Even solitary self-pity wasn’t meant to be. A soft knock on the door saw Eve sticking her head into the room. “Can I talk to you a moment, Kat?”
Kitty sighed and waved her sister to another chair paired with hers by the open window. “What is it?”
“You weren’t at breakfast,” Eve began.
“Obviously.”
“Jack passed on the news that you received a telegram from Mr. Jensen.” Eve dangled the prompt in front of Kitty and waited for a response.
“Yes, my divorce is final,” Kitty sighed, and stared out the window.
Eve studied her sister, noting the signs of lack of sleep. She expected Kat to be overjoyed her marriage was over and she was free of Hayes now. Instead, Kitty looked almost sad…or mad. She couldn’t help but ask her about it.
“I am happy about the divorce,” Kitty insisted, contrary to appearances. “I’m a bit stunned, I must confess. It was all accomplished so quickly. It really hasn’t sunk in that it is over at last.” Or that it had taken less than five minutes after learning that fact to find herself naked on Jack’s bed!
As if reading her mind, Eve launched into the purpose of her visit. “I wanted to talk to you about Jack, Kat.”
“Again?” Kitty bit her lip and stared out the window. Her whole life, she had been blessed with having a sister who was also her dearest friend. She had always had someone to bare her heart to and she loved Eve for that but, knowing Eve’s feelings about Jack Merrill, it was difficult to ask for the advice she so desperately needed.
“I’m worried about you, Kat,” Eve said softly, reaching over to grasp Kitty’s hand in hers.
“I love him, Evie,” Kitty whispered her confession in return. “And before you wrinkle your nose at the thought, please understand I see him in ways you never have.”
“But how can you say you love him?” Eve wanted to know anyway. “You barely know him at all.”
“How long did you know Francis before you knew you loved him?” Kitty challenged her sister.
“It took years before–”
“Evie!” Kitty shook her head in mild rebuke. “How long after you first met him eight years ago did it take for you to realize you loved him? And don’t try to lie to me. I was there.”
Eve knew she had no defense. She had loved her Francis at first sight and they both knew it. “But still…”
“No stills!” Kitty reluctantly offered up a wry grin. “I have known Jack Merrill over a month now, do you realize that? Despite the devil may care attitude he expresses for the most part, he is a caring, nurturing man. He is wonderful with Hannah. I feel happy when I am with him. He makes me laugh and, Evie, I trust him. I trust him never to hurt me.”
“But he is hurting you, Kat,” her clever sister deduced. “I can tell.”
“My heart, perhaps, but not my body. And not intentionally.” Kitty pressed her lips together. “He doesn’t know, Eve. He doesn’t know how I feel or what silly dreams I’ve built around him and I’ll not be the one to say anything about it. I went into this with my eyes wide open. He is what he is. He’ll never let himself become attached to one woman and, when he does marry one day, it will be a decision that has nothing to do with affection. But Evie! He has so much love to give!”
“Jack?”
“I know he doesn’t even realize it, but Jack would do wonderfully with a family of his own,” Kitty insisted. “Haven’t you seen him with the children? I’m sure Abby has told you how he is.”
Eve reluctantly nodded and conceded, “He would probably make an excellent father, but Kitty, you must know he would make a terrible husband! He hasn’t a faithful bone in his body!”
“I know and I never intended to let this go so far. I never wanted to fall in love again, especially with someone like him.” Kitty closed her eyes and imagined what she wanted for herself. “I want a man to cherish me for the rest of his days. To revel in a life as a husband and father. I want a man I can give all my love to and have it given back. I want to sit on that bench out there forty years from now with a man who still likes to simply hold my hand. I want what you have, Evie.”
“Kat.” Eve grasped her hand with tear-filled eyes.
“Don’t begrudge me my envy, Evie,” Kitty tried to laugh. “I can barely stand looking at Francis when he’s with you. You are his whole world. I just wish I could be Jack’s.”
