Читать книгу Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1 - Louise Allen, Christine Merrill - Страница 42

Katherine knew she should move away from those gentling hands, break contact with those expressive eyes. Nicholas must not know how she felt or she was certain he would feel honour bound to their strange marriage.

She broke eye contact with an effort that left her breathless and sat back in her seat, releasing his hands as she did so. ‘They will be so happy to see you again,’ she said firmly with a bright smile. The feel of it on her lips reminded her of the determined smile she used to use to assure her younger brother that he had nothing to fear from a visit to the tooth-puller. Inside she had an unpleasant feeling that it was just as false a hope that Nick’s homecoming would be painless.

Nick raised one brow quizzically; he was obviously not convinced either. ‘I am putting all my reliance upon my father being so charmed by my beautiful wife that he forgets my numerous sins.’

Katherine blushed. She was not beautiful, she knew that. Her chin was too pointed, her eyes too big, her hair was too dark to be truly fashionable and her manner far too independent and forthright to appeal to an elderly patriarch. That is, if he managed to look beyond the staggering debt she had brought to the marriage.

‘There is no point in flattering me,’ she said briskly. ‘I do not believe you, and in any case your father is going to have far too much on his mind to notice anything about me except the manifest disadvantages of the situation.’

Nick settled back against the battered squabs and regarded her seriously. ‘I have told you before that you are beautiful. Why do you not believe me?’

‘You told me I resemble a cat,’ she pointed out. ‘And I know I am not in the slightest in the fashionable mode; I am far too used to having my own way …’

‘Surely not,’ Nick interrupted. ‘Your life recently, if I may say so, appears to have consisted of anything but self-will and indulgence. You have no close friends that I am aware of, no money, no life of your own. You have been an unpaid housekeeper for years and somehow you seem to have remained meek and dutiful in the face of your brother’s outrageously selfish behaviour. If that is having your own way, then our definitions of it must be very different.’

‘I am too managing, then,’ she amended, trying not to let him see how his ruthless description of her life affected her.

‘A most useful attribute in a wife. I am sure my father will entirely approve of it.’

‘Will that be before he learns of my debts and the annulment, or afterwards?’

‘There is no need to worry about the debt, I told you. And we agreed to leave the annulment for one month after we arrive in Northumberland, did we not?’

‘But we must tell your family,’ Katherine protested.

‘Why?’ he asked, infuriatingly bland.

‘Because … because they will be very shocked to learn of it if they have begun by accepting me as your wife. And will they not expect us to … to share a bedchamber? I mean …’ The colour was rising in her cheeks again, she realised, furious with herself.

‘That is another thing you need not worry about.’ Nick’s smile was obviously intended to reassure; all it did was infuriate her.

‘How can I not worry?’ she demanded. ‘I would be an idiot not to worry about things.’

Her temper appeared to amuse Nick. ‘Now you are a married lady, you should surrender all your worries to your husband,’ he remarked, obviously intent on provoking her.

Katherine directed a smouldering look at him. The temptation to retort was strong, but she could sense his enjoyment at sparring with her. Self-preservation told her that the less pleasure he found in her company, the safer her feelings for him would be.

‘Very well, Nicholas,’ she said meekly, folding her hands demurely in her lap.

Unfortunately this uncharacteristic behaviour produced the opposite effect to the one she wanted. Nicholas roared with laughter and leaned forward to pinch her chin affectionately. ‘Do you know what you look like now?’ he demanded. ‘The kitchen cat with her eyes on a chump chop, just waiting until Cook is out of the kitchen.’ The shift in position brought him closer to the window. ‘It has started to rain, I had better let Jenny back inside and take a turn with the reins. Will you pull the check strong?’

Torn between relief at not being alone with Nick any longer, and anxiety about the two men becoming drenched up on the exposed box, Katherine greeted Jenny somewhat distractedly.

‘Did you enjoy the fresh air?’ she asked as the maid shook the first raindrops off her cloak and draped it over the seat beside her to dry. ‘I wish I could ride outside, but I fear it is not even worth suggesting that to Nicholas.’

‘It is good to be outside,’ Jenny commented, ‘but, my goodness, that box seat is hard, I declare that my backside is quite benumbed.’

