The Honorable Heir Read online

  “Bisterne is a very beautiful manor house, not a mausoleum.”

  “After your money stopped it from crumbling to bits.”

  “What do you know of it?” Catherine’s voice emerged harsher than she intended just as her mother swept into the dining room on a cloud of lavender and rose perfume.

  “Girls, you aren’t quarreling, are you?”

  “No, Mama,” they chorused.

  “Good. Catherine created quite enough of a stir last night with that mauve-and-green gown, and we don’t wish to have the servants gossiping about how the two of you cannot get along with one another.” Mama paused in her speech as a footman entered bearing fresh coffee steaming in a silver pot.

  He drew out Mama’s chair with his free hand, then poured coffee into the cup already set at her place. Mama took only black coffee for breakfast, which was probably why she remained girlishly slim despite her forty-five years. The footman departed the room without so much as offering to fill a plate for her.

  “You should have remained for the entire ball,” Mama continued. “You looked ashamed of yourself, Catherine. And, Estelle, you will never find a husband if you don’t allow young men to court you.”

  “I don’t want—”

  Catherine shot her a glance, then faced Mama. “I had developed a headache.”

  “I saw old Mrs. Selkirk talking to you.” Mama raised her coffee to drink and her eyebrows to query.

  Catherine raised her own cup as though she and her mother were saluting one another with foils before a duel—coffee cups at five paces. “I’m to stay away from Lord Tristram Wolfe.”

  Estelle smirked. “Which you didn’t.”

  “He wouldn’t stay away from me. In fact—” Catherine took a deep breath. She may as well get this out of the way now. “He’s calling this morning.”

  “Indeed?” Though they were as dark as her daughters’, Mama’s eyes gleamed from beneath half-mast lids. “Will I be the first mama in Tuxedo Park—or Newport, for that matter—to see her daughter marry two English titles?”

  “I have no intention of marrying another Englishman.” Catherine pushed back her chair. “And if you want the best for your younger daughter, you will be cautious about allowing Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Baston-Ward to call upon her. They are highly unlikely to inherit titles without a number of men dying prematurely.”

  As her husband had—far too prematurely—a month short of his thirty-fifth birthday. Edwin had simply never awakened after a night of excesses in dining, drinking and gaming.

  “I’m not interested in them as beaux.” Estelle rose, plate in hand, and headed for the sideboard. “I wish for someone willing to indulge my love of playing good music. We will practice for an hour this morning.”

  Unwise of you, little sister. Catherine froze on the edge of her chair, expecting Mama to forbid such a plan.

  But Mama’s face took on a beatific glow. “Those two nice young men you danced with last night? That sounds a perfectly acceptable form of activity.”

  “But, Mama, they’re—”

  “Gentlemen,” Mama said, interrupting Catherine’s protest. “And where would you like to meet your young man, Catherine?”

  Catherine clamped her teeth together to hold back a sharp retort about Tristram not being her young man. Pointing that out would only open up a discussion over why else he would call upon her. Mama did not need to know about his accusations.

  “The conservatory.” Her jaw was still rigid. This time of year, the room would be freezing with all of that glass. That might convince Tristram to make his stay as brief as possible. “I believe his call is purely business,” she added. “At least I hope that’s all it is. I truly do not wish to upset Mrs. Selkirk. She believes Georgette has set her sights on Lord Tristram Wolfe.”

  Mama sighed. “She threatened to ruin us, I suppose?”

  “Something like that.”

  “She hasn’t managed to do so yet.” Estelle returned to the table with enough ham and eggs on her plate to ensure her girlish figure would soon abandon her. “Or not entirely.”

  Catherine stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing important.” Estelle took a dainty bite of ham and began to chew with extensive vigor.

  Mama sighed. “Estelle was uninvited to a party or two after Mrs. Selkirk learned she had been in the village playing her music with some of the workers.”

  “I didn’t want to go to the parties anyway. Well, not all of them.”

