“Nasheeba,” she said aloud. “Wife of the great pharaoh, mother of Thutmos, prince of the temple.”
“You do know what you’re doing!” Alfred exclaimed.
“Not really. I’ve simply learned a few symbols.”
“Beautiful. Ah, well, I think I should make us all some Egyptian tea!” Alfred said. “Excuse me. I shall leave the two of you alone for a few minutes.”
He walked out of the elegant parlor, leaving her there, facing David.
“Katherine…” David said softly, then stepped forward.
She was so surprised that she hadn’t the least idea of what he was doing at first. Before she knew it, he had taken her into his arms.
His eyes seemed to pour into hers, and he said her name again. “Katherine…the beautiful, the magnificent, the brave!”
And then he kissed her.
She felt his lips, soft on her own, ever so slightly awkward. His hands, planted on her back, pressed her hard against him.
It was her dream, she thought. David. Wanting her. Kissing her.
But something was not quite right. His kiss wasn’t how she had imagined it. She wanted it, yes…
But not this way.
She placed her hands on his chest and pushed. He seemed to take her action as merely a token protest and held her more tightly, his lips growing harder against hers.
She twisted her face from his. “David!”
“What?” he whispered huskily. “Oh, Kat, I need you. You’re truly what I need…what I want. When I saw you…you had saved my life. And you were gone…and then you were back. And more beautiful, more desirable…I dream about you breathing, about your eyes, about the way you looked. And I know you care about me, I know it.”
“Yes, I do, but…”
“But?”
“This isn’t right…being here.”
“But, Kat, where else could we be? We’d be seen. Alfred is my friend. He would protect us. Kat, we could steal hours and hours here.”
David had relaxed his hold. He stroked her face gently, looking into her eyes. There was an honesty in his words. Pain, craving. He cared about her, wanted her.
The world should have been on fire.
She felt a chill.
“Why should we steal hours?” she asked.
He groaned, pulling her against him again. “Oh, Kat! If only you had remained but a poor waif! But now your father might well become famous and wealthy…. But then, artists are Bohemian, avant garde…. No, he still wouldn’t understand. You…you wouldn’t want him to know. And then, of course, there’s Lord Avery. And Margaret.”
She stiffened. Her mouth wouldn’t quite work correctly. “You want me…to be your mistress.”
He looked at her in apparent puzzlement. “Kat, I would always care for you!”
“But you wouldn’t marry me,” she said.
“Kat, I’m the son of Baron Rothchild Turnberry!”
She had never felt so cold in her life. “Younger son,” she reminded him.
“Yes, yes, but, Kat, I truly love you.”
“And Margaret?”
“Well, of course, there is a difference. You must understand. You are not so naive not to know the way of the world. Please, don’t stare at me so. You’ve wanted this. I thought you’d must know that…we’d have to be secret.”
His fingers were still moving over her face. Knuckles stroking her chin. His expression now was that of a kindly tutor explaining a piece of learning that every child should know. Then he bent to kiss her again. His lips were more forceful this time, trying to wedge open her lips. And his hands upon her were stronger, moving, creeping around her ribs, rising to her breasts.
She made a sound of protest and pushed hard against his chest. She was ice now, but love died hard.
He broke from her again. “Kat, I must have you!” His whisper was frantic. “You are such fire! And…and my intended bride is ice! You are the passion, Kat. A man needs passion in his life.”
He wasn’t letting go of her, and he pushed her suddenly, so that she fell backward onto a sofa. And then he was on top of her. “Kat…you must understand.”
She shoved hard, but he was too heavy to dislodge. She twisted her head, and he caught her chin between his thumb and fingers. “Kat, I love you!” he said, and the words were real, as if torn from his heart. His lips found hers again.
Kat, I love you!
For a moment, the words were a sweet echo in her heart. And the feel of his kiss was not painful, but bittersweet, less than stirring, perhaps, but searching and sweet, his quest, a dream perhaps, similar to her own and yet…crucially different.
Then truth sliced bitterly into her heart. He wanted her. And she was made for desire, carnal, a woman to be a mistress, but never a wife for so highborn a person.
She ripped her mouth away. “Get off me, David, please.”
He went still. He stared at her, then frowned, and she could see that his temper was growing. “You have teased like the worst, cheapest whore in the East End!” he said hoarsely.
She stared at him, stunned, gaping. “Get off me. Now.”
“Kat!” The anger faded from his features. “You don’t understand. God, I am so sorry! You see, I must have you!” he repeated.
“Let me go!” she enunciated.
“You’re not listening. I really love you!” Again, the whisper was so heartfelt, the look in his eyes so earnest, that her heart skipped a beat. She forgot the base cruelty of his earlier words.
“I love you!” he whispered.
She stared at him. “Love is not enough,” she said softly.
“Kat!” He still did not release her. He buried his head against her. She struggled to free herself from his hold, but he was like a deadweight. She considered her options. Screaming, scratching, kicking.
“David, you must get off!” she tried again, and shoved him with all her might. This time she succeeded in dislodging him and she struggled to her feet. She would have stayed there, but he caught her dress and pulled her back down. Now, however, she was on top of him.
