Читать книгу Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight - Julia London, Alison DeLaine - Страница 43

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

IT WAS A BLOODY close call. James had seen Katherine’s carriage trundling toward Deal Manor and quickly turned his horse down a side road through a thicket of alarmingly sparse vegetation. It was almost certain she hadn’t spotted him.

All afternoon he waited for the opportunity to renew his proposal, to argue his case, all the while expecting every moment to see a rider approaching the castle with news of the vote.

It didn’t arrive.

And the opportunity he sought remained elusive.

The afternoon clouds burned away, and the sun shone brilliantly over the damp moors. They took Anne to the barn, sat her on a shaggy pony named Bess and walked her around the meadow. Katherine had put wildflowers in Anne’s hair, laughed freely—more freely than before?—and turned her face to the breeze. James tried to guess what Deal might have said to her that morning, whether he might have said anything that would assure James’s success.

It was impossible to tell.

They took Anne to the beach, followed by a goldfish feeding frenzy at the pond. Anne stuck her hands in the water and squealed as the small fish nibbled at her fingers. Katherine stuck her fingers in, too, and splashed water at him. He splashed back until they both looked as if they’d been standing at the bow of a ship in a storm, and he’d loved her so much in that moment he’d almost asked her again to marry him, timing be damned.

And now time was running out. If they came to an understanding tonight, they could marry in the morning—blessed be liberal Scottish law. He would waste no time consummating the union, and then if the news did arrive it would be too late. They would set out for London immediately on pretense of ending the whole business by making the marriage known, and he could pretend he’d missed the vote by a hairsbreadth before setting out for Dunscore. She would find out eventually, but by then she would be irrevocably his.

He would make sure she didn’t regret it.

As night fell, James contemplated this with a glass of brandy clenched in his fist and heat from a blazing fire in the great hall scorching his face. She’d gone upstairs to tuck Anne into bed, but soon she would return, and then he would need to finish his plan.

But Katherine would not accept him in marriage as easily as she had accepted him into her bed. Stubborn woman. Hold a pistol to her head and force her to say the vows? If it would have resulted in a binding contract, he would have tried it already.

I’ll do anything to have her. Guilt slithered through the back of his mind, but he shoved it aside. This was the only way. Other men might have tried following her like a puppy, yapping pretty words of love and devotion. Such a man would have had his hopes skewered on the end of her cutlass.

Telling her he loved her—good God. That bloody well wouldn’t work, either.

No, Katherine was like an enemy ship. She would have to be captured.

He was so consumed by his thoughts that he didn’t notice Katherine approaching until she stood next to him. He turned to her, feeling his liquor more than he’d realized. She was beautiful—his very own fantasy in the flesh, standing there in a simple blue gown with all that dark silk falling over her shoulders. God help him, he lost a part of himself every time he looked at her. She commanded his world, whether he wanted her to or not.

She held a glass half-full of wine. In the firelight, the liquid glinted the same dark pink as her most intimate flesh. “Come,” she said quietly, holding out her hand. “I have something to show you.”

His pulse leaped. He was in no mood for surprises, but he would follow her anywhere. He took her hand and she led him out of the main hall, down the main corridor, up a back staircase. They turned down another corridor, climbed narrower staircases and followed narrower hallways. Finally she pushed open an ancient wooden door, and they emerged onto Dunscore’s ramparts.

The view stole his breath. Above them, the night sky glittered with stardust. A slender crescent moon hung over the horizon to the west, where a faint blue glow was quickly fading. To the east, the shadowy ocean surged against the beach in shimmering crashes of froth.

She released his hand and went to the waist-high rampart wall, setting down her glass and laying her hands flat against the stone. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

He stared at her back. Something had changed. “Magnificent.”

“This is where I always came to think. Or sometimes, just to look at the stars.” She tipped her head back and looked up. “Sometimes I would talk to my mother and imagine she was up there somewhere, listening.”

Her mother. James’s pulse ticked hard in his throat. There was only one reason she might be telling him this. Wasn’t there?

“I have no doubt that she was,” he said, and joined her at the rampart wall. His tongue was thick with the need to ask about her visit to Lord Deal. Perhaps—God. Perhaps this was her way of turning to him now that Deal had ended things. He took a drink of brandy and swallowed his questions, keeping his eyes fixed on the sea.

“Do you ever watch the stars?” she asked him.

He didn’t give a rat’s arse about the bloody stars. Not right now. “At sea,” he told her. “On the night watch.”

“Mmm. The stars are beautiful at sea.”

Marry me, Katherine. He would have to say it sometime.

“Sometimes we watched the stars in Algiers,” she said quietly. “Mejdan’s fourth daughter had a small telescope that she would set up in the courtyard, and we would take turns viewing the stars and planets.”

Every muscle tensed. She noticed, and he felt her tense, too. “You don’t wish me to speak of that,” she said.

“You may speak of whatever you damn well please.” Sick apprehension caught him in the gut, but whatever horrors she revealed, he could withstand it.

