The Kiss of a Stranger (5 page)

Chapter Five

Catherine looked terrified. Or perhaps simply overwhelmed.

Crispin silently congratulated himself on selecting Madame LaCroix. She was not only a talented modiste, but one whose silence on Catherine’s current appearance could be trusted.

Madame LaCroix declared that designing a wardrobe for Catherine would be “a challenge,” which was probably the official dressmaker’s term for “exorbitantly expensive.”

“This is your only . . . dress?” Madame LaCroix eyed Catherine’s ensemble with a look of utter disgust. Her French accent was, of course, not authentic, but being French helped a modiste pay her bills.

Catherine silently nodded.

“It must be burned. The shoes may be tossed into the flames beside it.” Madame LaCroix turned to Crispin. “I can, of course, recommend a shop to replace the boots.”

Shoes were definitely a necessity.

“Do you have bonnets?” the dressmaker asked.

Catherine shook her head.

“Stockings? Wraps? Pelisses? A reticule? Slippers? A riding habit? Shawl?”

Does Catherine have anything?
Crispin wondered. Her head hung lower with each question. So Thorndale was a bully
and
a skinflint. How could he have allowed Catherine’s situation to grow so ridiculous?

“I can only imagine the state of your underthings,” Madame LaCroix mumbled. Catherine turned a very becoming shade of crimson. Crispin bit back a smile—he liked the fact that she blushed so easily. “She cannot obtain all of these things here, Lord Cavratt.”

“I suppose I will have to lend her my bonnet and shawl, then.” Crispin pretended to be serious. “Unless, of course, you wish to provide me with a list of where we might go to obtain them.”

“So she could parade around the city looking like this?” Madame LaCroix waved her hand over Catherine, her nose turned up in obvious disapproval. “
Non!
Inexcusable, Lord Cavratt. The wife of a man of your position dressed as she is.”

“Which brings us back to the reason for our visit to your establishment. You do still sell dresses, do you not?” Crispin eyed Madame LaCroix with a look meant to remind her who was paying the bill. “A decent dress would be a drastic improvement.”

“Decent?” Madame LaCroix scoffed. “I have never made a ‘decent’ dress in all my life, Lord Cavratt. My creations are
magnifique
.”

“I would trust no one but you to make the attempt.” Flattery, he instinctively knew, would go a long way with the faux-Frenchwoman.

“You do not believe I could make her magnificent?” Madame LaCroix’s eyes narrowed.

Catherine was pretty. She possessed a fine pair of eyes. But Madame LaCroix seemed to think she could be an Incomparable—a distinction very few ladies were granted.

“You doubt, but you should not. I am a worker of miracles.” Madame LaCroix began circling Catherine, eyeing her with immense interest.

Crispin watched Catherine shrink into herself the way she seemed to every time anyone paid her any attention. She turned her eyes on him—so blue and so uncertain.

He’d seen something in them in her sitting area at Permount House, some hint of spark behind the fear, and it had pulled him in. Before realizing what he was about, he’d nearly kissed her again, his own too-vivid memories of the one kiss they’d shared clouding his judgment. She’d probably received little if any attention from men before and he wasn’t about to confuse her for all the heart-wrenching looks in the world.

“Go. Go. Go. I must work,” Madame LaCroix said, still surveying Catherine as she circled. “You have many purchases to make.”

“I have always had quite an eye for stockings and slippers,” Crispin replied dryly.

“Psh!” Madame LaCroix mocked. “And have her look worse than she does now?”

Catherine’s head seemed to drop even lower. Crispin began to wonder if Madame LaCroix truly had been the right choice. Her bluntness was as legendary as her gowns. Catherine’s obviously fragile heart might not be able to bear it.

“Ask Lady Henley to assist you.” Madame LaCroix waved him off. “Her taste is impeccable.”

Lizzie! Why hadn’t he thought of his sister? She and her husband would most certainly be in Town. He had no doubt she would not only take up the assignment, but thoroughly enjoy it. Lizzie spent more time shopping than the entire House of Lords spent in Parliament. She would never pass up the rare opportunity to spend Crispin’s money while enjoying her favorite pastime.

He thanked Madame LaCroix and turned to go.

“You’re leaving?” Catherine asked, a thread of worry in her voice.

