Once a Mistress Read online

  Every word of what Kathryn had told him was true. Drew carefully folded his father’s last will and testament and returned it to its kidskin envelope. He’d often accused his father of being irresponsible, only to find that George Ramsey, fifteenth marquess of Templeston, had been more than responsible regarding Kit and the woman named in the will as the boy’s mother—one Kathryn Markinson Stafford. The provisions he’d made for the care and welfare of his illegitimate son and for his mistress showed a remarkable depth of feeling and admirable forethought.

  According to the late marquess’s will, the vast majority of the wealth and properties attached to the title of marquess and the properties and holdings attached to the lesser titles of earl of Ramsey, Viscount Birmingham, and Baron Selby, would be inherited by the sixteenth marquess and would, in time, pass duly on to the seventeenth marquess in perpetuity.

  Swanslea Park was the exception. The gardens, the tenants’ houses, and the acreage under pasture that made up the estate belonged solely to Drew but the main house was to be held in trust for the legitimate heirs or issue of Andrew Ramsey or the legitimate heirs or issue of Kathryn Markinson Stafford. The house was to be held in joint trust by Andrew Ramsey and Kathryn Markinson Stafford until the time that legitimate heirs or issue of Andrew Ramsey or Kathryn Markinson Stafford reached the age of majority. Should there be no living legitimate heirs or issue of Andrew Ramsey or Kathryn Stafford, the main house, gardens, tenants’ houses, and the acreage under pasture would, upon their deaths, become the property of the Trevingshire hunt.

  The dowager cottage and parkland surrounding Swanslea had been deeded to Kathryn for her sole use for as long as she lived, after which it would become a part of the estate held in trust for the legitimate heirs or issue of Andrew Ramsey or Kathryn Markinson Stafford. In addition, the marquess of Templeston would provide ten thousand pounds per annum for the maintenance of the jointly held property and the dowager cottage. The will was over two years old and although George had recognized Kit as his son and designated him as heir presumptive to the hereditary titles, he had precluded Kit from the possibility of inheriting Swanslea Park.

  Martin had mentioned a codicil to the will but it wasn’t included with the copy of the will in the safe in his father’s study.

  Drew raked his fingers through his hair and frowned. His father had provided generous annual allowances for Kit and Kathryn, as well as for his other mistresses and any children they might bear in the nine months immediately following his death. How Drew was expected to recognize his father’s mistresses or offspring was beyond his ken. He could only hope that his father had supplied a list along with the codicil to his will.

  The will named Drew sole legal guardian for any and all of his father’s children except Kit. Drew’s guardianship of Kit was to be shared with Kathryn. He could not remove Kit from Kathryn’s home or care or travel with him unless she consented or accompanied them. He couldn’t hire or fire any nannies, governesses, or tutors without Kathryn’s consent, nor could he elect to send Kit to boarding school without her consent. And he could not arrange a betrothal or marriage for Kit unless Kathryn approved and gave him leave to do so.

  Kit was Drew’s heir and his legal responsibility, but he was Kathryn’s son and George had gone out of his way to make certain that Drew would have no recourse where Kit was concerned, except to consult Kathryn.

  The same was true for Kathryn. So long as Kit was his legal heir, Kathryn was bound by law to allow Drew access to him. She could not prevent him from spending time with the boy. She could hire and fire his nannies, governesses, or tutors without Drew’s consent, but she could not pack Kit off to boarding school without Drew’s approval. She had right of consent in all matters except those pertaining to the hereditary titles or finance. In those matters, Drew had the final say. If Kathryn died before Kit reached his majority, Drew would become sole guardian. If Drew died before Kit reached his majority, Kit’s guardianship would be shared between Kathryn and George’s trusted solicitor, Martin Bell, or Martin’s designate.

  Drew exhaled. An hour ago, he’d been blissfully unaware of his half-brother’s existence, but Kit had suddenly become his heir and Drew was responsible for his care and well-being. And along with Kit came Kathryn. An hour ago, he would have sworn that he’d put Kathryn behind him years ago, but it seemed there was unfinished business between them and Drew was afraid there would be no escaping it.

  For now, Kit and Kathryn were part and parcel of the same package.

  Drew pushed himself out of his father’s massive leather chair and walked around the desk and across the room to the opened wall safe. Shoving the will back into the safe, Drew pushed the inner door closed and quickly spun the dial. He bit back a smile as he slid the small portrait that concealed the safe into place. The subject of the Holbein portrait was the second earl of Munnerlyn’s favorite horse. Since Holbein tended to paint ladies who strongly resembled horses, Drew appreciated the irony. Apparently his maternal ancestor had appreciated it as well, because he’d been the one to offer the famous court painter a very large commission to paint the genuine article.

