Lady Silence (27 page)

Katy turned to say thank-you to Damon, but he
was already trotting off, preparing for the turn into the narrow
side street that led to the stables. She shook off as much snow as
she could onto the tiled foyer floor, then hurried up the stairs to
change.

~ * ~

“’
Tis the sharp edge of his tongue
you’ll be getting, my girl,” Clover Stiles declared as she fastened
the buttons on one of Katy’s most demure gowns. A silver gray of
softly woven wool, it featured long sleeves and a high neck and
gave off the aura of the cloister. A silent order of nuns, of
course. Katy’s lips twitched into a half-smile.
Ah well
. Succumbing to vanity, she wrapped a
bright paisley shawl about her shoulders, then examined herself in
the pier glass. Damp curls escaped the ruthless confines of the
conservative coiffeur Clover had fashioned. An adequate compromise,
Katy conceded. One that fit her peculiar status in the household
and echoed the confusion in her heart.

Katy turned to Clover, who was regarding her
with considerable anxiety. “He has already called me lame-brained,
tottyheaded, and idiotish. He says he wishes to speak with me about
something else entirely.”

“
Oh.” Unaccountably, Clover appeared
stricken.

“
Clover . . . Clover, what is it? Do
you know something I do not?”

Katy’s old friend stared at the carpet,
shifted her feet, shook her head. “Ah, no, miss. It was just an
idea I had . . .”

“
Well, out with it.”

Clover, who never blushed, turned bright
pink. “I—I was wondering if Mr. Palmer had made an offer.”

Oh, dear
. “And
it matters to you?” Katy inquired gently, while struggling to
reverse her perspective.

Clover toed the carpet, offered a reluctant
nod. After several moments of awkward silence, she drew a gasping
breath and plunged into speech. “I know he’s had an eye on you
forever, miss, and it’d be a good match for a girl who had no
family and couldn’t talk, but now . . . now we know about you . . .
well, truth to tell, I thought you was above his touch, and I’ve .
. . we’ve . . .” Clover hung her head and faltered to a halt.

“
You have an eye in that direction
yourself,” Katy finished.

“
Yes, miss,” her old friend
whispered.

Katy wondered if it were possible to start
this day over, to wave a wizard’s wand and have dawn repeat itself.
What to say? And how to say it? It was, after all, no more foolish
for Clover to long for Elijah Palmer than for Katy to dream of
Damon Farr.

Useless, perhaps—in both cases. But perfectly
understandable.

“
As much as I have always admired Mr.
Palmer,” Katy said, taking great care not to betray Elijah Palmer’s
offer, “he would not do for me. He is too good a man to have a wife
whose heart is given elsewhere.”

“
Ah, Katy, I’m that sorry,” Clover
breathed, instantly recognizing her friend’s dilemma. “The world is
surely a cruel place.”

Ignoring the pain in her heart, Katy asked,
with an attempt at a smile, “And what of your plans to be a fine
dresser in London?”

“
The heart is a wondrous organ, they
say—with a will of its own.” Clover pursed her lips in
self-mockery, then enveloped Katy in a hug. “Go now and see what
his nibs be wanting. Probably naught compared with what we’ve been
conjuring. Put on your brave face now and be off. We’ll do, you and
me. Like the colonel himself, we’re survivors.”

Damon was waiting for her, warming himself
before a roaring fire which occasionally hissed as snowflakes found
their way down the chimney, only to be vaporized into oblivion.
Like her own, his dark hair was wet, glistening in the leaping
firelight. Harsh-faced he might be, but Damon Farr took her breath
away. To Katy he was still the hero, the most handsome and
desirable man on earth. And she was confined with him in a room
about the size of his mahogany desk at Farr Park. The warmth that
surged through her was not from the fireplace.

He waved her to a chair comfortably
upholstered in floral tapestry and seated himself opposite her. As
much as she wanted to look him straight in the eye, Katy feared
what he might see in her own. At the moment her emotions were far
too raw for scrutiny.

