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

“You’re quite certain? Not even a hint? London is a terribly long journey to bring a bit of news that could have been written in a letter.”

She hesitated a moment too long.

“He did make an offer, then,” he said.

“Anything Lord Croston might have suggested was not meant to be serious.”

Lord Deal laughed. “My dear, if a man like Croston offers marriage, I assure you it is serious. You rejected him, didn’t you. Why?”

“He is unsuitable.”

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that once already. But why is he unsuitable? He seems a solid enough fellow, and his estate is larger than McGowan’s and Arran’s put together. And you’ve got much in common. It seems a perfect match.”

“It isn’t.”

“Why not?”

Because it couldn’t be. Because she felt too much when she was with him. Because she was in love, and everything William said about that was true. “Lord Croston is too demanding. He wants to be in command—of everything.”

“Well yes, I suppose I’ve seen that in him.”

“I won’t stand for it.”

“Forgive me, my dear, but are you not just as commanding?”

She smiled tightly. “As you heard him say in front of the committee, a ship cannot have two captains.”

“Ah, yes. Well, I suppose that’s true enough.” He looked at her hard across the table, letting his false senility fall completely away. “Are you in love with him?”

“Certainly not.” Her cheeks flamed, putting the lie to her words.

“Is he in love with you?”

“I’m sure he’s not.”

“Really?”

She shot to her feet. “Enough of this. Lord Deal, I will not marry Lord Croston. And even if I would, he has not renewed his offer, and—”

“So try accepting the first one.”

She stared at Lord Deal across the table, and he stared back with knowing brown eyes. God help her, this was not going the way she planned. After a moment, he pushed his chair back and stood. “My dear—” he came around the table and stood looking down at her “—I cannot in good conscience proceed with an engagement to you under anything less than the direst exigency.”

“Then let us proceed.”

He put a finger against her lips. “Why are you so afraid of him? You, who seem afraid of nothing.”

She was a rabbit caught in the open, staring at him with the pressure of his finger keeping her silent. I love him.

“I’ve seen love change more than one man, Katie.” He removed his finger, and his eyes turned deadly serious. “Tell me right now that he’s been unkind to you, that he’s used you badly, that he’s been violent—tell me right now, in all possible honesty, that you truly wish to marry me and not him, and God help me, I’ll do it.”

She couldn’t find a single word.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#ulink_3351a128-dde6-596c-bde8-abb16b048389)

IT WAS A BLOODY close call. James had seen Katherine’s carriage trundling toward Deal Manor and quickly turned his horse down a side road through a thicket of alarmingly sparse vegetation. It was almost certain she hadn’t spotted him.

All afternoon he waited for the opportunity to renew his proposal, to argue his case, all the while expecting every moment to see a rider approaching the castle with news of the vote.

It didn’t arrive.

And the opportunity he sought remained elusive.

The afternoon clouds burned away, and the sun shone brilliantly over the damp moors. They took Anne to the barn, sat her on a shaggy pony named Bess and walked her around the meadow. Katherine had put wildflowers in Anne’s hair, laughed freely—more freely than before?—and turned her face to the breeze. James tried to guess what Deal might have said to her that morning, whether he might have said anything that would assure James’s success.

It was impossible to tell.

They took Anne to the beach, followed by a goldfish feeding frenzy at the pond. Anne stuck her hands in the water and squealed as the small fish nibbled at her fingers. Katherine stuck her fingers in, too, and splashed water at him. He splashed back until they both looked as if they’d been standing at the bow of a ship in a storm, and he’d loved her so much in that moment he’d almost asked her again to marry him, timing be damned.

And now time was running out. If they came to an understanding tonight, they could marry in the morning—blessed be liberal Scottish law. He would waste no time consummating the union, and then if the news did arrive it would be too late. They would set out for London immediately on pretense of ending the whole business by making the marriage known, and he could pretend he’d missed the vote by a hairsbreadth before setting out for Dunscore. She would find out eventually, but by then she would be irrevocably his.

He would make sure she didn’t regret it.

As night fell, James contemplated this with a glass of brandy clenched in his fist and heat from a blazing fire in the great hall scorching his face. She’d gone upstairs to tuck Anne into bed, but soon she would return, and then he would need to finish his plan.

But Katherine would not accept him in marriage as easily as she had accepted him into her bed. Stubborn woman. Hold a pistol to her head and force her to say the vows? If it would have resulted in a binding contract, he would have tried it already.

I’ll do anything to have her. Guilt slithered through the back of his mind, but he shoved it aside. This was the only way. Other men might have tried following her like a puppy, yapping pretty words of love and devotion. Such a man would have had his hopes skewered on the end of her cutlass.

Telling her he loved her—good God. That bloody well wouldn’t work, either.

No, Katherine was like an enemy ship. She would have to be captured.

He was so consumed by his thoughts that he didn’t notice Katherine approaching until she stood next to him. He turned to her, feeling his liquor more than he’d realized. She was beautiful—his very own fantasy in the flesh, standing there in a simple blue gown with all that dark silk falling over her shoulders. God help him, he lost a part of himself every time he looked at her. She commanded his world, whether he wanted her to or not.

She held a glass half-full of wine. In the firelight, the liquid glinted the same dark pink as her most intimate flesh. “Come,” she said quietly, holding out her hand. “I have something to show you.”

His pulse leaped. He was in no mood for surprises, but he would follow her anywhere. He took her hand and she led him out of the main hall, down the main corridor, up a back staircase. They turned down another corridor, climbed narrower staircases and followed narrower hallways. Finally she pushed open an ancient wooden door, and they emerged onto Dunscore’s ramparts.

The view stole his breath. Above them, the night sky glittered with stardust. A slender crescent moon hung over the horizon to the west, where a faint blue glow was quickly fading. To the east, the shadowy ocean surged against the beach in shimmering crashes of froth.

She released his hand and went to the waist-high rampart wall, setting down her glass and laying her hands flat against the stone. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

He stared at her back. Something had changed. “Magnificent.”

“This is where I always came to think. Or sometimes, just to look at the stars.” She tipped her head back and looked up. “Sometimes I would talk to my mother and imagine she was up there somewhere, listening.”

Her mother. James’s pulse ticked hard in his throat. There was only one reason she might be telling him this. Wasn’t there?