Chapter Five
The Earl of Sutton’s library was already occupied when Katie, Hy, and Chatham followed their host into the massive room.
Chatham paused just inside the door, his hand resting on Hy’s lower back, his brows drawn down as he looked from Letty Grayson and her mother, Mrs. Grayson, to Baron Angus Fowler.
“What are you doing here, Fowler?” Chatham asked his closest friend, who currently resembled a hulking red-haired thundercloud.
The big Scot glared at Letty before turning his scathing green gaze to Katie. “Why don’t you ask your sister-in-law, Chatham?”
Chatham’s frown deepened at Fowler’s hostile retort and looked like he wanted to rebuke his friend, but Hy spoke first.
“What is this about, Katie?”
Katie looked from Letty—whose pale face was pinched with misery—to a very red-eyed Mrs. Grayson, who was anxiously plucking at her handkerchief, and then back to Fowler, who fixed her with a murderous glare. It did not take a genius to understand what must have transpired.
Katie opened her mouth but was unable to find any words.
Thankfully, the Earl of Sutton spoke, “I’m afraid there is no way to make this situation any more palatable.” He looked from Letty to Katie, his lips twisting with disgust. “But you might as well sit, Your Graces, as this is likely to take a while and who knows when Dulverton—”
The door flew open and the man in question strode into the room, his eerie, livid eyes flickering from person to person, like bolts of lightning, lingering longest on Katie before he gave their host his attention.
“I had hoped to speak to, er—” He broke off and scowled at Katie. “What is your name?”
“Allow me to present Lady Kathryn Bellamy,” Sutton said coolly.
“Bellamy?” Dulverton repeated, his nostrils flaring as revulsion flickered across his rough-hewn features. He snorted, but there was no amusement in the sound. “Addiscombe’s daughter.” The words were flat and emotionless, like a judge delivering a sentence.
Katie gritted her teeth at his superior, contemptuous gaze. It wasn’t the first time she’d been judged by her father’s tattered reputation, and it would not be the last. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“She is your sister-in-law, Chatham?” Dulverton asked in the same insolent tone.
“She is,” Chatham said icily.
“Where are her parents, the Earl and Countess of Addiscombe?” Dulverton barked, either not recognizing or not caring that he was antagonizing most of the occupants in the room.
“Lady Kathryn lives with us and has done for five years,” Chatham said.
Katie was amazed that her brother-in-law could claim her without cursing her name.
“Her parents are dead?” Dulverton asked.
“Both are alive, but my wife and I stand as guardians to Lady Kathryn.”
Dulverton’s face settled into what was evidently his habitual superior scowl. He gestured toward Fowler and the Graysons. “What are you three doing here?”
Fowler, already seething, seemed to double in size. “I am here because this—this girl,” he narrowed his eyes at Letty, “chose to make a mockery of me in the garden.” His blazing green gaze slid to Katie. “And I know exactly whose idea this asinine game was.”
“Game?” Dulverton turned from Fowler to Katie, regarding her with such frigid intensity that she actually shivered. His eyes were undeniably beautiful, but they looked inhuman. They also exerted an almost tangible pressure on her, like slabs of flagstone pressing against her chest.
“It is all my fault,” she said. “The whole thing was my idea.”
“I do not understand. What thing?” Dulverton demanded.
Katie looked from face-to-face, hoping for…
something. Dulverton managed to look conceited and bewildered at the same time; Hy’s expression was unreadable; Chatham’s disappointed; the Earl of Sutton disgusted; Mrs. Grayson terrified; Fowler enraged; and Letty alternately accusatory and sick with self-loathing.
There was not a friendly face in the room.
Katie forced herself to meet Dulverton’s impatient, inquisitorial gaze. “We were playing a game.” Her voice broke and she had to clear her throat twice before she could speak. “A kissing game.”
***
Gerrit’s temples pounded.
A kissing game.
The words burned through the fog of confusion, and he stared at the red-headed seductress—Lady Kathryn, he reminded himself—and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Damnation!” Fowler bellowed, causing not only Gerrit, but everyone else in the room, to startle.
“It was a bloody game about kissing, Dulverton.” The massive baron sprang up from his chair and stalked across the room, not stopping until he was towering over Lady Kathryn.
“You have finally done it, haven’t you?” he snarled.
Lady Kathryn, to her credit, did not flinch from the raging giant. Only her hands, clenched and white-knuckled, betrayed her agitation. “I am sorry, Angus.”
“You’re sorry?” Fowler bellowed.
This time the girl did flinch.
“Lower your voice, Fowler,” Gerrit warned as he eased his body between the furious peer and the woman who was likely going to be his wife.
Fowler’s eyes threw sparks. “Who the hell do you think you are, Dulverton?”
“You are scaring Lady Kathryn,” Gerrit said in a low voice.
Fowler gave an almost hysterical laugh. “Scaring her? Scaring her?”
“You are in a gentleman’s library, Fowler,” the Duchess of Chatham said, her quiet voice more effective than Fowler’s shouting. “Not on the deck of one of your ships.”
Fowler glared at the duchess and opened his mouth, no doubt to issue a thundering rejoinder, but the Duke of Chatham interceded. “Have done, Angus. Now is not the time.”
