Always a Temptress (34 page)

H
arry couldn’t find her. He didn’t sleep, he forgot how to eat, he lost the patience to wait. After five days of fruitless searching, he was visited by Baron Thirsk, who asked Harry what he knew about the book. Harry booted the officious little bureaucrat back out the door. Harry could give a cold damn about that book. He didn’t care if it led to the assassination of every statesman in Britain. He couldn’t find Kate, and the baron refused to put a gun to the head of the Duchess of Livingston to find out where she was.

Bea was inconsolable. Truly afraid for her, Harry wrote to Grace and begged her to come back to care for the old woman. Thrasher spent all his waking hours trolling the stews for information, and the Rakes searched the countryside. Diccan’s household army polled servants, and Mudge watched the asylum for suspicious activity.

As for Harry, he followed every trail he could, his desperation increasing every hour Kate remained missing. His temper shortened, his anger grew, and his weight dropped. But even Kate’s chef Marcel wasn’t eating his own food. Instead he wandered the markets tracking large purchases for a clue to where a hidden asylum might be.

Harry’s patience finally snapped on the tenth day, and he stormed the doors of Livingston House. But the family was away from home. Ignoring the jarring protest from his ribs and his head, he climbed on Beau and headed back for Moorhaven. He was halfway across Hounslow Heath before he heard the hoofbeats closing in from behind. But when he turned, gun in hand to shoot whoever was trying to stop him, it was to discover his household staff tracking him, every one as armed as he.

It didn’t help. The Livingstons had left Moorhaven for an unknown destination, leaving behind a skeleton staff who blamed Lady Kate for shaming the family with her sordid revelations. They couldn’t stop Harry from searching, and he did, all but tearing the library apart in an effort to find the priest hole.

When the door finally clicked open to reveal that square of darkness, though, it made everything immeasurably worse. He thought of young Kate trapped in the stony silence of that little hole, all the while wondering why her father couldn’t love her, and he knelt on the floor and sobbed.

Come back to me
, he begged, his head in his hands.
The darkness is a nightmare for me, now, too. The days are no better. I hear your voice and catch your scent on the air. But you’re not there, and I can’t bear it.

When Harry finally emerged from that cold, empty house, Thrasher and Finney were waiting for him. They didn’t say a word as Thrasher helped Harry back onto his horse and followed him down the drive. And when he felt compelled to ride to every private asylum within fifty miles, they followed silently along.

He didn’t allow them to follow any farther, though. He sent them home. And then, because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he went to Eastcourt.

The minute he saw it he knew he’d made a mistake. It only made everything worse. The house was everything Kate had said: solid and homey and sweet, a tumbled, gabled old hodgepodge of a house, with a cottage garden so large it almost blocked out the buttery-yellow facade. But what froze Harry as he sat on his horse on the front drive was that he knew it.

Except for the color of the stone, Eastcourt could have been taken for his own home. If he walked through that front door, he suspected he would walk into those mad, chaotic, familiar rooms where Kate had once argued Greek philosophers and cadged cookies from his mother. He remembered how she’d said that the minute she saw Eastcourt, she’d known it was home. He was afraid he knew why, and it shattered the last of his reserve.

She could break your heart, that woman, he thought, desperately trying not to break down in the driveway. How could a man keep from falling in love with her? How could he not see how foolish he was to think that silence was better than challenge and humor, faith and strength. Christ, what strength.

It was only now, looking on the home she’d constructed from memory and determination, that he recognized how indomitable her spirit was. Beaten, branded, abandoned, locked in the dark, and yet she still worked to create a world that included every misfit and rogue who happened her way.

And one miserable ex-army major.

He loved her so much. Why hadn’t he admitted it? Why hadn’t he had as much courage as Kate and told her?

He would. As soon as he got her back, he would tell her. And keep telling her for the rest of their lives, no matter where they lived them. It didn’t matter anymore. As long as he could spend his life with Kate.

He returned to London to find it in the midst of the greatest scandal of the decade. If Glynis had done nothing else, she’d made sure the story circulated about Kate’s alleged disappearance. Kate’s nemesis finally had her revenge.

