Page 18 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

Chapter 2

The Same Day

On the road to Wych House

Inside the Duke of Chatham’s Coach

Hyacinth Derrick, Duchess of Chatham, sighed. Her younger sister was currently pulling faces at the man riding beside the coach, behaving more like a child of twelve than a woman of seventeen.

“Please leave Shelton be, Katie.”

Katie turned her attention from the handsome lord with obvious reluctance and slumped back against the luxurious leather. “I’m sorry, Hy. I just can’t resist teasing him because he makes it so very easy.”

It was true, Hy had seen as much for herself. Katie was able achieve what hundreds of young women had found it impossible to do for over a decade: disconcert the ridiculously gorgeous—even Hy, who did not like him, could admit that—Andrew Derrick, Marquess of Shelton.

Hy had worried when her husband Sylvester had invited his cousin to stay with them. Mainly, she had feared for her younger sister’s safety, heart, and reputation around the heartless rake. After all, the man had abducted another of Hy’s sisters, Selina.

But Hy loved her husband and knew that Sylvester loved and needed his cousin in his life. The two men had been estranged for more than a decade and, in order to heal that breach, they needed to spend time together.

She had to admit that Shelton seemed like a changed man since the day Selina had disappeared. Whatever Sylvester had said to his cousin on that afternoon all those months ago had left its mark. The man had been a careless, abrasive cad every single time Hy had encountered him last Season. And now he was…muted and reserved and quiet. Whether that would prove to be a change for the better or worse, she did not know.

Shelton had not been the only one who had changed.

Katie, her tomboy youngest sister, had come back from their Aunt Agnes’s house so altered that Hy would have suspected somebody had swapped her with another girl if not for Katie’s familiar face.

Gone was the grubby hellion who had preferred climbing trees and fighting with their younger brother to dancing and flirtation.

There was no trace of the young woman their mother had relentlessly chided and nagged and deplored as beyond the pale when it came to proper decorum and behavior.

Katie was now a polished sophisticate who was—unless she was teasing Shelton or Fowler—far older than her ten-and-seven years.

No longer did she arrive at meals disheveled with dirt under her nails.

Instead, her sister had grown into her long-promised beauty. Her hair was the red-gold of a mythical dragon’s hoard, and her eyes were a sparkling feline green and even tilted like a cat’s. She was tall, although far below Hy’s own towering five feet and eleven inches. Unlike Hy’s figure, which could generously be described as plank-like, Katie was all lithe, sensual curves.

Hy wasn’t sure she approved of all the changes in her little sister. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of darker emotions roiling beneath Katie’s sophisticated, almost jaded, façade. Something had happened at her Aunt Agnes’s. Something other than the usual spit and polish used to prepare girls for their first London Season.

But Hy was the last person who could think of a subtle way to ferret out such information. No doubt Phoebe or Selina, both far more adept at sensing their siblings’ emotions, would quickly and easily get to the root of Katie’s changed behavior.

As clueless as Hy was, however, even she could see that Shelton posed no threat to her little sister. Indeed, if anything, Hy had begun to pity the man who’d kidnapped Selina.

Almost.

Hy had not always been so sanguine about her little sister’s interest in the too-handsome marquess. When Katie had appeared to develop a fascination not just for Shelton, but also for her husband’s closest friend, Baron Fowler, Hy had feared the worst. Almost from the day of her arrival at Chatham Park the younger woman had followed the two men around the vast home and grounds, haunting their steps in a way that had been more than a little concerning.

Hy had eventually decided to confront her sister on her behavior—a decision that had not come easily to her.

“I am only pretending, Hy.”

Hy had heard the words but could make no sense of them. “You are pretending that you are in love with them?”

Katie had laughed. “Yes.” She had given Hy a sly look that would have been more at home on the face of a thirty-year-old demimonde than a girl before her first Season. “I cannot resist teasing them. Shelton is so accustomed to being feted and worshipped everywhere he goes that he cannot see that he is being tweaked. As for Fowler?” Katie rolled her eyes. “I think Doddy probably knows more about the opposite sex than poor Angus.”

Hy suspected that Katie was right on both counts. Still, it had unnerved her that her sister’s assessment had been so succinct and mature. Certainly, more astute than anything Hy could have come up with.

Even though she’d not understood Katie’s motivations, she’d been relieved by her answer and had passed it along to Sylvester.

“Oh, poor, poor Drew,” he’d said, once he had stopped laughing. “I almost feel sorry for him.”