Page 31 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

Avoiding Kathryn, however, had not been so easy. Andrew suspected that he would not have been able to escape her if there had been a thousand rooms.

His gaze slid to his tormentrix. The green-eyed vixen was sitting across from one of Needham’s secretaries, a morose-looking young man whose name escaped him, and the two were playing chess.

Andrew would not have believed that Kathryn could sit still for long enough to concentrate on such a complex game.

Not that he was one to talk. Chess had been the game of choice among many officers during the war and Andrew had been forced to play at a superior’s request on more than one occasion. He had never voluntarily played the game and was awful at it.

Kathryn’s eyes slid from the board up to Andrew, as if she felt his stare. For once, she did not poke out her tongue or blow him a kiss. She did not taunt him in any way, but merely gave him a cool look—although he could not decide what her expression said—before turning to glare at the chessboard as if it had personally insulted her.

Why was she playing the game if she hated it?

Needham’s secretary said something, and Kathryn laughed, her sophisticated carefree expression once again firmly in place.

But the moment the secretary turned back to the board her smile faded. What was it that seemed to be repressing Kathryn’s seemingly irrepressible spirits?

Perhaps it was being in proximity to her mother?

Andrew decided that could certainly do it.

Lady Addiscombe was perplexing. With her handsome features and shapely body, the countess should have been a desirable woman. Instead, just looking at her was enough to give Andrew a bowel weakening sensation he’d not experienced since riding into battle. The woman combined the worst characteristics of both a Cit and aristocrat to create something entirely new and twice as noxious.

The way she had publicly harangued Lady Needham earlier had made Andrew’s own face heat in sympathy.

And then, during dinner, she had not once, but twice, sent her companion to fetch something from her chambers. What could she have possibly required so desperately? Twice.

He looked up from his thoughts and straight into Lady Shaftsbury’s cerulean eyes.

The marchioness held his gaze for a moment and then turned her attention back to the people clustered around her, which included Viscount Bellamy, the little blonde girl, whom he’d discovered was Needham’s natural daughter, twin girls from one of the neighboring estates, and Bellamy’s young school chums whose names he’d already forgotten.

Lucy—that was Needham’s daughter’s name—was perhaps thirteen and chattered ten to the dozen while casting yearning looks at Addiscombe’s heir. Clearly the lass was smitten.

Andrew prophesied that Needham would have a problem with that in a few years. Lady Addiscombe might have allowed a mere daughter to marry an ironmonger, but she would draw a hard line at allowing her heir to take an illegitimate bride.

He turned away and encountered the dark brown eyes of the Countess of Addiscombe’s companion.

Rather than look away like the mouse she resembled, she held his gaze, her own pulsing with censure, just as it had in the corridor when she had plowed into him.

So, she was yet another woman who knew of his scandalous, wicked deeds.

Or at least she thought she did.

Andrew snorted at her censorious look and was amused when she recoiled, her face flushing.

He glanced at the longcase clock in the corner—barely fifteen minutes had passed since the last time he’d looked.

Christ. He could not leave just yet; he had to hang on for at least an hour more.

It was…purgatory.

His gaze slid to where the oldest Bellamy child—the newly minted Countess of Crewe—sat surrounded by the small menagerie she’d brought with her.

Evidently her marriage had been a revelation to almost everyone. Not even her mother had been told. Judging by Lady Addiscombe’s horrified scowl at the dinner table she had not been pleased to discover her daughter had married the Earl of Crewe, despite the fact that Crewe was well larded.

Aurelia Bellamy—now Lady Crewe—was a lovely, lithe woman with intelligent eyes and the slightly startled expression of a newly married young lady.

Interestingly, Crewe also looked a bit startled, even though he must be forty and had been wed twice before. If Andrew had been forced to wager, he would have bet that Crewe, a hardened rake, was truly smitten with his new wife.

More remarkable than their sudden marriage was the identity of two of the three guests they had brought along.