Chapter Twenty-Four
“—looking for you, Your Grace.”
The voice slowly penetrated the dense fog of Gerrit’s concentration, and he looked up from the ammonite—which filled one entire table in the tent—to find Jessop, his assistant, hovering on the threshold to the tent, his forehead deeply furrowed.
“What was that, Jessop?” Gerrit said, wincing as he stood up and straightened his back. He should have been sitting instead of bending over, but he often forgot about things like posture when his mind was engaged.
“The duchess is here, Your Grace.”
“My mother has returned?” he blurted, his pulse racing. And not in a good way.
Jessop cleared his throat and glanced away, as if embarrassed. “Er, not the dowager, but your wife.”
Gerrit felt like an idiot. He opened his mouth to ask what she wanted and luckily realized that would only make him look like a bigger idiot. Instead, he strode out of the tent.
Kathryn’s gelding, Robin, was grazing not far from Centurion but he could not see her. “Where is she?”
“She is at the dig, Your Grace.”
Gerrit strode toward the well-trodden path that led to the terraced hillside everyone referred to as the dig.
He spotted Kathyrn immediately, her emerald riding habit vivid against the dun background. She was talking to Leopold Scott and Albert Everett, both junior lecturers at Oxford who’d spent several months here for the last two summers.
Albert, the more sociable of the two, was gesturing with his arms and whatever he said made Kathryn laugh.
Jealousy boiled in his belly at the younger man’s apparent ease when it came to chatting with women. Gerrit had never made a woman laugh—at least not intentionally.
By the time he reached the trio he was seething, more at his own consuming jealousy than anything else.
“You should have told me you were coming today, Your Grace.”
Kathryn, who’d been speaking, stopped at his harsh announcement, her pleasant smile fading at whatever she saw on his face. “Hello, Dulverton.”
“I would have arranged a tour for you,” he said, biting back the urge to tell Scott and Everett to sod off and get on with their bloody work.
“You needn’t put yourself out. Alby was just showing me what he was working on.”
“Alby?” he repeated, probably more loudly than necessary.
Everett cleared his throat. “Er, yes, Your Grace. Um, Her Grace and I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted several years ago at a house party,” he said, reminding Gerrit that Albert Everett was the younger son of Viscount Everett.
A house party? Although Gerrit had never actually been to one, he knew country house parties were, if not outright orgies, certainly notorious for the amount of bed hopping that occurred. Had Everett fucked Kathryn?
You are allowing your jealousy to run away with your sense. Kathryn already told you she’s had only one lover.
Gerrit was stunned that he heard the tiny voice over the sudden roaring in his head.
“Er, Your Grace? Is aught amiss?” Everett asked, anxiously peering up at Gerrit.
Gerrit’s eyes slid from Everett to his wife. “A house party,” he repeated, sounding demented to his own ears.
“Chatham’s house party,” Kathryn said, cutting him an odd look. “They host one every summer.”
Gerrit grunted, his gaze moving back to Everett. The man was handsome in that golden-haired, blue-eyed vapid sort of way that women seemed to like.
Did Kathryn admire such a man?
Everett swallowed, his cheeks turning darker the longer Gerrit stared.
“Oh, those are fascinating,” Kathryn said.
Gerrit wrenched his gaze off Everett and saw that his wife was pointing at the partially excavated piece that Mr. Scott had been working on, prior to fraternizing with Gerrit’s wife.
Kathryn looked up at Gerrit, her green eyes especially vivid today. “They are like the ones you have in those shadowboxes, but enormous.”
He felt a twinge of pleasure at her observation. “People have been unearthing ammonites for centuries in this part of England, but the size of this particular specimen is remarkable.”
“His Grace has donated spectacular samples to dozens of museums both here and abroad,” Everett said, making Gerrit feel a twinge of guilt for wanting to thrash him only moments earlier.
“That is very generous of you,” Kathryn said.
It was tempting to bask in her approval, but…
“Specimens of such size and clarity should be available to the masses,” he said. “It would be wrong to hide them away in a private collection or profit by selling them.” Good God, he sounded like a pompous arse!
“I saw them for sale in Lyme Regis in a shop operated by a woman who—”
Mr. Scott guffawed. “Ah, you mean Mary Anning. She’s something of a moneygrubbing nutter who—”
“Miss Anning happens to be one of the foremost authorities on marine fossils in Britain. I daresay she has forgotten more about the specimens found in this part of the country than most of us will ever know,” Gerrit said coolly.
