Chapter Twenty-Two

Not more than an hour after Delilah and Angelique had read the little item in the newspaper, Dot came to them bearing an urgent request from Lord Kirke, who wished to speak with them at once in the reception room.

They scrambled out of their aprons to meet him there.

They had a feeling they had reached the "see what happens next" they'd been anticipating.

He stopped pacing before the fireplace when he saw them swiftly progressing across the marble foyer toward him.

Delilah discreetly closed the door of the room behind them.

"Thank you for attending me, Mrs. Hardy, Mrs. Durand," he said without preamble. "In light of the distress an item of gossip in the newspaper has caused Miss Keating, I feel it prudent that I take my leave of you at once, for the sake of appearances. I do not believe anyone knows that Miss Keating and I are currently living beneath your roof. I fear I am a veteran of the gossip sheets for many reasons, some perhaps warranted and some not, and can easily withstand the negative attention. She does not deserve it." He faltered almost infinitesimally here. "I am infuriated, and I will take action. I can state definitively that she is wholly innocent of the insinuation and I deeply regret that they feel they can somehow besmirch her name by associating it with mine."

He'd said all of this politely. Very nearly crisply. As though it was just a matter of business.

But the word "regret" was cracked in the middle.

They saw the tension tugging at his mouth, across his cheekbones.

His words might be polite.

But his eyes were shattered.

Angelique and Delilah thought they were witnessing a man coming apart. At the very least, in some terrible pain.

He'd arrived somewhat wild-eyed. He was leaving in a similar condition. And in between he'd looked as though he'd finally found a home.

Then again, this was a man who apparently did not live his life by halves.

What on earth had transpired?

They noticed he hadn't insisted the gossip item had no merit. Nor had he explained how he happened to know that Miss Keating was distressed.

Then again, perhaps he didn't owe them an explanation.

They had both learned that formidable men knew a thousand ways to disguise anything that might be construed as weakness.

"We are sorry for your distress, Lord Kirke, and we respect your wishes. We do wish all the best for you. I know Mr. Delacorte in particular will miss you. You are always welcome here," Delilah said gently. For this was true, for now.

He paused. "I have enjoyed my stay... more than I anticipated." He smiled faintly, realizing how that sounded. But his voice was rueful and wistful in a way that made both of their hearts contract with sympathy.

And then he smiled, and when he smiled it was so staggeringly clear how this challenging man could buckle any woman's knees.

"Please give my regards to your husbands and to Mr. Delacorte. Tell him if he practices hard enough, he might one day be as good as I am at chess."

With this last little bit of mischief fomented, he bowed, and then he and his portmanteau went out the door.

Catherine retreated to her room and packed her belongings swiftly. Blindly. Punishingly, as if her two-year-old dresses were transgressors. Remembering how hopeful she had felt the last time she'd packed them.

How could she ever have been so foolish and naive? Thanks to Lord Kirke, naive was the last thing she was now.

She was still shaking violently from the storm of emotion and shock.

I am willing to marry you.

The gall of him. The bitter shame of it.

The ghastly, howling pain of it.

To be a problem to be solved, an albatross to be worn about his neck for the rest of his life.

Not a prize to be claimed.

Or a woman to be loved.

She sat down hard on the bed and dropped her face into her hands.

She was furious because she could see so clearly now that she had only herself to blame for all of this. What manner of madness had overtaken her? How had she ever thought she'd be equal to London? How had she thought herself equal to him?

No one can make a fool of you if you don't allow them, he'd said.

A stubborn echo of her usual common sense responded to those words. Because she was sensible, was she not? Because she knew what he'd meant. She subscribed to this philosophy, too.

And yet it also went some way toward absolving him of responsibility for what had happened.

He was a clever man, she'd grant him that, she thought bitterly. Quite the nimble thinker.

Nothing changed the fact that she had worn, on her own body, over her own skin, the dress meant for a woman to whom he'd made love as part of a business arrangement because he'd known she'd be gullible enough to take it from the modiste.

And she might never have known, if not for that gossip in the newspaper.

That the whole of the ton now seemed to know was unbearable. That they might actually believe she had all along been his mistress while masquerading as an innocent young woman made bile rise in her throat. That what had once been seen as charming and novel—her newness to the ton, the fact she was relatively unknown—was precisely the permission they needed to suspect her. She'd been like a shiny toy, batted aloft between them. She had reached the end of her usefulness, and the last bit of fun they could get out of her was tossing her away.

This embarrassment and shame had no precedence in her life; she was ill-equipped to bear it. It shuddered through her again and again. She didn't know how to ease the torment of it.

To think, she might never have known how muscular her pride was if some man hadn't dressed her in his mistress's clothing.

