Married to the Marquess by Rebecca Connolly Page A

his wife as they moved into the room. “I believe Baroness Rudin intends to sing again.”
    Kate’s head snapped up and she looked where he indicated. “Blast!” she hissed. “Perhaps I will suddenly find myself violently ill. Catch me if I faint away, won’t you?”
    “Kate!”
    “What?” she asked, looking up at him. “You cannot possibly expect me to listen to her caterwauling like a drunken sailor and applaud the performance. I have heard better vocals from dying cats.”
    Derek choked on more laughter. “Kate, stop. I will never maintain composure during her attempt to perform now that is in my head.” He tilted his head as he considered her in a new light. “I had no idea you were funny.”
    She gave him a look that was so coy, he had no idea she could do so. “There are many things you do not know about me, Whitlock.” She looked around, and then sighed. “Now if you will excuse me, I must find Moira and then spend the rest of the evening avoiding Lord Pembrook and his noxious fish breath.”
    Derek allowed her to move away from him, and turned to put a fist to his mouth, hoping to stem the fits of laughter that were threatening to burst out of him. But really, he was truly flabbergasted. Kate was funny? That was a twist of irony he had never expected. What else was she hiding underneath that buttoned up demeanor of hers?
    “What’s the fuss, Derek?” Colin asked as he, Duncan, and Geoff approached him.
    Derek took a calming breath and turned. “My wife,” he announced, “is funny.”
    The stunned expressions on each of their faces nearly set him off again, but he had felt that same shock only moments before.
    “Oh, come off it, Derek!” Colin said after a moment, starting to smile at what he thought was a joke. “Katherine doesn’t have a sense of humor!”
    “No, no, she does, I swear,” he said with a very serious shake of his head. “It’s the strangest thing.” He proceeded to tell them all exactly what she had said as proof, and he knew they were convinced when even the mostly stoic Duncan had to put a hand to his lips.
    “Well,” Geoff said, when he had recovered, and started to move away, “I think I might stand by Katherine during the musical portion of the evening. It might be extremely entertaining.”
    “Watch out for her claws,” Colin told him, demonstrating with his hands, and earning himself a smack on the back of the head from Duncan, which was akin to getting punched by most men.
    “Leave off Katherine,” Duncan said firmly as he and Derek followed Geoff. “She’s funnier than you are.”

    Across the ballroom, having no success in locating Moira, Katherine decided to look for her out in the hallways. Hosting one’s first event could be very trying, and though she had not much experience, she had been an unofficial hostess a time or two, and those were demanding enough.
    She entered the darkened hallways and let her eyes adjust to the change from the brightly lit ballroom, then slowly made her way along, hoping she would not get lost. That would certainly be something for comment if it ever got out, how the Marchioness of Whitlock wanders around other people’s houses, even when in mourning.
    She almost laughed at the thought.
    “Did you see that the Whitlocks came in together just now?” said a female voice not too far away. Katherine pushed herself into an alcove behind a suit of armor, and waited, holding her breath.
    Another voice snorted in derision. “Rather brave of him to go anywhere with her, I should think,” came the unmistakable voice of Lady Greversham, one of the most notorious gossips in all of London. “And she is supposed to be in mourning. That girl is going to turn out to be just like her mother; puffed up and ridiculous and severe, only prettier.”
    “And she will have no one to regret that she is gone once she dies,” the first voice snickered.
    “I doubt,” came a third voice Katherine did not know, “that the marquess has yet