up yet, now, is there?”
Kate then rounded on their visitor, setting her hands on her hips pugnaciously. “Cam Monroe, what do you mean coming in like this, never giving a soul a hint of it? I would have thought you’d have better sense. It’s no wonder Her Ladyship fainted.”
Jeremy colored and said in a quelling voice, “Kate. Mr. Monroe is our guest.”
On the other side of Monroe, Pettigrew gazed at her with a mixture of awe and amazement. Kate dipped a curtsy toward Jeremy, murmuring a faint “Sorry, sir,” but she did not apologize to Cam. She had grown up next door to him, and she had no fear of him.
“What the devil is going on?” the dowager countess snapped, banging her cane once on the floor for emphasis. “Angela, what’s the matter with you? And who is this man?”
Jeremy turned toward the old lady. “Angela was a trifle startled, Grandmama,” he assured her. “We have not seen Mr. Monroe in several years.”
“Monroe?” The countess frowned fiercely. “I don’t know any Monroes.”
“My mother and I used to live in the village, my lady,” Cam told her easily. “Grace Monroe.”
The old lady gazed at him blankly for a moment. Then her brow cleared. “The seamstress?” she asked, her voice vaulting upward. “You are the seamstress’s son?”
“Yes, my lady. I am.” He stared back at her stonily.
The countess’s eyebrows vaulted upward, and she turned a sharp gaze upon her grandson. “Jeremy?”
“Yes, Grandmama. Mr. Monroe is our guest.” He moved forward to her chair, dropping his voice a little. “I am sure you will welcome him. He has come here all the way from the United States. He is Mr. Pettigrew’s employer.”
She shot a dark look at Mr. Pettigrew. “I’ve yet to determine what this Pettigrew is doing here. What are you about, Jeremy?”
“‘Tis business, Grandmama. Perhaps you remember that Cameron Monroe moved to the United States several years ago. He is the head of a company that, ah, I have been dealing with.”
“What he is saying, Grandmama,” Angela said crisply, “is that Mr. Monroe is apparently quite wealthy now, so we must be pleasant to him. Isn’t that right, Jeremy?”
She cast a sardonic look up at her brother, then at Cam, who was still standing in front of the couch, gazing down at her. Cam raised a quizzical eyebrow at her words, but his expression was more amused than offended.
“Angela!” Jeremy whispered, sending Monroe an apologetic glance. “I must apologize for the women of the family. They are used to a solitary life here at Bridbury.”
“That’s right. We don’t get out much, so we don’t know how to act,” Angela went on with false sweetness. “I am afraid that I have never before been called upon to meet a suitor who holds a gun to my head as he asks for my hand.”
“What?” Lady Margaret’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“Angela.” Jeremy groaned.
Mr. Pettigrew blushed to his hairline and looked away. Only Cam remained seemingly unaffected, still gazing at Angela with that cool half smile on his lips.
“A trifle dramatic, don’t you think, Angela?”
“Perhaps. But the drama is not of my making.” She stood up. “Grandmama, if you will excuse me, I believe that I will go up to my room now. I am feeling a trifle under the weather. Kate?”
Her maid moved quickly to her side, and the two women walked out of the room together, leaving a dead silence behind them.
Angela strode faster and faster, until by the time they reached her bedroom, Kate was almost having to run to keep up with her. “My lady … wait. Slow down.”
Angela swept into her room, but even then she could not seem to stop. She marched across it to the window, then swung back and looked around, as if trying to find somewhere else to go.
“What is going on?” Kate asked with all the familiarity of a friend, as well as a lifelong servant. “Why is Cam Monroe here? And what is he doing dressed up as a gentleman?”
“He is the one,” Angela replied tersely. “The man I told you about, the American who is trying to marry into the nobility.”
“Cam?” Kate had heard all about the Earl’s request that Angela marry a rich American to save the family, but she had a little trouble connecting the fearsome American with her former neighbor and the Stanhopes’ stable boy.
“Apparently. That Pettigrew man said his employer had arrived, and the next thing I knew, there was Cam marching into the room. And I realized that he was the one behind it all. The man trying to force me to marry him.”
“‘Tis no wonder you fainted.”
“I thought for a moment that I had lost my mind. I couldn’t imagine—Cam! It’s been so long—I never thought I would see him again. It’s been years since I even thought about him.”
Her grandfather had made sure that she was married before she could change her mind, whisking her away to London and getting a special license so that she could marry Lord Dunstan without having to wait for the banns to be read. When she returned to Bridbury, newly married, she had gone to Cam, hoping to explain what she had done and to give him money so that he could, at least, get away to America and the new life they both had dreamed about. But he had been too wounded and furious to allow any explanation from her.
“Do you think I don’t know why you married him?” he had roared, his dark eyes spitting fire at her. “Because he is a lord, and one of the wealthiest in the land, as well! I was too stupid to realize that you were just toying with me, amusing yourself until your nobleman came up to scratch!”
“No! No, please, Cam, that’s not—”
“Damn you! I don’t want to hear it!” He had hurled the purse she had offered him down at her feet, and the bright gold coins had spilled out onto the floor of his cottage. “I don’t want your whore’s money, either. I shall make it to America on my own.”
Then he had wheeled and torn out of his house, ignoring her pleas. She had not seen him again.
She had thought about him enough, God knew. At first she had been able to think of little else—missing him, aching for him, crying for him, that pain so great that it for a while somewhat masked the pain of her marriage. What had a blow mattered, when inside she had felt as if she had already died?
Later, when the fresh pain of losing Cam sealed over, and the realization of the lifelong despair and pain that her marriage would be settled in upon her, she had often dreamed that somehow Cam would return and rescue her. That he would find out, all the way across the ocean, what was happening to her, and he would come back and sweep her away from Dunstan. But she had known, even as she hoped and prayed, that Cam would not come back. Even if he had known her fate, he would no longer have cared. He hated her.
Finally she had accepted that her dreams were nothing but that, and that no one could save her from her fate. And, gradually, she had ceased to feel