Surely embarrassment in and of itself wasn't fatal, her good sense chimed in weakly. Do these people truly matter? And it was just a dress?

She didn't want to listen to sense at the moment. Those people might have mattered if she'd had a future with someone like Lord Vaughn. Which she clearly no longer did.

She was finding great wells of strength in her outrage, which swelled into fear and back into outrage again. Because the possibility remained that she was forever ruined. And this was a reason indeed to panic.

She breathed into her hands. In and out, in and out.

She pulled them away wet with tears.

Then she gave herself a shake, dashed her palm across her eyes, and went to find Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy.

Miss Keating was considerably less composed than Lord Kirke.

She sat across from Delilah and Angelique on the pink settee, visibly shaking. Her eyes were pink-rimmed and swollen from tears.

"I am so terribly embarrassed by the gossip. It isn't true, I promise you! But I feel I must leave at once. It has become clear to me that my season is at an end."

Her voice was thick.

They gave her a handkerchief embroidered with the initials TGPOTT. They were always prepared.

"We do not believe all of the gossip, Miss Keating," Mrs. Hardy told her firmly, which was on the whole true. "And we do not believe it of Lord Kirke, either. We have loved having you here, and we very much hope to see you again. We're so terribly sorry your season has ended so unhappily. But we understand why you feel you must return home."

Miss Keating sat quietly for a moment. Simply breathing.

"Is he... has he gone, then?" Her eyes were suddenly wide in what looked like stunned realization.

"Lord Kirke? He departed a few hours ago," Angelique told her gently. "He's gone."

She went rigidly still. As if she was only now absorbing the ramifications of this. "He's really gone?" she almost whispered.

"Miss Keating..." Angelique said gently "...you must tell us at once if he behaved in any way inappropriately."

"No," she replied vehemently. "He has always been... he was always kind."

The last word was broken, and she buried it in her new handkerchief. She wept, her shoulders heaving.

Delilah patted her soothingly, while she and Angelique exchanged bewildered looks.

Miss Keating finally looked up abruptly.

"You have all been so very good to me." She hungrily swept with her eyes the sitting room, the chandelier, the Epithet Jar. Gathering it into her memory.

Catherine was so tired of saying goodbye to things she had come to love.

And yet, only a fool lingers at the scene of their devastation.

Lady Wisterberg was generously paying for the royal mail coach so Catherine would have a swifter journey home, and she came to The Grand Palace on the Thames to collect her first thing the following morning to escort her to it.

"You know it isn't true?" Catherine said to her again. "You believe me? Please tell me you believe me."

Lady Wisterberg was both outraged and resigned. "Oh good heavens, my dear, I know it isn't true. You are a good girl and an innocent and the whole of the ton during the season are jackals." And yet Lady Wisterberg also sounded so matter-of-fact about it. She'd almost said it with a sort of bitter relish. It was clearly a milieu she understood in a way that Catherine never would. It was as though Catherine's season had been a game of five-card loo for Lady Wisterberg, and winning or losing had always been equal possibilities. She wondered at all of the things that Lady Wisterberg had seen throughout her life. And why she knew so much about everyone, and how she was able to get invitations for all those events in the first place. "I knew no good could come from associating with that man," the dowager muttered.

She hadn't known this at all, but Catherine didn't argue. That man was the only reason she'd had some semblance of a season at all.

It was also interesting to discover that her new lack of innocence wasn't at all apparent.

"I'll see what I can do to dispel that rumor," Lady Wisterberg continued. "I will contemptuously smash it like a fly if it buzzes up again. It should die down soon enough. But I do think leaving the ton is the wisest and only thing you can do. For your sake and for Lucy's sake, too, my dear."

Oh God! Poor Lucy! To have such a tainted friend!

But Lucy had been as perversely thrilled by the scandal as most humans would be, and impressed by the magnitude of ghastliness of it. She was also genuinely hurt and horrified for her. They had stopped at Lady Wisterberg's town house so they could say goodbye to each other.

No doubt she was also relieved that Catherine would likely never again turn Mr. Hargrove's head.

"I will visit you in the country," Lucy promised. "I'm so sorry about your season!"

"At least we have memories for a lifetime," Catherine said ironically. They both laughed a little. "I hope when you visit me you will be Mrs. Hargrove."

They had hugged each other goodbye, as though they'd been through a war together.

None of this had been Lucy's fault, either. And she was not at all certain whether she would see Lucy again.

"And do you know what else I heard?" Lady Wisterberg said, as the carriage carrying them to the mail coach reached the end of Barking Road. "It's a rumor, too, mind you. From a maid who is a friend of a maid who is having an affair with a footman at Lady Clayton's London town house. I learned that Kirke paid footmen to remind me to take you home from every ball before your curfew. At every single event. The cheek of the man!" Her own cheeks went rosy even as she said it.

