For Love of the Duke(93)
His smile said he knew as much. “Why do you insist on coming here? You can’t even tolerate the collection of scents in this godforsaken landscape.”
Katherine swatted his arm. “I adore this place.” This floral haven had become a kind of sanctuary in Society’s glittering world of falsity and unkindness.
The other, the reason she could not speak of, even to this man who’d become her only friend, was because it reminded her of those splendorous tapestries hung throughout Castle Blackwood. Even if the poignant beauty served to remind Katherine of Jasper and his love, Lydia, then Katherine would welcome even that fragile remembrance of her time there.
Harry flicked her nose. “Why so melancholy, Kat?”
She shook her head. “It is nothing,” she assured him.
They sat in companionable silence and stared out at the crimson orb as it rose above the horizon, bathing the gardens around them in a soft orange and red glow. Purple and pink clouds floated along the sky, better suited for floating cherubs than the dirty London town.
It was her birthday. She felt vastly older than her mere twenty years. Then, having ones heart so hopelessly and helplessly broken tended to age a lady. Tears blurred her vision.
The kerchief reappeared. “Consider it a birthday gift,” he murmured.
She accepted it with a wan smile and discreetly dabbed at her eyes. The pain of missing Jasper had not lessened in the months since she’d come to London.
He’d not come for her. A small sliver of her had thought perhaps she’d come to mean something to him and he’d not allow her to leave.
How hopelessly naïve she’d been. A person had but one heart to give. Jasper’s belonged to Lydia. And Katherine? Well, hers belonged to Jasper, now and forever.
“How do we intend to celebrate?” Harry murmured. He draped his broad, muscled arm along the back of her seat.
“We don’t,” she muttered.
“Egads, you’re in quite a foul mood today, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “I am.”
From the corner of her eye, she detected the grin on his lips. “Your duke?”
In the months since she’d first met Harry Falston, the 6th Earl of Stanhope, he’d come to know her well enough that they often knew what the other was thinking.
He drummed his fingertips along the back of her seat.
Katherine drew in a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of roses in bloom. “Achoo!”
Harry sighed and extracted another, clean, linen. He handed the monogrammed fabric over to Katherine. “Keep it,” he said. “As long as you insist on coming here, I shall have to continue to carry an endless supply of kerchiefs. My valet is growing quite irate at their mysterious disappearance.”
She managed a smile. “You are too good to me, Harry.”
He snorted, and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Just have a care not to say as much in front of Society, or you’ll surely shatter my well-earned reputation.”
Katherine leaned back in her seat. Her fingers plucked at the corners of Harry’s kerchief. They struck quite the pair. Her, the Duchess of Bainbridge, whose marriage remained shrouded in mystery to the ton, and Harry the unrepentant rogue who’d earned the censure of every polite, Society matron.
Theirs had been a rather ignominious beginning. While attending a soiree, Katherine had stolen a moment outside for air. Harry had followed her and made her a rather indecent proposal. She’d punched him in the nose.
After that, he’d set himself up as a kind of protector from the steady barrage of gentleman who’d incorrectly assumed her absentee husband made Katherine fair game for an illicit affair.
She imagined if Society stumbled upon them at this unfashionable hour, they would have raised more than a few brows.
Harry shattered the quiet. “I suppose if I were truly a good friend I would suggest you return to Bainbridge’s cold, dark castle and make amends with the undeserving bounder.”
Katherine folded her hands on her lap and studied the interlocked digits, silently.
“But I’m not a good friend. I’m a rogue and still hold onto hope that you’ll forget your miserable husband and—”
“Harry,” she said firmly, interrupting him with a scowl. It mattered not that he jested, any and all mention of Jasper still rubbed as raw as vinegar being poured upon an open wound.
Harry shoved himself to his feet and stood over her. “You believe I jest, Kat.”
She shook her head, wanting him to stop, needing him to stop. With the exception of her sister, Harry had become the one friend whose company she enjoyed. Never one to take himself or anything at all seriously, he provided the perfect foil to Jasper’s dark forebodingness and, what’s more, helped her forget, even for just those slips of moments in time, how close she’d been to having everything she’d never known she needed in life.