And that was when Hunter barged into the room.
“What the devil…?” David demanded.
“Let go of her,” Hunter snapped. “Now!”
Instantly, David grasped her, arms around her, manner protective. He struggled awkwardly to rise with Kat in his arms.
He didn’t have much time. Hunter was across the room. He caught Kat around the midriff and lifted her, disentangling David’s hold at the same time. For several seconds, Kat found herself dangling in Hunter’s arms like an errant schoolchild.
“Get up, David,” Hunter said, his voice low and threatening.
Kat was entirely indignant. “Sir Hunter, please put me down.”
“Hunter!” David protested, rising as told. “We are both of age!”
“She has a father who is worried sick about her,” Hunter said.
“Could you please put me down!” Kat said again.
“How dare you, sir!” David protested, and he flushed with a dark discomfort. “You have scores of mistresses!”
“I do not prey on the innocent, filling them with champagne and taking a detour to a friend’s house where the servants have mysteriously disappeared for the day,” Hunter thundered back.
“She wants to be with me!” David protested. “Kat, tell him!”
“Would you please put me down!” Kat again said to Hunter.
And he did. Naturally, she staggered, and he put his hand out to steady her, a hand that remained hard on her arm. He glared at her with such sharp anger and disappointment that she was left speechless.
“She wants to be with me!” David repeated.
Hunter’s eyes raked over her in a way that was almost physically painful. And then his hand fell from her arm and he stepped back.
“You and Alfred tricked her into coming here,” Hunter accused.
“She wants to be with me,” David said once again.
“I see. So it w
as her idea to come here.”
“She wanted to see me again, alone, and I knew it!” David protested.
Kat’s cheeks flamed, for what he said was true. She had wanted to be alone with him. But things shouldn’t have gone so quickly. He should have spent days seeing her, falling in love. Needing the sound of her voice, as she had come to yearn for his. Needing the look in her eyes, the sound of her laughter. And then, somewhere, there should have been the lightest touches. And at last…a kiss. For which he should have apologized, and…
And then, of course, he should have said that he loved her—in a way that defied all else. That he loved her and wanted to marry her. He would forsake all others. He would defy his father, if need be! For that was love.
“Were you tricked into coming here?” Hunter asked Kat. “Or,” he asked pointedly, “was this your intention?”
She gasped, far more ready to slap him than David. Tears threatened. She had no intention of spilling them before either man. She would not, however, dignify Hunter’s question with an answer.
She straightened to the most regal height she could manage. “I’ll see myself home, thank you, gentlemen!”
Head high, she started out of the room.
But at that moment, Alfred Daws came racing in, making a beeline for Hunter, in an apparent fury, ready to tackle him.
She was amazed at the deftness with which Hunter sidestepped his opponent. Alfred crashed onto the couch, rose again and turned. Hunter raised a fist, caught Alfred in the jaw, and the man went down.
Kat stared at Hunter. “You are all truly animals,” she said very softly. And she walked from the room and out of the entrance they’d come in.
She realized that the pins were cascading from her hair and that her neat and proper attire was scarcely together. She tried to catch the escaping strands of her hair, but the effort was fruitless, and so, still hidden behind the high bushes on Lord Daws’s property, she tried to straighten her skirt.
She didn’t hear Hunter’s approach, but somehow he was there, right behind her, a hand on her back. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” she cried.
“Indeed, you are.”
“I am not—”
“Your father is frantic.”
She went still, no longer angry, but dismayed. “It can’t be so late!”
“Lord Avery tried to reach David at the club. He was to bring you back to his, Lord Avery’s, house. But you all were not at the club, and you were not at home. I had a fair idea of where you might be when I discovered that Alfred Daws had joined you. Luckily, I followed, and you may feel free to thank me at any time.”
“Thank you?”
“So you did intend to let him bed you?” Hunter demanded coldly.
She stared at him, choking with fury. Then she found action. She drew back her arm, ready to slap him for all she was worth. He caught her wrist before the blow could find its mark.
“No, Miss Adair, because I don’t deserve that. Not the way that I found you.”
“I didn’t intend to let him bed me,” she said icily, “but neither did I need you to rescue me! I could have taken care of myself.”
He arched a brow. “Ah! So that’s what I saw.” His tone was dry.
She wrenched her arm free of his grasp. “I was trying to rise!”
“You were not doing very well.”
“I didn’t have time!”
She was stunned when he suddenly let out an oath and gripped her shoulders. “You little fool. Do you really think that a pair of arrogant college boys, who think themselves superior to others, would have hesitated to rape you?”
She swallowed hard and shook her head. “I don’t believe…I won’t believe…that he wouldn’t have accepted my refusal!”
His fingers tightened on her flesh. “You are far too pathetically naive to be on the streets!” he informed her. He released her, stepping back, shaking his head angrily. “Fix yourself,” he suggested, his tone so soft it was menacing. “You’re going to see your father.”
