Follow the Heart (22 page)

A half-grunt, half-snort tore from him at the thought, and he grabbed a vine and chopped fiercely at it. He’d become only too well acquainted with the results of her belief in freedom and wildness, as exhibited in her behavior toward him. A disciplined woman would never have flirted with a man, toyed with his emotions, the way she had.

Andrew yanked at the pruning hook when it caught in a thick raspberry branch, but it wouldn’t come loose. He knelt, wiping sweat from his face, chapped from the wind that blew dark clouds ever closer.

The first raindrop hit the back of his neck and rolled down his spine with the intensity of an ice bath. He pulled on the pruning hook until it finally gave way, gathered up his coat and the hedging shears, and dashed for the door into the folly. Unlike many, this picturesque edifice not only featured an open, columned portico around the exterior, it also had an enclosed interior—perhaps meant, one day, to be a mausoleum, but never used for it. Small statues stood in niches all around the circular walls between the windows, and a carved oak bench sat in the middle of the room.

He’d only managed to clear the vines away from one of the windows, leaving the interior quite dim. He pulled the candles and matches from his coat, took it off and draped it across the bench, and found the sconces between the statue niches.

He’d just stuck the first candle into a sconce when the door banged open with a gust and swirl of dust and detritus. He turned to close it—and then realized it hadn’t blown open by itself.

Kate threw her shoulder to the door to shove it closed against the strengthening wind. Though her hood hid her face, there was no mistaking her brown cloak.

He had but a moment to school his features, to hide both his pleasure and his ire at seeing her.

Kate shook the beaded drops of water from the hood before pushing it back and stepping into the small, circular room.

Andrew crossed his arms and tried to look grave, forbidding—fighting against his instinct to move toward her. He knew the moment she saw him, for she let out a sharp gasp and pressed gloved hands to her chest.

“I do apologize—I didn’t realize anyone was . . . Mr. Lawton?” She frowned and stepped sideways.

With his back to the window, the sole source of light, he must have been silhouetted. He turned away from her and struck a match against the stone wall and lit the candle. He repeated this three more times until one side of the room glowed with warm yellow light, then turned to watch her.

Kate looked around, but she had made no further ingress. “What is this place meant to be?”

“It is a folly.”

“It looks like a Greek or Roman temple.”

“And have you seen many Greek and Roman temples?”

Her head snapped toward him, surprise—and perhaps a bit of hurt—written in her expression at the sharpness of his tone. “I—no. Just illustrations in books.”

Still frowning, she moved along the opposite wall, leaning close to examine the statues.

Andrew opened his mouth to apologize but stopped just short of speaking.

“I had hoped to find you this afternoon, since I apparently missed you on my walk yesterday morning.” Kate’s index finger caressed the face of one of the statues. Andrew shivered and looked away, not wanting to imagine what it would feel like to have that finger trail down his cheek, trace the contours of his ear the way she did with the image of the ancient deity.

He resisted the longing to hurdle the bench, take her in his arms, and—

“Andrew?”

He shuddered at the sound of his Christian name spoken in her soft voice. “Stop. Please, just stop.”

She halted her progress around the room, dropping her hand to her side. “I apologize for using your first name. I know, it was highly American of me.”

He balled his hands into fists, but that didn’t help, no matter how much he liked hearing her say his name in that strange, flat accent of hers. “That is not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what is it you want me to stop doing?” She moved into the center of the room, her cloak brushing dust from the bench.

“Stop . . .”
Stop making me fall in love with you.
No, he couldn’t say that. “I have seen you with Lord Thynne and other men from the house party. I know you were . . . There is no reason for you to continue pretending that you enjoy my company when it is quite apparent you were just biding your time until one of the titled gentlemen responded to your flirtations.”

Kate’s bottom jaw dropped open and her eyes widened. “I . . . I never meant—”

“Never meant for me to think you were serious in your flirting with me? No, of course someone like you would not consider how you’d leave a wake of pain and misunderstanding behind you when you moved on to your next conquest.”

