Blame It on Bath Page 0,10

put on to the way his face had filled out and grown sharply attractive. When he stepped into the room, her first thought was that Birdie must have knocked on the wrong door and summoned the wrong man, a powerful, dangerous man with a cynical intelligence glinting in his eyes. Not until she took a step forward and got a better look at his face was she assured it really was Gerard de Lacey, the charming boy grown into a man. It was clear he didn’t remember her at all—she hadn’t really expected him to although some stupid corner of her heart harbored hope that he might, just a little. Once she saw him, though, it was almost a relief he did not. If she’d known before their meeting how much he had changed . . .

But she hadn’t. Katherine tried not to think about those changes except as they related to her immediate need, and not how much they appealed to more frivolous feelings like attraction. She needed a husband who would stand between her and Lucien Howe’s demands. Gerard de Lacey needed a wife with money. Whether he was strong and broad-shouldered, or skinny and balding, all that mattered was his willingness to help her. She had chosen him mainly for his family connections and his need of her, not his physical appeal. She would do well to keep that thought firmly in mind, and all others out.

She finished tying her cloak and pulled the hood far down over her face until she could only see the floor in front of her. Birdie went to the door and peered cautiously out, then whispered for her to come. Without a word Katherine followed. Her heart had barely calmed down from the shock of Captain de Lacey’s appearance and the stress of their interview; now it thumped hard and fast inside her chest as they hurried quietly down the back corridor of the inn and out the door to the stand of trees near the road where they had told the hired hackney to wait. If she got caught sneaking out of London this way, it wouldn’t matter what the captain decided; she’d never be able to get out of the house again to hear his answer.

The driver had drifted off to sleep on his box but roused when Birdie poked his foot. Katherine climbed into the carriage without looking his way. A moment later Birdie joined her, and the cab lurched forward.

“I offered him an extra half crown if he gets us back before the hour,” Birdie said.

“Very good.” Katherine undid the bundle of clothing left on the floor of the carriage. She knew they were cutting it very fine with this expedition and hadn’t a moment to waste. She shook out her nightdress and handed it to Birdie with her slippers.

“You spoke longer than anticipated with him.” Birdie took the cloak from her when Katherine pulled it off. “Was he not what you expected?”

“Partially.” Katherine stripped off her gloves and began unbuttoning her dress. “Not quite as I remembered him, but he’ll do.”

Birdie sniffed. She had fretted over this from the moment Katherine told her of it, but like the dutiful abigail she was, she hadn’t argued. Katherine still felt Birdie’s worry, for it scraped at the edges of her own mind. She had turned this plan over in her mind for some time, but choosing the captain in particular was the act of an impulse. She saw his name—or rather, his father’s name—in the scandal papers, and the idea came to her like a bolt of lightning. She had been straining to think of a gentleman who might suit her purpose and be amenable to her suggestion, and here was one she knew, however slightly, and even admired, however secretly, in dire need of someone just like her. It seemed a sign of divine providence.

It had taken her two days to learn where to find him without arousing suspicion, and then she had almost missed him entirely, for he was about to leave town. Birdie paid a large percentage of Katherine’s dwindling pin money to a groom at Durham House to find out where he was headed. By a stroke of good fortune, Lucien was out that night at one of his meetings, and Katherine was able to plead a headache to her mother, then sneak out with Birdie after dinner. Then they traveled all the way across London, over the river to this inn on the