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Clearly prepared for a fight and discomfited by Cat’s cheerful acquiescence, Miss Osborne seemed deflated by her quick success, but it lasted only a moment before she regained her earlier poise. Cleared her throat. Even that managing to sound melodious. “I don’t blame you. It’s easy to see how one in your position might fantasize. It would be only natural. Aidan’s shaky finances. His family’s odd reputation.” She dismissed them with an airy wave of her hand before resting her palm on her heart as if preparing for martyrdom. “Temporary obstacles to overcome. They mean little to me when placed against the venerable consequence of the earldom. That is truly forever.”
In other words, she didn’t care if she wed Attila the Hun as long as she gained a title out of it.
A serving maid took that moment to enter bearing a heavily laden tea tray. Stow following behind, a nervous smile on her waxen face.
Cat waited through the girl’s clinking bustle and withdrawal, her jaw clenched against what Miss High-and-Mighty could do with her earldom. Instead, she merely smiled until her cheeks ached. “Kilronan is lucky to have gained such unwavering affection, but I can assure you I harbor no fantasies toward His Lordship. He and Mr. O’Gara are family. Nothing more.”
Her warning imparted and the tea forgotten, Miss Osborne drifted toward the door. Stow a gremlin shadow dogging her heels. “I’m so glad we were able to come to a suitable arrangement, Miss O’Connell.” Pausing with a dramatic flourish, she offered Cat another piercing stare. “Do give your mother my best.”
Cat wa
ited until the drawing room door closed behind them before falling into a seat on a furious exhale. “Gods above, Aidan. What the hell have you gotten me into?”
Aidan found Cat in the library, muttering obscenities more at home on the tongue of a sailor.
“Plague. Of all the harebrained, idiotic—what was he thinking? Why not just come out and say I’m the household’s communal trollop? It amounts to the same thing in the end.”
“Flan told me about Barbara Osborne’s visit.”
She spun around. Desperation and fear darkened her eyes, making empty pools within the chalky pallor of her face. “You’re out of bed.”
“After two days, staring at my ceiling was growing a bit dull.” He reached for her hand, but she flinched out of his grip. Glared up at him. “Don’t. Just don’t touch me. That’s what she thinks. What they’ll all think once they discover me here.”
A crack in the impenetrable mystery of Cat. He probed with a delicate touch. “They?”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to leave. Now.”
She stalked ahead of him. Back and forth. Back and forth. Her long stride hampered by the sweep of her new skirts.
He’d been far off the mark with that one. Not even the primmest of gowns fully disguised the silky, seductive way she moved. A shame he’d wasted so much blunt to no purpose. But he could admire. And imagine. From a safe, celibate distance.
He did just that. Remaining calm amid the human eye of the hurricane pacing in front of him. Letting her work off her angst until her frantic gyrations wound down and she sank onto a sofa, her head in her hands.
“We had a bargain,” he began.
“That was before. Don’t you see?” she mumbled.
He leaned against the mantel as if patience was his middle name. “No, but you won’t let me.”
“Let’s just say I’m painfully familiar with accusations of immorality.”
He waited on a held breath for her to continue, but she clamped her mouth shut, any confession at an end.
“If you want to leave, let’s get to work.”
“And Miss Osborne? She did everything but plant her flag in you.”
“Now there’s an image to get the blood moving faster.”
“Don’t tease. It’s not funny,” she grumbled, but at least her earlier outrage seemed to be diminishing.
“If you like, I’ll speak to her. Explain that if she’d only waited she would have met your very proper and very ugly chaperone, Miss Grimm, who locks you into your chastity belt every morning and guards your door with a brace of pistols every night. And if that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll reassure her of your close family connection and explain about your poor ill mother, bless her soul. The plague can be nasty this time of year.”
She snickered. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Would I make fun of someone whose mother lies deathly ill?”
She chewed her lip, humor dancing in her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”
