Chapter Fifteen #5
“Summer colds are the worst kind.” He adjusted her shawl for the third time. “And these shoes—are they comfortable? You shouldn’t strain your feet.”
“Adrian, we are dining, not marching across the moors.”
“Still, comfort is paramount.” He knelt to examine her slippers with absurd gravity.
“You are being ridiculous.”
“I am being attentive.”
“You’re being—” She broke off with a gasp as he pressed a kiss to her ankle, then her calf, his hands sliding higher beneath her skirts.
“Adrian! We shall be late!”
“Then we shall be late.” His mouth moved higher still. “I must ensure you are properly relaxed before social exertion. Physician’s orders.”
“Mr Peterson said nothing about—oh!” She gripped his shoulders as he found a particularly sensitive spot. “This is not medical treatment!”
“Isn’t it? Your pulse is improved, your colour excellent—clearly beneficial.” His eyes gleamed wickedly. “I prescribe continuation.”
What followed made them very late indeed, and required Sarah to redo Marianne’s hair entirely while Adrian looked on with smug satisfaction.
The Ashford dinner was a small affair—just the immediate family and a few close friends. Lord Timothy was there, of course, placed strategically far from Catherine at the table, though their eyes met constantly across the distance.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Lady Ashford said warmly to Marianne. “A baby! How delightful!”
“How did you—” Marianne began, then turned to Adrian, narrowing her eyes. “You told them?”
“I may have mentioned it. To a few who needed to know.”
“He announced it at White’s,” Lord Ashford said with a grin. “Stood up in the card room and declared he was to be a father.”
“Adrian!”
“I was excited.”
“You were drunk,” Lord Ashford corrected. “Three brandies in an hour.”
“I was celebrating.”
The dinner conversation flowed pleasantly, with only minimal threatening looks from Adrian when Lord Timothy spoke to Catherine. It wasn’t until afterwards, when the ladies withdrew, that things became interesting.
***
Marianne had stepped onto the terrace for air when she heard voices from the garden below. Catherine and Lord Timothy, having somehow escaped their respective groups.
Below, in the garden illuminated by paper lanterns that swayed gently in the breeze, she heard voices—soft, urgent, unmistakably private.
She recognised Catherine’s light tones immediately, followed by Lord Timothy’s deeper register.
They were partially hidden by a trellis of climbing jasmine, though Marianne could see their silhouettes clearly enough in the moonlight.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Catherine murmured, though her tone lacked conviction. “If someone were to see us unchaperoned—”
“I know it’s improper,” Timothy said, his voice low, urgent. “But I had to speak with you privately. Constant supervision makes honesty nearly impossible.” He hesitated. “May I call you Catherine? Here, where there are no titles between us?”
“You already have been,” she said softly. “In your mind, if not aloud. I can see it in your eyes when you say ‘Lady Catherine’—as if your heart rebels.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“The same way you know what I think. We are dreadfully transparent, I fear.”
“Entirely,” he admitted, stepping closer. “Which is why I must speak before your brother appears and murders me for my presumption—or before I lose the courage the port lent me.”
“He won’t murder you,” Catherine said with a hint of amusement. “Maim, perhaps. Challenge you to a duel, certainly. But murder? That would cause far too much paperwork.”
Despite the humour, his next words came weighted with sincerity.
“Catherine, I am perfectly aware that we’ve only known each other a sennight.
I know it’s too soon by any reasonable measure, improperly fast by society’s standards, and probably inadvisable by every metric of sense and propriety.
” He paused, and Marianne could see him running his hand through his auburn hair in that nervous gesture she’d noticed at dinner.
“But I also know that I’ve spent every moment since we met thinking about you.
About your laugh when you discovered we’d both attempted to calculate the load-bearing capacity of the Egyptian Hall’s ceiling.
About your brilliant mind that sees poetry in mathematics and mathematics in poetry.
About the way you hold your pencil when you sketch, as if it’s an extension of your very soul. ”
“Timothy—” Catherine’s voice was breathless, warning.
“Please—let me finish before I lose my nerve.” He took another step forward. “I’ve always been told that love grows slowly, like a garden. But what I feel for you—it’s not a garden. It’s a lightning strike. Sudden. Brilliant. Unmistakable.”
Marianne pressed a hand to her lips. She should cough or step forward, should make her presence known—but she couldn’t move. The raw sincerity of the moment held her fast.
“I’m falling in love with you,” Timothy said, voice trembling slightly.
