Chapter Four

I sure hope Lord Kirke ducks in time, Catherine had thought, guiltily enjoying every second of listening to him walk that awful, bloviating man into a trap. Because much like The Ghost in the Attic, she was pretty certain she knew how the story was going to end.

Well, he hadn't.

When men got too full of themselves and liquor, it was best to just get out of the way of the flailing—she'd learned this from living in a town where everyone happily frequented the only pub. Goodness knew her father had matter-of-factly stitched a lip or two after a brawl.

She abandoned the shelter of the ferns, darted swiftly past the oblivious, promenading dancers until she was out of the ballroom, then wove through little clusters of people shouting and gesticulating at each other in cheerfully inebriated conversation. A few curious heads turned as she swept past and she offered what she hoped was a confident, I-belong-here smile.

She considered retreating to the ladies' withdrawing room, where at least she'd have some company and might meet a nice person or two, or have a chat with a lady's maid. But suddenly she felt shy about her sleeves, and was worried someone else might point them out.

So when she came upon the flight of stairs to the rest of the house, she impulsively dashed up, and with every step the music and the voices below grew fainter.

Presently she found herself in a marble-floored passage lined with gilt-framed portraits of what were likely relatives of the host and hostess—women and men in Elizabethan ruffs posing with narrow-faced dogs and solemn-eyed children.

A surprising hint of a breeze beckoned like a crooked finger.

She followed it to a pair of French doors opened partly onto a little verandah. Upon it were arranged a pair of benches surrounded by fluffy green trees and shrubbery in urns. Once again, she made for the green things with relief.

She sat down hard on the little bench, released a breath so gusty it fluttered the curls at her temples, then closed her eyes and agitated her fan beneath her chin. The marble was pleasantly cool on her bum through the silk. But behind her eyelids the ballroom colors still spun, as though she'd stared too long at the sun.

The palette of her life in the country was on the whole muted, softer, more limited, she realized now. The pace of life, though full, was leisurely as a sigh. She was unaccustomed to light bouncing from everyone and everything at once—from the silks and jewels and chandeliers and marble and tiaras—and to voices and music ricocheting and echoing off shiny, hard surfaces. She already felt a little queasy, like a child who'd glutted on a buffet of sweets. Her head was muzzy from her one delicious cup of ratafia. She thought of the soft, rosy warmth of the sitting room at The Grand Palace on the Thames and she momentarily wished herself there instead. But that seemed like a failure of nerve.

She felt undeniably a little melancholy, but it was also a bit dreamlike and delicious to be completely alone in a strange place. As if she was floating unmoored through space. As if anything could happen at any time.

She froze in her fan flapping when she heard the sound of brisk footsteps on marble. They paused.

She leaned forward to peer through the windows.

Then jerked back behind the plant, her heart jolting.

Lord Kirke was standing alone in the passage.

She leaned forward again and, through the greenery, surreptitiously studied him as though she'd stumbled across a centaur pacing in a clearing.

For someone who had just been hit in the face, he seemed remarkably composed. One would have thought it happened to him every day. She had no trouble at all imagining that it did.

He seemed such a frightening man. Brilliant, certainly, but in the way the edge of a knife is brilliant. And yet she was grateful that someone so formidable was on the side of the vulnerable people of England. Her father had more than once patched up a child or a woman who had been at the mercy of the tempers of the men who controlled their lives: fathers, husbands, employers. Afterward, his mood was always grim and low.

She wondered if Kirke had sought a refuge from the crowd, too, to think about his choices.

He touched his fingers to his lip, then examined them. Scowled faintly. Patted his person a bit with his other hand. She knew the signs: he was looking for a handkerchief, and not finding one.

Indecision racked her. She really didn't want to risk speaking to him.

But the man might be bleeding. And she was a doctor's daughter, after all.

Finally, she quietly retrieved her own handkerchief from her reticule, drew in a fortifying breath, and stood.

Gingerly but resolutely, she took a step forward.

Then another.

He glanced up and went rigid. His eyes were wide. Understandably he was a trifle wary of the woman inching toward him from the dark as though he were a beast caught in a trap, a handkerchief trembling in her outstretched hand.

He glanced from her face to the handkerchief, bemused.