Crispin smiled reassuringly. “I will return in two hours’ time. Your maid is here should you require anything, and Madame LaCroix will keep you excruciatingly occupied, I assure you.”

“But you will come back?”

For just a moment he was tempted to throw out a cheeky remark about being unable to resist the opportunity to conveniently skip out. He realized not a moment too soon that their uncertain situation would likely render such a comment decidedly unfunny. “Of course I will.”

She smiled at him, actually smiled. The miniscule effort would have gone unnoticed on anyone else, but coming from Catherine, the slightest lightening of her expression made those eyes of hers all the more striking.

A bit thrown off by the impact of a single tiny smile, Crispin made his way to Lizzie and Edward’s home entirely by memory. He paid very little attention to the path he took. His sister and brother-in-law lived only half a dozen doors down from Permount House. To Crispin’s relief, though not his surprise, they were at home and received him with enthusiasm and obvious curiosity.

“The rumor mill has been turning again, Crispin.” Lizzie eyed him over her steaming cup of tea.

“And what poor sap is being grinded in it this time?” Crispin was fairly certain
he
was the poor sap.

“It seems the highly sought after but quite uncatchable Lord Cavratt has been snared,” Lizzie said with an amused raise of her eyebrow before laughing out loud. “How many times have we heard gossip of that nature, Edward?”

“At least three times every Season.” Lizzie’s husband, Edward, grinned.

“But the gossips are quite frustrated in their efforts this time,” Lizzie continued. “Lady Littleton was here not an hour ago fishing for information. I couldn’t even give her a name.”

“That is the easiest part,” Crispin said.

“Oh, I could have rattled off several dozen names that could reasonably be connected to you.” Lizzie waved her hand dismissively. “You are being pursued by at least that many. I didn’t think you would appreciate my picking at random.”

“What name would you have her choose?” Edward asked, obviously amused by the entire thing.

“Catherine is a nice name.” Crispin shrugged as if it were merely a passing thought.

“To be sure.” Lizzie eyed him quizzically. “But why choose it?”

“Because that is her name.”

“You, apparently, have heard more detailed rumors than I. How did these rumors get started, I wonder.” Lizzie sipped her tea. “Did you dance with her once too often?”

“No.”

“Her mother is a little too anxious?”

“No.”

Lizzie’s lips pursed the way they always did when she felt her brother’s teasing had gone too far. “You are going to torture your own sister by refusing to relate some humorous
on-dit
? Come now. How did this bit of gossip get started?”

Crispin shrugged. “It’s quite simple, actually. I married her.”

“Good heavens!” Lizzie’s teacup clanked against its saucer. “You’re serious! What convinced you to do that?”

“Her rather large uncle.”

Crispin recounted the entire ridiculous ordeal, though leaving out Mr. Thorndale’s rough treatment of his niece. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to further embarrass Catherine. Lizzie expressed disbelief and disgust when the story warranted it. Edward simply listened, mouth hanging in surprise.

“I have considered an annulment,” Crispin said. “But that is proving more complicated than I’d anticipated.”

“You obviously have grounds,” Edward said. “The license was obviously forged.”

“Why is it that gentlemen only ever think in terms of cold logic?” Lizzie set her teacup on the side table with a clink of annoyance. “Of course he has grounds for an annulment, but that does not make obtaining one a good idea.”

Lizzie, then, thought a marriage contracted under threat of bodily harm between two people entirely unacquainted with one another beyond one shattering kiss ought to be considered ideal? Lizzie’s thought processes had always been baffling.

“You will survive the scandal given time, but a lady, unless she is a duke’s daughter or possesses an even higher rank, would not emerge from the aftermath with anything resembling a good reputation.” Lizzie’s expression clearly told him that she found her brother sadly lacking in intelligence. “This Catherine of yours would not be welcomed anywhere afterward. She could, perhaps, find a position as a governess, if such a position were located far from the eyes of society and if the family were desperate enough to overlook the smirch on her good name.”

“Oh, but it is worse than even that,” Crispin said. “The best chance for being granted an annulment lies in denouncing Mr. Thorndale for his illegally obtained license in the most public and inflammatory way possible. The ecclesiastical courts would most likely grant the annulment, but in the process, Catherine would, at best, be painted as a mindless pawn and, at worse, as a—”

“Coconspirator,” Edward finished.

