“Fluids,” he said decisively as he snapped his bag closed. “And rest. But as I said, she is well out of danger, Mr. O’Shea. She may have some lingering moments of confusion—depending on the dosage, opiates can be felt for several days thereafter. But I will be glad to proclaim her in fine health.”
Catherine wanted to protest that she felt quite clearheaded now. But as she lay back against the pillows, she found herself dreamily content to consider the pattern on the ceiling—only it was, after all, not a pattern, but the random stippling of shadows cast by the candlelight.
Still, it made for fine entertainment. It kept her quite ensorcelled until O’Shea returned, this time bearing a tray full of several bowls.
“Fluids,” he said in disgust as he retook his seat by the bed. “I told Thomas that you wanted fluids, and what do I get? French soups.”
She took a deep breath. A moment ago, she would have denied that she was hungry. But Thomas had a rare talent. The smell of something rich and savory awoke a beast in her stomach, which growled loudly enough to catch O’Shea’s attention.
“Well, now,” he said, one dark eyebrow rising. “Seems my wife fancies a French broth.”
“Yes, she does.” She reached for the spoon, but he tsked and took it from her.
“Lie back,” he said, and carefully ladled soup into the spoon.
Perhaps she was dreaming again. “You’re going to . . . feed me?”
She certainly was dreaming. In real life, O’Shea was incapable of blushing. “It’s a fine counterpane,” he muttered. “And in your state, you’re likely to spill.”
“Oh.” That made sense. She nestled happily into the pillows and opened her mouth. He carried the spoon to her lips, tipping carefully. Ah, but Thomas had outdone himself. The broth was light and perfectly seasoned, a medley of greens with the slight savor of a poultry base.
“Give him a raise,” she said once she’d swallowed.
He smiled. “Another?”
She nodded. But as she watched him spoon up another mouthful, that strange shyness came over her again. Had anybody ever fed her? Not since she was very young. There was a peculiar vulnerability in allowing him to fit the spoon to her lips; to feel his eyes on her, monitoring her so closely, waiting for her to swallow. It made her feel . . . fragile. Quite unlike herself.
It made her feel . . . loved.
But he didn’t love her. Her brain was muzzy. She was inventing fantasies. Worse, she was persuading herself to believe them.
When he carried the spoon toward her again, she caught his wrist, gripping it as a way to trammel the panic that wanted to bubble up within her. She should tell him not to help her. She could do for herself; she always had done.
“What is it?” he asked gently.
She looked into his eyes, his beautiful dark face, which she had once imagined the product of the devil’s own genius, designed to ensnare her. She’d been partly right. God help her. She was ensnared.
He tilted his head slightly. “Have you had enough?”
“No,” she said softly. “Not yet.”
She would blame this foolish contentment on the opiates. With any luck, she might not think clearly for days yet. A doctor had said so.
* * *
“Like hell you’re going out.”
This belligerent declaration came from the doorway, which O’Shea was currently blocking. Catherine continued to wrestle with the buttons on her glove. She had fallen asleep beside him, but this morning, she had woken alone. He’d intended to leave without a word to her; that much was clear. “I’m feeling much better,” she said calmly. “Quite myself now. And I understand that there is an auction to attend. A public auction.”
He stepped into the room and pulled the door shut on a bang. “God as my witness, you’re not going. You’re going nowhere near your brother. Give me a week, and I’ll make sure you have free run of this city. But until then—”
“You don’t command me,” she said gently.
He leaned back against the door, pinning her in a fierce glare. What a contrast to the tender solicitousness he’d shown her yesterday! No doubt he was vexed that she’d found out about the land auction. Alas, he had forgotten to inform Johnson of his secrecy, and that man had popped by to ask Catherine a quick question about the manner in which a bid was signaled.
