He was not making for the steps. There were two boatmen manning the planks there and because Withers was keeping in the shadow of the bridge they had not seen him. Ben wondered whether he would try to haul Catherine up onto the quay some other way, use one of the icebound boats, perhaps, but then he saw the man turn and a knife flashed at Catherine’s throat, and Ben stopped moving as all the blood seemed to freeze through his body.
“Hawksmoor!” Withers’s words seemed to echo off the ice in the gloomy netherworld beneath the arches. “Stay where you are!”
“Let her go!” Ben yelled. He was desperately hoping that some of the boatmen would hear, but this wide expanse beneath the bridge was hidden from view by the peaks and turrets of the ice slabs that had piled up here, and was cut off from all sound. They were alone in a frozen world.
Withers was backing toward the hulk of a boat tied up on the quay. Behind him a rickety wooden ladder led up from water level and it was clear to Ben that he intended to force Catherine up there and onto dry land. Ben could see her face, pale and petrified in the shadowy moonlight, and see the blade that menaced her.
“Let her go, Withers,” Ben shouted. “You’ll never get away—”
Catherine gave a small yelp, cut short, and Ben was horrified to see a dark line of blood trickle down her neck. He was a mere thirty yards away and he tried desperately to calculate how quickly he could cover the ground. Not fast enough. It would take Withers a mere second to strike. Except that Withers did not want Catherine dead. He had always wanted her alive.
As Ben started to move, he saw Catherine’s foot slip from the rotten treads of the ladder. Her cloak entangled itself in Withers’s legs and he stumbled. Ben was only ten yards away now and everything seemed to happen so slowly. He saw Catherine reach out and grab the rope hanging frozen from the deck of the ship beside her. With a huge effort she wrenched the icy line from the deck and swung it across with all her strength. It hit Withers squarely in the stomach and he let her go, doubling up with a grunt. Catherine tumbled from his grasp and fell sprawling on the ice, and the knife skittered away along the side of the icebound ship.
Ben reached Catherine’s side in one leap. He did not care what happened to Withers as long as she was safe. He was shaking as he reached out to her. “Kate—”
Catherine was pale but her grip on his arm was strong. “I am well,” she gasped. “Don’t let him get the knife! He will kill you!”
Ben spun around but Withers reached the knife first. Even as Ben strained every muscle, he saw the other man’s hand close about the hilt and he turned with a roar of triumph.
There was a crack as sharp as a gunshot. A fine lacing of lines ran out across the ice more quickly than a man could run, and a black ribbon of water appeared beside the stern of the boat. Withers staggered, fell back. There was a sickening sound of splintering ice and Withers fell.
One of the watermen had noticed what was happening at last. With a shout he picked up his boards and started to run across the ice toward them, gesturing to his colleagues to follow.
Ben hesitated for only a moment. He lay down on the breaking ice and grabbed the waterlogged sleeve of Withers’s coat. He pulled hard. Withers’s head came back up from under the ice and he coughed, shaking the water from his eyes. Ben tried to grip his arm, to pull him out. But Withers was pulling away from him, drawing back, determined to wrench himself from Ben’s grasp. And all the time the ice was breaking up, creaking and cracking below them as the current ran strong beneath.
“For God’s sake, man,” Ben yelled, “take my hand!”
The glare in Withers’s eyes was malevolent as he stared up from the ice. “Not you!” he said. “You let my half brother die at Bembibre. You saved Clarencieux but you let John die! So don’t save me now!”
Ben felt so shocked that for a moment he did not move. And in that second he saw the glint of the knife below the water and Withers’s hand came up with the blade pointed straight at him.
There was a cracking sound from above and a shower of ice dusted Ben’s shoulders. He tried to catch Withers’s wrist to grab the knife from him, but the ice started to break beneath him and it tipped him perilously off balance. He staggered and fell. Withers slipped back, his body disappearing beneath the ice and then Ben could see him no longer as the current took him and swept him away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A woman who has given herself up to the pleasures of physical gratification is in no way respectable, nor is she a lady.
