Promise Me Heaven (42 page)

Unbelievably, horribly, the corners of his mouth began to quirk. “But why should I hire one when fate has conspired to hand me wife and steward in one?”

“Oh!”

“Come along, Cat.” He stretched out his hand. “We must bid your family good-bye before we leave for London. The season begins in a few weeks, and I have a desire to see you queen it over the ton.”

But Cat sidled backwards, out of his reach. She tried to regulate her voice, matching his insouciant tone. She failed.

“I am not going with you!” she shouted.

“Yes, you are,” Thomas replied with dangerous quietness.

“No, I am not! I have had enough of your polite inattention. Knocking at my door. Steering me about Brighton by the elbow as though to touch my arm would give you a case of the French pox. Avoiding my eye. Calling me ‘madam’ for God’s sake!” She felt the tears overspill her lids and dashed them angrily away, “And… and after our exquisite nights together! Oh, Thomas, how
could
you?”

“Exquisite?”

She felt her cheeks grow hot.
Fine
, she thought wildly,
why not end this scene without any dignity left at all? Why not?

“Yes, exquisite! Rapturous! Wondrous! At least they were to me. I do not have the advantage of a past which dulls the impact of these experiences. I am sorry I have not yet acquired enough bronze to take them for granted. But yes,
damn it
, to me our nights were exquisite!”

He was grinning openly now, his wide, mobile mouth displaying a set of strong, white teeth. “Cat, you are overset.” He placed a calming hand on her arm. She shook him off.

“Can you not understand the King’s English? I am not going to put up with your diffuse courtesy during the day and your too intent lovemaking at night. ’Tis too great a discrepancy for a poor, simpleminded, naive idiot like me to deal with.”

Ignoring her waving arms, he grabbed hold of her wrists and hauled her to him, wrapping her in his iron embrace. “Madam, you
are
coming with me. You are my wife, and I am not going to hear any more about my ‘advantageous past.’ I am sick unto death of my past and the hold it has had over my life—no,
our
lives!”

He was growing angry himself. She could hear it in the tight growl of his words.

He continued, “I am not going to spend my days scuttling about trying to avoid some tart whom I bedded a decade ago because she might remind you there were other women in my past! But that is all they are! The past! Nothing more! So be it!”

“Thomas,” she began, but he gave her a little shake, his eyes burning with unbridled convictions.

“Listen to me, Cat. The past is done. Over. You said so yourself. You are my wife, my companion and you are my love. The first and only love of my entire thirty-two years. I have waited a lifetime for you, and I will have you!”

Cat stared at him, once more opening her mouth to speak, but he would have none of it.

“If I promised you a marriage of polite recognition and accommodation, I lied. I lied and you will just have to live with that. I want you with me. Now, tomorrow, tonight, and for all the rest of my bloody days. And you will be there if I have to follow you about the face of the earth, your little notes in one hand and the rest of your luggage in the other. Do you understand?”

She nodded mutely. Love burned, blazed, exposing itself with absolute clarity in his onyx eyes. Unguarded, direct, vulnerable. His love could be no less apparent than the sun burning brightly through the scattered remnants of the morning fog. Her arms swept to pull his dark, beautiful face to hers. But he held her back.

“And you love me!” he shouted. “Damn it, Cat. You love me.”

“I love you, Thomas.”

“And as for inattentive politeness. I shall attend you, madam, until we both burn to cinders with my attentions. Now,
please
, say it again. Please. For I have waited a lifetime for your words.”

“I love—” Her last word was smothered by his mouth.

Her lips opened under his for a long minute before she tore her mouth free. Lovingly, she brushed the hair from his forehead. She kissed the corners of his eyes, his high cheekbones, his temples, his jaw, and his mouth again. Finally, she wrapped her arms about him and held him as tightly as she could.

“I thought you were going to leave me. I heard you say so to Strand. I heard you tell him if you did not leave, it would be a hypocrisy you could not live with,” she whispered against his heated skin. “I thought it was what you wanted.”

“Oh, Cat. They want a captain to play soldier for them. I agreed. I could not hope for your love if I let men die while I wooed you. I would not respect myself. How then could I hope to win your heart?”

“My heart? My heart is yours! My heart, my body, my very soul, are yours. They have been for a very, very long time.”

He swung her up into his arms. His mouth trailed liquid fire down her throat, sipping the tears that had come from her eyelashes. Still, she tried to hold him closer, as though she feared he might disappear and leave her bereft once more.

“Hush, love,” he whispered, rocking her gently as he stood. “It’s all right, now. There is no need for these tears. It is all right.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. You are going away. You might be killed. Oh, Thomas, I would rather you didn’t love me at all than have you die. I do not care for your honor, your duty. Stay with me.”

His sad, loving eyes gave her his answer. She could not ask Thomas to be anything less than he was. It was her joy and her misfortune.

“Then you must swear to me you won’t die,” she said angrily. “If you do I’ll find you! I’ll search the afterworld and hound you through eternity if you leave me. I swear I will!”

“Cat,” Thomas said, striding with her in his arms to the house, the dew sparkling a jeweled trail behind them. “All that your threats promise me is heaven.”

Epilogue

July 1815, Devon

C
atherine Montrose was not in the best of moods.

For two months she had been in Devon at her new home, waiting for Thomas to return. Two months of sweat-soaked night terrors, waking to endless day after endless day of wondering if Thomas lived or died. Thousands of men had lost their lives near two insignificant little farms at a place called Waterloo.