To his utter astonishment, Kate burst into laughter.

She pressed a loose fist to her lips and held the other hand in the air, palm toward him. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the idea of my having conquests. Andrew—Mr. Lawton, if you are not acquainted with the real reason for my being here, then let me enlighten you.”

Kate unbuttoned her cloak and draped it over the bench beside his coat. “You may have realized that I am not a yearling debutante. Not even close. I will turn twenty-eight years old in April. In the ten years since my debut, I have had a grand total of three suitors. Two of whom ended up marrying friends of mine. The third was going to marry me only for my money—that is, until my father gambled away the family fortune on a railroad land speculation and lost everything. Then he wanted nothing to do with me; in fact, he told my father that no man with use of his senses would have me.” Apparently unable to contain her agitation, she marched a circuit around the room.

Andrew, standing beside the bench, turned as she walked the perimeter, fascinated with the change in her, finding it hard to remember why he’d been angry with her.

“So my father sold many of the expensive furnishings in our home, along with, I suspect, several pieces of my stepmother’s jewelry, to afford to send Christopher and me here so that we could find wealthy spouses in relative obscurity.”

She released another laugh, this one mirthless and painful. “I, the woman famous in Philadelphia for being the spinster with too many opinions and no talent for flirtation, was to come to a foreign country to snare a wealthy husband, with no fortune or property to entice him. Only my own charms. Ha—charms!” She stopped and threw her hands in the air. “Can you imagine me, trying to charm wealthy Englishmen who are accustomed to being around some of the most accomplished husband-seekers in the world?”

When he didn’t answer, she took up her circular pacing again. “So on the voyage over, I made a decision. I could no longer be Kate, the unfortunate spinster. I had to become Katharine, the sophisticated woman who knew how to get men to pay attention to me. But as I’d never had success with it before, I needed to practice.”

She stopped at the uncovered window, gazed out it a long moment, then slowly turned to face him, the frenetic expression gone. “I owe you an apology, Andrew. I did flirt with you. I needed to practice on someone, and you were the first candidate to present yourself. But . . .” She looked down and started pulling at the fingers of her gloves to remove them.

“But?” He stepped closer. Moth to flame. Bird to berry. Child to sweets. Man to woman.

Twisting her gloves in her hands, she looked up again. “But I realized that I’d made a mistake in doing so. You see . . . the more I flirted with you, the more I wanted to flirt with you—and not because I was getting better at it, but because you responded to it. You made me feel like that attractive young debutante with power over men that I never before possessed. I wanted to spend time with you because . . . because . . .”

Andrew couldn’t stand it any longer. He closed the distance between them, twined his fingers in the soft wings of hair over her ears, and kissed her.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

K
ate gasped when Andrew’s lips pressed to hers. She held her breath until her lungs threatened to explode, then slowly let the air out through her nose. Shock subsiding, the rush of excitement pulsed through her until it infused her with enough boldness to respond, angling her head to give his lips better access to hers.

She raised her hands and rested them on his waist. Beneath the thick muslin shirt, his muscles tightened and spasmed with his uneven breathing.

“Kate.” Her name in his deep voice caressed her very soul. One of his hands moved from her cheek around to her back, settling between her shoulders to draw her closer into his kiss, into his arms.

But when his chest pressed to hers, Kate panicked. Instead of embracing him, she used her hands to push against him, breaking the kiss.

Andrew stumbled back as if struck, his eyes glazed, chest heaving with his panting breaths. Kate knew she couldn’t be in much better condition. They both stood, breathing hard, a few moments before either one could put voice to their thoughts.

Seeming to come to his senses, Andrew straightened, running his fingers through his hair to try to smooth it back. The unruly curls sprang right back into the riotous cloud they usually formed. “I do apologize, Miss Dearing.”

“Don’t.” Kate smoothed her sweating, trembling hands down the front of her skirt. “You need not apologize to me. I . . . I have wanted you to do that for a while now. But . . .”

