Always a Temptress (19 page)

She only looked bewildered. “What baby?”

He wanted to shake her. “Please, Kate. It’s time we told each other the truth. You wanted me to marry you that summer so George’s baby wouldn’t be a bastard.”

He spoke for effect. Again, she surprised him. She didn’t slap him or stalk off or weep, as if tears now would wash away his anger over old sins. She just blinked at him, as if he were making no sense at all.

“George who?”

H
arry quelled a sudden rage. Sitting up, he turned on her. “I’m too tired to be playing this game, Kate. If you don’t want to talk about it now, just tell me.”

She kept staring at him as if he were speaking Hindi. “I’m happy to talk about it, Harry. I just have no idea what you’re talking
about
.”

That brought him right out of bed. Circling to Kate’s side, he held out a hand to her. “Come on.”

She flinched. “Come on what?”

“I can’t fight you lying down.”

She pulled away. “Fight? I don’t want to fight.”

“Discuss, then. Clear the air.” Losing patience, he picked her up, covers and all, and settled her on one of the armchairs.

“Move and I’ll come after you,” he warned. Then to give him a chance to get his temper under control, he crouched to prod the fire into life.

She took the opportunity to jump up and try to stalk off.

Harry caught her before she escaped and pushed her back into the chair. “I told you to sit,” he snapped, leaning over her. “I understand, Kate. I really do. You were desperate. I was handy. I don’t blame you anymore. I just want to understand.”

“Understand
what
?”

Kate was confusing him. He understood denial. He understood out-and-out fabrication. But something about the oddly frustrated expression in Kate’s eyes made him question his assumptions.

“Why did you really beg me to marry you, Kate?” he asked, sitting across from her.

“You know perfectly well. I loved you. And my father was going to marry me to Murther.”

“What about George?”

“George? Which George?”

He struggled to keep his patience. “You had a groom named George.”

“Well, yes, of cour…” Shock dawned in her eyes; confusion, anger. “Oh, my God,” she breathed. “You said
George’s
baby?”

She looked suddenly fragile as isinglass, hurt in ways Harry couldn’t even understand, and it unnerved him.

“I’m afraid you need to explain this to me, Harry,” she said, her voice perilously thin. “In simple terms. Why do
you
think I asked you to marry me?”

Harry sighed. “There’s no reason to dissemble, Kate. Your father told me.”

“Told you…
what
?”

Harry stood and wandered over to the fireplace. He hated to speak so baldly. “He admitted that you were promiscuous. That you’d been indiscriminate.”

“Promiscuous.” She laughed, a bleak sound. “Of course you believed him. After all,
you’d
certainly been under my skirts.”

“Don’t be crude.”

She actually gasped. “Crude? You just called me a slut.”

“Your
father
called you…” He faltered to a halt when he saw the anguish bloom in her eyes.

“What else did he say?” she asked, her voice hollow.

Harry turned away, unable to face her with her father’s words. “He said there was something…wrong with you. That you were unmanageable. Were you?” He looked over his shoulder to see her staring into the fire. “Unmanageable? Please. I have to understand. I only knew you that one summer.”

She laughed again, the sound grating like ground glass. “Oh, Harry.
Now
you want to understand. You couldn’t have thought to simply ask back then.” She began picking at the fringe at the end of the blanket, her focus on her fingers. “Unmanageable.” She sighed. “How can I know? I don’t think so, but then, I wouldn’t be a judge, would I? I know I was forever trying to sneak away to see my father. Every time it happened my nannies and governess would get called onto the carpet, so I imagine they protested. But father left punishment to them. Nanny Dodd liked the library. She made me stand with books on my head. It was my governess Miss Frazier who thought of the priest hole.”

Harry looked up. “Priest hole?”

She glanced at him sharply, as if surprised by her own words. “Yes. In the library.”

He sat down in the chair next to hers. “You were locked in a priest hole?”

Kate shrugged, pulling the blanket higher. “Once Frazier realized that my stints in the library were only helping me learn Latin, she decided the priest hole was a much better idea. Not so many books.”

