Chapter Two
Kate blinked, her dark eyes swimming with confusion. “What do you mean, to find you a wife?”
“Exactly that,” Elliot said. “Clearly, Katie, I cannot be trusted to manage the task on my own. Without your guidance, I might well find myself standing at the altar just for the price of a bit of cake.” He made a pacifying gesture with his hands.
“It would be just for the Season, you understand. Two months at most.”
Her mouth dropped open, like a landed fish gasping for breath. “Two months! Elliot—”
“Kate, I truly am desperate. You don’t know what it’s been like. And I thought—well, wouldn’t you like to see London for yourself?”
“Have you gone completely mad? I can’t go to London. What would people say? I’m not a lady!”
“Not by title, perhaps. But you are a gentleman’s daughter.” The daughter of a vicar, a learned man, a country gentleman. Even if she now occupied a small cottage with her widowed mother as a tenant upon the Longthorpe estate.
“I raise sheep, Elliot!” Kate gave a wild wave of her shepherd’s crook, as if to drive the point home. “I spin yarn and dry herbs. I bake, and I do the washing and mending. I’ve never been to the opera or the theatre, and I’ve never worn a ball gown—”
“But you do know how to dance.”
“Country reels!” Kate huffed in exasperation. “What would Devon say?”
“Nothing at all, most likely, given that I intend to tell him I’m bowing to his wishes on the condition that you are allowed the use of his London townhouse for the Season.
He won’t be using it, as he doesn’t intend to be in London for the Season this year.
Says he’s got business to attend to here. ”
Kate gave a little shake of her head, and the end of that dark plait whisked over her shoulder, twitching down over her back.
“Elliot, this is madness. A ridiculous scheme on its face. If you’re determined to undertake such a madcap ruse, surely there must be someone else—anyone else.
” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Drew,” she said decisively. “Drew is in London.”
“In London, yes, but not often out in society. He’s much too busy to bother with the Season.
Once in a very great while he might put in an appearance for breakfast or dinner, but he certainly hasn’t got the time to find me a wife when he hasn’t even managed to scrape together the time to find one of his own.
No,” he said, quite seriously, clasping his hands together in entreaty.
“There’s no one but you. Katie, you’re my dearest friend in all the world.
There’s no one else I can trust like you. And haven’t you wanted to see London?”
She gnawed at her lower lip, her cheeks hollowing with indecision. “Probably I’d embarrass you,” she said as her fingernails worried the wood of her shepherd’s crook.
“Kate, I embarrass myself most of the time. But you have always been a dab hand at reining in the worst of my impulses.” Sensible and practical; a tempering force that had saved him—and his brothers, from time to time—from the nastiest of scrapes they might have otherwise been tempted to leap headfirst into.
“But I haven’t a suitable wardrobe,” she said, with a vague gesture to the worn muslin of her dress.
A little gasp eked out of her mouth as she seemed to realize just how close she had come to agreeing despite herself.
She gave a tiny shake of her head as if to clear it and her stubborn chin firmed.
“I have responsibilities here—and for God’s sake, Elliot, my mother—”
“Of course she must come with us,” he said.
“You can’t travel alone with me, and you must have a chaperone.
Who better than your mother? No one could say anything was in the least untoward; not with your own mother with us.
” Elliot coughed into his fist. “You’ll both stay at Devon’s townhouse, and I shall stay at my own lodgings, naturally. ”
Her dark eyes narrowed as she uttered caustically, “Oh, naturally.”
“Probably Devon hasn’t thought to have me banned from the London house as it is, after all, in London. But you’ll have a proper place to stay, and Mrs. Norris—you remember Mrs. Norris?” It had been an age since she’d been housekeeper here at Longthorpe Manor. Ten years at least, if not more.
“Of course I remember Mrs. Norris,” Kate said. “She always had a peppermint stick for me on her market days.”
“Really? I had thought she saved those just for me.” And here he had always thought he’d been Mrs. Norris’ favorite.
It was rather a humbling thing to learn.
“She’s Devon’s housekeeper in London,” he said.