“I am going,” she said now, aiming for a calm, reasonable tone. “The plot is my design. Surely I deserve a taste of the victory. And yes,” she added as O’Shea scowled and opened his mouth to speak. “I know my brother will be there. Hasn’t it occurred to you that that’s part of my reason for attending?” To her own amazement, she felt curiously at peace with what Peter had done to her. At last, he had behaved in a manner that left no room for lingering doubts about his motives. He had revealed his true nature so plainly that she would never hope for better from him again. It was freeing, somehow, to be liberated from any lingering sense of familial obligation. He was her opponent, nothing more. “I want to see his face when he spies me. When he realizes he hasn’t managed to cow me an inch. And I trust you to keep me safe,” she said more softly. “I won’t feel a moment’s unease, beside you.”
He frowned, slouching a little as he turned his beaver hat round and round, his beringed hands squeezing. “This isn’t your battle to fight.”
She looked directly at him, letting the silence draw on a moment too long. “Isn’t it?”
He loosed a long breath. “Catherine, I . . . need my head about me, today. And if you’re there—”
“Stop.” She abandoned her gloves and crossed to him, taking his face in her hands. “Surely you have the discipline to resist my lures.” She went on tiptoe to kiss his lips, and felt his surprise in his momentary stillness.
Then he caught her by the waist and swung her around, setting her against the door as he took control of the kiss. His tongue plunged deep, and she opened her mouth for him, pulling him as hard against her as their bodies allowed.
It was as though she had touched a match to a fuse. His mouth ravaged hers, his hands moving feverishly down her body, smoothing hard down her ribs and waist and hips, palming the shape of her as though to persuade himself of her solidity, that she was here with him.
For a moment, his ravening intensity frightened her. There was no courtesy, no tentativeness, in the way he felt for her breast through the thick layers of her gown. He gave no warning, asked no permission, as he grabbed her skirts, hauled them upward past her knees, then thrust his hand beneath, reaching between her legs. He found the split in her drawers, delved unerringly through her folds, and cupped her hard as he kissed her more deeply yet. It was predatory. It was . . . overwhelming. She broke free to catch her breath in a gasp, and he seemed to sense her confusion; he grasped her chin and pulled her face around so he looked into her eyes as he stroked between her legs, his gaze adamant, bright and fierce, his mouth a grim, hard line.
She kept her gaze steady on his, lifted one hand to his cheek, bit back the gasp that his touches pulled from her, the groan of pleasure as his fingers breached her and penetrated, widening.
He leaned forward and licked her mouth. “Let me in,” he said in a low, fierce voice.
Yes. She nodded—a brief, strained jerk of her head that drew a low noise from him, something between a groan and a snarl. He gathered her skirts in great wads, crushing the wool, shoving it away as with his other hand he unbuttoned his trousers and freed himself.
She caught her breath as she felt the swollen head of his member nudging against her. His hands dropped to her hips, grasped her hard as he entered her.
In silence, holding her in place against the door, he thrust into her, deep, steady strokes that made her head tip back; made her eyes roll and her lashes flutter shut. So many sensations, all of them suffused with this growing, building physical hunger—even the unyielding press of the door, cool against her bare upper arms, seemed sensual . . . the crush of clothing between them, the way it whispered . . . the heat
of his mouth on her throat, his tongue stroking her . . . and below, this unyielding, rhythmic invasion . . .
He whispered something in her ear, garbled, unintelligible. Then he pushed down on her hips, forcing her to bend her knees the slightest fraction, and the new angle—
She moaned. He was hitting that spot now, somehow—every stroke brushed against it, teased and then tormented her; she felt herself swell, grow hotter and wetter and needier . . . He showed no signs of flagging; he seemed to go deeper, to hit something inside as well, and her thighs loosened; her knees gave way. He gripped her now to hold her on her feet as the pleasure broke through her, washed down the backs of her knees, prickled down her spine, her inner muscles contracting around him.
The noise he made burned her ears. He sank into her, trapping her against the door with the weight of his body, remaining there a long moment before he stepped back.
When he let go of her, she sagged. Would have fallen, had he not caught her again, lifted her, and swung her into a nearby chair.
