“You watch everything she does.” Amelia stubbornly kept pace with him. “Whenever her name is mentioned, you’re all ears. And lately, every time I see you talking or arguing with her, you seem more alive than you have since…” She paused, seeming to think better of what she’d been about to say.
“Since when?” Leo asked, daring her to continue.
“Since before the scarlet fever.”
It was a subject they never discussed.
The year before Leo had inherited the viscountcy, a fatal epidemic of scarlet fever had swept through the village where the Hathaways had lived.
The first to go had been Laura Dillard, Leo’s fiancée.
Laura’s family had let him stay at her bedside. For three days he had watched her die in his arms, hour by hour, until she had slipped away.
Leo had gone home and collapsed with the fever, and so had Win. By some miracle they had both survived, but Win had been left an invalid. And Leo had emerged an entirely different man, scarred in ways that even he couldn’t fully catalog. He had found himself in a nightmare he couldn’t wake from. He hadn’t cared if he lived or died. The most unforgivable part was that in his torment, he had hurt his family and caused no end of problems for them. At the worst of it, when Leo had seemed bent on destroying himself, the family had made a decision. They had sent Win to recover at a clinic in France, with Leo accompanying her.
While Win’s weak lungs had regained their strength at the clinic, Leo had spent hours walking through the heat-drowsed pantiled villages of Provence, up switchback footpaths scattered with flowers, across arid fields. The sunshine, the hot blue air, the lenteur, or slowness of life, had cleared his mind and calmed his soul. He had stopped drinking except for a single glass of wine at dinner. He had sketched and painted, and finally he had grieved.
When Leo and Win had returned to England, Win had wasted no time in achieving her heart’s desire, which had been to marry Merripen.
Leo, for his part, was trying to make amends for the way he had failed his family. And above all, he was determined to avoid falling in love ever again. Now that he was aware of the fatal depth of feeling he was capable of, he would never give another human being such power over him.
“Sis,” he told Amelia ruefully, “if you have some lunatic notion that I have any kind of personal interest in Marks, forget it at once. All I intend to do is find out what skeleton she has in her closet. Knowing her, it’s probably a literal one.”
Chapter Three
“I didn’t even know about Cat’s existence until I was twenty,” Harry Rutledge said, stretching out his long legs as he and Leo sat in the Rutledge Hotel’s clubroom. The quiet and luxurious spot, with its numerous octagonal apses, was a popular gathering place in London for foreign nobility, travelers of means, aristocrats and politicians.
Leo regarded his brother-in-law with thinly veiled skepticism. Of all the men he would have chosen to marry one of his sisters, Rutledge would certainly not have topped the list. Leo didn’t trust him. On the other hand, Harry had his good points, among them his obvious devotion to Poppy.
Harry drank from a snifter of warmed brandy, considering his words carefully before he continued. He was a handsome man, capable of great charm, but he was also ruthless and manipulative. One would expect no less from a man of his achievements, among them creating the largest and most opulent hotel in London.
“I’m reluctant to discuss Cat for several reasons,” Harry said, his green eyes guarded. “Among them the fact that I’ve never been particularly kind to her, nor did I protect her when I should have. And I regret it.”
“We all have regrets,” Leo said, taking a sip of brandy, letting the velvet fire slide down his throat. “It’s why I cling to my bad habits. One doesn’t have to start regretting something unless one stops doing it.”
Harry grinned, but sobered quickly as he stared into the flame of a small candle lamp that had been set on the table. “Before I tell you anything, I want to ask what the nature of your interest in my sister is.”
“I’m asking as her employer,” Leo said. “I’m concerned about the influence she may have over Beatrix.”
“You never questioned her influence before,” Harry shot back. “And from all accounts she’s done an excellent job with Beatrix.”
“She has. However, the revelation of this mysterious connection to you has me worried. For all I know, the two of you have been hatching some kind of plot.”
“No.” Harry stared at him directly. “There’s no plot.”
“Then why all these secrets?”
“I can’t explain without telling you something of my own past—” Pausing, Harry added darkly, “Which I hate doing.”
“So sorry,” Leo said without a trace of sincerity. “Go on.”
