was being subtly accused of being devious and spiteful.
‘Indeed it does—now, are you going to honour me with that dance or not, my dear?’ he said as brightly as if they were all getting along famously. ‘After all, you lured me away from our duty of greeting belated guests on the promise of one, so we’d best join the next set and let them see exactly why we deserted them, eh?’ he urged his wife indulgently.
Kate smothered a chuckle at her ladyship’s barely masked impatience with his doglike devotion. The obnoxious female was already watching them with ill-concealed fury; presumably she wanted Edmund to share that devotion and hated Kate for being there to rescue him from her witchy wiles. If only the deluded female knew how little Edmund actually wanted Kate herself now, the awful woman would probably triumph and crow unbearably over her, she decided, sincerely hoping she could escape such an unpleasant encounter when Edmund’s engagement to some dewy-eyed débutante was finally announced.
‘What did you ever see in her?’ she asked unwarily once their host and hostess had taken to the dance floor and the music was loud enough to mask her voice from an interested listener.
‘Since you refused to become my wife more times than either of us care to be reminded, you have renounced all right to ask me that impertinent question, Miss Alstone. So I suggest you keep your arrogant opinions and any other ill-informed and ill-natured gossip you have garnered about me to yourself in the future,’ he told her as icily as he’d just set down her ladyship and Kate knew she’d be on the verge of tears if she let herself risk such a public loss of control.
Biting her lower lip to keep it from wobbling, she nodded to him regally as words deserted her, but she refused to let her steps falter under his icy silver-green gaze, or show any sign that she was even conscious of Lady Tedinton’s darts of dark-eyed resentment, as that lady barely even bothered to pretend her attention was centred on her husband or the dance.
‘I wish you a good evening, my lord,’ she managed to say expressionlessly enough as they neared Eiliane, who was gossiping happily with one of her cronies on the dark rose-coloured sofa that now reminded Kate almost insupportably of their hostess for the night.
She curtsied to him with formal grace, he bowed with almost as distant a hauteur as he’d used to depress her ladyship’s pretensions and they parted before Eiliane had even spotted them returning together and been able to come up with a pretext for keeping them so.
‘This must be one of the most tedious parties either of us ever had the poor judgement to attend, Kate,’ her mentor greeted her cheerfully, once the friend she’d been so absorbed in pumping for the more interesting secrets of the haut ton had departed to bully some hesitant youth into dancing with her débutante daughter.
‘Indeed,’ Kate managed as she resorted to the small amount of cover allowed by her fan to conceal some of her confusion.
‘You’re overset, my love,’ Eiliane exclaimed, even more concerned when the hectic colour in Kate’s cheeks ebbed as she recalled Edmund’s cold fury with her at even the mention of his rumoured amour with their hostess.
‘I’ll do well enough once I’ve got my breath back,’ she managed to say calmly enough as she wondered why on earth she’d let her tongue run away with her in such an appalling fashion just because the very idea of Edmund making love to that vixen had made her feel ill.
‘Nonsense, we’ll call for our carriage and go home. I’ll be glad of an early night and you look as if you could do with a week of them all of a sudden.’
‘No!’ Kate thought of how insufferably Lady Tedinton would triumph and smirk if she was weak enough to turn tail and go home like a whipped dog after that obnoxious encounter. ‘I would rather stay a little longer and perhaps go on to Mrs Farnborough’s as we had planned. That last dance was quite a vigorous one and I shall be perfectly fine in just a moment.’
‘Will you, my love?’ Eiliane asked shrewdly and Kate wished her a little less acute for once, but hoped her friend had no idea of the real reason why she was feeling so out of sorts and low spirited.
‘Yes, I shall feel quite restored once I’ve had a rest. It would never do if I gained a reputation for giving myself die-away airs after all, for you’d never get me off your hands then,’ she joked weakly. She refused to even consider the fact that it felt as if she’d never look at another man for the rest of her life and feel the least desire to marry him, or even stand up with him for a waltz after her bittersweet ones with Edmund had spoilt her expectations of any other partner.
She certainly refused all invitations to waltz for the rest of the evening, but brazened out the remainder of the pantomime it rapidly became to her. Seeing the daughter of the house dance with the suitable young gentleman she and Eiliane managed to throw into her path helped and, from Lady Tedinton’s petulant expression, Kate thought her new enemy was probably having an even less satisfactory evening than she was. She allowed herself a brief smile of triumph when they finally left the Tedintons’ ballroom, quite certain there was a metaphorical dagger in her back this time.
Chapter Five
‘There it all is then, shipshape and neat as you like,’ Ben Shaw, the other half of the firm of Stone & Shaw Shipping that he and Kit Alstone, now the latest Earl of Carnwood, had set up long before his lordship even dreamt of inheriting the family wealth and titles, informed Edmund the next day. As this came after an exhaustive tour of the warehouses and the new enclosed dock Stone & Shaw were building by the side of the one they’d already outgrown, then a return to the elegant offices they now kept in the City for a résumé of the firm’s finances and projections for future profit, Edmund could only agree with him.
‘Even I can see that for myself, thank you,’ he told his formidable friend and business associate and wondered why Ben Shaw thought he needed reassurance that, while he was at the helm, Stone & Shaw would turn a fine profit for any investors lucky enough to be admitted into the select ranks of their stockholders.
‘If you didn’t come and see it all for yourself every now and again, I wouldn’t have much respect for you as a man or an investor, and I dare say we’d never have done business together in the first place,’ Ben told him.
‘So long as I don’t try to interfere in the way you run the enterprise from day to day, I presume?’
‘Aye,’ Ben admitted wryly, ‘you’ve the measure of me on that front, my fine young lord, and that’s plain to see.’
‘Not as young as I was,’ Edmund defended himself automatically, although such teasing bothered him much less than it had when he was first admitted into the august boardroom of Stone & Shaw, probably because he had been thought likely to become part of the family Ben Shaw protected and loved as fiercely as if they truly shared ties of blood, by marrying Kate Alstone.
Would his refusal to become part of that family, now he’d finally returned to the ton with the aim of taking a suitable wife who wasn’t Miss Alstone, mean an end to such an unexpectedly comfortable and profitable friendship? If so, he’d regret it deeply, Edmund decided, and settled down for an excellent glass of burgundy and a companionable cigarillo, determined to enjoy them and this unlikely friend while he still had the chance.
‘Speaking of your relative youth, or lack of it, when are you going to get down to the business of finally wedding and bedding that stubborn girl of ours?’ Ben came straight out and asked the question Edmund had been dreading all morning.
‘I’m not,’ he admitted