She tried to muster what dignity she could to adjust her clothing, difficult with his eyes on her with such condemnation. But he turned away before she was done, heading out to the street where Ethan and his carriage awaited. Ethan, ever polite, offered her an encouraging smile when she emerged. “Good evening, Miss Adair.”
“Evening, Ethan,” she returned, and managed a smile. She accepted his help into the carriage. A moment later, Hunter climbed in.
She couldn’t see a thing out of the window. The light from the street lamps seemed to swim before her, and all else was a haze. She continued to look out the window, anyway.
He didn’t speak. She felt heated in his presence, as if she sat near the burning coals of a chestnut dealer. His arms were folded over his chest. As his team of horses clopped through the streets, she knew that his eyes remained on her. He didn’t touch her. His knees didn’t brush hers.
They’d been riding some time before he said, “You might want to do something with your hair.”
Self-consciously, she tried to capture and restrain the escaping tendrils as best she could. He crossed over to the seat beside her.
“Turn,” he ordered, and she did so, her back and shoulders stiff as he first collected pins, then straightened the wild tendrils and repinned them with an expertise that could only have come from practice.
The brush of his fingers sent tremors along her spine. She was painfully aware of his slightest movement.
But he didn’t stay by her side. He shifted back to the seat opposite the minute he was done.
“Unless you are truly willing to become the man’s mistress and nothing more, I might suggest that you keep your distance from the Right Honorable David Turnberry for the time being,” he suggested from the darkness within the carriage.
“He would have listened to me,” she said.
Hunter snorted derisively. “It did not so appear.”
“Well, we’ll never know, will we?”
“A thank-you for the rescue,” he said next, “might be a courteous gesture,” he said again.
“Once again, Sir Hunter, I don’t believe that I needed to be rescued! And…did you have to resort to such violence with Alfred?”
“No. I could have let him beat me to a pulp.”
She lowered her head, feeling the urge to burst into tears again.
“Will there be repercussions?” she asked him after a moment.
“For what?”
“For…what you did to Alfred?”
“I’m rather certain neither of the young men will ever mention what happened there. Though you are convinced otherwise, you were a victim tonight. And it could have been far worse.”
“But…”
“But what?”
She looked out the window again, very hurt.
Dreams, she realized, died hard.
“Are your intentions so much more honorable?” she asked.
She wished she had never spoken. She could feel his anger sweep off him in waves.
He leaned forward, still not touching her. “I have been accused of many things, Miss Adair. And of some, I was guilty. But seduction and rape of an innocent? That is one sin that does not sit upon my conscience.”
She was startled when the door of the carriage suddenly opened. He had so held her attention that she hadn’t realized the carriage had come to a halt outside Lord Avery’s.
She exhaled, aware that Ethan, courteous as ever, was waiting to assist her from the carriage.
Aware she had been holding her breath.
Aware…that she was sorry, and that she might well have been in trouble. Though she would never really know.
“Miss Adair?”
She accepted Ethan’s hand and stepped down from the carriage. Hunter followed. She swallowed hard, knowing that she had been wrong and that the pain in her heart had refused to allow her to admit it.
She turned, ready to offer Hunter an apology.
But he was sweeping by her. The door to the house had opened, and Margaret came rushing down the steps.
She paused by Hunter, smiling, rising on tiptoe, kissing his cheek, then turning to Kat.
“Ah, there you are! Hunter, you found our missing Kat. Ah, dear Kat! Come in, come in! You must see what your father has done! Come, come!”
As she dragged her into the house, Kat looked back.
He was watching her. And for some strange reason, the disappointment in his eyes seem to tear at her, like salt upon the abrasion that was her heart.
I’m sorry, truly sorry!
But she could no longer say the words. And she was afraid, very afraid, that a door had closed that might never open again.
Chapter 8
THE EVENING SEEMED unendurably long to Hunter. Margaret was as ever gracious and welcoming to everyone. While they awaited dinner, she and Lord Avery showed Kat the work that William Adair had done during the day, and, seeing the sketches for the portrait he would do of Lady Margaret, Hunter could only marvel that the man’s talent had not been discovered before. The essence of the young woman had been caught. The sheer blond beauty, gentleness, kindness and warmth.
It was intriguing to watch Kat study the works. There were a few minutes in which her heart seemed painfully evident; she liked Margaret, admired her and was grateful to her. It must have been something of a conflict for Kat to so adore a man who was intended for this young woman. Where he might have been prone to sympathy at some point, he felt only the rise of his temper. How on earth could she be so certain that if she had said that she could not be David’s mistress, that would be the end of it? It was sheer lunacy.
Did she really believe it? Or had she just been trying to convince him, Hunter?
David’s friends, Robert Stewart and Allan Beckensdale, were at the house. Both were courteous in the extreme to Lady Margaret, and yet both were smitten by Eliza Adair. When the work had been viewed and wine served—the glass offered to Kat politely refused—Lord Avery grew anxious.
“Margaret, where is that young man of yours and his friend? The hour grows late, my stomach is growling, and I don’t think we’ll wait for them much longer!” he said impatiently.
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