“Oh, Kat,” Eve sighed. “Why don’t you tell him? I hate to admit it but Jack might feel more for you than you give him credit for.”
“I can’t be the one to say it, Evie!” Kitty laughed ruefully, and shook her head. “Can you just imagine the look on his face if I told him I loved him and wanted to be his wife? He’d run like a startled rabbit and never look back.”
“You haven’t much faith in him, Kat.” Eve looked pensively out the window toward the ocean. “Men can surprise you from time to time.”
“I’m not prepared to take that chance.”
“Wouldn’t it be best, then, to send him on his way before it gets any worse?”
“I wish I could.”
“I could do it for you,” Eve offered, and Kitty couldn’t help but laugh.
“Thank you but no.” Kitty sobered and met Eve’s eyes. “I’m going to have an affair with him, Evie, a nice long love affair, so don’t try to stop me. I’m going to take every bit of him I can, give as much love to him as I can, before he tires of me and moves on.”
“I would love to promise you he’ll fall in love with you in turn, but I can’t.” Eve stifled her shock at her sister’s announcement and tried to be realistic for her friend and sister. “You deserve love, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know if Jack will be the one to give it to you. Even if he does feel it, I doubt he would ever recognize it or admit it. I’m sorry.”
“I know that!” Eve raised a doubting brow. “I do! But I’m going to do it anyway. In fact, we already have!”
“Katherine Preston!”
“Oh, pish!” Kitty waved a hand. “I know you and Francis did too before you wed, so don’t be sanctimonious with me!”
“I’m not! I’m just scared for you.”
“Well, be scared for Jack right now,” Kitty went on, feeling a renewal of the ire that had inflamed her most of the night. “He made me so angry last night I wanted to slap him senseless for his idiocy.”
“I’m sure I don’t want to know details, but good for you!” Eve took her hand. “You’ll have a care for your heart then?”
Kitty gave her assurance.
“Will you come down to the parlor then?” Eve went on. “Mother wants to discuss our plans for the future, but, be warned, she is bound to try some of her matchmaking skills. She is quite enamored of the thought of another earl for a son-in-law.”
“She should pester Jack then!” Kitty managed a laugh. “Yes, I will come down in a few moments.”
“Very well.” Eve kissed her sister’s cheek and left the room while Kitty turned back to stand at the window and stare out over the ocean beyond the wide lawns. Eve was right, of course. Kitty could never expect that Jack would change his ways or come to his senses. If she loved as she did and continued an affair with him, she was taking her heart in her own hands.
Was it a risk she was prepared to take?
Could she not?
“Your sister left your door open,” her lover offered as his rough, warm hands closed on her upper arms. “I had to follow her up since I didn’t know which room was yours. If I had, I would have been haunting this space for the past several days.” He nuzzled the back of her neck. “I would certainly have come after you last night.”
“Why would you have done that?” she asked with a shrug, while trying to maintain her equilibrium under the dizzying desire already sweeping through her with just the mere touch of his lips.
“I wasn’t done with you yet.” His deep brogue was whiskey rough against her nape. His hands crept up to cup her breasts. “I wanted to make slow love to you, Kitty. My passion for yo
u burned so hot I could not take my time as I had wanted. There is so much more I want to explore.”
Kitty felt Jack’s tongue abrade the side of her neck before drawing her earlobe into his mouth. He bit playfully on it before sucking lightly. She couldn’t stop the shudder that swept her from head to toe. She was still angry with him, wanted to reestablish the rules as she had laid out before but logical thought fled. Passion replaced anger. Vocal rebuttal was the last thing on her mind. All that mattered was having him again.
She tilted her head to the side, mindlessly inviting him to take fuller advantage of the flesh there. To feast. And he did, opening his mouth, nipping and sucking the tender skin. His hands massaged her breasts, finding the nipples and rolling them between his fingers. Kitty’s hands rose to cover his, following the motion of his hands even as he moaned against her neck.
