Page 11 of Kathryn

The earl opened his mouth, probably to issue an equally curt response, but Dulverton was already striding away, leaving Lady Mariska, Lady Palmer, and Lord van Renesse to scurry after him.

Only when his broad back disappeared did Katie notice there weren’t just four pairs of eyes beyond the rose hedge, but at least a dozen.

***

“That is enough,” Gerrit snarled in Dutch at his uncle and Lady Palmer, both of whom had begun nattering at him the moment they left the crowded garden behind them.

The older couple cut him wounded, mulish glances but obeyed and the journey to the Earl of Sutton’s foyer took place in blessed silence.

Gerrit dispatched a footman to fetch the carriage while he and his uncle collected the ladies’ wraps before escorting them outside to await their conveyance.

Once he had installed the older couple in Lady Palmer’s ancient boat of a coach, he turned to his uncle. “You will come to Dulverton House tomorrow morning, and we will discuss what is to be done. Now, wait here while I have a word with Lady Mariska.” He closed the coach door before the other man could open his mouth and gestured for Lady Mariska to accompany him to a spot a few feet away.

“I am so sorry, Your Grace,” she babbled in Dutch before they’d even stopped walking.

“What for?” he demanded, finding it difficult to believe this groveling wretch was the same woman who had shrilly—and justifiably—chastised Gerrit for embracing the beautiful stranger in the garden.

He felt a deep, powerful pulse of lust at the memory of the woman’s lush body and the way it had bucked and ground against him.

Not the thought you need right now.

No. It wasn’t. Gerrit dragged his thoughts away from the shapely siren in the garden and focused on the woman in front of him. “Your aunt said you were feeling overheated and that is why you were out in the garden. That is not the truth, is it?”

She hung her head. “No, Your Grace.”

“What is the truth?”

“I—I did not want to come.” Mariska darted an apprehensive look up at him.

“You did not wish to come to the ball?”

There was a long pause, and then, “I did not wish to come to England.”

Gerrit’s hands fisted. “You never wanted to marry me, did you?” He had to force the words through clenched teeth.

“It is not you, Your Grace, it is—” Her eyes skittered away from his and she chewed on her lower lip. She swallowed again and blurted, “I am in love with somebody else.”

So much for tucking her away in a convent. “How long?”

“F-four years.”

A full two years before van Renesse had brokered their betrothal.

“Were you pressured to agree to the betrothal?” he asked, even though he already could guess.

“Yes,” she whispered, her face wreathed in misery.

“Why did you not tell me so in your letter?”

She blinked up at him. “What letter?”

Gerrit expected to feel anger at the obvious deceit, but instead he felt only weariness.

“This man you wish to marry, is he suitable?”

“He is respectable, and my father and grandfather would not have objected if—”

“If not for the agreement between our families,” he finished grimly.