“Miss Taylor is right,” Lord Drewe said. “We must prove it’s not merely coincidence. I’ll dispatch men to interview at the school, canvass the local area around Ambervale. I’ve no doubt we’ll find the link between your infancy and Margate easily enough, with a bit of digging.”
Thorne knew Lord Drewe’s men would find no link between that parish register and Margate school. He could have cleared his throat and informed them precisely where Kate Taylor had spent her early years. She could see how eager these people were to claim her as a Gramercy then. There was high-class scandal, and then there was immoral squalor.
He said, “Miss Taylor isn’t going anywhere with you. All you’ve presented are suspicions of her identity. And we don’t even know who you are.”
Miss Taylor bit her lip. “Corporal Thorne, I’m sure—”
“No, no,” the mannish one interrupted. “The good corporal is absolutely right, Miss Taylor. We could be a gang of white slavers, or bloodthirsty cannibals. Or occultists looking for a virgin sacrifice.”
Thorne did not believe the Gramercys to be white slavers or cannibals or occultists—though they seemed to him the genteel version of bedlamites. And though he knew something of Kate Taylor’s childhood, he had to admit—he could not say with certainty that they were not her cousins. It was possible, he supposed. She hadn’t been born in that place. And she had the right name, the right year of birth. Those facts, plus the portrait and birthmark, made an argument that couldn’t be easily dismissed.
Still, the odds remained against it, and he didn’t trust these people. There was something wrong about them and their story. Perhaps they were mistaken about the connection—in which case Miss Taylor would end up dismayed and potentially the object of ridicule. Alternatively, they were her relations and had somehow misplaced her for the better part of twenty-three years, allowing her to languish in cruel, isolating poverty.
They were careless, at best. Criminal, at worst.
He didn’t trust them with the next five minutes of Miss Taylor’s future, much less the entirety of her life.
“She’s not leaving with you,” he repeated. “I won’t allow it.”
“Remind me,” Drewe said coolly, “exactly who you are. In relation to Miss Taylor, I mean.”
Thorne saw the choice before him, clear as a fork in a road. He either spoke the words hovering on the tip of his tongue—words he would never have dared to dream, let alone give voice. Or he let Miss Taylor go with the Gramercys, surrendering any claim on her safety and happiness. Forever.
There was no choice at all. He spoke the words.
“I’m her betrothed,” he said. “We’re engaged to be married.”
Chapter Six
Kate startled in her chair. Surely she’d misheard him.
Engaged? To be married?
“Congratulations, dear.” Aunt Marmoset squeezed her hand. “Have another spice drop.”
“Truly,” Kate said, finally finding her voice. “I’ve no—”
Before she could get the words of protest out, Thorne’s big hand landed on her shoulder. And squeezed, hard. It was a concise, unmistakable message:
Don’t.
“No one mentioned that you were betrothed,” Lord Drewe said, looking suspiciously from Kate to Thorne and back. “Not the vicar, not the landlady . . .”
“We hadn’t told anyone yet,” Thorne replied. “It’s recent.”
“How recent?”
“She accepted me today, on the way home from Hastings.” Thorne lifted his hand from Kate’s shoulder and smoothed a stray wisp of her hair, subtly calling attention to its unbound state.
Kate’s cheeks burned as his implication spread through the parlor, working as a joist to lift eyebrows in every corner of the room.
Lark beamed. “Oh, I knew there was something between you. Why else would you have come home so late, looking so . . .” Her voice trailed off as her gaze wandered to Kate’s bedraggled hem and her mussed hair. “ . . . so natural.”
Her chair legs screeched as Kate shot to her feet. “Corporal Thorne, might I have a word?”
She excused herself with a nervous smile in the Gramercys’ direction.
“What are you on about?” she whispered, once he’d followed her to a corner near the pianoforte. Kate knew from experience they could speak quietly there without being overhead. “Hours ago you told me you don’t feel a . . . a dratted thing for me, and now you declare that we’re engaged?”
“I’m looking out for you.”
“Looking out for me? You just implied that we . . . that we’ve been . . .”
“They were already thinking it,” he said. “Believe me. I brought you home late at night, looking like you’ve been tumbled.”
“I—”
“And then you told them I gave you a puppy. What else are they going to conclude?”
Her cheeks blazed and she looked away.
“All that blushing doesn’t help, either.”
How could she keep from blushing? Her face heated further as she thought of his fingertips teasing that lock of her hair so presumptively.
“We won’t go through with it,” he said. “Marriage.”