Harry hesitated again, as if weighing the decision to tell him anything. “Cat and I had the same mother. Her name was Nicolette Wigens. She was British by birth. Her family moved from England to Buffalo, New York, when she was still an infant. Because Nicolette was an only child—the Wigens had her fairly late in life—it was their desire to see her married to a man who would take care of her. My father Arthur was more than twice her age, and fairly prosperous. I suspect the Wigens forced the match—there was certainly no love in it. But Nicolette married Arthur, and I was born soon after. A bit too soon, actually. There was speculation that Arthur wasn’t the father.”
“Was he?” Leo couldn’t help asking.
Harry smiled cynically. “Does one ever know for certain?” He shrugged. “In any case, my mother eventually ran off to England with one of her lovers.” Harry’s gaze was distant. “There were other men after that, I believe. My mother wasn’t one for limiting herself. She was a spoiled, self-indulgent bitch, but very beautiful. Cat looks very much like her.” He paused reflectively. “Only softer. More refined. And unlike our mother, Cat has a kind and caring nature.”
“Really,” Leo said sourly. “She’s never been kind to me.”
“That’s because you frighten her.”
Leo gave him a disbelieving glance. “In what possible way could I frighten that little virago? And don’t claim that she’s nervous around men, because she’s perfectly amiable to Cam and Merripen.”
“She feels safe with them.”
“Why not with me?” Leo asked, offended.
“I believe,” Harry said thoughtfully, “it’s because she’s aware of you as a man.”
The revelation caused Leo’s heart to jolt. He examined the contents of his brandy snifter with studied boredom. “Did she tell you that?”
“No, I saw it for myself, in Hampshire.” Harry turned wry. “One has to be particularly observant where Cat is concerned. She won’t talk about herself.” He tossed off the rest of his brandy, set down the glass with care, and leaned back in his chair. “I never heard from my mother after she left Buffalo,” he said, lacing his fingers together and resting them on his flat midriff. “But when I reached the age of twenty, I received a letter bidding me to come to her. She had contracted a wasting disease, some form of cancer. I assumed that before she died, she wanted to see what had become of me. I left for England at once, but she died just before I arrived.”
“And that was when you met Marks,” Leo prompted.
“No, she wasn’t there. Despite Cat’s wishes to stay with her mother, she had been sent to stay with an aunt and grandmother on her father’s side. And the father, apparently unwilling to keep vigil by the sickbed, had left London altogether.”
“Noble fellow,” Leo said.
“A local woman had taken care of Nicolette during the last week of her life. It was she who told me about Cat. I gave a brief thought to visiting the child, but I decided against it. There was no place in my life for an illegitimate half sister. She was nearly half my age, and in need of female guidance. I assumed she was better off in her aunt’s care.”
“Was that assumption correct?” Leo brought himself to ask.
Harry gave him an inscrutable glance. “No.”
An entire story was contained in that one bleak syllable. Leo wanted very much to hear it. “What happened?”
“I decided to stay in England and try my hand at the hotel business. So I sent Cat a letter, telling her where to send word if she ever needed anything. Some years later, when she was fifteen, she wrote to me, asking for help. I found her in … difficult circumstances. I wish I had reached her a little sooner.”
Feeling a tug of unaccountable concern, Leo found it impossible to maintain his usual veneer of carelessness. “What do you mean, difficult circumstances?”
Harry shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s as much as I can tell you. The rest is up to Cat.”
“Damn it, Rutledge, you’re not leaving it there. I want to know how the Hathaways got involved in this, and why I had the misfortune to end up as the employer of the most ill-tempered and interfering governess in England.”
“Cat doesn’t have to work. She’s a woman of independent means. I settled enough money on her to allow her the freedom to do anything she wished. She went to boarding school for four years, and stayed to teach for another two. Eventually she came to me and said she’d accepted a position as a governess for the Hathaway family. I believe you were in France with Win at the time. Cat went for the interview, Cam and Amelia liked her, Beatrix and Poppy clearly needed her, and no one seemed inclined to question her lack of experience.”
“Of course not,” Leo said acidly. “My family would never bother with something so insignificant as job experience. I’m sure they started the interview by asking what her favorite color was.”
