Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

“Croston?” Lord Deal peered harder. “Ach, it is. And from the looks of things, they’ve ridden fast and hard.”

What were they doing here? This could ruin everything.

“Are you all right, Katie? You seem displeased by their arrival. Sir Jaxbury is a dear friend, is he not?”

“My dearest friend. And I am not—”

“Then it is Croston whose presence displeases you?”

“I am not displeased.” She tucked her hand in Lord Deal’s arm and urged him toward the door. “Let us go and greet our visitors,” she said in the most pleasant voice she could manage.

“Mama!” Anne’s voice called delightedly from the staircase in the entrance hall. “Mama, I hear horses! Miss Bunsby says it is William! And Captain Warre! Mama, Captain Warre has come to visit us!”

Her fingers tightened around Lord Deal’s arm before she could stop them.

“Mmm,” he said. “I daresay young Lady Anne has made a friend.”

* * *

IT WAS A full twenty minutes before Katherine had the heart to tear Anne away from her friend and send her upstairs with Miss Bunsby. Something was wrong. Very wrong. When James told them what day they’d left London, there was no doubt they’d hardly stopped at all.

“What’s happened?” she demanded the moment Anne was out of hearing.

“Millicent and India have taken the Possession,” William told her. “Slipped out of the Thames in the dead of night.”

An invisible hand closed over her throat. “That’s impossible.”

“Apparently it’s not,” James said flatly. “We went to your house after hearing the Possession was gone and found no trace of Miss Germain,” James said. “We checked with Cantwell, and India was gone, as well. Snuck away somehow, and in her infinite wisdom, left a note. Wouldn’t be treated like a child, or something to that effect.”

William snorted.

“That is quite an offense,” Lord Deal commented gravely.

Suddenly things made sense—why Millie had been so adamant about not feeling well enough to travel, why she had begged to stay in London instead of accompanying them to Dunscore. With her face so pale and yellowed with bruises, it had been impossible to deny her. Katherine had allowed her the use of the London house indefinitely.

But indefinitely had lasted only as long as it had taken Millicent to put her plan into action. Katherine’s hands began to tremble, and she made fists to keep them still. “You must go after them,” she said to William. “I will commission a ship in Edinburgh and pay for a crew.”

A gleam came into William’s eye. “An easy guess where they’re headed.”

Malta. But what India planned to do with the Possession while Millicent tried to gain admittance to that surgical school was anyone’s guess.

“It’ll be a damned business, bringing up Cantwell’s daughter on charges,” Lord Deal said.

“There won’t be any charges,” Katherine said. Her thoughts churned, struggling to make sense of this development. “I only want the Possession returned.”

“Aye, Captain,” William said.

She did want it returned. Right now. Today. This instant. It belonged to her, with her, where she could see it every day and hold on to its promise. It made her who she was.

“What of the committee? Has there been any word?” she asked.

“I daresay it’s too soon to expect any,” James said. And then he turned to Lord Deal. “Have there been any developments here?”

He was windblown from the ride, looking more like a sea captain than he had for weeks, and it was hard to keep from staring. A lock of his hair curled over his forehead. A shadow of beard roughened his jaw. Those calculating, sea-captain eyes watched her carefully.

She wanted to throw her arms around him the way Anne had done.

Instead, she reached for Lord Deal’s arm. “Indeed, Henry and I have just been discussing the arrangements.”

James’s tight lips curved. “Have you.”

Lord Deal cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. We have indeed been discussing a variety of possibilities—attempting, naturally, to think of some gentlemen who would be appropriate and, of course, to identify those whom Lady Dunscore finds objectionable.” He patted her hand. “And I do believe we have identified at least one of the gentlemen in question.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#ulink_da7d2a90-d139-5378-bc05-8e3173bf13d6)

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, a knock sounded at the door of her bedchamber.

The sound caught Katherine standing with her hands pressed against the cool, bare stone of her bedroom wall. In the quiet room with her palms against rock, she could almost feel Dunscore’s heartbeat. It pulsed through her as though they were one.

She ignored the knock and let her hands fall. Went to stab at the fire, watching the sparks fly, calling up memories of her life—her real life. The one she’d built herself, not the one of her girlhood fantasies. William, grinning in the sunshine while porpoises played in the water. Young rigger Danby, dangling from the main yard after slipping from the footrope and nearly causing her to succumb in a fit of apoplexy in the process. That hot rush of anticipation that gripped her when she sighted a corsair xebec through her glass.

The sound of Anne’s screams above the cannonfire, and the knowledge that one small mistake—one single misstep—could change her life forever. Or end it completely.

Jab. Jab. She attacked a burning log until it fell into crumbling, hot orange pieces. That was why she was giving up her freedom. For Anne’s sake. And marrying Lord Deal was the most tolerable answer.

There was a second knock, more insistent this time.

It is the answer only because you refused a proposal from the man on the other side of that door.

Proposal? Ha. What she had refused was a lust-drunk misjudgment that had tumbled from his lips in a moment of passion.

A third knock, and this time, the hushed bark of her name. She unlatched the door and opened it a crack. “You’ve already received all the hospitality I plan to offer, Captain.”

“Open the bloody door.” The hallway was nearly dark, but the glow from her room lit the murderous expression on his face. He stood there in only his breeches and shirt—no waistcoat, no stockings, no shoes. Nerves tangled in her belly even as her ire rose.

“Devil take you,” she said, and started to shut the door, only to have him shove it open. “Get out!” she hissed, fearful of waking anyone.

“Are you engaged to him?” he demanded.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Everything about you is my concern.”

He grabbed her around the waist and crushed his mouth on to hers. The shock of instant fire in her blood had her gasping against him even as she tried to push him away, but he was immovable and her parted lips only gave his tongue free entrance into her mouth. He smelled like spicy soap and tasted of temptation. She felt him try to push the door closed and she tightened her hand around the latch to prevent him. He turned her back against the door and used their bodies to push it shut.

“Leave,” she gasped, and cursed him. He only kissed her more savagely, and even her outrage could not fight the fire that tore across her skin. She shoved at him and pulled him closer all at the same time, and suddenly it was like the first time they’d touched in her cabin aboard the Possession, except this time there was no reason to stop.

“I ask you again,” he said harshly. “Are you engaged to Deal?”