A Stranger at Castonbury

by Amanda McCabe

  Yes—this was what she had longed for, the sensation of every rational thought flying out of her and falling down into pure, burning need. Just as Jamie had always made her do.

  His hand slid down her back as he deepened the kiss, and the shawl he had wrapped around her fell away from her shoulders. The night air washed over her, but she only felt it for an instant before it was replaced by the heat of his touch.

  His hands slid under the curve of her hips and he lifted her up high against his body. He swung her around until she was braced against the low marble banister that ran around the folly. She clasped her knees to either side of his lean hips and arched into his body.

  His lips slid over her cheek and down her neck as she arched her head back, his tongue swirling lightly in the hollow at the base of her neck where her pulse pounded out a frantic beat. It had always felt like this when he touched her, as if something dark and secret deep inside of her reached out to the darkness in him.

  She felt his palm slide up from her waist to lightly cup her breast, stroking it through her thin gown.

  ‘Blast it all, Catalina,’ he growled. ‘I need—need...’

  ‘I know,’ she gasped as his touch slid over her. She twined her fingers in his hair and drew his kiss back to the soft curve of her neck. She trembled as his warm breath washed over her skin and cried out when his hand closed hard over her breast.

  ‘I don’t want to still need you like this,’ he said roughly.

  ‘I don’t want to need you either. I worked so very hard to forget you.’ To forget what he had done.

  ‘Did you forget me?’

  Catalina shook her head. She closed her eyes tightly, shutting out the rest of the world so she could revel in the bright pleasure of knowing his touch again. ‘I never could.’

  ‘I never forgot you either. Never, Catalina.’

  He tugged down her light silk bodice and chemise, baring her breast to the moonlight. Catalina bit back a sob as he rubbed the roughened pad of his thumb over her nipple. It hardened and ached under his caress.

  ‘You’re still so beautiful,’ he said. She opened her eyes to watch, mesmerised, as he bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth, his tongue swirling around it lightly until she couldn’t breathe. Her legs tightened around his waist and she pulled him closer into the curve of her body.

  He drew her deeper into the hot wetness of his mouth, biting down lightly and then soothing it with the edge of his tongue. She heard the mingling of their breath, harsh and uneven, the swirl of the wind around the marble walls, the lapping of the water from the lake along the shore. But none of it mattered. Only Jamie, his mouth, his hands, his body against hers. Just him.

  His hand traced along her bent leg until he caught the hem of her skirt in his fist. He drew it up and up, over her bare skin until he traced the soft curve just where her hip met her thigh. Catalina was suddenly glad there hadn’t been time to put her stockings back on.

  Then she felt his fingers move even lower. He nudged her thighs wider and traced his thumb along her damp folds. She cried out his name as he slid his touch inside her and pressed deep.

  ‘Jamie,’ she sobbed, and his open mouth came over hers to catch her words.

  She reached out for him desperately, her hand flattening over his chest where she felt the pounding of his heart. She slid her touch down, down, over his flat stomach, the sharp angle of his hip. At last she covered that hardness in his breeches and closed her fingers around him in the way she remembered he liked so much.

  He groaned deeply as she moved her hand down and up again, harder, faster.

  ‘Are you trying to kill me?’ he said.

  Catalina laughed and wrapped her legs even tighter around him. ‘Do you not like that now? You certainly used to.’

  ‘I like it too well. That’s the problem.’ Jamie’s hand slid away from her, slowly trailing along her leg as if he couldn’t quite let her go. But he gently lowered her to her feet and her hand fell away from him. He braced his palms to the marble railing on either side of her, not touching her. But she could feel him shaking just as she was.

  On trembling legs, Catalina moved away from him and sat down on one of the stone benches that lined the folly. She braced her palms on her legs and dragged in a shuddering breath.

  ‘I should go back soon,’ she said. ‘It grows very late.’

