Regency: Courtship And Candlelight: One Final Season. Elizabeth Beacon

rebellious reverie was interrupted by the noise of a candlestick being carelessly plunked down, then the unmistakable sound of a man pacing. She should have been relieved that Bestholme had stopped searching for her, but wished whoever was marching up and down the book room at Jericho instead. Releasing a pent-up shush of breath in an exasperated sigh earned her a sharp nudge from the annoying man at her side. Even as she stung at his silent rebuke, she caught the sound of two voices murmuring and realised someone else had entered the room while she was working herself into a fine rage against fate and Edmund’s overactive conscience.

      Then she heard Bestholme’s rather nasal tone after all and shuddered, but could hear little more until the furtive pair came closer to their side of the room and she hoped it wasn’t because of some give-away sound she or Edmund inadvertently let slip. Wondering why, if this was an assignation, they didn’t just shut the door and be done with it, or go and bother some other clandestine lovers with their unwanted presence, Kate shifted from one foot to the other to ease her cramped limbs and longed for them to leave.

      ‘I’m sure there’s nobody out there and I vow it’s like making an assignation with a little old lady who’s afraid of her own shadow, meeting you in secret and pretending all night that we mean nothing to each other, even if it does relieve the boredom of a very dull evening, but why won’t you do just this one little thing for me, George?’ Kate heard a distinctive husky voice murmur.

      Whatever was Lady Tedinton doing here, risking whatever scraps of her tattered reputation she had left to her? And what on earth could she be asking an apology of a man like Bestholme to do for her? Deciding she was fated to overhear other people’s conversations tonight, Kate listened shamelessly, but when Edmund’s strong hand felt for hers in the darkness she clasped it gratefully and clung to the warmth and comfort he was silently offering.

      Suddenly she didn’t need him to tell her the rumours of him and the unscrupulous woman standing only yards away from them being lovers were merely lies; a tale the peculiar female had no doubt thought up to puff up her own consequence. Not that Kate suddenly thought him a perfect Sir Galahad. No doubt he’d taken at least one or two willing beauties into his keeping in the past, since he wasn’t a monk or a saint, even if the mere thought of him doing so hurt far too much for comfort. There was a core of integrity about him that would not let him couple with a woman who held her husband and his family in such contempt that she didn’t care if most of society knew she’d cuckolded him repeatedly.

      ‘It’s a hell of a risk, Selene,’ Bestholme replied at last after considering whatever that ‘little thing’ might be for a very long moment to two listeners, forced to breathe so shallowly that Kate for one felt almost suffocated by her desire not to be heard and discovered by so unattractive a pair.

      ‘But I’m so very weary of warming an old man’s bed, Georgie. Please, say you’ll do this for me, lover? I so long to be free,’ her ladyship wheedled in a little-girl voice that somehow made their discussion all the more sinister.

      ‘No, I’m not risking putting my head in a noose to set you free in order for you to try to wed a man who has no more interest in you than a stone statue might have. Tedinton’s fortune would go to his heir anyway and I dare say your jointure would be tied up so tight not even the Lord Chancellor could get his hands on it. You’d end up worse off and alone, and I can’t afford to keep you, you’re far too extravagant and altogether costly a creature for me, my dear.’

      ‘That repellent brat is a minor and makes no effort to ingratiate himself with anyone and I’m certain you’re quite wrong about my jointure. Algy thinks the world of me and will leave me a rich woman.’

      ‘He might be a ridiculous old fool, but he’s far more possessive than you choose to realise. He won’t leave you a target for men like me after he’s gone, and the boy has a pack of embittered relations all longing to avenge the slights you’ve heaped on them these last ten years. The truth of it is that you’ve grown lazy, Selene. The world doesn’t revolve around you and what you covet for now, despite your belief you only have to scheme for whatever you want to get it.’

      ‘Just do this one little thing for me and I’ll make sure that high-nosed Alstone bitch has no alternative but to marry you,’ the woman cajoled and even as Edmund’s hand tightened on hers to offer comfort and denial of what the scoundrels were discussing so coldly, Kate had to put her other hand over her mouth to stop herself shouting out a protest at such a repulsive strategy and add the furious caveat that she wouldn’t marry Bestholme if her very survival depended on it.

      ‘And precisely how do you propose to do that?’ Bestholme asked.

      ‘I’ll whip up such a scandal she’ll beg you to wed her by the time I’ve finished.’

      ‘You don’t have the power, Selene my dear. Haven’t you realised by now that nobody as heedless as you are will ever hold sway among the ton? I doubt they mind your blatant peccadilloes with other men, or even the fact you married a fool for money for most of them did the same when it comes down to it, but you’re about as subtle as a town crier about your contempt for your husband and his cronies and he’s widely liked, for all he’s a senile old fool, and you, my dear, are not.’

      ‘Never mind preaching me a sermon and to hell with what a pack of pompous fools think, will you do it?’ Lady Tedinton replied in her lazy, malicious drawl as if they were discussing some minor favour instead of cold-blooded murder.

      ‘I’m still listening,’ Bestholme replied as if bored, but indulging her.

      And so am I, Kate was tempted to shout and step out of hiding to confound the unlovely pair, but she shuddered at the very idea of confronting such a sordid pair of rogues and wasn’t it as well to know exactly what they were planning?

      ‘Quiet,’ Edmund mouthed a warning against her ear, but how had he known?

      Kate was so busy struggling against the incendiary effect of just his breath on her ear lobe, his mouth so close against her neck she could almost feel the words form on his lips, that she missed Lady Tedinton’s first few words and frowned fiercely at him in the pitch darkness. How could she be so wrapped up in her response to his closeness that even the small matter of the murder of Lord Tedinton faded against the fierceness of the fire Edmund had lit between them with those few passionate kisses?

      ‘All you’ll need to do is be found with the silly chit in a scandalously dishevelled condition, then you can inform everyone you were just celebrating your engagement a little prematurely,’ she was saying in a scornful tone. ‘Even Carnwood won’t gainsay you when the silly wench is obviously in need of a husband.’

      ‘And you think I’m incapable of thinking up such a simple scheme myself, Selene? I’m almost insulted,’ Bestholme responded in that cold, indifferent voice Kate now knew was not an affectation, but reflected his true self.

      ‘You’re still being dunned and always begging so-called loans off me to pay off your endless debts, so you evidently don’t have the nerve to carry it out.’

      ‘Whereas you have the nerve and not the brains?’

      ‘Think so if you dare,’ Lady Tedinton hissed and Kate shuddered at the casual evil of it all.

      ‘I do dare, but that’s why you keep coming back to me, isn’t it?’ Bestholme demanded and there was the sound of a brief scuffle and then a horribly needy moan as Lady Tedinton demonstrated the truth of what he said.

      ‘Take me now,’ she growled.

      ‘No, it’s too risky,’ her lover argued and gave a low chuckle that made Kate shiver at the cold lustiness of their loathsome need for each other, ‘and I like you desperate, Selene. By the time Tedinton has pawed you all the way home and tried to mount you like a man, you’ll be glad to meet me in that very convenient summerhouse he’s had built in the garden for us, if he only knew it, and feel a real man between your legs again at last.’

      ‘I hate you,’ she informed him throatily and there was another of those horrible interludes as Kate heard them kiss noisily and even