Sandra Madden (6 page)

"It must have been a difficult time for you," Kate offered, an angel's compassion reflected in the mist of her extraordinary eyes.

Edmund turned away, renewing his resolve
not
to look at her.

The healing period had been difficult. But following his recovery, Edmund adopted the life of a wild young aristocrat. He became a first-class rake. In no time, he became one of the most popular young men about town, carousing and sporting with other young aristocrats his age, like Christopher Carew, the Viscount of Lavingham, and Robin Wells, Earl of Cheltham.

Stopping just short of scandalous behavior, Edmund took up gambling, games, alcohol, and the company of the fair sex. A courtesan named Minnie had been his favorite.

"There were days when I despaired," he answered Kate honestly. The memories of late mornings when he awoke with terrible headaches and stomach upset were still painful.

"How long was it before you recovered?"

"Several months. But still I walk with a lopsided gait as you can readily witness."

" 'Tis hardly noticeable."

"During those months I became acquainted with my father. He'd removed from Rose Hall to the city with Reggie when I was just a boy, long before you would have memory of him in residence at Rose Hall. He only returned to the country for holidays."

"I used to see him walking in the gardens."

"My father kept to himself. My mother made life at Rose Hall unbearable for him."

"I did not realize." Kate laid a gentle hand on his arm. "I am so sorry."

Edmund felt her touch clear through his shirtsleeve. A tingling warmth traveled slowly up the length of his arm to the nape of his neck and slid like fire down his spine, warming him through and through.

"Do not be sorry for me. 'Twas my father who suffered."

One evening, in the drawing room of his London town house, after several tumblers of claret, Oliver Wydville, the Earl of Stamford, felt it incumbent to warn his son. In his cups, he confessed that he had married Edmund's mother, the cool and beautiful Margaret Grayson, because he loved the lady to distraction. 'Twas a love match.

Oliver pampered and spoiled Margaret, and before he realized what he'd done, he had created a shrew. A fetching shrew to be sure.

The earl admitted morosely that he became little more than his wife's chattel. She viewed him as a weakling for so willingly doing her bidding, and rarely bothered to hide her contempt. He had been completely emasculated by love.

" 'Tis not easy for a boy to grow up without his father. I did not understand at the time how you must have suffered," Kate said, peering up at Edmund beneath her long, dark lashes.

"Suffered is putting it a bit... too strong," he replied. "I was not old enough at the time for my father to take me along to London."

"But not Reggie."

"No, Reggie was his heir, and five years older than I. Father feared my mother's influence might damage Reggie irrevocably."

"What a sad affair!"

And there was more to the story he could not tell the innocent Kate.

Oliver Wydville brought his spinster sister Cordelia to Stamford House. She ruled the household and acted as hostess when social obligations demanded a woman's presence. In order to make up for the female companionship his wife had deprived him of, Oliver took several mistresses over the course of time.

"Forgive me if I am being too forward," Kate said, interrupting Edmund's dismal musings. "But what... what happened to your mother?"

Kate
was
being too forward, but that had never stopped her questions in the past.

"While I fought the losing battle with the Spaniards in Mousehole, my mother left England to live with her sister in the Americas."

When the news of her husband's mistresses reached Margaret Wydville, she was beyond humiliation. She packed as many belongings—Rose Hall's most precious items—as could be shipped to her new home.

"Does she communicate with you?" Kate asked softly.

"She writes occasionally."

His father warned Edmund never to marry for love. He declared time and again to his sons that a more casual arrangement, like those he kept with his mistresses, brought a man true happiness.

" 'Tis a sad affair," Kate repeated woefully. "But I am certain your mother misses you."

Edmund was not certain his mother thought of him at all.

The sad affair became grimmer still. His aunt frequently relived the drama that brought her back to Rose Hall, so he felt confident that Kate had heard the story.

Shortly after the earl bared his soul to Edmund, another tragedy struck. Reggie was killed in a duel.

His headstrong brother had ignored their father's admonition not to fall in love. Worse, he became embroiled with a woman whose husband took exception to Reggie's attentions.