  Jamie nodded brusquely. He sat down beside her, close but not touching, as the darkness closed in around them again.

  ‘I am sorry, Catalina,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask you to meet me here so I could grab you like that.’

  Catalina laughed. ‘Obviously I did not mind it so much.’

  Jamie laughed too, and leaned his head back against the wall as he stared up into the dome of the folly. ‘Neither did I. That has not changed between us.’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s just everything else that has changed.’

  He was quiet for a long moment. ‘And some things will never change.’

  Like his family? His duty? ‘Why did you ask me to meet you here, Jamie?’ she asked.

  ‘Only this,’ he said. ‘To tell you that you were right.’

  Puzzled, Catalina examined his expressionless face in the shadows. ‘Right about what?’

  ‘About Spain, the Bourbons.’

  Catalina went very still and stared at him in the moonlight. She remembered their old quarrels, the memory of what had happened to her country under the iron fist of King Ferdinand. How she could never go back there. And Jamie was a part of that.

  Jamie nodded as if he could read her thoughts. ‘I thought I was doing my duty, that I was doing what needed to be done for the security of all Europe. But in the end I left my family, my first duty, in dire straits while I worked to help re-establish a vengeful madman to the throne. There are times I can’t even look at myself in the mirror knowing what has happened. Especially...’

  ‘Especially what?’ Catalina whispered.

  ‘Especially when I thought I had lost you and I couldn’t say these things to you. That you were right. That I am sorry. Sorry for so many things.’

  Catalina shook her head. She closed her eyes tightly against the tears that prickled at her eyes. It was all too, too late. Everything. ‘We have both paid for our mistakes now. We’ve done what we had to do and now we must go forward. You are here with your family now, and they seem so happy to have you back.’

  ‘And you, Catalina?’

  She laughed. ‘I am glad you are here, too. When I thought you were dead...’ Her heart had been torn out. But she had somehow gone on living. She could surely do that again.

  ‘That was one of the reasons I was able to accept my task,’ Jamie said quietly. ‘When you were gone it hardly mattered to me what happened.’

  A tiny spark of hope bloomed in Catalina’s heart, but she knew it was futile. That had been a long time ago, and so much had changed. But knowing that he had missed her—it was something she could cling to. One certain thing in the midst of so much that was confusing.

  ‘I meant what I said earlier, Jamie,’ she said. ‘You must consider yourself free of me. You have to do what your family needs now.’ Catalina despaired of knowing how she could let him go—divorce was too public, and a scandal was the last thing his family needed. But she had to do what was best for him.

  ‘Do I?’ Jamie shook his head, that unreadable little half-smile touching his lips. He looked towards the darkened house, and Catalina glanced over to see that a golden light glowed in one of the upstairs windows. Soon other people would be awake, and she needed to be safely in her chamber before they were.

  She stood up and tightened her shawl around her shoulders as she turned away from Jamie. ‘You know you do. And now I must go.’

  She wanted to leave quickly, to get away from the folly without looking at him again. He was too good at reading people; he would see her confusion and pain right away, and her attempt to do what was right would be painfully prolonged.
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br />   He didn’t say anything, he didn’t try to hold her back, but his hand brushed over hers as she swept past him.

  ‘Sleep well, Catalina,’ he called softly as she slipped out into the garden. ‘But remember—this isn’t over yet.’

  Catalina ran back to the house, not stopping until her chamber door was safely shut behind her. She feared that he was too right—it wasn’t over, at least not in her heart. And it never would be.

  Chapter Twelve

  Buxton was crowded and noisy as Jamie eased his curricle past a large, lumbering landau and turned down a side lane. Shop doors were thrown open for the customers who hurried in and out laden with packages, calling out to friends, finishing the morning’s errands. It was a warm day despite the heavy grey skies that threatened rain later and the damp air, and everyone wanted to be home before the storm came.

