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Was this what her natural mother had felt for her father, this desperation?
Katherine had wanted to be kissed, and if that desire was to be fulfilled, how else might it be done if not like this? He would hardly choose to marry her. There was a world between them, not simply miles. If she wanted kisses from him, they would have to be kisses like this.
She did not try to pull either her arm free, or her bonnet from his hand, she felt calm suddenly. “Give me back my bonnet, Your Grace. Please?”
“Say that you wished for it?” There was a cold hard look back in his eyes.
“No.”
“Say it.”
When she did not, his grip firmed on her arm, though it was not painful. “Say it!”
His voice rang with determination.
“No, John.”
His hand suddenly left her arm and then it was back at her nape bracing her neck and holding her firm as he pulled her mouth to his.
His kiss was a hard pressure against her lips. She had not imagined kissing to be like this. Her heart raced, and her fingers clawed into the muscle of his arms to steady herself. She felt faint and hot and liquid-boned.
It was brief, barely an instant long, but when he pulled away his pale eyes shone like glass with triumph. “You wished for it,” he whispered over her lips. “Say it.”
“Yes,” she answered, knowing she turned crimson as she did so. She felt the provincial idiot she was; gauche, weak and base-born.
He said nothing, his eyes boring deep into her soul.
What must he think of her?
“Here,” he said, letting go of her nape and her bonnet at the same moment. “I’ll give you a lift home.”
She felt disorientated and dizzy. She shook her bonnet, trying to get it to recover its shape, while she also tried to recall who and where she was.
Her hands trembled as she tied the ribbons and her legs felt weak, too weak to walk home.
She hadn’t looked at him since he’d let her take her bonnet. She looked at him now and saw questions in his eyes as he lifted his hand to take hers.
She accepted it, to climb up into his curricle, and said nothing. He climbed up beside her once she had slid across the seat.
Her throat was dry.
He released the brake and flicked the reins, setting his fashionable, expensive horses into a trot.
She hated herself.
His gaze turned to her.
She looked at him.
“I’m sorry, Katherine, I should not have kissed you, no matter that you wished for it.”
She felt like crying. Had he not even really wished to do it? Had he only done it because he’d realised he could?
A dark humour suddenly shone in his eyes once more. “But, then again, maybe I am not really sorry.” He looked back at the road.
“You have changed,” she answered, staring at him, not understanding him at all, and yet loving him.
His eyes turned back to her, a look of granite in them. “Life has changed me, Katherine. But you are not changed. Perhaps you can make me remember who I was?”
What did she say to that? What did she say to this stranger?
He looked back at the road ahead and flicked the reins again.
She gripped the side of his curricle and hung on.
Chapter Four (#ucb57aeeb-b2b1-5405-a5a6-1667894ed489)
John steered his chestnut thoroughbreds through the gates of the courtyard leading into the stables.
His blood was still boiling with a mix of desire and anger.
He had made Katherine admit she had wanted to kiss him but, nevertheless, she’d accused him of arrogance and being changed.
She was right, of course.
He had not spoken to her for the rest of the drive as bitter thoughts had bounced about his head. It had been wrong to kiss her. But he did not regret it. She made him remember the past, she made him remember what it was like to be warm-blooded and feel. He wanted to feel with her.
His heart thumped as he set the brake. God, he felt better even for having had that one kiss. It had been the way she’d pressed so innocently against him, with tenderness, not with a grabbing, greedy lust. She could wash his soul clean; that was how he felt.
A weight had lifted from his shoulders when he dropped to the ground.
His grooms rushed forwards to free the horses and put away the carriage.
John strode towards the servants’ entrance to the house. He had something he ought to do. He had put it off long enough.
The flagstone-floored hall was busy with numerous maids and footmen scurrying through it. The house bells lined one wall of the passage, the side the women occupied, while the men walked along the opposite side.
They carried a variety of items: linen, copper pans, silver, candles, coal scuttles…
One of the young maids jumped when she saw him and dropped an armful of linen. When she bent to pick it up, others began noticing his presence. It swept along the hall like a wave as they dropped into curtsies or bowed. He was invading their territory and making them feel uncomfortable – the arrogant duke.
Well he had not been arrogant abroad, he had laboured with his men in Egypt and he would go wherever he wished in his own home.
He carried on.
“Your Grace?” Finch appeared from a doorway a little ahead of John and bowed.
“Is Wareham somewhere, Finch?” John heard the maids and footmen shifting back into movement behind him.
“He is in his rooms I believe, Your Grace.”
“Then send for him. Have him come to his office. I shall wait there.”
“Your Grace,” Finch bowed again then disappeared.
The estate manager’s office was at the end of the hall, away from the main thoroughfare.
The door was shut and when John tried the handle, he discovered it locked.