Not long following his eldest son's death, Oliver Wydville's heart gave out. He died, leaving Edmund as his heir and the new Earl of Stamford.

The Earl of Stamford, a position Edmund never expected nor wished for.

While perfectly willing to fulfill his duty by marrying and producing an heir, Edmund meant to avoid love at all costs. He knew only too well what a dangerous emotion love could be. He'd vowed never to make the mistakes of his brother and father. As last of the line, he could ill afford to be doomed by love.

"Edmund, we are here."

"So soon?" He looked up from the contemplation of the path.

The gardener's cottage lay directly before them. Instead of winning an answer from the beauty by his side, Edmund had been woolgathering.

When he turned to Kate, he found her gazing up at him. Smiling. Captivating. She made him feel as if he were the only man on earth, that she would be looking only at him even if a regiment of handsome, broad-shouldered soldiers passed them by.

"I thank you for walking me home, Edmund."

"Promise me you will consider all that we have discussed?"

Her expression became serious, sweetly serious, as she twisted the ring on her finger from side to side in an absentminded fashion. "Aye, Edmund. I shall consider all."

"And you will say aye?" he coaxed.

"Must you have your answer on the morrow? I should like more time—

"I must return to London. My business is finished... except for the poaching. Nasty business. Trumble has suggested mantraps."

"No!"

"Aye. His solution seems an excessive measure to me."

"Open your preserves, Edmund. Give the tenants and villagers a month, perhaps two, to hunt each year. They will have no need to poach, then. As it is, they are hungry men, and poach only to feed their families."

"I shall think on it." Kate had offered an interesting solution, one that in all likelihood would not have occurred to him.

"Are you humoring me?" she asked.

"Are you coming to London?"

"I cannot promise. 'Tis a decision I cannot make lightly."

"I shall only hope, then." Without thinking, Edmund made a slight bow, as he would to any lady. "I will take my leave now. Give my regards to your good father."

Kate bent her knee. "Good day, Lord Stamford, you shall have my answer as soon as I know it."

He tipped his head, offering his most winning smile, and departed. He whistled all the way back to Rose Hall.

She must agree, for he would not take nay for an answer.

Edmund meant to find Kate a husband. Someone who deserved her.

Chapter Four

The new moon promises harmony

Edmund had chosen a bride! How horrid the thought!

'Twas inevitable, but difficult to contemplate. Who could love him as well as Kate?

Edmund had asked her to come to London! How wondrous!

'Twas impossible, but truly tempting.

Kate could not make a decision of such import without first consulting her astrologer, Jutta.

The moment Edmund strode out of sight, whistling a merry but unrecognizable tune, she hurried into town. Her mind was awhirl, her thoughts scattered like a deck of playing cards caught in the wind. She could not latch on to even one for more than a moment.

Worse, her emotions fluctuated between a dispiriting sadness and light-minded excitement. When at last Kate reached the village, she was in a rare state of turmoil.

Jutta, the baker's wife, lived above her husband's shop, where she interpreted the position of the planets for the curious. Loyal patrons, like Kate, customarily purchased a loaf of crusty bread from the stargazer's husband before they departed.

A mass of untamed coarse, wren-brown hair mushroomed from Jutta’s head. Otherwise, the middle-aged astrologer's only notable feature was her receding chin, which sloped into her neck at a rather startling angle.

In the normal course of events, Jutta charted the constellations and counseled Kate once a week. Kate always knew how the alignment of the planets would affect her health and fate.

But nothing had been normal since Edmund's return to Rose Hall. Kate had no choice but to pay a second visit to Jutta.

"London, Jutta! The Earl of Stamford has asked me to travel to London as his aunt's gentlewoman. Why did the stars not reveal this course before?"

"I know not."

"What say they? Do I go or stay?"

But Jutta behaved as if she had not heard the question. The stargazer regarded Kate with mouth agape.

"Your eye is black and blue."

"I walked into a low-hanging bough."

