When a Scot Loves a Lady

Leam departed. The city streets were still crowded with vehicles and people, the sky thick with rainclouds the color of her eyes. He must head for the War Office and the information on Cox that might or might not be there. Still he felt peculiarly adrift, without anchor.

He paused to allow a cart to trundle past on the muddy street, the clatter of wheels and shouts and the smell of rain all about.

Not adrift.

Free. Free of guilt. Free of regret and pain.

His hands tightened on the reins and he sucked in a lungful of damp air, water dripping off his greatcoat capes and the brim of his hat. He pushed his mount forward toward the War Office.

Chapter 20

Kitty did not speak to her mother about Viscount Gray’s suspicions of Lord Chamberlayne. She simply did not know where to begin. Mama, I have had an affair—and it seems that perhaps I still am having it—with Lord Blackwood, whose fellow spies believe your beau is involved with persons planning sedition, and they have asked me to assist them in acquiring information about Lord Chamberlayne’s family and possible illegal activities . No, that would not do. But she could not do what Lord Gray asked and conceal it from her mother either.

Standing by her bedchamber hearth, she drew her letter to him from her pocket and placed it on the grate. She must have time to consider, especially to understand how important Lord Chamberlayne was to her mother in truth.

The following day she joined her mother in paying calls. The day after that passed much the same, including a drive with Lord Chamberlayne in the park. The days crept into a week. Leam did not return.

“Kitty, you are fidgeting,” her mother said to her as the carriage halted at the curb on Berkeley Square to collect Emily and Madame Roche.

“I am not. I never fidget.” She untangled her fingers from her reticule strings. “Mama, where were you when you did not come home in the evening a sennight ago?”

The dowager met her placid look with a glimmer in her eye.

“I wondered when you would ask that.”

“I was waiting for you to make an announcement. I expected you to. Where were you?”

“There is no announcement to be made. I was at your brother’s house. Serena was feeling poorly, and you know I am the only mother she has now. You might have asked me at any time.” The dowager folded hands gloved in the finest kid on her lap of striped taffeta.

“I am sorry Serena is unwell. I will call on her tomorrow.” She exhaled sharply. “But this is ridiculous. When will Lord Chamberlayne make an offer?”

“He already has.”

She stared, a tangled mess of relief and disappointment inside. “You did not accept him?”

Her mother reached across the seat and took her chin into her hand as though she were a child.

“Kitty, I spent nearly thirty years married to a man who ill suited me. I am tempted, but I shan’t dive into another marriage quite so swiftly.”

Kitty nudged her face away. She must make certain.

“But you have had ample time. He has been courting you for months.”

“And what of your suitors, daughter? Several have been calling on you for years.”

Kitty looked out the carriage window. Emily and her companion were descending the steps of their house. Her mother had never asked her this. Never pressed her. Why now?

“They do it mostly for the novelty of it,” she said. “None of them have a sincere attachment. It is the image of cool, reserved inaccessibility in the face of rumor that attracts them, not I.”

Her mother’s thin brows dipped into a V.

“Katherine, I never wish to hear you say such a thing. You disrespect a gentleman by judging his attentions in such a manner.”

Kitty’s head snapped around. “Mama, you cannot be serious.”

“Your pride has outrun you, daughter. You have become far too comfortable dismissing any man you don’t feel lives up to your exalted idea of what a gentleman should be.”

Kitty’s cheeks flamed. “And what precisely is that?”

“He must be extraordinarily learned, well placed in fashionable circles, an exceptional conversationalist, titled, wealthy, a man of taste and elegance, as loyal as yourself to his loved ones, and I daresay handsome as well.”

“I never said such a thing.” Her heart beat very swiftly.

“You needn’t. You live it. But you will not find such a paragon, daughter. Men like that do not exist. Most of them are rather more like your father.” There was no bitterness to her mother’s voice, only the clean, uncluttered sense Kitty had always admired. But, even so, this was not honesty.

“Mama, I must know something. Why did you never—” The carriage door opened.

“Bonjour, Katrine! My lady.” Madame Roche was all gracious smiles, black and red and white fluttering with frills. Emily tucked her slender frame into the seat beside Kitty and placed a book in her hand.

“Here is the one I promised you. It is not nearly as tumultuous as the Racine play Lord Blackwood lent me, but I think you may like it, and you said you had seen Phaedra before, in any case.”

“It was such a plaisir to encounter His Lordship again so soon. What a kind gentleman!”

“We saw him yesterday at Lady Carmichael’s drawing room,” Emily supplied.

“Helas, with the large dogs.” The elegant widow sniffed.

“I did not know you were acquainted with Lord Blackwood, Kitty.” Her mother’s gaze sharpened.

“A little.”

“Quite a lot, I should say,” Emily commented. “But that was to be expected given the circumstances.”

Kitty’s heart thudded. Her mother studied her. The carriage rumbled into motion.

“I have been thinking about that duel, Kitty, the one in which his brother died.” Emily’s lips pinched together. “It was insensibly tragic.”

“It is men, dear girl,” the dowager said.

“I don’t think I understand them very well,” Emily replied.

Kitty felt her mother’s regard on her. She was wrong. She did not hold all gentlemen to impossibly high standards. Perhaps, like Emily, she simply did not understand them.

The exhibition opening spread through three high-ceilinged chambers of the British Museum. It was a spectacular show, a display of oil paintings of the Italian masters of the late Renaissance. Thick-

muscled Masaccios competed for position on the wall with delicate Botticellis and dark, brooding Caravaggios.

Kitty had attention for little of it. Once she would have enjoyed such a display. Now her distraction, apparently, knew no bounds.

“Kitty, you are not yourself. Lady March remarked on it recently and I daresay she has the right of it.”

She clutched her reticule to hide her distress. “Then, Mama, that simply must be.”

“Give me your arm.”

“No. I will take Emily’s.” She searched for her friend in the crowd.

“Do not frown, Katherine. It causes wrinkles.”

“I needn’t have any concern over wrinkles. As you so kindly pointed out in the carriage, I apparently have no interest in securing a gentleman’s notice.”

“You are twisting my words.” The dowager studied a graceful portrait of the Virgin and child, the chubby babe reaching negligently for his mother’s exposed breast, pacific grace etched on both their glowing faces. “You