“Does someone have the key?” he asked, looking back along the busy hall.
One of the footmen stopped and bowed. “Mr Wareham keeps it on his person, Your Grace, but there’s a copy of every key in Mrs East’s office. Shall I fetch it?”
“Please, do.”
The young footman bowed again and then rushed off to the housekeeper’s room. A moment later he was running back with the key.
John took it and thanked him, remembering that his grandfather had never said thank you to a soul. John felt the tug of war inside him pull. This was an instant of the old John, his mother’s child, but these instants were getting rarer. He had changed, and he was changing even more.
When John unlocked the door, he felt a cold shiver grip him.
This was another room brimful of ill memories. The whitewashed walls and flagstone floor made it feel cold despite the sun pouring through the windows on two sides, which looked out across the park.
Shelves full of ledgers lined the other walls, while the middle of the room was dominated by Wareham’s large oak desk.
John had spent numerous hours sitting at it as a child, learning the art of bookkeeping.
He crossed to the shelves and scanned the dates on the spines of the ledgers. Wareham began a new one each year and recorded every expenditure and income for the house and the tenancies in these books.
Finding the current year’s, John slid it off the shelf and carried it to the desk.
He sat and opened the broad record book.
Columns of transactions ran down each page, all totalled at the bottom.
His memories turned to his childhood, when he’d sat here beside Wareham scanning these books. The old Duke had schooled John to manage the estates from the age of thirteen. John had spent hours studying such things, to learn how to achieve profit, when to take risks and when to be prudent. Wareham had been the man who’d explained it all.
If Wareham is fleecing me, he’s fleeced the old man. What did that mean?
The old Duke had trusted Wareham implicitly; he was one of few the old man had. Wareham had been here years; like many of his grandfather’s staff. People who’d earned his trust had been kept. If Phillip had not raised this situation, John would never have considered doubting Wareham.
John’s index finger followed lines of figures on the first page. There was nothing abnormal listed, no unusual purchases or amounts.
Remembering the date of the loan Phillip had queried, John rose to find last year’s ledger.
He pulled it from the shelf and then, at the desk, began flicking through the pages, searching for the date.
There were no unexpected sums. Nothing was recorded which would suggest the reason for giving out a loan.
“Your Grace?”
John looked up.
Wareham was standing in the doorway, his fingers on the handle of the open door.
John smiled the smile he’d taught himself in London in the last few weeks, the one which screened out all other expression, his grandfather’s smile, and straightened but did not stand.
There was an insolent, angry glint in Wareham’s light blue-grey eyes. He did not defer. He neither bowed nor even nodded his head. It had been the same on John’s arrival.
The old man’s monster roared to life as John waited, imparting the cold condemning glare he had also learned from his grandfather. Silence stretched across the room while Wareham stared back.
“Your Grace.” Wareham finally allowed, nodding slightly and showing more defiance than deference.
The bastard.What is this?
John wished to make him do it over, but that would be churlish. It was far better to let it pass. Wareham must surely realise his days were numbered if he continued this. He must know John would not be lenient or soft. He ought to know the old man had drilled this detachment into John. Sentimentality had been thrashed out of him as a child, and Wareham had watched.
“Is there something I may help you with?” Wareham closed the door, his whole demeanour challenging John’s presence in the room.
John felt anger burn deep. He was entirely his grandfather’s monster now.
“Take a seat.” John deliberately indicated the chair on the far side, refusing to vacate Wareham’s. John owned this house, this office and the money passing through these ledgers – let Wareham remember that.
When Wareham sat, John held every muscle in his face steady. Thank God he’d learned how easily read he’d been in town and mastered that. Now he expressed only a mask of indifference.
“I would have thought, if Your Grace wished to view the ledgers, you would have asked me to bring them to you?” Wareham’s tone was tipped with steel.
You? It was an unforgivable insult not to use John’s title. You!
“Who owns the estates you manage, Wareham?” John felt as though a sandstorm had swept over him, his vision blurred and his skin prickled with anger.
“You do, Your Grace.”
Even when Wareham did use John’s title, he made it offensive.
“And please tell me then, Wareham, therefore, who owns this office and these ledgers?”
The man’s eyes momentarily showed a questioning thought, but then he stated, “Your Grace,” the challenge slipping from his voice.
“And pray, who employs you?”
“Your Grace.” There was darkness at the heart of Wareham’s eyes. A darkness which said this would not be the last of this conversation.
John smiled his grandfather’s vicious smile. “We have that straight then. Let us move on.”
John did not mention the loan after that minor mutiny. He did not wish to give Wareham any chance to cover his tracks.
“I have decided to review every aspect of my estate. I shall take these accounts now to help me do so and I wish to see all the supporting receipts and invoices. You may begin a new ledger.”
