Who cared what the world would think, or what was right or wrong, or which one of them won in their battles of will? She had learned her lesson: the only important thing was to love him and share pleasure with him and grab her one chance at happiness. And everything else be damned!
Matthew stepped out onto the street, feeling his spirits soaring precariously. He had agreed to undertake this suicidal mission out of sheer despair. After Katherine left him, he had felt lower than he ever thought possible. Plagued by a low but unremitting fever from his wound, haggard from lack of sleep and ceaseless self-recriminations, he had felt as if he would die from loving her, wanting her and not having her. Neither whiskey nor women could ease the pain. He cursed himself for letting her go and hated himself for wanting to keep her against her will. He was tortured both night and day by hot, lustful dreams in which she moaned in ecstasy beneath him, and nightmares in which he saw her brutalized again and again at the brothel.
So when Redfield had laid out this scheme, the most appealing thing about it was the near-certainty of death in it for him. But to find Katherine here like this! When he saw her standing in that room, thin and pale, her gold eyes dark with sadness, it had taken every ounce of will power in him not to sweep her into his arms. And then she had lightly bandied words with him, smiling and looking up at him provocatively, her eyes amber beneath the thick fringe of her lashes. He thought of the way she had looked at him when he first entered, her face glowing, her eyes alight. Surely that had been love, not hate, shining out of those eyes at him. He would see her again, hold her in his arms in a waltz tomorrow night, steal a few moments alone with her on the terrace. He began to whistle, then stopped abruptly when he realized that the tune he was whistling was “Dixie.”
Katherine turned slowly before the mirror, checking to make sure every fold of the soft gold satin gown was in place. Behind her, Angela watched enviously her slow rotation in the powder room mirror. It just wasn’t fair, she told herself, that her ugly duckling cousin had turned into such a swan. Her gown was beautiful and shimmering and revealed her bosom to a point just short of indecency. Her hair was pulled back from her face and arranged in artless curls falling from the crown. Her perfect, shell-shaped ears were adorned with simple gold studs, and around the base of her slender, regal neck lay a fragile gold chain. The effect was stunning. Somehow she looked majestic and exotic all at once, and Angela felt like a colorless child beside her. She could not imagine how Katherine had managed such a complete transformation, but she had no doubt that that golden glow of her skin and eyes was due to the imminently eligible Commander Forrest And she had the uneasy feeling that her dowdy cousin was about to pull off the catch of the Season.
“Well, Cousin, I am ready to go down now. Coming?” Katherine asked her.
Angela smiled. She was not fool enough to make her entrance in Katherine’s shadow. “No, dear, you run along. I simply must speak to Rosemary Clifton first.”
“All right.” Katherine smiled, headily suspecting Angela’s true reason. She swept out of the powder room door and paused at the top of the stairway, her eyes searching for Matthew. She began to descend the broad stairs, her wide skirts trailing the marble. Her right hand clutched the ivory fan fiercely, as she willed him to look up and see her. Already men had noticed her and were clustering about the bottom of the stairs. Then casually he glanced around and saw her and stopped in midsentence. Lazily he smiled at her entrance, but she had seen the way his entire body had stiffened when he saw her and the fierce blaze that had sparked in his eyes before he regained control of himself. She favored the room with a dazzling smile, and a barely audible sigh ran around the ballroom.
Katherine was the hit of the evening. She had not really considered that possibility. Her dress had been for Matthew; she had wanted to stir his senses, tease him, enflame him. Her own senses had been in a whirl ever since she saw him again. She had not been able to sleep or eat from the excitement that raged in her. A thousand questions spun in her hand, and she could not untangle her own turbulent emotions. Only two things seemed clear to her: he was alive, and somehow she must rekindle his desire for her. It had not occurred to her that she might produce similar effects on other men as well.