"Aye?" The stargazer hiked a sparse brow.

"Do you see a journey for me in the stars, Jutta?"

Jutta looked down at the parchment chart that lay between them on the crude wooden table, "Your sign is Cancer, a family sign."

"My family is here." At least the family Kate knew.

"But you are a moon child, vulnerable to the changing phases."

"Are you saying I am meant to travel to London? That indeed change is predicted?"

"You shall see the way by the light of this eve's moon."

"No more? They say no more?"

"Your sign rules here." Jutta rubbed her belly. "If you do not take regular meals there will be a disturbance."

Kate felt the disturbance as she headed for home deep in disappointment. A mass of butterflies frolicked in the pit of her stomach.

Kate begged her papa's forbearance and retired early to her small room. But when darkness fell the moon was shrouded by clouds. She spent a ragged night, alternately tossing and turning on her small feather bed, and then staring from her window to wish on any number of stars. Stars hidden in the hazy mist. Kate wished the same over and over: that she might make the correct decision. Jutta had been no help, and nothing was forecast in the midnight sky. Kate was left to weigh the wisdom of such a great change by herself through the long, quiet hours.

The hope of a London goldsmith identifying her ring filled her with an edgy excitement, a prickly anticipation. To discover her true identity would be the answer to her prayers.

Alas, the rubs: first to leave her dear papa and then to live beneath the same roof in London as Edmund. Kate feared the folly of such an arrangement. Instead of becoming closer to him, she should distance herself from the earl's simmering virility and spellbinding eyes.

Still, when might she have another opportunity to search London for her natural mother and father? The moon gave her no sign, the stars did not shine, and the stargazer's chart remained unclear.

By dawn's light Kate had not yet made up her mind.

She sought her papa's advice. Soon after dressing for the day, Kate carried a ripe red apple, a chunk of cheese, and jug of water to the south garden where John Beadle worked.

The finest gardener south of Newcastle, he looked more like a member of the gentry than a gardener, even when down in the dirt readying the spring soil. His complexion had long ago been darkened and leathered by the sun, and his dark hair had been sprinkled with gray. Kate loved his forthright hazel eyes and his calm, quiet dignity.

Calm and dignity that she did not possess. Ever since she could remember, Kate felt a restlessness, a constant churning deep inside her. She did not understand its cause or know its cure, but she felt sure it had to do with the past.

Although dissimilar in temperament, John's patience worked in good stead with Kate. By example, he had instilled in her a love of gardening and given her an unequaled knowledge of rose gardening. From John Beadle she had learned strong, firm values. She'd been more fortunate in the parents who took her into their home and hearts than Edmund had been with his natural mother and father.

Her papa had lost a great deal of weight following her mother's death. He appeared thin and wan. Kate worried about him, wondered if she should even ask his advice. But then, her dilemma might take his mind off his sorrow, if only for a little time.

"Good day, Papa."

"Kate." He looked up, surprise mixed with pleasure in his ready smile. "What brings ye here, me girl?"

"I brought you refreshment, so that you might take a rest."

He waved her away, his attention returning to the soil. "No need to worry over me. 'Tis better to work."

"Papa, I miss her, too."

He continued to stare at the dirt. "I know ye do. How is your eye today?”

"As you can see, the normal color is almost restored." And the lump on her head, which he could not see and did not know of, had lessened in size as well.

Kate hunkered down to his level, squatting on her heels. "Papa, you know that I have been keeping Lady Cordelia company in the afternoons."

"Aye."

"Lord Stamford has asked me if I would accompany Lady Cordelia to London as her gentlewoman. It would only be until I gained a position as nurse, and I would be well compensated for my time."

He looked up at her, plainly perplexed, if the scowling bunch of his brow was any indication. "Would ye like to be Lady Cordelia's constant companion? She does go on with an endless list of complaints."

"Aye, the lady's ailments are numerous," Kate agreed. "But I am accustomed to her, and she is good to me. I am thinking that living in London might offer me opportunities not available in the village... like the theater."