Always a Temptress (7 page)

She froze, her heart in her throat. It came again. She jumped to her feet. “Who is it?” she whispered.

The answer came in a dearly familiar Cockney accent, “’Oo d’ya think, Y’r Graciousness?”

“Thrasher!”

Without another thought, she wrapped her hands around the shutter and pulled. The agonized screech of hinges should have woken the dead. She stopped, eyes closed, and tested the silence. When she heard no new movement, she finished the job.

It only took two more good tugs to pull the hinge away from the wall. Swinging the whole apparatus to the side, she unlocked the window and shoved it up a few inches.

And there was that tousled blond head hovering just above the sash. “It
is
you,” she whispered, grinning as she reached out a hand. “What are you doing here?”

Shoving aside the help, Thrasher rolled over the window sash like a tumbler, landing on the floor with barely a sound. “Whattya think?” he asked, giving her a big cheeky grin up from the floor. “Savin’ you.”

She didn’t care how uncomfortable it made him. She dragged the skinny young reprobate to his feet and gave him a crushing hug. “You devil. How dare you risk your life on that wall?”

“Risk?” he retorted, pulling away before she could kiss him. “Wit’ all that ivy? Cor, it were like hikin’ up a easy hill, which is good, ’cause we gotta go down the same way.” With that, he unwound a rope from around his waist and began tying it to the big four-poster.

Kate grinned, flushed with triumph. “Actually, you caught me just getting ready to go out.” Gathering her things, she pulled on her cloak and gloves. “How did you find me?”

“Don’t be daft,” he chastised without looking up. “Never lost ya. That cove what run off wiff ya ’as ’air as red as a Runner’s vest.”

“Aitches, Thrasher.”

He looked up with a cheeky grin. “
Has. Hair
,” he corrected himself, giving the rope a test tug. “Orangest hair I ever seen. Was dead easy ta follow. I jus’ jumped up on me perch and ’ung on.”

“You didn’t come here alone, did you?” she objected.

His laugh was breathy. “Nah. Stopped by y’r ’ouse and got t’ others.”

“Others?” she asked, casting an anxious look out the window.

He waved off in the direction of the dark woods. “Mr. Finney,” he said. “Coupla stable hands ’n that cook o’ yers. Wouldn’t be left be’ind. Says ’e can be right nasty wit’ a cleaver.”

Kate almost laughed out loud. Her butler, her grooms, and her chef, all armed and waiting to help rescue her. She thought she might weep.

“What about Lady Bea?” she asked, helping Thrasher tie the rope to the bed leg.

“Bob Coachman took ’er back to Lunnun to wait.”

For the first time since being tossed into the coach, Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank heavens. She really is all right?”

The boy grinned, all teeth and big brown eyes. “Mad as a wet ’en. Ready to grab a fryin’ pan ’erself. Mr. Finney’s the one as eased ’er. Said as ’ow she’d need to be in Lunnon to give out you was sick in bed so’s nobody’d know you was nabbed.”

Kate nodded, glad. It was the only argument she could think of that would keep Bea from running headlong into danger for her. Finney was about to get a big raise.

Thrasher tiptoed to the window and threw the rest of the rope over the sill. “’Oo was it took ya, Y’r ’Onorableness?”

“That’s a long story, Thrasher. We’ll talk about it when we get home.”

He gave the rope an experimental tug. The heavy old bed didn’t budge. “Vines is good climbin’ vines. ’Ang on to the rope jus’ in case.”

She nodded. “You first.”

His sharp-featured face folded into a fierce frown. “Don’t be daft.”

“I won’t go down unless you’re already on the ground, Thrasher. And if I’m caught, I want you to run, do you hear me? You have to get back to the rest of the staff.”

He took a quick assessing look out the window. “Only ’cause then we can come get ya again.”

And without further ado, he swung himself over the sill and disappeared. Left behind in the room, Kate took a moment to steady her heart. She wasn’t afraid of the climb. She had climbed down many a vine in her day. She was afraid for her friends. If Harry caught them, God knew what he might do.

She took her own look outside to see Thrasher already halfway down the house. At least the windows were dark. Evidently the house slept on. Taking a deep breath, she threw her leg over the ledge.