“Aye, my love,” he groaned.
Tension was already building between Kitty’s thighs as his arm came around her waist to pull her back against him. Even through her bulky clothing, she could feel the hard length of him nudging against her bottom and she pressed back against him, reveling in the moan that escaped him. He squatted, quickly gathering her black skirts in his hands and bunching them up at her hips as he ground against her again, with only the thin barrier of her drawers and his breeches to block the heat.
“I want to take you, my love,” he growled in her ear. “I want to possess you and feel you throbbing around me. I want to feel you explode around me. Say, yes.”
Kitty could feel that throbbing begin as his words brought a piercing ache to her core. She wanted him as well. Wanted to feel him inside of her. She gripped the back of the chair in front of her and wordlessly arched her bottom towards him. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, as he pulled the drawstring at her waist and pushed her drawers down.
When his scalding hand made contact with her bottom, Kitty could not stop the cry that escaped her lips before she bit down on them. His skillful fingers slid along the curve of her buttocks until they slid between her legs, teasing the swollen nub of her desire before slipping inside of her. He pushed her legs farther apart and thrust his finger deeply. “My God, Kitty,” he groaned, his voice trembling. “You’re so hot. So wet.” He pushed another finger along with the first as Kitty leaned over the chair, panting. His other hand came around and parted her from the front, rubbing between the damp lips even as his fingers thrust once more from behind.
Her flesh quivered around his digits and Kitty could feel the ache build and contract around him, knowing he could feel it to. “Aye, my love,” he encouraged, as he pumped his fingers into her and his other hand teased her bud.
“Jack,” her voice was ethereal, wavering from far away. “Please.”
“Tell me, my love.”
“I want you…come with me…” she gasped.
Jack growled in her ear as she felt him reach between their bodies and release himself from his breeches. His left arm came around her waist as his right hand slid up the back of her thigh, raising it, bending it up and away, as he entered her from behind. He bent at the knees and thrust the length of himself up and into her as she gasped. “Lean forward, my love,” he urged, grunting when she leaned against the chair.
Grasping her hips, he pushed into her again, keeping her one leg in his hand, keeping her spread for him as he set up a rhythm that had her squirming back against him. He slapped her bottom lightly. “Hold still.”
Kitty moaned against her arms as Jack pumped into her again and again, reaching deeper into her core until she thought he might tear her apart. Still he teased her with the climax, allowing her to have it within her reach before changing the cadence and dangling it before her once more. She tightened around him each time he withdrew until she could feel him shaking with desire as well. His pace quickened until he was pounding into her desperately. His fingers dug into her hips as he tried to pull her closer and closer. Stars burst behind Kitty’s eyes as she exploded around him, contracting with heavenly bliss even as he thrust into her one last time with a guttural cry that echoed her own scream of release.
“Oh, Jack, I–” Kitty bit off the sentiment she so wanted to confess.
He stayed in her as the throbbing continued, then abated. His hand caressed her bottom once more, before he pulled off her with a hiss.
Kitty lay limply against the chair as he drew up her drawers and tied them around her waist before dropping her skirts back to the floor. She closed her eyes, fighting the urge to turn into his arms, kiss him tenderly and pour out her love for him. She wanted to tell him how wonderful he was. What he made her feel. How she would do anything to have him in her arms for the rest of her life.
Unable to do any of those things, she only raised herself up, hands still gripping the back of the chair. Opening her eyes, she found the view from the window still before her, but the sky more brilliant, the sun’s reflection on the water more blinding. She longed for him to wrap his arms around her once more, to whisper words of love in her ear as sweet and extraordinary as that which she saw before her.
“Kitty?” His brogue held a question she could not answer. If she were to turn to him now, he would know instantly what was in her mind and heart. And he would run from her as fast as he might. “What is it, my love?”