Finally, as slowly and gingerly as she'd extended it, he took it.

"Thank you," he said cautiously. "Mine seems to have gone missing."

"Perhaps it's still being laundered from the last time you were hi..."

She sucked in a breath and her hand flew to cover her mouth.

It was too late. The amazement dawning over his features told her he knew full well that the last part of her sentence was going to be "hit in the face."

Her own expression had doubtless confirmed this.

If she hadn't been held fast in the clutches of her own horror, she might have seized her skirts in her hands and bolted back down the stairs.

His face seemed peculiarly taut.

"Does my face strike you as eminently hittable, then?" he said finally, as politely and formally as a butler, on a hush that struck her as ominous.

"No! That is..." she stammered. "It's just... I'm new to London... I'm not very familiar with current ballroom... customs."

No undertaker had ever dug a deeper hole than the one she was digging for herself now.

His eyes widened. "‘Ballroom... customs,'" he repeated dazedly.

And suddenly, before her eyes, his face went incandescent with wicked glee. Which was when she realized his taut face had been suppressing hilarity all along.

"Imagine if every quadrille was punctuated by a pair of hearty slaps," he crooned. "I'd never forget the steps. If we all stood about in a circle and ritually smacked each other to music once in a while there might forever be peace in our land."

She exhaled a shocked laugh, delighted and scandalized. "And the reels would be—"

She stopped herself. Uncertain.

"No. Out with it," he ordered. As if he were her confessor. As if she were cruelly depriving him of delights.

"Imagine how the reels would be. Everyone waiting patiently for a turn to grapple and punch down the center. Then patiently waiting..."

"...to do it all over again. Ha ha!"

His laugh was a lovely echoing boom in the passage.

Good heavens. It was the strangest sensation. Knee-buckling relief and as though she'd been handed a guinea.

He sighed. "But then that would make every ball just like a typical day in the House of Lords."

Her smile wavered. For all she knew, it would. Men were confounding creatures, declaring eternal drunken fealty to each other one minute, challenging each other to duels the next. Sometimes both in one night.

"You witnessed the face hitting, I gather?" he asked, after a moment. Somewhat diffidently.

She considered lying. Something told her he'd know at once if she did. "I did," she admitted.

He merely nodded shortly. Then he touched her handkerchief to his lip and turned his head toward the corridor. "I'm sorry you were forced to see it." He paused at length. "I feel that some things need to be said, regardless of the potential consequences. I always calculate the return on my investment, and I knew this was worth it."

He said this somewhat abstractedly. Fortunately, he seemed to be speaking mostly to himself, because she hadn't the faintest idea how to respond. She was entirely out of her depth.

"It happens," she said, finally. Somewhat inanely. "Men will do that now and again. My... my... father is a doctor. I have seen a lot of things."

He turned his head to look at her again, somewhat surprised, amusement flickering in his eyes.

And slowly, subtly, he straightened to his considerable full height and went still.

Whereupon she had an epiphany: upon first meeting, most men seemed to preen or posture, smolder or fidget or gently condescend, all in the name of emphasizing that they were male and she was not.

But the very quality of Lord Kirke's stillness launched a primal thrill up her spine. It called to mind a swift object in motion come to abrupt rest—a hurled javelin, for instance, or an arrow—on its target.

It was intoxicating and unsettling. For this, too, she knew about men: he wouldn't linger here one more moment if he didn't want to, manners be damned. Men did what they wanted to do, generally.

Her heart was now beating double time.

She probably ought to demurely lower her eyes but it seemed foolish to forego the opportunity to study the splendid geometry of his face. One day she would be able to tell her grandchildren about how the infamous Lord Kirke's thick brows drew closer together the time he scrutinized her at a ball. How there was the faintest frost of silver at each of his temples and how his eyes, the darkest and most alive eyes she'd ever seen, were ringed in faint shadows.

"You seem to know who I am, but I fear I'm at a disadvantage," he said finally. "And yet you seem familiar, Miss... Mrs.... Lady..."

Hell's teeth. If he didn't remember it, she was none too eager to remind him of their door-crack conversation.

"Keating. Miss Catherine Keating, sir. We haven't been formally introduced but"—she cleared her throat—"we spoke last night."