It went on this way for two interminable weeks. Harry stopped sleeping. If he tried, all he did was dream of Kate. Young Kate with all the hope in the world in her eyes, even though she’d known the priest hole always waited; mature Kate, bright steel forged in the fire of pain. Kate who had soothed her own nightmares by easing others’.

Day after day he was visited by the widows and slum rats and veterans she had saved from despair with her deceptively casual assistance. And when visitors were forbidden the front door, Harry needed look no farther than Kate’s own staff. She’d made that outrageous, notorious home of hers a haven, even for a tired Rifleman who’d once thought he’d have to wander the world alone to recover his peace of mind.

He had almost recovered it right here in this noisy, surprisingly whimsical, amazingly down-to-earth house in the middle of Mayfair. And then, because Kate saw the need to protect even him, he’d had it taken away.

He spent the majority of the day in his relentless search. The few hours that remained, he lay in her bed seeking her scent. Burrowed into her pillow, he replayed the moments of his marriage over and over in his mind. And inevitably, every night, he returned to that moment she had discovered that lovemaking could be a joy.

The image was sharp as etched glass: Kate, her skin pearlescent in the candlelight, her breasts proud and high, gently bobbing as she moved over him, her body sleek as a seal, all sweeping lines and lush curves. Her exquisite face alight with wonder, with nascent joy, with the laughter of surprise as she’d felt him fill her, as she’d tortured him, riding him like a mad hussar over the fences, spurs and heels and hands.

And every time he replayed those moments, night after night, he fought harder to believe that enough of her would come back to him, that they could rediscover the wonder they created together. That they could remember how to anticipate the future. And every time he lay there till the dawn, eyes open, tears tracking down his temples, the weight of trying grew heavier and heavier.

I love you, Katie
, he repeated over and over again.
Come back to me
.

Kate had been gone a total of twenty-one days when Elspeth Hilliard appeared on Harry’s doorstep. He had just come in from another sweep of the stews to have a grim Finney greet him at the door.

“Got a visitor. Lady Elspeth, she says.”

Harry had sent her innumerable messages. He’d assumed they’d either been intercepted or ignored. Feeling the first hint of hope in days, he strode into the Chinese Drawing Room. There she sat, still clad in a hooded cape, as if afraid his staff would know her.

“Aunt Kate has the most exquisite taste, don’t you think?” she asked, looking brittle enough to crumble. Harry had forgotten how young she was.

“I can’t find her,” he said baldly.

She nodded. “I know. I heard my mama say that it was what she deserved. But it isn’t!” Suddenly she was on her feet, hands clenched. “She wouldn’t run away from anything. And it wasn’t her fault anyway.”

“No,” Harry agreed, easing her back into her chair. “It wasn’t.”

Elspeth sat very still, hands clutched in her lap, tears welling in large green eyes that looked so much like Kate’s. Across from her, Harry waited. Kate loved this girl, which meant she had bottom. Harry prayed she would have enough to see this through. It would be a hard thing to go against her family.

“What did you come to tell me?” Harry gently asked.

Her head snapped up, and he saw a full range of emotions skim across her expressive little face. Poor girl. Caught between loyalty to her parents and the need to do the right thing for her aunt.

Her head went back down. When she spoke, her voice was so low Harry had to lean closer to hear it. “Aunt Kate wasn’t the only one gone missing that morning,” she said. “Thom the coachman was gone, too. When he met us in Dover last week, he said something about a quick trip to Chatham.”

Her eyes painfully young, she looked up. “No one at our party was from Chatham.”

“You’ve been thinking about it, though. What troubles you about Chatham?”

Her eyes huge, she shook her head, her curls bobbing.

Reaching over, Harry took her hand. “Did you know that your father had your aunt Kate committed a few weeks back?”

She pulled her hand back. “Don’t be silly. Why would he do that?”

“I think you know,” Harry said, and then went still, giving her the chance to think.

“Her birth embarrasses them. And she won’t disappear.”

