Page 74 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

“Oh, yes you are.”

“What makes you think—”

“I overheard Hy and Chatham discussing you a few weeks ago.”

“You overheard them? Eavesdropping is a nasty, craven, and detestable habit.”

“My, my—how fierce you are! Rawrrr.” She clawed the air.

Andrew couldn’t help laughing. “You are ridiculous.”

“Do you want to hear what they said, or are you too noble?”

Andrew’s hands itched to yank Kathryn over his knee and administer the spanking she so desperately deserved. Instead, he sneered and said, “Just get on with it.”

“They said you were nothing like your normal self—not arrogant, obnoxious, or even indiscriminately amorous, as far as Chatham could discern.”

Why did hearing that irritate him? Why should he care if his cousin and his wife had noticed that he’d not gone tomcatting while living in their house?

The fact that he was bothered, bothered him even more.

And it was all Kathryn’s fault.

He retorted, rather lamely, “Little girls like you should not be privy to such information.”

Rather than be offended or annoyed—as any normal adolescent would be—her smirk grew into a smile that was truly terrifying. “I know what you need, Drew.”

“Oh, do you?” Andrew heard himself taunt. Christ! Are you mad? some far wiser part of his brain demanded. Do not poke her!

Kathryn nodded. “Yes, I certainly do.”

“And what is that, Katie?” Andrew asked, evidently unable to control his own mouth.

“You need a wife. And I am going to find you one.”

He sputtered wordlessly and shook his head. “Why you—you impudent saucebox! Just who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded, not caring about his language or the barely leashed fury in his voice.

“Don’t act so perplexed. It is our wager.”

“Wager?” he repeated blankly.

“Don’t you remember when I said that I would never marry, and you laughed at me?”

Andrew continued to stare in open mouthed incomprehension.

“You don’t remember,” she accused, looking peeved.

“No, I don’t remember,” he was happy to retort. “I daresay whatever you are babbling about is a product of your demented imagination as I sincerely doubt that I would wager about—”

“You. Did.” Her quiet voice was unexpectedly menacing, and a shiver of dread rippled down his spine.

Andrew had been knee-deep in dead bodies, he’d charged into guns that all but promised death, and he’d stared his own mortality in the face a dozen or more times.

And yet Lady Kathryn Bellamy, a mere chit, somehow managed to put the fear of God into him.

It is because she fears nothing.

Andrew suddenly knew that was the truth. Kathryn was reckless, careless, and—quite frankly—half-mad. She reminded Andrew of the stories he’d heard about Richard Barry—the infamous Lord Hellgate. Andrew had been an adolescent when Hellgate had been in his prime, but he remembered well enough the tales he’d heard at Eton about how the young lord had arrived at school with an unprecedented £1,000 at his disposal. Barrymore’s money had run through his fingers like water. His antics increasingly extreme until he had died at the tender age of three-and-twenty.