Not one glimmer of recognition flickered in his eyes. This both abraded her vanity and surprised her not at all.

"At The Grand Palace on the Thames," she admitted resignedly, finally. "Through... through the door."

His head went back, then came down in a nod. "Ah. You're the singer. ‘New to London.'"

Irony fair shimmered about those last five words. But his eyes were filled with teasing glints.

She felt the heat rush to her complexion again. "I'm afraid so."

He hesitated.

"I fear I'm insufferable the night before I need to give a speech in the Commons." He paused. With a rueful ghost of a smile he added, "And at most times in between."

She suspected this was his version of an apology. And was in all likelihood true.

She thankfully managed not to say this out loud.

"Well. Goodness knows I deserved to be thoroughly castigated for singing," she replied humbly.

He fixed her with an amused, speculative look, clearly aware she was taking the piss.

"‘Castigated,'" he repeated, approvingly, as if she'd just handed him a glass of wine of a surprisingly good vintage.

She couldn't help it: she smiled again. And so did he.

"So, Keating. Why are you out here instead of inside dancing and gossiping?"

"Keating," not "Miss Keating." As if she were a fellow MP whose back he might chummily pat. A coconspirator. Like everything about this man so far, "Keating" irritated her and she liked it almost too much.

But the question rendered her mute. The concerns milling about in her head like sheep without a dog would no doubt bore him. She was hardly a raconteur.

But there he was waiting, his hopes no doubt pinned on her ability to divert him again, and the notion of seeing disappointment flicker in his eyes for some reason made her palms sweat.

"I—it's—it seems my dress is wrong."

Of all the thoughts to escape from her mouth. She felt like an utter cake.

His eyes flared warily. His brows met in confusion.

Her face went warm.

He swept her person with an information-seeking glance that seemed to have nothing of prurience in it, and then returned an unreadable gaze to hers. She was mordantly amused he didn't attempt to disabuse her of the notion. Oddly, it made him seem more trustworthy.

"Someone said something that led you to this conclusion," he guessed finally.

She cleared her throat. "A somewhat offhand remark was made about my sleeves and... I inferred. I confess it didn't occur to me that it would matter very much. This dress is only two years old." She absently smoothed her palms along her skirt. "I hadn't time to get new ones before the season, as the opportunity came on rather suddenly, and I hadn't the budget for it... I've always been assured that... that blue is my color," she concluded, rather absurdly. She could feel her blush traveling. Surely her entire torso was pink by now.

"Mmm." He nodded, sympathetically. "I suspect there's a shortage of French modistes in Upper Sheep's Teat, Northumberland, or wherever it is you hail from."

She didn't even blink. She was getting a sense of him now.

"It's Nether Sheep's Teat, but please don't be embarrassed, Lord Kirke. Everyone always confuses the two."

He smiled again. She was beginning to feel a bit like Icarus, taking that fatal mad leap again and again in order to see that smile. This conversation seemed to hold equal potential for disaster and rewards.

"It's called Little Bramble," she expounded, somewhat meekly. "My town."

"Of course it is," he humored.

Lord Kirke, it was clear, was a conversational fencer: always feinting, disarming, distracting, testing. It was probably a quick and efficient way to uncover liars and fools. Not necessarily the best way to make friends or keep from getting punched. But she found it hopelessly compelling. One wanted to pass his tests.

"How did you know I was born in Northumberland?"

"It haunts your vowels," was all he said, cryptically.

This was fascinatingly specific, and yet again ranked among the most interesting things ever said to her by a man.

"And you, sir... are Welsh?" She realized this was like saying, "And you, sky, are blue?"

"Ah, indeed I am Welsh, Keating," he replied indulgently. "All the way from Satan's Arse Crack, a little town near Cardiff."

Not even in her wildest dreams had she ever thought she'd hear the words "Satan's arse crack" so exquisitely enunciated.

She began to wonder if he was a lot drunker than he seemed.

"It sounds lovely," she decided to say. "And explains a good deal."

When he smiled, slowly and fully, those charming parentheses deepened about the corners of his mouth and his eyes lit like dark stars. It made him look like Pan, willing to use his unimaginable powers to perpetrate dangerous mischief.