Harry saw her shudder and felt sick. “I thought it was your husband…”

She looked up. “Who inspired my odd relationship with the dark? Oh, no. Although he was happy to take advantage of it.”

“But your father…”

She looked down again. “I’m sure he never knew.”

The last word Harry would have ever used about Kate Hilliard was
vulnerable
. And yet he found himself aching for that lonely, frightened little girl. He remembered the first time he’d seen her lurking about the back of the Grange, as hesitant and anxious as a fawn. He’d thought she was one of the orphans from over at the workhouse.

She went on, as if Harry weren’t even in the room. “I finally realized that my father simply didn’t want me around. I asked why, once.” She kept pulling at the fringe with quick, jerky movements. “It was the only time my father hit me.”

Harry had an image of the sprite he’d met that summer, all flowing hair and dusty skirts, eyes brimming with wicked intelligence and devilish humor. She’d had such a bright, impish smile. “You seemed so happy,” he said. “So…fearless.”

Briefly she looked at him, then back at the flames. “I was.”

Harry got to his feet and stood there a moment, struggling with the direction of this conversation. Afraid, suddenly, to see it to the end.

“What made you think I was having George’s baby?” she asked, never looking up.

Harry walked to the window and looked out into the empty darkness. “Your father told me. He said you’d been sneaking off all summer with George, and the inevitable happened. That he was just the…latest.”

She let out an abrupt laugh, a high, eerie sound. “And my father swore to this.”

“Of course. Why else do you think I agreed with him?”

He turned to see her shake her head. “Indeed,” she said, her voice too quiet, her focus on nothing. “Why else?”

He stood there for a long few minutes, but she didn’t say any more. “Kate?”

She didn’t answer, didn’t so much as acknowledge him. She kept shaking her head, her eyes too bright and glassy, her face stretched into an odd rictus, as if she’d been stripped of everything but skin and bones. But when he reached for her, she pulled away, tightly clasping her hands in her lap. She looked, Harry thought, oddly like an abandoned child.

Stalking back over, he crouched by her chair. “Kate.”

Suddenly she was lurching to her feet. “Get your pants on, Harry.”

He stood as well, now completely confused. “My pants?”

“I need to show you something.”

“Kate, it’s four in the morning.”

“Then we’re just in time.”

And without another word, she spun around and headed for her room. Left behind, Harry couldn’t think of anything to do but dress.

He met Kate outside his door five minutes later. “Now what?”

She didn’t answer. Clad in a dun brown round gown and cloak, her braid pinned up out of the way, she led the way down the hall and through the dim house, not stopping until they walked outside to the mews, where Harry saw lights and heard one of the grooms whistling. Kate threw open the door to the stables and walked right in.

Giving her bobbing staff a distracted smile, she made her way to the back, where Harry heard someone crooning to one of the horses. As they got closer, Harry recognized the big, vacant fellow who’d helped them rout the Lions back at Diccan’s. He topped Harry by a good four inches and positively dwarfed Kate.

“’Lo, Katie,” he said with a wide grin, doffing his cap.

She took the big man’s hand, and he smiled as if she’d brought the sun. He had his cap in his other hand, held over his heart. Harry remembered that his movements were halting and abrupt, his manner child-like.

“Harry,” Kate said. “I’d like you to meet George.” She flashed a smile up at her companion. “George is my cousin.”

Harry felt as if he’d been kicked by a mule. Good God.
This
was George? “Impossible,” he protested. “You’d
never
…”

“No,” Kate said, her voice derisive. “I would never. George, you know my friend Harry.”

George nodded enthusiastically. “Helped him save you, din’t I?”

She flashed her cousin another of the sweetest smiles Harry had ever seen. “Indeed you did. I don’t know what I’d do without you, George.”

George blushed. “Couldn’t do without
you
, Katie.”

“We’ll leave you to your work, now, all right?” she said, patting his hand.

George bent for Kate’s kiss on his cheek and watched as she strode out of the barn. Harry followed, more by rote than anything.

“George’s mother was one of the dairy maids at the castle,” Kate was briskly saying. “My father’s brother Will had a notoriously wandering eye.” She briefly looked back over her shoulder. “George has always been happiest with his horses.”