‘Jenny! What a thing to say. You should have asked John to stop and come inside much earlier.’

‘I wanted to give you a good chance to talk to Mr Lydgate,’ Jenny said, shrugging off the reproof. ‘Did it help? Has he confided in you?’

‘Not a great deal. He told me a little about his father—who is somewhat elderly—and his younger brother. His father is a farmer, I gather.’

‘A prosperous one by all accounts. The master didn’t get that way of speaking or those manners at the plough’s tail or the village dame school.’

Katherine blinked, then decided to ignore Jenny’s turn of phrase. She had never once in Katherine’s hearing referred to Philip as ‘the master', only as ‘Mr Philip'.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘He is probably a prosperous squire, well able to give his sons a tutor and send them to university.’

‘So you’ve come to an understanding, then? There won’t be any more talk of ending the marriage?’ Jenny asked brightly.

‘No, of course not! Whatever are you thinking of—naturally we must have the marriage annulled.’

‘Despite the way you feel about him?’

Katherine met Jenny’s shrewd eyes and struggled to keep the truth out of her own. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded. ‘Naturally I admire Mr Lydgate’s courage and his sense of honour in helping me. And naturally I cannot impose upon his good will a moment longer than is necessary.’

‘I mean you are in love with him,’ Jenny retorted, presuming ruthlessly on years of intimacy. She watched Katherine struggle wordlessly for a crushing phrase to contradict her. ‘I knew it, the way you look at him—or half the time don’t look. What does he feel about it?’

‘Nothing at all! Really, Jenny, you quite mistake the matter. Mr Lydgate’s feelings are simply those of a chivalrous gentleman attempting to help a lady in a difficult situation. Now, please, stop trying to put me to the blush.’ So Jenny had already seen something, seen it before she herself had acknowledged how she felt about Nicholas. She could only trust that no one else was so perceptive.

They made good time, despite the rain that afternoon. The next night, as Nick helped her down from the carriage, his news released both a sigh of relief from her lips and a cold sinking in her stomach at the thought of the confrontation to come.

‘We have only a short drive tomorrow—an hour at most. I thought you would prefer to arrive rested and in daylight.’

He appeared to have taken her strictures about the extravagance of the York inn to heart, for since then their stopping places had been humble, although clean and well kept. This last was no exception; it sat sturdy and ancient in a fold of the hill beyond the small town of Marlowe Beck. They had pressed on past the fine Duke’s Arms in the main square and, despite her earlier protestations about money, Katherine had watched it go with some regret. Although too well bred to utter the words, her anatomy was suffering as much as Jenny’s was from the long hours sitting, and the thought of a fine goose feather bed and a hot bath was deeply tempting.

But thoughts of the smart inn vanished as John helped her down from the coach. The evening sun was setting behind the hills, sending long shadows over the rolling green of the fields and making dark mysteries of the endless stone walls and the occasional copse of twisted trees.

Nick had vanished into the inn and emerged again with the landlord, who had a beaming smile on his face. Katherine caught a snatch of the man’s words, but, what with the breeze blowing them away and his unfamiliar accent, she could not catch the whole sentence.

‘… back parlour, Mr Nick, and no fear … anyone will … big house. It’s a great day, that’s for sure.’

Nick ushered them all firmly through into the room the innkeeper indicated and opened a door in the panelling at the rear. Katherine glimpsed the foot of a narrow flight of stairs. ‘Up there are the rooms, choose whichever you wish for yourself and Jenny.’

‘You sound as though you know this place,’ she observed, only to interrupted by a hearty chuckle from the inn keeper.

‘That he does, hinny, that he … I mean to say, ma’am, we remember Mr Nick from years back. When he was just a lad,’ he added hastily with a glance at Nick. ‘I’ll just take your bags up, I expect you ladies would prefer the back room, it being quieter, like.’

‘Hinny?’

‘You are lucky he didn’t call you hen or flower.’ Nick smiled, suddenly looking five years younger. ‘It’s good to hear the accent again.’

The old inn was like a haven before a storm, Katherine thought two hours later as she curled into the corner of the settle in front of the fire after dinner.