Catherine's heart stopped.

"Lord Kirke did what?" she breathed.

"He paid footmen a shilling to remind me to take you home by curfew. At every ball. A shilling! To come and fetch me from the game room. And they did! Do you know how much a shilling means to a footman? As if I wouldn't remember my responsibility to you," she huffed.

But Catherine recalled how logy and resentful Lady Wisterberg had been in the carriage as she'd dutifully escorted her home. As if she'd been pulled from a trance. She began to imagine the scene that might have been caused by a footman attempting to get her up from a game in which she was deeply immersed and had no intention of leaving.

Her throat felt tight. She somehow hadn't even considered that Lady Wisterberg might simply forget about her. But of course that made sense. After all, Lucy, who was staying with Lady Wisterberg, had no curfew. All of the other adults in Catherine's life had always been responsible. Not a gambler or imbiber in the lot.

Dominic must have known how nearly drugged Lady Wisterberg was by gambling. After all, he knew the ton as well as Lady Wisterberg did.

He had looked after her from the first. From the very night he'd been hit in the face. He had seen to her safety. To the time he'd gone, against his will, to find her at the Hackworths' because she'd done a stubbornly reckless thing to get him to prove that he cared.

And he never would have told her about the footmen. She might never have known.

He'd done it because that was who he was. Her chest ached.

"Perhaps we'll never know who was responsible for the dress," Lady Wisterberg said. "But if you ask me, that man has taken an inordinate interest in you and you are safer in the country."

But Catherine was stunned.

You didn't see your face when you saw Mrs. Pariseau's new dress.But I did.

Of a certainty, he was a man who understood longing. And the suffering implicit in it.

Kirke had wanted her to have a beautiful dress, and he could hardly overtly buy one for her. So he'd done that, too.

Because he couldn't help himself. He'd wanted to ease her suffering.

She covered her eyes with her hands. They had begun to sting again.

He thought of his work as moving the world toward justice. But she saw now that what he really was doing was trying to move the world more toward love. Love seemed a fundamental part of him, however fiercely, indirectly expressed. Even as it had devastated his life years ago.

Perhaps this—these furtive gestures, this little secret safety net he had built for her, the acts of service he performed as part of his role as MP—was the only way he could love now.

What if she'd said yes to his proposal? Would he have been hers forever?

But it seemed to her there was a part of him that would not allow her to love him or himself to love her and she simply couldn't imagine a life lived that way. How empty it would be.

She'd once thought being married to him would be like yearning after something while it was clutched in your fist. Somehow she'd known from the first.

And surely a man who could speak so eloquently and at length about so many things could get out those three important little words if they were true?

Perhaps he hadn't said them because they simply weren't.

Perhaps he could only love once, and he had spent his love on Anna.

Because if he was willing to fight for everyone and everything else, why hadn't he fought for her?

He hadn't. Which must mean that he could do without her.

Leaving London was the right thing to do, she understood.

Still, in essence, she was ruined, in every sense of the word. She had been ruined even before the gossip item. Because she could not now imagine herself with any other man.

Yet practicalities demanded that one day she do exactly that.

Lady Wisterberg was undaunted. She gave Catherine a little thigh pat.

"There, there, dear," she soothed. "You'll be home soon. The gossip will stop—eventually. Your aunt and I will see about finding a landed country gentleman for you. Perhaps a nice widower who won't care about any silly rumors."

She handed Catherine a handkerchief, as the tears she could no longer contain spilled again.

Her father and Mrs. Cartwright were surprised and delighted when Catherine and her trunk appeared at the door of the home they all shared.

"I missed you both, and I missed the country. I had a wonderful time in London, and I made some nice friends, but this is where I want to be."

"Well, you're a sight for sore eyes and we're happy you are here," her father said comfortingly.

There was undeniable happiness in being the source of his happiness; her heart lifted a little.

"So are you, Papa!"

But to her alarm, he felt slighter in her arms when she hugged him. His white hair was longer and a little fluffier, as if he might drift away from her, like a cloud, at any moment.

But the most difficult part was that she could tell—by the way he'd studied her, eyebrows pitched together—that her father knew she was lying in some fashion about why she was home, because he was no fool. And because he knew what grief looked like. It soaked into one's bones, changed the way you walked and the rhythms of your speech. It hovered behind your expressions, no matter how much care you took to arrange your features in such a way as not to worry anyone else around you.

And if she hadn't already known that she loved Dominic all along, the grief would have told her. Grief was the price—the gift—of love.

Her father didn't press her for details. And she refused to say or do anything that would worry him.

And while she had local friends who were peacefully married; she could not imagine they could commiserate about London gossip, or tristes with a notorious baron in a carriage, or the garden of a mansion, or up against the wall of her cozy room.

