Julia London Read online

  Kate assured her she wouldn’t, and moved to the door, smiling at the equally ancient footman who moved to open it for her.

  “Ho there, where do you think you are going?” Mrs. Biddlesly shrieked. “I’ve not said you might go!”

  With a look toward heaven, Kate turned round. A full half hour later, she managed to escape, having endured the cataloguing of all Mrs. Biddlesly’s physical ailments—in precise detail, thank you.

  Kate’s father was leaning against his little cart as she bounced down the stairs.

  “A list of complaints again, eh?”

  “Indeed,” Kate said with a laugh. “And she’s added quite a few more since last week.”

  With a snort, her father rolled his eyes. “Don’t know why you bother at all, Kate. She’s an ungrateful old bat.”

  “Ah, she is that. But I can’t help but do so, Papa—no one else will bother with her,” Kate said and adjusted her bonnet. “Well then! Shall we call on Mr. Heather?”

  With another shake of his head, her father grabbed the cart handle. He looked up, over Kate’s shoulder, and nodded to something behind her as she took another basket from the cart. “Looks as if you’ll have an escort again this week.”

  Kate turned around—and almost collided with Lord Montgomery. Again. Another happy coincidence. In fact, she quickly calculated it was the eighth happy coincidence in as many weeks.

  “Beg your pardon, Mrs. Becket. I must have startled you,” he said with a mischievous smile.

  “Not at all, my lord!” A ridiculously large, unguarded grin split her face.

  He glanced over her shoulder at her father and touched the brim of his hat. “Good day, Mr. Crowley. Fine day for a walkabout, eh?”

  “Aye, it is, as fine a day as the past Wednesday’s walkabout, and the one before it,” Papa snorted. “You go on ahead, Kate,” he said, ducking beneath the wide brim of his hat as he busied himself with the rearranging of the baskets in his little cart. “I’ve a bit of tidying up to do here, and you’d not want to keep Mr. Heather waiting for his victuals.”

  “Thank you, Papa.” She stole a glimpse of Montgomery. “Mr. Heather is undoubtedly pacing the floor, wondering what could be keeping us. He’s rather the nervous sort.”

  “You are so good to engage in such charitable works, Mrs. Becket, and how diligent you are about it!” Montgomery exclaimed. “There are others who are not as generous with either their time or their spirit, myself chief among them.”

  “Indeed? I naturally assumed you were calling on them yourself, sir. Whatever else might bring you to this street each Wednesday?” she asked with a sly smile.

  He chuckled boyishly, took the basket from her hand, and walked beside her as she started down the street. “You give me too much credit. My motives are far more nefarious than charitable endeavors, I freely admit.”

  “Nefarious?” She laughed. “Lord Montgomery, how you tease me! I’d wager you’ve not a wicked bone in your body!”

  He gave her a look that suggested she knew better than that, leaned slightly toward her, and said low, “You’d be quite wrong, madam, were you to wager. I’ve more than one wicked bone in this body.”

  That sent a heat straight up her spine, and Kate swallowed. There were few persons who could confound her, but Montgomery happened to be the king.

  “Ah, look here! I’ve offended you,” he said cheerfully.

  Offended was not exactly the word she’d use, and she laughed. “Offended? Never! Titillated is more accurate,” she said, and unthinkingly stole a glimpse of her father over her shoulder. He was keeping quite a distance behind her and Lord Montgomery. She slid her gaze to his lordship again; his two thick brows had risen quite up to his hat.

  “I’ll have you know that the gentleman in me is aghast at having titillated. But the man in me is rather intrigued by it.”

  She believed him—his eyes were glittering with the intrigue, and she could feel the spark of it herself, all the way to her toes.

  “I find I rather enjoy titillating beautiful young widows.”

  And this young widow enjoyed being titillated—in fact, she was so caught up in the state of titillation that she had not noticed they had come to a crossing point. Montgomery casually caught her elbow, held it firmly as he looked one way and then the other, and propelled her across the street.