  “Ring around a-rosy, pocketful of posies, ashes, ashes. We all fall down!”

  High-pitched squeals of delight drifted up from the garden below, penetrating the quiet gloom of the study. Drew walked over to the window overlooking the garden, unlatched it with all the care of a midnight housebreaker, then leaned silently against the casement.

  Kathryn and Kit lay on the grass near the maze. Kit squealed with glee and began turning somersaults across the lawn. “Watch me, Mama.”

  “I’m watching, my darling.”

  Drew smiled as Kathryn clapped her hands and praised Kit for his efforts as he rolled across a patch of lawn into the hedge forming the wall of the maze.

  “Your turn, Mama,” Kit ordered.

  Kathryn shook her head.

  “I’ll show you,” Kit promised before he leaned forward and put his head on the ground and rolled himself over.

  She shook her head once again.

  “Please?”

  Kathryn glanced over her shoulder and back at the house. Drew stepped away from the window to keep from being seen, waited until she seemed satisfied that no one was watching, then quietly moved back into place.

  “All right,” she said. “Shall we do it together?”

  Kit nodded.

  Kathryn had gathered her skirts in one hand and knotted them.

  She wouldn’t. Drew caught another glimpse of the flowers and vines painted on her black silk stockings and his heart thudded in his chest. She would. He grinned as Kathryn followed Kit’s lead, bending at the knees, placing her head on the ground, and rolling forward, over onto her back. Again and again. Until she lay tangled in the hedge, her skirts hiked high upon her thighs, the black garters plainly visible.

  Kit clapped his hands together in delight, then pushed himself to his feet and ran to her. He tugged at Kathryn’s hand, attempting to pull her out of the hedge and onto her feet, giggling as she resisted his efforts. “Please, Mama, swing me.”

  Kathryn pretended to think it over, but quickly gave in. She pushed her skirts back down over her legs, then stood up and grasped Kit beneath the arms. She held him close and whirled him around, swinging him into the air and around in a circle until dizziness forced her to stop.

  She dropped to her knees and enfolded the little boy in her arms. “Oh, Kit,” she said, “I love you so.”

  “I love you, too, Mama.” He returned her embrace by wrapping his arms around her neck and squeezing her tightly.

  Drew winced in empathy as the little boy tangled his fingers in the soft wispy tendrils of hair at the nape of Kathryn’s neck and hugged her with a good deal more force and enthusiasm than was necessary.

  He watched Kathryn reach up and gently loosen Kit’s grip enough to regain her breath.

  But Kit didn’t want to let go. “More,” he demanded.

  Kathryn shook her head. “Im
possible.” She smiled down at him. “For you’ve already made me quite breathless and dizzy.”

  Once again her words struck Drew with the force of a blow.

  “More,” he’d demanded, begging for more of her intoxicating kisses.

  “Impossible,” she’d answered with a shake of her head. “For you’ve already made me quite breathless and dizzy.”

  Drew squeezed his eyes closed in an effort to blot out the memory of that moonlit night in the duchess of Richmond’s formal gardens. But it was an exercise in futility. He’d spent too many days and nights trying to remember every moment spent in her company to forget the most important one. He’d asked Kathryn to marry him in those gardens. He opened his eyes to find Kathryn gazing up at the open window.

  Inexorably drawn by the sound of their laughter, Drew had tried to remain silent and observe without being observed, but the edge of the curtain flapping in the breeze had given him away. He stared down at her—brown eyes met gray-green—and Drew found the answer to his unspoken question in her eyes.

  She remembered.

  He remembered.

  That sure knowledge nearly took her breath away. Wren put a hand to her hair and self-consciously tried to smooth it into place as she feasted upon the sight of Andrew Ramsey. He stood framed in the window of his father’s study, the morning sun glinting off the silver strands in his dark hair. Wren stared up at the window, unable to look away. He was still the handsomest man she’d ever seen, but he had changed.

  He was six years older than when she’d last seen him and those six years had left their mark. Then, his hair had been a rich coffee brown. There had been no shimmering threads of silver at his temples.

  She’d met Andrew, earl of Ramsey, during her London Season. The war had ended, the Treaty of Paris was in progress, and Napoleon was safely exiled on the island of Elba. Four and twenty years of age at the time, Drew had just gone on half pay from his position as an officer in the War Office.

  Attached to Lieutenant Colonel Grant’s staff, Drew had been charged with the task of deciphering French codes and recruiting men to relay those codes to then field marshal Wellington. Although he’d spent the better part of four years immersed in the deadly business of war, he’d seemed unaffected by it. He had looked much younger than his years, somehow managing to retain an air of innocence and idealism and the arrogant assurance of his privileged youth.

