“Why are you smiling?” Lady Aldington asked, sounding bemused.
“No reason.” Constantine coughed. “We must find this cat at once. I take it this is the first time he’s run amok?”
“Yes, my lord,” Haddock replied, taking his arm from his wife.
Mrs. Haddock slid her arm from her husband’s waist and moved to the side. “I do apologize for this wholly inappropriate interlude.”
“Nonsense,” Lady Aldington said, surprising everyone in the room with her firm tone. “I’m glad you helped this poor kitten, and why shouldn’t you welcome him into your family? Is there anything we can do to coax Grayson out? Does he have a favorite treat or a toy?”
Constantine stared at the woman who was taking charge of this situation. He kept repeating himself, but by God she was different. Meanwhile, all he could think was where did this cat live? Did the Haddocks carry him upstairs to their suite of rooms on the uppermost floor? If so, how did he get outside from there?
However, rather than demand answers to these questions, he decided perhaps he should change a bit too. Indeed, why shouldn’t his married butler and housekeeper have a pet cat?
Because this isn’t their house!
The response speared into his head in his father’s voice, as most admonitions did. This one in particular pricked Constantine’s ire. It may not be the Haddocks’ house, but they effectively ran it. The household would be a shambles if not for them. So yes, they could have a bloody cat.
“I’ll go down to the kitchen to fetch a kidney. Those are his favorite.” Mrs. Haddock started toward the door.
“And I’ll find the stuffed mouse Mrs. Haddock made for him.” Haddock cocked his head to the side. ‘It doesn’t really look like a mouse, just a small stuffed…thing. We call it his mouse, however. He is rather good at catching the real ones, my lord. If that helps to soften your opinion.” The butler gave him a feeble smile before departing.
“Does my opinion seem hard?” Constantine threw the query out to the room at large, but since only his wife remained, she was the one to respond.
“You always seem…cool. Not hard, though.”
He turned toward her. “I thought you said I was dispassionate.”
“And cool. Perhaps.” Light swathes of pink flashed across her cheeks.
Dispassionate and cool were not wrong. That was who his father had schooled him to be. When Constantine thought of his siblings, those words didn’t come to mind. But perhaps this was who he truly was. Except why then did he have a sudden urge to show the countess that he could be heated and…impassioned?
“Perhaps I will be different too,” he murmured.
Her lips parted, and he wanted to kiss her in a thoroughly different fashion than he had last night. He’d never opened his mouth against hers or put his tongue inside or invited hers. Would she recoil if he attempted such a thing? She’d appeared to do that last night when he’d lightly touched her breast. But then she’d also seemed to enjoy his hand on her sex.
“There he is!” Sabrina dropped her gloves and flew after the gray streak as it dashed toward the bloody window draperies again.
“He loves drapes,” Constantine muttered as he joined the chase. “Careful. Cats have sharp claws.”
“Close the doors so he can’t get out!” She pulled the draperies aside, and the cat ran out into the room.
Constantine dove for the doors that led to the dining room and then for the one that opened to the corridor from the stair hall, slamming them closed more quickly and loudly than he normally would.
“He’s in your study again!” Lady Aldington called.
Turning on his heel, Constantine ran into the study and shut the door behind him. Lady Aldington was on her knees near the window.
“Is he hiding in the drapes again?” Constantine asked.
“Shh. I’m going to wait patiently. I think he’s scared.”
Constantine didn’t have all day. He had a racing club meeting and needed to go upstairs to change. But then the view of his wife’s backside could likely persuade him to ignore everything he had planned.
“I suppose we should fetch Haddock or Mrs. Haddock,” she suggested. “Grayson will likely feel more comfortable with them.” She looked back at Constantine over her shoulder. “You could go fetch one of them while I stay here.”
There was something very wrong with him. Watching her in this position made him want to strip her bare and take her from behind in the most obscene way. He imagined the bare flesh of her back, exposed as it had been at the rout last night. Blood rushed to his cock. What was happening to him? He’d never fantasized about her like this, certainly not to the extent he was in the past quarter bloody hour.
Just then, the cat ran from the draperies, his trajectory aimed for the door. Constantine threw himself backward and grasped for the ball of gray fur. He plucked up the animal and held it tightly. Which Grayson did not appreciate, for he swiped at Constantine’s chest.
He held the cat up. “No need to be rude. I’m only trying to help.”
Grayson stared at him with wide yellow eyes. He really was still a kitten, certainly not an adult, with whiskers that were much too large for his face.
“You’re a handsome lad,” Constantine said softly, recalling the kittens that had lived at Woodbreak in his youth. His mother had loved to care for the litters every spring.
Without warning, Grayson lashed out at Constantine’s chin with his paw.
“Ow!” Constantine dropped the cat and brought his hand to his chin.
“Oh no!” Lady Aldington stood and rushed to stand before him. “Did he scratch you?”
“Yes.” The pain in his chin was sharp. “Apparently I offended him by calling him handsome.”
“Cats are known to be particular.”
“Where did he go?”
“Back under the draperies.”
Constantine glared in that direction. “You’re an unsightly, unrepentant miscreant! Is that more to your liking?”
The countess sucked in a breath. “That’s not nice.”
“It’s a ploy,” Constantine whispered. “If he doesn’t like compliments, perhaps he prefers insults.”
“Oh.” Her eyes lit with mirth. She went back to the draperies and knelt once more. “Come out now, Grayson, you horrid little scamp.”
“Scamp may be too nice,” Constantine cautioned. He pulled his hand from his chin and saw that there was blood. Damn. Without a handkerchief, he pulled his cravat off and dabbed at the wound.
“Grayson, come on, you menace,” she coaxed in a singsong voice that made Constantine smile. Suddenly, a dark nose appeared beneath the hem of the curtain. “There you are, you fiend.”
A moment later, the cat crept carefully from the drape and sniffed at the countess. She held out her finger, which he practically inhaled in his efforts to conduct his olfactory investigation. The countess laid herself flat on the carpet and rolled to her side. “Is this better? Now I’m not lurking over you.”
Constantine moved closer—slowly and quietly—to obtain a better view. He just managed to see Grayson put his paw on Lady Aldington’s chest as if he were trying to push her onto her back. She must have thought the same thing, for she rolled to her back with a smile. “Is this better?”