Nick and John were playing cards with an ancient pack Nick had somehow known to find on the mantelshelf and Jenny was leaning over John’s shoulder, egging him on to wild bets with the broken pieces of spill they were using for gaming counters.

From the public taproom across the hall came the sound of a fiddle and an instrument the like of which Katherine had never heard.

The windows were snug behind curtains apparently made from a cast-off chintz gown and the fire flickered and glowed, casting hot light over the flagged floor and gleaming off the old polished oak of settles and tables.

Candles cast more intimate pools of light on the hands of the card players and made strange masks of their faces. Under-lit, John’s double chin was exaggerated, Jenny’s brown hair gave off red glints and Nick’s face was unguarded as he fanned the cards in his hand, his head slightly cocked, his underlip just caught by sharp white teeth as he considered his bet.

‘I will meet you and raise you ten.’

Suddenly she saw the young man of six years ago, straightforward, untried, proud and hot at hand. He must have sat here on many an evening with friends, perhaps with the sons of local farmers and squires, learning to keep their faces straight whether they held good hands or bad, flirting with the barmaids, boasting of their horses. Her mouth curved in an unconscious smile.

John folded with a groan, tossing his hand on the table. ‘You’re bringing me no luck at all,’ he chided Jenny. ‘Go and jinx the master’s hand, why don’t you?’

Nick laughed and reached out long fingers to gather up the pile of spills. His eyes met Katherine’s and suddenly he was still. The smile faded from his lips and his shadowed eyes seemed to speak straight to hers. The room went quiet, so quiet that the crackle and spit of the fire and the tic-toc of the battered mantel clock sounded louder than the music from across the way.

‘You can’t afford to lose any more, John,’ Jenny said brightly. ‘I want to hear the music—they might be dancing.’

‘They will be,’ Nick told her, scooping up the cards and tapping them back into one pack. ‘Why don’t you go on and tell me what you think of the Northumberland pipes?’

Jenny needed no further urging. She tugged John grumbling out of his chair and out of the room. The volume of the music swelled, diminished and swelled again, marking their progress through the doors into the tap.

Katherine swallowed. She knew perfectly well what Jenny was up to, wretched chit. She had some romantic idea of throwing her mistress together with ‘the master’ and confounding all talk of annulment.

Nick got up lazily and wandered over to replace the cards where he had found them and toss the handful of spill fragments on to the fire. He stood gazing into the firelight, one foot up on the high fender seat, his forearm resting on his bent knee.

Katherine was so jumpy she felt sure she could feel the nerves crawling under her skin. If only he would say something. She had a careful store of unexceptional subjects for conversation: how much later the season was up here, how much smaller the lambs were than in the south, how surprised she was not to find great mountains, how far were they from the sea?

Nick straightened up and came to sit beside her on the settle, propping his feet up on the fender and falling into a relaxed slump that somehow managed to look elegant. Still he did not speak. Katherine clamped her teeth firmly together to prevent herself beginning to babble of nothings.

‘You look very comfortable.’ His remark was so sudden she almost jumped.

‘Doubtless you are about to make a cat-comparison,’ she grumbled, attempting to inject a note of humour.

‘Well, you are not quite purring, Kat. What would it take to make you purr, I wonder?’

You could listen only to the teasing, she realised, or you could listen to the sensual undercurrent in his voice. ‘Oh, cream and a feather cushion and a mouse to catch. This is a very comfortable room.’

‘It is, is it not?’ He seemed pleased with her appreciation. ‘I have always thought so. What do you like about it, Kat?’

She considered, head on one side in thought. ‘I like the entire inn. I like its size—it is so snug and homely. I love the way it sits here in the shelter of the hill, half-hidden, its back protected from the wind. I like the faded old fabrics and the deep glow on the furniture.’ She thought some more, letting the comfort and security of the old house sink into her bones. ‘Yes, homely. Perhaps I can find somewhere like this to live.’

‘Ah.’ Nick seemed momentarily disconcerted and Katherine had a qualm that she had been tactless. What if his home was like the bleak foursquare farmhouses and manors they had passed so frequently? ‘You would not prefer something just a little larger?’