—Mrs. Eliza Squire, Good Conduct for Ladies
THEY WERE IN THE HACKNEY carriage and Catherine was wrapped in Ben’s cloak and he had his arms about her, but she could not stop shivering. Although she had not fallen in the water, she felt as cold as though she had been dipped in the icy river. She could feel that Ben was shaking as well, both of them transfixed by the horror of their experience.
When the first of their rescuers had come upon them, Algernon Withers’s body had vanished, carried away by the breaking ice. The knife had sunk without trace. Catherine had listened while Ben had told the men that there had been an accident; they had been trying to reach the steps when the ice had started to break. The watermen shook their heads in grim pleasure. They had seen it all before.
“Once the ice breaks and the current gets you…” one man said. He shook his head again and all his colleagues looked grave. “You’re a lucky man, my lord, that it did not take the two of you away as well as that Withers cove….”
Catherine had begun to realize that Ben could not go anywhere without people recognizing him. There had been a crowd about them already, wrapping them in blankets, helping them over to the brazier on the quay to keep warm, offering food and pouring more spiced wine down her throat. They were good-natured and friendly and all seemed to think Ben was a personal friend because they had read about him in the penny press. A couple of river policemen had come along from the docks to hear Ben’s story again and bemoan the dangerous nature of the Thames even when it was frozen. One of them had bashfully offered one of the Frost Fair handbills for Ben to autograph because he wanted to give it to his wife.
“She will be fair disappointed to have missed seeing you, my lord,” he had said with a grin.
Ben had promised to be available to give a full report of Withers’s death. More people had arrived wanting to talk to him and shake his hand, but Ben begged them to summon a hack, which they had done with a good grace. They’d sped Ben and Catherine on their way with wishes of good health and good luck.
And all the time, Ben had not let go of Catherine for a moment, but had held her close, trying to warm her cold body with his own even colder one.
Now, alone at last, she burrowed deeper into his embrace.
“Thank goodness! Those good people were very kind but I thought we should never be permitted to get away.”
Ben kissed her hair. “I am sorry. I tried to leave as quickly as I could.”
“Do not apologize.” Catherine smiled in the dark. “I doubt we should have had so much help, been so thoroughly warmed and fed, were it not for the fact that every one of them wishes to be able to say that they helped the famous Ben Hawksmoor this night.”
Ben laughed but sobered abruptly. He grasped her hands. “But you, Kate…Are you sure you are not injured? When I saw that he had the knife at your throat I thought—” He stopped. “He did not want to kill you,” he said in an odd voice.
“No,” Catherine said. She shivered convulsively. “He wanted me alive.”
Ben slid his arms about her again. “I think he was obsessed with you. He needed to possess you.”
“Don’t,” Catherine said, and her voice broke. “I understand that now. He wanted me and I thwarted him and so he became even more determined to take what he could not have.”
Ben rested his cheek against hers and for a moment they sat in silence.
“Thank you,” Catherine said. “Thank you for saving me.”
Ben laughed. “Selfish as I
am, my sweet, not even I would have stood by and let him carry you off.”
But his arms hard about her gave Catherine another answer and she reveled in it.
“I heard Withers say that you let his brother die,” she said hesitantly. She freed herself a little so that she could look at him. “What did he mean, Ben? Was that why he hated you so much?”
Ben shifted slightly to settle her more comfortably in the crook of his arm. “I am not sure, Kate, but I think it must be.”
“Lady Russell told me she had met Withers’s brother,” Catherine said, remembering. “She said both he and the father were very wild.” She frowned. “I know Lord Withers’s father died years ago but I have never heard him speak of a brother.”
“He mentioned Bembibre,” Ben said slowly. “He said that I had saved Ned Clarencieux’s life—and let others die. And it is true that at Bembibre that is exactly what I did.”
