When the same thing happened as they rode past a couple of young bucks standing near the Italian fountains, anxiety tripped through her. But then one of the gentlemen staring back at her stiffened and sent a sharp elbow jab into the ribs of the man beside him. Both young men turned and walked swiftly in the opposite direction.
Turning to Hale, she noted the heavy scowl darkening his brow and realized it was his menacing countenance that had startled the gentlemen. It was odd to have someone so ready to battle on her behalf and a strange warmth filled her.
When he turned to look at her, the glowering expression immediately cleared. “You’re drawing some attention, dove.”
“I noticed that,” she replied thoughtfully. “Do you think those men could be involved in the plot against Frederick?”
He laughed. “Not a chance. Those two had nothing more sinister in mind than bedding you. Thoroughly.”
Katherine didn’t understand why the man felt the need to tease her with such a ridiculous and inappropriate suggestion. “I doubt...”
Her next words slid from her mind as she noticed a strikingly familiar figure standing beneath a tree across the lawn. It was the same gentleman she’d spotted the day she and Frederick had gone shopping. Today, in the afternoon sunshine and general gaiety of the park, the man’s detached manner appeared distinctly out of place, and the sight of him caused a tingle of trepidation to cross her nape.
“What is it? What did you see?” Hale’s expression was ruthless and focused. The intensity coiled inside him made her think of a lion preparing to pounce.
Katherine glanced back to where the man had been standing, but he was gone. How was that possible? There was no horse nearby, no carriage waiting. She scanned the area around the tree but there was no sign of him.
Had she conjured the man from her imagination?
“Lady Katherine.” Hale’s deep voice brought her gaze back to him.
“It was nothing.”
His eyes sharpened. “Don’t lie to me, duchess. You’re practically trembling. You saw something. Tell me.”
She wanted to argue that she wasn’t trembling at all, but she couldn’t deny the quiver of foreboding that remained within her. “It could be nothing,” she clarified.
“I’ll determine that.”
She sent a quick but thorough glance back toward the oak where she’d seen the man in the silk top hat and then scanned outward from there.
Still no sign of him.
“I thought I saw someone I recognized. No one I know personally but someone I’d seen the day our carriage was overtaken.”
“One of the kidnappers?”
“No. Just a gentleman I’d noticed watching us earlier that day. I could have sworn I just spied him again.” She glanced to the oak. “Over there. But then he simply...disappeared.”
“Tall, around thirty years of age, dressed in black, wearing a topper?”
Katherine’s eyes widened. “You saw him?”
“You don’t know who he is?”
“No. He does seem very slightly familiar, but I cannot figure out why. I’m certain I’ve never met him before. Do you think he’s involved?”
Hale didn’t answer that with anything more than a short grunt. Then he turned in his seat and made a sharp hand gesture. A second later, a stocky man with mussed black hair, a thick neck, and a heavy jaw rose from where he’d been crouched along the lakeshore. He took off at an easy lope down a footpath.
“What?” Katherine swung her gaze back to Hale. “What just happened?”
“I sent one of my men to follow him.”
“Follow him? But how? He’d completely vanished. Just how many men do you have watching us?”
The smile that widened Hale’s mouth then was full of self-conceit. But it only made the dratted man more attractive. “Instead of all the questions, duchess, you might consider trusting me.”
She was starting to notice he only called her duchess when he was irritated by her or when he wanted to irritate her in turn. Otherwise, he more often used dove.
And then there were those rare times he’d called her luv... She shook the thought from her head.
Shortly after, Hale instructed Newton to direct them home. She spent the rest of the drive thinking about the familiar-looking stranger, wondering how he might be connected.
The man in black had been watching her. She knew it for a fact. But how had he known she’d be at the park that day? Was he watching her house as well? Or had he been informed of their plans, somehow?
That possibility was frightening.
It didn’t help that deep down she felt certain she somehow knew who he was, though she could not connect him to anyone from memory. Her sense of recognition made absolutely no sense.
Chapter Nineteen
Katherine sat in the breakfast room, distrustfully eyeing the small, but still surprising, stack of invitations she’d received that morning.
Invitations to an upcoming musicale, a luncheon, the theater, and a few small parties. All appropriate for a young lady only recently out of mourning.
“What on earth am I supposed to do with these?” she muttered under her breath.
“I believe you’re supposed to accept or send your regrets.”
Katherine rolled her eyes at her brother’s statement of the obvious. “Easy for you to say when you don’t have to attend any of these events.”
Frederick looked up from his plate of breakfast. “You don’t have to go to any of them if you don’t want to. I know that type of thing doesn’t interest you.”
Though she appreciated her brother’s acknowledgement of her apathy toward the idea of entering London’s social whirl—even on a small scale—she was also aware of the fact that they needed to think beyond their current concerns to their greater future. Once they managed to eliminate the threat against him, her brother would have a whole long life ahead of him. He’d already admitted that he found London fascinating. And she suspected there would be a great deal in town that would fulfill his constant quest for intellectual challenges. Eventually, Frederick might wish to enter society, join the House of Lords, choose a wife.
Their father may have scorned London society, but