The baron shook his head. “Fine. I have had enough of this. I will leave you to deal with her, Chatham.” He cut Lady Kathryn a scathing look and then turned toward the two women cowering on the settee. “I will call upon you and Miss Grayson tomorrow, Mrs. Grayson.”
The older woman nodded while the younger one—her daughter, Gerrit presumed—lowered her gaze, her face turning a splotchy red.
Without another word the baron strode from the room.
The door had scarcely banged shut behind Fowler when Mrs. and Miss Grayson leapt to their feet. “If you would excuse us,” Mrs. Grayson whispered, ushering her daughter toward the door.
“Allow me, madam,” the Earl of Sutton said, already headed in that direction. He looked from Gerrit to the Duke of Chatham. “I will give the four of you some privacy while I show these ladies to their carriage.”
This time, the door closed without a sound.
Gerrit turned to Lady Kathryn. “A kissing game? And yet I do not remember agreeing to play, My Lady.”
The girl opened her mouth, but it was Chatham who spoke. “I think an evening to calm our frayed tempers and take stock would be beneficial at this point, Dulverton. If you will pay a visit—"
“I want some answers, Chatham, and I want them now.” Gerrit glowered at the other man who glowered right back.
The duchess set a staying hand on her husband’s arm and Chatham stood down.
Gerrit shifted his attention from the duke to his wife, who—with her rail-thin body, plain face, and bright orange hair—looked nothing at all like her sister. “Describe this game.”
Chatham again bristled but the duchess said, “My sister and her friends were playing a game that involved kissing men on a list.” Although her voice was emotionless, two spots of color appeared on her cheeks.
It was not the first time Gerrit had found himself the butt of other people’s jokes, but it had not happened in years. He did not like the feeling any more now than he had when he’d been a powerless boy at school.
“What list?”
The duchess’s mouth tightened as she turned to her sister. “You drew up the list?”
Lady Kathryn gave the duchess a look of pure misery. “Yes.”
“Each man was, I presume, worth some point value?” the duchess persisted.
“Good Lord, Hy!” Lady Kathryn burst out, her cheeks the color of ripe cherries.
The two women engaged in a silent glaring match.
Evidently the duchess won because Lady Kathryn’s shapely lips twisted unhappily, and she turned back to Gerrit.
“Every man was worth a certain point value. The person who collected the most points won.”
“Won what?” Gerrit demanded. “A husband?”
Her green eyes rounded with shock. “No! That was not our plan, at all. Truly,” she added at his look of scathing disbelief. “I never imagined any of us would be—”
“What was the prize?” Gerrit persisted, as if that somehow mattered.
“There was no prize,” Lady Kathryn insisted, staring at her feet.
She had destroyed his carefully contrived plans for the future for nothing more than a lark? Why did that fact seem to make this asinine game all the more insulting?
Gerrit struggled with the fury that threatened to undo him. Only the memory of Fowler’s enraged, ill-mannered display kept his own temper in check.
Chatham cleared his throat. “There is no denying that Lady Kathryn’s behavior tonight has been… lacking.” He looked from his sister-in-law to Gerrit, his face hardening. “But Sutton assured me that—according to more than one witness—you were not an unwilling participant when it came to kissing.”
Gerrit’s face heated, and he would have given anything to be able to throw Chatham’s words back in his face.
But the other man was right. Although Gerrit had been startled for a few seconds after she’d first locked her lips with his, he’d never made any attempt to step away from her.
Instead, he’d quickly conquered his usual abhorrence of a stranger’s touch and had kissed her with more enthusiasm than he had done in years.
Perhaps ever. It had stunned him how quickly kissing—something he had only done with one other woman two decades before—had come back to him.
And then there was the grinding and fondling. Not to mention that he’d lifted her gown up to her knees by the time his uncle had interrupted them. Gerrit could not deny that he would have fucked her right there on that garden bench if they’d not been caught.
His prick gave a happy pulse at the thought.
Realizing the room had gone quiet, he looked up to find three pairs of eyes on him.
“Yes, I am equally to blame,” he admitted gruffly.
Chatham was not appeased by Gerrit’s admission and pressed on. “By tomorrow there will not be a soul among the ton who does not know about this, Dulverton.”
Gerrit nodded, faintly nauseated at the thought of the shame even now attaching to his name. He had spent the last twenty years trying to scrub out the stain his first wife had left on his reputation, and all his efforts had apparently been for naught.
“I will present myself at Chatham House on the morrow,” he said after an unpleasant silence.
Gerrit suddenly recalled the other meeting he had the next day—the one with his uncle and Lady Palmer—and the nausea that had been simmering in his belly swelled.
Tomorrow would truly be a day from Hell. “I will come after noon,” he added.
“Your Grace?”
Gerrit looked up at Lady Kathryn’s voice and met her anxious green eyes. “Yes?”
“There is no need for you to—”
“We will discuss this matter tomorrow,” the duchess said, staring hard at her sister. For the second time that evening the sisters engaged in silent combat.
After a long moment Lady Kathryn scowled at her sister and turned back to Gerrit. “I shall see you tomorrow, Your Grace.”
Why did her words sound more like a threat than a promise?