  No one paid him any attention as he made his way through the town. He wore a plain grey coat and a broad-brimmed hat drawn low over his brow, and no one seemed to recognise the carriage. He liked those few moments of solitude, where there was only the horse and the road, and no one in his family there to watch him with ill-concealed concern in their eyes.

  They never asked him questions, but he could tell they wanted to know what had really happened. One day he would have to tell them, but not yet. Not while he still had no words for the guilt that twisted at him when he thought of how he had left them, of the pain he had caused.

  Not when the issue of Catalina was still unresolved. His wife.

  She said she considered him free of her, that he had to do his duty to his family now. Yet what of his duty to her? He had to do what was right, but how could he when she would not let him? If she would not let him be her husband, he still had to take care of her.

  And he had to start doing right by her and his family by settling old scores. As he had worked on the estate in the past few days after the assembly, he had thought about it all a great deal.

  Jamie drew up at a small house set on a quiet street not far from the Assembly Rooms and climbed down from the high carriage seat. There was no one else passing by this row of small but respectable dwellings; it was far from the shops and the more fashionable neighbourhoods. The houses were plain and well-kept, quite unexceptional in every way. There were only a few shops across the street that catered mostly to the comfortably off merchants, widows and lawyers who lived in the houses.

  And that made it the perfect place for someone to hide in plain sight.

  Jamie knocked on the black-painted door at the top of a small set of stone steps, and it was quickly opened.

  ‘You are early,’ Alicia said as he bowed over her hand before slipping inside. ‘Crispin is taking his nap and the maid has gone out on an errand.’

  ‘Are you both comfortable here, Miss Walters?’ Jamie asked. He left his hat on a small bench in the hall and followed her into the tidy sitting room. A fire burned in the grate against the damp day, and an open work box sat on the table, spilling out colourful embroidery silks next to a tea set. A few toys were scattered across the floor.

  ‘Oh, yes, very comfortable,’ Alicia said as she scooped up the toys and deposited them in their box. ‘It was so kind of you to find this place for us. I certainly do not deserve it after...well, after everything.’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘You have surely been punished enough for your mistakes. I am still paying for mine.’

  Alicia gave him a puzzled glance. ‘Whatever do you mean, Lord Hatherton? What mistakes could you possibly have made?’

  He smiled. ‘Nothing to worry about at the moment, Miss Walters. How is young Crispin settling in?’

  ‘Very well indeed. Though I think this street is a bit quiet for him. He does like to watch the horses go by.’ Alicia poured out two cups of tea. ‘I know I have no right to ask, but how is everyone at Castonbury? How is...’

  She broke off, and a faint blush touched her pale cheeks.

  Jamie sat down by the fire and took the cup she offered him. ‘How is Mr Everett?’

  Alicia bit her lip. ‘How—how did you know?’

  Jamie shrugged. ‘He has often expressed concern about you. He is a good man.’

  ‘A good man I do not deserve.’ Alicia sat down across from him and stared down into her cup. ‘Have you discovered where Captain Webster is hiding yet?’

  ‘Not at present, but he cannot stay hidden for ever. Have you had word from him?’

  Alicia shook her head. ‘I left him a message in our old hiding place telling him where I am and offering to share a new scheme with him, just as you instructed. He has not yet replied.’ She gave a small frown. ‘But I think I saw him a few nights ago.’

  Jamie’s senses sharpened. ‘Saw him where?’

  ‘In the lane behind the house, just past the garden that backs onto the Assembly Rooms. I was putting Crispin to bed in the nursery and happened to glance out the window. I thought I saw a man with red hair, but then he was gone so fast. I could have only imagined it.’

  Jamie didn’t like the thought of Webster lurking about like a phantom, even if it was all part of the plan to draw him out. ‘You should let me set guards on the house, as I suggested before.’

  ‘No,’ Alicia said adamantly. ‘I don’t want to scare Crispin. And no one should know where we are. We have the maid, and she does seem to notice everything that happens in the kitchen and out on the street. She loves to tell me all about it.’