She found herself besieged by officers in blue, all begging for a space on her dance card. It was a heady feeling for a former wallflower. Laughing, smiling, flirting, she danced the night away. The only thing spoiling the evening was the fact that Matthew had not approached her at all. Then suddenly, she saw him striding purposefully across the floor toward her, and she waited for him breathlessly, almost faint with fear and hope and excitement.
“I believe this dance is mine,” he said, cutting off an approaching swain, and she moved into his arms without a murmur of protest.
His hand was firm against her waist as he guided her about the floor, their bodies a very correct distance apart. But the grip his other hand maintained on hers was anything but seemly. She followed him easily; he danced well, lightly, and she felt as if they were floating around the floor. It was all perfect: it felt so right, so good, to be in his arms, to be staring, entranced, into his gray eyes, devilishly alight. She felt as if she could whirl around the floor like this forever.
At last she managed to find her voice enough to say lightly, “You have neglected me, Commander Forrest. Quite shamefully, too; I haven’t seen you all evening.”
“Oh, but I have seen you. The crowd around you has been too thick for me to get close. Besides,” his teeth flashed in his tanned face, “I couldn’t let you have it all your own way, could I?”
“Well, I can see you’re as conceited as always,” she snapped, and he burst into laughter.
“Oh, Katherine, you look so beautiful I could devour you.”
“Right here on the dance floor?” she teased.
“Right here.” His voice was husky. “Kathy, when this dance is through, walk with me on the terrace.”
Her heart began to pound violently, and her voice was barely more than a whisper: “All right.”
“I see you wore my chain.” He didn’t add that he had been quite shaken when he saw her coming down the staircase in that alluring gown cut from his cloth and his chain hung enticingly about her silken neck. Surely that was a clear statement that she had forgiven him.
She smiled. “Your fan, also. And your dress. And some other things you gave me.” She smiled meaningfully.
His breath caught in his throat at the idea of the flimsy undergarments he had given her lying soft against her skin. The music wound to a close, and she took his arm for him to lead her to the terrace. Fanning her flushed face, she noticed with pleasure that his arm trembled under her hand. Once outside, they walked to the far end of the colonnade, beyond the lighted windows, where the darkness covered them. He faced her, suddenly realizing he had no idea what to do. Should he try to explain to her, enlist her silence? Beg her to forgive him? He longed to kiss her, but was afraid he might frighten her off.
Gently he touched the chain about her neck; the metal was warm with the heat of her body. Softly his fingers traveled downward, lightly brushing the tops of her breasts, slipping down between her breasts and back up, tracing intricate designs about her chest. Both of them stood still, their eyes locked, almost afraid to move for fear of breaking the pleasure of his touch, painful in its intensity and lack of fulfillment.
Finally, Katherine broke the spell by taking his hand between hers and lifting it to her lips. Softly she kissed the palm, then each fingertip; for an instant she held his hand to her cheek, then again kissed his palm.
“Katherine.” The word came out almost a groan.
“Matthew.” She took his other hand and began to kiss it the same way. “Matt. Matthew. ‘See how I say your name?’” she quoted shakily. He felt wetness on her cheek. Tears? “He said you were dead.” There was a catch in her voice. “I thought you were dead.”
“As you can see, I am very much alive.” He slid his fingers along the so
ft angles of her face. “Oh, Katherine, I haven’t felt so alive since the last time I saw you.”
She stretched up on tiptoe, and kissed him, a brief whisper of a kiss, but his arms tightened around her and he kissed her deeply, hungrily, his tongue caressing hers, and she responded, pressing her lips to his, her tongue playing with his. His hands roamed her body, delving into her bodice to fondle her perfect breasts. Hungrily he bent to kiss them. To his amazement, he felt her hands traveling over his chest, sliding down his legs.
“Oh, God!” He pulled away from her.
“Matthew!”
“We have to go back in now.”
“Matthew, why?” She pressed her body into his, felt the shudder that shook his body. He wanted her; she could feel it.
