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Marry me, Katherine. Oh, God.
“I got caught in a gust of wind,” she explained, removing her hood. It sounded reasonable enough. “One of those powerful blasts that comes up between buildings.”
Phil raised a brow. “Powerful enough to fling a bit of debris against your neck and leave a mark?” She came forward until their skirts touched, searched Katherine’s face, and looked Katherine right in the eye. “You’ve taken a lover, Katherine, and if it was Lord Deal I shall run you through with your very own cutlass.”
“Devil take you.” Katherine turned away and wrenched open one button on her cloak, then another. “It’s you that ought to be run through.” The looking glass proved that sure enough, there was a tiny red mark where her neck curved into her shoulder. “I must have scratched myself.”
“Your lips are swollen.”
“Nerves. I’ve been chewing on them all morning.”
“Your cheeks are red and abraded.”
“Did I not just tell you I got caught in a gust?”
“Your dress is torn.”
“It isn’t!” Katherine frowned into the reflection. Good God, it was. Right there—right above her breasts, a bit of trim had torn away and hung limply down. Warily she met Phil’s knowing eyes in the looking glass.
“Captain Warre,” Phil guessed.
Oh, God. Phil’s softening expression brought the full weight of reality bearing mercilessly down. The urge to tell Phil everything—the lovemaking, the proposal—came up hard and fast. She swallowed it whole.
Phil came up behind her and brushed a fallen lock from Katherine’s shoulder. A line creased between her delicate brows. “He didn’t hurt you...”
Katherine shook her head and thought of Mejdan. He hadn’t hurt her, either. But that was where the similarity ended.
“Quite the opposite, I suspect,” Phil said with a little smile. “But tell me—the hearing ended not two hours ago. How can you have returned from his bed so quickly?”
Katherine’s face warmed.
Phil laughed, soft and comprehending. “Ah, the carriage. I should have known. My, but he’s clever. And impatient. But I suppose there will be plenty of time to explore the joys of a bed after the wedding.”
Katherine turned from her and went to the window. “You of all people cannot possibly believe that I would marry Captain Warre.” She imagined exploring the joys of a bed with him every night as his wife, and her heart squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. No limpstaff, he.
“Katherine, don’t be a fool!” Phil cried, following. “If not him, then who? Good God, you are thinking of Lord Deal.”
She could not belong to James and still belong to herself, and one captivity in a lifetime was enough. Lord Deal was someone she could control. “The union makes sense.”
“For a woman of mature years who isn’t already in love with another man! You cannot possibly believe this will make you happy. For heaven’s sake, Katherine—” Something in the street caught her attention. “Someone’s coming to the door.” A figure in a gray woolen cloak was painstakingly making its way up the walk below. “Katherine, I think it’s Millicent!”
Katherine recognized her the moment the words left Phil’s mouth. She spun away and strode out of the dressing room with Phil in her wake. For Millie to have returned here after the way she left meant something must have gone very badly. A dozen possibilities hurtled through her mind as she hurried down the main staircase as quickly as damnable fashion would allow, leaving the topic of her folly with James behind. They had reached the main landing when Dodd led Millicent into the foyer, where she pushed her hood onto her shoulders and clutched Dodd’s arm, nearly collapsing against him.
“Millicent!” Katherine called out. She ran forward, already seeing the dark bruises covering Millicent’s face. One side of her face was puffy, giving her a grotesquely asymmetrical appearance. “Who did this?” A deep fury rose up, making her words come out like barks.
“Gavin,” Millicent breathed through a lip that was swollen and cracked.
Gavin, her brother. The physician. If he were here, she would put Gavin beyond any physician’s help. “Get two footmen to carry her upstairs,” Katherine ordered. “Quickly. Call for a doctor and ring for Mrs. Hibbard. Have her bring soup and a compress.”
“Right away, your ladyship.” Dodd hurried away, and within moments two young men from the mews rushed into the foyer. Upstairs, Katherine directed them to the room Millicent had occupied before she’d left, and by the time they laid her across it she had lost consciousness.
Immediately Katherine began pulling at Millicent’s clothes. “I will kill him.”
“We’ll do it together,” Phil said, moving in to help. There were more bruises on Millie’s arms and chest, and Katherine heard Phil breathe a prayer.
“I should have stopped her,” Katherine said.
Phil tugged at a sleeve, freeing Millie’s arm. “You know better than to think you could have, stubborn as she is.”
“I could have ordered her to stay.”
“And she would have defied you. We’re not on the ship anymore.”
And Millicent would scarce have listened to her even if they had been. But the bruises and cuts were horrible, and the blood— “Perhaps she would have been better off in Malta,” Katherine said in despair.
“Now you’re being ridiculous. Even if she was admitted to that school in disguise, it would take nothing more than a man determined to avail himself of what he thought was some fresh, male flesh to discover the truth, and then she would be out. She would have fallen into prostitution within the week.” Phil peeled away one stocking, then the other, revealing more bruises on Millie’s legs. “The bastard ought to be skinned alive and hung on a pole.”
