‘It is good of you to have him here to live with you as a young gentleman.’
‘If you could have seen him in that Johor gaol...’ He swallowed down that awful memory, hardened his voice. ‘This is just another part of his training. He has learned how to handle life at the lower end. Now he must be equipped with the means to deal with those from money and breeding, those who consider themselves his superior in every way.’ He said it with cool dispassion, but Kate’s eyes were soft when they met his and she smiled in a way that made his heart swell.
There were few people about at this hour—those exercising their horses, servants hurrying on errands, nurses with children in their charge—and none of them recognised him. It was a strange feeling. Nice. With Kate on his arm and Tom laughing and running about them he could almost let himself believe in this illusion they were presenting to the world. He could relax into it for those few moments and enjoy them for what they were. Reality would intrude soon enough. He could not defer it. The music must be faced.
He felt her fingers caress against his arm and his hand moved to cover them. And he thought how much he would give to have this masquerade be the truth.
* * *
At five o’clock, they were back in the carriage, but they did not head home.
The ease of what had been between them for those couple of hours seemed to vanish. She sensed the return of the tension within him.
He faced her, his eyes, so dark and filled with their secrets, on hers, and she knew something important was coming.
‘We have to make our appearance in society sometime and the sooner the better.’
Because the Admiralty’s spies would be watching.
She glanced at Tom, who was stroking Bob’s feathers and feeding him some titbits, and listening intently for all it looked otherwise. Tom did not know their marriage was a sham and she could not burden the child with a truth that would destroy his happiness. With the boy’s terrible background she was determined to protect and care for him in the little time they would be together, to let him experience something of what it was like to be loved and cherished, as every child should be, as her own little Ben, of whom he reminded her so much, was.
‘And show them all how happily married we are,’ she said with a smile, and held Kit’s eyes, knowing that the irony of the words would escape the boy. ‘What are you proposing?’
‘Five o’clock is the fashionable hour for the ton to be seen here in Hyde Park. It will be quite the parade at Rotten Row.’
‘I always did like a parade.’
‘Kate, there is something that I should warn...’ He glanced at Tom, then back at her, as if whatever it was that he wanted to say could not be spoken in front of the boy.
Tom glanced up directly at Kit at that moment, waiting to hear the words, silent, a slight tension about him.
Kit shifted his gaze to meet the boy’s. He smiled at Tom. ‘I should warn you both,’ he said, ‘that some of those we shall see are rather high in the instep.’ Then paused, leaning closer. ‘Very high in the instep, if truth be told,’ he said, lowering his voice as if spilling a confidence to them both, and gave a grin that made him so devilishly handsome that it made Kate’s heart skip a beat.
‘Do you think you will be able to suffer a few curious stares?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes, sir.’ Tom smiled. ‘It’s a shame you are not wearing your cutlass and me my knife. I reckon we would draw even better stares then.’
‘I reckon we would,’ said Kit with that same grin that did strange things to her heart. He was still smiling when his eyes shifted to meet hers.
In their dark depths she saw that whatever lay ahead was not as easy as he was pretending. And she wondered as to the true words of warning he would have spoken had Tom not been with them.
Kate had not long to wait to fathom something of an answer.
* * *
It was, as he had said, a swarm of fashionable people. Most in open-top carriages with matching teams of bays like those that Kit had hired. Some were small groups of gentlemen on horseback. Some were women in a cacophony of coloured silks and bonnets, all expensive and elegant, perfect sophistication. The gentlemen’s attire was very like that of Kit’s—dark tailcoats, white shirts and waistcoats beneath, with matching neckcloths, and black beaver hats, black pantaloons and shoes for those who rode in carriages and buff breeches and shiny high-top black boots for those who rode. But their clothes had a look of expense and luxury, as if they had been stitched on to their bodies by some top-end tailor.
She thought of the pouch of gold that lay on the dining-room table at the house in Grosvenor Street and knew Kit’s choice of tailoring was not due to lack of funds, but more what he deemed it important to spend his money on. She liked the fact he was not strutting and preening like the men all around them. Just the way he sat there, everything about him... He was more of a man than any of them.
How those fashionable people stared. And with Bob perched upon Tom’s shoulder she supposed she could not blame them. A tame raven was a novel sight, after all. But then, as those long-nosed women and puffy-faced men stared, she saw something change in their expressions.
She saw that they recognised Kit.
There were no nods of acknowledgement. No waves, or friendly smiles. Just wide-eyed stares and disapproving tight lips and gossipy whispers behind fans and gloved hands. A ripple of shock spread out through the park, with the carriage that contained Kit and Tom and herself at its epicentre.
She held her head high and kept a slight smile on her lips as if it was all nothing more than amusing, and was both relieved and proud when Tom did the same.
Kit met the eyes of all those they passed. He did not look away. He did not smile. But he nodded an acknowledgement. Some returned it. Others turned their faces away in obvious slight. Neither response seemed to make a difference.
