“I will start by saying that I was told there would be swimming the lake sans clothing,” Robert said. “And that all my friends would be participating.”
Matthew grinned. “We did tell you that, yes.”
Ewan signed a few things and Charlotte smiled. “Ewan says that you were very happy to leave that stuffy party and that was when the plan was hatched.”
Robert glanced over to find Katherine staring at him, appraising as she ate and listened. “How many at the party?”
Matthew leaned back and seemed to be trying to recall. “It was the annual summer soiree. That has always been my mother’s crowning achievement. How many attend, Isabel? A hundred?”
“About a hundred and fifty earlier this year,” Isabel said. “I have not heard this story, so I am as on the edge of my seat as you are, Katherine.”
“So they tell me we are going swimming au naturale,” Robert continued. “Unsurprisingly, I am all for the idea. When offered the choice of something wicked or something staid—”
“Always choose wicked,” Baldwin finished with a side glance at his wife that turned Helena’s cheeks pink. “Not a sentiment I always agreed with but find much more merit in now.”
“We went to the lake and everyone ducked behind bushes. I had no idea why, but I stripped down to what God had given me and turned to see what in the world was taking everyone else so long…”
“Only to find my father and fifteen of his cronies standing there with drinks and cigars in their hands.” Matthew began to laugh. “Mother hated when he smoked in the house, so she had banished his friends outside, and Papa was thrilled to show them the new boat dock that had just been built there.”
“Which he knew about,” Robert said, pointing at Matthew with an accusing shake of the head.
“But the best part,” James said, his eyes watering from laughing so hard, “was Robert’s reaction. What was it you said?”
“Well,” Robert said with a wink toward Katherine. “I was standing there, shocked to have all these very proper, very old, very disapproving faces looking back at me. What else could I say?”
“Did you apologize?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “What fun would that have been? I asked who wanted to join me and said the last one in lost a shilling. Then I got in the water.”
Katherine tilted her head back, and her peals of laughter filled the air with the rest of them. “The gall,” she said, swiping at the tears streaming down her face. “What Tyndale’s father must have thought!”
Matthew’s expression softened and he and gave Isabel a loving glance. “Oh no, my father had the best sense of humor of anyone. He turned to the group and asked if there were any takers. I think a few of the gentlemen considered it even. But eventually they went inside and we came out of the bushes.”
With that first story told, the table continued sharing their exploits of the past. Since, aside from Katherine and her aunt, everyone here was part of their greater 1797 Club family, there were things told that might not have been recalled in Society as a whole or with too many strangers in attendance.
Robert watched as Katherine took part it in all. She laughed at the right parts of every story or threw in a witty comment that brought the rest of the party to even more laughter. She asked questions and seemed truly interested in whoever was speaking at any given moment.
It was impossible not to like the woman. That was what he discovered as their supper went on. She was so sharp witted and unfazed by anything she heard. It seemed passion was part of her very nature. She laughed with it, she ate with it, she glanced at him and there it was, bright in her dark, sultry eyes.
And there was no denying her beauty. It seemed to increase the more comfortable she became with his friends. She relaxed, her walls dropped and there was a glimpse of the real woman beneath the shame she had carried into Society. The hesitation she showed with him.
The dessert plates were at last taken away and their party began to rise, separating off so that the men could take their port before they joined the ladies for whatever entertainment would follow that night.
Robert shook off his thoughts on Katherine as she stepped away, linking arms with her aunt as the ladies left in a giggling, chattering group.
“Hmmm,” Matthew said as he came around the table and nudged Robert with an elbow.
Robert jerked his attention from the spot where he’d last caught a glimpse of Katherine. Matthew looked awfully smug. “Hmmm? What hmmm?”
Matthew shook his head. “Oh, nothing. Just observing you, that’s all.”
Robert narrowed his gaze. “Oh, that’s all, is it? And what do your observations reveal, Tyndale?”
Matthew laughed as he gently shoved him toward the door. “Nothing I’m inclined to share yet. Now let’s get to the port, shall we?”
Robert fell into step beside his friend, letting Matthew talk about something to do with his estate as they followed their friends to James’s study for their drinks. But he felt a strange discomfort as he did so.
Like something had been revealed that he hadn’t wished to share. A genie had been let out of a bottle and he had no idea how to put it back where it belonged, nor what would happen now that it was on the loose in his world.
Katherine stood up from the chattering group of ladies and walked to the sideboard to refresh her glass of sherry. At least it gave her something to do. Since the men and women had separated, not even the lively, friendly conversation of her aunt and her new friends could adequately distract her.
She kept watching the door, anticipating when Robert would return. It was a strange thing. When she saw him the night of her return to Society in London, she had wanted nothing more than to flee from him. Her memories of the night on the terrace when her father had decided to marry her off added to other thoughts of Robert, things he didn’t even seem to remember, she had wanted distance.