  “I have misjudged you, then,” Kate said airily, thoroughly enjoying his possessive hand on her arm. “You are a wicked man if you enjoy titillating widows.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Becket, I give you my word that I am indeed quite wicked when the situation warrants.” They had reached the other side of the street, yet he held fast to her elbow and looked her in the eye. “And I give you my word that I would endeavor to be as wicked as you’d like, given the slightest opportunity.”

  The fire in her was now burning quite out of control, her mind racing with deliciously dark thoughts of just how wicked this handsome man might be with her. As the heat rose to her cheeks, she laughed. “If I didn’t know you to be a gentleman of the highest caliber, my lord, I would believe you are trying to seduce me.”

  He cocked a brow as his gaze boldly swept the length of her. “What’s a man to do then,” he muttered, “when a widow puts away her weeds and presents herself so pleasingly?” he asked, slowly lifting his gaze to hers again. “A lovelier woman I’ve not seen, Mrs. Becket. You are the stuff of men’s dreams,” he said, as his gaze dipped to her bosom. “A pret tier gown I’ve not seen . . . or perhaps it is the woman who makes the gown so delightful.”

  Kate laughed at his blatant attempted to seduce her. “You are a rake!” she cried happily and pulled her elbow free of his hand. “I am now quite convinced that the rumors of your . . . skill . . . with the ladies of the ton must be well deserved.”

  “My reputation is indeed well deserved!” he said with mock indignation. “But I would toss all others aside for the mere pleasure of your company, I assure you.”

  Now Kate laughed roundly, tossing her head back with delight. “Honestly, my Lord Montgomery!” she declared. “How silly you are! I am hardly one of the many naive young debutantes who seek your attention, and I daresay I cannot be drawn into your charms with false flattery!”

  “Ah!” he cried, bringing a hand to his heart. “I am mortally wounded, Mrs. Becket, for how could one gaze upon a face as lovely as yours and offer anything but the sincerest and warmest esteem?”

  “Have you considered the theater?” Kate asked flippantly as she continued up the street. “I should think you’d make a fine dramatic actor!”

  Montgomery easily fell into step with her. “I have considered nothing but my heart, and how I long for you to hold it, Mrs. Becket,” he said, grinning. “But alas, you think me a rogue, a roué, when I only seek the favor of your smile.”

  “Come now, my lord. Is that all you seek?” she asked, watching him coyly from the corner of her eye.

  He sighed with exaggerated frustration. Kate smiled at his square jaw, his thick lashes, the full lips she remembered so keenly. It was almost as if that illicit kiss had happened only yesterday, the very same kiss that had burned in her memory these last two and a half years, making her sick with guilt and heady with imagination.

  “There you are, you’ve caught me red-handed,” he said, shaking his head, and smiling down at her as they reached Mr. Heather’s stoop. “I should never be content with a mere smile, no matter how beautiful it is. I’d want more. I’d want all.”

  The look in his eyes was scorching, and Kate slowly drew a breath, awkwardly took the basket of fruit from his hand, and held it tightly against her chest. He was smiling, but his eyes . . . there was something else in his eyes, something that made her believe he spoke true.

  Thankfully, the sound of her father’s cart rattling up behind them snapped her out her trance. “I beg your pardon sir, but Mr. Heather will be wanting his fruit. Please excuse me.” She curtsied and stepped away from him.

  With a grin that made her he
art sink, Montgomery stepped back, swept his hat off a head of thick gold hair, and bowed with a flourish. “I shall indeed leave you to your good works, knowing that I may now go to my grave a happy man, for having titillated the fair Widow Becket.” With that, he straightened, put the hat back on his head. His eyes were full of mirth again; the deep-water look had gone.

  “Ah, a roué, indeed!” Kate said and laughed as she reluctantly put one foot on the steps leading to Mr. Heather’s door. “I pity the poor young ladies who will be titillated by you and fall prey to your wicked ways, sir.”

  “Pity them? Or envy them?” he asked with a subtle wink.

  “You’re incorrigible!”

  “Thank you! I am endeavoring very hard to be.”