He showed nothing, but she knew that this was what he had expected, that what was happening was no shock to him. And his eyes when they met hers and Tom’s were strengthening, as though it was the three of them together against the rest of the world.
* * *
When they got home, Tom dined with them as he did most evenings. It had been her suggestion upon their arrival at the house, both for the child’s sake and as a means of alleviating the awkwardness of her and Kit dining alone. But the boy’s presence was double edged, preventing both matters she did not want to discuss and those she did. She was forced to bide her time, to wait for a chance to speak to him alone. Dinner seemed to stretch on for ever.
At last it ended and the hour was late enough to send Tom to bed.
The footmen stood sightless and deaf against the wall.
The butler hovered discreetly by Kit’s elbow. ‘Shall I fetch the port, sir?’ The man’s eyes shifted to where Kate sat at the opposite end of the long, polished mahogany table.
Kit did not take his eyes from her, even though his words were for the manservant.
‘No, thank you. My wife and I are going out to the theatre.’ Then, to her, ‘If you are feeling quite up to it, darling?’ Playing the masquerade before the servants, for in truth what better place to set a spy than in the house that was supposed to be their home? Not him and her against the world, after all, only him. Behind closed doors she felt the distance he put between them.
‘Perfectly,’ she replied. ‘If you will excuse me, while I change...’
* * *
From her Antiguan wardrobe she selected the deep-purple silk with tiny glass beads scattered over a low-cut bodice. For the first time, she did not don the black fichu to cover her décolletage, aware of how much skin she was exposing. But if all of London was going to stare and point and gossip over her as an American, then she would hold her head high and give them something worth staring at.
She tucked the neck
lace containing Kit’s ring into her pocket and had the maid pin her hair up high at the back, then pulled a few strands free, winding them round her fingers and arranging the resultant tendrils against her neck and décolletage. Her neck was bare, the darkness of the dress exaggerating the pale nakedness of her shoulders and breasts. Nothing relieved the starkness of the dress or the skin it revealed...only the thin worn gold band upon her finger. Wendell would be shocked at her, she thought. She was shocked at herself. But the woman who looked back at her from the peering glass did not look shocked; she looked...powerful and proud and unafraid, and ready to face down the sneers of London’s ton. Kate smiled, then went downstairs to where the man to whom she was married waited.
* * *
Kit stared at the woman who walked down that staircase of the house in Grosvenor Street and the sight of her stole the words from his tongue and the breath from his lungs. He had always thought her an attractive woman, but... He stared at her, as though he was some greenhorn and she, a goddess.
‘Cat got your tongue, Captain North?’ she said softly as she came to stand before him, but she must have known the sight she presented; that she was sensual and powerful and spectacular.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, and could not take his eyes from hers. He leaned in and brushed a kiss against her lips and then whispered softly and slowly in her ear, ‘The footmen are watching.’ But that was not why he kissed her, or why he could not take his eyes off her.
She smiled that smile of hers, not fooled for a minute.
‘Thank you, darlin’,’ she said, accentuating her American accent. ‘You are kinda irresistible yourself.’ She stepped in closer just as he had done and brushed the back of her hand against the fall of his breeches as she whispered in his ear, ‘For the footmen’s sake, you understand.’
With a smile that said she knew her power, she walked with a saucy wiggle out to the waiting carriage, leaving him standing there with an enormous and obvious erection.
His gaze shifted to the footmen and butler, who were all watching goggle-eyed, but who shifted their gazes immediately to pretend that they had noticed nothing.
He smiled to himself. Suddenly the prospect of the night ahead did not seem bad. Not with Kate by his side.
He walked out into the night to join her.
* * *
The Theatre Royal in Covent Garden was relatively quiet, which was not surprising given that it was only a matter of weeks until Parliament and the Lords closed for recess, and most of the fashionable and powerful families took themselves off from London to spend the hot summer months on their country estates. But the attention of the ton that were there that night was not focused on the theatre’s stage with the players upon it, but on the box on the first level in which he sat beside Kate.
‘Oh, my,’ she said, ‘we do seem to be rather a spectacle of interest.’
‘We do,’ he said. He had been prepared to face their scrutiny and condemnation, to suffer it as was his due, but this did not feel like suffering. It felt... He felt...buoyed by Kate, proud of her, sitting there like some beautiful Boadicea who could have felled them all with one sensual glance from those ocean-grey eyes, soft and gentle and yet wielding such power. All the men in the place were craning their necks to stare at her and he knew that every single one of them would be wanting her; every single one of them aching to be in his shoes, for all that they knew of him. It was not what he had expected to feel, coming back to swallow down his shame and humiliation.
The matrons of the ton were peering blatantly through their opera glasses, making not the slightest effort to hide either their disapproval of him or their jealousy of the woman by his side.
‘I feel sorry for those players down there on the stage, acting their hearts out...’ she began.
‘When no one is looking at them,’ he finished.
She smiled.
‘All those shawls and fichus, all those...coverings you wore on Coyote and Raven, I think I understand them now,’ he said.
