Page 96 of In the Prince's Bed
“What exactly do you expect to find out?” Mama asked her peevishly.
“I don’t know.” And that was the God’s honest truth.
“If you surprise a man in his own home, you’d best be prepared for what you find. Men often dismiss their mistresses just before they marry, you know.”
She did know. And it shouldn’t bother her if he was getting rid of a mistress. It was certainly better than keeping the mistress after they married. But it did bother her, and it boded ill for their life to come. She refused to marry a man with Papa’s morals.
Of course, he might be hiding something else entirely. Or perhaps she was being unduly cautious again. No, she didn’t think so. She only prayed she didn’t get more than she’d bargained for by surprising him like this.
They traveled in silence a while as thick forests of ash and elm turned to clay hills, and the sun slid toward the horizon. It was nearly dusk when Katherine saw a sign-post that said,FENBRIDGE—2MILES.
Her heart began to pound. “We can’t be far,” she told her mother.
“It’s not too late to return to London,” Mama retorted. “Why risk it when you have so much to lose?”
“Because I must.”
She spotted a farm laborer driving a cart ahead of them. As they came alongside, she ordered the hired coachman to stop.
The laborer, a weathered man with an unusually tall brow and long-fingered hands, reined in as well, turning a pair of suspicious eyes on her. “Lost, are ye?”
Katherine flashed him a smile out the open window. “Indeed we are. We’re looking for Lord Iversley’s estate. Edenmore.”
The man jerked his head to the field that ran by the road. “You been driving by it for a good bit. You can see the house from the road up ahead—it’s a big ’un.”
“Thank you,” she said, and offered him a coin.
With a derisive snort, he ignored it and clicked his tongue to send his odd-looking horse clopping on down the road.
As they passed him, Katherine gazed at the cleared fields he’d indicated and felt a moment’s unease. Three men toiled in them with horses much like the odd one she’d just seen—short, barrel-bodied, and devoid of the thick hair usual to the legs of draft horses. They were turning the earth in nice, neat rows…with shiny new tillers.
What if Alechadbeen telling the truth? Might he get angry enough at her distrust to toss her aside, as Mama feared?
Then where would she be? She couldn’t go back to Sydney—not unchaste as she was. And even if Sydney would have her, she’d already realized he wasn’t the man for her. Indeed, she greatly feared that no man could make her feel what she felt for Alec.
But whatdidshe feel for Alec? Did she dare give a name to the dizzy pleasure she felt when he entered a room? The way his teasing always brightened her day? She could say anything to him, and he understood. Even around Sydney she’d always had to censor her more…reckless thoughts.
So why couldn’t she trust Alec? Why did she still hold a piece of her heart back from him?
Just as she wondered if she should turn back to London after all, she caught sight of the house the laborer had described, and her heart leaped into her throat.
Thiswas to be her home, this huge house of red brick and a hundred glass windows, with an elm-lined drive they now entered, and a fishpond and flower gardens and long lawns…
But they were overgrown flower gardens, choked with weeds. And the fishpond was covered with a thick green scum. And of the hundred windows, a good third of them were boarded up, turning what had once been a beauty of a house into a pockmarked crone.
“He wasn’t lying when he said the place was in no condition for a wedding,” Mama remarked.
Katherine glanced over to see her mother scrutinizing the place with a frown. “Don’t you remember, Mama? He said his father neglected the place for years. That’s why he wanted to be here rather than in London.”
No wonder Alec had spoken so fiercely of his poor home. What sort of unconscionable creature had his father been, to let this beautiful old building fall into such disrepair?
“This is more than neglect, girl,” her mother said. “This doesn’t look good to me, not good at all.”
Katherine ignored her mother as they drove up before the front entrance. Of course it didn’t look good; that’s what happened when a man didn’t do his duty. And it wasn’t as if there’d been much time for Alec to turn things around.
It was odd, though—Alec had mentioned workmen, yet there were none around. No one repaired the sagging eaves, no one pulled the weeds in the beds of rosebushes gone wild, and no groom ran out to greet them as they approached.
Indeed, even after they disembarked, it took several moments to get any response to their knock at the front door. When at last it opened, the aging fellow who greeted them seemed confused by their appearance. “May I help you?”
