Then Comes Seduction

“Oh, dear,” she said in dismay, “whoever can this be? Are you expecting anyone?”

But the carriage door was already open and the coachman was reaching up a hand to help someone alight.

Mr. Dubois was looking upward with amiable politeness.

Uncle Stanley was frowning.

And out stepped Lady Forester.

Closely followed by Sir Clarence Forester.

“What in thunder?” Jasper said.

Katherine might have turned and fled ignominiously if he had not gripped her hand more tightly and stridden forward with her. But he stopped in his tracks when the coachman turned to help yet a third passenger out.

An elderly gentleman whom Katherine did not know.

“God damn it all to hell!” Jasper exclaimed. “What now?”

23

LADY Forester and Clarence.

The bald-faced gall of it!

But before Jasper could express any of the outrage he felt…

Seth Wrayburn too!

“Be civil, Jasper,” Katherine murmured to him. “Do, please, be civil.”

After what the two of them had done to her? But God bless us, Seth Wrayburn! The man never stepped beyond the threshold of his own London house. Yet here he was in Dorsetshire, in company with Lady Forester and Clarence, of all people.

Jasper took himself in hand. What would more disconcert the latter two more than civility, after all?

“Ma’am? Sir? Clarrie?” he said in cheerful tones. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

It would probably have been obvious to an imbecile, of course, that it was anything but. He had been unable quite to unclench his teeth as he spoke.

“Pleasure you may call it, Montford,” Wrayburn said, making no attempt to smile or to look anything other than thoroughly irritated. “I call it a decided displeasure, being dragged half across England over roads that are a disgrace and past tollbooths that seem to have sprouted up every half mile or so and being talked to every mortal inch of the way. I am not in any way pleased, I would have you know.”

He frowned ferociously.

“We have come, Jasper,” Lady Forester said, “to take dear Charlotte away to a home where she will be properly cared for and carefully guarded until her come-out next year. We have come-”

“If I have to listen to one more of your rehearsed monologues, Prunella,” her uncle declared, cutting her off in the middle of a sentence, “I swear I will hire a post chaise without further ado and take myself off back to the sanity of my own home in London, and the whole pack of you will find the doors barred against you for the rest of my natural life. We have come, Montford, to settle this matter of Charlotte once and for all. Prunella and Clarence claim this is an unfit home, and they are like flies in autumn, the two of them, buzzing about one’s head and trying to fly into one’s mouth and up one’s nostrils no matter how many times one tries to bat them away. I have come to see for myself. I shall see and I shall decide and then I shall go home and hope never to set eyes upon a single one of you ever again.”

“Sir.” Jasper found that his good humor was being restored. “May I have the honor of presenting Lady Montford to you? Charlotte’s great-uncle, Katherine, Mr. Seth Wrayburn.”

Katherine curtsied and Wrayburn looked at her fiercely. She was looking more than usually beautiful in her creased green dress and with her hair down and one long piece of grass clinging to a lock of it behind one ear. She also looked like someone who had been recently tumbled in the hay.

“And have you met Stanley Finley, my father’s brother?” Jasper asked. “And Mr. Dubois?”

“An unfit home?” Uncle Stanley said, ignoring the introduction. He was looking thunderous. “An unfit home when my brother’s own son is heading it with his new wife, who is the sister of the Earl of Merton? Unfit in what way, I would like to know?”

He had turned his frown upon Lady Forester and Clarence.

“Where is Charlotte,” Lady Forester asked pointedly, “while her half brother and his new wife have been off… romping together?” Her eyes raked over them with haughty contempt. “And where are all the houseguests, including all the gentlemen?”

Katherine spoke for the first time since she had murmured to him to be civil.

“They are at tea in the drawing room, I do believe, ma’am,” she said. “All the very young people will be there with Charlotte as hostess for the occasion and Miss Daniels as her chaperone. Mrs. Dubois and Lady Hornsby will be there too-they have come with their daughters to stay with us. You must all be weary after your journey. Allow us to take you up there for some tea while rooms are being prepared for you. And welcome to Cedarhurst.”

“I am surprised, Lady Montford, that you are prepared to appear in the drawing room before guests looking as you do,” Lady Forester said.

“She does indeed look almost too charming, ma’am,” Dubois said. “I quite agree with you. But indeed, my wife and I are charmed by the beauty of all the young ladies here and delighted with the good manners and breeding of all the young gentlemen. It was a splendid idea to gather them all together here in the country for a bit of summer fun. Life can be lonely and dreary for the very young.”

“What makes this an unfit home,” Clarence said, as usual speaking when he really ought to know that the best policy was to maintain a silence, “is that everyone knows Jasper’s marriage is a sham, that he married only because society demanded it of him. And that he married a social upstart who is no better than she ought to be.”

That did it!

Jasper released Katherine’s arm and strolled forward until the toes of his boots almost touched those of Clarence, who could not step back because the carriage was still directly behind him.

“Clarrie,” Jasper said in the soft, pleasant voice he reserved for those with whom he was not pleased at all, “you are a nasty little beast and I have a few scores to settle with you when the time is ripe. That time, for the sake of civility, is probably not yet, alas. But if the time is not to be now, you will apologize to my wife with abject humility so that we may proceed into the house and make you and your mama comfortable as we do with all our guests.”

“You will make the apology, Forester,” Uncle Stanley said, “if you do not want me to knock every tooth in your head down your throat.”

“And make it quick, Clarence,” Wrayburn said, sounding more irritated than ever. “I want my tea even if it does have to be taken in a roomful of people, most of them very young. And silly, I do not doubt.”

Clarence looked at Katherine before allowing his eyes to slide off to one side of her.

“I am sorry, ma’am,” he muttered.

Jasper moved his face half an inch closer.

“With abject humility, Clarrie,” he said in the same quiet, pleasant voice. He was slowly swinging Katherine’s bonnet by its ribbons.

“I beg you will forgive me, ma’am,” Clarence said, his eyes darting at her and then away again. “What I said was uncalled for.”

“How lovely it is,” Katherine said before Jasper could object further, “that Charlotte is to have her family about her for her birthday the day after tomorrow. Do come inside, all of you. You look very weary, Mr. Wrayburn. May I take your arm?”

He still looked irritated, but he allowed her to do so and they proceeded up the steps. Jasper offered his arm