She made her way out of the summerhouse and back along the path toward the house in the drizzling rain.
It was not rain she felt on her cheeks, however. The moisture was too warm.
Eleven
Beauty, on her feet, tail waving, looked from the door to Gil. She whined once.
“Tell me,” he said, addressing her, “that what just happened did not really happen.”
She could offer him no such assurance.
“Could you not lie for once in your life?” he added.
Apparently not.
He sat down on the bench, set his elbows on his spread knees, and pushed his fingers into his hair. He rested his forehead against the heels of his hands. His dog sat at his feet and looked up at him, her head cocked slightly to one side.
What the devil...What the devilhad that been about?
Had he just doubled the complications in his already complicated life?
“Whatisit about Abigail Westcott?” he asked aloud.
Beauty thumped her tail.
The first time, and the second time too, he had set eyes upon the woman he had disliked her intensely. She hadsymbolized for him all that he most detested about ladies—ladies, as opposed towomen—dainty and delicate and vaporish, yet cold and haughty with a distinct air of entitlement. And despite the irregularities of her birth she was a lady. With a capitalL. He had avoided her all he could during the week when her family was here and had been horribly dismayed when he discovered she was staying on after they left. Since then he had avoided her when he could and treated her with cool courtesy when he could not.
Yet he had told her more about himself than he had told anyone else in his life, even Caroline. Even his lawyer and that chaplain on the boat back to France.She liked to be treated roughly—at certain times. She wanted to wallow in the muck and the gutter. With me.
Good God! Had he really told her those things?
Abigail Westcott showed no sign of wanting any rough play. She had not even touched him when he had touched her. Even her lips had not pushed back against his, though they had softened and trembled slightly. He would wager a bundle that had been her first kiss.
She had not pulled away from him either. Or shown any sign of horror or revulsion. She had looked briefly into his face afterward and then left. She had even closed the door quietly behind her.
He raised his head and let his hands hang down between his knees. The clouds were breaking up again. The fields and hedges that stretched into the distance in a patchwork of greens and browns were dappled with sunshine and shade.
Damn Harry!
He had sat down earlier at the table in his room and written out a two-column list of all the points that would be in his favor and all those that would be in General and Lady Pascoe’s favor if there were a court case to decide Katy’sfate. He had omitted the possible criminal charges each might bring against the other, assuming they were just so much posturing on the part of the lawyers, a ploy to convince their respective clients that they were tough negotiators and worth every penny of their exorbitant fees. The only points he could think of for his column were the facts that he was her father, that he had a home to which to take her, and that he had the wherewithal to support her. Three points, reasonably solid. He did add after thinking about it that he had never deserted her or consented to have her taken to the home of her grandparents, but that sounded a bit whiny and he had crossed it through.
There were ten points in the general’s column, all of them perfectly sound. But really the list was pointless. For everything boiled down to the fact that the general and his wife had birth and power and influence on their side while he had none of the three. Most telling of all, they had Katy. The power of possession.
He desperately needed something to help redress the imbalance. Would a wife do it? If he had the fatherhood, the home, the money,andthe mother to offer in his effort to sway a judge—assuming that the matter went to court, that was—would he be granted custody? Or, even better, would Katy’s grandparents cede the custody to him without a battle if he married a wife of whom they must approve?
Someone like Abigail Westcott, who was the perfect lady? But no, she was not quite perfect, was she? Her birth was illegitimate. Besides, they were unlikely to approve of anyone who would be supplanting Caroline, their only child, upon whom they had doted.
It was hopeless. The whole damnable situation was hopeless.
Beauty scrambled to her feet and nudged at his handswith her cold, wet nose. He patted her head and straightened out her ears with his thumbs, even the one tip that would never stay straight.
“I am notreallyconsidering it, anyway, Beaut,” he said. “And even if I were,shemost certainly is not.”
Beauty woofed.
What he should do now, Gil thought as he got to his feet to return to the house, and what hemustdo—no more procrastinating—was leave here. Go home. See what the house looked like after all this time. See what itfeltlike to be back there.
He would leave tomorrow or the next day at the latest.
