by Pam Roller
Alex stood to lead his guests into the adjoining withdrawing room for dessert. He fervently wanted everyone gone.
Elizabeth caught up with him at the door. “What will you do, Alex?” she whispered, her eyes bright with worry.
Alex paused with one hand on the doorframe. What would he do? What he’d like to do. Catch Katherine before she got to the stairs, swing her hard toward him, and grasp her head in his hands. Taste her luscious mouth. Run his hands down her damnably sensual body.
His hand on the doorframe clenched. “That is not your concern, Elizabeth,” he said, wanting to drive his fist to his forehead and pound some sense into himself. “She will soon learn that I have control over her and will demonstrate it fully if need be.”
“You do not mean—”
“I will do what is fitting to Lady Katherine Seymour,” Alex said. “And since she cannot speak, I will not have to listen to her futile protests.”
****
“M’lady, do ye require help—”
Katherine slammed the door, leaving Millie standing in the corridor. Yanking out hairpins and tossing them onto her dressing table, she began a rapid pace across the room and back.
She didn’t know at whom she was angrier—King Charles, Lord Drayton, or Sir Cooke. Charles would not care for a complaint after so generously finding her a guardian, yet she felt compelled to pen him a letter anyway and remind him of her father’s many years of service during His Majesty’s exile. Out of deference to her father, the king should have told her of his suggestion. Instead, she had to hear about it at the dinner table in front of Lord Drayton’s guests.
She shook out her hair until it fell loosely down her back, then strode to the window and flung aside the curtains. She would marry Lord Drayton when hens made holy water! Thank heaven he agreed with her way of thinking.
He was just as much to blame. Had he only told her during their first meeting, she would have tolerated the unpleasant duration of the meal. As it was, now he knew that her forced silence had done nothing to dampen her tendency to speak her mind. He would have good reason now to remove her from his house at once.
She should apologize to him for leaving his table. The idea, however, made her stomach twist into disagreeable knots. No matter what else she’d lost, she must keep some semblance of pride.
She glanced behind her at her closed bedchamber door and then opened the window. Breaking the silly rule would no doubt cause another flurry of alarm from Elizabeth, but Katherine didn’t care. The breeze felt good, and it dried her unbidden tears.
Lord Drayton had been so quick to discount the king’s suggestion, telling her it meant nothing. She meant nothing.
If only she knew what her future held.
She leaned out and gazed at the pebbled carriage drive, imagining his big hands grasping his wife, shoving her out, and watching her body fall.
A sharp rap came at her bedchamber door, and, with a shiver, she jerked the window closed.
Millie curtsied when Katherine opened the door, and the maid’s round eyes were wide. “M’lady, Lord Drayton is finished with his meal and wants ye to come to his study.”
He would rebuke her now. Or banish her from his house. Perhaps both. Sudden trepidation made her feet refuse to move. Where would she go?
“He said at once, m’lady. I am sorry.” Millie’s eyes lowered.
Gripping her slate in her trembling hands, Katherine followed the maid downstairs.
Chapter Five
Lord Drayton’s fierce expression and harsh tone made Katherine, legs shaking and arms hugging the slate to her chest, unable to respond to his words with even a simple nod. All coherent thought now centered on Millie’s words of his fierce quarrels with his wife.
He stood in the middle of his study, arms akimbo and feet wide apart. “The Cookes are in the parlor, so I shall not keep them waiting. Should you dine at my table again, you will wait to be excused before leaving. Your abrupt departure, regardless of the cause, was unpardonable.”
Was he finished? Would he punish her?
He followed her furtive glance to the thick rod hanging on the wall to his right. To her utter surprise, the hard set of his lips relaxed into wry amusement.
“You could never do anything to warrant that,” he said. “’Tis dusty from disuse.”
Relieved, Katherine wetted her dry lips. Nonetheless, she remained stiff and still in front of his study door until an itch in her throat made her turn and spend the next moment coughing into her hand.