Harry was numb. He felt as if in these last few minutes, Kate had swept his feet out from under him. Her father had lied. Not just lied, made up the most damning accusations about his daughter out of whole cloth.

But
why
? If it had been Diccan’s father, the duke’s brother, Harry could have understood. The bishop had been a petty, controlling, unhappy, condescending bastard. The Duke of Livingston had not. He had been the definition of noble, generous and caring for his family and fields and every last person on his lands. He’d stood up in Lords and sat on the privy council, and he had done it all with a kind of unconscious humility that had marked him a great man.

Then how in God’s name could he have maligned Kate unless she really had deserved it?

Harry came to a dead stop. “He couldn’t have lied,” he insisted. “He
never
lied.”

Because if he had, then Kate
hadn’t
lied. Murther had been the one to take her virginity. And Harry had condemned her to it.

“My God, Kate, I’d revered your father my whole life!”

Kate stopped just shy of the kitchen door. “And you’d only known me a matter of weeks.”

He searched her face for the truth and saw it. All of his beliefs, the cornerstone that had anchored his anger all these years, was crumbling. “It all happened so fast. I was so overwhelmed by you. I thought you must have blinded me.”

She stood silently for a moment, the predawn breeze fingering the curls around her face, the uncertain light making her look young and vulnerable. Harry couldn’t take his eyes from her. He wondered if he’d ever really seen her before.

“Well,” she said, turning away. “At least you got a commission out of it.”

He reached over and caught her by the shoulder. “You think that I
wanted
that commission? Do you? Did I ever once express a desire to go for a soldier?”

Now it was Kate’s turn to look uncertain. “My sister Frances said you were delighted. Swanning your uniform around the neighborhood and boasting of your luck.”

“How else could I convince my mother that I wasn’t being sent into exile as punishment for casting my eyes too high? I couldn’t have stayed there. You know that. Your father just made it possible for me to make my way somewhere else.”

“But you’ve never left the army,” she protested.

“I’m good at it,” he snapped, knowing how disgusted he sounded. “While your father was alive I owed it to him. He could so easily have ruined my entire family for my having the temerity to court you.”

“And since?”

It was his turn to shrug. “I couldn’t leave the job half finished.”

For the longest time, she stood perfectly silent. Then, shoulders slumping, she shook her head. “
Difficile est saturnam non scribere.
”

It is difficult not to write satire.

She couldn’t have been more right. Ten years. Ten
years
, destroyed by a single moment, by a man Harry had always believed would never injure another living soul. Harry simply couldn’t comprehend the scope of it. He was shaking with shock. And he hadn’t been the one trapped into a nightmare of a marriage, caged and beaten and thrown in the darkness.

Oh, God. How could anyone repay Katie for what she’d lost?

“Why?” he demanded, shock still freezing him. “Why in God’s name would your father do such a thing to you?”

Kate didn’t move. “If you find out,” she said, “would you please let me know?”

She sounded so lost; so suddenly, completely alone. Harry couldn’t tolerate it. He couldn’t bear to think of what these last minutes must be doing to her. The father she’d adored had accused her of sins that would have shamed her. And the boy she’d loved had believed him.

Even as he watched, Harry could see her drawing herself up, her posture growing rigid as a wall. There were no tears, no wailing or cursing, when any other human would have disintegrated at tonight’s revelations. Not Kate. Right before Harry’s eyes, she was disappearing back into that hard, impervious facade she’d built to protect herself.

He couldn’t let her do it. She would only grow more brittle, more outrageous. She would encapsulate all that betrayal and grief and anger within the outrageous persona she’d created, and it would eat away at her until it destroyed her. He would never forgive himself if he allowed it to happen. There had to be a way to exorcise her grief.

He knew she would fight him. He’d be lucky if she didn’t eviscerate him. But it was a penance he was willing to pay. Before she could escape, he pulled her into his arms. And before she could express the outrage that sparked in her eyes, he kissed her.