Only minutes had passed. Or maybe not even a minute. She had no sense of time. She felt . . . boneless, as she sat watching him. He leaned back against the door, his face dark as he studied her. His expression, paired with the rigid set of his shoulders, gradually made her frown. Made her cast her thoughts back.
She caught her breath. “You didn’t . . . withdraw, did you?”
“No.”
“I’m sure . . .” She swallowed, bestirred herself to sit upright. “I’m sure nothing will come of it. There are couples, married couples who have lived together in a regular fashion for years, who still don’t conceive—”
“And some that conceive on their wedding night,” he said curtly.
She stiffened. Was that anger in his voice? “You can’t blame me for this.”
He sighed. “I don’t.” He came toward her, kneeling down to look into her face. “I don’t,” he said very softly. “It was my own damned carelessness. That’s what angers me, Kitty. Not you.”
She let him gather her hands, confused by her own reaction. It would indeed be ruinous to conceive a child in this situation. She should be horrified. She should be angry, even—not only at him, but at herself. Such inexcusable recklessness, to continue to take this risk again and again.
But the horror that should have assailed her was curiously difficult to locate. Instead, as she looked at his broad hands enfolding hers, curiosity wisped through her, stealing her breath.
He was not her kind. Born in the gutter, raised with a knife between his teeth. When angered or amazed, he lost hold of his grammar, and spoke like a common thug. A criminal—reformed, mostly, but while he still owned this gambling den, he could never be counted on the right side of the law. He was no fit match for a woman.
And yet . . . he was keenly intelligent. Honorable, in his own peculiar style. Wise in ways she wasn’t. Ambitious, disciplined—save when it came to her.
A flush warmed her face. She bowed her head to hide it, amazed that she should feel such gratification at this revelation: she alone had the power to undo him.
For what good could come of that? This marriage had been forged as a dark secret, to wield like a weapon. She must be mad to entertain, even for a second, what a child of theirs would look like—act like—what talents it might inherit, in the curious combination of her reserve and restraint and savvy, and his more daring, roguish cunning.
“What’s got you so pink?” he asked softly. “You know, if it came to that, we’d make do, Catherine. And God save the world from any child of ours. God save the Queen, for no doubt the tyke would have ambitions for a crown, ere long.”
Her smile startled her. It felt so easy to hold. She felt peculiarly vulnerable; she folded her lips together, made herself stand. “We should go.”
“You’re not going.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I said it, Catherine. I won’t have you there. Especially not now,” he added in a mutter as he turned away to fasten his fly.
She stared at his broad back, struck dumb by that statement. “Not now? Now, you mean, that you might have . . .”
“Yes,” he snapped over his shoulder.
Her teeth clamped together. Now that he might have seeded a child in her, he would bully her for it? “No,” she said, her voice ragged. “That does not give you rights over me. If I wish to go, I am going.”
He faced her, looked down at her from his great height, his face impassive. Remote and cold. She felt, as he stared at her, the difference between their sizes—and, in a horrible prickle of awareness, the fact that he stood between her and the door.
“I’d rather bear your anger than the risk to you,” he said.
“That isn’t your choice to make!” She started for the door, and he stepped sideways, blocking her.
“Don’t make me do this,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll—”
“Make you do what? Keep me locked here against my will?” A wild laugh ripped from her. “Don’t you see? This is exactly what I told you I wouldn’t allow. I am not your ward, your property, to boss as you see fit—I am not your wife, O’Shea!”
“Today you are,” he said grimly, and reached for the doorknob.
“No!” She lunged for the door, but it was too late—he had already stepped out.
The lock turned.
He had taken the key with him.
* * *
She should have raged. He had rescued her from a prison yesterday, only to make another for her. Instead, after shock had subsided, she felt only a weird, numb grief, too deep for tears.
Did he know what he had done? She felt as though some light inside her, briefly flickering, had been crushed by a careless boot heel. He had used her desires to trick her. He had shown he did not respect her judgment. Or, even worse, he had shown that his judgments would trump hers, regardless of his esteem for her.
