Page 56 of Intolerable
As soon as he’d realized she was the woman he’d kissed in the cupboard, he should have banished her from his mind. He’dtried, dammit.
Kat strode into the breakfast room. She wore a loose day dress with a small floral print. Ruark could see it was a few years out of fashion, and the ends of the long sleeves were frayed.
“Morning, Ruark,” she sang as she went to fill her plate. She could eat like a soldier on leave who’d been on rations for months.
“Good morning.” He sipped his coffee and watched in mild amusement as she sat down and frowned at her plate.
“I may have taken too much.” She shrugged. “Ah, well. You have a dog I can feed, don’t you?”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“We have dogs at Warefield.”
“I know. It’s my house, Kat.”
“Yes, but you aren’t there as much as me. There are two more dogs since you were there at Christmas.”
“Are there?”
“A brother and sister from John Mason’s terrier. Aislinn and Abigail each took one.”
“Mother allowed that?”
“Father made her.” Kat attacked her plate for a few minutes while Ruark perused the newspaper.
When she began to slow, he set the paper aside. “You are not enthusiastic about marrying, are you?”
“Not at all.”
“I don’t suppose you kissed this Hickinbottom fellow in order to cause a scandal so youcouldn’twed?”
Her hand arrested with a piece of ham speared on fork halfway to her mouth. “I didn’t, but that’s an excellent stratagem. I wish I’d thought of it.” She ate the ham and after swallowing said, “I kissed him as an experiment, and I chose him because he was already betrothed.”
Ruark followed her logic. “That way he couldn’t be forced to wed you?”
She narrowed one eye and nodded, a smile stretching her lips. “Clever, yes?”
“Yes. But also foolish. Kat, did you not think about what this would do to your reputation?”
“I can’t say that I did, but I also can’t say that I care.”
“What of your sisters? This will reflect poorly on Iona and the twins.”
She frowned. “Iona has said as much. She’s quite irritated with me. That’s why we had to have separate chambers.”
That made sense to Ruark. “I think in her position I might be irritated too,” he said gently. Sometimes Kat had a hard time understanding others’ perspectives, particularly when she was focused on her own goals, as she’d been with her experimentation.
“Ohhh.” She stretched the word out and grimaced. “I didn’t realize. I’ll apologize.”
While that was the right thing to do, it wouldn’t fix matters for Iona, who, at nineteen, was also old enough to wed.
“It may be that you should remain here in London to distance yourself from her and the twins,” Ruark suggested. “Would you like that?” He’d have to convince their mother. And hire a companion for her. There was no way he was going to supervise her, nor should he oversee a twenty-year-old young lady, even if she was his sister.
Her eyes glowed with excitement. “Ever so much.”
“You’ll have to promise not to conduct any more kissing experiments. Why were you doing that anyway?”
“I was talking to Hetty, and she said not to marry anyone unless they were a good kisser. I asked her how I would know if they were good or not. She explained it—I had no idea tongues would be involved—and I decided I needed to understand first-hand. So I conducted an experiment.”
