“I’m reluctant to discuss Cat for several reasons,” Harry said, his green eyes guarded. “Among them the fact that I’ve never been particularly kind to her, nor did I protect her when I should have. And I regret it.”
“We all have regrets,” Leo said, taking a sip of brandy, letting the velvet fire slide down his throat. “It’s why I cling to my bad habits. One doesn’t have to start regretting something unless one stops doing it.”
Harry grinned, but sobered quickly as he stared into the flame of a small candle lamp that had been set on the table. “Before I tell you anything, I want to ask what the nature of your interest in my sister is.”
“I’m asking as her employer,” Leo said. “I’m concerned about the influence she may have over Beatrix.”
“You never questioned her influence before,” Harry shot back. “And from all accounts she’s done an excellent job with Beatrix.”
“She has. However, the revelation of this mysterious connection to you has me worried. For all I know, the two of you have been hatching some kind of plot.”
“No.” Harry stared at him directly. “There’s no plot.”
“Then why all these secrets?”
“I can’t explain without telling you something of my own past—” Pausing, Harry added darkly, “Which I hate doing.”
“So sorry,” Leo said without a trace of sincerity. “Go on.”
Harry hesitated again, as if weighing the decision to tell him anything. “Cat and I had the same mother. Her name was Nicolette Wigens. She was British by birth. Her family moved from England to Buffalo, New York, when she was still an infant. Because Nicolette was an only child—the Wigens had her fairly late in life—it was their desire to see her married to a man who would take care of her. My father Arthur was more than twice her age, and fairly prosperous. I suspect the Wigens forced the match—there was certainly no love in it. But Nicolette married Arthur, and I was born soon after. A bit too soon, actually. There was speculation that Arthur wasn’t the father.”
“Was he?” Leo couldn’t help asking.
Harry smiled cynically. “Does one ever know for certain?” He shrugged. “In any case, my mother eventually ran off to England with one of her lovers.” Harry’s gaze was distant. “There were other men after that, I believe. My mother wasn’t one for limiting herself. She was a spoiled, self-indulgent bitch, but very beautiful. Cat looks very much like her.” He paused reflectively. “Only softer. More refined. And unlike our mother, Cat has a kind and caring nature.”
“Really,” Leo said sourly. “She’s never been kind to me.”
“That’s because you frighten her.”
Leo gave him a disbelieving glance. “In what possible way could I frighten that little virago? And don’t claim that she’s nervous around men, because she’s perfectly amiable to Cam and Merripen.”
“She feels safe with them.”
“Why not with me?” Leo asked, offended.
“I believe,” Harry said thoughtfully, “it’s because she’s aware of you as a man.”
The revelation caused Leo’s heart to jolt. He examined the contents of his brandy snifter with studied boredom. “Did she tell you that?”
“No, I saw it for myself, in Hampshire.” Harry turned wry. “One has to be particularly observant where Cat is concerned. She won’t talk about herself.” He tossed off the rest of his brandy, set down the glass with care, and leaned back in his chair. “I never heard from my mother after she left Buffalo,” he said, lacing his fingers together and resting them on his flat midriff. “But when I reached the age of twenty, I received a letter bidding me to come to her. She had contracted a wasting disease, some form of cancer. I assumed that before she died, she wanted to see what had become of me. I left for England at once, but she died just before I arrived.”
“And that was when you met Marks,” Leo prompted.
“No, she wasn’t there. Despite Cat’s wishes to stay with her mother, she had been sent to stay with an aunt and grandmother on her father’s side. And the father, apparently unwilling to keep vigil by the sickbed, had left London altogether.”
“Noble fellow,” Leo said.
“A local woman had taken care of Nicolette during the last week of her life. It was she who told me about Cat. I gave a brief thought to visiting the child, but I decided against it. There was no place in my life for an illegitimate half sister. She was nearly half my age, and in need of female guidance. I assumed she was better off in her aunt’s care.”
“Was that assumption correct?” Leo brought himself to ask.
