Always a Temptress (29 page)

“Find out who he gave it to,” he suggested.

“Might even ask for it back,” Chuffy mused. “See what happens.”

The discussion ended there, because Finney opened the door to usher in Bea and a surprisingly young man with big shoulders, bigger hands, and a brisk attitude. Harry only saw his face briefly, as he disappeared around his back.

“Quite an audience you have here, Your Grace.”

“Mike!” She greeted him as if they were old friends. “Glad you were available. My husband has gone and gotten himself stuck like a pig on a spit.”

“Not another member of your adoring train,” Harry protested.

“Good heavens, no,” the doctor said with a booming laugh. “I help out with the orphanage.”

Harry tried to look behind him. “Orphanage?”

He caught Kate grinning. “Just something to keep Bea and me busy when the tulips are dormant. Dr. Michael O’Roarke, meet Major Sir Harry Lidge.”

“Nice to meet you, Major. Guards?”

“Ninety-fifth.”

“Ah, a real unit, which is obvious from the road map you carry on your body. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t come through my tent one time or another. Go hold his hand, Kate. You’re making me nervous.”

“Just don’t lop anything off,” Harry warned.

The doctor laughed. Harry tried his best not to flinch, but as gentle as the doctor was, he was brisk. Kate came around and took Harry’s hand. He wished she hadn’t. Her hand was cold and clammy, which made him feel guilty. She was afraid. His Kate had been afraid far too often for his liking. She kept watching him, as if she were balanced on his pain. So he winked.

“Good news and bad news, Major,” the doctor said, straightening. “You missed all the important bits, but there’s too much bleeding. I’m going to need to open this a bit wider and cauterize it.”

Kate paled. Harry held more tightly on to her hand.

“Do you have to?” she asked, sounding more uncertain than he’d ever heard her.

Harry didn’t hear the answer. Considering that Kate paled even more, he didn’t have to. He gave her hand another hard squeeze. “Out,” he said. “Mudge will help the doctor. You go sit with Bea.”

She pulled herself together. “No. I’m not leaving.”

“Yes,” Harry said, holding more tightly. “You are. I’ve done this before. You haven’t. I’d much rather not have to pick you up off the floor.”

Her laugh was dark and brimming with nightmares. “I told you before, Harry. I’m finished with people shoving me about. I’ll stay.”

“No,” Chuffy disagreed, grabbing her hand and pulling. “Man doesn’t like his lady love watching him squeal. And Lidge is about to squeal like a farmyard sow.”

“A sow?” Harry echoed, scowling. “I couldn’t at least be a boar?”

“Not a bore at all, Harry. Quite an interesting fellow.”

Harry groaned. Kate tried to pull away from Chuffy. Smiling like a child, Chuffy ushered her and Bea right through the door just before Drake locked it.

“Wish I’d had him at Mount St. Jean,” O’Roarke mused. “Just think of the officers I could have evicted. Now, Major. I assume we have brandy? You’re going to need it.”

Harry closed his eyes and wished he were the kind of fribble who passed out.

Kate hated surrender. The sound of that lock turning almost sent her running for the hall door. But the minute she saw Bea and Bivens hovering in her room, she knew she wouldn’t be allowed back in with Harry.

“Spend our time thinking of the verse,” Chuffy suggested, pulling off his glasses so he could mop his brow.

Kate felt guilty. “Not one for surgeries, Chuff?”

He vigorously shook his head. “Delicate stomach.”

Kate couldn’t help it. She kissed his cheek. “Then you’re a good friend.”

Just then she heard a strangled moan coming from Harry’s room. She instinctively lurched in that direction, only to be caught again by Chuffy.

“Seen all those scars?” he asked, pushing up his glasses. “Done this before.”

Kate nodded absently. It was quiet again. Had he passed out? Was he…dead?