The descent seemed longer than three stories. By the time she reached the ground, her knees were trembling and her fingers aching. She took no time to recover, though. The minute her feet touched the soft flower bed, she ran after Thrasher.

She made it no more than fifteen feet before she heard the footsteps behind her. She ran faster. She could see Thrasher disappear into the trees. She pulled up her skirts to lengthen her stride. Something slammed into her and shoved her straight to the ground. She knew who it was even before he spoke.

“I probably should have told you,” Harry murmured in her ear. “I don’t sleep.”

H
arry felt as if he’d fallen on knives instead of Kate’s soft body, his ribs setting up a grating screech. He wasn’t about to let her know, though. She would take advantage, sure as check.

“Sadly predictable,” he said, trying his best to sound as if he could breathe past the stabbing pain in his chest. “I expected better from you.”

Stretched out along her back, he grabbed her splayed hands and held on, fully expecting a fight. When she didn’t immediately move, he took a second in the whispering darkness to assess the situation. Kate had climbed down the east wall and headed for the woods at the far end of the lawn. He could only be thankful he’d heard her, since he’d had to run all the way across the front of the abbey and turn the corner to even see her.

A movement at the tree line caught his eye. Her young accomplice, no doubt. The little blighter had a fast pair of feet. It didn’t matter. Harry knew who he was. He’d seen the little urchin riding the back of Kate’s carriages.

“So,” he said jovially to his captive, “resorting to children for rescue now, are you, Kate? What’s the matter? No
cicisbeos
in the neighborhood?”

He was trying his damndest to ignore the sweet pressure of her derriere against his groin, the feminine swoop and swell of her too-lush form beneath him. She’d almost gotten away, and he blamed himself for not anticipating it.

“What?” he asked. “No excuse? No plea for clemency or offer to negotiate?”

That was when he realized that something was wrong. She was too still. He thought she’d shuddered once, but after that she went quiet, emitting no more than a funny, rasping little wheeze he almost couldn’t hear over the shush of the breeze.

She couldn’t be having trouble breathing. He didn’t have all his weight on her. But by now she should have been bucking and kicking, at least cursing him back to the ninth generation. Instead, she was eerily still, her forehead on the ground, her hands limp.

He couldn’t have knocked her out, could he? “Kate?”

Nothing. He lifted back enough to give her a bit of room and flipped her over on her back. Not unconscious. Her eyes were open.

“You really have to stop this, Kate,” he told her, holding her hands, just in case.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. It was as if she weren’t there at all. She just…lay there, staring sightlessly past him. An odd chill snaked down Harry’s back. Capturing both of her hands in one of his, he tapped at her cheek.

“Kate.”

She was beginning to frighten him. Kate was never this quiet. This still. “Kate, answer me or I’ll do something drastic.”

He knew he wasn’t using all of his faculties. He’d actually been half asleep in the library when the sound of scraping against the outside wall had pulled him awake. He still felt groggy. But that didn’t excuse his next decision, except that he was beginning to feel desperate, and he could think of only one way to guarantee an immediate reaction from her. He kissed her.

At first, he merely touched her lips, nudging them with his own. Brushing back and forth. She didn’t even resist. She was scaring the hell out of him.

He pushed farther, deepening the kiss, stroking her throat with his hand. He nibbled at her bottom lip; he ran his tongue across the seam of her lips. He pressed against her closed teeth.

He wished he could have said he remained unaffected. He wished like hell the taste of Kate didn’t suddenly call up too many memories to contain. Good memories, sweet memories, the kind that a man should store up as ballast against all the evil and violence he would face in the world.

It had been his last moment of innocence, that summer, when he’d still believed that the world was his for the taking, when he believed Katie loved him. When he still held out the hope that she really would cast her lot with him.

Too quickly to think, he found himself spinning back there, and it cost him his control. Before he knew it, he was urging her to open for him; he was stroking and soothing and doing his best to incite a firestorm. And she was responding. Her lips began to soften, her body move, tentatively at first, as if she’d forgotten the sensuous duels they had once fought.

Relief swept through him, gratitude. She was all right. He let go of her hands and cupped her face, his body molding itself against hers. He felt her heart against his, and it was thrumming like a hummingbird’s. He was in danger of being lost, and he knew it.

