by Mary Balogh
But he knew from the tone of her voice that he had guessed correctly. She wanted to walk home but was afraid to do so. And she would consider it too early to ask Claude or anyone else to bring out a carriage to take her. So she had sought refuge in the music room, perhaps hoping to remain here undetected until the end of the ball.
“Wait here,” he said. “I shall go up for a cloak and escort you home.”
“You will not!” she exclaimed, her voice outraged. “I will go alone.”
“Wait here.” He set a finger over her lips. “Don’t even think of slipping away, Catherine. I will come after you with great noise if you do. I will bring a search party with me to beat the bushes. You will be mortally embarrassed. Wait here until I come.”
“No,” she said. “No. If we were seen together . . .”
“We will not be.” He was at the door already. He turned back to look at her. “Wait here.”
“I will come to supper, then,” she said. But he was out through the door already. He closed it after him, pretending not to have heard her.
If he had planned it, it could not be more perfect. She had not planned it. He was certain of that. But he would make her glad of it. He would make her see how perfect it was.
Catherine.
He could not remember being so obsessed with any woman.
10
SHE did not know quite how she had got into this. She had tried hard to avoid temptation or the possibility of gossip. Dancing with Viscount Rawleigh and going in to supper with him would have offered the danger of both. And so she had left the ballroom and almost the house. She had taken her cloak and gone to the music room, from which she could slip out into the night without being observed by either footmen or other guests. And then she had stood in the doorway, afraid to leave. It was so very dark outside—and the walk back home was over a mile, much of it among the oak trees of the lower driveway.
Just like a child, she had been afraid of the dark.
And so she had sat on the bench of the pianoforte, trying to get up her courage. Or failing that, she had decided to stay where she was until supper was well over.
It seemed hardly fair that her problems had now been compounded. He was going to be missed. It would take him almost an hour to escort her home and return. She assumed, at least, that he meant to walk with her, not call out a carriage. That would be even worse. He would be missed, and then perhaps someone—Mrs. Adams, certainly—would notice that she was missing too.
She should have said a very firm no to being escorted home. She should have insisted on going back up to the ballroom. Even now, she should slip out alone. He would not find her in the darkness. And she did not believe he would put into effect his threat to make a loud noise in search of her. He would not gather a search party. It had been a foolish threat meant for a gullible female.
Oh dear Lord, she had not thought she was still gullible to the wiles of men.
But she must be just that. She was still standing undecided in the music room when he returned, looking more satanic than ever with the folds of a dark cloak swinging about him. Without conscious intention, she had put on her own cloak, she realized. She drew the wide hood up over her head and shivered.
“Now,” he said briskly, “we may leave.”
“This is not right,” she said. “It is very improper.”
He raised his eyebrows. She wondered if he knew how very arrogant he looked when he did that and decided that he probably did. “Afraid, Mrs. Winters?” he asked.
She was—afraid of him, afraid of the darkness outside, afraid of going back to the ballroom with him. She hated being afraid. She hated feeling weak and vulnerable and under the control of a man. Just like that other time. Except that it was worse this time. This time if she stepped outside with him, she would be doing so voluntarily, knowing exactly what Society could do to her if the truth were ever known.
But what could Society do that it had not already done? Society did not care about her any longer or even know about her. How foolish now to care for her reputation. Except that . . .
“Mrs. Winters?” He was standing at the French windows, one hand on the door handle, the other stretched toward her.
“No,” she said, moving toward him. “I am not afraid, my lord.”
As soon as she had passed him and stepped onto the terrace and he had closed the door behind him, he set an arm about her waist, encircling her with a fold of his cloak as he did so. He hurried her across the terrace and onto the dark lawn. She drew in a sharp breath. They were not going to walk down the driveway?
“It is a little quicker this way,” he said, “and a little more private.”
A little more private. The words burned themselves on her mind and she heard her teeth chattering. His arm was warm and firm about her. She could feel his thigh and his hip with her own, firmly muscled, very masculine. Her body was still aching with desire from their waltz and the kiss that had followed it.
A little more private.
Would she be able to resist him? Would she want to? Would she have the willpower? Oh, this was beginning to remind her . . .
It was so very dark. Her eyes had not quite accustomed themselves to the darkness even though she had sat in the darkened music room for half an hour or longer. And yet he was moving with confident strides.
“It is so dark,” she said aloud, and heard with distance the thinness of her voice.
He stopped and turned her against him before kissing her—with wide mouth this time. “You will come to no harm,” he said. “I was notorious in the army for my ability to see in the dark. Besides, I came here often as a boy. I would know the way blindfolded.”
You will come to no harm. She almost laughed aloud.
It was worse when they got among the trees. She would not have been able to see a hand before her face if she had held one there, she was sure. And the ground was more uneven. But he held her securely to his side and his pace slowed only a little. He really did seem to know just where he was going. And yet she waited for him to stop. She waited for—for ravishment. Though she was not sure it would be that. She was not sure she would have even that much consolation afterward.