Both men’s jaws sagged at Gerrit’s rebuke, and Kathryn’s lips curled up. No doubt she viewed Gerrit’s scolding as rude. Too bad.
“As for Miss Anning selling what she finds,” Gerrit went on, “she does so to support not only herself, but also her widowed mother. Scarcely moneygrubbing behavior.”
Mr. Scott’s face was bright scarlet. “Er, just so, Your Grace.”
Kathryn set her hand on Gerrit’s arm. “Will you show me what you have been working on, husband?”
A muscle in Gerrit’s eyelid twitched at the word husband. Her lips were curled up slightly at the corners and she was regarding him with the oddest look. A look that made his collar feel too tight.
“Er, yes,” he stammered, sounding like an idiot. He cleared his throat. “This way.”
***
As Katie followed Dulverton, she pondered his reaction to her visit. Although he had glared at poor Alby and Mr. Scott with a rather violent glint in his pale gaze, she did not think he was displeased that she had paid a visit to his dig.
Katie’s foot slipped as they ascended the terraced slope.
“Allow me,” Dulverton said, taking her elbow and slowing his pace to help her up the hill.
“Thank you,” she said, flustered by the slight touch. “I wouldn’t be so clumsy if I did not have this heavy skirt.”
“Mind your step,” he said, leading her around a deep depression and stopping before a large, level area.
“Oh, my,” she exclaimed when she realized there was a pattern to what had been unearthed. “What is that?”
“It is a belemnite, a rather large one.”
Katie dropped to her haunches to have a closer look and reached out a hand before stopping and glancing up. “May I touch it?”
“You won’t hurt it.”
She lightly traced a finger along one of many long swirling ribbons. “It looks a bit like a squid’s tentacle.” She squinted. “But… are those hooks at the end?”
“That is very observant of you. Yes, they are hooks. And there is likely some relation between this animal and the squid swimming in the ocean today.”
Katie preened at his praise and then wanted to slap herself. Why did she always have to be so desperate?
She pushed away the unhappy thought and instead looked from the belemnite to the hillside. “Is that slide recent?”
“Yes, this spring.”
Katie saw three young men and one woman working together in an area, all four garbed more simply. “They work for you, too?”
“Correct.” She thought that was all he would say, but then he went on. “They are from town and spend much of the year fossil hunting along the shore. I pay them during the summer months to work for me, and they are allowed to sell anything they find that I do not donate or keep.”
“That is generous of you.”
He shrugged.
She gestured to the huge fossil. “Is it difficult to dig these out?”
“No, it just takes time and patience.”
“I would like to help,” she said, getting to her feet and brushing off her habit.
His eyes widened comically.
“Why do you look so thunderstruck?” she asked, more amused than annoyed.
“I never imagined you would be interested in such a thing.”
“Why not?”
He seemed to undergo some sort of internal struggle and then gestured to her habit and his own dusty clothing. “It is dirty work.”
“Believe it or not, I used to love being out-of-doors and climbing trees and looking for birds’ nests, exploring, and even hunting fossils. Not that we ever found much of anything.”
“We?”
“My brother and I. Doddy and I spent most of every day together until I was sixteen. And when he was off with the curate taking lessons I wandered my father’s estate by myself.” Katie pulled a face. “So much so that my mother despaired of me.”
“Why?”
“She said I was more animal than female.” She smiled wryly. “Looking back, I cannot gainsay that.”
“What happened when you were sixteen?” he asked.
“Everything changed when my sister Phoebe married. My brother went off to school and my mother sent me to my aunt to make me into a lady.”
His brow furrowed. “What did that entail?”
“Staying clean, dressing properly at all times. And if I did go outside, I was only allowed to wander in the confines of the garden with a hat and gloves and parasol and—” Katie broke off and glanced away from his penetrating gaze.
“And I became a lady,” she finished softly.
Being a lady was something she had always believed she’d wanted.
But then she had discovered the price of fine gowns and fancy parties.
She forced her gaze back to his and saw that he looked uncomfortable and bemused. Doubtless it was a bit too much personal information for such a private man, so she returned to the point. “I would like hunting for fossils. At least—” She bit her lip.
“At least?” he prodded.
“I would like to do so here, unless you think I might ruin something. I can always go where everyone else goes to hunt for them.”
“You mean the shore?”
Katie nodded. “Miss Anning offered to take me with her one morning if I cared to go. I—I talked to her the day I went into Lyme Regis with you.” Katie’s cheeks heated at the memory of that day, and she could see by the sudden swelling of his pupils that he was remembering too.