Then he winced and touched a quick finger to the corner of his mouth. She winced along with him.

"I think you've stopped bleeding," she volunteered.

He glanced ruefully down at the handkerchief in his hand. It was pristine, apart from a few drops of blood.

"Keep it. I have another." She'd always wanted to say something grandly magnanimous like that. She might not have the right dresses, but her new handkerchiefs were unimpeachable.

He arched a brow and tucked it into his coat. "Very generous of you. My thanks."

This would be the appropriate moment for either of them to discreetly melt away.

She was pleased that neither of them seemed inclined to do it.

"So, Keating. Is that the reason you're out here alone on a bench in the shadows—nursing hurt feelings about your sleeves?"

"Oh no. Not really. That is, I don't suppose my feelings are hurt. She doesn't know me, and they're just words, aren't they? I can't be hurt by someone who doesn't truly know me."

"Can't you?" he remarked neutrally.

"I shouldn't think it was a comment on my character, was it? It's just a dress." She looked up at him worriedly and smoothed the front of it again, then rushed on, because why on earth should a man like him care? "I suppose it has simply given me something to think about. Green things feel a bit like family members, as I'm from the country. And I suppose I'm just a bit... winded." She brushed her hand against her cheek self-consciously.

He frowned very faintly. "From the dancing?"

She gave a little embarrassed laugh. "From the newness. London and ballrooms and the like. It's my very first season and it's quite a lot to take in but I like it very much," she reassured him earnestly, lest he think she was insulting his milieu. "The people at The Grand Palace on the Thames are lovely, aren't they? I love it there. Everyone at this ball looks so beautiful and the music is the finest I've ever heard! And some of the dances are a bit unfamiliar to me but I'm excited to become better at them. I shall wade back into the ballroom presently for I'm to dance a reel with Mr. Hargrove. I expect in no time at all I shall learn who the kind people are by what they say and make friends of them."

For a man clearly possessed of little patience, he'd listened to all this with apparent, even flattering, unblinking attentiveness.

But he said nothing for such a long while that it occurred to her that his thoughts might have simply drifted away toward something he considered more worthy of his attention, fights and speeches and the like, and he hadn't even realized she'd finished speaking.

Finally, casually, he leaned against the wall and bent a knee, as though he was settling in.

"You're walking through a jungle on your way to a pressing engagement." His cadence made it sound like the beginning of a story. "This engagement is a matter of life or death. And blocking your path is a body of water teeming with hungry crocodiles. There's no bridge, no vines upon which to swing. No trees. You've no tools. You're wearing what you're wearing now, your allegedly wrong dress. Some crocodiles are sleepier than the others. Some are more vicious. You're desperate. They're desperate. How do you get across?"

Somehow it seemed only fitting that this odd conversation would eventually include a riddle. Perhaps they were a tradition in Satan's Arse Crack. "I suppose I could... wait until they fall asleep, because they have to sleep some time, dash through the shallowest—"

"Wrong. Congratulations, now you're crocodile food."

She gave a start.

"You'll need to swim across. And in order to swim with the crocodiles, one must become a crocodile. Or at least don a convincing crocodile disguise. And everyone in there, Keating"—he jerked his chin in the direction of the ballroom—"is a crocodile. Particularly during mating season."

She was speechless. And fascinated.

"Speaking of which. What are you doing wandering about, without your"—he spiraled a finger in the air, as if paging through an invisible dictionary for a word—"minder?"

"My minder?" She was startled. As if she were a donkey.

"Usually some formidable woman of middle years charged with trailing young women to protect them from straying into the hinterlands of houses and launching into conversations with scandalous personages like me. Your chaperone. Your companion. Your Reputation Protector. Whatever the ton has decided to call it this year. Who is she, where is she, and why are you alone?"

This sudden transition from riddle to inquisition rattled her. She thought of Lady Wisterberg. She couldn't bring herself to say she was at the gaming table.

"Are you scandalous?" she whispered finally. Her heart sank.

He flicked his eyes skyward briefly. "Crocodile food," he muttered, to no one specifically.

He reached into his coat and produced what appeared to be a cheroot, which he idly rolled between his fingers.