“We have been out here too long already. Soon people will notice we are not there and, if we stay out here long, your reputation will be ruined.”
“I don’t care; it already is.”
“Perhaps in Boston; not here.”
Her hand slipped between the buttons of his uniform, caressing his chest.
“Katherine, please, you are torturing me.”
“Then take me. Can’t we slip into the garden, back behind the hedges?”
“My love, I can think of nothing I would rather do than abscond with you to the garden and make love to you. But we can’t! Don’t you see? Your reputation would be in shreds. I cannot blacken your name here, too. It would be different if I could take you with me when I leave, but I can’t. It’s far too dangerous. I would have to leave you here, fair game for all the scandalmongers, without me here to protect you. Otherwise, I would say, ‘reputation be damned,’ because I have never wanted anyone so badly as I want you now.”
“Later, then, we will meet somewhere. I can slip out of my room anytime. I shall come to your room. It won’t be like it used to—I will do anything you say, I swear.”
“Good God, can’t I make you understand? I have to think of your future—and mine. II you were to be caught and I was embroiled in a scandal, soon my entire masquerade would be discovered, and I would be hanged as a spy. And you would be treated as a spy, too, knowing who I was and not revealing it. But even if we were not caught, as soon as I am done here, I have to leave, and frankly, I doubt if I shall manage to reach Virginia. I expect to die. And I cannot just take my pleasure of you and then leave you here, perhaps carrying my child, to face the world alone.”
“If that is the case, I should think you would want to have your one last moment of pleasure, and I do, too. And these past few weeks, thinking you were dead, the thing I have regretted most bitterly is that I am not pregnant with your child!”
“Katherine, you are not thinking clearly.”
She gave a short, bitter laugh and straightened her disarranged dress. “Oh, yes, I am thinking clearly—clear through to the obvious reason you refuse to take me—simply that you don’t want me.”
“Katherine—”
She brushed past him and marched into the ballroom without a backward glance. He leaned against the railing and sighed. God, what an unholy mess.
Katherine lay awake all night. She felt as if she had been hit by an emotional hurricane: first the agony of thinking him dead, then the exhilarating joy upon finding him alive, the spiraling passion that had engulfed her this evening, and finally, his second rejection of her. Now, bruised and buffeted, she tried to gather herself together and return to some stability, sort everything out and put it into perspective.
He did not want her anymore—how could she have forgotten that? He had rid himself of her forever back in Liverpool. Her happiness at seeing him had simply obscured that unpleasant fact. She had thought she had rekindled a passion in him, but obviously she had been mistaken. Katherine didn’t believe his excuses for a second: he was the most irresponsible man alive, not one to be guided by fear for her reputation, or even for their lives. No, he was lying, for some reason pretending to be enflamed by her, but glibly fibbing his way out of bedding her. And the reason was obvious; he must keep her on his side because she could identify him to the authorities. One word from her and he would be on the path to the gallows. So he must keep her happy by paying court to her, but could not bring himself to make love to her.
Sternly, she shook herself. What did it matter? She had known Matthew did not love her, or even desire her any longer. All that was important was that he was alive. She could see him and hear his voice and feel the warmth of his lazy grin. At least she could revel in that. He would continue to come to see her, and they could continue their verbal games. She could drink in the pleasure of seeing him, and she would not press him again to make love to her. No, she would be her old self, sharp, light, amusing; she would not plague him with her love. And perhaps, if she could manage to look pretty enough, some of his old desire for her might reignite.
But what was she to make of his reason for being here? He must be here as a spy or saboteur; she was betraying her own country by not revealing his identity. Katherine felt stricken with guilt. She knew she would never identify him: that would mean certain hanging for him as a spy. Yet how could she, ardent Unionist and abolitionist that she was, allow him to bring harm to her country? Her love for Matthew had not changed her opinion of the South or of the rectitude of the Northern cause. The South was almost defeated now, but whatever Matthew was trying to do—and she had no doubt but that he would accomplish it—could prolong the War, cause more lives to be lost. And she could not just toss away hundreds of men’s lives for her love of a Rebel spy.