And when she found out he had wagered on bedding her? Oh, she could have clawed his eyes out. But since then, since coming here, she had begun to see him in a different light. Of course, there was their passionate encounter in the parlor the night before to consider. But it was more than that.
There was more to him. She couldn’t stop thinking of the emotion he had shown her earlier in the day. Or that fact that he didn’t demand reciprocity for the pleasure he had given her the night before. And the stories told by his friends were all charming, revealing a side to the duke that went far beyond cad. He was cocksure, certainly, but he was also clearly loyal and loving to his friends.
Which left her conflicted and confused and longing for the arrangement he kept telling her they could make.
“If you want something stronger, I have other options.”
Katherine jumped and turned to find Emma standing at her elbow. Katherine blushed, for she realized she’d been standing there, holding the bottle of sherry, just staring at the door for heaven knew how long.
“I must have been woolgathering,” she said, tilting the bottle and filling her glass at last before she offered the same to Emma. She shook her head with a little smile.
“I wanted to tell you again how happy I am you joined us. I know you came in part to avoid Roseford, and I do apologize again for the misunderstanding. But it seems you two are getting along.”
Katherine ducked her head and hoped that her blush wasn’t too revealing. Emma was one of the quieter duchesses, but she had the impression that the pretty woman was always watching and listening. “We are making the best of the situation,” she said at last.
Emma nodded. She said something then, but Katherine didn’t hear it. At that same moment, the parlor door opened and the gentlemen streamed back inside, filling up the room with masculine presence and laughter. The last to enter was Robert and his gaze scanned the room until he found her. He nodded a fraction, then entered the room and crossed to speak to the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield on the opposite side of the chamber.
“I want to say something,” Emma said softly. “And it is violating the bounds of our very new friendship. But if I don’t, I will worry about it.”
Katherine shook off her obsession with Robert and refocused on Emma. “Oh, that sounds dire. Please, do say whatever you need to say.”
Emma glanced across the room and Katherine blushed as he realized she, too, was looking at Robert. “Roseford is a good man, beneath it all. I believe that. But he is…fire. And that can be a very good thing, many of my friends have married fire and learned to dance within the flame. But if you don’t learn, fire can still burn. Do you…understand what I mean?”
Katherine stared at the duchess, taking in her words and trying to find a response that didn’t reveal too much or put her on the outs with her new friends. None of them could truly understand, after all, what she was about to do.
“I can fight fire,” she reassured Emma. “You needn’t worry about me.”
Emma wrinkled her brow, but James said her name in that moment and she excused herself before the conversation could continue. Katherine took a breath as she departed, happy for the privacy as long as it would last.
Emma wasn’t wrong that Robert was fire. Katherine had felt that fire, never more than last night. But she had no intention of fighting it, not anymore. She just had to figure out how to dodge the flames to get only what she wanted and not a bit more.
Chapter Twelve
Katherine’s hands shook as she made her way down the dark and empty hallways of the guest wing of the house. Robert had whispered which room was his as everyone was saying their goodnights, and now she counted doors from her chamber to his as she prayed no one would come out of any of them.
Not that it seemed likely. The rooms were filled with dukes and duchesses, and in the quiet of the hall, she sometimes heard murmurings from behind the doors. Even little moans.
All it served to do was put her on edge in the most shocking way.
At last she reached the seventh chamber from her own. She had to smile, as it was almost as far removed as they could be from each other in this wing. Emma was true to her word that she’d been trying to separate them.
And yet here Katherine was, standing in front of the beautifully carved door, ready to knock and place herself in the immediate path of a man who knocked her off kilter. A man whose actions had led to her marriage years before, a man she had tried to hate for that.
A man she knew she couldn’t trust because of his wager, his reputation, his…everything. And yet if she knocked and gave him just a little, she could take so much more. Take the pleasure she’d sought all through her marriage. Take the wickedness she’d been told was her nature. Take the sensations she had experienced last night at his hands and tongue.
“Just don’t forget to take,” she muttered, and finally forced her shaking fist to tap the wooden surface before her.
It took him less than a minute to answer the knock. When he opened the door, her breath vanished. He was undone. His jacket, cravat and waistcoat had been discarded. His shirt, too, and now she was staring at an expanse of muscled perfection like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Being a libertine normally meant overindulgence in everything under the sun. Clearly Robert did it very differently, for his body was carved from stone.
He could not have been more different from her husband, and she stared because she couldn’t look away. Slowly she forced herself to look at the rest of him. His hair was mussed. His trousers slung low on his hips, revealing the most fascinating curves and lines. He was wearing no boots.
And he was smiling at her. Not smug, not challenging, not even teasing. It was a smile of…welcome.
She gaped, trying to find something clever to say to break the tension when her mind was now entirely empty. He didn’t wait for her to find words, he simply caught her hand and drew her into the room.
He released her and then turned, locking them into the chamber, locking out the world that would judge her for what she was here to do. Now it was only the two of them.