He didn't light it. His expression had gone serious.

"Or..." He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Perhaps, whoever she is sent you out here hoping to orchestrate a compromising situation, the sort that would make me, through misguided honor, fall upon that sword known as matrimony. Perhaps she thought I'd be reflecting upon my mortality after having been hit in the face, and eager for a life of quiet domesticity. It's been tried more than once, Keating, and all have failed," he warned darkly. "It can't be done."

She was once again speechless. She clamped her teeth to keep her jaw from dropping.

The astounding cheek of him!

Or... was he teasing her again?

This seemed likely. But now she was curious. What would this entrapment entail? A swoon in his proximity, a spy waiting in the wings to dart out to catch him with a woman in his arms and threaten ruination? What kind of woman would lay a trap for such a man? Did people actually do that sort of thing?

Perhaps a crocodile would.

She could well imagine the covetousness he inspired—all beautiful things, from dresses to people—seemed to stir varying degrees of turmoil in onlookers. But for heaven's sake. He seemed such a difficult man. Half imp, half satyr. All wrapped up in an intimidating mantel of notoriety. He'd be no more appropriate as a husband than the King of the Fairies would be.

She suspected being married to him would be like forever yearning for something even while it was clutched in your fist.

"Well. That is disappointing to hear, indeed," she humored gently. Ever so slightly dryly.

He didn't reply. But after a moment the corners of his mouth deepened, and a devastatingly soft, wholly unguarded amused warmth gathered in his eyes. She could feel that warmth in her solar plexus; it spread softly through her limbs. And then he gave his head a slight, wondering shake.

For one mad instant she felt as though she'd been given a peek beyond his drawbridge right into the burning heart of the man.

The moment was over too soon, and left her breathless and restless.

"It's Lady Wisterberg," she confessed. Her voice was faint. "My aunt turned her ankle and couldn't come to London."

She did not like one bit the cynical, knowing light that flashed in his eyes when he heard the name.

But he said nothing. He pushed himself away from the wall briskly. "I'm going to do you a favor and vanish like an apparition because heaven forfend you're seen chatting merrily and alone with the likes of me. But I'll leave you with a bit of wisdom. If someone spent a precious breath insulting your sleeves, it likely meant she perceived you as a rival, which is useful to know. Sometimes insults are more valuable than compliments, and sometimes what seems like kindness is a sort of chess move. Good luck with your season."

His bow was swift and graceful, and just before he vanished around the corner he turned around and walked backward two steps and flashed a final grin. "And by the way, Keating, blue is, indeed, your color."

Lady Wisterberg, he thought wryly. That was almost funny. God help the girl.

Confident Farquar would have been piled into a carriage by now, Kirke strode back the way he'd come up the stairs, past all those Clayton ancestral portraits, their chins engulfed in ruffs, their hairlines plucked so that their foreheads looked vast. All, no doubt, wearing the correct, stylish sleeves for the era. Imagine wanting to decorate your walls with your relatives, he thought. Apart from his great-uncle—who'd had money and had seen something in young Dominic, and had sent him to school—his own would be a gallery of rogues, ruffians, and ne'er-do-wells. A row of proud sneers and square chins.

The only painted image he had of any relative was Leo.

The thought of him made Kirke tense as if he'd brushed up against a wound.

What the bloody hell did Farquar know, if anything? And how did he know it?

As he did with many things, Kirke had a contrary relationship with crowds. Like a porpoise surfacing for air, he invariably needed a moment or two of solitude during people-packed soirees, whether or not he'd just been hit in the face. He'd in fact only reached adulthood with his sanity arguably intact thanks to a refuge he'd found near his teeming-with-humanity family home: a secret, secluded patch of clover-blanketed hillside shadowed by a boulder. He supposed that made him a bit like Keating, who found comfort next to green things. It was in all likelihood the only thing they had in common.

He half smiled to himself. Given a chance, the young men of the ton were going to enjoy discovering Keating. And she them. She had eyes like the view out a window on a spring day and a flatteringly direct gaze, and the lines of her body could make a less jaded man forget his name.

But he was thirty-five years old now. His own appetites and interests did not run to innocents, or to women who wanted anything more from him than a few hours or so of naked oblivion. Innocence was a language he could no longer speak.

