Lady Silence by Blair Bancroft Page A

hungrily as she walked
toward the towering bookroom ladder. His tethers of honor, best
intentions, common sense, disappeared, as if at the wave of a
magician’s wand. Nothing could hold him to his chair. As silent as
Katy herself, Damon followed her across the room. He stood at the
foot of the ladder as she climbed, entranced by a flash of lace
from the hem of her petticoat, the glimpse of neatly turned ankles
above the leather slippers on her astonishingly small feet. He
closed his eyes, desire and conscience locked in battle. When he
opened them again, Damon gulped, discovering he was eye level with
Katy’s delightful derrière, as, oblivious to his presence, she had
found the books she wanted and was descending the ladder straight
into his arms.
    What was a man to do? He seized her, books
and all, turned her neatly to face him, swooped in for a kiss.
    Positioned as they were, Katy’s knee
did not have far to go. Colonel Farr gasped, stumbled backwards,
swore with heartfelt vehemence as he doubled over in worse agony
than suffered with either of the wounds he’d taken on the
Peninsula. Only later, as he sat with his head in his hands,
cursing jumped-up chambermaids, the war, the army, and even his
mother, did he wonder how he could have been so woefully stupid, so
pitifully weak that he had strayed from noblesse oblige straight into droit de seigneur .
    Katy Snow’s fault, of course. Tempting little
morsel that she was. And who among the fine officers and gentlemen
he knew would even think of resisting such a succulent plum when it
was dangled before their noses?
    Would she come back? He doubted it.
    He could order her to serve him. He
paid her salary, not his mother; he had checked the household
accounts to be sure. Katy’s fine clothes came out of his mother’s
jointure, but the girl’s wages came from Farr Park funds. She was
his, to do with as he pleased. Droit de
seigneur . Right of the Master. And in Medieval times
that right had included taking the place of the groom on the
wedding nights of the fairest maidens. Ah,
yes!
    He was an officer and a gentleman. Far above
such things. Or should be.
    Perhaps he’d wring her neck, instead.
    Colonel Farr picked up the heavy volume
of Homer in the original Greek and shied it across the room, where
it made a most satisfactory thump against the black fireplace
grate. Staggering to his feet, he limped across the room to
retrieve the precious volume, his head awhirl with contradictory
thoughts. Behind him, the translations of The Iliad by Pope and Chapman lay where they had
fallen at the foot of the bookroom ladder.
     
    Supper that night was as much of an agony as
Colonel Farr anticipated. Katy stalked into the dining room behind
his mother, radiating belligerence and animosity. How the blasted
girl managed to convey her feelings so clearly was astonishing. And
she’d tucked some kind of scarf into her décolletage, but it did
little good. His imagination, the colonel discovered grimly, was
quite capable of stripping her bare.
    “ Damon! Wool-gathering at table? Surely
your book does not occupy your thoughts every moment of the day and
night?”
    “ I beg pardon, mama. Would you kindly
repeat your question.”
    “ Not a question, dearest. I merely said
that I have had a letter from Ashby. He wonders that you have not
visited him.”
    Guilt. How could he possibly tell her
that not only did he wish to be alone, but he did not want to face
his too perfect, ever infallible elder brother because Ashby
thought him a hero. A hero, by
God!
    “’ Tis true, the two of you are as
different as chalk and cheese, but you always dealt well together.
At least . . . so I thought.” The countess’s voice trailed off into
a question.
    Ashby, the Noble. Pattern card of an English
lord. Possessor of every virtue. Except, evidently, the sense to
choose a wife who would suit his mama.
    As if she read his thoughts, the countess
interjected a familiar theme into her plea for a visit to