Andrew shook his head. “But it can never be. No matter how we feel for each other, we must go our own ways. You need a wealthy husband. I am in no position to support a wife, much less her family.”

Tears stung Kate’s eyes and regret clogged her throat. “How can God be so unfair?”

Andrew leaned against the wall, pressing his head back against the stonework. “Do you really believe God takes so minute an interest in what happens between people like you and me? It seems He has more weighty matters to attend to.”

Kate turned her back to Andrew and busied herself with brushing the dust from her cloak so he wouldn’t see the tears that refused to obey her internal command to stop. “I used to believe that God cared what happened to me. How many times have I heard about how God cares for the sparrows and the lilies, which means He cares for me even more? But perhaps those are just platitudes we are told to keep us from despair.” She drew a ragged breath and hugged the cloak to her chest, burying her face in the damp wool.

Gentle hands took her by the shoulders and turned her around, and Andrew wrapped her in a hug.

With her arms and the cloak between them, Kate allowed herself to melt into his embrace, her forehead fitting into the curve between his shoulder and throat. As soon as she allowed herself to accept the comfort he offered, the tears ceased.

“Kate—for Kate to me you will be from now on, now I know that is who you really are—would that we could run away together, marry without thought to consequence.” His chest heaved with an almost silent chuckle. “Plant our own garden and see how it grows.”

She smiled at the analogy. And while she would gladly have spent the rest of the day in his arms, she couldn’t. Drawing on what few reserves of strength remained to her, she pushed away and straightened her shoulders. “But we both know that garden would wither from the drought of financial ruin.”

Andrew reached toward her, as if to dry the tear tracks from her cheeks, but Kate took a step back and wiped her face dry with her sleeve. She shook out her cloak and swung it around her shoulders.

“I will say good-bye now, Andrew.” She wiggled the fingers of her left hand into her glove. “And farewell. When you return from London, I think it would be best if we avoided each other’s company.”

Andrew lifted his coat from the bench and slapped away the dust as best he could.

Kate wanted to go to him, to tell him she didn’t mean it, to say she would run away with him no matter the consequences. But a picture of her three half sisters in rags, huddled together on the street corner while her father and stepmother begged for food, created a barrier she could not transverse.

“I agree. When I return, we shall see no more of each other.” He shrugged into the coat, then pinned her with his piercing eyes. “Good-bye, Kate.”

“Good-bye, Andrew.” Rather than risk begging him for one final embrace, Kate pulled her hood up, hiding him from view, heaved the door open, and fled from the folly. The wind whipped and yanked at her cloak and skirts, and the cold rain stung her face, but she ran, down the hill and around the pond, back toward the house. She ran until her sides ached and her lungs threatened to burst.

Once she reached the grape arbor–covered path leading into the main gardens, she slowed, gulping breaths of air that had turned frigid once again. The intertwined vines overhead blocked the worst of the sleet, and her slow trudge through it allowed her time to try to compose herself before she reentered the house.

“Miss Dearing? There you are.” Lord Thynne appeared at the other end of the tunnel. He strode toward her, concern deepening the lines in his forehead and around his eyes.

Why couldn’t she have fallen for him instead of for Andrew?

“Miss Dorcas said you went for a walk after dinner, but when you had not returned after two hours, and the weather turned, she grew concerned. So she asked if I would come find you.” He gained her side and looked her over from head to toe, as if checking for injury.

“I am quite well, my lord. But I do appreciate your concern.” Despair over the loss of Andrew rose in her throat and stung the inner corners of her eyes. But she could not allow herself to give any more thought to the man she could never have. Especially not when the man who could save her family from ruin stood before her. “I am a bit tired, though, from my mad dash to shelter from the rain. Might I take your arm back to the house, my lord?”

A slow smile eased the lines in his forehead. He turned and offered his elbow toward her. “Only on one condition.”

She paused, her hand halfway to his arm. “Condition?”

“That when we are alone, you agree to call me Stephen.”