‘To protect me from the hot beat of the sun on one ocean and the cold bite of the wind on another,’ she said.
‘That is not why you wore them.’
‘No?’ She arched an eyebrow.
‘No’. His eyes held hers. ‘No man could resist if he saw you.’
She shook her head, but she laughed.
The lead actor’s voice was resonating through the auditorium, but beneath it was the murmur of scandalised voices from the stalls below and the boxes all around them. A matron across on the opposite side of the theatre was pointing at him as she gossiped behind her fan, as if he were blind and could not see her. Above them, young Frew was hanging out of his box so far that he was in danger of falling. He saw Kate’s eyes glance up at Frew before returning to meet his.
‘Do you think he is reporting back to the Admiralty?’ she asked.
‘Frew fancies himself as a romantic and a poet in the fashion of Byron. But who knows who Admiralty are recruiting these days? Do not let him spoil the play for you.’
‘But this is not about the play, is it? Being here. Tonight.’
‘No,’ he admitted.
She leaned closer to him, her eyes searching his. ‘Maybe we should give them something more to gossip about.’
‘What have you got in mind?’ he asked softly.
She kissed him on the lips, a deep, gentle, passionate kiss that made him want to wrap his arms around her and lay her down right there and make love to her. To make her his wife in truth. To hold on to her and keep her by his side for ever.
He kissed her with the truth that was in his heart, with all that he felt for her. He kissed her as if he really were worthy of winning her love from a dead man.
The actor on the stage stumbled over his words, but that was not what drew the gasps of shock and disgust from the audience.
She broke the kiss and, looking into eyes, she smiled.
And, despite everything, he smiled, too.
* * *
She had faced them down. She had held her head high and been proud of being an American in their midst even though their countries were at war.
But now that they were alone, facing each other across the carriage as it rumbled over the roads that led from Covent Garden back to the house in Grosvenor Street, she could feel the change in the atmosphere. The darkness of the night was interrupted by regular-spaced gas lamps with their warm yellow glow. Every few seconds it flashed across the hard handsome planes of his face like that of a warning beacon over rocks. Her body thrummed with the knowledge of him, of the temptation he presented. The bodice of her dress seemed too tight and restrictive, her breasts too sensitive.
She could remember the feel of his mouth upon them, the stroke of his fingers over the skin of her hip, the thrust of him between her thighs. Turning her face away from the lure of those dark dangerous waters, she looked out at the passing sandstone houses, all uniform with their Palladian-styled fronts and black-painted window frames and glossy front doors. Beneath the long black evening gloves, she could feel the press of the old wedding band and moved her fingers to touch it, to turn it, to remind herself of vows once sworn that, at this moment, seemed so long ago that she could barely remember.
‘I am sorry for exposing you to this, Kate. You should not have to suffer such scrutiny or be subjected to such harsh appraisal.’ His voice was quiet in the darkness.
‘I am not sorry. I am proud to be American.’
She heard the slight catch in his breath, as if he had given an ironic smile. ‘They do not look at us because you are American.’ She heard him smile again. ‘They look at you because you are beautiful. But their attitude—the disapproval, the censure—it is because of me, Kate.’
She moved her gaze to meet his across the carriage once more. ‘Why?’
In the
silence that followed she did not think he would answer. And in that moment everything seemed to click into place and she knew that this was at the heart of everything that drove him, everything that he was. She did not ask the question again, just waited.
‘Because of what I did before I left London.’
The words seemed to echo in the space between them.
‘What did you do, Kit?’
The next flash of gas lamps showed him smile that bitter ironic smile, the one that hid the other things beneath. ‘Do not ask me that question, Kate. Not tonight.’
Her heart was beating hard with awareness, with anticipation. She swallowed. ‘Why not, Kit?’ she asked softly.
‘Because I cannot bear to tell you the answer. Because I want you with me for the little time we have together.’
‘I am with you.’
‘But you would not be were I to tell you. Trust me, Kate.’ He smiled again, but the quiet darkness was in his eyes so that she believed him.
She nodded, knowing this was not the right time to push, but feeling a spasm of fear over what would cause North the Pirate Hunter, who had endured torture and thought it nothing, who could expel another man’s life without so much as a blink of the eye, to speak in such a way. What he had done must be truly terrible on a scale beyond imagining. A chill crept across her skin.
‘In two weeks Gunner will be back in London. In two weeks you will be on your way home to Louisiana and your children.’ The distance was there again in his voice. Whatever ease and teasing sensuality was between them in public was lost in private, when temptations and truth and darkness returned to stand as unscalable barriers, reminding them that they were each in a place the other could not reach.
Wendell’s name whispered in her ear. She turned her gaze to the passing houses.
They did not speak again.
Chapter Thirteen
A man was leaving Kit’s study when Kate came downstairs the next day. She leaned against the doorway, looking at him. She was wearing the black day dress and fichu, her armour back in place, shielding herself from him as much as every other man.
[GOD08] The Lost Gentleman Page 20