Harry was trying unsuccessfully not to smile. “No doubt you’re right.”
“Why did she go into service, if she had no need of money?”
Harry shrugged. “She wanted to experience what a family was like, if only as an outsider. Cat believes she’ll never have a family of her own.”
Leo’s brows drew together as he tried to make sense of that. “Nothing is stopping her,” he pointed out.
“You think not?” A hint of mockery varnished Harry’s hard green eyes. “You Hathaways would find it impossible to understand what it’s like to be brought up in isolation, by people who don’t give a damn about you. You have no choice but to assume it’s your fault, that you’re unlovable. And that feeling wraps around you until it becomes a prison, and you find yourself barricading the doors against anyone who wants to come in.”
Leo listened intently, perceiving that Harry was talking about himself as well as Catherine. Silently he acknowledged that Harry was right: even in the worst despair of Leo’s life, he had always known that his family loved him.
For the first time he understood fully what Poppy had done for Harry, how she had broken through the invisible prison he had described.
“Thank you,” Leo said quietly. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to talk about this.”
“Certainly.” And in absolute seriousness, Harry murmured, “One thing I should make clear, Ramsay: If you hurt Cat in any way, I will have to kill you.”
Dressed in her nightgown, Poppy sat in bed with a novel. She heard someone enter the elegantly appointed private apartments, and she looked up with a smile as her husband came into the room. Her pulse quickened pleasurably at the sight of him, so dark and graceful. Harry was an enigmatic man, dangerous even in the view of those who professed to know him well. But with Poppy, he relaxed and showed his gentle side.
“Did you talk with Leo?” she asked.
“Yes, love.” Harry shrugged out of his coat, draped it over the back of a chair, and approached the bedside. “He wanted to discuss Cat, as I expected. I told him as much about her past—and mine—as I could.”
“What do you make of the situation?” Poppy knew that Harry was brilliant at discerning other people’s thoughts and motives.
Harry untied his cravat, letting it hang on either side of his neck. “Ramsay is more concerned for Cat than he’d like to be, that’s clear. And I don’t like it. But I won’t interfere unless Cat asks for help.” He reached down to the exposed line of her throat, drawing the backs of his fingers over her skin with a sensitive lightness that caused her breath to quicken. His fingertips rested on the rapid tattoo of her pulse, and caressed softly. Watching a delicate tide of pink rise in her face, he said in a low voice, “Put the book aside.”
Poppy’s toes curled beneath the bed linens. “But I’ve reached a very interesting part,” she said demurely, teasing him.
“Not half so interesting as what’s about to happen to you.” Drawing the covers back with a deliberate sweep that left her gasping, Harry lowered his body over hers … and the book dropped to the floor, forgotten.
Chapter Four
Catherine hoped that Leo, Lord Ramsay, would stay away from Hampshire for a good long while. Perhaps if enough time passed, they would be able to pretend the kiss in the garden had never happened.
But in the meantime, she couldn’t help but wonder … why had he done it?
Most likely he had merely been amusing himself with her, finding a new way to set her off balance.
If life were at all fair, she thought dourly, Leo would have been pudgy, pockmarked, and bald. But he was a handsome man with a strapping six-foot build. He had dark hair and light blue eyes and a dazzling smile. The worst part was that Leo didn’t look at all like the rogue he was. He looked wholesome and clean and honorable, the nicest gentleman one could ever hope to meet.
The illusion was dispelled as soon as he opened his mouth. Leo was a thoroughly wicked man, articulate in all circumstances. His irreverence spared no one, least of all himself. In the year since they had first met, he had exhibited nearly every objectionable quality a man could possess, and any attempt to correct him only made him worse. Especially if that attempt had been made by Catherine.
Leo was a man with a past, and he didn’t even have the decency to try and hide it. He was frank about his dissolute history, the drinking and skirt-chasing and brawling, the self-destructive behavior that had nearly brought catastrophe to the Hathaway family on more than one occasion. One could only conclude that he liked being a scoundrel, or at least being known as one. He played the part of jaded aristocrat to perfection, his eyes glinting with the cynicism of a man who, at the age of thirty, had managed to outlive himself.