F
or Harry the reaction was instantaneous. Not just the usual spark that flared between them; something sweeter, softer. Something that bound them. She fit so perfectly beneath his heart, her body so soft and pliant, her hair like silk. Her scent had changed. She had once smelled of summer flowers and sunshine. Now she was exotic flowers, a scent that made a man’s mouth water. Her mouth, that wide, laughing, sharp, sensual mouth, caught his like a pillow, and he sank into it without a sound.

Here in the deep night where the darkness had begun to pale on the eastern horizon, he swore he could hear the old stream tumbling by in their little glen. He could almost feel the sunlight on his shoulders, when it was too early for dawn. Bowing, his body molded itself to Kate’s, as if he were melting into her arms.

It all happened to him in a second. In two, she was fighting. Even though he’d expected it, he was still surprised at her ferocity. She used knees and elbows and fingernails. She bucked and kicked; she growled, deep in her throat like a feral cat. Not in fear, not in panic; Harry knew well the sound and feel of those. In anger. In despair. In pain at what had been done to her, at what she’d been left with.

And all the time, Harry held on. Not with force; Kate would never suffer a bruise at his hands. He simply withstood her fury, hoping that when she wore down she would realize that his arms were a bulwark against fear and pain, not a prison to create them.

He didn’t know how long she fought. He knew he was going to show bruises in the morning, but he held on, gently, firmly, caressing her mouth from corner to crest, kiss after kiss, claiming every small inch, soothing as he would a wound, massaging with lips and tongue. Softening, seducing, waiting, one arm around her waist, the other cupped at the back of her head so she had to stay.

He knew it was a risk; she might end up hating him. She might never let him close again. But he couldn’t let her escape back into her hard, desolate shell. He had to make her know that she wasn’t alone anymore.

He felt her surrender in minute steps, her force waning, her protests dying. He felt her lips soften, finally open, just a bit, just enough to offer welcome. He felt a tremor build in her, muscle by muscle, bone by bone, as her fearsome control began to disintegrate. And finally, finally he tasted the salt of tears on his tongue, and she began to sob.

It was only then that he released her mouth. Gently, deliberately, he pulled her face against his chest and held her tightly to him. He said not a word; words would have been intrusive. He held her as her whole body shook beneath the force of her sobs. He held her as ten years of pain and loathing and fear bubbled up and spilled free. He held her as she mourned for what had never been, what had been suffered and forfeited. He had failed her before. He wouldn’t this time.

As if she had fallen all the way to the bottom of a long hill and was preparing to rise again, Kate began finally to regain her poise. Harry could feel it as if she was rebuilding, a block at a time, straightening, reclaiming her strength and posture and dignity. He knew that he only had moments more to comfort her before it became too uncomfortable, and he savored every small moment. The curl of her hair against his cheek, the tears that still dampened his neck, the fierce pride that shored her up when everything else had been lost. He realized he was humming, like a mother did to a hurt babe, deep in his throat. He was stroking the silken tangles of her hair. He was inhaling her exotic bouquet and hoping she accepted his warmth.

Even if he hadn’t known her, he would have held her. He had certainly held grieving women before. But to hold his Kate this way again, after all they had shared and lost, was both honor and burden. It was a privilege he knew only a very few had been accorded. If she never let him this close again, he would have to be satisfied.

Before he was ready to let her go, Kate pulled out of his arms and turned to the side. “I must ask you to excuse me,” she said, much on her dignity as she surreptitiously scrubbed at her face with trembling hands. “I am not usually one for waterworks.”

Harry couldn’t help smiling down at her puffy, tear-stained face. “
Est quaedam flere voluptas.
”

Her laugh was abrupt. “Ovid now? Well, he’s wrong. There is no pleasure in weeping. Only a thick head, puffy eyes, and a quite disgusting need for a handkerchief. I vow, I’ll be laid low with cucumber slices over my eyes for a week.”

“You can’t be,” he said, tucking a damp curl of hair behind her ear. “You’re obliged to present yourself to the public in order to convince them we’re inseparable.”

Before this, Harry would have resented the moue she made. “Not today, I think,” she said, straightening her skirts with still-trembling hands. “I believe after everything that has happened, I am entitled to a day of the vapors.”