“Precisely.” Crispin wouldn’t wish such a thing on Catherine.

“But,” Lizzie said, “to be forced to remain married to someone she hardly knows . . .” She shook her head. “I couldn’t imagine being at all happy in a marriage I hadn’t chosen.”

Not being at all happy.
Was that what Crispin had to look forward to should he remain married?

“Have you explained all of this to her?” Lizzie looked the very picture of their old nurse when she’d scolded them for irresponsibility.

He shook his head. “Being the picture-perfect husband I am, I lied to her. I told her there were legal complications and then very quickly changed the subject.”

“Good strategy,” Edward said with a nod of approval.

Lizzie did not appear to agree. “She will bear the weight of whatever comes of this. Either she will be shunned by good society and left to earn her keep by spending the remainder of her life in drudgery and necessary exile, or she’ll be married to you.”

“Why is it, dearest sister, that I cannot tell which option you consider the more horrid?”

Lizzie studied him a moment, as if piecing something together. “She hates you, does she?” Sympathetic sisters were, it seemed, hard to come by.

“Oddly enough, I don’t think she does.” Catherine had every reason in the world to be storming through his house, looking daggers at him and despising him. But she had done nothing of the sort. “I seem to have married a saint.”

“And when do I get to meet this pattern card of feminine virtue?” Lizzie asked. “Before you pack her off to slave away over a brood of destructive brats, I hope.”

“Tonight at dinner.” They never stood on ceremony with invitations. “You, of course, will be bringing carriage loads of presents.”

“Will I now?”

“Bonnets. Shawls. Slippers. Even unmentionables, I think.” Crispin tapped his lip thoughtfully.

“And why will I be bringing these, um, gifts?”

“Because I will be paying the bills.”

“Ah, that does make a difference, doesn’t it? Is there anything else on your list?”

Plenty. A return to normalcy. A wife he knew something about beyond her tendency to blush and cower in terror. A foolproof guide to what he ought to do about the messy situation in which he’d landed. “I have no idea. What do you think she needs?”

“What does she have?”

“A potato sack that is currently serving as a dress.”

“Anything else?”

“A coat. A pair of boots that are, miraculously, still holding together. I have no idea if she even owns a night rail.”

“Her uncle’s generosity at work, I assume,” Edward said.

Crispin nodded. “An oversight I very much want to rectify.”

Lizzie looked far too intrigued for Crispin’s peace of mind. “I accept.”

* * *

Crispin watched Catherine throughout dinner that night. Lizzie and Edward were hardly intimidating, but Catherine seemed overwhelmed. How, he wondered, could she possibly survive a formal dinner party?

Lizzie completely monopolized Catherine after dinner, spending nearly an hour in a one-sided conversation Crispin didn’t attempt to overhear. He stayed near the fire, pondering every upcoming social obligation he had scheduled and trying to determine the best way to help Catherine survive. Perhaps they could shrug off, say she was ill. But no. That would give rise to even more unwanted rumors.

If only he knew how to go forward. Crispin had sent a note to Mr. Brown, his solicitor, that afternoon. Though he had not committed one way or the other to the annulment proceedings, he instructed Brown to prepare the paperwork for either scenario. Brown would investigate the criminal aspect of Thorndale’s forged license, as well as Catherine’s situation so a marriage settlement could be drafted should they not obtain an annulment.

The clock chimed nine and Catherine excused herself, nearly running from the room as she’d done the night before. She would eventually grow accustomed to Town hours and Town manners and Town greediness. London had a tendency to corrupt with mind-boggling speed. He hoped she proved an exception.

Crispin turned his eyes on his sister and brother-in-law. “Care to place any wagers on the likelihood of her surviving anything beyond a poorly attended musicale?”

“I’ll give you five to one,” Edward said.

“Will you two stop it?” Lizzie had her fist propped on one hip. That look always preceded pain and suffering, usually in the form of a drawn-out lecture directed at him.

“Lizzie”—Crispin jumped in before she could thrash him too thoroughly—“you know I would never
actually
wager on any lady’s chances for social success, especially not my own wife’s.”