“Are you ill?” he asked when she at last straightened and moved her loose hair back from her face. “Should I send for a doctor?” His hands, loosely clenched, had dropped to his sides.
She lifted her slate and then studied his reaction.
“Go ahead. I understand your frustration. I could not speak for a week after my parents—” He stopped as if catching himself, and shook his head. “Go on, answer me. Do you wish for a doctor or not?”
Although his voice had once again become firm, his eyes held a searching quality.
She wrote, keeping her strokes light to minimize the chalk’s squeak. Doctors are useless. I have coughed since the London fire.
“Ah. Well.” He seemed almost disappointed. “I will not send for one, then. Have you tried lozenges?”
She nodded. Why did he care?
“Edward Cooke knows his herbs. Perhaps he could suggest something.”
Perhaps. Katherine nodded once more, watching the play of candlelight on the bristles of his jaw. How would they feel against her neck?
“Very well. I will ask him.” Lord Drayton once again crossed his arms, took a breath, and leveled his chin. “And there is one more thing that I wish to make clear, Lady Katherine. ’Tis only a ruse that the king suggested we marry. If he truly had, I would have taken you to wife yesterday—out of loyalty to him.” He turned away and lifted the single candle from his desk. With his back to her he added, “Forsooth, I saw by your reaction in the dining room that you are as against the idea as I.”
Katherine’s insides took an odd tumble at that declaration. When he again faced her, however, she raised her chin and arched one brow in question. Why had he lied to the Cookes? She didn’t want to look away from him to write the question, however. There was an intensity in his eyes that stilled her.
Lord Drayton’s mouth opened, then closed and tightened. As he walked toward her holding the candle, the room shrank behind him in the darkness.
Since he hadn’t dismissed her, Katherine did not move.
He stopped and scrutinized her, his features flickering in the candlelight. “Must you always tremble like this? I do not wish to frighten you. Whatever the past, you may be assured of your safety.”
There it was again, that reference to the past. She hadn’t met him before now, had she? Insulted him during a party at Whitehall? Perhaps Ellis had done something.
No. She’d never seen Lord Drayton before. She would have remembered his height, the span of his considerable shoulders, those blue eyes, that jagged scar on his jaw. Her overwhelming draw toward him.
“Would that you could speak,” he said softly. “We would have much to discuss.”
Indeed they would. She’d question his paradox of behaviors toward her, protecting her from others while maintaining a simmering animosity. She took in a slow breath then, and caught the clean masculine scent of him, warm citrus and spice.
At once, everything about him stood out in more vivid detail than a single candle could possibly provide. Katherine heard his intake of breath with clarity, felt the air around them crackle.
His eyes darkened as they drifted to her lips. He stood so very near.
The sleeve of his linen shirt rasped as he moved his hand toward her waist. His tongue wetted his lips, and Katherine feared her heart would burst from her chest.
An odd, aching warmth stole into the most private part of her.
Now he would take her in his arms and kiss her. Baffled at the thought,
she knew she would let him. She closed her eyes.
His hand brushed her waist. She heard a click at her side, and her dazed mind registered it as a latch.
“You are blocking the door.”
Her eyes opened. His tone, impassive and flat, matched the expression on his face. Gads! She was a fool to think that Lord Drayton could feel any emotion.
The man had a heart forged from iron.
****
In her bedchamber once more, Katherine allowed Millie to help her change into her nightclothes, and then dismissed her with a wave. She walked to the window and once again opened it to let in the breeze. Below her, the Cookes made their noisy way to their carriage. Sir Cooke stumbled and cursed, and Lady Cooke fussed at him. Edward seemed unperturbed.
Agnes glanced up. Her head angled to the side as she stared at Katherine as if contemplating something. To be polite, Katherine waved, and after a moment, Agnes returned the gesture.
Katherine turned away from the window and then crossed the room to sink into the chair at her writing desk.