  “One was a garden party with Mrs. Lorillard, the younger one.” Mama blinked as though fighting tears.

  Catherine shot to her feet. “I will send a note to Lord Tristram right now telling him not to come. Even if his business is with Bisterne’s estate, I won’t risk anything else happening to the family.”

  She stalked from the room and headed for the library.

  A freshly filled fountain pen lay on the top of the desk along with a stack of paper and envelopes. She seated herself in the wide leather chair and picked up the pen just as the clock on the mantel chimed eleven.

  Of course. The hour was late. Despite leaving the ball early, Catherine hadn’t slept until well after Estelle ceased playing the piano and their parents and brother returned from the ball. The clock’s four chimes had risen through the floorboards before Catherine slept and she woke six hours later. How Papa and Paul managed to remain at entertainments until past midnight, then catch a train into New York in the morning, she never understood.

  She hurried with her note so a footman could carry it over to the Selkirk house on the Wee Wah Pond. Clearheaded in the cold light of day without old Mrs. Selkirk’s lingering hostility, she of course remembered she could refuse a call from Lord Tristram Wolfe. Catherine, Lady Bisterne, didn’t need to receive a man who outright accused her of a crime.

  The quarter hour chimed. There was no time to get across the park to the other lake before Lord Tristram left.

  Catherine crumpled the note and tossed it onto the embers of a banked fire. It smoldered on the coals for a moment, flared in a short-lived burst of flame, then died like her brief notion that she could refuse to meet with the younger son of the Marquess of Cothbridge. If she did not, he might tell the Selkirks that he suspected her of being a thief. He might go as far as to contact local authorities or, worse, some diplomatic service between England and America. The resulting scandal would destroy Catherine and her family, despite her innocence.

  It was a large step from stealing fiancés to stealing family heirlooms, yet Catherine’s detractors would make that leap. She had come home to mend the past, not create more scandals—she must silence Lord Tristram by allaying his suspicions.

  She must also keep Estelle from igniting scandal by indulging her music with two gentlemen who were twice removed from inheriting titles—or anything at all.

  Catherine, the Dowager Countess of Bisterne, a thief indeed. She had taken nothing that did not belong to her other than Georgette’s fiancé. For that act, she had paid nearly every day of her marriage.

  “Stolen jewels indeed.” With more vigor than was ladylike, Catherine climbed the flaring staircase to her bedchamber. Giving her maid a nod of greeting, she crossed the pink rose-patterned carpet to the window and looked at the lake. The waves frothed like her insides. She should have eaten. She should have thought to send the man packing earlier. She should have...

  Too many should-haves filled her life. But her homecoming was supposed to change all that. And therefore, she would start with Lord Tristram Wolfe.

  She turned from the window and moved to her dressing table. Smelling faintly of magnolia with her initials in diamond chips on the lid, her jewel case rested atop the golden wood. The bottom drawer held the other jewels Bisterne had given her during their marriage, pieces he declared were not part of the family set. Considering
he had lied about the hair combs, she doubted she could trust his word about these, either. She pulled a string of amber beads out of the box and held them up to the light. Despite the grayness of the day, the beads glowed and warmed in her hand. Artificial amber, if it existed, could not do this. Or could it?

  Catherine laid the beads on the dressing tabletop and pulled out a brooch with a ruby surrounded by pearls. “Sapphire?” she called to her lady’s maid.

  “Yes, my lady?” Sapphire glanced up from the window seat where she perched with a pile of mending on her lap.

  “You were a lady’s maid for twenty years before you came to work for me, were you not?”

  “Twenty-two, yes, my lady.” Sapphire’s dark gray eyes narrowed. “Is there a problem with the quality of my work?”

  “Not at all. I was thinking perhaps you’d know a bit about jewels.” Catherine held the ruby toward the light. “Is this real or paste?”

  Sapphire’s eyes widened. “My Lord Bisterne gave that to you.”

  Catherine said nothing.

