Trial by Desire

by Courtney Milan

  Her hands clenched the bedcovers uselessly.

  And then he looked into her eyes and thrust forward. His fingers clenched around her wrist. His mouth gritted; not in pain, but in the onslaught of pleasure. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in.

  There was nothing between them but the smooth slide in and out, the friction, the heat that built between them. She had no control over her body, nothing in her head except the feel of his skin against hers, the grind of his pelvis, the pleasure building once again.

  He reached his climax first; his thrusts grew stronger; his fingernails bit into her wrist. He let out a hiss between his teeth, and the hot rush that filled her, the sure knowledge that she had given him the pleasure he gave her, was all she needed. She clamped around him. And then she was spasming around him again—insanely, perfectly, completely his.

  NED COULD NOT FIND WORDS afterward. None of them seemed right; they didn’t seem to fit the intimacy they’d just shared. Any words he could imagine would only emphasize what he’d given her—and what he’d hidden behind that tender display.

  But then, Kate didn’t know what he hadn’t said. She turned against him, her hand falling on his naked hip. “You were right.” Her words were soft against the silence, but still he prickled, inhaling cool air. She trusted him. Her breath, warm against the hollow of his throat, bespoke security. She cinched her arm around his waist, unconsciously molding herself against him. That posture, that welcome confidence, had to be genuine.

  “You knew about Louisa,” she said quietly.

  “Perhaps I should have said something to you.” He traced his finger idly down her shoulder. Easier than looking in her eyes.

  “But why did you not do something more about it?”

  For a second, Ned’s heart froze. He should have, he realized. Should have intervened, offered to take the matter off her hands. He should have insisted—

  “After all,” she continued, “when I was younger, every time it seemed to me I had hit upon something interesting to accomplish, my father always found someone else to do it for me. It made me think that I was supposed to be some helpless creature. An accomplished lady is one who plays the pianoforte, who speaks six languages. Who can converse with her dinner partners on Byron and Shakespeare. Accomplished ladies aren’t allowed to accomplish anything of value.”

  “Ah.” Ned felt a restless sense of familiarity at those words. Truth be told, most gentlemen didn’t accomplish anything, either. She hadn’t wanted him to take the burden from her, after all. She wanted a challenge. He knew what that felt like.

  He hadn’t realized women longed for the same things men did.

  “Now you know the truth,” he told her. “You’ve saved a woman from her husband.”

  Her hair brushed his chest as she shook her head. “No,” she contradicted.

  He was about to tell her that Lady Harcroft would be safe when she spoke again.

  “I’ve saved seven.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Do you recall the circumstances under which we first met?”

  “We encountered each other in the servants’ quarters at a ball.” In point of fact, Ned had followed her in—not alone, accompanied by Gareth and Jenny. “You never did tell me what you were doing there, except to feed me some story about needing to help an old nursemaid.”

  The story hadn’t explained everything. But then, he’d been so wrapped up in his own problems he’d accepted her tale without question.

  She sat up, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, that much was true. It just wasn’t the full truth. You see, when I was sixteen, I discovered that my old nursemaid had broken a limb. A duke’s daughter is allowed at least to bring baskets of jellies to her dependents—and so I did. In the course of the visit, however, I discovered that her husband had caused the accident. It wasn’t the first time.”

  For all the dire seriousness of the subject matter, she was warming to the conversation. As she spoke, she gesticulated with her hands.

  “That first one was easy,” she continued. “I just arranged for passage across the Atlantic with a bank draft waiting for her on the other side. Now she owns a bakery in some odd place in America—Boston, I think.”

  She took the injuries seriously, Ned knew. But that light in her eyes was about more than the seriousness of the injury. How much of herself had she been hiding? His chest felt tight and uncomfortable. There was more than a twinge of jealousy mixed in with his feelings of astonished respect. When she had been sixteen, she’d been saving women from violence, unbeknownst to her father.

  And what had Ned been doing?

  Wagering on horses. Weathering the aftermaths of his first bouts of drinking.