“No—I’ve fallen. Entirely, irrevocably, and likely disastrously.
I think I began the moment you corrected my calculation about the Pantheon’s dome, when you explained why my mathematics were sound but my historical assumptions were flawed. ”
Catherine made a small, helpless sound—half laugh, half sob. “Timothy, you impossible man.”
“Is it impossible? Because from where I stand, it seems inevitable.”
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the fountain’s gentle murmur and the distant sound of laughter from the house. Then Catherine spoke, her voice clear and certain.
“I fell in love with you the moment we started speaking of architecture at Lady Weatherby’s ball,” she admitted.
“When you understood why the proportions mattered, why the mathematics of beauty was important. When you didn’t look at me with pity or curiosity about my past, but with genuine interest in my thoughts. ”
“Catherine—”
“I’ve spent five years believing I was broken,” she went on, words spilling like water from a breached dam. “That the girl who could love, and be loved, died in that accident. But when you look at me, I do not feel broken. I feel… possible.”
“You are so much more than possible,” Timothy said fervently. “You are extraordinary.”
“I am also improper,” Catherine said abruptly, with new-found resolve. “For I find I cannot wait another moment to—”
Whatever she meant to say was lost in a soft gasp and the unmistakable reality of a kiss. Not a chaste brush that might be excused, but a true, unguarded kiss—brief, certainly, yet brimming with all they had not dared to say.
For ten heartbeats, the garden held its breath.
Then the world exploded.
“WHAT IN THE BLAZING HELL IS HAPPENING HERE?”
Adrian’s roar could have carried to Scotland. He stood framed in the garden door like judgment itself, evening coat discarded, fury carving hard planes into his face. The lanterns seemed to sway in sympathy.
Catherine and Timothy sprang apart as if struck by lightning. Catherine’s hand flew to her lips; Timothy stepped forward, as though to shield her.
“Your Grace, I can explain—” Timothy began, his voice admirably steady despite the fact that the duke facing him looked entirely capable of murder.
“Explain?” Adrian’s voice climbed yet higher. “Explain?” He descended the steps with the controlled violence of a predator, his slight limp more pronounced for his agitation. “You dare—dare—to lay hands upon my sister in a dark garden, unchaperoned, as if she were some common—”
“Adrian, stop!” Catherine moved between them, chin lifted in glorious defiance. “Before you say something unforgivable, you should know—I kissed him.”
Adrian halted, wrong-footed. “You—what?”
“I kissed him,” she repeated, steadier now. “He was being perfectly honourable—making a declaration that would make Byron weep—and I could not wait. I seized his lapels and kissed him. So if there is to be murder for impropriety, it ought to be mine.”
Adrian opened and closed his mouth like a landed fish. The sight might have been comic if danger did not still crackle in the air.
Marianne decided intervention was required before someone—most likely poor Timothy—ended up becoming an unfortunate addition to Lady Ashford’s prized roses.
“How romantic,” she said, descending the steps with unhurried grace. “Your first kiss, Catherine. Was it everything the novels promise?”
Three heads whipped towards her.
“How long have you been there?” Catherine demanded, colouring furiously.
“Long enough to hear Lord Timothy’s declaration,” Marianne said mildly. “Byron could hardly have bettered it—though he would have used more syllables and far more doom.”
“Marianne!” Adrian seized the opportunity to redirect his outrage. “You cannot be condoning this—this wanton display of—”
“—of affection between two people who clearly care for one another?” She set a calming hand upon his rigid arm. “Hardly the scandal of the century, darling. We have seen worse at Vauxhall on a Tuesday.”
“That is different! Those people are not—”
“Not your sister?” Her tone dropped. “Adrian, recall a certain conservatory? Cut glass gleaming while you pressed me rather firmly against the windows?”
He flushed. “That was different.”
“How, precisely?”
“Because it was us!” The words burst out—and then he heard himself and faltered. “Because—because we were—I mean to say—”
“Yes?” Marianne prompted, all gentle mischief. “Do explain how our improprieties were more acceptable.”
“They were not improprieties, they were—” He raked a hand through his hair, destroying its careful order. “I do not know! They were.”
“A persuasive argument,” Catherine said drily. “I especially admired the precedent.”
“Do not be clever with me, Catherine Elizabeth Blackwell.”
“Would you prefer I be stupid? Though that ship has sailed, considering I have just been caught kissing a man in a garden.”
Timothy, wisely silent until now, stepped forward. “Your Grace, if I might—”