Harry gave him an inscrutable glance. “No.”
An entire story was contained in that one bleak syllable. Leo wanted very much to hear it. “What happened?”
“I decided to stay in England and try my hand at the hotel business. So I sent Cat a letter, telling her where to send word if she ever needed anything. Some years later, when she was fifteen, she wrote to me, asking for help. I found her in … difficult circumstances. I wish I had reached her a little sooner.”
Feeling a tug of unaccountable concern, Leo found it impossible to maintain his usual veneer of carelessness. “What do you mean, difficult circumstances?”
Harry shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s as much as I can tell you. The rest is up to Cat.”
“Damn it, Rutledge, you’re not leaving it there. I want to know how the Hathaways got involved in this, and why I had the misfortune to end up as the employer of the most ill-tempered and interfering governess in England.”
“Cat doesn’t have to work. She’s a woman of independent means. I settled enough money on her to allow her the freedom to do anything she wished. She went to boarding school for four years, and stayed to teach for another two. Eventually she came to me and said she’d accepted a position as a governess for the Hathaway family. I believe you were in France with Win at the time. Cat went for the interview, Cam and Amelia liked her, Beatrix and Poppy clearly needed her, and no one seemed inclined to question her lack of experience.”
“Of course not,” Leo said acidly. “My family would never bother with something so insignificant as job experience. I’m sure they started the interview by asking what her favorite color was.”
Harry was trying unsuccessfully not to smile. “No doubt you’re right.”
“Why did she go into service, if she had no need of money?”
Harry shrugged. “She wanted to experience what a family was like, if only as an outsider. Cat believes she’ll never have a family of her own.”
Leo’s brows drew together as he tried to make sense of that. “Nothing is stopping her,” he pointed out.
“You think not?” A hint of mockery varnished Harry’s hard green eyes. “You Hathaways would find it impossible to understand what it’s like to be brought up in isolation, by people who don’t give a damn about you. You have no choice but to assume it’s your fault, that you’re unlovable. And that feeling wraps around you until it becomes a prison, and you find yourself barricading the doors against anyone who wants to come in.”
Leo listened intently, perceiving that Harry was talking about himself as well as Catherine. Silently he acknowledged that Harry was right: even in the worst despair of Leo’s life, he had always known that his family loved him.
For the first time he understood fully what Poppy had done for Harry, how she had broken through the invisible prison he had described.
“Thank you,” Leo said quietly. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to talk about this.”
“Certainly.” And in absolute seriousness, Harry murmured, “One thing I should make clear, Ramsay: If you hurt Cat in any way, I will have to kill you.”
Dressed in her nightgown, Poppy sat in bed with a novel. She heard someone enter the elegantly appointed private apartments, and she looked up with a smile as her husband came into the room. Her pulse quickened pleasurably at the sight of him, so dark and graceful. Harry was an enigmatic man, dangerous even in the view of
those who professed to know him well. But with Poppy, he relaxed and showed his gentle side.
“Did you talk with Leo?” she asked.
“Yes, love.” Harry shrugged out of his coat, draped it over the back of a chair, and approached the bedside. “He wanted to discuss Cat, as I expected. I told him as much about her past—and mine—as I could.”
“What do you make of the situation?” Poppy knew that Harry was brilliant at discerning other people’s thoughts and motives.
Harry untied his cravat, letting it hang on either side of his neck. “Ramsay is more concerned for Cat than he’d like to be, that’s clear. And I don’t like it. But I won’t interfere unless Cat asks for help.” He reached down to the exposed line of her throat, drawing the backs of his fingers over her skin with a sensitive lightness that caused her breath to quicken. His fingertips rested on the rapid tattoo of her pulse, and caressed softly. Watching a delicate tide of pink rise in her face, he said in a low voice, “Put the book aside.”
Poppy’s toes curled beneath the bed linens. “But I’ve reached a very interesting part,” she said demurely, teasing him.