  “Louisa,” Kate said, “is the seventh one I’ve spirited away. She’s the first lord’s wife, though. And she has definitely been the hardest.” She looked over at him. “You’re—you’re not going to insist that I stop, are you?”

  Ned shook his head.

  “I love my father,” she said, “and he adores me. But he thinks of me as his little poppet, a delicate thing to be shielded from all difficulty. My mother trained me to throw parties and perform gracious acts of charity. I love them, but these last years, I’ve been glad to have the excuse to remain here. In Kent, they would never have let me do so much.”

  There was a wistful quality to her voice, and Ned was reminded again of what he’d thought earlier. She was lonely. She hadn’t had any true family—or at least, not anyone who knew the truth of her. She leaned against him. “Oh, parts of this will be so much easier, now that I know you approve. Do you know what I’ve had to do to get the funds for my bank drafts?”

  Ned shook his head again.

  “I’ve had to go shopping. I have an account with several dressmakers. I purchase extravagant gowns. They write up the bill with twice the amount, and then slip me the rest in bank notes. I am famous in the ton for my shopping.”

  Harcroft had remarked as much. And now that Ned thought the matter through, he had never seen his wife wear the same gown. “Woe is you,” he said dryly. “I can tell you absolutely despise that.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a winning proposition for me in more than one regard. After all these years of silence, it feels extraordinarily freeing to talk of it.”

  She trusted him. It was precisely what he wanted. After all, he’d vowed to make things right with her. He was doing it.

  So why did her warm hands feel like ice against his heart?

  She trusts me only because she doesn’t know the truth.

  He wanted to get out of bed and walk away. At a minimum, he wanted to turn from her, to give her the ridge of his spine. He’d gotten precisely what he wanted. And now he wanted her to take it back.

  “Now, what do we do about Louisa?” she asked. Her voice was growing lazy with sleep. And that simple word—we—left Ned biting his lip.

  That certainty in her voice, that confidence in her breathing, the evenness of every inhalation—it was all because he’d fooled her. He’d made her believe he was strong and capable, the sort of powerful man who might face down rampaging horses and raving husbands alike. She believed in him, and the weight of her belief sat upon his shoulders.

  She didn’t know the truth. She didn’t know that every few years, winter came upon him, replacing the warmth of summer. That all her trust was reposed in a man who might crumble.

  Yet he hadn’t crumbled the last time the darkness had come. For years he’d fooled people into believing that he was strong and capable. For years, they’d believed him. And so long as he kept his mouth shut—so long as he just put one foot in front of the other in the morning—well, nobody would ever need to know.

  Least of all Kate.

  “We’ll see her in the morning. Everything will work out—just you see.” It was more a promise to himself than a vow he could make to her. He would take care of her. He wouldn’t ever let her fall. She didn’t need to know about Ned’s own idiotic problems.

  She didn
’t find his reassurances ironic. She seemed, in fact, to take his strength for granted, a trust that warmed him almost as much as it left the palms of his hands cold. His promise seemed to settle into his skin. No; when faced with this sweet trust, winter wouldn’t matter. He simply wouldn’t let it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AS MUCH AS KATE WISHED to spend her time exclusively with her husband, when morning dawned, her responsibilities overwhelmed her. They were going to have to do something about Louisa. Now that the earl was aware that Kate was involved, the matter had become a thousand times more dangerous.

  Kate and Ned made certain that Harcroft was not lurking nearby, then they started off. Kate splashed across a cold stream, holding on to her husband’s arm. They crept across fields, avoiding country roads. They didn’t dare be spotted on their way to the cottage where Louisa was staying.

  When they were ushered inside, Kate explained the problem. “Louisa, your husband believes I had something to do with your disappearance.”

  “So what does that mean?” Louisa shook her head. “I’m not going back. I’m not letting him have his son, either.”

  “No. Of course not,” Ned said.

  “But it does mean that this situation is no longer tenable,” Kate finished. “It never has been. You have to either decide to leave England, or you must confront your husband and find a way to wrest your freedom—and your son’s—from his grasp.”