“Ah, here we are,” he said after what seemed a long age of tense silence—tense on her part anyway. “My sense of direction has not failed me.”
And this time she did see. A faint gleam of light from among the branches of the trees shone on the latch of the postern door. The road was just the other side of it and her cottage a mere few steps away. He really had brought her straight home, then. Her knees turned weak with relief. And this was even better than having gone down the driveway and through the village. Late as the hour must be, there was a strong chance that they would have been seen in the village.
It was so dreadfully improper to be out alone with him at night like this.
He released his hold on her to open the door and look cautiously out, both ways.
“No one,” he said. He reached a hand for hers. She could see almost clearly now that the door was open and the sky was visible beyond it. “Come.”
But she held back. “I can go alone from here,” she said. “Thank you. It was very kind of you to escort me, my lord.”
There was silence for a moment and then a chuckle. “Is that my cue to make you my most elegant bow and to deliver my most polished speech about its having been an honor and a pleasure?” he said. “Come. I will see you home. There may be a score or two of footpads waiting to pounce upon you between here and your cottage. How would I forgive myself if you came to harm?”
He was laughing at her. Half of his face was caught in the dim light of the sky beyond the door. He was so very handsome. She had waltzed with him tonight—twice. Once in the ballroom and once in the music room, when the dance had become not just intimate and romantic, but also lascivious. The music and the rhythm had been a mere ex
cuse for their bodies to touch and to move together. He had kissed her tonight and she had kissed him.
If there had been any doubt in the last couple of weeks, since his first appearance at Bodley, there was none left. All the barriers and masks and armor she had built up about herself in five years had crumbled and disappeared without a trace. She could no longer pretend that she was not a young woman with a young woman’s needs and yearnings. And perhaps they did not even disappear with youth. Perhaps it had been foolish to try to persuade herself that she could wait them out.
“Come,” he said again, more softly. More irresistibly.
She did not take his hand, but she slipped past him through the doorway and onto the road. She felt for a moment almost as if she had been slapped with reality. He stepped out after her, closed the door, and set his arm and his cloak about her again.
Toby barked when they were coming up the path and when she opened the door. Barking sounded so very loud in the middle of the night. She was so concerned with shushing him that she forgot about turning in the doorway, bidding Lord Rawleigh a firm good night, and closing the door between them.
“Silence, sir,” he said in a firm, quiet voice, and Toby fell silent, wagged his tail, and trotted off into the kitchen—doubtless to his comfortable perch on her rocker.
Then the hall was in darkness as the outer door closed. And she was in his arms, his cloak all about her, and being kissed again.
Except that it was not really a kiss. Not by her definition, anyway. His mouth was open and somehow so was hers, and his tongue was plundering deep into her mouth. It was an unbearably intimate kiss. Almost as intimate . . . His hands were beneath her cloak, cupping her breasts, doing something to her nipples that made them tight and hard and sent sensation sizzling through her breasts and down through her womb to her thighs to set them aching and throbbing.
And then his hands were behind her, moving firmly downward, cupping her buttocks, bringing her hard against him, lifting her slightly so that she could feel the hardness of his own need of her.
It must feel thus to drown, she thought—this frantic need to come to the surface, to gulp in air, this opposing instinct to stop fighting, to make it easier upon oneself, to let happen what was going to happen.
“Catherine,” he murmured against her lips, his voice low and husky. “So very beautiful.”
She could not think. She could not organize her thoughts. His hair was thick and silky between her fingers.
“Take me upstairs,” he said against her ear. “This is better done horizontally than vertically.”
This. The joining of their bodies. His coming inside hers. For pleasure. Although she had never known pleasure in such a way, she knew that with him she would. Now. Tonight.
She could no longer remember why it was undesirable to be his mistress. She needed a man’s body so desperately. His man’s body. Him. She needed him.
To be his mistress. For how long? A week or two while he was still at Bodley? He would be tired of her by then. He would not take her away with him as he had suggested sometime recently—she could not remember when. She would be alone again. How would it feel—the aloneness and the emptiness after having been his mistress for a brief time?
Perhaps she would not be quite alone. Perhaps he would leave her with child.
He had been kissing her throat and trailing his mouth up over her chin to her mouth again.
“Come,” he said.
“No.” Her voice sounded flat, dispassionate. She had not quite realized she was going to speak until she did. But she knew that it had to be said again. “No.”
He moved his head back a few inches. She wondered if he could see her. His face was just a shadow.
“You are not going to be difficult, are you?” he asked her.
“Yes.” Her voice was a little stronger. “I believe I am. I want you to leave now, please.”
“My God.” She found that she was pressed against the wall, his hands bracketing her head, braced against it. “Am I a fool? Is my imagination so vivid that I have misread your response? When we first waltzed? In the music room? On the walk home? Here? I cannot have imagined it. You are as much on fire for me as I am for you.”