Kitty shook her head sharply in denial. His endearment was generic to him, she chastised herself. He had used it from the moment they met. It meant nothing. Remember, she told herself, what is explosive and life changing to you is just a moment worth some note to him. She resolved to have words with him again about the perimeters of their affair, to remind him of the terms, but not now. Not when she was feeling so vulnerable.
He stayed there for several moments more but Kitty refused to turn and have him run away from the look in her eyes. “Will you not speak to me? Tell me what has upset you so?”
He waited. “Kitty?”
After a long moment, Jack left the room with a sigh.
Chapter 30
“Well, girls, I don’t plan on living here, but I would like to think I am welcome to come here when I want to!” Maggie Preston complained to her girls.
“Of course you’re always welcome here, Mother,” Eve sighed, pinching her nose in frustration, and pushed back from the big desk in her father’s study. The women were gathered around it, going over how their properties and new responsibilities would be taken care of. “But Kitty has a valid point in suggesting perhaps we should engage an estate manager to handle the day to day business of Kilberry since none of us will be living here full time.”
“Where do you plan on going, Katherine?” her mother asked.
She didn’t really know, if Kitty were to be honest with herself. There was her room upstairs, not the suite she had shared with Freddie, but the rooms she was in now. She might live here at Kilberry permanently, but Newport was all but deserted in the winter months, making living here year round a lonely prospect. Her home of the past six years had been in Boston, a place she had never enjoyed living. Even if she had, she would never put herself in the position of living near Freddie again. While a part of her longed to return to Scotland with Eve so she might be near her sister, Abby and Moira, Kitty couldn’t imagine living a life within Jack’s reach but always lingering just outside his life. He was a life-long friend of her brother-in-law, making avoidance improbable. It would be unbearable to watch him take a wife one day.
“Perhaps I’ll travel for a bit, Mother. See the world, as it were. One might think you’d be happy to see your scandalous, divorcée daughter gone from New York for a while so I don’t embarrass you.” The words came out harshly and she cringed with instant regret.
“Kat!”
“Katherine!”
Kitty rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry, Mother. Truly, I am. And truthfully, I have no idea what I might do or where I might go. I simply hadn’t really thought about it. I’ll have to find a house for myself and Hannah somewhere.”
“You can stay with me
until you do,” Maggie offered, sensing the feelings of loss and displacement her daughter was facing. “I would enjoy having Hannah underfoot, and you as well, despite what you think.”
“Mama,” Kitty’s heart squeezed. “What would I do without you?”
“Well, if you’d take my advice, you’d snatch up your earl and make me a truly happy woman!” her mother teased.
“Mother!”
“Mama! I hope you don’t plan on saying anything of the kind to Lord Haddington,” Kitty cried. “It’s humiliating to think he’s suffering silently in dread, afraid to even face you lest you bully him into marriage.”
“Perhaps he needs a touch of bullying.”
“Mother, please!” Kitty begged. “If Jack ever manages to reach the point of a marriage proposal, I’d like it to be because of me and not because my mother nagged him into it!”
“Really Katherine,” her mother sniffed. “I hardly think–”
Sung Li cleared his throat from the doorway. “Pardon me, missy, I don’t mean to interrupt, but two rather questionable persons are at the door to see you.”
Eve and Kitty exchanged puzzled glances. “Questionable?” Maggie queried. “What would a person of questionable appearance being doing at the door, asking for my daughter?”
“I don’t know, missy-ma’am, but they asked for Mrs. Hayes by name.”
“Did they provide their names?” Eve asked.
“They would not say, lady,” Sung Li informed them, “but they say only Lord Haddington sent them.”
Kitty again shrugged under Eve’s questioning eyes. “I suppose you should show them in, Sung Li.”
“Missy, I don’t believe…” the majordomo swallowed his protest. “Right away, missy.”
Moments later, two rough and, yes, very questionable looking characters came in to the room. They were dressed fashionably enough, yet the clothes fit all wrong and were definitely not their own. Their demeanors were shifty, their eyes dodging from side to side.
A Question of Trust Page 25