“She nearly resigned her position years ago. Said the cold out here in the countryside grew too painful for her joints, and Longthorpe Manor is dreadfully drafty, you know. But Devon convinced her to stay on at the London house instead, where the weather is milder. She’ll see you properly taken care of.
And as for the wardrobe—I’ll pay for it. ”
Kate drew in a shocked breath. “You couldn’t! What would people say?”
“Who is going to know?” Elliot splayed his hands out. “It’s just two months, Katie. And how long has it been since you’ve had a new dress? You could have ball gowns,” he wheedled. “And the time of your life in London, besides. Just think of it—you’ll attend balls, garden parties, musicales…”
Her lips pursed, but he sensed her wavering regardless. “I sincerely doubt it,” she said. “I’m nobody, Elliot. I’ve never set foot outside of the county. Who is going to invite me anywhere?”
“Kate,” he breathed, half-hope already, and reached for her hands to take them in his, squeezing tightly.
“The moment it is known that I have arrived back in London, I promise you the invitations will come pouring in. You’ll have your pick.
I give you free rein to select any that please you—only do me this one small favor in return.
Help me, Katie. Please. I am not above begging. ”
Her hands clenched upon his; her lips pinched—and then, at long last, she let out a long, deep sigh, and her shoulders sank from their severe set. “All right,” she said. “All right. I will ask Mama. But you’ll need to find someone to tend the sheep in my absence.”
∞∞∞
“To London?” Mama blinked owlishly behind the silver rims of her spectacles, her knitting falling to her lap, needles hopelessly tangling in the half-finished wool stocking she’d been working on. “For the Season?”
Kate settled into the threadbare chair opposite Mama’s, wilting into a slump that would have provoked a scolding, had Mama not been so startled by the suggestion. “It’s madness, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s madness,” Mama said. “Though I daresay expecting something less than madness from Lord Elliot would, in itself, be tantamount to madness. So I suppose I find myself somewhat less than surprised than otherwise I might be.” Mama pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose and tilted her head to the side in interest. “What does surprise me, however, is that you agreed to it.”
Kate heaved a sigh, letting her chin drop into the cup of her palm as she sank against the armrest. “It’s the first time he’s ever asked a favor of me,” she said. “The first time he’s ever needed anything of me.” But to find him a wife?
Mama folded her hands atop her abandoned knitting, plucking awkwardly at the cuff of her sleeve. “You might have had a Season, you know,” she said in a low voice, as she cast her gaze to her lap. “If your father hadn’t left us so soon.”
That old, familiar pain sparked behind the cage of Kate’s ribs.
It had dulled over time—half her life, now, that Father had been gone—but there were still moments, every now and then, that could bring it back as sharp as ever.
Particularly when Mama spoke of him in that small voice, rough about the edges with the threat of tears.
“Not this sort of Season, Mama,” Kate said.
Father had been, of course, considered a gentleman.
A learned man, with a university education, who had once made a tidy living as the local vicar.
For a long while, they had had comfortable lives, with the income from the vicarage that Father had overseen, as well as the use of the lands which had come with it.
Once, the funds might have existed for a brief sojourn to the city for the Season, though they most assuredly would not have run in the same circles as the Holbrooks, nor found themselves awash in the invitations to the sorts of events that Elliot could expect to attend.
But when Father had passed away unexpectedly of a sudden heart ailment when Kate had been only thirteen, with him had gone their life of relative luxury, as well as any hope of that promised future which Kate might once have expected.
There had been no money to spare on such frivolities, and no time to waste in mourning for possibilities now well beyond her grasp.
She had had no recourse but to pack those dreams away in favor of eking out enough of a living to support them.
And in time, she had grown content—after a fashion—with her small, simple life.
With Mama, and with her small flock of sheep.
With finding small slivers of the life she might have had in the books she often borrowed from Longthorpe’s extensive library.
A life lived vicariously within the pages of the duchess’s vast collection of romances.