Suddenly her legs gave out on her and she sat in her slipper chair. What was happening to her? She had seen people in pain before. She had seen people tortured, and she’d seen them lying on the ground, their insides lying on the street next to them. One yelp from Harry and she was weak-kneed and shaky. He wouldn’t die on her, would he?

He wouldn’t leave.

Of course he would. If Harry wasn’t killed playing his shadow games, he would take off and wander the world, just as he’d promised. She might as well prepare herself for it now. She might as well remember what she had worked so hard to learn. The only person she could really rely on was herself. It didn’t matter if she loved him with all her heart. It didn’t matter if he was the best man in the world. The time would come when he left her to fend for herself. She might as well get used to it now.

Brave words. They didn’t stop the shaking or the terrible, searing pain in her chest at the thought of Harry suffering in there without her to hold his hand.

“Catalog,” Bea said, sitting on a chair beside her.

Kate blinked up at her.
Not now
, she wanted to say.
Let me alone
. She was still straining to hear any sounds from the next room, still willing Harry to be all right. To be past the pain. She couldn’t waste time on anything else.

Bea patted her hand impatiently. “Catalog sonnets.”

Catalog sonnets
. What the deuce did she mean?

“You mean the verse?” Chuffy asked, still mopping his brow.

Bea nodded, and Kate gasped. “Do
you
recognize the verse?”

The old woman shook her head. Kate looked up, trying to pull the words from her memory.
Is not the fruit sweet, my first love? Not all of me will die
. They were wrong. In the wrong order, missing a word; something.

“‘My library was dukedom enough,’” Bea said, looking curiously intent.

“That’s from
The Tempest
,” Chuffy offered.

“Library,” Kate echoed. “Of course. Let’s go. Bivens, if anyone asks for me, tell them where we’ve gone.”

“But where have we gone?” Chuffy asked as Kate swung open the door.

“My library,” she said. “I have stocked every book I’ve read in the last five years in there. We’ll look there first.”

Chuffy sighed. “Fonder of the stables.”

Kate gave him a gentle shove out the door. “Precious few books in a stable.”

As much as she knew she should get downstairs, Kate couldn’t help walking the other way, just to see if she could learn anything. “I won’t go in,” she promised Bea. “I just want to…”

She heard it before she saw him in the room across the hall. Taking a second to shoo Bea and Chuffy down the stairs, she stepped into the empty bedroom to find Mudge bent over a chamber pot casting up his accounts.

“Is he all right?” she asked.

Mutely he nodded.

“Are you?”

He managed a half grin. “Never get used to it, do I?”

Which was when Kate realized that the reason Mudge had no interest in Kate’s flirting was because he truly did love another. For that moment, she hurt worse for Mudge than she hurt for herself.

“Does he know?”

Mudge’s eyes grew huge, and he paled. But he shook his head. “He’s not like…me. I understand that.” Taking a shaky breath, he got to his feet. “Will you send me away?”

“Only if you ask. It’s a difficult thing to love someone when you realize he’ll never love you the same way. I know.”

Wasn’t it funny? It took this sad little scene with Mudge for her to realize that she’d never fallen out of love with Harry after all. All the turmoil she’d felt when she’d held him during his nightmares, when she’d seen the blood soak his shirt, when she’d wished with all her heart that she could be a complete woman, wasn’t going to go away. In fact, it would only get worse because no matter what happened, she would have to love him until the day she died.

And the only one who understood was this exquisitely beautiful boy with the sad eyes. “Well, Mudge,” she said with a shaky smile. “Shall we muddle on?”

For a second, the pain in the boy’s eyes was indescribable. But when he nodded, he smiled, and it was heartfelt. Kate gave him a quick, hard hug. And then she turned away.

“Can I go in?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t do no good. Doctor gave him laudanum and brandy.”

She smiled. “Then I’ll go down and do my part. But I’ll be back up, and no one is going to keep me out of that room.”

“Yes’m.”