Catherine could not see his face in the darkness of the carriage but she could hear the note of despair in his voice. She held him tightly, instinctively offering comfort.
“What happened?” she whispered.
It was a moment before Ben replied, and when he did he spoke dispassionately, as though he were reporting something that had happened to someone else, not something Catherine suspected was etched so deep in his memory that nothing could ever shift the nightmares.
“I was serving with Moore’s troops in Spain at the end of 1808 when the French came after us at Valladolid. We knew we were hopelessly outnumbered and had to retreat. It was late in the year and the road was hard and the mood of some of the men turned sour. They ravaged the villages we passed through, drinking, whoring, looting…They lost all their discipline.”
Catherine could not help but catch her breath. “Did you…Were you there?”
“No,” Ben said. “I told you I was a maverick, working on my own. I had been sent from my regiment to join the rearguard as a messenger. They were holding the French off as best they could and doing a fine job of it, unlike the rabble of foot soldiers ahead of them. I was on my way back, taking dispatches from Crawfurd and Paget up the column to Moore. When I reached the village of Bembibre I found two hundred of our troops had been left behind. They had found a wine cellar and were so dead drunk they could not stand. Their commanding officer had abandoned them, left them there. Amongst them were men that I had once commanded, including Ned Clarencieux.”
Catherine made a small sound of despair. “Ben…”
“I could not save them all,” Ben said. “The French were so close behind and I had despatches for Moore that I could not risk losing. Besides, what could I do, one man against a closing army? Ned was as sick with drink as the rest of them. I pulled him out and I had to leave the others to die. Withers’s half brother must have been amongst them.”
For the first time that night, Catherine felt the hot tears soak her cheeks and the sodden material of Ben’s cloak. She had not cried when Withers had snatched her, had not cried when she’d thought Ben was going to be killed, had not cried when Withers had died. But now Ben’s words pierced that icy calm with all the things he had left unsaid. How was one man to make a decision like that and to bear the memory of it for the rest of his days? And yet she knew that in war men were called on to make such decisions all the time and had to live with the consequences.
“It was not your fault,” she said fiercely. “You were not the one who abandoned them. You could not have saved them all!”
“I may not have given the order but I still left them,” Ben said. “I chose to help Clarencieux and I left the rest, knowing they would die. If Withers’s half brother was one of those left behind, he might well believe that Ned had no right to be the only one to live.” He sighed. “I will make inquiries, see if Withers had a relative who served in the Peninsula. If they had different fathers, it would account for the fact that I did not recognize his name.”
Catherine didn’t say anything. She knew that any words of hers, even given in comfort, could make no difference to what he felt. It had not been Ben’s responsibility and yet he had felt the weight of that choice keenly and would never forget it. She curled as closely to him as she could to give him comfort. She was starting to feel warm and sleepy now, but something still nagged at her mind. Algernon Withers might well have been responsible for Clarencieux’s death and have wanted to punish Ben for what he saw as his part in letting his brother die, but where did that leave Sir James Mather? Was he simply an unfortunate casualty of the whole affair, a man Withers had known and chosen randomly to be the victim when he framed Clarencieux out of hatred and resentment? Catherine’s mind was cloudy with sleep now and she let the matter slip away.
She was in fact asleep when the hack drew up in St. James’s Place and Ben carried her into the house, but she stirred a little in the warmth and the light. He put her gently down in the hallway but kept his arms about her. His breath stirred her hair.
“I have told the hack to wait a moment,” he said, “in case you choose to go home to Guilford Street, Kate.” He smiled. “But you are my bride—if a hedge bride at that. I almost lost you once tonight and do not wish to let you from my sight.”
Catherine smiled sleepily. She was remembering the expression on his face when he had thought Withers had stabbed her. He had looked so white, so desperate, stricken with fear…. He had never said that he loved her but she thought now that she did not need to hear those words when she had seen all she needed in his face.
“Nor do I wish to go. Please send the driver with a note for Lady Russell, lest she worry about me.”
