Wick looked at the pieces. “Needs mending again. Why are you bothering?”
“This child’s parents had nothing to give him to bring to the underworld but his knucklebones,” Gabriel said, picking up his magnifying glass. “Why shouldn’t that gift be honored equally with the trumpery gold Biggitstiff is after?”
“A message has arrived from Princess Tatiana’s delegation,” Wick said, apparently accepting Gabriel’s edict in regard to the knucklebones. “She is now in Belgium and will arrive on schedule. We’ve had some two hundred acceptances for your betrothal ball, among them your nephew, Algernon Bennett, Lord Dimsdale. In fact, the viscount will arrive before the ball, by the sound of it.”
“Bringing the Golden Fleece?” Gabriel’s nephew, whom he vaguely remembered as a boy with a fat bottom, had affianced himself to one of the richest heiresses in England.
“His Lordship will be accompanied by his betrothed, Miss Victoria Daltry,” Wick said, glancing at his notes.
“It’s hard to believe that Dimsdale could have garnered such a prize; perhaps she has freckles or a squint,” Gabriel said, carefully aligning the clay fragments so that he could determine where the rivets originated.
Wick shook his head. “At her debut this spring Miss Daltry was accounted one of the most beautiful women on the marriage market.” They had been in England for a matter of months, but he already had a firm grasp on relevant gossip among the aristocracy. “Her adoration for her betrothed was also universally noted,” he added.
“She hasn’t met me,” Gabriel said idly. “Maybe I should steal her away before my own bride arrives. An English Golden Fleece for a Russian one. My English is far better than my Russian.”
Wick didn’t say a word, just slowly looked from Gabriel’s hair to his feet. Gabriel knew what Wick was seeing: black hair pulled back from a widow’s peak, eyebrows that came to points over his eyes in a way that frightened some women, the shadow of a beard that never seemed to really go away. Something in his expression scared off the soft ones, the ones that thought to cuddle and wrap his hair around their fingers after sex.
“Of course, you could try,” Wick commented. “But I expect you’ll have your hands full trying to charm your own bride.”
Not his best insult, but pretty good.
“You make it sound as if Tatiana will run for the hills at the sight of me.” Gabriel knew damn well that the glimmer of ferocity in his eyes frightened ladies who were more used to lapdogs. But for all that, he had yet to meet the woman whose eyes didn’t show a slight widening, a sparkle of happiness, at the prospect of meeting a prince. They liked to have a prince under their belt.
Still, this was the first time he would be trying to charm a wife, rather than a lover. One had to assume that women took the business more seriously than they did the occasional bedding.
A curse sounded in his head but died before reaching his lips. He turned back to the little pot before him. “Perhaps fortunately, my betrothed has no more choice in the matter than I do.”
Wick bowed. He left as silently as he had arrived.
Three
Yarrow House
T here was a moment of cool silence in the room, like the silence that follows a gunshot when hunters are in the woods.
Victoria didn’t say anything. Kate took one look at her soft, bewildered eyes and saw that her mother’s pronouncement had flown over her head.
“Victoria is my sister,” Kate repeated.
“Yes, so you bloody well better go there and make sure her marriage goes through before she’s ruined. Because she’s your sister.”
A little pulse of relief rushed through Kate’s veins. She must have misunderstood, she had—
“She’s your half sister,” Mariana clarified, her voice grating.
“But—she’s—” Kate turned to Victoria. “How old are you?”
“You know how old I am,” Victoria said, snuffling a bit as she rubbed her lower lip. “I’m almost exactly five years younger than you.”
“You’re eighteen,” Kate said. Her heart was thumping in her chest.
“Which makes you a ripe twenty-three,” Mariana said pleasantly. “Or perhaps twenty-four. At your age, it’s easy to forget.”
“Your husband, the colonel—”
Mariana shrugged.
Kate found herself struggling to breathe. She felt as if her whole life were unfolding in front of her, all the questions she never knew she had. The shock of her father coming home, just two weeks after her mother’s funeral, and saying that he was planning to marry by special license.
Her mother lying in bed all those years, and her father popping his head in now and then to say cheerful things and toss kisses in her direction but never to sit by his wife’s side.
Because apparently he’d been sneaking off to sit with Mariana.
“I feel as if I’m missing something,” Victoria said, looking from one to the other. “Are you going to cry, Kate?”
Kate recoiled. She had never cried, not since her father’s funeral. “Of course not!” she snapped.
There was another beat of silence in the room.
“Why don’t you do the honors?” Kate said finally, looking at her stepmother. “I’m agog to learn the particulars.”
“The particulars are none of your business,” Mariana stated. Then she turned to Victoria. “Listen, darling, you remember how we used to see dearest Victor even before we came to live in this house?”
Victor! Kate had never thought for a moment that her father’s name had any connection to that of her stepsister.
“Yes,” Victoria agreed. “We did.”
“That would be because your mother was his mistress,” Kate said. “I gather he visited your house for at least eleven years, before my mother died. Was there a colonel at all? Is Victoria illegitimate?” she asked Mariana.
“It hardly matters,” Mariana said coolly. “I can provide for her.”
Kate knew that. Her beloved, foolish father had left everything to his wife . . . and Mariana had turned it into a sweet dowry for Victoria, and be damned whether the estate needed the income. It was all Victoria’s now.
Who was not only pregnant, but illegitimate. One had to suppose that the colonel, Mariana’s putative first husband, had never existed.
Mariana got up and stubbed out her cigarillo in a dish overflowing with half-smoked butts. “I am shocked beyond belief that the two of you haven’t sprung to your feet and hugged each other in an excess of girlish enthusiasm. But since you haven’t, I’ll make this short. You will go to Pomeroy Castle, Katherine, because your sister is carrying a child and needs the approval of the prince. You will dress as your sister, you will take the bloody mongrels with you, and you will make this work.”
Mariana looked tough, and more tired than she usually did. “In that case, you will keep the Crabtrees in their cottage,” Kate stated.
Her stepmother shrugged. She didn’t really give a damn either way, Kate realized. She had launched the Crabtrees into the situation just in case the plea of blood relations failed.
“I’ve summoned the same man who cut Victoria’s hair,” Mariana said briskly. “He’ll be here tomorrow morning to cut off all of that rot on your head. Three seamstresses are coming as well. You’ll need at least twenty gowns altered.”