Mrs. Hibbard whisked into the room followed by a maid who set down a tray with a teapot, soup tureen, cups and bowls. The maid left, and Mrs. Hibbard bustled to the bed. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing, this. I’ve got compresses, but little good they’ll do for all this. Lord above.” Her soft, round face was pinched and angry. “Whoever done this ought to have twice as much done to him.” She laid a compress across Millie’s black eye and another across a nasty bruise on her shoulder, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Millicent would need a compress for her entire body. “I’ll go make up some more,” Mrs. Hibbard said, shaking her head. “Let’s hope the doctor gets here right quick.”
A hole opened up in Katherine’s chest as she stared at Millicent’s battered body. “I’ll never let her out of my sight again.”
“She’ll be delighted to hear that, I’m sure. She’s a grown woman, Katherine.”
“She’s not yet twenty.” And her time aboard the Possession may have sturdied up her muscles, but she was still short, and slightly built, and more delicate than a country physician’s daughter should be.
“Which is plenty old enough to be acquainted with the ways of the world,” Phil pointed out. “She’s not as delicate as she looks, Katherine. You know that. She’s got the spirit of ten sailors.”
“Which didn’t save her from this.”
“But it will.” Phil reached for Katherine’s hand. “She’ll survive this. I know she will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#ulink_d7725606-41f0-5e52-bce1-dbb5289294e9)
HE’D FORGOTTEN THE preservative.
At home in his bedchamber, James stood with his waistcoat in one hand and the preservative—pristine and unused—in the other. What utter stupidity to have thought he could touch Katherine and maintain enough coherence to take precautions. She’d been pure intoxication from the moment he’d set eyes on her.
Hell and damnation! At this very moment, his child might be growing in her womb. Enraged, he flung the preservative across the chamber. It hit the wall with a soft thwack and fell to the floor.
And even his own stupidity didn’t keep him from growing hard—again—at the memory of being inside her.
His “solution” had been entirely, completely illusory. Rather than slaking his thirst and clearing his head, making love to her in that coach only made him want her more. He had buried himself inside her, possessed her as completely as was physically possible, and still he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted her naked. Here. On his bed, without stays and hoops and yards of fabric.
Instead, within the hour he would see her at this bloody rout Lady Effy was giving, where he would smile politely and make conversation with the very devils who dreamed of foraging inside her skirts exactly as he had. It was not to be tolerated.
He paced the length of the chamber, restless and unsated. There was a chance she hadn’t conceived. His thoughts strayed into the queasy territory of a woman’s monthly flow, and he sat on the edge of the bed. Even if she had, within weeks she would be married to Deal. He leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.
Marry me, Katherine. The whisper of his own words taunted him.
Good God—what had he been thinking? The answer, of course, was that he hadn’t been. Thinking. He’d been rutting like a stallion in heat. Katherine was everything he didn’t want in a wife. She was combative where he wanted peaceful, commanding where he wanted submissive, fiery where he wanted mild.
He got up and snatched the preservative off the floor and tossed it into the drawer in his dressing table. He should be thanking every bloody star in the sky that she’d rejected his reckless proposal.
In the looking glass, the man who had so blithely anticipated resolution before mocked him now. You’ll have a high time lying awake nights while Lord Deal tries to sink his half-wilted cock into that tight, wet heat. He slammed the drawer shut and glared at himself. The staff in his breeches wasn’t the only idiot in this bedchamber.
Was that it, then? A hasty farewell as he buttoned his breeches and stepped out of her coach two streets away to avoid being seen? Sod it all, he’d made a bloody mess of things. He needed to talk to her.
About what? his reflection sneered. Arranging another tryst before she becomes Lady Deal?
About...them. Their relationship. The debt. Yes—the debt! He pushed away from the dressing table and turned, shoving his hands through his hair. That bloody, goddamned debt that he’d failed to repay. The one she said she’d forgiven him for. The one, in fact, she didn’t truly believe he owed—that much had been there in her eyes this morning when the truth behind his rescue had emerged.
There was a knock on his door—Bates’s knock—and he let his hands fall. “Come in.”
The door opened, and Bates handed him a small, sealed note. “This just arrived, your lordship.”
“Thank you.” He ripped open the seal and read Philomena’s words. Tossing the note aside, he rang for his valet.
* * *
AN HOUR AFTER sunset, Katherine sat by Millicent’s window in the fading light with Anne playing cat’s cradle on her lap with a length of yarn. Millicent lay with her black-and-blue face stark against the white pillows and a dark prognosis. The doctor had done what he could—which was bloody little—but speculated that she might have sustained internal injuries and that only time would tell. Phil had sent their regrets to Lady Effy, and all that was left was to wait.
William paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, while Miss Bunsby dabbed Millie’s forehead with a damp cloth and cast him frequent looks of disgust. That alone should have been reason enough to dismiss her—to actually dismiss her, this time.
“Doctors,” William muttered, jabbing at the fire with an iron. “Never have an answer about anything.”
Anne leaned back against Katherine with a sigh. “Maybe Millie will feel better if Mr. Bogles sleeps with her.”
Katherine stroked her hair and pulled on the yarn to help Anne thread it through her fingers. “He might walk on her, sweetling. That wouldn’t feel good at all.”