Thoughts of naked oblivion and inappropriate sleeves called to mind the perfidious Marie-Claude, who had found time before she'd nearly burned his house down (and who had either fled or planned to flee across the Channel, or so he'd heard today) to order and charge to him something ridiculously expensive in blue silk which had not yet been retrieved from the modiste's. His man of affairs had only just meticulously accommodated one recent shock to his bank account only to confront another one—the burned house—and was none too pleased to present him with an outrageous dressmaker's bill on top of all of that. Kirke would of course grit his teeth and pay for it because it wasn't the hardworking Madame Marceau's fault.

Though theirs had been a business arrangement—initiated by her—Marie-Claude had ultimately wanted something from him she could not quite articulate, but which manifested in a restless torrent of demands. And while it was no hardship to now and again indulge a beautiful woman, it became clear the requests would never stop. Whereupon he'd bluntly called an end to things.

At which point the lamp had become a projectile.

He was ardent, but remote. He'd come to understand that this drove some women mad. More than one had sensed that some part of him would never be known to them, and he supposed it was merely human nature to want what one could never reach, on the assumption that the struggle to get it made it worth having.

He would definitely quibble with this.

Only he knew the truth: before the age of twenty he'd felt nearly everything a man could feel, in gruesome proportions. Soaring love and searing shame. Passion and joy, terror and struggle. Gutting loss. The whole bloody lot had dug such brutally deep channels through him that little he felt in the aftermath was capable of shaking him or leaving a mark. Nearly every emotion he'd felt since had seemed a mere echo by comparison.

For a long time he'd allowed himself to believe that this was the source of his strength. His tireless attempts to right injustices took him to dire places, workhouses and mills and slums, places so desperate they might have broken another man. And while he cared passionately, they never brought him to his knees.

But his hands had shaken when he'd read the letter from Anna a little over a month ago. She'd sent it along with the miniature.

And everything he thought he could never again feel revealed that it had simply been lying in the underbrush to ambush him.

He'd once done something unforgivable. And through a blinding epiphany he'd understood there could never truly be atonement, only a reckoning.

He passed a painting of a woman in a blue dress, which reminded him of Keating. In normal circumstances, their paths would never cross. The two of them occupied two entirely different worlds. An innocent from the country; a jade from London. Her life was quiet; his was a tumult. Her future was an open road, a shiny, hopeful blank slate; his present was a snarl at best and his past had just come flapping out at him like an opened Pandora's box and his future would always be uncertain and complicated.

And yet they apparently both found refuge near plants.

When he came upon a footman relighting a sconce, he slowed.

Then stopped.

He was indecisively motionless for so long the footman looked up and gave a start. "Lord Kirke, sir." He bowed.

Kirke reached his hand into his pocket, and felt about. When he miraculously found a shilling, he approached the footman almost as gingerly as Keating had approached him earlier with her handkerchief.

He lowered his voice. "My good man. At 10:25 p.m., no later, if you would be so kind as to find Lady Wisterberg and tell her that she is needed at once—at once—to escort the young lady for whom she is responsible tonight back to her lodgings? Please say nothing more than that. I know you will not mention my name. Do not give up until she is away from the table. Do you understand?"

The footman eyed the shilling glinting between Kirke's fingers. After an understandable hesitation—on one hand, a shilling was a handsome sum for a footman; on the other, it was a pittance for the battle he might have on his hands—he accepted it, and his mission. "Very good sir. If ten twenty-five o'clock it must be, then ten twenty-five o'clock it is."

They exchanged knowing looks. Everyone in the ton knew that once the dowager started in at faro, little short of Armageddon would shift her out of her seat before the sun rose.

It would of course be wildly inappropriate for Kirke alone to escort Keating back to the boardinghouse.

He wasn't certain why he bothered to intervene. But the notion of the rare light in the girl's face dimming if she discovered she'd been abandoned and forgotten by her chaperone disturbed him, as though she were the last of her species and ought to be protected. She seemed openhearted and hopeful without being flighty, and kind without being dull, and these were the sorts of people the ton liked to grind into smithereens.

Good luck, Keating, he thought. He doubted she'd last the month in London.