She sat there for so long, Harry wanted to shake her. But he knew what this visit would cost her. She had already proven her mettle just in showing up. In the end, it was her aunt who had gained her loyalty. “Our great-aunt Agnes was sent away to Chatham years ago,” the girl said. “She killed Uncle Charles.”

Harry could hardly hold still. “Do you know the name of the facility?”

“My parents wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “They
wouldn’t
.”

But Harry had no answer, even as tears spilled down her cheeks. “If I help you,” she whispered, “they’ll never forgive me.”

He wrapped his arm around her and held on. “Do you know, Elspeth?”

Still it took a moment. “The Rose,” she finally whispered miserably. “They called it Tudor Rose.”

It was Harry’s turn to shake his head. God. How had he missed it? Gently he forced the girl to look up at him. “She’s probably not even there. I’ll let you know.”

“As soon as you can.”

It was the first real hope he had. He didn’t like leaving the girl with her disillusionment, so he handed her over to Grace and Bea. And then, hardly daring to hope, he collected Kit Braxton and Alex Knight, and he rode for Chatham. It had been three weeks. He couldn’t bear the thought that he would be too late.

T
hey reached Chatham about teatime. The weather was gray and damp, with a nasty little wind that dropped the temperature. It didn’t help make the facility look any more inviting, a gray stone building just near the river that looked to have been modified from a warehouse. But it wasn’t an asylum. The sign on the wall said
ROSE WORKHOUSE
.

Harry saw it and quailed. Worse than most asylums. Infested with disease, packed with the destitute, the pitifully mad, the villainous. Harry’s heart rate tripled and his stomach soured. She couldn’t be locked in this place. But if she wasn’t, he had no idea where to look.

Inside was worse. They hadn’t even made the pretense of painting. The walls were as gray as the inhabitants who shuffled through the overcrowded wards. Light barely forced its way through high, grimy windows, and the air was permeated with the stench of boiled cabbage. Babies cried, high, pitiful sounds of despair. Someone was weeping, and an oversize man in a frock coat was taking a slattern against a wall.

Harry didn’t bother with being polite. He shoved a pistol under the chin of one of the matrons and demanded she lead him to Kate. She cooperated quickly enough with a whine and a wink, but swore no knowledge of the name. So Harry locked the entire staff in a closet and led his team on a thorough search.

“Kate! Kate, damn it! Answer me!”

Every minute in this place was stripping away his composure. Where was she? Why didn’t she answer when he called?

He had just about given up when Kit Braxton gave a shout. Locked in a small back room was George. Thinner, dirty, lost looking. It even took a minute for the big man to recognize Thrasher, who hadn’t stopped cursing since recognizing him.

“Where’s the duchess, George?” Thrasher demanded. “George, you gotta tell us!”

For a long time, George just stared at the boy, as if trying to remember how to speak. When he started shaking his head, Harry all but crumbled.

But then, like a miracle, George smiled. “Hey, Thrasher. You come to get us, me and Katie.”

Everyone froze. “Where is she, George?”

But George shrugged. “Dunno. Barnes says she’s in a special place where nobody’ll find her. Keep her safe, he says. That’s good, huh? But I want to go home, Thrasher. I want Katie to go home with us.”

Harry was already out the door. He knew who Barnes was, a slick, snake-eyed man with nervous hands who was waiting to be let out with the rest of the staff. Harry wasted no time. He threw open the door to the room they were locked in, so that it crashed against the wall. Then he stalked up to Barnes and shoved his pistol up his nose.

“Take me to her,” was all he said. “Now.”

Harry had only felt this out of control once before, and that was when he’d realized what the British army was doing to the women of Badajoz after the siege. He’d killed men from his own army that day without compunction. Barnes must have seen that he would do the same today. Even so, he shook his head, the whites of his eyes showing.

“She ain’t here,” he insisted. “We kep’ the big guy, ’cause he’s a hard worker. She were a right pain in the ass.”

Harry thought he would choke on the fear. “Where did they take her?”

“I don’t know and that’s the truth! Nobody does!”