What did she do now? she wondered as she walked down the steps. Would it be easier living with Harry or harder? Would his kindnesses feel like blessings or fresh wounds? Did she have the kind of courage Mudge did to live in Harry’s shadow without letting him know what he really meant to her? Just how many times could she watch him walk away without being destroyed? Already the old wound was opening, bleeding, the scar she’d thought she had built up over these long years no protection at all. All it had taken was his being injured and she was that fifteen-year-old girl again, hanging her happiness on his well-being. He was hurt and she lost her balance, her purpose, her composure. Would it be long before she found herself just like Mudge, physically sick every time Harry stumbled?

She
hated
this. She had worked so hard to be free of it; to stand apart from the emotions that had held her in such thrall. And yet, within days of being back with Harry, her distance was gone.

She should leave, take Bea and run to Eastcourt, where she could assume control of her life again. She should offer Harry his freedom before he demanded it and see him off on his way to the rest of the world. She should, damn it.

She knew, though, that she wouldn’t. So when she walked by Finney, she smiled and told him to call her the minute Harry woke. And then she buried herself in the library, knowing instinctively that the needle she sought was not in this haystack.

Eight miles away, the windows of the Richmond Hill Asylum were dark. The matron of the east wing, knowing her patients’ habits, caught a few winks before it was time to rouse her charges. It took a keen eye to spot her transgression, as she slept bolt upright at her desk.

Someone else was familiar with her habits, though, and crept past her on soundless feet. A staff member clad in the gray serge uniform with its plain lace collar, she was an unfamiliar face on the hall. Her pale blond hair shone in the shadow, and her lush figure strained the seams of the borrowed uniform. In her hands she clutched the master keys. She walked on crepe-shod feet, and she knew where she was going. The fourth door down the right side of the hall.

It wasn’t until she had noiselessly opened the conveniently soaped door and knelt beside the low bed with its bright yellow quilt that she made any noise. Taking a second to assess the generously curved blond woman who lay beneath the quilt, she nodded. They did look alike. Gently she laid her hand over Lady Riordan’s mouth.

“Sssssh,” she whispered. “You need to stay quiet. I’m here to help.”

The patient jerked awake, eyes huge in the darkened room. “It’s all right,” the lady in gray said. “My name is Schroeder. I can help you escape.”

The woman gave a little gasp. “My husband?” she asked, barely making a sound when Schroeder’s hand was removed.

Schroeder gently shook her head. “Lady Kate. She told some people who wish to stop the Lions.”

Lady Riordan hesitated. “You’re Scottish.”

“My brogue gives me away, I see.”

Lady Riordan drew back. “I won’t betray my husband.”

“We won’t ask you to. But you know of others?”

She got an anxious nod. “They put Lady Sanbourne in here, too.”

“We know. Are you ready to leave?”

The pretty young matron looked anxiously around, as if expecting help to materialize. “But how will you get me out without them seeing?”

“I won’t,” Schroeder said, getting to her feet. “You’ll do it yourself.”

“But how?” she asked, climbing out of bed.

Smiling, Schroeder began to unbutton her uniform.

“By walking out the front door.”

T
he search of Kate’s library ended up taking three days. Not only did Kate have a surfeit of books at her disposal, since books had long since been her only comfort, but from the moment Mike O’Roarke met with her to share his conclusions about Harry, she didn’t have two hours of uninterrupted time.

“He’s a hard man, your husband,” Mike said. “Survived a lot.”

Kate handed him a glass of Madeira and took up a seat across from him, trying her best to seem calm. She swore she hadn’t breathed since she’d been yanked out of Harry’s room. “Will he survive this?”

Mike took a contemplative sip. “We’re up against two problems. Loss of blood, and fever. He gets past those, he should do fine. We should have already known if he nicked a lung. A kidney might take a bit longer, of course.”

Kate understood now why Mudge had needed that chamber pot. “You are a veritable ray of sunshine, Mike.”