Lord Drayton provoked a swirling cauldron of emotions within her that she’d never encountered in her life. She should detest him for his coldness, or fear him because of what he might have done to his wife. Instead, she couldn’t help the undoubtedly lethal heat that made her breath come short and her hands damp whenever she was near him. What was behind that aloof, handsome face, and why did he affect her so?
She balled up her fists and hit her thighs in frustration, and then rubbed her legs briskly against their protesting ache. His references to their tied past mystified her. She could not fathom how they knew of each other before her arrival here yesterday afternoon.
Unable to dispel her agitation, she pulled her journal from the drawer of the writing desk and opened it to a blank page. Only here could she express her innermost thoughts.
Moments later, a ponderous creak behind her made her drop the quill with a gasp and whip her head around. Her closet door was opening. She stared, hand pressed to her chest, as if expecting someone to step through the door into her room.
Another breeze billowed in through the window, and the door creaked back toward its frame. Shaking her head at her folly, Katherine turned back to her journal and picked up the quill. Seconds later, she startled again at the creak of the closet door opening again.
This wouldn’t do.
She went to the door to push it shut, but then paused. A cloth-covered furnishing the size of a small chest had been shoved far back against the wall, away from prying eyes. Strange that she hadn’t noticed it before.
Inside might simply be stored linens. Or, perhaps it held a trove from the past that could tell her the story of Lord Drayton and his dead wife, or give her a reason for his contradictory disposition.
She stood, biting at her lip, trying to still her growing curiosity. It mattered not what it was, really. She could wait for Millie to uncover it because it was too far back in the closet, and she didn’t want to go in there.
But—she leaned down, squinting—it wasn’t a chest, but rather a painting, or a group of them. She could see the dull gleam of a carved gilt frame where the dark cloth didn’t quite cover it.
She had seen no portraits on the walls. Some were hidden right here. Why?
Her breathing quickening, Katherine hurried to her bedside table and grabbed the candleholder before she could talk herself out of going in for a quick look. But when she stepped a foot in the doorway, she hesitated as anxiety battled inquisitiveness. Perspiration formed on her upper lip as the familiar fear of small spaces swept over her.
She blew out a slow breath. By the heavens, it was time to get beyond this dread that had begun during her entrapment in the fire.
Armed with light, Katherine edged into the room with her eyes riveted on the object. Four steps took her there. The floor creaked under her weight, and she sneezed and rubbed her nose at the musty smell.
She set the candleholder on the shelf in the very back, grabbed the cloth, and yanked it off.
Five paintings stood facing the back wall as if in forgotten punishment.
Quickly she hoisted the first painting with both hands and turned it around, then knelt in front of it. A chill charged down her spine.
A black—haired young woman with an ashen face and a thin, tormented smile stared at her. Her dark eyes were too wide, as if shocked at some horrible news. Yet they held no emotion.
Was this Lady Drayton? Katherine touched tentative fingers to the woman’s pale painted cheek, and then withdrew her hand. Hurriedly, she stood and moved the painting to the side in order to look at the next one.
Cool air tickled the back of her neck, and a creak of hinges brought her back to her surroundings. She whipped her gaze to the door.
It was closing.
Dear God! She had left the window open.
Stomach clenching, Katherine leaped toward the door. Her toe caught the hem of her nightdress. Tumbling to her knees, palms slamming onto the wood floor, she stared through rapidly blinking eyes. Through the closing door, the dull gray tester over her bedposts flapped merrily as if bidding farewell to her with appalling, colorless hands.
A detached voice in her head, something one might mention over a cup of chocolate and biscuits, spoke of the quickly changing weather, and wasn’t it just like the English springtime to fling a sprightly gust of wind at any moment?
The door clicked shut.
In the light of the flickering candles on the shelf, Katherine saw an inside handle on the door. She wetted her dry lips and staggered to her feet.