The irony was that of all the confidants she could imagine, the only person with whom she could fully imagine discussing such a thing was with Lord Kirke.

So mainly she extolled the joys of The Grand Palace on the Thames, and she described in detail the fine houses at which all the balls took place, including the fact that all of them featured healthy potted plants.

She'd left the blue dress behind in her room at the boardinghouse.

In comparison to London, she found the quiet of the country somehow both deafening and as soothing as the coverlet at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

She'd arrived with her entire being ringing from a terrible blow, as if she had toppled from on high, from perhaps a desk. She let the familiar soft, green hills cool and comfort her until the tumult in her settled enough for something else to be clear:

Her country village was no longer enough for her.

The contours of her soul had changed in a short time, and she no longer fit it, like a dress she had outgrown.

What had Lord Kirke said in the sitting room that night: We may not find precisely what we're looking for as we seek answers, but the search may reveal to us other useful or beautiful things about ourselves and our world.

It was like wildflowers, she supposed: one never knew which ones might burst forth in the spring, having waited beneath the earth for just the right rain and warmth. London, and a certain beautiful, difficult, flawed man, had caused her soul to riotously bloom. She hadn't known passion or wildness or complexity or jealousy or daring were part of her. She hadn't known it was possible to be more fully, soaringly herself until she'd met him. She hadn't truly known the depths of her capacity for tenderness, or her need to express and receive it.

He was the cause of her suffering, but the notion that she might never have met him left her desolate. The idea that he could easily find a temporary lover to comfort and distract him scorched the breath from her if she dared entertain it for a moment. She'd grown up with such a fine, peaceful example of love. How had she managed to fall in love with a man who seemed unable to love her in return?

And at night, even the skim of her night rail over skin was a sensual torment. Because her skin remembered, and preferred, the skim of his fingertips.

She was more conscious than she'd ever been of how quiet it was in their house at night. She was wistful for the merry sitting room of The Grand Palace on the Thames, and the sound of cheerful debate, and the clicking of knitting needles, and the rustle of pages turning. For the little pok sound of someone laying a chess piece decisively down on a chessboard.

"I wonder if I could read a story aloud to you?" she offered one night to her father.

He studied her, surprised.

"We haven't yet done that, have we? It sounds lovely. Have you one in mind?"

It was one way to fill the room with other people: by way of characters and stories.

How had brave Scheherazade managed to mine her imagination for so many stories? As Lord Kirke said, women were resourceful when the circumstances demanded it. And she knew she, too, would find ways to survive.

Hotel rooms were always scarce during the London season. Kirke finally found an unimpressive one near the King's Theatre, where the poor madman shouted Hamlet soliloquies to an indifferent audience.

He felt like his town house after the fire: still upright. Still looking more or less whole and normal on the outside.

Inside, scorched to charcoal.

It seemed to him a blackly comic farce of Shakespearean grandeur that every time he truly loved someone, he apparently destroyed them and shattered his own life.

He tried, as one does, to trace it back to the beginning, back to the moment he'd taken her handkerchief from her, to see where he could have done something differently. He did not see how he would have made different choices. He could rue them all now, but a different choice would mean he would never have held her in his arms, and this he knew he would never forego.

He was able, for a time, to function within a blessed shocked numbness. For a fortnight, he managed to allow in no feeling at all by working until he dropped into a black sleep at night. He was damned if his own stupidity and suffering would lead to more suffering for any of the people he'd been trying to help or the people he'd been elected to serve.

It was useful to have a sense of duty for a spine. To fill his days with meetings and appointments he would be required to attend. He reported to Parliament, and voted when needed.

But as one week became two weeks became three, his inner condition became outwardly apparent.

Because he scarcely ate.

He gave no speeches.

And he attended no balls.

He'd tried to attend one, and by his calm insouciance demonstrated that the rumors about him and an innocent girl who had merely visited London from the country for a few weeks were nonsense, as so many rumors were.

He knew—he heard—Lady Wisterberg had vigorously done her part to slap them down, too. She was convincingly scornful and indignant. Then again, if she had been just as forceful about protecting Keating's reputation from the first, Dominic would never have spent a moment alone with her.

So be it.

The ton gossips eventually gave up the outlandish notion of him taking the angelic young Miss K as a mistress, and stopped talking about her altogether, mainly because it was not as much fun to shun someone who wasn't present for the shunning. And because no oxygen was given to the flames.

But at the ball he'd attended, he found himself experiencing a nearly grotesque lurch of hope when he glanced at a collection of ferns in a corner of a ballroom.

After that, he found he simply couldn't go to another. That was it for him for the season.

And possibly for every season thereafter.