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

“After all this talk of helping me, of winning over the committee— God. After all that talk of guilt—”

“Do not tell me how I feel.” He pointed at her, heedless of the blade.

“Dunscore could have been mine. It was mine. And you stole it!”

“The trusts we woke Deal’s solicitor in the middle of the night to draft say otherwise. Dunscore remains in your name.”

“You betrayed me!”

“Would you have agreed to marry me under any other circumstance?”

“Yes!” The answer shot from her lips on its own, stunning them both into silence.

He blanched, and his mouth thinned. “If we would have married, anyway, then I fail to see why it matters now what ultimately brought us together.”

He may as well have stabbed her through the heart. She forced her mouth into a curve. “No. Nor would I expect you to.” Finally she sheathed her blade.

“Katherine...” He came toward her, but she backed away, ready to draw again. He held his hands up, but his eyes blazed. “I would do it again,” he said harshly. “If it was the only way to have you, I would do it again.”

Katherine could think of only one reason for him to say such a thing. “God, I’m a fool. Croston is in debt, isn’t it? I should have known.”

“Croston is not in debt.” Anger raged across his face. “Enough of this. We’re leaving for Croston in the morning, and I haven’t had time to prepare.”

“You may go to Croston,” she told him stonily. “Anne and I shall stay here. In a few days, after she’s recovered from the journey, we will return to Dunscore.”

“You will do nothing of the kind.”

“I make my own decisions, Captain. I am the countess of Dunscore.”

He jabbed his finger at her. “You are my wife.”

The words struck like blows. “Yes,” she said. “And you managed it with deceit as your grappling hook and lies as your cannon fire.” The pressure in her chest and belly ached so badly she nearly doubled over with it. It hurt to look at him. “I’ve been taken captive before, Captain. I may not be able to escape, but this time I will have my captivity on my own terms.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#ulink_f619b961-9e30-5b62-a99d-2a8a79d26754)

“MOVE OUT!” PHIL exclaimed the next morning, as Katherine’s coach trundled toward Madame Bouchard’s. The sunshine had burned off the mist, and its rays glared through the windowpanes. “You’ll be responsible for sore tongues all across London.”

“Let them talk till their tongues fall out, for all I care.” Katherine shook out the old coat Dodd had found in the attic—Grandfather’s, most likely—and held it up. “It won’t stop me from attending the masquerade, which you said yourself is the most important event of the Season. I’m envisioning a pair of breeches in beige silk. Nude beige.”

“Katherine...”

“And something very scanty on the top.” Phil didn’t respond. She would go to the masquerade alone, and why not? Let James see what their marriage meant to her now that she’d learned of his betrayal—and his lack of remorse.

“The swine,” Phil muttered, as if reading Katherine’s mind.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”

“Nor can I.” And her heart felt like a rag in a scullery maid’s hands, but she’d be damned before she ever let him find out.

James had hoisted his flag on her mast, and all of society knew he had conquered her. Now he was her captor. Her liege lord. The past days’ delight was gone, as there was no delight in being someone’s spoils. She may as well have been a cask of Italian wine or a bolt of Ottoman silk.

She would show all of London she was nobody’s captive. Not anymore.

“The blackguard. Not—” Phil pointed her finger at Katherine “—that I think you should move out, because I absolutely do not. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t deserve it if you did. No—you must punish him some other way. Something that will bring him crawling on his knees to declare his undying love.”

“He has no undying love to declare,” Katherine said shortly, even as her imagination played out the scene Phil described, and she found herself wanting very badly to hear such a declaration.

“Breaking your heart with his deception—”

“He has not broken my heart.”

“Darling,” Phil said in that you-can’t-hide-anything-from-me tone, “do you think I can’t see?”

“Lust. William said so.”

“Ha! And what would our dear scoundrel William possibly know about matters of the heart? Tell me you didn’t listen to him. I assure you, lust does not cause the heartache I see in your eyes right now.”

“Whatever I may have felt for Captain Warre died the moment I learned of his betrayal,” Katherine said, and wished to God it was true.

Phil rolled her eyes as the carriage slowed to a stop on the busy street in front of Madame Bouchard’s shop. “You love him, and there’s no sense denying it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Katherine made herself laugh even as invisible hands wrung another drop of pain from her heart. “I can be grateful I never succumbed to that frippery, at least.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous?” Phil laughed, and then added, “You aren’t really going to move out.”

“I am. Just as soon as I’ve shown him the consequences of his lies.” It would break Anne’s heart. Katherine’s fingers tightened into the coat, and she wadded it in her lap. During the journey from Dunscore, Anne had already begun calling James “Papa.” It would be cruel to drag her away from James now.

But it would be more cruel to keep her with a man who viewed the two of them as little more than chattel.

* * *

HALFWAY THROUGH THE fitting at Madame Bouchard’s, Katherine got an idea. It was a perfect, vengeful idea that made her heart race, then ache with satisfaction, then grow strangely numb. James thought he could control her? She would show him he could not.

The moment she parted company with Phil and returned home—flush with success at having arranged a costume that would have everyone from London to Venice talking—she put her plan into action.

“You mentioned that if there was ever a way you could right your wrongs against me, I had only to ask,” she told the Duke of Winston a short time later, seated in the entirely red first floor drawing room of his town house. “I require your assistance.”

One dark brow ticked downward. “A matter with which Croston is unable to assist?”

“Very much unable.”

“You have only to name it, Lady Croston.”

She smiled past the hurt. James and all of London would see exactly how she took to captivity. “I want you to pretend to have an affair with me.”

The duke barked a laugh. “You’re trying to get me killed. My apology wasn’t enough? You hope to lure me in so Croston will cut me down?”