  “It’s beautiful, my lady, and will look fine against that blue silk you had made up at Worth’s in Paris.”

  Catherine ran her thumbnail across a pearl, wondering if Sapphire would think her stark-staring mad if she tried to bite one of the gemstones to see if it had that gritty feel only true pearls exhibited. “If I dare wear—”

  A knock sounded on the door. Catherine jumped and jabbed the pin of the brooch into her thumb. She didn’t need to open the door to know a footman stood beyond it to tell her Lord Tristram had arrived.

  While she wrapped her bleeding thumb in a handkerchief, Sapphire answered the door. Lord Tristram had indeed arrived on the stroke of eleven-thirty. Catherine nodded assent that she would receive him and unwrapped her thumb. Only a few drops of blood marred the whiteness of the black-bordered linen, but the digit throbbed too much for gloves to be comfortable.

  “It’s morning. It’s my parents’ home. I won’t look improperly dressed without gloves.” She spoke the excuses aloud as she patted a stray tendril of hair back into place before the mirror.

  The reflection of her diamond engagement ring and wedding band winked back at her. She dropped her hand and stared at the diamond-crusted circlets. The rings were Baston-Ward heirlooms—her husband had made that clear on their wedding day. Catherine had not removed them from her hand once in five years. Going into muted colors after only a year and a month was one way to announce her widowhood, but removing the engagement ring and wedding ring band was quite another statement, a declaration that she would accept advances from other gentlemen, which she would not.

  Yet how could she walk downstairs and declare her innocence to Lord Tristram Wolfe when she did indeed wear jewelry that did not belong to her?

  * * *

  Tristram walked from the Selkirks’ imitation Elizabethan house to the VanDorn home. He hoped the exercise and biting air would ease the tension gripping him. But by the time he climbed the steps to the curving edifice of Lake House, his guts felt as though they had turned into watch springs.

  He pressed the doorbell, then stood drumming his fingers against his thighs. A second before the door opened, he remembered to remove a calling card from his pocket to hand to the silver-haired butler.

  “‘Lord Tristram Wolfe.’” The man read from the card. “Her ladyship is expecting you.”

  Tristram followed the man’s straight back across a corridor that curved gently away from the door. Several rooms opened along the hall’s length, and he expected the butler to show him into one of these—a parlor, the library, even a cozy sitting room perhaps. Instead, the man headed up the staircase, pausing where it widened into a landing.

  “Make yourself comfortable, my lord. Lady Bisterne will be with you shortly.” The butler bowed and withdrew.

  Tristram stared at the panorama before him. The chamber stood out from the house to allow floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. The abundance of glass made for a chilly chamber, and a view that made up for the cold—the wind-whipped waters of the lake and the woods beyond; gardens, a gazebo surrounded by spruce trees and the house itself, which curved along the shore.

  “Astounding.” The word escaped his lips.

  “It is, rather.”

  He startled at the sound of her voice behind him. Half smiling, he faced her ladyship and held out his hand. “Thank you for receiving me, Lady Bisterne.”

  “Of course.” She accepted his proffered hand.

  Her fingers felt like icicles against his palm, and for a moment, he fought the urge to clasp her hand in his and warm it. The action would have given him a moment to gaze at her by the light of day, for she was worth a moment—or a hundred—of gazing.

  She’d been pretty by the gaslights of the clubhouse. But here, even in the gray of a day threatening more rain, her complexion glowed like a natural pearl, emphasizing the depth of dark eyes behind lashes long and thick. The dark green jacket and skirt she wore brought out the red in her smooth hair. All of her was smooth, neat perfection except for that dimple in her chin. That dimple, that slip of the sculptor’s chisel, served to emphasize the flawlessness of her bones, while making her far more approachable, far more...appealing. Too appealing.

  No wonder Bisterne had fallen for her. The wonder was how he had managed to leave her behind at Bisterne, while he cavorted in London.