“No,” Mama acknowledged slowly. “But your father had an extensive social circle. Friends he’d made at university; people he’d known growing up in London. Perhaps we’d not have attended Ton events, exactly—”
“Mama, I doubt even the Holbrooks would have spared us an invitation, should we ever have been in London at the same time.” And that was to say nothing of other invitations. Even so much as a voucher for Almack’s would have been well beyond their reach.
“That’s not true,” Mama said, with a delicate sniff. “I daresay that the duchess would have done. Out of fondness for you, if nothing else.” She allowed herself a little shrug. “But even so, within our own social class, we could have expected to be welcomed.”
Had they ever had the means, Mama meant to say, Kate supposed. But they hadn’t. The small annuity that Papa had left for Mama paid out four percent per annum, and without Kate’s small flock of sheep and the wool they produced, it would have ceased to support them years ago.
“Your father would have wanted a Season for you,” Mama said, lowering her eyes to her folded hands. “He loved it here, loved ministering to his flock. But he wanted a bigger world for you, Katie. He would have wanted more for you than to be mired here, tending sheep.”
“Mama, I love the countryside.” That much, at least, was true. Even if she had never had the opportunity to leave it, she loved the fresh, clean air, the rolling hills, the wide stretch of the unimpeded sky.
“You might love London, too,” Mama said. “If you had only had the opportunity to see it.” She used the cuff of her sleeve to dash away a stray tear from her eye. “Of course, the circumstances are…somewhat unusual.”
Kate pursed her lips against the snicker that wanted to emerge. “Say rather unbelievable.”
“Yes, well, that is Lord Elliot, isn’t it?
” Mama gave a watery smile. “Still, I cannot help but feel a certain gratitude toward him. Wild scheme or no, you deserve a bit of a respite. A holiday of sorts, no? A chance to live out a life few are privileged enough to lead, even if it is only temporary.”
“Two months, Mama. That’s quite a holiday.”
“Only for us, my dear. Besides, you’ve hung upon Lord Elliot’s stories of London for years, now. Wouldn’t you enjoy the chance to see it for yourself?”
It was true that she had always enjoyed the stories that Elliot had regaled her with of his time in London, loved the scandals and the gossip and the glamor he’d imparted.
But she had never labored beneath the delusion that she would have been welcomed among his set, in the glittering world of the Ton.
Just the thought of it provoked a nameless anxiety, and her hands curled into the fabric of her skirts as her palms began to sweat with the advent of unease.
Would they smell the sheep on her, Elliot’s high-society friends?
He could—as he’d said—outfit her like a lady, but that wouldn’t turn her into one.
He was, in truth, Lord Elliot Holbrook, even if they had never stood on such ceremony due to their long-standing friendship.
Father might have been a gentleman, an esteemed member of the clergy, but it had been so long since their circumstances had been anything even approximating genteel.
“Are you quite all right, dear? You look as if you’re about to cast up your accounts.”
Kate swallowed down the bile that had coated her throat and made an effort to force a shade of a smile to her face. “I’m well enough,” she said. “It is only—oh, Mama, what if I make a cake of myself?”
“I can’t imagine Lord Elliot would let you,” Mama said, with a faint wrinkle of her brow. “And besides, with his penchant for devilry, you’ll look positively angelic by comparison.”
“Mama.”
“Oh, come, dear, you know it’s the truth.” Mama adjusted her spectacles upon the bridge of her nose, swallowing back a laugh. “Lord Elliot is a fine man, but he has got the remarkable tendency to thumb his nose at propriety when it suits him.”
“Such as dragging me to London to find him a wife?” Kate suggested wryly.
“Well, there is that,” Mama acknowledged. “But a man has got a right to choose a wife in his own way.”
“Devon thinks otherwise.”
“Ah, well—His Grace has always been a bit of a managing sort,” Mama said.
“Such a stern boy, even as a child. I swear I never saw the like.” She reached out one hand and laid it over Kate’s.
“At least I can be certain that Lord Elliot will have a care for your reputation. But you’ll have the time of your life in London, just you see.
No one deserves a bit of fun more than you. ”
That was that, then, Kate supposed. They were bound for London.