I must stop him myself, she thought. That is the only way. I must find out what he is here for and somehow dissuade him or foil his plans.
And upon setting that task for herself, she finally drifted off to sleep, just as dawn broke.
She awoke late the next morning and spent a long time getting dressed; she wanted just the right dress and just the right hair style. Then she sat down to wait, trying to cover her nervousness with needlework. But looking at her uneven stitches, she knew that she would have to tear them all out and start over again. Angela stuck with her, plying her with curious questions and gossiping about the party, until Katherine felt that she would scream. At last, unable to endure the boredom or her cousin’s chatter, she went for a stroll, taking her maid with her for propriety.
A block away from the house, she saw Hampton coming toward her. “Miss Devereaux,” he said sweeping off his hat and bowing. “What luck! I was just coming to call on you.”
His eyes swept over her. She looked like a delicious confection in a frosted silk of broad purple and white chevron stripes. A dainty straw hat perched on her curls, a lavender feather curving fetchingly downward to brush against her cheek. Matthew felt a distinct desire to gather her up in his arms and kiss her right there on the street.
“Commander Forrest, what a pleasant surprise,” Katherine murmured, her eyes twinkling.
“And Pegeen,” he smiled at the pert redhead, “are you still breaking hearts? You made my crew quite worthless, you know.”
Pegeen giggled. “None of your blarney now, Captain Hampton. You don’t need it to get me to leave you alone.”
“Thank heaven you are Irish.” He winked at her and offered his arm to Katherine.
She flashed him a dazzling smile, and they walked off together, Pegeen trailing discreetly several paces behind.
“You have changed, Katherine.”
“Have I? In what way?”
“You are more beautiful than ever. You seem to have accepted your beauty.”
She looked up at him through her lashes and smiled. “You thought me beautiful; no one else ever had. It made me look at myself in a different way. And I decided to be daring; I was quite an outcast anyway—I had nothing to lose.”
“Katherine, I am sorry,” he began, but she tossed her head and said, “Old cats!” so furiously that instead laughter bubbled up out of his throat.
“Don’t laugh. It is true; they are. Wouldn’t even speak to m
e! God knows they were all dull enough, but compared to being shut up all day with only Aunt Amelia! Her only topic of conversation is the Fritham family tree. Oh, except for funerals; she is quite enamored of them, too. Of course, Aunt Amanda did come over to scold me, and her son Jamie, too, to slobber over my hand and tell me how he was willing to marry me, despite my wicked past.”
“Ah, another suitor,” he said lightly.
“Mm. One of your Boston cash registers.”
“Katherine, couldn’t we find some place more private than the street to talk?”
“There is a little park a couple of blocks from here.”
“Good. To the park, then.”
A few minutes later they were ensconced on a stone bench, hidden by spreading trees, with Pegeen on guard at the gate. Matthew took her left hand in his and lightly stroked the ring finger.
“Has your stupid lieutenant beat a retreat, then?” he said sarcastically.
She snatched her hand back and said heatedly, “Oh, you are a fine one to talk about deserting me! For your information, Lieutenant Perkins did not break off our engagement. He loved me and was very sweet and told me that it didn’t matter about you and that he would be patient and—” she choked in fury.
“What a magnanimous man he is,” Hampton said dryly. “He seems such a paragon, I only wonder why you broke your engagement. I assume one of you must have cried off, since you no longer wear his ring.”
Katherine clenched her fist. How could she have forgotten what an infuriating man he was! She wanted to hit him for his lazily mocking tone, to wipe that derisive grin from his face.
“Yes, I called it off, not that it is any of your business. I was not going to saddle him with a tainted wife; I have more respect for him than that. He deserves better than your leavings! Yours and quite a few other men’s—”
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