“Not half so interesting as what’s about to happen to you.” Drawing the covers back with a deliberate sweep that left her gasping, Harry lowered his body over hers … and the book dropped to the floor, forgotten.
Chapter Four
Catherine hoped that Leo, Lord Ramsay, would stay away from Hampshire for a good long while. Perhaps if enough time passed, they would be able to pretend the kiss in the garden had never happened.
But in the meantime, she couldn’t help but wonder … why had he done it?
Most likely he had merely been amusing himself with her, finding a new way to set her off balance.
If life were at all fair, she thought dourly, Leo would have been pudgy, pockmarked, and bald. But he was a handsome man with a strapping six-foot build. He had dark hair and light blue eyes and a dazzling smile. The worst part was that Leo didn’t look at all like the rogue he was. He looked wholesome and clean and honorable, the nicest gentleman one could ever hope to meet.
The illusion was dispelled as soon as he opened his mouth. Leo was a thoroughly wicked man, articulate in all circumstances. His irreverence spared no one, least of all himself. In the year since they had first met, he had exhibited nearly every objectionable quality a man could possess, and any attempt to correct him only made him worse. Especially if that attempt had been made by Catherine.
Leo was a man with a past, and he didn’t even have the decency to try and hide it. He was frank about his dissolute history, the drinking and skirt-chasing and brawling, the self-destructive behavior that had nearly brought catastrophe to the Hathaway family on more than one occasion. One could only conclude that he liked being a scoundrel, or at least being known as one. He played the part of jaded aristocrat to perfection, his eyes glinting with the cynicism of a man who, at the age of thirty, had managed to outlive himself.
Catherine wanted nothing to do with any man, least of all one who radiated such dangerous charm. One could never trust such a man. His darkest days might still be ahead of him. And if not … it was entirely possible that hers were.
Approximately a week after Leo had left Hampshire, Catherine spent an afternoon outside with Beatrix. Unfortunately these outings were never the kind of well-regulated walk that Catherine preferred. Beatrix didn’t walk, she explored. She liked to go deep into the forest, investigating flora, fungi, nests, webs, and holes in the ground. Nothing delighted the youngest Hathaway so much as the discovery of a black newt, a lizard’s nest, or a rabbit warren, or the tracking of badgers’ marks.
Injured creatures were caught, rehabilitated, and set free, or if they could not fend for themselves, they became part of the Hathaway household. And the family had become so accustomed to Beatrix’s animals that no one so much as batted an eye when a hedgehog waddled through the parlor or a pair of rabbits hopped past the dinner table.
Pleasantly tired after the long ramble with Beatrix, Catherine sat at her dressing table and took down her hair. She scrubbed her fingers over her scalp and through the loose blond waves, soothing the little aches left from tight braids and hairpins.
A happy chatter came from behind her, and she turned to see Beatrix’s pet ferret, Dodger, emerging from beneath her dresser. His long, sinuous body arced gracefully as he loped toward her with a white glove in his teeth. The mischievous thief liked to filch things from drawers and boxes and closets, and hide them in secret piles. To Catherine’s frustration, Dodger especially loved her possessions. It had become a ritual humiliation to go through Ramsay House in search of her own garters.
“You overgrown rat,” Catherine told him as he stood tall and braced his tiny paws on the edge of her chair. She reached out to pet his sleek fur, tickled the top of his head, and carefully pried the glove from his teeth. “Having stolen all my garters, you’re moving on to gloves, are you?”
He regarded her affectionately, his eyes bright in the dark stripe that formed a mask across his face.
“Where have you hidden my things?” she asked, setting the glove on the dressing table. “If I don’t find my garters soon, I’ll have to keep my stockings up with pieces of old string.”
Dodger twitched his whiskers and appeared to grin at her, displaying tiny pointed teeth. He wriggled invitingly.
Smiling reluctantly, Catherine picked up a hairbrush and drew it through the loose locks of her hair. “No, I don’t have time to play with you. I’m getting ready for dinner.”
