Lady Silence (7 page)

Damon swallowed, gulped for air. “Thank
you,” he said. Ducking his head, he opened the book. The words swam
before his eyes.
Devil it
,
but the girl was a menace. At this rate his book would take as long
to write as Agamemnon had taken to lay waste to Troy.

A scrap of paper descended onto the page he
was pretending to read. In Katy Snow’s precise hand, three words
and a question mark: “Pope and Chapman?”

She couldn’t possibly . . . “What about
them?” Damon growled. Katy pointed to a top shelf at the far end of
the room, just beneath the gallery. “I own them?” he asked,
incredulous. Katy shrugged, and with a heart-quickening flutter of
her lovely long lashes, regarded him expectantly. “By all means,”
he said, “let us look at all the translations available.”

His gaze followed hungrily as she walked
toward the towering bookroom ladder. His tethers of honor, best
intentions, common sense, disappeared, as if at the wave of a
magician’s wand. Nothing could hold him to his chair. As silent as
Katy herself, Damon followed her across the room. He stood at the
foot of the ladder as she climbed, entranced by a flash of lace
from the hem of her petticoat, the glimpse of neatly turned ankles
above the leather slippers on her astonishingly small feet. He
closed his eyes, desire and conscience locked in battle. When he
opened them again, Damon gulped, discovering he was eye level with
Katy’s delightful derrière, as, oblivious to his presence, she had
found the books she wanted and was descending the ladder straight
into his arms.

What was a man to do? He seized her, books
and all, turned her neatly to face him, swooped in for a kiss.

Positioned as they were, Katy’s knee
did not have far to go. Colonel Farr gasped, stumbled backwards,
swore with heartfelt vehemence as he doubled over in worse agony
than suffered with either of the wounds he’d taken on the
Peninsula. Only later, as he sat with his head in his hands,
cursing jumped-up chambermaids, the war, the army, and even his
mother, did he wonder how he could have been so woefully stupid, so
pitifully weak that he had strayed from
noblesse oblige
straight into
droit de seigneur
.

Katy Snow’s fault, of course. Tempting little
morsel that she was. And who among the fine officers and gentlemen
he knew would even think of resisting such a succulent plum when it
was dangled before their noses?

Would she come back? He doubted it.

He could order her to serve him. He
paid her salary, not his mother; he had checked the household
accounts to be sure. Katy’s fine clothes came out of his mother’s
jointure, but the girl’s wages came from Farr Park funds. She was
his, to do with as he pleased.
Droit de
seigneur
. Right of the Master. And in Medieval times
that right had included taking the place of the groom on the
wedding nights of the fairest maidens.
Ah,
yes!

He was an officer and a gentleman. Far above
such things. Or should be.

Perhaps he’d wring her neck, instead.

Colonel Farr picked up the heavy volume
of Homer in the original Greek and shied it across the room, where
it made a most satisfactory thump against the black fireplace
grate. Staggering to his feet, he limped across the room to
retrieve the precious volume, his head awhirl with contradictory
thoughts. Behind him, the translations of
The Iliad
by Pope and Chapman lay where they had
fallen at the foot of the bookroom ladder.

Supper that night was as much of an agony as
Colonel Farr anticipated. Katy stalked into the dining room behind
his mother, radiating belligerence and animosity. How the blasted
girl managed to convey her feelings so clearly was astonishing. And
she’d tucked some kind of scarf into her décolletage, but it did
little good. His imagination, the colonel discovered grimly, was
quite capable of stripping her bare.

“
Damon! Wool-gathering at table? Surely
your book does not occupy your thoughts every moment of the day and
night?”

“
I beg pardon, mama. Would you kindly
repeat your question.”

“
Not a question, dearest. I merely said
that I have had a letter from Ashby. He wonders that you have not
visited him.”

Guilt. How could he possibly tell her
that not only did he wish to be alone, but he did not want to face
his too perfect, ever infallible elder brother because Ashby
thought him a hero.
A hero, by
God!

“’
Tis true, the two of you are as
different as chalk and cheese, but you always dealt well together.
At least . . . so I thought.” The countess’s voice trailed off into
a question.