  Kate laughed as her father rolled to a mere crawl to keep from joining their private conversation. “Thank you for walking with me, sir. Good day!” she said cheerfully.

  Montgomery chuckled and touched his hand to the brim of his hat. “Good day, Mrs. Becket,” he said, and turned smartly to her father. “Good day to you, Mr. Crowley.”

  “My lord.”

  With a jaunty wave, Lord Montgomery started back the direction he’d come, striding long and whistling a cheerful little tune.

  Kate was still swimming in a pool of desire, and with a smile that would not possibly fade, she walked up the steps to knock on Mr. Heather’s door.

  He adored her. He wanted her for his very own, and no one else would do.

  As Darien walked down that street, he thought that now she had at last divested herself of those wretched widow’s weeds (and hadn’t she looked exceedingly lovely today in that brilliant gold?), he could feel his desire more keenly—it could not be avoided or evaded.

  How he had come to this state of wanting, he could not really say. For years, he’d been content to be the man about town, flirting with debutantes, engaging in trysts with ladies who’d married money rather than husbands, and frequenting the gentlemen’s clubs where all sorts of lecherous games might be arranged. He had enjoyed his reputation of being a wealthy, incorrigible bachelor.

  But then his sister Anne had married, and Darien found himself thinking about life.

  The more he thought on it, the more he began to realize how weary he was growing of the ton’s clubs and salons, how the sameness of elite society was weighing on him. Nothing ever seemed to change—the endless round of parties and routs, the endless talk of who was having an adulterous affair with whom, or who was just out, or who had gained a fortune, and who had lost one.

  Darien crossed the street, his stride determined. He wanted more.

  He had, in the last two or three years, since passing the age of thirty, begun to feel a persistent urge to settle down with a woman, to start a family. Anne seemed quite happy with the state of matrimony and was already expecting her second child. Darien wanted what Anne had, that happiness that comes without thought or effort, that just seems to naturally occur when one’s heart is held by another.

  Unfortunately, he was not very impressed with the current crop of debutantes and other marriageable women of the ton. As a group, they were uninteresting. They seemed to know nothing of the world outside their salons, and worse, did not seem to care.

  But Kate Becket . . . now there was a woman who had snatched his imagination and run away with it from almost the moment she had first appeared in Mayfair. She was very pretty and her ripe figure far more attractive to him than the slender and pale debutantes. She was articulate and possessed an uncommon wit. Their banter and exchanges at Sunday services and on the street never failed to intrigue him. He would invariably walk away from those encounters with the intense feeling that there was a living, breathing woman full of passion beneath all that black bombazine, and the man in him ached to touch her.

  Certainly that long-ago Christmas kiss had fanned his imagination on that front—he’d never been able to forget it, and many was the night he’d lain in bed, reliving it, feeling her body in his arms, pressed against him, her lips, softly yielding, beneath his.

  But while Kate Becket might have suffered a lapse in judgment that night, aided by a gin-soaked punch, she was not, as a whole, the sort of woman to be drawn in by the usual, empty flirtations men used to seduce. On the contrary, she was far too clever for it. She had pegged him a roué, and a roué he was—he’d not deny it. But a roué, a rake, could be reformed, could direct all of his attentions on the one woman he might love.

  That meant, of course, that Darien would have to redouble his efforts to woo her, for she was a tough nut—too resilient to his usual charms, and frankly, deserving of something far better than a mere smile and a crook of the finger.

  Fortunately, Darien thought, as he strode down the street to his waiting carriage, he relished the challenge.

  Chapter Three

  Emily Forsythe, who had just turned eighteen years of age, was now officially out by virtue of having been presented at court and having made her debut at a magnificent debutante’s ball just one month ago. Now that the coming out was over, she could turn her attention to marriage.

  One bright Sunday morning, she wrote the names of the three men whom she would consider marrying, in order of preference: Lord Montgomery (a bit long in the tooth at two and thirty, but at forty thousand pounds a year, she didn’t mind); Lord Bastian (hardly as old as her, and rather undisciplined, but at thirty thousand pounds a year, worth the effort); and Lord Dillingham (perfectly suited to her in terms of age and temperament, but rumor had it that after some disastrous investment, he now had only twenty thousand pounds a year).