He shrugged. “You want me to lie?”

“I want you to tell me what to do.”

So he did. And for the next three days, Kate did it. When Harry’s fever rose, she dosed him with willow bark and lashings of barley water. When that didn’t bring the fever down, she bathed him with cool water. When he became delirious and tried to get up to find his men, she and Mudge talked him through it. And when he managed to get past them and fall, reopening his wound, Kate helped Mike sew it back up.

Bea stopped in to beg her to sleep. Drake demanded she look for the poem. Cook pleaded for her to eat the fortifying soups and delicate pastries he sent up to her. And Harry demanded that she leave him alone.

She wished she could. But as odd as it sounded, that wound seemed to tether her to him. She tried to take strolls around the garden and found herself right back upstairs wringing out a rag and wiping the sweat from Harry’s body. She urged him to eat and forgot to do it herself. She watched his eyes constantly moving beneath his closed lids as he refought old battles and reclaimed dead comrades, and held his hand as he tossed his way through the night. And when on the third day he woke more clear-eyed, she sparred with him, trying to ignite that devilish spark in his eye, which meant he was stronger.

“What do you mean you’ve read
Ars Amatoria
?” he demanded, carefully feeding himself some of cook’s soup. “Who in the devil allowed you to read Ovid?”

She hooted as she wandered the room straightening up. “Don’t be silly, Harry. I think Ovid should be mandatory reading for every girl. Not only does he reveal all a man’s secrets of seduction, but he teaches her to enjoy her life. ‘Have fun while it’s allowed, while your years are in their prime.’ Sounds like good advice to me.”

Harry scowled, but Kate finally saw humor. “Sounds like trouble to me,” he said. “Men have little enough advantage in this world. We don’t need Ovid to level the playing field.”

For a moment Kate almost cursed at him. Little advantage? Was he mad? They had all the advantage. Just in time she saw the teasing light in his eyes. “Poor men,” she scoffed. “Nothing to their credit but law and property and strength and arms. Women, on the other hand, have intelligence, wile, and breasts.” Grinning, she looked down. “For some reason, breasts carry disproportionate weight in balance.”

Harry closed his eyes on a groan. “Not fair,” he protested. “Not when I’m debilitated.”

Debilitated
, she thought, almost snorting out loud. How could a debilitated man look so compelling? Even pale and bristly, he was all hard angles and power, his bare arms rippling with every movement, his belly flat and his taut chest dusted in golden hair. The bandage didn’t detract from his power or his scars from his beauty.

It wasn’t fair. She was trying so hard to protect herself. And yet her body positively ached for his. Even as she wandered his room as if not even noticing his naked chest, her heart was picking up speed and her eyes kept straying. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his tousled hair, wrap her legs around his, and lay her head against his chest. She wanted…she wanted
more
, and she didn’t know how to ask for it. She, the notorious Lady Kate, didn’t know how to ask her husband to bed her. Ovid would say to use all of a woman’s arts, looks and voice and coy flirting.

“On the other hand,” she continued briskly as she straightened Harry’s dresser, “Ovid gives over two sections to instruct men and only one for women. Does he seek to keep the advantage, or think we don’t need as much instruction?”

Harry chuckled. “I’m sure each of us will have a different opinion on that. What made you think of Ovid anyway? It certainly can’t be my recent amatory feats.”

“I was searching the library for the poem those verses come from.”

“You haven’t found anything?”

“Not yet. I have another section left after you finish your meal. Finney and Mudge are pulling all the books for me now. Again. The staff have worked very hard.”

“Your library is extensive,” he admitted, casting her a sly glance. “For a woman.”

She tossed at towel at him. He caught it midair and grunted with pain.

“Don’t think I’m going to apologize,” she said, even though she knew he could see the worry in her eyes. “You deserved that.”

“Were you the one who gave Mudge
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
?”

She grinned. “He’s a very bright boy. And it’s a very small book.”