“She will worry all the more,” Ben said dryly, “when she hears you are Lady Hawksmoor.”
Catherine’s lips curved again. She was smiling and yawning at the same time. “I think not. She likes you, Ben Hawksmoor, and I have always trusted her judgment.”
“Congratulations, my lady,” another voice said, and Catherine jumped to see the very correct butler she had met previously. He was smiling.
“This is Price,” Ben said, and Catherine smiled back at him.
“Good evening, Price. I am very pleased to meet you again.” She yawned. “I do beg your pardon. It seems I am so tired I cannot keep awake.”
“Some hot water, my lord?” the manservant asked, but Ben shook his head. “In the morning perhaps.”
He picked Catherine up again but halfway up the stairs he stopped, put her on her feet and started to kiss her. She wrapped her arms about his neck. He shifted so that his hard thighs were suddenly outside hers and pinned her against the wall with his body. His kiss was deep, his tongue tangling with hers, teasing, promising, possessing. Suddenly she felt wide awake and very aroused.
“We can’t stay here.” Ben’s voice was harsh. “Come with me.”
They were in the bedroom she remembered, with the huge peacock-blue bed.
“That bed covering,” she said, “will have to go.”
Ben laughed. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
Catherine looked down at her clothes. “I have no maid. I will need your help.”
“With pleasure.” There was a hardness in Ben’s eyes, a hunger as he looked at her now. It shocked her and excited her, too. Beyond measure. She knew that this time there would be no stopping.
“You carried me over the threshold,” she said, remembering.
“Because you are my bride.” Ben smiled, a slow smile. “To my surprise, I find I like that thought rather a lot, Kate. It is a revelation to me.”
Catherine reached up to touch his cheek. “Then you had better make me your wife in deed,” she whispered.
THIS TIME HE WANTED EVERYTHING to be perfect.
Ben had placed Catherine softly, almost reverently, in the center of the big bed, and now he leaned down and kissed her. She slid her hands over his shoulders, smoothing the material of his shirt beneath her palms, then locked her hands about his neck and kissed him back.
He broke the kiss and straddled her, touchin
g her cheek and the line of her jaw with gentle fingers. She opened her eyes and they were soft and smiling. He felt lost in that look, lost in a way he had never experienced before and for a moment it held him still, but then she reached out to him again, sliding her hands up his arms beneath his shirt, pushing it back from his shoulders so she could touch his bare skin. He shivered at her touch, spellbound. No woman had ever been able to do such a thing to him before. Her power over him was almost frightening.
“Catherine…Sweetheart…”
He shook his clothes off and threw them on the floor, then turned back to her and dealt as ruthlessly with her own until she was naked beneath him. He traced the line of her breast with one slow movement of his fingertips. She arched to him then, her hands gripping his upper arms, and made a sound halfway between a gasp and a cry. He caught her about the waist and drew her up against his own nakedness, kissing her fiercely, letting her sink back onto the bed only so that his mouth could follow the path his fingers had taken down her throat to her breasts, to tempt and tease, and then lower still, to the soft skin of her stomach.
He propped himself on one elbow and studied her face. She looked flushed and heated as though with a fever. Her eyes were half open, dark and slumberous with arousal.
“I want it to be good for you this time,” he said.
A half smile curved her lips. “It was not bad last time….”
She reached out to him but he whispered, “Not yet,” and saw her eyes close and felt her body soften as his mouth touched the warm, tender skin of her inner thigh.
He moved higher, lifted her to his mouth and deliberately flicked his tongue to the hot, moist core of her.
She cried out, her whole body convulsing immediately, moving beneath his hands. He waited until she had stopped, had fallen back with a gasp of pure shock, and then he dipped his tongue into her again. Again she cried out, this time a sound of desperation and passion mixed, and he held her hips down and slid up at last to rest the painfully swollen tip of his penis just inside her. He kissed her breasts, sucked on the nipples and felt her body tense about him as she raised her hips to try to draw him deeper inside.
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