did not know him at all. He hardly ever came to Warren Hall, and he was not often in London either-neither were they, of course. He had a home and estate in Gloucestershire but had never invited them there or told them anything about it. And he had a long-standing quarrel with Elliott, Duke of Moreland-his first cousin and her brother-in-law-that had somehow drawn Vanessa in too a few years ago. Neither of them spoke to him whenever they could decently avoid doing so. Katherine had no idea why. There was, in fact, an intriguing aura of mystery surrounding Constantine that was, she supposed, part of his appeal.
Was he a rakehell? He was a friend of Lord Montford’s and every bit as dashing and handsome as he was, even if his looks did narrowly escape perfection because of his nose, which had been broken at some time in the past and not quite straightened afterward. Though actually the bend in his nose made him look more attractive than perfection would have done.
“Enough of this,” Margaret said firmly. “You will stay for dinner, Constantine? Bar the doors, Stephen, lest he say no.”
“Coercion succeeds with me every time,” Constantine said. “But so does a friendly invitation. I will be delighted to stay.”
And so, Katherine thought, she was surely doomed to another disturbed night. She was to go walking with Lord Montford tomorrow-and Meg and Stephen and Miss Wrayburn. She must make a determined effort to walk with one of them.
She must also pray very fervently that it would rain tomorrow.
The five of them went walking as planned the following afternoon, which was fortunately fine, even sunny, after a damp, unpromising morning. Jasper walked with Miss Huxtable while Merton had Charlotte on one arm and Miss Katherine Huxtable on the other. After they had all spent a while down by the Serpentine, admiring the swans and watching a young boy sail his small boat on the water under the eagle eye of his nurse, they walked back again with Merton between Charlotte and his eldest sister and Jasper with the younger.
As he had planned from the start, of course. One must never be too obvious in such pursuits, but one must be relentless. He had maneuvered the exchange without any of the others even suspecting that maneuverings were going on. Except, perhaps, Katherine Huxtable herself. She favored him with a tight-lipped but otherwise expressionless stare as she took his arm.
“Miss Wrayburn is charming,” she said almost vengefully.
“But sometimes anxious about how she will be received,” he said, inhaling to see if he could catch a whiff of that soap smell again. He could. It was faint but unmistakable. It must be the most seductive scent ever invented.
She looked very fetching too in a sage green, high-waisted walking dress with a straw bonnet adorned with ruched pale green silk about the crown and ribbons of a matching color beneath her chin. Her hair looked very golden beneath its wide brim.
“Oh, but she need not be anxious with us,” she said. “There is no reason to be. We are very ordinary people.”
“Indeed?” He looked down at her with raised eyebrows, but she was being quite serious. “One wonders, then, what extraordinary people would be like. One might need an eye shade just to look at them.”
She clucked her tongue and raised a reproachful face at the same time.
“That was a compliment, was it?” she said dryly. “Thank you, my lord, on behalf of Stephen and Meg.”
“Charlotte is very taken with you,” he said quite truthfully. “And with your sister,” he added to be fair. “She is flattered by your kindness and condescension in taking notice of her.”
“It is hardly condescension,” she said. “We were very ordinary mortals indeed just a few years ago and living in a small cottage in a small country village. I was contributing to our meager income by teaching at the village school a few mornings a week. The most glamorous events in our lives were the infrequent village assemblies and the annual summer fete at Rundle Park, the manor of Sir Humphrey Dew. Our circumstances have changed since then, but we have not, I hope. I liked us as we were.”
Was she deliberately making herself sound dull? He felt a wave of amusement.
“I believe, Miss Huxtable,” he said, dipping his head a little closer to hers, “I would have liked you then too. Did you dance about a maypole on the village green every spring, by any chance? There is nothing more enticing than the sight of a lovely woman weaving her ribbon about the pole, dipping and swaying and flashing her ankles as she goes.”
“No maypoles.” But she laughed suddenly. “And no flashing ankles.”
He felt enveloped by sunshine and warmth and noted with some surprise when he glanced upward that the sun was hidden behind clouds. It amazed him that he had tried to forget her for three whole years, that his memories of her had not been pleasant ones. That, of course, was because his memories of her had been all tied up with memories of humiliation.
“No maypoles or flashing ankles,” he said. “How very sad. Though perhaps not. Perhaps the males of your village from the age of twelve to ninety were thereby saved from unutterable suffering at your hands-or should I say rather, at your ankles.”
“I wonder, Lord Montford,” she said, though her face still laughed, “if you have any skill or experience with ordinary conversation.”
“But of course I have,” he said, all astonishment. “I am a gentleman, am I not? You wound me with your assumption that I have none.”
“But I have never heard any evidence of it,” she said.
“Would you say,” he said, looking upward, “that those clouds overhead presage more rain to come later? I would say not. You will observe that they are white and fluffy and really quite benign. And there is blue sky beyond them. My prediction is that in one hour’s time, or even less, the sky will be a pure blue and we will bask in the bliss of it for a short while before the pessimists among us start to worry about tomorrow. Have you noticed how good weather invariably brings on the prediction that we will have to suffer for it with some shockingly infelicitous storm in the near future? Have you ever heard anyone do the opposite? Have you ever heard anyone on a day of cold sleet and arctic gales gloomily predict that we will suffer for this with blue skies and sunshine and warmth at some time in the future?”