inelegant whistle escaped Robert. ‘You weren’t, were you?’
‘Certainly not. I was most elegantly entrapped by Black Jack and his doxy and haled off to Newgate where I had no means of proving who I am.’
‘But you look nothing like a highwayman,’ Robert protested. ‘I mean, I know your clothes are hardly what one might expect—’
‘They belong to my groom,’ Katherine interjected. ‘And Nick does look very like Mr Standon. Younger, but very like.’
‘How do you know?’ Robert swivelled in his chair to regard Katherine with fascination.
‘Because my wife took it upon herself to go to find him and to persuade him to show himself to the magistrate in the case.’
Robert’s eyes opened wide, making him look even younger than his years. ‘But why was Katherine not able to prove who you were without having to do that? As your wife—’
‘I married Nicholas—’
‘Kat!’
Katherine shot her husband a defiant look. He wanted to shield her and protect her and part of her loved him for it, but she was not going to pretend to her terrifying new family. ‘I married him in Newgate because I was—I am—heavily in debt.’
Robert whistled again. ‘Well, that’s not a problem for you any more. Nick’s as rich as Croesus; old Wilkinson, our man of affairs, has been squirreling his income away in all sorts of interesting ways ever since he left. Nick, for goodness’ sake, are you not going to tell me where you’ve been?’
Katherine cleared her throat. ‘Before this goes any further, let me make my position quite plain. I will have this marriage annulled and I will look after my own debts.’
Robert’s gaze flickered from one determined face to another and this time his whistle was silent. You’ve met your match with this one, Nick. It was a pity, he was rapidly becoming very attached to his new sister-in-law.
‘We will discuss this later,’ Nick began as the door opened and Heron entered.
‘My lord, I have taken the liberty of opening your old rooms and her ladyship’s woman is unpacking her ladyship’s things in the Lake Suite. I have ordered hot water sent up in case her ladyship would care to retire before luncheon, which will be in half an hour.’
Katherine got to her feet with a smile. ‘Thank you, Heron, if you would show me the way.’ Nick made as if to join her, but she smiled coolly at him. ‘I am sure you and Lord Robert have much to discuss, my lord.’
The door closed behind them, leaving Nick conscious of a strong desire to kick the furniture and very aware of his brother’s fascinated gaze.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘You want to annul the marriage?’ Robert sounded incredulous. ‘She is enchanting.’
‘No, I do not want to annul it, but Kat does and she’s as proud as they come and the most stubborn woman I have ever met. She married me in sheer desperation because of the mess her scapegrace brother had got her into and in the expectation that the debt would die with me. I had the devil’s own job getting her to agree to come here in my company.’ He dug his hands into the pockets of his coat and began to pace up and down the room. The emotions that were flooding through him were too complex to untangle, but most of them hurt damnably.
Robert’s uncritical affection he had always been assured of, but he should not have been surprised at his father’s chilly reception. Nor should he have been surprised at the feelings that had gripped him as the landscape had become more and more familiar. Affection, memory, pride and the dragging knowledge that one day all this would be his responsibility. All the acres, all the possessions, all the people inescapably his until the day he died. And then the shock of seeing his home again. The rush of water to his eyes had startled him; perhaps he loved the place more than he had ever realised.
And now he had one more responsibility to worry about—Kat. He remembered the way her eyes had widened and darkened with the dawning knowledge of what she was about to discover of the man she had married. Unconsciously he smiled at the picture of her as she stood in the Great Hall, chin up, back straight, making appropriate conversation with Heron, determined to let neither of them down.
‘I did not tell her who I am—she had no idea until Heron called me by my title,’ he confessed, unpleasantly aware that he was going to be expected to explain himself once Katherine had him alone.
‘No wonder she looks so coolly at you! Why do you want to stay married if she does not?’ Robert asked.
‘Because I owe her my life. I can never pay that debt.’ And because making love to her is rapidly becoming an obsession.
‘And you will persist whether she wants it or not?’
‘Whether she wants it or not,’ he agreed harshly.
A cough announced Heron’s reappearance. ‘My lord, I have asked Lord Robert’s man to lay out a suit of clothes for you from his lordship’s wardrobe. What you are wearing may, of course, be most suitable for travelling, but I fear his Grace will not look kindly upon a frieze coat at the luncheon table.’ He looked pointedly at the clock and both brothers made for the door with alacrity.
‘I remember all too well our father’s views on unpunctuality,’ Nick observed as they parted on the upper landing. ‘I have no wish to render today any more hideous by being three minutes late.’
Robert grinned and slapped him affectionately on the shoulder. ‘Welcome home.’
Katherine stood and looked helplessly out across the parkland to the lake.
With her hands full of folded garments, Jenny was chattering happily as she moved between portmanteau and highboy drawers. ‘A Marchioness! Who’d have thought it? And I’ve just realised—that puts me top of all the female servants excepting the housekeeper. Oh, Miss Katherine, just when things looked so black, this is a miracle.’
‘Well, do not get too used to it, Jenny.’ Katherine tossed a fine linen hand towel on to the washstand and gave her appearance a distracted glance in the mirror. ‘We have no choice but to stay here until the annulment, but after that I must be earning my own way.’
‘But, Miss Katherine, the master’s a lord, the heir to a dukedom. You don’t need to worry about the debt—he must make more money than that in a week. And you lo—’ she caught Katherine’s eye, bit her lip and continued carefully ‘—you like him.’
‘You are talking nonsense.’ Katherine twitched at her hem. In a minute she was going to have to go downstairs, face the three men again. ‘Lord Seaton is heir to a dukedom. For that reason alone he must marry well.’
Jenny bristled in her defence. ‘You are well bred, a lady.’
‘Oh, Jenny, a duke is going to be looking for an heiress for his oldest son. He will expect a young lady of lineage and land, someone whose family has connections at Court and in society. Not, of course, that I would not be seeking the annulment in any case, however good my birth,’ she added hastily. Could the heir to a dukedom marry for love? Stop it, she scolded herself, He is