“You came,” he said softly.
Well, now she had to find her voice, for it was clear he expected some kind of response beyond gaping at him like a fish out of water. She swallowed hard and forced herself to say, “I think you knew I would.”
“Drink?” he asked, motioning to a little table in his sitting room. There was a bottle of scotch there.
Normally she was not a fan, but in that moment, she needed liquid courage. “Yes,” she squeaked.
He moved to the table and poured them each a portion, then turned back to hand over the glass. When she’d taken it, he tilted it toward her in salute. “To tonight.”
Her scotch sloshed as she tried to make it reach her lips. She hated herself for revealing how nervous this made her.
“Katherine,” he said, setting his glass aside without drinking. He moved closer and took her glass, too, placing it beside his and taking her hands. “Relax.”
She blinked up at him, outlined in firelight. Standing in his chamber, he felt so big. So all-encompassing. All the emotions she’d ever felt toward him crowded in together, shouting for her attention and memory. And above it all was the loudest voice that screamed desire and whore at once.
When his hands gripped hers, when his thumbs smoothed over her flesh gently, the cacophony faded a little. She swallowed. “How can I?” she asked.
“Sit down, please,” he said, drawing her toward the settee in the middle of his antechamber.
She blinked in confusion. The door to his bedroom was in her line of vision behind his head. She could see the bed over his shoulder. And yet he wasn’t hustling her in there to get this job done. It was very confusing.
“You must be filled with regret asking a ninny such as me to come to your chamber in the middle of the night,” she said, turning her face.
“On the contrary, I am very happy you came,” he said. “I worried as the night went on that you had changed your mind.”
“I almost did,” she admitted. “I stood in my chamber for three-quarters of an hour after the party retired, trying to convince myself what to do. You can see my wanton side won out in the end.”
He frowned and his dark gaze searched her face carefully, closely. She tensed beneath the unexpected regard that had nothing to do with desire. There was something else there. Something she didn’t want to experience or see.
He drew a breath and touched her chin, tilting her face so she was looking at him. Then he asked her a question she would never have expected in all her life. A question she had been avoiding for months.
A question he had no right to ask and yet he did, his face close to hers.
“Katherine, what did he do to you?”
Beneath his fingers, Katherine jolted, and Robert watched as her facial expression went utterly flat. It was a defense mechanism, of course. He’d seen her use it in the ballroom the first night she reentered Society. Put up a shield to the pain.
But he knew from bitter experience that the shield didn’t soothe the underlying agony. It just kept the world out, for good or for bad.
“Why do you want to know about him?” she asked. He noted she didn’t seek clarification. There was only one him.
He shifted. It was a good question. This entire endeavor, the pursuit of this woman, it was for his pleasure. And his ego, if he recalled the wager that seemed so far away. He was not meant to dig deeper. He never did. And yet here he was, pressing her to develop the connection.
The why was more complicated than he was willing to admit. Not even to himself.
“You want something from me,” he explained softly. “And I want to give it to you, more than you could possibly understand. If I understand your physical past better, then it will help me understand your needs, as well.”
“And use what I tell you against me.” Her chin tilted up, defiant, accusatory. “How could I ever trust you?”
He bent his hea
d closer, drawing in that cinnamon scent. Driven by a need to know more about her even if that scared the hell out of him. “I swear to you on—”
She interrupted him with a laugh that cut through the quiet. She backed away. “There is nothing you could ever swear on, Your Grace.”
He pressed his lips together. “My mother,” he said softly, letting the pain rip through him when he said those two tiny words. When he thought of the woman who’d loved him, just not quite enough that she’d stayed. “Gone for far too long and much beloved. I swear to you on my mother that whatever you tell me here in this chamber will die with me.”
Her lips parted and she looked at him with a bit of new understanding. He wasn’t sure he liked that. No one truly understood what he’d been through. Even his friends only knew snippets. Not the worst of it. Never the worst. He had never been able to say that out loud.
She sighed, the sound shuddering from her lips. He saw her soften in emotional surrender. It was better than the physical to watch her walls come down. Well, almost as good anyway.
She reached over to the table and took one of the glasses of scotch. She sipped it and then said. “I was forced to marry him.”
Her gaze held steady on Robert. Almost accusatory. He wrinkled his brow, for there was a flicker in his mind. A memory he couldn’t quite access. An itch. But then it was gone.
“For his money?” he asked. “His position?”
“No, that would be a normal reason for a father to trade his daughter,” she said. There was no mistaking the bitterness in her tone. “My father believed my nature was wanton. And as a man of what he considers a godly bent, he had to crush that in me. He believed that marrying a man like the Earl of Gainsworth would put me in line. Break me, I think he put it.”
Robert froze. There were a great many ways to break a person. He’d watched some of them, watched his friends endure horrible childhoods. He’d felt some, too. From his father. When his mother died. When he found out why.
The Duke of Desire Page 12