Katy accepted an etched glass mug cup of hot
spiced wine. She sipped, feeling the hot brew all the way down.
Damon could not be going to ring a peel over her head—she would not
believe it. The moment hovered—intimate, perfect, and infinitely
precious. Dazzled by his presence, Katy fought her sluggish mind.
There was something essential she had forgotten . . .

“
I must thank you for the pianoforte
and for Mehitabel. Especially when I know you cannot think me
deserving of such generosity.”

“
You are mistaken,” the colonel
responded cooly. “Your misguided actions do not preclude my being
aware of your service to my mother . . . and to me. A musical
instrument and access to a horse are small recompense for your many
years of service.”

So that was it!
She was being paid off. Like a mistress receiving a gift of
jewels when her usefulness had come to an end. “I see,” Katy
murmured. “Your mama has already warned me that I am not expected
to return to Farr Park.”

“
Indeed.” It was the colonel’s turn to
look away. From what she could see, the frown he turned on the fire
was inexplicably fierce.

“
I am to find another position . . . or
to marry.”

The colonel drained his wine, poured another
glass. He seemed to have forgotten her presence.

“
Cat got your tongue?” Katy teased,
taking shocking advantage of the intimacy established by the many
hours they had spent alone in the bookroom at Farr Park.

The colonel’s head came up. His wine
mug clinked as it hit the brass inlay of one of the room’s
quartetto tables. “What are the Hardcastles to you?” he hurled at
her like a shot. “No more pretenses, I beg you. I fear you may need
my help, and I cannot give it if I remain in ignorance. Now is the
time to tell all.” Damon leaned forward, capturing her gaze with
his. “You will note I do not call you by name,” he enunciated not
more than eighteen inches from her face, “as we all know it is not
your own.
Now
, girl. No more
roundaboutation. I will have the whole story.”

Katy’s mug tilted, ruby red drops splashing
onto the silver of her skirt. Damon took the glass from her and set
it beside his own. Wordlessly, he offered his handkerchief. When
she had mopped up the spill as best she could, Katy kept the
handkerchief, clutching it in both hands in her lap. “I cannot,”
she whispered. “You would have to send me back.”

“
And if I swear to you I would never
send you back . . . ?”

“
Legally, you would have no
choice.”

“
I would have the choice of whether or
not I ever revealed what you say to me now.”

Of course he had that choice. She had always
known it, but she had never been able to trust anyone, not even
Damon, with such an all-encompassing decision for her life.

The smell of roasting meat drifted in to mix
with the smell of woodsmoke and the damp chill of a snowy night.
“Come, child,” Damon urged softly. “If you do not speak up now, I
shall have to order dinner put back.”

The implied threat was clear. He
would
know before they left his
room.

“
There was once a child,” Katy said at
last, “born of good family, but her parents died when she was a
baby. She was raised by her grandfather, younger son of a noble
house. He was unusually well educated, a true scholar, and the girl
was given the education of a boy. She was even encouraged to think
for herself, to express her opinions. In many ways it was an
idyllic life—and, like most idylls—over far too soon. Shortly
before her twelfth birthday, the grandfather died, and she was sent
to live with her father’s cousin, a woman who was considered to
have married well and who had a daughter of nearly the same age.
The grandfather’s grand family was pleased. The solicitors were
pleased, the trustees were pleased. All agreed the solution was
ideal.” Katy’s voice trailed off. She looked pointedly at her wine,
sitting at the colonel’s elbow.

Grimly, he handed it to her. “But the
situation was not ideal,” he said.

Katy shook her head, took a gulp of her wine,
still warm, thank goodness, for she had turned to ice. “No . . . it
was not.”

“
Tell me.”

“
I—the girl was everything the lady of
the house did not want in a child. She was shockingly well
educated, a full-blown blue stocking. She expressed her opinions
freely. She even dared object when told not to speak unless spoken
to. She was told in no uncertain terms not to correct her
governess, even if she said Timbuktu was in China. She was not to
spend her days reading nor was she to ride her horse above a
ladylike trot. She was not to hobnob with the servants. She was, in
short, a
trial
. She betrayed
the vulgar traits of her maternal grandfather, the tradesman, as
well as the bookish and misguided traits of her other grandfather .
. .”

