For Love of the Duke(44)
Mother ignored Anne. “Your uncle considered nothing more than the duke’s title. I’m certain of it.”
“I’d venture he also considered the very, very generous terms of the contract,” Anne muttered.
Katherine grabbed for the parchment, her heart thudding hard in her breast. This time, Anne turned it over.
Katherine began to read, and promptly choked.
He’d settled £1200 upon her annually as pin money? By all the saints in heaven.
“That is a small fortune,” Anne murmured, eyes wide and unblinking.
She was to have a country cottage in Kent.
Anne scratched at her brow. “All money brought by your dowry is to revert over to you if anything should happen to him.” She shook her head. “I dare say this is very generous, Mother.”
Generous? Katherine’s throat worked reflexively. Generous? Through his magnanimous gesture, Jasper had ensured she’d never be dependent upon him as Mother had been dependent on their wastrel father.
“I do not care if the duke gave her the Queen’s Crown,” Mother cried. “The man killed his wife. Surely that matters to one of you?”
A knock sounded at the door.
Three pairs of eyes swiveled to the entrance of the room.
Katherine’s stomach lurched. Oh, goodness. Her toes curled inside her ivory satin slippers.
The butler cleared his throat, his small blue eyes wide in his pale face. “Er, the Duke of Bainbridge to see Lady Katherine.”
Jasper’s imposing figure filled the doorway. An enormous specimen of a man, the smallish butler seemed a mere flicker in his shadow. Jasper glanced at her momentarily; his expression the hard, inscrutable one she’d come to expect.
Humiliation over her mother’s outburst melded with pain for the ugly insults Mother and all of Society leveled at this generous, if cold, gentleman. Society didn’t know him to be a man who’d risked death to rescue her from the frozen depths of the Thames. They didn’t know the man who appreciated the tortured words of Wordsworth. And they most certainly didn’t know he’d sacrificed himself to wed plain, bluestocking Katherine Adamson, saving her from Mr. Ekstrom.
His gaze slid away from Katherine, and then he pinned Mother to the spot with his flinty, emerald green eyes.
She paled and then scrambled to her feet. Her eyes darted nervously about the room. For the first time in Katherine’s lifetime she found her mother an unsettled, stammering, bundle of awkwardness. “Uh, w-welcome, Y-Your Grace. Tea?” she squeaked.
Jasper arched a midnight black brow.
“Uh, th-that is,” Mother crushed the fabric of her skirts in her hand. “That is t-to say…”
“I believe my mother is offering you tea, Your Grace,” Anne said. She dropped an elegant curtsy and smiled. God love Anne; she epitomized ladylike elegance and grace.
Alas, it appeared this husband-to-be of hers was wholly unaffected by her sister’s gentle charm. Jasper peered down the length of his slightly crooked, Roman nose at her, and remained silent.
Nor did it fail to escape Katherine’s notice that he’d failed to bow.
Anne’s smile dipped.
Katherine’s gaze moved between Jasper, and her sister, as she considered for the first time how very important it was for Jasper and her sister Anne to like one another.
She hurried across the room. “Your Grace,” she said.
He froze her with a look…and the words died on her lips.
This was clearly not a man eager to make her his wife. This was the coldhearted beast who’d harshly reprimanded her after he’d pulled her from the Thames.
She staggered to a stop several feet from him, hating the unease that coursed through her. The Jasper she’d come to know did not elicit this uncertainty. He laughed; albeit rusty and harsh, but he laughed. And he spoke in gentle tones.
Mother seemed to compose herself. She tilted her chin up a notch, and cleared her throat. “Your Grace, may I offer you—?”
“A moment alone with Lady Katherine,” he interrupted in a low, dark tone.
Mother paled, and managed a jerky nod. “V-very w-well. Come along, Anne,” she said, and snatched Anne by the forearm and steered her from the room as though she were an archangel saving her daughter from a dark demon.
The door closed behind them, and Katherine stood stock still in the middle of the room with that dark demon. She folded her hands in front of her. “Jasper,” she said quietly.
He said nothing.
Katherine caught her lower lip between her teeth and troubled the flesh. His eyes narrowed as he followed that distracted movement.
She stopped. “You know, there really is no reason for you to be so surly.”
His nostrils flared, but other than that he gave no outward reaction to her statement.