Page 10 of Whiskers and Wiles

“I assume you know this from your own personal experience?” Waldorf asked.

“Yes,” Kat said, her smile sharper than ever. “I spent two years of my life during my time at Oxford attempting to educate a rat. I was unsuccessful.”

“Well, as they say, those who cannot do teach,” Waldorf fired back. “So I am not at all surprised that you would attempt to teach comprehension and communication, not at all.”

Kat fully intended to go on until she won the battle, but Lord Gerald burst into uproarious laughter. “Do you see what I mean?” he asked his son, thumping Waldorf on the back.

Kat’s heart sank with wariness. Whathadthey been saying about her?

“Father, please,” Waldorf said through gritted teeth, as embarrassed as if he were a lad of fifteen and not a man of nearly fifty.

Lord Gerald continued to laugh. “I have half a mind to let you inherit Godwin Castle and its curse after all,” he said. “The curse has already afflicted you with blindness.”

Kat’s back went stiff. So that was what this was about? Lord Gerald had been matchmaking? Kat knew full well from Muriel and Bernadette, who had recently married into the Godwinfamily because of Lord Gerald’s pronouncements about the curse, what the older man meant by his words.

She would not have any of it. Not even the enticement of being related to her closest friends through marriage into the same family could convince her to waste another moment of her affections on a fickle, ignorant blackguard like Waldorf.

Fortunately for her, she spotted a way out of the annoying conversation walking along the path that circled the Serpentine. Lady Thistlewhite and her daughter, Beata, seemed to be out for an afternoon stroll, enjoying the sights and sounds of the park. They were first on the list that the queen had given her, and by the look of the way they were posing to attract attention, Kat felt it would be a simple matter to convince them that Lady Ryman’s ball was the best place for them to make the connections they seemed to be after.

“If you will excuse me,” she told Waldorf and his father pointedly. “I see someone I must speak with. Good day to you, Lord Gerald. It was lovely meeting you again.”

“And you, Lady Katherine,” Lord Gerald said, laughing.

Kat sent Waldorf a nasty, sideways look as she marched past him, directing her steps toward Lady Thistlewhite and her daughter. She did not care what Waldorf or his father had to say about her. Their opinion of her did not change what she chose to do with her life in the least. And if Waldorf thought he could prevail upon her to avoid a family curse, then he had another?—

“Kat, wait!” Waldorf’s voice called after her.

Kat froze for a brief moment, anger flaring through her. She did not even deign to turn and glare at Waldorf for whatever he wanted. She would not let him humiliate her again. Ever. She had a mission to accomplish, so she walked on.

Three

The damnable,bloody impossible woman. Waldorf knew he should have let Kat walk away, that he should take his father back to the family’s London townhouse, and that he should continue on to the club to inform the others in the Badger Society about King Swithin’s change of heart on the Mercian Plan. He absolutely should absolutely ignore everything about Lady Katherine Balmor and go about his business.

He couldn’t do it. She had the look about her that she always had when she was about to cause a great deal of trouble.

“Wait here,” he instructed his father before striding quickly after Kat.

“This should be interesting,” he heard his father chuckle behind him.

“Kat, wait!”

He did not expect Kat to turn and fly back to him, eager to wait on his every word, but he didn’t expect her to pause for only a moment, then continue on without even looking at him.

“Bloody annoying woman,” he grumbled, picking up his pace so that he could catch her and demand to know where she was going with that expression of determination on her face.

He needed to protect her, from whatever danger she had a tendency to walk into, and especially from herself.

No, another voice in his head argued. She had washed her hands of him years ago after being deliberately false with him. She had spent the last twenty years proving that she was a deceptive cat, just like the creatures she had kept constantly with her, carrying them around as though they were handkerchiefs or hats, for twenty years now.

He wanted to argue sense into himself and leave her alone, but something deep within him would not allow him to, and by the time he’d decided he was only encouraging his father’s ridiculous aims about him and Kat marrying, it was too late and he’d reached Kat’s side.

“I do not require your presence, Lord Waldorf,” Kat said in dry, clipped tones, without even looking at him. “I have no wish to be the butt of any jokes you might have with your father.”

“That wasn’t—we didn’t—my father is an arse most of the time, and you know it,” Waldorf grumbled. It aggravated him to no end that Kat was so perceptive when it came to how other people saw her. Or at least how she believed other people saw her. She’d made up her mind long ago about what he thought of her.

Unlike himself. He still, after twenty long years, was uncertain what his true feelings for the woman were.

“And I will thank you not to refer to me by any past diminutives,” Kat went on, as if she’d never stopped speaking.

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