Finally Colonel Seward had gotten word to her. Thomas lived. Cat had spent the next two weeks waiting for a note in her husband’s own hand. No message, in any form, had arrived. Her relief gave way to anger, frustration, and finally dark conjecture. He could be wounded, maimed, or ill.

Refusing to give in to melancholy speculation, Cat sat in Thomas’s library each evening, poring over account books, studying demographic sheets, reading the newest agricultural findings, anything to keep the horrendous images at bay. The estate was her pledge of trust to Thomas, trust that he would come back, proof of her faith.

And it was better than the nightmare-riddled nights.

Anxious and tired, Cat had picked up the mail this morning and flipped through the correspondence. A foreign watermark caught her eye. Anxiously, she ripped it open. Perplexed by the long, elegant scrawl, she finally recognizing it as Aunt Hecuba’s. She had smiled before she had read the first line. A smile that had quickly faded.

Aunt Hecuba was fine. Glowingly fine, wondrously fine, blooming under the concentrated (she had actually underlined the word, the old tart!) attentions of the marquis. Had Cat managed to get that great, black, handsome brute to the altar yet? Of course she had. Blood ran true. By the way, Hecuba had run into that interesting Daphne Bernard. It seems the young lady had managed a daring escape from Paris!

As had she. Really, people are most odd. True, her own flight from Paris had been exciting, but she really hadn’t outsmarted an entire regiment of guards at some blockade, as some Sally Leades person was intimating. And she hadn’t single-handedly thwarted a criminal ring terrorizing their fleeing countrymen in the northern French provinces. Still, being a celebrity had its rewards. Of course, she knew Thomas would be there to take care of Cat. Her beloved niece had never truly been in any danger.

But Daphne. What a resourceful woman Daphne Bernard was. They had only met because “Daffy” owned a large pendant, remarkably similar to the one Hecuba had left behind. Of course, Daphne’s was real.

“Of
course
,” Cat had muttered as she read.

Perhaps they had misjudged the young woman, Hecuba went on to write. Daffy had explained to Hecuba that she had merely taken the opportunities God had thrown in her path to further her own sorry little way in the world. Daffy hadn’t the advantages of so aristocratic and loving a family as the big English girl—Kitty, was it? No, Cat. (Isn’t that cute? Hecuba had written.) They had become quite friendly.

Had Cat heard from her dear mama? Hecuba had. She and Grenville had stopped at a coaching house on the Prussian border. Fellow travelers had had a message to be delivered in London. Wonderful happenstance! It was from Cat’s mama. By the way, Cat had best not expect her parent for some time. Philip had taken a notion to follow Hannibal’s path.

Crumpling the paper, Cat pitched it into the hearth and stomped angrily from the room, barking out orders to have the coach brought about. At least now she was in the proper mood to confront her Enid concerning the chit’s defiant demands regarding her coming-out wardrobe.

Enid, who was staying with Cat, as was only proper, was waiting for her at the local seamstress’s. The girl was probably attempting to bribe, blackmail, and bully the poor woman into lowering the décolletage on her many gowns. Enid, it seemed, was determined to be seductive. Well, thought Cat darkly as she settled herself in the carriage, we’ll see about that.

Cat enumerated on her fingers the many pithy things she was going to say to her sister as the elegant coach rolled down the lane toward town. She was staring out the window, green fire dancing in her eyes, when she saw a big, fat ewe standing in the hedge separating the lane from the pasture. Leaning out the window, Cat called for the driver to stop.

Bob jumped down and worriedly approached her, asking if anything was amiss. Alphonse joined him from the rear of the coach.

Cat pointed at the sheep in the thicket. “There’s nothing for it, we’ll just have to get her out of there.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but couldn’t I just ride back to the house and have one of the lads fetch a workman? I’m sure I haven’t the sorriest notion on how one goes about disentangling a great, fat, fleecy thing like that.”

Cat harrumphed. “Waste of valuable time. I’m promised at the seamstress in half an hour and shall be late as it is.”

“Well then, couldn’t we just leave her, Mrs. Montrose? She don’t look too uncomfortable like.”

“No, we cannot.” The farm, and everything on it, was her responsibility, and she was going to see everything was taken care of properly.

“Now, Bob, you go around and hold her middle while Alphonse grabs her legs and drags her out.”

Dubiously, the two men approached the sheep. The ornery creature bleated at them at their first touch and the driver jumped back.

“Coo! She be a biggun!” Alphonse said, rubbing his hands together in preparation for the next assault.

“Lift her up as Alphonse pulls, Bob!” Cat shouted encouragingly.

“Easy fer her to say,” Bob muttered, wrapping his arms around the ewe’s impressive girth. He heaved her up, grunting for Alphonse to pull.

Alphonse gave an irresolute yank on one of the sheep’s hind legs, causing the animal to twist in panic, her sudden movement pitching Bob backward into the hedge.

He fell down sputtering, glaring balefully at his lady mistress, who was, in turn, eyeing him with distinct disillusionment.

“For heaven’s sake, Bob,” she said, descending from the carriage, “it’s only a sheep. Now then,” she said, striding over to where the ewe was trying to bury itself in the briar. She pointed her elegant ivory fan at its hindquarters. “I suggest you, Bob, lift her so that her front legs cannot gain any purchase in the branches. At the same time you, Alphonse, take hold of both her hind feet. Firmly. And pull for all you’re worth. The sooner done, the sooner over. On my count, lads.”

She was so intent on marshaling her ill-prepared troops, she did not hear the approaching rider.