Her father’s second and much younger wife, Hannah, had presented him with two pairs of twins in six years, and now their handsome house on Paradise Road, which had once been Lady Elyot’s, was bursting at the seams. For the sake of comfort, Harry’s month-long holiday had been spent mostly in London, about two hours’ drive away. And Sir Chase had clearly come here for full recompense, not to negotiate.
Hoping to put him out of countenance, Caterina went in with both barrels blazing. ‘Do you then live off your earnings, Sir Chase?’ she asked.
‘Caterina!’ he father spluttered. ‘My dear, you may not ask a man questions of that nature. Please, it’s time you went. Sir Chase and I will discuss this and find a way, somehow. The debt will be paid. You had better go and see how Hannah does. She’s been asking for you.’
Sir Chase reached the door ahead of her and, with one hand on the brass knob, would have opened it but for Caterina’s hand placed firmly over the join. ‘One moment, if you please,’ she said, tilting her head to look scathingly into his eyes. ‘I understand the meaning of honour as well as any man, Sir Chase, but if I may not ask you about your winnings, then perhaps I may ask if you truly believed it was honourable to challenge my brother to a race you must have known he could not win when he already owed you money he could not pay? What exactly was your purpose in encouraging him into such folly that could only end in my father’s embarrassment?’
Her heart-shaped face was held up to the light, showing him the full opulence of her loveliness, the luxuriant waving chestnut hair touching the silken-sheened skin, amazing golden-brown eyes framed by sweeping lashes, a straight nose and wide lips full of sensuous beauty. Her eyes blazed with the kind of passion that would respond instantly and without inhibition to any situation, and Sir Chase doubted very much that she would have obeyed her father if she had not already decided to do so. Perhaps she wanted him to see her as submissive, but he could see in her eyes, in her very bearing, that it was not so. This one would do as she pleased.
Mischievously, he incensed her further by allowing his eyes to roam briefly inside the frilled collar of her habit-shirt and then over her firm high breasts. ‘But I have already told you, Miss Chester,’ he said, unsmiling, ‘it was your brother who challenged me, not the other way round. So if you understand honour as well as you say you do, you’ll not need any further explanation, will you?’
Though she sensed there was more to be said on the subject, there was a limit to the time she wished to spend in the company of this arrogant man, so she took her hand away from the door and waited for him to turn the knob. When he did not, she looked up to find him regarding her from between half-closed eyes that were difficult to read, and it was being made to wait until he was ready that made her realise he was telling her something about her manner. When he did open it, very…very…slowly, she was not allowed to whirl out as she had whirled in.
Out in the hall, she found that her heart was beating a hollow thud between her shoulder-blades, and the desire to sweep his accessories off the table on to the floor was only curbed by the sound of a high-pitched infant tantrum. With a sigh, she turned and went upstairs.
The same sound reached Stephen Chester’s ears before the door closed behind his daughter, making him look up, ruefully. ‘Sorry about that,’ he murmured.
Assuming he meant the noise, Sir Chase took the seat opposite, sampling his glass of brandy while looking round him at the beautiful Wedgwood-blue room overlooking a large garden at the back of the house. A wellexecuted painting of a ship under sail against a background of some distant harbour hung on the wall behind Mr Chester’s desk. Through the new green of the trees, he could see the distant sparkle of the River Thames, alive with wherries and their passengers. There were no signs of poverty to be seen, but the discrepancy in the ages of his host’s family was intriguing, and obviously a cause of expense. And although Sir Chase had not come here intending to negotiate, there was now a new factor in the equation that had not been there when he arrived: Miss Caterina Chester.
‘You have an interesting family, Mr Chester,’ he said, replacing his glass on the table. He rested one boot across his knee and held it there. ‘I understand Mrs Chester is your second wife.’
Stephen smoothed a hand over his thinning dark red hair from the back of his head to the front, nodding. ‘My wife is one of the Elwicks of Mortlake,’ he said. ‘You will probably know them. Been married almost six years.’
Sir Chase’s dark brows moved. ‘Oh, indeed I do, sir. Near neighbours of my parents. I believe the eldest son died a couple of years ago.’
‘Mrs Chester’s brother Chad. Yes. I lost the first Mrs Chester ten years ago, and with three grown children of my own I didn’t quite expect so large a second family so soon. If I’d known there were going to be nine of us instead of five, I’d not have moved from Buxton. My Derbyshire home is a good deal larger than this one, plenty of rooms, woodland and paddocks, and orchards. But my wife is a Surrey woman, and Caterina and her sister wanted to stay near London.’ He smiled at last, softening with fatherly pride. ‘Caterina lived here with her aunt, Lady Elyot, who was still Lady Chester at that time. It was perfect for the two of them then.’
‘Ah, your daughter. May I ask her age, sir?’
‘Twenty-three, Sir Chase.’ Suddenly, Stephen’s hand slapped the table as he stood up, shimmering the remaining brandy in his glass. ‘Twenty bloody three, and not married. And not likely to be, if she can’t be more agreeable than that.’ He strode to the window, staring out into the distance. ‘I hope you’ll excuse her forthright manner, sir,’ he said, more quietly. ‘She can be quite difficult to handle at times, but we’ve all been under a bit of a strain, one way or another, and unfortunately Caterina has a mind of her own. My other daughter,’ he said, lightening his tone, ‘Sara , is just the opp—’
‘Tell me, if you will, about Miss Caterina Chester, sir.’
‘Eh?’ Startled, he turned to look. ‘I thought you’d have heard by now.’
Sir Chase smiled, but made no reply.
Stephen sauntered to the table, studied the remaining brandy and gulped it down in one go. Then, moving from one piece of furniture to the next and sliding his fingertips over the surfaces, he hopped through what he saw as the main events of Caterina’s twenty-three years in a verbal hotchpotch that reflected his own needs more than hers. ‘Well, I allowed her to come down here from Derbyshire to live with my brother’s widow. Caterina and her aunt are very close. She lives up at Sheen Court now, since she became Lady Elyot.’
‘Yes, I know Lord and Lady Elyot and his brother Lord Rayne well.’
‘Oh, of course. Well, Caterina was seventeen when she came out. Made quite a stir at the time. Very much sought after. You can imagine.’
‘I can indeed, sir. Offers of marriage?’
‘Oh, Lord, yes. Plenty. She accepted the Earl of Loddon first.’
‘Then what?’
‘She cried off at the last minute, the minx. Heaven knows what the real cause was. And what a fuss that provoked!’ He stroked his hair again. ‘Second engagement to Viscount Hadstoke. We told her she was fortunate to have an offer after that, title, wealth, big…er…well, anyway, she ducked out of that one with just two days to go. I was sure that would be the end of her chances. High risk, you know. A non-starter. She didn’t seem to care, but I did, and so did her sister.’
‘Why is that, sir?’
Stephen stopped pacing to spread his hands, helplessly, though he did not answer the question regarding Sara. ‘Well, how does it look, I ask you? Talk…gossip…plenty of offers of carte blanche,