No. Please, no. He couldn’t fail. Not again. Not when she needed him. He searched that building like an enemy emplacement. He terrorized the staff and inmates. If Chuffy hadn’t kept hold of him, he suspected he might have tried to shake information out of the children. He couldn’t bear it.

“Where is she?”

They were standing outside in the hard gravel yard, nothing visible except weeds all the way to the river. There was nothing else to search.

“Maybe we should go back,” Kit suggested. “Get help.”

“No. She’s here. She has to be here.”

“She’s here all right,” a sharp, grating voice said behind him.

Harry spun around to see a scarecrow standing not ten feet away.

“Where? Where is she?” Harry demanded, advancing on him.

The man hopped back, hands out. “She said you’d pay me. I want my money.”

Harry grabbed him by the throat. “You’ll get a hangman’s noose unless you take us to her.”

The little man pushed at Harry. “You want her, you got her. I’ve had enough. Woman never shuts up. ‘Get Harry. Get Harry. Tell him I’m here,’” he mimicked in cruel tones. “Drive a man to drink, she does.”

Harry just tossed him to the ground. “Get moving.”

They never would have found her. The door was hidden in the larder, a sliding wall of shelves. Harry pulled it open and then, for a long moment, could do no more than look down into the darkness.

He had to go in. He cleared his throat, wiped his wet hands on his slacks. Took in a strident breath.
Please, God. Please. Let there still be light in those magnificent eyes. Let her be in there.

Behind him, Kit laid a hand on his shoulder. “Harry?”

It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but he walked into the darkness.

There were steps going down. Passing lanterns around, Harry led the way. One flight and then a half, all the while the air becoming colder, damper, thick with mold and refuse. Harry wished he had the Duchess of Livingston’s throat in his hands. He’d choke her like a chicken. God, how could Kate survive it again?

He had just opened his mouth to call to her when he heard it. A woman’s voice, rising, falling, echoing off the dank walls.

“I told you, Bert, if you would just get help for me, I’ll pay you enough that you never have to work for these vile people again. In fact, I’m sure Harry will give you a government stipend. You have vital information about the Lions the government would love to have. Bert?…Bert? Fine. Deserted by another man. I might have known. They’re all alike. They stay around as long as there are low-cut dresses and champagne. Give them a job to do, though, and off they go…”

Even before Harry turned the lock on the door everyone was grinning. He wanted to laugh, to shout. “Kate?” he called, hearing the strain in his own voice.

The key scraped and the lock clattered and then popped open. For a moment there was silence inside. “Harry?” Her voice was unpardonably small. Oh, how he would hurt people for doing this to her. “Harry, if you’re just in my head, I wish you’d go away. Better yet, go get the real Harry. I’m running out of patience in here.”

His hands had begun to shake. He opened his mouth, but suddenly he couldn’t seem to get the words out. He yanked on the door.

She was sitting on a chair, like before. This time, though, she looked nothing like a proper miss. She was leaning forward, hands on knees, feet planted apart, as if poised to spring. Her hair was tangled and dull, but she’d done her best to keep it tidy.

Harry felt tears fill his eyes and course down his cheeks. Her eyes were open, alert and amazed.

“I’m here, Kate,” he said, stepping in and opening his arms.

She sprang after all, right into his arms. “You really are!” she cried, burrowing her face in his neck. “Oh, Harry, you’re here!” Harry had the most overwhelming feeling that he’d just come home.

“You smell so good,” she crowed. “But I think anything smells better than my room.” Pulling back, she flashed him a shy smile. “I did try and keep it neat. You would be appalled at how rare a good bar of soap is in this establishment. Hello, Kit, Chuffy. Thrasher, I think you’re growing out of your uniform again. “

She’d lost weight. He could probably count her ribs. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and one couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t bathed. Harry didn’t care. He had never held anything so precious in his life.

He cupped her face in his hands. “Tell me you’re all right.”

She smiled, then, and Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen a more incandescent sight. “I found something out, Harry. You were right. I do much better if I stay alert.” She hesitated, her eyes growing wide. “Harry, you’re crying.”