  His mouth suddenly dry, Tristram tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his coat and tore his gaze from Catherine. A suite of sofas and chairs rested upon a Persian carpet in the center of the room. “May we be seated? This may take a while.”

  “I will send for coffee.” Her nostrils pinched. “Or would you prefer tea?”

  Perhaps the VanDorns’ cook made better tea than did the Selkirks’, but her face told him she disliked that oh-so-English beverage. “Coffee is well enough.”

  While she rang for a footman to bring up coffee, Tristram returned his attention to the lake. The waves had died down and precipitation that suspiciously resembled snow fell lightly like feathers from a pillow. “Snow at the beginning of November.”

  “Not uncommon here. They’ve been seeing a bit here and there since the middle of October.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Seeing she had seated herself on a sofa facing the windows, he settled on a chair across from her. “They? You weren’t here?”

  “I only arrived in Tuxedo Park three days ago.”

  “Yes, from Dieppe. Wouldn’t Le Havre have been more convenient?”

  Her hands flattened on the brown velvet cushion, and a stillness settled over her. “How do you know where I was in France?” Her voice was as cold and brittle as the ice rimming the edge of the lake.

  “I thought I would—”

  The arrival of coffee, hot and fragrant, along with cream, sugar and sweet biscuits, interrupted him. Her question and his partial response hovered in the air while she thanked the footman, then poured Tristram coffee, adding a dollop of cream and pinch of sugar he preferred. Not until she settled back on the sofa, a fragile china cup cradled in her hands, did he continue.

  “I thought I could catch up with you in Paris, and then Le Havre, but I miscalculated your direction there, and arrived in New York a week ahead of you.”

  Her eyes widened, a little too far for genuine surprise, as far as Tristram was concerned. “Why, may I ask, were you following me?”

  “To recover the jewels, of course.” He smiled.

  She gave him a blank stare, sipped her coffee, then set the cup on the low table between them. Light from the wall sconces flashed off the diamond-studded wedding band and matching engagement ring on her left hand, rings that should grace the far less attractive fingers of the current Countess of Bisterne, Florian’s sister-in-law.

  Tristram leaned forward and slipped his hand beneath Lad
y Catherine Bisterne’s, tilting it so a cold flame burned at the heart of the engagement diamond, and asked, “Shall we start with these rings?”

  Chapter 4

  A handshake often creates a feeling of liking or of irritation between two strangers. Who does not dislike a “boneless” hand extended as though it were a spray of seaweed, or a miniature boiled pudding? It is equally annoying to have one’s hand clutched aloft in grotesque affectation and shaken violently sideways, as though it were being used to clean a spot out of the atmosphere. What woman does not wince at the viselike grasp that cuts her rings into her flesh and temporarily paralyzes every finger?

  Emily Price Post

  Blood drained from Catherine’s face. Beneath Tristram’s grip, the rings warmed. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her lips, no longer dusky rose, compressed.

  “Please.” Her voice rasped barely above a whisper, and she tugged her hand free.

  Tristram considered rising and crossing the room so he could bang his head against one of the myriad glass panes in the windows to knock some sense into himself. She hadn’t just been reacting in guilt; he had been holding her hand too tightly.

  “I am sorry, my lady.” An urge to raise her hand to his lips washed over him. If blood had drained from her face, then it surely flooded into his, for his ears and cheeks burned. His necktie grew too tight. “I forgot myself.”

  “I’d ask you to leave but I believe we have unfinished business.” Her hands steady, her expression now the smooth mask adopted by a lady used to court circles, she refilled both their cups. Instead of picking up hers, she twisted off the rings and laid them on the table, where the diamonds winked and shimmered like lighthouse beacons warning of danger ahead. “As you can see, I have never taken them off.” Her ring finger bore the marks of rings long worn. “I was afraid to remove them lest people think I was hunting for another husband.” Two rapid blinks betrayed emotion trying to break through her facade. “I’d recommend you tell old Mrs. Selkirk that, but then you would have to admit you were here.”