One Final Season by Elizabeth Beacon Page B

confounded woman is a damned nuisance at the best of times and this isn’t one of them,’ he said grimly. ‘Sometimes I’d like to strangle her.’
    ‘Better marry her as soon as possible instead—obviously made for each other,’ his friend said with understated irony that was currently wasted on Edmund as he fumed at Kate’s protracted absence.
    ‘I’ll think about it,’ Edmund said tersely and with a casual look about him to locate the Marchioness of Pemberley and Bestholme, who was, luckily for him, still in the ballroom and not pursuing Kate around the half-lit gardens or goodness only knew where else she might be hiding herself.
    Satisfied Kate’s chaperon was engrossed with old friends now and blissfully unaware that anything was amiss, he left by way of the card room as if he hadn’t a care in the world, even as he fought an irrational fury that Kate hadn’t come to him for help instead of bolting for the shadows. After searching the quieter rooms of their host’s residence, he was beginning to think trouble existed in Miss Transome’s overheated imagination when he caught the faint, unmistakable scent of Kate Alstone lingering in an otherwise deserted corridor leading towards his host’s library. He stilled his already near-silent footfall and listened for any further sign of the elusive, overly independent female.

    Despite knowing very well she should return to the ballroom and prepare to endure a whole evening of dodging Bestholme as stoically as she had it in her to manage, Kate had wandered furtively on through private rooms she knew very well she shouldn’t intrude into. The farther she got from the ball, the more she felt like a hind with the noise and threat of hounds and huntsmen fading behind her and the harder she found it to turn about and go back. She scoured a dark room for unexpected fortune hunters and allowed herself a huge sigh of relief once her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she still found no sign of the repulsive creature—nor any hidden galleries or dangerously secluded corners he might spring out from.
    Sinking into a snug high-backed chair by the unlit fire, she wondered if the lady of the house sat there to embroider or read whilst her husband laboured over his speeches in the House of Lords, which were apparently earnest, detailed and well intentioned, but guaranteed to empty that august chamber almost as fast as a cry of fire. It made a rather appealing picture of two lives entwining over the years so that, even if she didn’t share his interest in politics, her ladyship sat and kept her lord company whilst he pursued one. Shifting in her chair, Kate wondered if Eiliane had been right all along. Maybe marriage wasn’t a military campaign from which all emotion must be sternly banished and all hope of anything better shorn ruthlessly away in case it proved false.
    Too late for such a conclusion to make any difference to her situation, she decided sadly, but she still felt irrationally betrayed by Edmund’s defection when she had absolutely no right to. Such a shame that she’d spurned him so emphatically during her first heady Season, when she’d been too young to realise just what wonderful possibilities were being offered her and grab them with both hands. Now he was so indifferent to her it felt as if some long-anticipated treat had been withdrawn and her life was suddenly limited and dry for the lack of it. Squirming in her comfortable seat, Kate braved an answer to so many of the questions troubling her and it only made matters worse. Edmund, who no longer wanted her, who despised her for turning him away, who seemed determined to court a sweet and suitable wife not in the least bit like Kate Alstone—somehow he mattered uniquely to her and it was obvious to anyone who had two eyes to see with that she no longer meant a thing to him.
    Cursing her younger self for refusing to see that he’d make her an ideal husband and lover, Kate felt unable to just sit and