  Emily studied the names. She intended to have an offer from one of them by the peak of the season, preferably at the Charity Auction Ball, an affair Lady Southbridge hosted each year to benefit the local orphanage. Emily had a lovely fantasy of being offered for in front of hundreds of the ton’s most elite members. She’d be wearing her court dress, of course, but with new gloves and slippers, and when the lucky gentleman made the offer, a round of applause and cheering would go up, and perhaps her friends would toss flowers from their hair to her feet as Montgomery (or Bastian or Dillingham) swept her in his arms in a mad moment of public affection.

  With that happy image playing in her mind’s eye, Emily put aside her pen and drew on her Sunday gloves, found her reticule, and marched out of her room to join her family for church services and the spring social immediately following. She was not the sort to ever miss an opportunity to further her cause, and as two of the gentlemen in question regularly attended church, she counted it as one of her better opportunities.

  When they arrived at the church, Emily’s parents and older brother took some time to greet the many friends and neighbors who had gathered on the church steps this brilliant spring morning. As Emily impatiently waited for her parents, her eyes scanned the crowd; she spotted Montgomery off to one side, speaking with the last vicar’s widow.

  Interesting. Mrs. Becket had put away her widow’s weeds and was wearing a blue brocade gown that Emily thought conspicuously bright for Sunday services. The widow was laughing at something Montgomery said, her eyes crinkled appealingly at the corners. Emily instantly urged her father in that direction, hoping for the chance to converse with Montgomery, but her father was engaged in a lively conversation with Lord Frederick and would not be budged. Emily could do nothing but stand by dutifully.

  But she could watch intently as Montgomery leaned his head close to the widow and said something that made the woman blush. Blush! Imagine it, a widow blushing like a girl! It was, in Emily’s opinion, unseemly.

  When at last it came time to enter the church, the Forsythe family filed in and occupied the third pew to the right of the pulpit, as was their custom. On the second row to the left of the pulpit, Lord Montgomery had joined his sister and her husband, as was his custom. Emily liked this arrangement—she could watch him in the course of the services. Typically, she alternated between Montgomery and Dillingham, who sat directly before her, but Dillingh
am was in the country this weekend, and Bastian, alas, was apparently a sinner, for he did not attend services with any regularity. That would, of course, change if Emily accepted his offer.

  As the services started, she settled in, one eye trained on Montgomery, the other on the vicar, naturally, lest anyone think she wasn’t completely attentive. But her attention to the vicar soon waned as it became apparent to her that Montgomery was not listening to him, either. She couldn’t be completely certain, but she thought he was watching the widow Becket, who was seated off to one side with her father.

  But why would he be watching her?

  Emily mulled that one over. It wasn’t as if Widow Becket was any sort of match for a viscount! Her beginnings were humble, as Emily understood them, and she was living in the guest house on the vicar’s small estate. Not only that, she was old. Granted, not so old that she required a cane or any such thing, but too old to be contemplating marriage again.

  Yet at the conclusion of the insufferably long service, Emily was positively convinced that Montgomery had gazed at Mrs. Becket the entire service. Well, mostly convinced—she supposed it was possible that he’d been gazing at the cross above her head, divining some sort of inspiration.

  Nevertheless, the possibility troubled her.

  At last, the congregation filed out the church and tromped around through the courtyard, across the cemetery, to the old stables converted to meeting rooms where the spring social would be held. Emily escaped her parents, and her brother, who wandered off to join other young men that Emily had no use for, and made her way to sit beside Miss Tabitha Townsend, who, like her, had come out just this season. Emily and Tabitha had known each other since they were girls.

  “Have you received an invitation to the May Day Ball?” Tabitha asked breathlessly once the two young women had exchanged pleasantries.

  A ridiculous question. Of course she’d been invited. “Of course.”

  “What do you intend to wear?” Tabitha asked anxiously.