Harry was smiling again, relieved to hear the sharp edge of her tongue. “I heartily agree. Shall I buy you some gothic romances to peruse?”

She shuddered. “Vile things. All ghosts and monks and fainting women. I should write my own. The heroine would never wait for the hero to rescue her. Heroes are so unreliable.” She stopped, shut her eyes. “Sorry, Harry. Hard habit to break.”

He took her hand and kissed it. “But they are unreliable, Kate. At least they have been, during which time you have more than magnificently cared for yourself and Bea.”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me five years ago.”

“You survived,” he insisted. “You had the last laugh.”

Her head came up, her surprised smile a bit smug. “I suppose I did. Murther is dead, and I am still a duchess and the daughter of a duke, which is more than enough. After all, it gives me precedence over my sister-in-law Glynis, which makes her livid. Every time I walk into dinner before her, I can almost hear vessels burst in her head.”

She sounded better, but she was still thrumming like a tuning fork; Harry could feel it, not even touching her. He simply couldn’t leave her like that. Reaching down, he cupped her face in his hands. She instinctively stiffened, tried to pull away.

“Sssssh,” he whispered. “I’m just going to kiss you. I promise from now on I’ll always try to tell you what I’m going to do before I do it.”

Her eyes looked huge. “What if I don’t
want
you to do it?”

Her pupils had grown. Her breath had shortened. Harry smiled. “Then you will tell me and we’ll discuss it. I will never force you to do anything you don’t like or that frightens you, Kate. But if we’re going to make a show of how great this marriage is, we have to at least look comfortable together. The more I can touch you, the better we’ll pull it off. If you let me simply kiss you now and then, you’ll become more used to it.”

She made a little huffing noise. “I’m not as convinced of success as you are.”

He smiled, using his thumbs to wipe away her tears. “You don’t need to be. You just need to close your eyes.”

The trembling increased; for a second she betrayed the terror that must still shadow every memory. Then, like the valiant woman she was, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to him.

Harry was humbled by that simple show of courage. Two days ago, he wouldn’t have believed he would ever see it. Dipping his own head, he brought his mouth down to hers, brushing lightly over her lips, her eyelids, her nose. He wanted so badly to stay, to deepen the kisses into something warmer, more intimate. He wanted to run his tongue along her lips, coaxing them open, coaxing
her
open.

He was the one trembling now. His body wasn’t used to restraint. It wanted her with all the swift hunger of a starving man. He knew better, though, so with a final kiss to her forehead, he straightened and dropped his hands. He was selfishly glad when she swayed a bit, as if regretting his loss. And when she opened her eyes, he was relieved to see uncertain wonder hovering there.

“It’s still early,” he said. “Would you like to return to my room for some rest?”

She was already shaking her head. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”

He dropped a final kiss on her brow. “Tomorrow.”

Kate felt as if she were splintering into a million pieces. Emotions she hadn’t allowed in years surged through her, taking her breath, her balance. Grief, anger, shame, and oddly, on hearing that Harry hadn’t been quite so thoughtless, relief. Confusion mixed them all into an unpalatable stew. Had Harry actually held her? Had she let him? Had it really felt like coming home after surviving a storm?

She didn’t know. She didn’t
want
to know. She just wanted to get inside her room, where she could be alone. Where no one could see the toll this night had taken, or suspect the maelstrom it unleashed.

So when Harry opened the kitchen door, she swept past the sleepy tweeny who was just building up the fire and hurried up through the baize doors into the main house. Thankfully, Harry let her go on alone.

As usual, the halls were well lit. It was still early, though, when shadows held sway. They made her run up the stairs a bit faster, her focus more on getting to her room than how she did it. She wanted to get there before anyone intercepted her.

She had just set her foot on the second-to-the-top step when she realized that something was wrong with the stair. Her foot never took hold. Before she could catch her balance, her foot shot straight up and catapulted her backward.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow shift at the top of the stairs, but she never had the chance to identify it. Shrieking at the top of her lungs, she went over backward and tumbled all the way down the stairs.