that he fitted any description of an unfortunate man she’d ever come across. He was noble, wealthy and an unusually intelligent gentleman of wit and character. Three years ago his youthful intensity and fiery devotion had frightened Kate into insulting brusqueness, borne of an irrational fear that he could too easily steal her heart, just as her elder sister’s treacherous first husband had cynically taken hers and then trampled on it ruthlessly and even gleefully, before callously deserting her in the most appalling circumstances.
Now she was one and twenty and still unwed, even if that was by her own choice. With the added disadvantage of flaming red hair she still found annoying after twenty-one years of living with it, even possessed as she was of the famous dark blue Alstone eyes and just enough height to render her graceful, Kate thought of herself as an oddity. She formed part of a close circle of family and friends who only wanted her to be happy, yet perhaps she just didn’t deserve to be so after breaking a young man’s heart so callously once upon a time?
Watching Shuttleworth avoid a matchmaking mama with a preoccupied nod, she wondered where her wits had gone wandering off to three years ago. If she’d only seen a hasty, impulsively passionate and rather callow youth in the man he’d been then, didn’t that make her almost as headstrong and foolish as her sister Miranda had been at seventeen when she’d fallen in ‘love’ with a man so unworthy of her he wasn’t fit to kiss the hem of her gown after a muddy walk? If she had been wilfully blind in her determination not to follow Miranda’s example, could that mean Lord Shuttleworth might have been the love of her life and her ideal husband, if only she’d had the courage to say yes to him three years ago? Indeed, had the passionate sincerity of his youthful determination to wed her been the real reason her suitors ever since had seemed so colourless and interchangeable that she felt not a single qualm about refusing any of them?
His lordship had clearly got over any lingering infatuation he’d ever felt for her while he was away, since it had taken him two evening parties and a night at the play to find time to reintroduce himself to her after three years of absence. Tonight it would have been rude beyond anything his gentlemanly instincts could endure to ignore her in Eiliane’s company, but all the time they’d been together he’d watched her with cynical grey eyes, their irises rayed with a silvery jade green that she couldn’t recall studying quite so diligently in the past. Her heart had actually fluttered under his steely scrutiny; she’d felt it and cursed it for being so susceptible as she curtsied and observed his elegant bow and finely tuned indifference to whatever she might feel upon meeting him again.
‘Perhaps I became useful to some of the eligible bachelors somewhere along the way,’ she mused absently to Eiliane now. ‘A safe habit we have fallen into on either side without noting it. They know I shall turn down their suit, so they feel safe declaring themselves my slaves and proposing to me in the certainty I’ll refuse.’
‘And you truly think that sort of habit would make a suitable basis for a lifetime commitment to love and honour a man if you broke it and shocked and perhaps horrified him by accepting him at last, Kate? It sounds a nightmare to me when you’re young and full of promise and would do so much better if you’d only look for happiness within this theoretical marriage you’re contemplating so coolly,’ Eiliane retorted.
‘Love can’t always be a bolt of lightning.’ Kate defended herself rather uncomfortably, because all of a sudden it seemed rather a sterile scheme to marry for less even to her. ‘Sometimes I dare say it needs time to grow into something much more comfortable and this year I might meet a man I can respect for his integrity and honour as well as his sense of duty. Mama and Papa made a marriage of convenience, don’t forget, and they seemed happy enough together.’
‘They made the best they could of second-best, my girl, being people of wit and character. It was their love for their children that gradually bound them together, rather than any great passion for each other, and I know for a fact that your mother loved a man her family deemed unsuitable for her until the end of her days.’
‘Oh, so it’s all her fault then, is it?’ Kate asked impetuously, finding someone to blame for the streak of passionate recklessness that ran through the Alstone sisters like a fault line in a mining seam, then she realised what she’d given away and could have kicked herself. Give Eiliane such a promising bone to worry at and she wouldn’t rest until it was stripped bare of all sorts of possibilities.
‘I knew it!’ Eiliane exclaimed, as Kate winced. But at least her so-called friend’s shrewd gaze had slewed away from Lord Shuttleworth, which was some consolation, for it now being centred so mercilessly on her instead, she supposed ruefully. ‘You’re terrified of falling in love with a handsome face, then bitterly regretting it, just as your sister did so disastrously, aren’t you?’ Lady Pemberley accused her triumphantly, as if she’d won a significant battle and Kate must now admit love was vital to a happy marriage after all.
‘Of course not,’ she lied hotly, but felt her cheeks flush and cursed her telltale redhead’s complexion.
‘You are, my girl, and you wouldn’t be prattling to me about marriages of so-called sense if you were not cravenly terrified of letting your heart rule your head. What you should do if you possess even a sliver of good sense is use this Season to find the man you’ll love and respect for the rest of your days together, before it’s too late. If you meet that man after you’ve contracted some hollow alliance with another, you’ll condemn both him and your unfortunate lover to a lifetime of suspicion and misery, as well as putting your very soul in jeopardy into the bargain!’
‘Stop overdramatising everything. I possess a much colder nature than my mother or either of my sisters,’ Kate insisted and Eiliane just raised her darkened eyebrows sceptically and refused to be drawn. ‘Because I was born with this unfortunate-coloured hair, everyone thinks I’ve got fiery passions to go with it, and you’re all quite mistaken!’ Kate told her crossly, wishing even her nearest and dearest would stop falling back on the ridiculous cliché that redheads always had temperaments to match their fiery colouring.
‘Having watched you grow from a babe in arms into an intelligent, beautiful and often exasperating young woman, Katherine Alstone, I do believe I know your true nature far better than you do yourself,’ Eiliane said slowly, as if she’d just discovered the key to a conundrum that had long been puzzling her.
‘Then you’ll also know how much I don’t want to be engulfed by a grand passion, or become pale and interesting as I pine uselessly for a man who might well pass me by without a second glance,’ Kate defended herself uncomfortably.
‘I suppose we might find a gentleman who’s either too preoccupied with another woman, or too blind or daft to be knocked all of a heap by your youth, beauty and usually shining intelligence and wit, if we searched the whole kingdom for him diligently enough, my love, but very few men will ever pass you by without a glance, I can assure you,’ Eiliane said with a knowing smile. ‘And love won’t kill you, you know, Kate. I’ve endured it twice now and found it quite breathtakingly wonderful both times. Indeed, I consider myself exceptionally blessed to find it twice, even if I am rather a superannuated wife for poor Pemberley to lay claim to.’
‘Nonsense, he was lucky indeed to win you and well he knows it,’ Kate responded hotly, ready to argue black was white in order to see someone she loved as much as Eiliane happy again. ‘It’s just that I can’t bear the idea of depending on someone else for my happiness, Eiliane, not that I don’t believe in the possibility of love for anyone else.’
‘Which is ridiculous if you’ll only think about it a little harder, Kate. Indeed, it’s totally illogical if we’re going to go about this in the cool way you seem to favour.’
‘I know, but I can’t seem to change my mind, even with so many examples of wedded bliss in front of me to form a corrective,’ she told Eiliane ruefully.
‘I blame myself,’ her friend replied gloomily, ‘I should have insisted on wrenching the two of you from your grandfather’s custody as soon as your sister Miranda turned up on my doorstep one morning with such woe and misery in her poor sad eyes that I knew he wasn’t fit to look after a couple of kittens, let alone