And then she bit him.

He reared back in outrage. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”

He reached up to touch his lower lip and came away with blood.

Well, at least he’d accomplished one thing. She was definitely alert. Her eyes were cold as death, the icy green almost vanished around huge pupils. “You have to ask?”

“You enjoyed it as much as I did! You can’t tell me you didn’t.”

“I’m not telling you anything except get off me.”

He couldn’t; not yet. He couldn’t pull himself away from the heat of her body; he couldn’t just shut away those memories as if they had never existed. They existed; they’d just been lies.

He wanted to look back on those summer days as the last days of innocence. But there had been nothing innocent about Kate. Nothing pure or true. And he’d paid the price for believing there had been.

She squirmed, trying to push him away. “Get. Off.”

“Why?” he asked, suddenly angry. “You’ve fucked every other man in Europe. Why not me?”

He heard the words come out of his mouth and knew they were ugly, violent things. He saw their impact on her already ashen features, and it shamed him. He was doing it again, hurting her. He kept hurting her, and that was so unlike him. He had never once given in to anger; not in all the long years of soldiering, when the bloodlust of battle too often spilled over onto perpetrators and innocents alike. He had seen the cruelties men inflicted on men, on women and children, and he had held himself sequestered behind a strong wall of discipline. But suddenly the anger rose from deep within him, and he couldn’t seem to rein it in.

“You owe it to me,” he grated, retaking her hands.

She managed a breathy laugh. “The only thing I owe you is a hat pin in the eye.”

He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He was still hard, still consumed by the soft feel of her beneath him. He could feel how taut her nipples were. He could hear the quick rasp of her breathing. And he knew how hard her heart was beating. She was as aroused as he. She
had
responded. And she was belittling him for
his
reaction.

Suddenly he resented the hell out of her. Because of her, he’d spent a decade wading through one battlefield after another. He had faced atrocities no mortal man should ever suffer, been wounded to the point of death, and still carried the cost of that last battle in his chest. And her? She sat atop the dung heap of society, a rich trollop with a title to protect her. He shook with the urge to hurt her. To make her regret every promise she’d ever made to him and broken. Every hurt
she’d
inflicted.

“I hope you don’t mean to tell me you’re indifferent to me,” he accused, so close he could see her pupils dilate even more. “I know you too well. Why not make your incarceration more pleasant? I could certainly find better things to do with our nights.”

If anything, her skin grew paler. “I hope you don’t think you’re offering me a compliment.”

“I’m offering you a deal. Don’t you think I have as much right as anybody else to finally get what I was promised?”

“Oh, I see,” she said, looking away. “This is about your rights.”

“Why not?”

She blinked. “Men do have their rights, don’t they? Their rights to their house, their horse, their land, their women, their children. Their right to own, to control, to punish.” Like a lightning strike, her gaze met his, and he could taste her disdain. “Well, Harry, a woman has only one right, and that is the right to occasionally say no. No, Harry.”

And with that, she turned her head away and lay silent as a stone.

As if she’d taken away a light, Harry suddenly felt the darkness again, the chill of the night breeze. He heard a dog barking far off and the slam of a door somewhere in the house. He smelled the grass they’d crushed when they’d fallen. Beneath him, Kate was rigid and still, her gaze once again fixed on nothing.

He flushed with guilt. He’d heard the faint tremor in her voice, and knew that it didn’t matter what she had done to him, what he thought she’d stolen. She didn’t deserve that kind of disdain. No woman did.

Briefly closing his eyes, he lifted himself away from her. She lay splayed on the grass, her skirts twisted around her legs, her cloak lying half over her dress. Taking a moment, he covered her legs and untangled her cloak. He was just about to push himself to his feet when her cloak shifted, revealing a tear in her dress that exposed part of her breast. Harry saw it and stopped cold. It wasn’t the breast that shocked him. It was what he saw on it, round as a coin, almost an inch across, just above the nipple.

“Is that a
tattoo
?” he demanded, not sure whether he was more surprised or outraged that she’d disfigured her beautiful breasts. Perfect, full, firm, milky white. Irrevocably marred.