In a liquid and lightning-fast movement, the ferret leaped to her lap, snatched the glove from the table, and streaked from the room.
“Dodger,” Catherine exclaimed, dashing after him. “Bring that back!” She went out into the hallway, where maids were rushing back and forth with unusual haste. Dodger disappeared around the corner.
“Virgie,” Catherine asked one of the maids, “what is happening?”
The dark-haired girl was breathless and smiling. “Lord Leo has just come from London, miss, and the housekeeper told us to ready his room and set another place for dinner, and unpack the luggage when the footmen bring it up.”
“So soon?” Catherine asked, feeling the color drain from her face. “But he didn’t send word. No one expected him.”
I didn’t expect him, was what she meant.
Virgie shrugged and hurried away with an armload of folded linens.
Catherine put a hand to her midriff, where nerves were leaping, and retreated into her room. She wasn’t ready to face Leo. It wasn’t fair that he had come back so soon.
Of course, it was his estate. But still …
She paced in a tight circle and tried to marshal the chaos of her thoughts. There was only one solution: She would avoid Leo. She would plead a headache and stay in her room.
In the midst of her turmoil, there was a tap on the door. Someone entered without waiting for a response. Catherine nearly choked on her own heartbeat as she saw Leo’s tall, familiar form.
“How dare you come into my room without…” Her voice faded as he closed the door.
Leo turned to face her, his gaze sweeping over her. He was travel-rumpled and a bit dusty. His hair wanted a good brushing, the dark brown locks disheveled and falling over his forehead. He looked self-possessed but cautious, the ever-present mockery in his eyes replaced by something she couldn’t identify. Something new.
Catherine’s hand drew into a fist against her midriff, and she struggled to catch up with her own breathing. She held still as he approached her, while her heart pounded with a dizzying mixture of dread and excitement.
Leo’s hands went on either side of her shrinking body and gripped the edge of the dressing table behind her. He was too close, his masculine vitality surrounding her. He smelled like outside air, like dust and horses, like a healthy young male. As he leaned over her, one of his knees pressed gently into the mass of her skirts.
“Why did you come back?” she aske
d weakly.
He stared directly into her eyes. “You know why.”
Before Catherine could stop herself, her gaze dropped to the firm contours of his mouth.
“Cat … we have to talk about what happened.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He inclined his head slightly. “Would you like me to remind you?”
“No, no…” She shook her head for emphasis. “No.”
His lips twitched. “One ‘no’ is enough, darling.”
Darling?
Filled with anxiety, Catherine fought to keep her voice steady. “I thought I made it clear that I wanted to ignore what happened.”
“And you expect that will make it go away?”
“Yes, that’s what one does with mistakes,” she said with difficulty. “One sets them aside and moves on.”
“Really?” Leo asked innocently. “My mistakes are usually so enjoyable that I tend to repeat them.”
Catherine wondered what was wrong with her that she was tempted to smile. “This one will not be repeated.”
“Ah, there’s the governess voice. All stern and disapproving. It makes me feel like a naughty schoolboy.” One of his hands lifted to caress the edge of her jaw.
Her body raced with conflicting impulses, her skin craving his touch, her instincts warning her to move away from him. The result was a kind of stunned immobility, every muscle drawing up taut. “If you don’t leave my room this instant,” she heard herself say, “I’ll make a scene.”
“Marks, there is nothing in the world I would enjoy more than watching you make a scene. In fact, I’ll help you. How shall we start?” Leo seemed to enjoy her discomfiture, the wash of uncontrollable color over her face.
The pad of his thumb stroked the thin, soft skin beneath her jaw, a coaxing motion that caused her head to tilt back before she quite knew what she was doing. “I’ve never seen such eyes,” he said almost absently. “They remind me of the first time I saw the North Sea.” His fingertips followed the edge of her jaw. “When the wind chases the waves before it, the water is the same green-gray your eyes are now … and then it turns to blue at the horizon.”