Harry harrumphed. “Small in size, oversize in ideas.”

“You don’t like it?”

He tilted his head. “This is a test, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I consider Mary Wollstonecraft a genius.”

He scowled. “So does my mother. She made all of us read it.” A corner of his mouth quirked. “Although she does part ways with Wollstonecraft over the woman’s rather colorful life.”

“Geniuses are allowed to be different,” Kate stated grandly.

“If you say so.” He scowled down at his empty bowl. “This mortal is just hoping to attain a regular diet again. I need a nice juicy beefsteak.”

Kate came over to retrieve the tray. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Before she could leave, Harry grabbed her wrist. “Sleep with me tonight.”

Kate froze, her hands full of tray. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

His eyes were so blue, so intense. She could drown in those eyes.

“I miss you,” he said softly. “You quiet the nightmares.”

If she were intelligent, she would take a figurative step back and refuse. One look at the real need in his eyes undermined her resolve. Worse, it seemed to prompt her to take an unforgivable step forward. “On one condition.”

No, don’t. It will hurt so much worse when he leaves again.

“Anything.”

She looked away, her heart suddenly racing. “When you’re…stronger,” she said in an unforgivably hesitant voice, “you must stop avoiding your duty and…and
finish
.”

Harry went dead quiet. Kate swore he had to hear her heart; it was thundering so loudly in her chest, she thought it would simply tumble out. She wasn’t sure she was breathing. She didn’t know what she wanted him to say. Now that she’d blurted that out, she wasn’t sure anymore what she wanted. She thought of the exquisite joy she felt in Harry’s arms; but the fear always lay in wait, lurking just out of sight until he made one wrong move, shattering the joy and freezing her mind.

“Are you certain?” he finally asked, his hand tighter on her wrist.

She couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think I’m certain of anything anymore. But I’m going mad with waiting. The specter of it grows impossibly larger, but at the same time the frustration over not…doing it is driving me mad. I want to know if I can manage it, Harry. I
want
what you promised me ten years ago.”

She was stunned to see him close his eyes.

“Harry?”

“I’m not sure I can remain in control,” he said, eyes opening to reveal a heat that threatened to scorch Kate right there. “I’ve tried my best to be gentle, to be patient. But…” He shrugged. “I have a feeling that our joining will be cataclysmic.”

She shuddered at the impact of those words. “Will you promise not to beat me?”

Harry dropped his hand, looked stunned. “Good God, what do you think I am?”

She wouldn’t relent. “On your honor. No riding crops or fists or feet. No…” She swallowed. “Ropes.”

Harry’s mouth dropped. Then, once again claiming hold of her, he took in a shaky breath. “One day,” he said, “I hope I can show you how pleasurable it can be to give up control to your partner. As I’ve promised before, though, on my honor, not till you’re ready. And it will never…
ever
…involve riding crops, fists, feet, or ropes.”

A sudden shock of lightning arced between them, just with his words. Kate felt her breasts tighten and her knees weaken. “And you’ll show me about…”

Harry’s smile was immediate and delighted. “It would be my great privilege and pleasure to continue showing you just how beautiful and responsive your body is.” Lifting her hand, he kissed it, almost bumping his nose on the tray. “Especially,” he added, “when stroked by a tongue.”

In the end, Harry took his cue from Ovid. After all, the translation of
Ars Amatoria
was “the art of love.” Art, indeed. One phrase kept repeating itself.
There’s a thousand ways to do it.
He just had to think of one that wouldn’t terrify Kate into flight. Kate feared domination and pain. That just left it for Harry to let Kate be the one to dominate.

“You want me to what?” she asked when the time came.

It had begun innocently enough. She had all but finished scouring the library that day, and come to bed frustrated and anxious. Harry had taken the precaution of taking a leisurely bath, washing away the last traces of injury and illness so that Kate wouldn’t hesitate. He didn’t worry about performing. Just sitting in the tub planning the night ahead, he’d had an erection that threatened his returning blood supply.

