She raised her head, bracing her hands on Dauntry’s back. He’d lost his hair ribbon, as well as his domino and mask. Dark curls spilt over his shoulders, twisted down his back. There was not a chance that most of the sea of revellers didn’t recognize her. Didn’t recognize them.
She could almost feel the gossip swirling around them like midges on a hot summer night. The entire ton would be buzzing with it by morning. But, as she’d be the Countess of Somercote before she was likely to see any of them again, it really didn’t matter.
Cynical and wrong as it might be, a marriage and a title would sweep this all away. Make it nothing more than a mildly amusing story. Gossip was only truly savoury when attached to scandal.
Dauntry marched straight out the gates, past the stunned and titillated faces of the bon ton, and down the street to the top of the Vauxhall Stairs. He slung her down off his shoulder and set her on her feet, one hand still locked about her arm, pressing down on bruises he wasn’t aware of. George forced herself not to flinch. He wouldn’t forgive himself if she complained, if he knew.
‘Well, curst Katharina?’ He let go of her, raising one hand to brush a curl away from her eyes. He swept it back, fingers tracing the curve of her ear, trailing down her neck.
‘Yes, Petruchio?’
‘Yes—the very word I’ve been waiting for.’ He bent his head and kissed her again, his eager hands locking her to him.
George pressed close, twined her hands in his loose hair, and kissed him back.
A few houses up, Brimstone stopped to watch George and her bedevilled suitor. The sound of running feet echoed loudly in the dark. Shouts and shrill laughter spilt out of the gardens.
‘Well?’ Bennett inquired as he and Morpeth caught up with him. ‘Is he kissing her or beating her?’
‘Would it make any difference?’ St Audley said skidded to a stop.
Brimstone shot his cuffs and turned back towards the gardens, suddenly overcome with thirst. He jostled the viscount and pushed him back towards the garden. There was nothing more boring than happily united lovers.
Epilogue
Barton Court, August 1793
Curled up indecorously in her favourite chair, George watched two-year-old Dysart play with his wooden horses. Caesar, a look of long suffering on his greying face, was being put to use as the hill Dy’s chargers were running up and down.
The distinct sound of a carriage rolling along the gravel drive—the crackle of wheels shifting rock, the steady gait of the team—eased its way in through the open window, grew louder as the clock ticked on the mantel and the birds chirped outside in the warmth of the afternoon.
Dy’s head snapped up and one of his beloved chargers fell un-noted to the carpet. He ran to the window, the skirts of his dress flapping. George stood and shook out her gown, peeling her shift away from her damp skin. She scooped up her son and held him so he could peer out the open window.
‘Our guest is arriving. Shall we go and greet him?’
Dy nodded, dark curls bobbing. He clutched his favourite horse to his chest.
With her son balanced on her hip and Caesar trailing along beside her, George made her way down the main stairs to the entrance hall.
The portrait of Ivo’s father smiled down upon her as she passed it. As did the one of her father, and those of past Dauntrys too numerous to count.
Ivo had gone to town to meet with his solicitor, and George had sent a long overdue invitation to Ashcombe Park. She hadn’t been sure the marquess would come, but something had to be done. Someone had to swallow their pride…and this time around it had been her. The estrangement between her husband and his family had gone on long enough.
The front door was thrown open by the butler and the marquess appeared in the open doorway, backlit by the afternoon sky. A tall, steady figure for all that he was well into his eighties.
Caesar’s hackles went up and George shushed him, running a hand down his back to smooth the hair back into place. She snapped her fingers and the dog obediently prostrated himself on the floor.
Lord Tregaron stepped inside, wig precisely set, as if he’d just stepped from the hands of his valet, not from a carriage after a jolting thirty-mile drive. He leaned upon the elegant walking stick clutched in his right hand a bit more than she remembered, but not so much that a casual observer would notice.
‘Do you have Somercote trained as well as that beast?’
George bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. The old man was very much as she remembered him from their few, brief encounters. Haughty. Angry. Like a cat rubbed the wrong way.
‘Well, girl?’ His bushy brows rose as he tipped his head back and glared down at her from his superior height. His cocoa-brown eyes, exactly like his grandson’s, bored into her.
‘I’m wondering how to answer you, my lord. If I say yes, you’ll think your grandson a fool. If I say no, you’ll think me one.’
The old man gave a bark of laughter and stripped off his linen surtout, handing the full-skirted coat over to the butler, along with his hat and gloves. ‘That my heir?’
George glanced at Dysart and bucked him up farther on her hip, getting her arm under him. Dysart looked back at her uncertainly, his free hand clinging to the front of her gown, chubby fingers soft against her skin.
‘I told that stubborn grandson of mine all would be forgiven when he presented me with an heir.’
The marquess’s gruff tone put her forcibly in mind of her husband when he knew he was in the wrong but was loath to apologize. A family trait, that. Or, perhaps, simply a masculine one. Her own father had been much