“
And?” Damon inquired
softly.

“
The girl’s relatives, a lord and his
lady, were . . . tall. They towered over her. They
boomed
at her. They punished
her.”

“
How did they punish her?”

Katy held her glass mug in both hands,
searching for warmth. “At first . . . they simply shouted. To a
child who had never heard a harsh word, they were very . . .
intimidating. Then they began to shake me. They were both so large.
After that, it was a willow branch or a riding crop. My hands, my
arms, my . . . derrière”—Katy was too lost in her story to blush or
notice she was no longer speaking theoretically. “And, finally, my
bare back. There was no one to care. My cousin Eleanore, in fact,
seemed to gloat each time. Perhaps because my beatings spared her
what she herself may have endured. I never knew. The servants, of
course, had no choice but to look the other way.” Katy trailed to a
halt, her gaze fixed on the draperies shutting out the snowy
night.

“
There is more, is there
not?”

Katy proffered an infinitesimal nod. “I did
not recognize the look then, but I know it now. I only knew that
when he looked at me, I was frightened.” Grim-faced, Damon nodded.
“I went to the vicar, and he called me a spoiled ungrateful wretch
to make up such lies about family connections who had been kind
enough to provide me with a home. So I made my plans carefully.
Fortunately, my grandfather had been a man of the world as well as
a man of the cloth, and he’d taught me well. I’d been wise enough
to hide my hoard of coins, and one day I simply walked to the
village, boarded a stagecoach, and kept on going.”

“
Until you came to Farr
Park.”

Katy nodded. “That was several weeks later,
after I had learned that opening my mouth only brought great
trouble and sent me flying back onto the road.”

“
And you actually thought I would send
you back to that?”

So softly spoken, yet
clearly he was angry. Very angry
. “But you were far
away,” she reminded him. “And I feared your mother could not stand
against the baron and his wife. Legally, I am theirs to do with as
they will.”

Slowly, he nodded, his mind already leaping
ahead. “And by the time I returned, you had dug a hole so deep,
there was no way out.”

“
Yes,” she admitted on the whisper of a
sigh.

“
I think,” Damon said, his mind moving
forward with military determination, “it might be awkward for Oxley
and his wife to discover you at the moment. Is that not
so?”

“
The situation is, indeed, very
strange,” Katy admitted, recognizing at last the futility of
continuing any portion of her long deception. “A twelve-year-old
child has no access to proof of her birth. There is no way I can
say, ‘I am Lucinda Challenor, and she is not. My Challenor
grandparents are gone, and my mother’s family has not set eyes on
me since I was a baby. So, truly, I am nothing but Katy Snow. The
waif the cat dragged in.”

“
On a night much like this,” Damon
mused.

“
Yes.” Katy’s lips curled at the edges.
“Though I doubt you were as sober, for you still appeared foxed the
next day when I first saw you.”

Oh, yes. What a stupid young cub he had been.
But not so uncaring he had had a homeless waif thrown back out into
the cold.

“
Dinner is served, colonel, Miss Katy.”
Jesse Wiggs stood stiffly in the doorway. Katy, head whirling
between gratitude for the interruption and a wish that these
intimate moments with Damon would never end, allowed the colonel to
draw her to her feet and lead her toward the dining
room.

What had she done?
Her life was in his hands.

And it felt good. So wonderfully right.

Katy sat, toying with her food until Lady
Moretaine declared she must be sickening for something. And no
wonder after her ill-conceived walk to the far side of town. Katy
allowed herself to be sent from the table, fed a hot posset sent up
from the kitchen, and be tucked up under heavy quilts after liberal
use of the warming pan. She wound her arms around her pillow and
thought of her hero. She smiled . . . and forgot to be afraid. She
dreamed the secret fantasies of her innermost being.