By trapping her here, he had all but admitted that he wanted doilies after all. A woman who waited by the fire like a lapdog, eager for the sound of her master’s footsteps after a day spent tending the hearth.
By the time footsteps came at the door two hours later, she had packed up her things. She was waiting, primly erect, in the wing chair, her hands locked tightly in her lap. She would not weep. She would not raise her voice. She would simply go. The moment he opened the door, she would walk through it—and if he stopped her this time, she would make him pay for it.
The knob rattled. But it did not immediately turn. She frowned. Now came a scratching at the keyhole.
She rose, uneasy. “Who’s there?”
“God in heaven,” a familiar, feminine voice said. “Catherine?”
That voice! She gasped, then hurried over to the door, tugging angrily at the knob. “Lilah?” She sank to her knees, peering through the keyhole. “Can that really be you? I thought . . .”
Darkness filled the keyhole—Lilah kneeling, too. “So Callan wasn’t lying,” she said in marveling tones. “Let me in, then!”
“He took the key.”
“He what?” A brief pause. “All right, stand back, then. I’ll pick it open.”
* * *
“And then we visited Boston, which was the coldest place this side of the North Pole, and if you thought London was bad for snobbery—”
“Oh, I can’t imagine anybody was rude to you,” Catherine murmured. They sat in the Palmers’ drawing room, chairs drawn together by the fire, knees nearly brushing, a discarded tea tray shoved off to one side. The room was very grand, a vaulted ceiling painted in rococo style, cherubs gamboling in the heavens; the furniture was powder blue and white, the carpet pale as a newborn’s cheek, not a stain upon it. That shade spoke of extravagant wealth, no care whatsoever for the cost of replacement, once mud was tracked in, or soot, or the mere dust of everyday life. Yet Lilah looked perfectly at home amid the splendor, dressed in a bronze silk gown tailored expertly to her curving body. French, Catherine guessed. Pingat, the very newest style; she herself had
never worn anything so fashionable or rare.
“You’re a proper lady now,” Catherine said. Nobody would mistake Lilah for anything else. She wore a necklace of emeralds at her throat, French lace at her cuffs and collar. The bronze gown flattered her rosy complexion, and contrasted with the deep, inky shine of her hair, coiled so elegantly at the crown of her head. “Surely the Bostonians bowed.”
“Well, of course they did.” When Lilah smiled, her full cheeks turned her azure eyes into laughing half-moons. “Doesn’t mean I felt like bowing back. Sourpusses, the lot of them. At any rate, we were meant to go on to Philadelphia, but when somebody mentioned they expected snow, that did it for me. I said to Christian that summer was a fine time to travel, but in the autumn, I liked nothing better than a proper scone. He went looking for one, and came back with some wretched biscuit that a baker had conned him into buying. We took one bite and booked our passage back home.”
Catherine smiled. Marriage had not diminished Lilah in the least; if anything, it seemed to have amplified her cheeky, laughing charm. She seemed . . . easier in her skin, more relaxed. That slight wariness which Catherine remembered in her was nowhere in evidence now.
Perhaps love did that. It made one feel at home, at last—even with oneself.
The velvet nap of her armchair was very fine. She drew a pattern into it, a chain of diamonds. The auction would be concluded by now. O’Shea would have discovered her absence. She should have left a note. What if he imagined that Peter had found her again? But no, Callan would tell him of Lilah’s visit, surely.
She scowled. Why should she trouble herself for his feelings, when he had shown his complete disregard for hers?
Silence intruded into her thoughts. She looked up and discovered herself the object of intense scrutiny.
“I’m not the only one here with a tale to tell,” Lilah said.
She cleared her throat. “But first, you must finish yours. How was the voyage back? Smooth, I hope?”
Lilah pulled a face. “Lovely, I ate myself sick, we made record time. Enough with the honeymoon. Explain why I had to spring you out of my uncle’s gaming den.” She arched one dark brow. “Callan said you’d been staying there. Wouldn’t tell me why.”
Luck Be a Lady Page 26