“You’re right, Mama.” Anne let her hands fall into her lap, and the yarn went limp. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of bitter herbs wafting from fresh compresses Mrs. Hibbard had brought up. “If I get a bruise, I don’t want any compress.”
Katherine touched her nose. “If you get a bruise, I’ll make sure Mrs. Hibbard makes you an extra big compress to make it go away that much faster.”
Anne made a face and a noise and wiggled on Katherine’s lap just as Dodd appeared in the doorway. “Lady Ramsey is downstairs, your ladyship.”
“Send her upstairs,” Katherine told him.
Moments later she and Phil met Honoria in the adjoining dressing room. She swept into the room wringing her hands. “Katherine, I had no idea— I didn’t mean to intrude! Is she going to be all right?” Upon hearing what the doctor had said, she gasped. “Poor, poor thing! I do hope she pulls through quickly. I never would have come if I’d known, except that I had to come, because Katherine—” she gripped Katherine’s arm “—you didn’t tell me we are to be sisters.”
Phil’s brows rose. “Sisters!”
“I was out shopping for ribbons when I saw Lady Ponsby, who said she had it on good authority from her husband after this morning’s hearing that it was so. I was already obliged to drink tea this evening with Lady Kirby and Lady West—the most excruciating thing imaginable—and I wasn’t able to confirm until now! Your house was closer than James’s, so I came here straightaway.”
Things had gone utterly out of control. “Imbeciles! Have the rumormongers nothing better to do than spread lies?”
“In London?” Phil laughed. “Ha! But I am sorry, dear,” she said, taking Honoria’s arm, “unfortunately, the rumor is false.”
“La, I was afraid of that! Forgive me for being indelicate with your friend in such grave danger, but when is my brother going to see reason and ask for Katherine’s hand?”
The sound of Dodd’s scolding carried in from the hallway. “Your lordship, I beg you, you absolutely must not—”
As if on cue, James stalked into the room—heedless, as always, of what he must or must not do. “How is she?” he demanded.
“Lord Croston, your ladyship,” Dodd announced disapprovingly from the doorway.
Yes, she could see that plain enough. “At death’s door,” she told him. In a single heartbeat everything they’d done in the carriage flowed over her like hot water in a bath. Her pulse pounded in her throat. “Apparently her elder brother wasn’t as keen to welcome her home as he might have been. We know nothing more. She arrived at the door barely able to stand— How she made it all the way here, I don’t know.”
With a quiet oath, James crossed the dressing room to the bedchamber and looked in. “What does the doctor say?”
“Very little,” William said with barely concealed disdain as James entered the chamber. “They may be superficial bruises, or they may be life-threatening. Naturally, he cannot tell.”
Katherine scowled at Phil. “I see you’ve occupied yourself with pen and paper.”
Phil merely shrugged. “No need to thank me, dearest. I was already writing to India—it was nothing to dash off one more.”
“Such an awful tragedy,” Honoria said. “Absolutely terrible. I shall go to Lady Effy’s and quell the inevitable rumors that will arise with both you and James absent.”
* * *
IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the night when Katherine opened her eyes to find that she had dozed off on the daybed in Millicent’s dressing room. A figure stood facing the fireplace.
James.
She pushed herself up, and he turned. “William and Philomena are sitting with her,” he said. “She’s still sleeping. There’s been no change.” His coat lay over the back of a chair, and he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves to his elbows the way he used to do aboard the Possession.
She fought her way out of the sleep she hadn’t meant to fall into. Memories of the carriage ride exploded into her mind before she could stop them—his mouth on her lips, his hands on her breasts, his body buried in hers. The hasty buttoning, fastening and tucking as the carriage rolled to a stop.
He brought her a glass of water and she took it from him, careful not to touch his fingers. “You needn’t have stayed,” she said, letting a sip of cool water slide across her tongue.
“True enough.” The clock on the mantel tick-tick-ticked. In the fireplace, logs cracked and snapped.
He was so beautiful it was all she could do not to stare. And the more she tried not to think of their lovemaking, the more the memory grew, pulsing and breathing with a life of its own. “There’s nothing more to be done,” she told him. “You’re free to leave if—”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Very well.” Her fingers remembered the hard ridge of his jaw, the solid muscles on his torso rippling beneath his shirt.
His eyes lighted on her, smoldering with what they’d done together. “Was there bad blood between Millicent and her brother before she went to the Continent?” he asked.
“She didn’t like him, but that was all I ever knew.” Katherine stood and paced a few feet away, but the room was too small to offer the distance she needed. “When I met her in Venice she would have done almost anything to join my crew. Three years later, she was determined to stay in Malta and attend surgical school. When she learned we’d sailed from Malta while she slept, I had to order an extra watch for three days and nights for fear she would go over the rail with an empty cask and try to make it back.”
“A fool’s errand that would have left her dead.”
“She wanted to attend that surgical school so badly.”
“Another fool’s errand. Did you learn what made her so desperate to join you at the first?”
Katherine made a noise. “The father of the children she’d been hired to care for. Apparently he didn’t believe her duties should end once the children went to bed. I still don’t know if she was running from a threat or a fait accompli.”
