Regency: Courtship And Candlelight: One Final Season. Elizabeth Beacon

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ gainsay you when the silly wench is obviously in need of a husband.’

      ‘And you think I’m incapable of thinking up such a simple scheme myself, Selene? I’m almost insulted,’ Bestholme responded in that cold, indifferent voice Kate now knew was not an affectation, but reflected his true self.

      ‘You’re still being dunned and always begging so-called loans off me to pay off your endless debts, so you evidently don’t have the nerve to carry it out.’

      ‘Whereas you have the nerve and not the brains?’

      ‘Think so if you dare,’ Lady Tedinton hissed and Kate shuddered at the casual evil of it all.

      ‘I do dare, but that’s why you keep coming back to me, isn’t it?’ Bestholme demanded and there was the sound of a brief scuffle and then a horribly needy moan as Lady Tedinton demonstrated the truth of what he said.

      ‘Take me now,’ she growled.

      ‘No, it’s too risky,’ her lover argued and gave a low chuckle that made Kate shiver at the cold lustiness of their loathsome need for each other, ‘and I like you desperate, Selene. By the time Tedinton has pawed you all the way home and tried to mount you like a man, you’ll be glad to meet me in that very convenient summerhouse he’s had built in the garden for us, if he only knew it, and feel a real man between your legs again at last.’

      ‘I hate you,’ she informed him throatily and there was another of those horrible interludes as Kate heard them kiss noisily and even caught the sound of fine cloth tearing as they went at each other like beasts.

      ‘I like the way you hate. Now tidy yourself up, then get back to the ballroom and persuade that old fool to take you home early. I’ll go the other way and come back through the garden, so nobody will know you were with me. It’s only the fact I’m supposed to be courting a fortune that keeps my creditors off my back as it is, so who knows what they might do if they found out about you, my lovely doxy?’

      ‘Foreclose?’ Lady Tedinton asked as if discussing the weather and Kate felt sickened at the sound of her lover’s flat-handed slap, presumably to somewhere that didn’t show. ‘I could come to you in the Fleet,’ she offered throatily, as if violence made her more eager and Kate wondered if she might disgrace herself and Edmund by actually being sick, then considered the consequences and managed to control her revulsion after all.

      ‘No, try informing on me to get me sent there and you’ll rapidly discover what a mistake you’ve made. Just behave yourself and go on keeping that senile old idiot sweet, then be where I told you to be by dawn, Selene, or I’ll take my pleasure elsewhere. There are plenty of younger and more obliging mistresses than you who can be had for a lot less trouble than you cause me,’ Bestholme warned carelessly.

      ‘I’ll be there,’ Selene Tedinton replied urgently.

      ‘I know,’ her repulsive lover drawled huskily and Kate heard his footsteps recede while the light faded as he ungallantly took his candle away, leaving his mistress still in the dark.

      A few moments later there was the swirl of silk and satin and an exasperated curse, then softer footsteps receded towards the ballroom until all seemed silent and empty in the room beyond this airless office they’d been trapped in.

       Chapter Eight

      ‘Have they really gone?’ Kate whispered as quietly as anyone could whilst making a sound at all.

      ‘I hope so, since you’re restless as a cat and nowhere near as silent,’ Edmund grumbled back.

      ‘I was quiet as a mouse and resent your aspersions, my lord,’ she informed him with as much dignity as a lady could assemble whilst shut in this cupboard of a room with the unbelievably infuriating Viscount Shuttleworth and forced to listen to murder and her own forced marriage being planned outside it.

      ‘Then for heaven’s sake do it softly for a change.’

      Kate stamped a soft-soled foot on the runner and hoped Bestholme really had left and so wouldn’t hear the faint thump it made against the oak floor underneath. If being angry with Edmund for very little reason helped keep her from falling into hysterics over what she’d just overheard, then Kate was all for it.

      ‘Virago,’ he chided impatiently.

      ‘Tyrant,’ she flashed back at him.

      ‘Come on, I’ve had enough of lurking in the dark like a thief,’ he growled in an exasperated masculine rumble and towed her as abruptly out of their hiding place as he’d hauled her into it in the first place.

      ‘Just as well they really have gone,’ Kate carped even as she clung to his hand like a lifeline. ‘We’d have been in a fine pickle if he’d stayed here in order to give her a head start for the ballroom.’

      ‘He’s not that much of a gentleman and we’re in a fine pickle anyway,’ he told her seriously.

      Thinking back over the last however long they’d now been away from the ballroom and propriety, Kate could only agree with him. ‘How are we going to stop them?’ she asked shakily.

      ‘We aren’t.’

      ‘Then you’re prepared to let that harpy and her disgusting paramour murder her husband without even lifting a finger to stop her?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then what are we going to do?’

      ‘We are going to do nothing. When you cease your incessant nagging and let me think, I dare say I will eventually find a way to stop them without a scandal.’

      ‘And I just sit about simpering while you stamp about brooding and proving what a clever gentleman you are?’

      ‘You’re a single female with a reputation to consider.’

      ‘Bah! If I were a married woman without any shreds of one left to me, you’d still find a way of excluding me,’ she fired back at him, struggling to free her hand from his at last, although it felt very comfortable in the misogynistic, contrary man’s hold and part of her really didn’t want to stand alone after such an evening.

      ‘Yes, I would,’ he told her implacably.

      ‘Why? I’m not a fool or a hysterical female given to fainting and die-away airs.’

      ‘No, just because you’re you,’ he told her rather obscurely, ‘and you’ll be busy,’ he added by way of a diversion.

      ‘Busy?’

      ‘Planning our wedding,’ he said and Kate felt the odd sense of detachment she’d been suffering ever since he’d stopped kissing her finally threaten to overwhelm her.

      ‘I thought you just said “our wedding”,’ she said faintly.

      ‘I did.’

      ‘But how can I do that when we aren’t going to be married, Edmund?’

      ‘Because we are, Kate.’

      ‘Solely because you just СКАЧАТЬ