But why now? Here?

“I declined Lord Deal’s offer of marriage,” she told him instead.

“His offer.” For a heartbeat the world froze.

“It was pure kindness,” she said quietly. “Lord Deal is a dear friend—he would do anything for Papa. For me.”

Despite their conversation earlier. James’s heart thundered in his chest. If she had accepted, he would have killed Deal with his bare hands. But then—

“You declined?” A powerful sense of victory surged through him.

“He wasn’t what I wanted.” Hope flooded him, but then she added, “Not that it wouldn’t have been...tolerable.”

“Tolerable.”

“Living with a kind man is not so awful.” She looked him straight in the eye. “Anne’s father was such a man.”

That quickly, they were back to Algiers. He tried to digest her words but couldn’t. “You describe your captor as tolerable?”

“No. I describe him as kindhearted.”

Kindhearted. James thought about the time he’d spent in Salé trying to negotiate her freedom, only to discover she’d been gifted to al-Zayar.

“Full of smiles and laughter, if not vim and vigor,” she went on quietly. Directly. Softly, with something like nostalgia in her voice. “His physicians said he had a bad heart. But he loved to play in the courtyard with the children, and he treated his dogs like royalty. No creatures were ever so pampered.”

“His dogs.”

“Spoiled. Each and every one.”

“And his slaves?”

Even in the darkness, he saw her eyes flash. “The dreadful tale of ravishment and horror you imagine is the stuff of novels.”

“Anne’s existence says it isn’t.”

Her hand flew up to slap him. He caught her arms and held it firmly. “I meant no insult by that.” Bathed in starlight, her face looked like porcelain. He felt her arm relax, and he released it.

“I need you to understand,” she said desperately, gripping his shirt. “You must understand.”

Ah, God. He framed her face, pushed his fingers into her hair. “I do. I do understand. God knows, we tried to convince al-Zayar to accept a ransom.” The futility of it stung bitterly even now. “I can only imagine how you must have prayed—”

“No—that’s not it at all. Don’t you see? Can’t you see how much better my life was with Mejdan than it would have been if I’d been ransomed and brought home?”

“Better!” He tightened his fingers in her hair, wanting the impossible: to kill a man that, according to her testimony before the committee, was already dead.

“You know bloody well the life that awaited me here. The whispers, the ostracism, the kind of man who would have offered for poor, ruined Lady Katherine.”

He forced himself to inhale. “And the alternative?”

“Studying the stars through Kisa’s telescope.” Her expression softened, and her fisted hands uncurled against his chest. “Savoring pomegranate seeds on a hot day. Trying not to laugh when Mejdan’s mother scolded us for talking too much.” She searched his face. “Please understand, James. I thought I would live there forever. It wasn’t a large household. We all lived together—Mejdan’s wives, daughters.”

Concubines.

“They were my friends. My family, even.”

“Until al-Zayar died.”

A shadow darkened her eyes.

“You grieve for him.” He caught himself before sharper words shot from his lips.

“He never mistreated me. It could have been so much worse. Would have been, if his mother hadn’t helped me that night. James, please—”

“I know. I know.” He struggled to calm himself in the face of something he couldn’t change. “I understand.”

* * *

KATHERINE COULD SEE it was a lie. Even in the near-dark, his murderous expression was clear: he wanted to raise Mejdan from the dead just for the pleasure of killing him. Perhaps it had been a mistake to entrust James with this. But if they were to be married...

Oh, God.

Perhaps this entire thing was folly. He still had not renewed his proposal. Marry me, Katherine. The words were so simple. Why had he not said them?

She needed to make him understand about Algiers. “Without Riuza’s help, I would have been trapped when Mejdan’s son took over the household, and all could have been exactly as you imagine.” James’s chest was taut beneath her hands, rising and falling with his angry breath.

“You should have gone to the consulate.”

“With Anne in my belly?”

“At least you would have been safe!”

“I was safe.”

“Rowing out with William to steal a ship from the harbor? Good God. When I think what you must have endured...” His arms came around her, and he held her tightly against him.

His furious heartbeat thudded in her ear. “Endure is relative. You know that.”

“You never should have had to endure anything,” he said against her hair. “And I intend to see that you never do again.”

Never again. She pulled back a little and tried to read his thoughts, but couldn’t. She made herself take a chance. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life seeing pity in your eyes and knowing you see me as a tragedy.”

“That’s not what I see, Katherine. Not at all.” She saw the moment he realized what she’d said. His hands came to her face. “Then you’ll marry me?” The words might have sounded like a command if not for the uncertainty coloring them.

“I will.” She barely managed the words.

His hands tightened a little on her cheeks. “Immediately. Tomorrow morning.”

It was mere hours away. Her pulse danced wildly. “I suppose that would be wise,” she said, cursing the nerves in her voice. “Under the circumstances. Do you not agree?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw, and triumph flashed in his eyes. Instead of answering, he kissed her.