Ashby, the Noble. Pattern card of an English
lord. Possessor of every virtue. Except, evidently, the sense to
choose a wife who would suit his mama.

As if she read his thoughts, the countess
interjected a familiar theme into her plea for a visit to her
eldest child, the Earl of Moretaine. “Even if the poor boy was
foolish enough to marry that horrid creature, he is still your
brother; you, his heir.”

“
That poor boy is four and thirty,
mama.”

“
And still childless. It begins to seem
likely your son will be Moretaine.”

The colonel swore, begged pardon. “I assure
you Ashby is more likely to have sons before I,” he stated grimly.
“I have no thought to marry.”

“
Has it occurred to you,” said the
dowager countess with some care, “that Ashby may, by now, be aware
that he ruined his life when he married that woman? That he may be
in need of support from his only brother?”

With some deliberation, Colonel Farr laid his
fork onto his plate. For some reason—force of habit?—he glanced at
Katy Snow. Their confrontation evidently forgiven, she was staring
at him, her beautiful green eyes full of concern . . . offering
encouragement.

“
Very well, mama. I will write to Ashby
today, asking him to set a convenient time for a visit. You will
come, too, will you not?”

“
I must, of course.” The dowager
sighed, then offered her younger son a loving smile. “Fortunately,
I see Ashby in town during the Season, and thanks to your
generosity, my dear, I have not had to live next or nigh the witch
these many years.”

Damon raised his napkin to his lips, hiding a
smile. His mother had a more than ample jointure and lifetime use
of the dower house on the grounds of Castle Moretaine, yet she had
snapped up his offer of a home at Farr Park. She was fond of him,
he knew, but he suspected that, when escaping Drucilla Moretaine,
witch of Castle Moretaine, his mother had rather enjoyed the notion
that she was practicing the economies of widowhood. Instead of a
fine townhouse in Bath, she was spending the funds she had saved on
Katy Snow!

With relief, Colonel Farr watched his mother
lead his nubile and distracting secretary from the room. He reached
the port.

“
It ain’t right,” declared Jesse Wiggs,
glowering at the other members of the Farr Park staff as they
gathered round a long pine table for their evening meal. “It just
ain’t right.” Jesse was a tall, broad-shouldered young man, as a
footman should be, his honest, indignant blue eyes making a fine
contrast to the white of his wig.

“
What ain’t right?” Jedadiah, the
second footman asked, picking up his cue.

Knowing full well he should keep his tongue
between his teeth, Jesse Wiggs threw a belligerent glance at
Humphrey Mapes at the head of the table, before stating, “Our Katy
shut up every morning with the colonel, that’s what. Her nothing
but a babe, and him come back from doing God knows what in heathen
lands.”

“
The Spanish are Catholic, not
heathen,” said Mapes sternly.

“
Don’t make no never mind. He’s a good
man, the colonel, but my daddy was a soldier, and many’s the time
he’s told me men forget themselves in a war. Learn things they
oughtn’t to know. Don’t think the colonel should be in there, all
alone, with our Katy. Enough to tempt a saint, she is. And our Mr.
Farr was never that.”

“
He is your employer,” Betty Huggins,
the Cook, burst out. “An officer and a gentleman. You’ll keep a
civil tongue in your head, Jesse Wiggs, else you’ll find yourself
on your backside in the dust, with not so much as a
character.”

“
Perhaps a stint in the army would do
you good,” Mapes suggested blandly. “For don’t think I haven’t seen
you staring your eyes out at our Katy. I daresay the green-eyed
monster has you in its grip.”

“
She’s not for the likes of you,” Mrs.
Tyner, the housekeeper, declared indignantly, joining the
conversation for the first time as guilt had kept her silent. She,
too, had been wondering about the propriety of Katy Snow spending
hours alone with Colonel Farr for as much as six days a
week.

“
Ain’t for the likes of the colonel
neither,” returned Jesse Wiggs, scowling fiercely.

“
I think maybe,” Clover Stiles
ventured, “Lady Moretaine wants to put her in the master’s
way—”

“
That’s enough, Stiles,” Mrs. Tyner
snapped.