But he only had a moment to react, because his words incited the oddest reaction of the night. Suddenly Kate rolled over and pulled herself into a ball, yanking her cloak over her. “Yes,” she said in a curiously flat voice, her head tucked like a hedgehog’s. “It’s a tattoo.”

Harry was confused. He would expect her to react with defiance or insouciance. She sounded shamed. She looked as if she were trying to disappear.

“What is it a tattoo of?” he demanded, suddenly unsettled.

Kate lurched to her feet and turned away to retie her cloak. Her head was down, her long neck curiously vulnerable looking, as if she were bowed under a weight of some kind. “That,” she said, stalking past him, “is information you have no right to.”

“Kate,” Harry protested, hand out.

But she evaded him, heading back toward the front of the house. He hurried after her, intent on catching her. He had to find out what that tattoo meant.

He reached her just as they broached the flower beds near the south corner. Grabbing her hard by the arm, he spun her around. Kate ducked, arm up over her face, as if warding off a blow.

Harry froze, suddenly even more off balance. He knew that reaction. He’d seen it a thousand times in places of violence, a distinctive cringe into defensive posture. Instinctively he let go of her arm. Still half turned away, Kate cast him a quick, oddly defiant look. Then she turned and ran for the woods.

“Kate, stop!”

It only took six steps to catch her. Again he grabbed for her arm. He caught cloth instead, and it tore. Kate shrieked, batting his hands away. He pulled back, but it was already too late. His hand had brushed against that dark red design on her breast. It was no tattoo he’d touched.

“Let me see,” he commanded.

She tried to run again, but he grabbed her around the waist and held on. She fought like a wildcat, kicking, biting, scratching. He knew he was shaming her even more, but he couldn’t let her go until he knew for certain what it was he’d felt.

He saw. He let her go.

“That isn’t a tattoo,” he all but accused, hands clenched, chest suddenly on fire.

She stood before him, trembling and white, her hair falling out of its braid, her hand covering the expanse of breast exposed by her torn dress. Even in the dim light from the stars he could see a sheen of tears he knew she would never let fall.

“No, Harry, it is not a tattoo. Are you finished now?”

He took an instinctive step closer. She retreated. “Kate, that—” He waved an ineffectual hand at the monstrous thing. Raised, red, shiny, the perfect round image of a coat of arms. “It’s a brand!”

She tilted her head, and he saw how brittle her defiance was. It shook him. “Yes, Harry,” she said. “It is.”

“How?”

“Don’t you recognize it?” She pulled the material away so he could get a better look. He didn’t need to. He could still feel the imprint of it across the tips of his fingers. “It’s the crest for the House of Murther.”

He blinked. He shuddered, the breath leaving him. “Murther? Your husband?”

“Yes, Harry. My husband. He wanted to make sure I knew who I belonged to.”

“But
why
?”

For a moment, she just looked at him. Then, grimly, she smiled. “Because it was his right.”

Harry wasn’t sure how long he stood there, his hands clenched before him like a fighter, his chest on fire. He thought he’d been inured to evil. He thought he’d seen it all. But as he stood there, it occurred to him that the curious honey bee Lady Bea had embroidered on Kate’s chemise would have been perfectly placed to cover that brand. But there had been two bees, one on each breast.

Christ. He wanted to vomit.

“Major?” came Mudge’s voice from the front of the house. “You need to get back here now!”

Harry closed his eyes.
No more. Please, no more.

He couldn’t ignore Mudge, though. Favoring his ribs, he set off for the front of the house. He didn’t see Kate. Had she made for the woods? Could he blame her if she had? He was beginning to wonder if Schroeder hadn’t been right after all. It wasn’t logical, but the courage Kate had just shown shook his belief in her culpability. She might be outrageous. He was no longer so sure she was venal.

He trotted around the corner to the front of the house to see Kate ahead of him, making for the door. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. He didn’t know how to face her again.

“C’mon!” a shrill, young voice cried, and Harry looked up to see that a group of men crowded the front door. He couldn’t believe it. Kate’s tiger was back, bouncing up and down on his toes on the portico, and surrounded by three armed compatriots.

“We don’t have time ta waste!” The boy was punching a finger at Mudge’s chest. “Let us in!”

Kate had already seen them and was running for the front door. “Thrasher! I told you to run!”