  Louisa simply looked at Kate before shaking her head. “Unlikely. I’m his. I married him. He controls my funds. And besides…” She sighed. “If he looks at me that way, I might just crawl back to him. I did it once before.” There was a grim edge to her speech.

  Kate set her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I know it’s not easy. But you’re going to have to do something.”

  “I can shoot him,” Louisa offered hopefully. “Isn’t that ridiculous?” Her voice shook. “I can’t imagine looking him in the eyes and telling him no, but I can see myself shooting him.” Her voice dropped. “I can see myself shooting him very easily.”

  “Perhaps we might consider solutions that do not lead to your subsequent hanging,” Kate suggested.

  Ned flicked a glance at Kate. She had no notion what he intended. The hardest part of her hobby had always been convincing the women in question to act. She didn’t understand why it was so hard to make the decision to leave a violent husband. A man who was willing to break bones didn’t deserve much consideration, in Kate’s opinion. And yet there was this vacillation. She tried not to let it irritate her.

  Sometimes it still did.

  Louisa pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them to her, as if making herself smaller would shrink her problems. “It’s easy for you to tell me to make a choice,” she said. “But when I try to think of the future, my head just hurts. I can’t face it.”

  Kate exhaled in exasperation. “But you shall have to do so.”

  Louisa set her fingers to her temples and didn’t respond.

  “You know what?” Ned’s voice rang out, doubling Kate’s annoyance. “Did I ever tell you about my experience with Captain Adams in China?”

  At those words, Louisa looked up, and Kate pressed her lips together. This hardly seemed the place to exchange anecdotes. They needed to plan, to think, to charge forward. They had little enough time as it was. Kate turned toward her husband, and her brows drew down.

  But at least Louisa had uncurled from her little ball, as if once the tension was released, she could sit straight again.

  “No,” she said softly. “You didn’t. I’ve heard almost nothing about your journey. What was China like? Was it foreign? Exotic?”

  Ned rested one hand easily on his knee and leaned back. He looked toward Louisa, as if she were the only person in the room, and Kate felt her annoyance grow.

  “It was frustrating,” he replied. “Very frustrating. I arrived, thinking my mission would take me maybe a month or two. But when I first got to the Eastern hemisphere, hostilities had broken out. The ship I was on rerouted, so as to find a safe place to land. It took me months just to make my way to Hong Kong. But I’d promised Gareth I would investigate the opium situation in China. And I was bound and determined to go forward, war or no war, hostilities or no hostilities. After all, I hadn’t traveled halfway round the globe, just to be fobbed off with secondhand accounts. I wanted to see the British action in China, and I wanted to see it personally.”

  Kate tapped her foot, one hand on her hip.

  Ned put his hands behind his head and looked up. “The man I needed to talk to was Captain Adams. He’d been appointed as a liaison to all the silly, foolish second sons and aimless aristocrats who’d been shipped out East for no reason other than that nobody wanted us back in England. I suspect he despised us all. He took one look at me and knew precisely what to make of me.”

  “He thought you were someone he had to respect, as the heir to a marquess?” Kate asked. “The sort of person who could solve problems decisively?”

  Ned cast a glance at her, that smile on his face, but ignored her. “Absolutely not. He thought I was useless, and that I would prove to be a headache.”

  “Well. I hope he learned his lesson, judging you so quickly,” Kate said. “But back to Louisa…”

  Ned shrugged. “He was right. I went to his office day after day, requesting that he allow me aboard one of the ships they were sending down to the mouth of the Pearl River, to observe what was happening. At first, he said no. Then I began to wear into the thin veneer of his patience, at which point he said, ‘Definitely not.’ After about three weeks of my constant badgering, it turned into, ‘My God, man, don’t you frivolous idiots have the brains to see I have real work to do? Stop pestering me.’”

  “But then he gave in,” Kate predicted. “As for Louisa…”

  Ned smiled more broadly. “No. He didn’t. It took another week to turn into ‘Mr. Carhart, as God is my witness, if you set foot in my office one more time, you will regret it for the rest of your life.’”