“
You don’t think there’s any hope of a
m—?”

“
Hold your tongue, girl!” Mapes
barked.

With soft sounds of resignation, the Farr
Park servants applied themselves to their food. After several
minutes of silence near bursting with unspoken speculations, Mapes
raised his voice to reach the housekeeper at the far end of the
table. “Mrs. Tyner, perhaps you might be good enough to speak with
our Katy . . . ah—make sure all is well with her.”

“
Of course, Mr. Mapes.” As if she
hadn’t planned on doing that very thing!

With a collective sigh of relief, general
conversation broke out around the table, although mostly in
whispers, with the various servants darting quick glances at Jesse
Wiggs and Clover Stiles. Katy was one of theirs. They might
sometimes envy her rise, but mostly they only recalled she had come
to Farr Park with nothing, not even a voice, and had become the
darling of the house. She was Katy Snow, their Katy, and nothing
and no one would be allowed to harm her.

The dowager arranged her indigo silk gown
over an elegant settee upholstered in leaf green damask, then waved
her young companion into a matching armchair close by. “Katy,” she
declared, “what has happened? If one could make a meal of tension,
we might have dined in splendor this evening. Katy?”

Avoiding Lady Moretaine’s penetrating gaze,
Katy hung her head. Her hands were clasped tight in her lap.

“
He has snapped at you,” the dowager
declared. “Treated you as a tweeny.”

Katy shook her head.

Lady Moretaine frowned. “He has made
unreasonable demands. Expects more than you are trained to do.” The
only response was a sharp shake of Katy’s head. What pride the
child had! Any insinuation that she was unable to be of help to her
son was rejected with scorn.

Katy hunched her shoulders, drawing farther
into herself.

The countess did not care for what she
was beginning to suspect.
Dear God, surely
not.

She should have thought, should have
considered . . .

Oh, but she had. She had known quite well
what she was doing when she thrust the child in her son’s path. A
man so long at war. A girl in the full perfection of youth and
beauty. But she had not thought far enough. She had allowed herself
to forget Katy’s origins. By treating the child as a family
connection rather than a lost waif rescued from a snowstorm, she
had come to believe the fabrication—even to the extent of vague
dreams of a closer alliance. Something she should have examined
with more care, recognizing it for the absurdity it was.

Men of noble birth did not marry the Katy
Snows of this world, no matter how fine their manners, how
beautiful their embroidery and flower arrangements, nor how
exquisitely they played the piano. Even a governess might
occasionally dare to hope for such an exalted alliance, but not a
girl of no name and no family. A foundling who did not talk.

The Dowager Countess of Moretaine clasped her
hands together as tightly as Katy’s own. “My dear,” she began
softly, “it would seem I may have made a dreadful mistake. Has my
son attempted to molest you?”

An infinitesimal shrug.

“
Katy! That is not a proper response.
Tell me at once—did my son touch you, attempt to kiss
you?”

Katy’s lower lip jutted out. The toe of her
slipper traced a flower on the thick Axminster carpet.

“
Very well,” said Lady Moretaine,
looking grim, “since you do not attempt to deny it, I shall assume
it is true.” For a moment, the countess seemed to study the fire
that had been lit in the white and gold marble fireplace to take
the chill off the late September night. “My dear, I believe we must
remove to Bath. You would like that, I am sure. You would have an
opportunity—”

But Katy had sprung to her feet, her lovely
face contorted with horror. Her blond head was shaking so hard a
long strand of gold came loose, tumbling over one ear.

Lady Moretaine’s eyes widened. “Sit down,”
she commanded in a tone of voice she had not used to Katy Snow in
many a year. Reluctantly, Katy resumed her seat. “Although I am
loathe to lose you to marriage,” said the countess, “I have come to
look upon you as a member of my own family. I am obliged to do what
is right for you, even though that may not be what either of us
wishes. Do you understand me, child? In Bath, you may meet eligible
young men. You cannot aspire to a great house or a fine title, but
you should find some young man willing to accept you for what you
are.”