But he wanted it to be as perfect as he was capable for his brave girl. She had been through so much: first her home, and then her husband. And briefly, in between, a callow boy who’d considered himself far more sophisticated than he’d actually been, who might have hurt her worst of all. That boy owed her joy. He owed her pleasure. She needed to know that every man wasn’t Murther.

So he welcomed her into bed with open arms, and she snuggled against him. He was already hard enough when her knee slid onto his thigh. Then his cock reared, ready and throbbing. Praying for the control to make the experience beautiful for her, he began to stroke her. Her skin was so soft, her hair as sensuous as silk, even contained in the braid she wore, as if any man would be put off by it. He immediately pulled it loose and winnowed his fingers through the sweet-smelling strands.

“Where do you get your perfume?” he asked. “It smells like tropical islands.”

She lifted her head to kiss his throat. “Floris. Do you like it? It’s my special soap.”

He lifted her hair to his nose and inhaled. “I would recognize you in the dark.”

Tropical islands, lush rain forests, exotic Indian havelis intricately painted in hot colors, the floors piled with brilliant silk pillows, the white muslin curtains wafting in an evening breeze. He’d have to take her there someday so she could share it all.

“I like your scent, too,” she assured him, fanning her fingers across his chest and sending lightning shooting through him.

He growled into her hair. “I don’t wear a scent.”

“Oh, yes you do.” As if to illustrate, she buried her nose into his neck and inhaled, which did further damage to Harry’s control. “Horses and fresh air and…and…
man
.”

He’d found her breast; round, firm, pert, filling his hand and more, all but daring him to take it in his mouth. He couldn’t get enough of the weight of it in his hand.

“I’d better not smell like that. I just took an inordinate amount of time in the bath.”

He could feel her smile against him. “I know. I think I’ve been very patient. And you do smell like man. If you didn’t, I don’t think I would be nearly as anxious.”

She was stretching, arching into his hand, the whisper of silk she wore as a night rail slithering up and down her generous curves. It was a delicious feel. The first thing he did was pull it off over her head.

“Oh, good,” she whispered with a giggle. “Now you.”

“No—” But he never finished. Her delicate fingers were at the drawstrings of his unmentionables, with predictable results. He felt a sheen of sweat cover his chest, the night air an erotic kiss against it.

He lifted her mouth to his. “Open for me, Kate,” he whispered, taut as a bowstring. “Welcome me.”

She was trembling; her eyes were huge, the pupils as black as night. Harry couldn’t look away. He loved those eyes. He loved the whimsy he saw there, the fierce intelligence, the fiercer indomitability, the sly humor. Kate’s eyes were a symphony of seduction all unto themselves, cat green with flecks of yellow so that it seemed they glowed otherworldly in the shadows. He couldn’t resist them.

Even so, he kissed them closed and then kissed her mouth open, tilting his head so that they fit together as perfectly as their bodies. Sipping, nipping, nibbling her plump lower lip, tracing the sweet sweep of her upper lip, he sank into the comfort of her mouth like a sybarite settling into a harem. She tasted of wine and honey and Kate, and he sated himself on her.

As he kissed, he caressed, memorizing her plump breasts, her long, taut nipples that responded so quickly to his eager fingers. He swept in to her waist and dipped his finger into the sweet little dimple of her navel. He spanned her hips and cupped the lush globes of her bottom, pulling her full against his side. Close, but not connected yet. Not fully flush against the aching prod of his arousal.

She was hot, damp, nubile, more seductive than the cleverest houri, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out. He kept hearing her taunt in his head.
Finish
. Oh, God, did he want to finish. He kept imagining himself sheathed in her, deep and tight and wet, her head thrown back so he could see the moonlight wash down the arch of her throat, so he could take one of those straining breasts in his mouth and suckle so hard she shrieked in pleasure.