Page 48 of A Wallflower to Win the Viscount

He stood up abruptly.

‘I must go.’

He coughed, knowing there was something he had to say to her before he left. ‘But before I do, I believe I am mistaken about Beatrice, and I’m sure she would enjoy taking tea with you,’ he said briskly, the easing of his conscience doing nothing to lessen the tension in his body. ‘And as you appear to have dealt with your cousin in an admirable manner and you now know who your future neighbours will be, I will say good afternoon.’

‘Oh, yes, goodbye, then,’ she said, standing up and sending him a sad smile.

Before he could say, do or think anything that might undermine this sensible decision, he turned and walked out of the drawing room, followed by the strange cat.

Remaining entirely focused on getting away from Primrose, he strode up his footpath and entered his father’s house. Movement at his feet drew his attention to the floor. The cat skittered around him, then rushed down the hallway, heading towards his father’s study.

Lucian no longer had objections to the animals spending time in his garden, but he drew the line at them moving into the house. If the new owners might be happy to share their home with a pregnant patchwork cat, that would be up to them, but he had no intention of doing so.

He entered the study. The cat was nowhere in sight. Lucian sighed and checked behind and under the desk to see where it had hidden itself.

A quiet mew came from somewhere above his head. He looked up to see the animal staring down at him from the top of a bookshelf. How on earth did it get up there with that enormous belly?

‘Come down immediately,’ he commanded, feeling somewhat ridiculous. ‘In your condition you should not be climbing such heights.’

He believed that to be true with pregnant women, but was it also true of cats? He didn’t actually know, but he was sure it should not remain in such a precarious position.

The cat merely stared at him with its big green eyes and gave another plaintive mew.

‘If you got yourself up there, then you can get yourself down.’

This elicited another of those pitiful mews but no attempt to climb down.

He looked around the room. Most studies had a ladder to reach the books on the highest shelves. This one did not. That was no surprise. He suspected his father had inherited the books along with the house. The man never read and probably didn’t know this room even existed, so would have never needed to access the out-of-reach books.

There was only one thing for it. If the cat was not going to come down and he was unable to scale the heights and get it down himself, he would have to fetch Primrose.

To that end he hurried back down the street and repeated his previous behaviour by pounding on the door, then brushing past the footman and entering the drawing room before the man had a chance to announce him.

‘That pregnant cat has got itself stuck up on top of a bookshelf,’ he announced without preamble.

‘Clawdia?’ she said in surprise as if she had several pregnant cats. ‘Oh, dear.’

‘She won’t come down. You’re going to have to coax her because she won’t listen to me.’

Primrose smiled as if she found something amusing about his predicament. ‘She’s probably looking for somewhere to have her kittens. Somewhere she feels safe.’

‘Well, she’s hardly safe eight feet up in the air on a shelf with no barrier.’

‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed.

Finally, she was starting to see there was nothing funny about her cat’s errant behaviour.

Together they rushed back down the street, through the open front door and into the study, where Clawdia was still sitting up on her high perch, grooming her nether regions in that undignified and yet still superior manner that cats often adopted. When she saw Primrose and Lucian, she stopped what she was doing and that plaintive meowing started up again.

‘Come on, sweetheart,’ Primrose cooed. ‘If you got yourself up there, then you can surely get down again.’

That was exactly what Lucian had said, and the cat was responding in exactly the same way to Primrose as it had to him: by doing nothing.

She turned to him with a worried expression. He did not like that. She was supposed to be solving this problem. ‘Maybe she was able to jump up, but because her belly is so big, she might not be able to climb down.’

‘She should have thought of that before she got herself stuck on the top shelf.’

‘Yes, she can be a bit silly at times. But we can’t leave her up there! What are we going to do?’