Free Kitty by MC Beaton Page B

After all, things were apt to get a bit rumbustious at the Thackerays’. He hoped they hadn’t gone too far. His thin black brows met in a worried frown. Perhaps he should not have left her alone. He remembered the faint look of contempt on Lady Mainwaring’s face when he had explained where Kitty was. With a pang, he suddenly remembered being seventeen himself when everything had seemed to matter so much, a gangling youth standing nervously at his first ball, frightened by the chattering sophistication of the older debutantes.
    Well, he would rescue her tomorrow and perhaps take her to the seaside. He frowned again. Why had the word “rescue” entered his mind?
    When he arrived at Rooks Neuk at noon on the following day, the guests were just finishing breakfast. Veronica Jackson immediately came fluttering up to him, but of his wife there was no sign.
    Mrs. Thackeray handed him a note.
    His thin face flushed angrily as he read Kitty’s letter. She had no right to go off without waiting to see him. Then let her have her independence. He would continue to put his affairs in order. He had no intention of rushing up to town. It would teach her a lesson.
    He refused offers of breakfast, abruptly made his good-byes and, clutching Kitty’s note in his hand, marched out to his carriage.
    Veronica Jackson came fluttering after him. “Why can’t you wait, Peter? It’s not like you not to make the most of an opportunity.”
    Peter Chesworth studied the weed in the moat. “I have a lot of work to do, Veronica.”
    She pressed closer to him. “But your little shopgirl isn’t waiting for you, is she?”
    He turned and looked down at her, an unfathomable expression in his light eyes. “Don’t call my wife by that silly name, Veronica. I must leave. Good-bye.”
    He strode off across the drawbridge, leaving an angry Veronica to stare after him. She would have been even angrier, if she could have realized what he was thinking.
    Lord Peter Chesworth was thinking of his wife. He was remembering her delicate figure, shy voice, and large gray eyes. By comparison, Veronica seemed… well… somehow overblown.
    Kitty was at that moment sitting in the pretty garden of Lady Mainwaring’s Regents Park home and wondering why her husband had not come after her.
    At last, she voiced her thought aloud. Lady Mainwaring put down her gardening tools and turned to look at her.
    The garden, which was Lady Mainwaring’s pride and joy, sloped gently down to meet the Regents Park canal. It glowed with every kind of English garden flower—stocks, sweet william, pansies, marigolds, lupins, and delphiniums. Rambling roses rioted up the iron trelliswork on the white walls of the house and over by the garden wall, a bed of herbs added its heady scents to the summer air—thyme, marjoram, basil, parsley, and mint. A huge weeping willow trailed its long fingers in the green waters of the canal and its fluttering leaves sent dancing patches of shadow over Kitty’s troubled face.
    She was seated at a small cane table by the water’s edge. In her pink-and-white spotted organza dress with the high, boned collar and her broad-brimmed picture hat, she looked as if she had stepped out of a French painting, reflected Lady Mainwaring. Monet—or was it Manet?
    “Are you thinking about your husband again?” she teased Kitty. “Well, don’t. He will have received your note and, with any luck, will be furious at you. Any reaction is better than none, my dear. In about two days’ time, in my estimation, he will decide to come and see what we are up to, but you, of course, will not be here.”
    “Why not?” asked Kitty faintly. She had done nothing but look forward to her husband’s arrival.
    “Because you are not ready yet,” said Lady Mainwaring, picking up a trowel and returning to work. “Your maid, Colette, for example, is boasting that she does no work. I
always
listen to servants’ gossip. It may be vulgar but it is a very valuable source of