  But that was no longer the case. At one and thirty, his innocence and idealism and the arrogance of privileged youth were gone. The assurance remained, but it was assurance born of the knowledge that he was a survivor. He had faced war and deprivation and lived through it. Perhaps even lived to regret it.

  The years of hardship were reflected in the lines on his face. A web of fine creases framed the outer corners of his eyes and longer, deeper frown lines marked his forehead and bracketed his mouth.

  Waterloo had left scars. On his body and on his heart. The Drew she had loved was gone, but the jaded, angry, cynical, and bitter man who currently inhabited his body was every bit as attractive as the one she remembered and twice as intriguing.

  Wren sighed. She had carried her memories of Drew Ramsey pressed like fragile blossoms in her heart for years. And while she dreamt of seeing him again, of meeting him and falling into his arms again, a tiny part of her had prayed that her dreams would never come true. A tiny part of her prayed that she had been a passing fancy for Drew and that once he got over his anger at having been left waiting at the altar, he would count himself lucky to have escaped the shackles. A part of her still hoped he’d feel that way. She didn’t want to think that Drew Ramsey had wasted any precious time carrying a torch for her.

  Because the girl he had found so enchanting was gone.

  At nineteen, she’d been young and innocent and starry-eyed. Brought up to go from her father’s keeping into the keeping of a respectable husband, she had been sheltered and inexperienced. Aunt Edwina had prepared her for her debut, teaching her the rules of society.

  Wren had learned the lessons she’d needed to know in order to make her debut into society. She learned to run a household and to patronize the most fashionable dressmakers, milliners, and jewelers, and dutifully returned every morning call and invitation she received. She memorized the myriad array of titles and the names and faces that went with them. She learned how to curtsey and who to curtsey to and she’d been presented at Court.

  She’d fallen in love with London the moment she arrived, but nothing London had to offer compared to her first meeting with grown-up Drew.

  Because their fathers had been such close friends, Wren had known Drew all of her life. But they had only spent time in each other’s company a dozen or so times during the course of their childhoods. The marquess of Templeston and Sir Wesley Markinson were friends, but their families didn’t move in the same circles. As the only son of a wealthy peer, Drew had gone to Eton and on to Cambridge while she was schooled at home.

  When she met him again during her London Season, she’d taken one look at him and tumbled madly, irrevocably, in love. Tall, dark, and handsome, he was the image of every fairy-tale prince she’d ever dreamed about. He’d asked her to dance and Wren had been so nervous she could barely keep from stumbling over her own feet.

  But he hadn’t seemed to mind. He’d delighted in her conversation and by the evening’s end, Drew had seemed as captivated by her as she was by him. He’d called for her the next morning and nearly every day after that. As if by magic, Wren had stepped into the fairy tale she had always dreamed of living. She became the perfect evening accessory—an enchanting innocent, who sparkled with wit and humor as she decorated Drew’s sleeve, blissfully hanging on to his every word, relying upon his judgment and his greater knowledge of the world.

  She hadn’t realized how blissful ignorance was until long after life had begun to teach her that there would be no fairy-tale happily-ever-after ending for her. It was a lesson she’d learned quite well. In the six years since she’d last seen Drew, she’d become a wife, a mother, a widow, an orphan, and a grieving mistress in rapid succession. With the exception of Kit, her life since Drew had become one long endless and intimate acquaintance with loss.

  She barely remembered the girl she’d been, but her precious memories of Drew had been achingly real and inviolate. So real and inviolate that she hadn’t noticed the change in him when he’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere to rescue her from the hounds. He had looked the way she remembered—until now.

  Now she recognized the signs of his suffering. Drew was also intimately acquainted with loss. He had come to Swanslea to bury his father. Kit’s father. She glanced over at the little boy. Kit was too young to understand the magnitude of his loss. But Drew understood and was deeply affected by it.

  Wren blinked back tears. The Andrew Ramsey she remembered had been more boy than man. But this Drew was fully-grown. She remembered him as completely virtuous—a hero without flaws—but the man before her was a hero with more than his share of wounds and flaws. The man she remembered existed only in her dreams. This man was very much alive and the idea that she might willingly discard her precious memories, after holding on to them for so long, for an older, angrier, living, breathing remnant of the man she’d loved frightened her.

  She wouldn’t lie to herself. Drew was a danger to her hard-won peace of mind and to Kit. She had fallen in love with him once before. Could she risk doing so again? Now that she had Kit to think about and his future to protect? Wren shook her head. Nothing was worth risking Kit. Not even his half-brother.

  And protecting Kit meant staying as far away as possible from Drew.

  She glanced up at the window. The curtain was still blowing on the breeze, but the window was empty. Her peace of mind was restored.

  Chapter Seven