“And therefore,” she said, “we go to bed together. It is perfectly logical, is it not?”
“Yes.” He sounded baffled and irritated. “Yes, it is. Catherine—”
“I will not be your mistress,” she said.
“Why not?” His head moved an inch closer to hers. “Why ever not? Do you believe I will mistreat you? I am accustomed to giving as much pleasure as I receive.”
Even then a treacherous desire stabbed through her.
“I will not,” she said. “And I do not have to give a reason. I will not. I have told you so before. I tried to avoid you tonight by retiring to the music room. I tried to stop you from bringing me home. I tried to stop you from coming beyond the postern door with me. I have been very clear in my denials.”
“As your body has been very clear in its invitations,” he said. He was definitely angry now. “You want marriage, is that it, Catherine? You set your favors at the highest price of all. Well, I will pay it. Marry me.”
She was shocked into silence for a few moments. “You would marry me,” she said, “in order to go to bed with me?”
“Precisely,” he said. “If there is no other way. I want you that much. Are you satisfied?”
“Yes, I am satisfied,” she said, cold suddenly and as far from feeling desire as she had ever felt. She brushed his arms aside when they reached for her. “I am satisfied that my reason and my common sense have been advising me well for the past two weeks. I am not just a female body, my lord. This is not an empty shell. There is a person inside. A person who dislikes you and resents your arrogant assumption that a few kisses and caresses are sufficient to establish your right to make use of my body for your pleasure. You have done nothing but pursue me since I first mistook you for your brother and smiled at you. Even though I said no quite clearly when you first called on me, you would not believe that any woman could be insane enough to resist you. Well, this woman prefers insanity to becoming your possession.”
“Why, you bitch,” he said quietly and almost pleasantly. “I do believe you are enjoying yourself. I will give you no further opportunity. You will be plagued with me no longer after tonight, ma’am. I am sure we will be mutually delighted not to set eyes on each other again.”
Toby was standing in the passageway, growling. She looked down at him in the shaft of light that came through the door as it opened and then shut again none too gently. She stood where she was for a few minutes, almost as if her weight and spread hands were necessary to hold the wall up. Toby was whining.
“You want to go outside,” she said. Her voice sounded quite normal. It seemed strange to perform the familiar and ordinary tasks of letting Toby out through the back door and then going into the kitchen to light the lamp and stoke up the fire in order to boil the kettle for tea. She had to have a cup of tea, late as it was. And she had to sit for a while in the familiar surroundings of her kitchen before going upstairs to bed—where she could have been lying at this very moment with him. . . .
She felt sick. She was not at all sure she was going to be able to drink her tea after all. She felt sick and horribly guilty. He had called her a bitch. No one had ever called her such a dreadfully vulgar name before. That in itself would have caused a feeling of nausea. But worse was the feeling that perhaps he had been justified.
He had once accused her of being a tease. Was she? Had she led him on? She had wanted him so very badly. Had her need shown to the extent that it had become an invitation? She had not tried to avoid any of the three kisses he had given her tonight. Indeed, she had welcomed all three and had participated fully in them.
She had wanted him. Even now her womb throbbed with the left
over need to feel his body inside hers.
It must have been her fault, all that had happened this evening. Just as it had all been her fault that other time. Except that over the years she had regained her self-respect by reasoning it all out and coming to the conclusion that it had not really been her fault. Only a small part of it. Only what might have been called the teasing.
As now. She was a tease, it seemed. Issuing invitations but being unwilling to accept the consequences.
She hated herself—again. How quickly a self-esteem built so painstakingly could disappear.
Toby was scratching on the door. She got up to let him in and noticed that the kettle over the fire was already boiling. She made her tea, stood over the pot while it steeped, and poured a cup while it was still rather too weak for her taste. It did not matter. At least it was hot and wet.
Toby stood before her when she sat down again, his tongue lolling, hope and speculation in his eyes.
“There is no point in my saying no, Tobe,” she said to him rather bitterly. “No one ever believes me when I say no anyway.”
It was invitation enough. He jumped into her lap and curled into a comfortable ball. He sighed deeply and proceeded to go off to sleep with the aid of a soothing hand smoothing over his back.
She stared upward, rocking slowly in the chair, feeling the kind of deep despair that even a week ago she had remembered with a shudder and tried not to remember at all.
Her tea grew cold on the table beside her and filmed over.
• • •
VISCOUNT Rawleigh was frustrated and angry when he left Catherine’s house. He shut the door firmly behind him, disdaining to slam it, and strode across the road toward the postern door, looking neither ahead nor to right nor to left. He pushed the door open, stepped through, and shut that too with a decisive click.
Had he been as alert as he had been when he opened the postern door on his way to the cottage, he would probably have both heard and seen the one-horse cart that was approaching the village from the south, even though it was still some distance away.