But it was too late. At once, the walls tilted and closed in around her. She stumbled backwards and struck the wall beside the paintings. The closet door skewed and shrank as it drifted away from her. She held out her hands toward it, begging it to return. The door faded to a pinpoint and disappeared.
No way out.
Bands of steel wrapped around her chest and throat, and she gasped for breath. Twisting, she slapped her hands against the rough planked wall as a cough ripped through her chest.
The memory of the fire slammed into her. In her mind she grasped the doorknob, relenting only when intense heat seared the flesh of her palm. On the other side of the door, the children’s terrified wails faded to silence.
Katherine covered her face and gasped at the blistering inferno that scorched her throat.
As the memory of thick, acrid smoke engulfed her nose and mouth, she raised her hands in desperate panic and scratched wildly at the splintering wood of the closet wall.
Dragging her torn and bleeding fingertips down, she slumped to her knees. To her right a woman stared, her mouth contorted into a grimace, her dark eyes fathomless yet vacant.
With shaking hands pressed to her face, Katherine collapsed. The scream that resounded in her head only emitted in a thin breath.
All thoughts faded as her eyes closed.
Chapter Six
It had to be only the dampness of the spring weather that sent the sudden chill through Alex.
He sat huddled in an enormous armchair with his stockinged feet stretched toward the roaring fire. The heat in his large bedchamber grew, but the strange coldness within him would not let up its rigid clench.
As he lifted the mug of ale from the small round table beside him, he realized something else held him in its frigid grip. Whatever it was stretched powerful, icy fingers deep inside him and scraped at his carefully wrought, self-imposed numbness with razor-sharp claws.
Alex tensed and growled inwardly, giving a silent warning to whatever dared try to breach the fortress in which he hid his emotions.
Oh, but he had wanted so badly to lose his hands within her soft-looking, fragrant curls. And when she had closed her eyes, as if waiting for him to kiss her....
No. Katherine Seymour was a liar, the daughter of a spy, using her beauty as a means for manipulation. Tomorrow he would begin inquiries of eligible men to choose as her husband.
Alex drain
ed his tankard of ale and slammed it down on the table. He would not touch her. He took strength in the promise he’d made to himself last year—a promise based on a series of horrid circumstances, the details of which not a soul would ever know.
A crisp rap at his door became an outlet for his frustration, and he jumped to his feet. His servant, having just pulled out the truckle bed for himself, straightened and sent a silent question to Alex.
“Just see who it is, Sam,” he snapped.
“Yes, m’lord.” Sam shaped his face into an annoyed expression similar to Alex’s and opened the door with yank. “Yes?”
The servant standing in the doorway looked past him to Alex, and bowed. “A messenger is here. A company of the king’s soldiers is traveling this way and seeks shelter for the night. Shall I direct them to the barn when they arrive?”
“That will do,” Alex said from across the room.
Sam closed the door and walked on silent feet to the blue bowl and pitcher on the washstand, where he lifted a clean towel and stood watching Alex expectantly.
“Are you telling me it is time for bed, Sam?” Alex asked. Still, he pulled off his shirt as he walked toward the washstand, gave it to Sam, and washed his face.
“You seem tired,” Sam said. “Tired and quite tense.”
“Something is amiss with me,” Alex conceded as he took the offered towel and dried his face, “but it will pass.”
“When the woman is gone?”
Alex hesitated. “Yes. When the woman is gone.”
The network of stout ropes holding up the wool undermattress and its feather top mattress creaked and groaned when Alex lay down a few minutes later dressed in his long nightshirt. The large bed molded comfortably to his body, and he sighed and closed his eyes. Perhaps a night’s rest would quell the strange feelings that plagued him.
His thoughts drifted for a while, and eventually settled on the image of Katherine at the table rising, her brown eyes flashing fire. But this time, Alex stood and went to her, and eased away the determined line of her beautiful mouth with his lips.