He pulled her into his arms and almost squeezed the breath out of her. He had to feel her heart. He had to hear her voice. “Kate. Remember when you told me you loved me?”

She froze where she was, as if afraid of missing something. “Yes, in fact. I do.”

Behind him, Harry heard shuffling feet. “We’ll…uh, be outside,” Chuffy called.

He didn’t really pay attention. He was consumed by the feeling of Kate in his arms. All of the fear, the uncertainty, the indecision disappeared. This was exactly where she should be. No matter where they lived, or what they did, it only mattered that they did it together. “I was a fool, Kate. I was afraid. I’d lived so long with nightmares I didn’t realize when I was presented with a dream. I love you. I will always love you. I’ll sell my traveling gear and dig tulips. I’ll sign Eastcourt over to you and leave. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, if you’ll only love me back.”

He heard the oddest snuffling and didn’t know if she was laughing or crying.

It turned out, she was doing both. Tilting her head back, she smiled up at him as if he were the morning light. And lifting her hand, she wiped away his tears. “I spent a lot of time recently thinking about the benefits of travel. I would like to see India. And Venice and America and Portugal. But I can’t simply wander off from my responsibilities.”

“Would you like to consider working out something together?”

A pain of pure anguish ripped through him as he waited for her answer. He knew, in the end, he’d agree to whatever she wanted. He needed to be with her. He needed her strength, her humor, her outrageous sensibility to leaven the nightmares. But she needed
his
strength, his steadiness, his eye. Didn’t she?

In the end, he couldn’t bear her hesitation. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I tried so hard to find you.”

“I know you did. I never thought you wouldn’t.” She sounded hesitant, suddenly. “No matter what I am, I know you would never break your word to me again.”

“What do you mean?” he countered, furious. “You’re my wife. My love. My hero.”

Her voice, when it came, was uncertain, her posture defiant. “I’m a bastard, Harry.”

He wanted to weep again for her. He knew, though, that it was the worst response he could give her. So he kissed her forehead, her eyes, her nose. “You’re the woman who recovered Eastcourt and started an orphanage and gave homes to some of the most disreputable rabble I’ve ever met. Has any of that changed?”

Not taking her gaze from his, she shook her head, her eyes wide and glistening in the uncertain light.

“Well, that is who I fell in love with,” he said. “Not your lineage. I know it will be difficult with society, Kate. But I’ll be right there with you.”

Her laughter was abrupt. “Damn society. I consider this a very efficient way of determining my real friends.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. “Did I pass?”

Her smile was soft and honest. “Oh, yes. Take me home, Harry.”

Later that night, when the rest of the house had wandered to bed, Harry and Kate lay exhausted in each other’s arms.

“Snuff the candles, Harry,” she begged, running her hand up his chest. “It’s time for a new experiment.”

Harry kissed her forehead. She smelled like frangipani. “What experiment?”

She ran her fingers down his chest, leaving a delicious trail of fire. “If I tell you that I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than travel with you—except maybe raise our children at Eastcourt—will you make love to me? Here in the dark.”

Just the suggestion did terrible things to his cock. Rubbing his cheek against hers, he stretched up to extinguish the lone candelabra, leaving the room in profound darkness. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

He could feel her smile against his skin. “You banish the nightmares, Harry. You replace them with something beautiful. I need that.”

Pulling her close, he rubbed his cheek against hers. “Never let it be said that you’re predictable, Kate.”

She chuckled. “Heaven forfend. I might as well be dead.”

Harry couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel Kate; he heard her racing heart and felt the heat begin to glow from her skin. He knew she was smiling in his arms; he wanted to make her laugh. To make her sigh and chuckle and moan, her body weeping in anticipation and her climax shattering. He lifted a hand and captured her breast and thought that it was even more mysterious in the dark.

“I think we should make a practice of this,” he murmured, bending down to kiss her. “There is something very seductive about making love in the dark.”

She arched into his hand. “I think that’s a brilliant idea. Now, does Ovid prescribe any other interesting positions?”