  At this point, Kate noticed that Louisa had begun to lean forward, her eyes alight. And when Ned paused contemplatively, she let out a little gasp. “Oh, don’t stop there. Did you? Set foot in his office, I mean.”

  “Of course I did. I was scared out of my wits, too. I had promised Gareth I’d not leave until I had personally seen what was happening. And so the next morning, I presented myself once more. By that time, I wasn’t really sure why I continued to march into his office. I surely did not expect to meet with success. I had all the feeling of throwing myself against a brick wall, violently, repeatedly, for no other reason than there were no other brick walls available. It was pure foolishness. Only idiots and madmen continue to better themselves in the face of persistent failure, and by that time, I was certain I was both.”

  There was a certain gentle humor in his retelling, a glint in his eye, and out of the corner of her eye, Kate could see Louisa smile. Ned had always had this skill, even when she’d first met him—this ability to say something funny and unassuming, to set someone at ease, to bring out the light in shadowed eyes.

  He’d been sweet. Over the years of his marriage, that sweetness had been given more substance than she’d guessed.

  “So? What happened?” Louisa asked.

  “He clapped eyes on me. And this time, he didn’t say one word. Instead, he rang a little bell on his desk.”

  Kate was leaning forward as much as Louisa, now. “And then?”

  “And then, eight soldiers marched in. They must have been lying in wait for the moment. They grabbed me by the arms and legs.”

  “Didn’t you fight?”

  “I tried. But there were eight of them and one of me. If I’d had as many arms as a squid, I’d still have been at a distinct disadvantage. Especially at close quarters. In any event, they lifted me off the ground and carried me like a sack of potatoes. And the only thing the captain said was this—‘Dunk him.’”

  “Oh, no.” Louisa covere
d her mouth in sympathy. “Did they toss you in a lake?”

  “I can tell you’ve spent no time around soldiers, if a lake is the worst you can imagine. That would have been very kind, in comparison with what actually happened. You see, the garrison had built these privies. And it was so wet there, that… Well, in any event, the waste eventually collected in these massive holes in the ground. They were foul, disgusting swamps.”

  “Oh, dear God.” The words escaped Kate’s mouth.

  Ned smiled at her, his cheerful tone at odds with the filthy scene he set. “So in I went. It was quite possibly the most humiliating moment of my life. It was disgusting and degrading, and I do not have the words to describe how impossibly awful it was. I couldn’t even scream in protest, because that would have required me to open my mouth. I have never felt quite so helpless in my life as I did at that moment.”

  The two women stared at him in shock.

  “You realize,” Ned said in a low voice, “that if this story ever gets out, I will be a laughingstock. I am trusting you ladies with my deepest, most shameful secret. You must never tell another soul. I know I can count on you.”

  Louisa nodded, and in that instant, Kate’s breath stopped wildly. Somehow he’d managed to calm her friend’s fears. He’d managed to make her smile. And now he was subtly making her feel that she was important, trustworthy. Somehow he’d known that she’d had so much taken from her that she couldn’t possibly give anything back. Her husband didn’t need to beat his chest or roar. He didn’t need to make arrogant demands. He just needed to smile and make Louisa laugh. Now Kate’s heart stung just a bit.

  “So,” Louisa asked, “what did you do?”

  “What would you have done? I took a bath.” He grinned. “A long bath. Then I got in a little boat and I tooled around and I thought. There’s something extraordinarily valuable about having someone do their worst. If you survive it, they can’t truly touch you again. There’s nothing they can do to bring you down. And Adams—well, he’d done his worst. He couldn’t kill me. My cousin would investigate my death and make his life miserable if he did. He’d had me thrown in the privy on the assumption that I’d be too humiliated to admit it to anyone once I got home. He believed I would simply make up some rubbish for a report and leave him alone.” Ned leaned back in his chair. “He believed wrong. The next morning I got dressed. I went down to his office one last time. And then…” Ned smiled, stood. He walked over to Louisa and bent down, so that he was level with her.