the creamy froth of lace on the décolleté of her gown had turned from winter snow to warm magnolia. Was she fishing for a compliment? Virgil studied the tiny frown which puckered her brows and decided most definitely not. ‘That is a very disparaging remark,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Realistic, merely. My mirror tells me the limitations of my attractions whenever I look in it, Mr Jackson. I bear rather more resemblance to a greyhound than I would like.’
Her words were a challenge, but in the short space of this conversation Virgil already knew her well enough not to fall into the trap of flattery or polite contradiction. ‘Yes, I can see that,’ he said coolly, ‘there is about you a kind of sleek gracefulness in the way you carry yourself, and your bone structure, too, has that delicate, well-bred look.’
For a fraction of a second, she looked as if she would slap him, before she laughed again, a low, smoky sound, intimate and sensual. Once more he was struck by the transformation it wrought, as if a curtain had been thrown back, allowing him a very private glimpse of the person behind the severe facade. Why would such a privileged woman require such a disguise?
Before he could pursue this question, the butler announced dinner. Virgil offered his arm, and he and the duke’s daughter followed their hosts through a succession of chilly corridors to the dining room which was, thankfully, in the renovated part of the house. The petticoats of Lady Kate’s gown rustled seductively as she walked. The claret velvet of her dress lent a lustre to her skin, and brought out golden highlights in her brown hair. As Virgil held her chair out for her, catching an illicit glimpse of very feminine curves as he did so, the first stirrings of attraction took him by surprise. It had been so long, he hardly recognised them.
Lady Kate sat down, leaving the faintest trace of her scent in the air, flowery and elusive. Despite the relative heat of the dining room compared to the gallery, it was not particularly warm. Another quirk of the English, Virgil had discovered, to serve their food tepid—or perhaps it simply travelled so far from the kitchens that it could not help being cool. Warming dishes were a rarity here, though kitchens built in the most inconvenient place possible were sadly common. ‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked abruptly, taking his place on Lady Kate’s right-hand side.
She took a sip of her wine. ‘A little. I forgot my wrap. It was my own fault. Polly, my maid, was offended by something the butler said to her, and for almost the entire dressing hour I had to listen to her wax lyrical about servants who were no better than they ought to be, who wouldn’t know a hard day’s graft if it bit them on the ankle, who lived a cosseted life wrapped in cotton, and who had no right at all to look down their noses at a working woman. My dresser used to be a working woman of a very particular kind, you see.’
Virgil replaced his glass on the table, slopping a drop of red wine onto the immaculate damask. His eyes narrowed. ‘You can’t mean you have a—a courtesan for your maid?’
‘Streetwalker. I don’t think Polly ever rose to anything so lofty as a courtesan,’ Kate replied candidly.
She was expecting him to be shocked, Virgil realised. There was a defiant look in those blue-grey eyes. He recognised it, and he liked it. She was no insipid English rose. ‘Did you take her on to annoy your aunt or your brother?’
‘Let us not forget my father, the duke. And no, I did not. Well, only partly,’ Kate admitted ruefully. ‘I took Polly as my maid because she used to work the streets around Covent Garden, and since her protector was rather eager for her to continue to do so, I thought it best to remove her from the city.’
‘And does she like being your maid, this reformed streetwalker—I take it she is reformed?’ Virgil asked, torn between amusement and shock.
‘Oh, I’m pretty certain of that. There is Mrs Taylor’s Gentlemen’s Parlour in Buxton, of course, but I really don’t think Polly is refined enough for Mrs Taylor, and besides, I feel sure that I would have heard if my maid had been practicing her arts so close at hand, for it is a mere two or three miles from Castonbury you know, and we are a very tight-knit community,’ Kate said, smiling once again. ‘Though Polly is an extremely loyal maid, she’s a little like a vicious dog, liable to savage anyone else who tries to pat her. Her taste in clothes, however, is exquisite. I can see from your face that you’re thinking I am one of those English eccentrics you have read about.’
‘I’m thinking that you are about as far from a typical Englishwoman as I am likely to meet,’ Virgil said bluntly.
‘I shall take that as a compliment. My father would agree with you, though he views my eccentricities in a rather less positive light. He would much prefer me to be what you call a typical Englishwoman, though to be fair, since I put myself beyond the pale, his efforts to make me conform have been rather half-hearted.’
Though she had not put the shutters up completely, she had definitely begun to retreat from him. There was an edge to her words. Virgil was intrigued, and a little at a loss. ‘You must have committed a heinous crime indeed,’ he said, careful to keep his tone light. ‘And here was I thinking myself privileged to have such a blue-blooded dinner companion. Should I have shunned you? No, I have that wrong—given you the cut direct?’
‘You are mocking me, but believe me, in what is termed the ton, I am very much a social pariah.’
She was turning a heavy silver knife over and over, not quite looking at him, not quite avoiding his eye. Hurt and determined not to show it, Virgil guessed. ‘Then that makes two of us,’ he said, covering the back of her hand with his. ‘I know all about being an outcast.’
Kate was not used to sympathy, even less used to understanding, but she was accustomed to insulating herself with her flippant tongue. ‘You are very kind, but I know perfectly well the circumstances are not the same at all.’ The words were out before she could consider their effect.
Rebuffed, Virgil snatched his hand back. ‘Temerity indeed, to compare myself to a duke’s daughter.’
‘I didn’t mean that!’ Kate exclaimed, aghast. ‘I merely meant that …’ But Virgil Jackson shrugged and looked the other way, and they were clearing the plates, and Kate’s other neighbour was patiently waiting to claim her attention. She was almost grateful for the interruption, despite the fact that the subject would inevitably be her family, and could not be anything other than painful, given the recent developments at Castonbury.
Sure enough Sir Merkland, an old hunting friend of her father’s, and one of the few who seemed either oblivious or uncaring of her tarnished reputation, asked after the duke with that mixture of morbid curiosity and smugness which the healthy reserve for the decrepit, especially when the decrepit person in question was overly proud of his superior rank. Kate abandoned her soup. The consommé was good, but the Wedgwoods’ chef was an amateur compared to the genius currently running the Castonbury kitchens. Not that Monsieur André was likely to remain with them for much longer, for her father’s taste, since the loss of his sons, ran largely to milk puddings and gruel.
She provided Sir Merkland with a much more optimistic account of her sire’s health than Papa’s frail appearance the day before merited, then listened with half an ear to the squire praise her sister Phaedra’s prowess on a horse, smiling and nodding with practiced skill as he proceeded on to one of his interminable hunting anecdotes. On her other side, Virgil Jackson was discussing American politics with the wife of one of Josiah’s business partners, patiently explaining the differences between the federal system and the British Parliament. That slow drawl of his was mesmerising.
The arrival of a haunch of beef and various side dishes distracted Sir Merkland, who was almost as dedicated a trencherman as he was a huntsman,
