Page 23 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

“Devon wants what is best for you,” Kate said loyally. “I’m certain of it.”

“He wants me married and settled,” Elliot sniffed. “And he doesn’t particularly care how it happens, so long as it does. But since he’s placed me in this damnable position, I might as well do it my way and make the best of it. Katie, please,” he said, spreading his hands out in entreaty. “I would have asked Rebecca, but she likes most everyone. I need someone discerning, someone cunning and canny enough to see through the half-truths and the guile that the Ton likes to cast about like so much confetti. And I need your good sense to do it.”

Kate drew in a short breath, her shoulders shifting uncomfortably. “My good sense? Elliot—”

“Men and women don’t mix in London as they might in the countryside,” he explained. “It is difficult to truly come to know a woman when your acquaintance is furthered in fifteen-minute increments spent in a drawing room where every word you speak is overheard, or during the duration of a dance set, surrounded by others. But you—you are a woman. The rules which constrain me do not apply to you, and therefore you can ask the pertinent questions and determine if the answers are honest. You’re likely to discover more about a woman in the space of a single afternoon than I could manage in a year. I do truly need you, Kate.” Elliot thrust his lower lip out in the approximation of a pleading pout and ducked his head. “You won’t let some horrid creature swoop in and beguile me with falsehoods and fabrications, now, will you?”

“I—I—” Kate sucked in a breath so massive that Elliot was surprised she had not split the seams of her stays. “I suppose not,” she said at last, in quite a small voice for a woman who had just taken such a deep breath. She seemed to deflate by inches, shrinking with the inelegant slouch of her shoulders.

“Wonderful,” he said, favoring her with a brilliant smile. “I knew I could count upon you, Katie.”

Wilting further, she laid the pencil down between the pages of the notebook, and frowned down upon the lines that she’d scrawled there at his request. Apprehension, he thought, and hesitance had settled across her face like a bird huddling into its nest. They were written in the furrow that had etched itself between the fine, high arches of her brows. Carved into the hollows of her cheeks. Scored within the tight corners of her lips.

She hadn’t liked this duty he’d tasked her with. But he wondered if she understood why. If it might hold the meaning he hoped.

Chapter Ten

Avid horsewoman.

Prefers the countryside to the city.

Enjoys reading.

Loves children and dogs.

Kate supposed they weren’t the most ridiculous of requirements, nor even the shallowest. Elliot could have listed any number of things, from the superficial to the profound, and yet this short list was far less offensive than it might have been.

Still, there was some part of her that wanted to take offense anyway. Was this what wife-hunting boiled down to in the end? Four small requirements, which might apply to any number of women? It was better, she supposed, than choosing a woman only for the fairness of her face or the shapeliness of her figure, but only fractionally.

But was it better that those four small requirements might apply to any number of women? If Rebecca’s dinner party had been anything to judge by, there would be a great many women lining up for the mere possibility of becoming the future Lady Elliot Holbrook. Just the thought of it was unsettling. Every unmarried woman present had been vying for even a sliver of his attention, and she—

For a moment there, as she had found herself relegated to the fringes of the group that had coalesced around him, she had felt rather…lonely. In such a crowded room, she had felt lonely. Bereft. Like she’d somehow lost something terribly important and precious in only the space of a few seconds.

Kate shook her head to clear it of the strange notion and rolled her shoulders to relieve the knot that had woven itself between them as she and Elliot had conversed only moments ago. Then, from her perch beside Mama in the curricle she’d climbed into as Elliot had gone to retrieve the horses, she pressed the ruined tip of the pencil to the page of the notebook opened upon her lap and wrote in a thick, black scrawl: Kind.

There. Her own requirement, because his wife would have to be a kind woman. Elliot deserved that in his marriage. A wife not given to rages or sulks; one who would be gentle with him, because he was a more sensitive and tender-hearted soul than most men she had known. He needed the sort of wife that would celebrate that rare quality, and never try to crush it out of him.

And patient. Kate’s pencil flew across the page as she added the word to the list. Any woman who married him would need to be possessed of a great quantity of patience, for he was ever the joker, ever the comedian. Which was…quite a lovely quality, most of the time. It made him an amusing companion, clever and quick-witted as he was. Even on those occasions where Kate had most wanted to throttle him, it had almost always been with a helpless laugh caught somewhere in her throat. One couldn’t help but to be amused by him—or at least, his wife ought to be. A keen sense of humor, she scribbled in. That was critical, really. For both Elliot’s happiness, and his future wife’s sanity.

What else? Kate tapped the tip of her pencil to the page, her brow furrowing in thought. Loyal, she decided. Of course anyone would wish one’s spouse to be loyal, but Elliot particularly, she thought. Despite the frustration he often evinced toward his brothers, and his tendency to purposefully irk both of them, he had a great deal of love and respect for them. And he was close with his mother. Though the dowager duchess had spent much of the last several years traveling, Kate knew that she and Elliot exchanged frequent letters. Elliot would want his wife to have strong ties to her own family—and no doubt to develop a fondness for his.

A woman he can love. The thought traipsed through her mind, but the pencil remained stationary upon the page as if it had been glued there. She didn’t want to write it down, didn’t want to make herself responsible for it. Her fingers froze, cramping up and aching. She let the pencil drop to flex her fingers free of the painful sensation, and it rolled to the center of the notebook, nestling between its spread pages.

A lacy white handkerchief dangled before her eyes. “Here you are, dear.”

Kate gave a muted shriek of surprise, her heart pounding in her throat. In these last few moments as she’d been furiously thinking and scratching out requirements, she had forgotten entirely that she was sitting in a curricle in the midst of a public park, with Mama at her side. “Thank you, Mama,” she said as she accepted the handkerchief. “What is it for?”

“You’ve become terribly flushed,” Mama confided softly. “You’re sweating just a bit, darling. Is it too hot? Shall I ask Lord Elliot to return us home?”

Sweating? Surreptitiously, Kate patted her forehead, feeling the cloth whisk away the mist of sweat that had gathered there. Where had it come from? The day was warm, but not so warm that she had felt overheated. The breeze that wafted by ought to have precluded such a thing, anyway. “Thank you,” she murmured again, as she patted her cheeks just to be safe. “I’m fine, Mama, truly.”

Mama’s lips pursed, and behind the lenses of her spectacles, her eyes studied Kate’s face as though searching for hints of deception. “You’re certain? You don’t look it.” Mama’s gaze dropped to the book resting upon Kate’s lap. “What have you got there that has put that particular expression upon your face?”

What expression was that, exactly? Kate’s hands folded over the notebook, feeling somehow embarrassed. “Elliot bought a notebook for me,” she said as she worried her lower lip between her teeth.

“He did? Whatever for?”

“To take notes,” Kate said dryly. And then, as Mama slanted her a look of purely motherly annoyance, Kate admitted, “On the qualities that he desires in his future wife. I can only surmise that I am meant to create a page for each lady under consideration to assess them for their potential—er, wifely aptitude.” Per his requirements…with the addition of a few of her own, as he had insisted her opinions were of such importance to him.