Page 40 of Whiskers and Wiles

Kat tried earnestly to grasp hold of her anger at Waldorf and to clutch it tight. She tried to tell herself that it was his doing they were in their current muddle. He was the villain and he always had been.

She knew so much better now, however. She could not prevent her thoughts from flying back to the night of the ball, to her impetuousness and her foolishness. Every time she recounted her thoughts and actions at Ryman House, she discovered a new level of shame within herself.

Simply put, she had behaved as a child. She had acted without thinking, acted without confirming a single one of her suspicions. She had clung tight to those suspicions with no evidence that she was in the right simply because she was prejudiced against Waldorf for the sins of his past. And she had destroyed the hard work of a great many people because of it.

If she were honest with herself, she felt as though Queen Matilda’s punishment was too lenient. She should have been tied to a stake and whipped for her willfully selfish, painfully ignorant, and shockingly destructive wrongs. She should have been banished from all of Britannia, forced to live out her life as a wanderer without a home, or worse, as an American.

She knew she was wrong, but her queen had given her a second chance. No matter how odious Waldorf was or how infuriated with her the events of the other night had left him—and he continued to be deeply furious with her—she was determined to do whatever it took to sway Lady Walsingham to the Mercian cause, and to convince the woman to convince her husband to open debate on the Mercian Plan once Joint Parliament began in just over a week’s time.

“I know that this entire twist in both of our plans was my doing,” Kat said, keeping her voice and her eyes lowered, since what she truly wanted to do was shout at Waldorf to stop sulking and help her, “but we must work together to make the best of it and to successfully complete the new mission we have been given.”

“I will not be the one to ruin things this time,” Waldorf said, sitting straighter, his eyes going wider, as if she’d chastised him. “Now that I know fully whose orders I am following, I will do my utmost to complete the mission she has set me.”

Kat wanted to argue, but there was no argument in his words. They were in accord, set on the same mission, working for the same outcome.

She was so very used to challenging Waldorf that to agree with him felt deeply disturbing.

Nothing else was said until the carriage made the turn off the main road and onto the path that would take them through the grounds of Oxwick Park to the manor house. From the momentthey entered the Walsinghams’ property, however, Kat could tell that something was highly out of the ordinary.

There were banners and bunting lining the way up to the house, for one. The banners were all red and pink and blazoned with hearts. As they approached the house, bushes covered with red and pink roses were interspersed with the banners. Roses were most definitely not in season, however, and when the carriage finally pulled around a magnificent fountain to the front of the house, Kat came close enough to one of the bushes to see that it was decorated with silk flowers and not real ones.

The house itself was adorned with silk flowers, colorful bunting, and other bits of frippery that made it appear rather like a sugar house. Beyond that, the footmen who came down from the house to assist them with their baggage and to help Kat step down from the carriage were dressed in shades of red, pink, and violet.

“What sort of insanity is this?” Waldorf mumbled, most likely to himself, once the two of them had alighted and stood at the base of the terrace stairs that led to the house’s red-painted front door.

Kat had no answer for him. She clasped a hand to her stomach to still the dread that fluttered there.

“Hello and welcome!” a high-pitched, soft female voice greeted them from the doorway.

Kat and Waldorf both turned from sweeping the garish face of the house with their stares to gaping at the middle-aged woman who swept out into the sunlight of the terrace.

Lady Walsingham was a tiny woman, but her presence was enough to fill the entire garden. She barely reached five feet, but her smile was as bright as the sunlight she’d just walked into. She was the sort of woman Kat generally liked, but also distrusted, at first sight because of her obvious amiability.

There were things about the woman that would, at first sight, alert anyone who did not know her as to her character, however. While there was nothing ostensibly wrong with her manner of dress—she wore the same style of high-waisted, long-sleeved gown that most every other woman in Britannia favored at the moment—it was somewhat obvious that she was not wearing stays, or any sort of forming undergarment, with her gown. The result was that her posture was more relaxed and her movements far less restricted than even Kat was used to. Beyond that, she had her greying hair loose down her back rather than caught up on her head.

“Oh, look at the two of you,” the woman said, pausing on the stairs and clasping her hands together over her heart as she gazed at Kat and Waldorf. “When I received Queen Matilda’s letter last night, stating that the two of you would be the perfect addition to my matrimonial rites celebration, I knew you must be unique in the annals of love. But seeing the two of you together now, I cannot imagine two people more perfectly suited to advance Cupid’s cause.”

Kat’s heart—which had been lower than she’d ever known it to be in her life since the ball—sank even lower. She glanced warily to Waldorf, finding a similar expression of dread on his face.

Had she thought Queen Matilda’s punishment had not been harsh enough? She had the terrible feeling that she was about to learn an entirely new meaning of castigation.

“Lady Walsingham,” Waldorf took the lead, stepping forward to greet their hostess with what he likely thought was a happy smile. To Kat, he looked as though he had eaten too many sprouts and was fighting desperately not to break wind. “How kind you are to accept us into your magnificent party at such short notice.”

Not to be outdone, and more conscious of the importance of their mission being a success than ever, Kat stepped forward as well, saying, “The moment Her Majesty, the queen informed us of the important, nay, spiritual work you have undertaken here, I knew that dear Waldorf and I needed to be a part of it.”

She smiled, hoping she had done a better job of it than Waldorf, and slipped her arm around Waldorf’s hugging him tightly.

“Yes,” Waldorf said, also, apparently, not wishing to be seen as less enthusiastic than Kat. “This, we were told, is the place for people in love, and in love we most certainly are.”

He looked at Kat with teeth bared and fire in his eyes.

Kat stared back at him with a smile equally as vicious, attempting to show him that she would outwit him and outplay him in this game Queen Matilda had set for them. If he thought she would even pretend to be some sweet, biddable, Wessex wife, he would be sorry.

From the carriage behind them, Napoleon yowled wildly as one of the footmen removed his basket from the carriage.

“Love is such a wonderful thing, is it not?” Lady Walsingham said, coming the rest of the way down the steps to greet them more intimately. “And I can see clearly that the two of you have a great passion for each other as well. Pasion is the sinew of love, and it is my sincerest wish to facilitate the two of you in coming to a deeper understanding of each other and of what it is to be united in love before my retreat has ended.”

Yet again, dread pooled in Kat’s stomach. Dear God, what had Queen Matilda committed them to?

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