  ‘Then at least you must send me word immediately if you even suspect you see Webster again,’ Jamie said.

  Alicia nodded. ‘Of course I will. I want him found as much as you do. That is the only way I can go on with my life. Whatever that may be.’

  Jamie knew all too well how that felt. Life felt as if it was at a standstill until he could catch Webster and restore his family’s home and honour. Only then could he somehow move forward.

  He and Alicia made more plans for trying to track down Webster and he left as the day moved into late afternoon. A few raindrops were falling from the sky as he drove out of town and turned back towards Castonbury. In the distance he glimpsed a figure hurrying along the side of the road, a slender woman in a blue dress and jacket. Her back was to him, her head bent, but Jamie could tell even from that distance that it was Catalina.

  He urged the horse faster as the rain began to fall thicker and heavier. He came alongside her just as she stumbled in the mud. He leapt down from the carriage and ignored the twinge in his own leg to catch her as she fell.

  ‘Catalina?’ he shouted over the rain. ‘Where are you going? What are you doing here?’

  She looked up at him, raindrops glistening on her lashes, and he was shocked to see the raw hurt in her eyes. It flashed there for only a second before she looked away, but he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything to take it away.

  But first he had to get her out of this cursed rain.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jamie was with Alicia Walters.

  Catalina hurried as fast as she could down the lane, not even seeing where she was going as she tried to get away from Buxton and from that house. She hadn’t felt the first drops of rain at all.

  The day had started in such an ordinary fashion. Lydia was working on some amateur theatricals with the other young guests, watched over by Lily, but they had needed some new fabric for costumes and Catalina had volunteered to go and fetch it. Phaedra was going a few farms over to look at some horses for sale, and had offered to drop Catalina in Buxton if she wanted to buy the fabric there and do some extra shopping. It had seemed like a fine idea, a chance to be alone and think in quiet. She had planned to walk back to Castonbury when she was done and get some exercise as well.

  But then she had turned down that quiet street of small houses. When she had glimpsed Jamie there, so surprising and sudden, at first she had felt a rush of gladness. She had just raised her hand to wave to him when the door had opened and Alicia Walters had appeared there. Alicia, who everyone thought had ru
n away after her crime was discovered. Yet she seemed to have been expecting Jamie.

  And Catalina had been able to do nothing but rush off, forgetting even the errand that had brought her to town in the first place. She found herself now on the country road and couldn’t even really remember getting there.

  The sky had burst open and dropped the heavy burden of rain onto the earth, as it had been threatening to do all day. Catalina hadn’t even noticed the first chilly drops, she had been so lost in the memory of Jamie holding Alicia’s hand, walking with her into that house. She had been lost in that terrible sense of feeling so foolish.

  But she hadn’t been able to escape the rain for long. The drops had quickly become a deluge, cold and needle-sharp, pounding against her head and soaking through her spencer and dress. She had stumbled in a muddy hole and her half-boot had almost been sucked from her foot.

  ‘Maldición,’ she had cursed, and wrenched herself free. She had dragged her ruined straw bonnet from her head and turned her face up to the angry heavens. The storm seemed to reflect all her anger and confusion back at her.

  ‘Catalina! What are you doing, you foolish woman?’ she heard someone shout over the roar of the rain.

  Jamie. It was Jamie who had followed her from the town. Catalina laughed and covered her face with her dripping hands. She felt his strong arms around her waist as he lifted her free of the mud hole.

  ‘Catalina, where are you going?’ he asked roughly, setting her back on her feet. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Catalina shook her head. What was he doing here? What was he doing visiting a woman who had deceived his entire family? A woman no one had seen in weeks? Had they all been wrong about Alicia and her relationship with Jamie? ‘I was shopping,’ she said. When she had set out that morning on her errand it had seemed like such an ordinary day. How long ago that was.