Page 4 of Return to Satterthwaite Court

Still ungovernable.

Tomorrow she would be traveling down to Somersetshire to join her family for Christmas, having achieved none of the things her parents had wished for her.

Kate tied the gentleman’s handkerchief tighter around her throbbing finger. Her mouth settled into a pensive frown.

She was too willful, that was the problem. And no gentleman wanted to shackle himself to a difficult wife, no matter how beautiful she might be. A man wanted a wife who was demure and biddable. A wife willing to dim her intellect and ability so that he could shine the brighter.

Kate would die, rather.

And anyway, what kind of man was intimidated by a woman merely because she could rival him in thought and deed? None worth having. Not as far as she was concerned.

“How can you call him handsome when he was so unforgivably unpleasant?” Christine wondered. “Rude, officious, and really quite—”

“Handsome,” Kate said again. “Why haven’t we seen him before?”

“Because he’s no gentleman, clearly.”

“Rubbish. He was well-spoken. And did you see how he carried himself?”

“I’m sorry, no.” Christine resumed walking down Bond Street. “I was rather distracted by his hydrophobic dog biting your hand.”

Kate kept pace with her friend. “It wasn’t his dog.”

“He claimed it was,” Christine said.

“He was lying.”

“I don’t know why he would. If the dog didn’t belong to him, what business had he in defending it? Or in taking it away from here?”

Kate gathered her heavy skirts in her hands as she sidestepped a puddle. “He was rescuing it, of course.”

Christine cast her a dubious glance. “Him?”

“Yes, the very man. Rude, officious, handsome, and…alarmingly tenderhearted, it seems. At least”—Kate smiled⁠—“when it comes to dogs.”

A frown puckered Christine’s brow. “I wonder who he was?”

“I don’t know.” Kate’s shoulders set with determination. “But I intend to find out.”

Chapter Two

Mr. Elias Catmull stood at the center of Lord and Lady Mattingly’s luxuriously appointed drawing room. A slim, angular-faced gentleman with unusually close-set, shrewdly assessing eyes, he was one of Kate’s most relentless admirers.

One of her most aggravating as well.

At only seven and twenty, he possessed the patronizing air⁠—and the thinning pate—of a gentleman a full decade older.

“You must forgive the impetuousness of my visit,” he said, lips twisting in a thin smile. “I couldn’t allow you to leave London without paying my respects once more and bidding you a safe journey.”

Kate’s expression hardened. Impetuous indeed!

The two of them had met at the beginning of the season. A business associate of Christine’s fiancé, Mr. Catmull had inveigled an introduction to Kate at her debut and had made a point of appearing at all of her engagements thereafter. Indeed, he’d crossed her path altogether too frequently. Not only at every ball, musicale, and theatrical, but at the shops and in the park as well.

She’d sometimes suspected he was stalking her. Impoverished rakes often employed such tactics with heiresses, attempting to catch them in a rare moment of vulnerability so they might compromise them. But though Kate was indeed an heiress, Mr. Catmull wasn’t impoverished. Not that she was aware.

Whatever his motives, their acquaintance was of a long enough period for Kate to have formed a fixed opinion of the man. With his devious gaze and encroaching manner, Elias Catmull was as calculating as a poisonous adder in the grass.

And, at the moment, he was the least of Kate’s concerns.