‘Well, perhaps just a little.’ Somehow his arm had crept around her shoulders and she was curled more against his side than the settle cushions. How had that happened?

‘Kat.’

‘Hmm?’ She looked up, having to tilt her head back against his shoulder to do so, and his mouth found hers.

This was not the desperate last kiss of a condemned man, nor was it the first sensuous celebration of a reprieved one. This was an assured, deliberate claiming, a determined attempt at seduction by a man who appeared to have no doubt he would succeed.

He held her, not brutally but firmly, so that she could not escape without fighting; that, somehow, did not seem to be an option. He held her with those long, strong fingers while his mouth systematically removed every trace of resistance.

Her own lips had no choice but to part under the pressure of his, her own tongue seemed to know just how to meet the challenge of his as it touched, flickered, tasted, then plunged and took quite ruthlessly.

She was bent back over one imprisoning arm, her breasts crushed achingly against his chest and suddenly he left her mouth and began to nibble the length of her throat, down the delicate, tender curves, down to where the pulse raged in the angle of her collarbone.

Katherine moaned, part in protest that he had abandoned her mouth, part in exquisite agony at the havoc he was wreaking now with his teeth and lips.

She was so hot, so … needing. She wanted him to touch her everywhere and did not know quite why. Her body arched against him, untutored, innocently demanding. He growled deep in his throat in response and his mouth was suddenly on the curve of her breast, impatiently pushing aside the modesty of the fichu she had tucked in around her shoulders. She moaned, whimpered.

‘Purr for me, my Kat.’ His voice was husky, muffled against the taut swell of her breast. And then he had swung her up into his arms. It was several confused, giddy moments before she realised he had one foot on the bottom step of the stairs to the bedrooms.

Where did the strength to resist come from? Or was it simply common sense reasserting itself the moment his drugging mouth left her hot skin?

‘No! Nick, put me down!’

He paused, still halfway through the doorway, then bent to find her mouth.

‘No!’ Katherine twisted her head away and instantly he set her on her feet. She found herself standing on the second step, high enough to meet him eye to eye. ‘Nick, what do you think you are doing?’

‘Making love to my wife.’ He was breathing hard, but somehow he kept his voice light.

‘But you cannot! We will never get an annulment if you do—what are you thinking of?’

He raised one hand and twisted an errant lock of her hair between his fingers. ‘Do you want an annulment so badly?’

‘Of course I do!’ Katherine stared at him as though he had lost his senses. ‘You cannot want to be tied to this sham of a marriage any more than I do.’

‘You were willing to be a true wife to me in Newgate.’ His voice was still light and in the gloom she could not read his face.

‘But we had a bargain and I could not break that, it would have been dishonest,’ Katherine protested. ‘And anyway, you were—’ She broke off, appalled at where that train of thought was leading her.

‘Going to be hanged, so that would have drawn a convenient line under the whole messy business?’ Now he sounded angry.

How dare he? she thought, I did not start this. ‘That is not what I meant and you know it. You promised me an annulment in a month’s time. What you were about to do would have made that impossible.’

‘I promised you that we would get an annulment if you wanted one. I thought perhaps that after tonight you might not want that.’

‘Oh! You arrogant …’ Katherine fought for words. ‘You thought you would seduce me, did you? I am sure you would succeed with many women—after all, you appear to be very good at it, doubtless as the result of much practice.’

‘And why would I want to seduce you?’ He shifted slightly so the light from the room struck his face. His voice was dangerously calm, but his eyes were hard with anger.

‘Other than simple carnal desire? Presumably you would feel humiliated by having to tell your family that your marriage was about to be dissolved.’

‘More humiliated than living with the thought that I had seduced an unwilling woman? I thought we understood each other, Kat. It appears I was quite out.’ He stepped back from the stairs and took the edge of the door in one hand. Kat found her eyes unable to leave the long finger where the mark of his signet ring still showed white against the tanned skin. On her own hand it seemed to burn with its own heat. ‘I suggest you go to bed before we start hurling the fire irons at each other like a real married couple.’

He reached out and picked up a chamber stick from the side table. ‘Here, madam wife, a candle to light you to bed. I wish you a goodnight. It will doubtless be better than the one I anticipate.’