Seven Wicked Nights

by Courtney Milan

  How innocent they had been. How foolishly hopeful.

  Jamie led the way onto the narrow path through the trees, then pulled his mount to a stop in the small meadow. Memories whipped at her like the gusts of wind trapped in the narrow valley. Cat briefly glanced around before studying her hands. She did not want to be here. She looked up to tell Jamie she wanted to talk somewhere else. Anywhere else. But he was there at her side, and his hands were on her waist, lifting her down.

  She was suspended in the air for a breathless moment. His blue gaze caught hers. Something took flight in her chest, beating its impossible wings. Something that held the soaring, reaching quality of hope.

  Disoriented, she placed her hands on Jamie’s shoulders. He lowered her slowly, a kind of embrace. Her feet touched the earth, but he did not remove his hands from her waist.

  She did not step away, as she had that startling moment at the ladder. Was that only yesterday? Time bounced in dizzying circles. Age seventeen felt closer than the week prior.

  She should maintain distance from the man who had dashed her soul against the rocks of heartbreak. She knew she should. Her heart thumped with insistence about this.

  But she didn’t want to. Hope was a ridiculous thing.

  “Do you remember our spot?” Light shone in Jamie’s blue eyes.

  Cat bit back a smile and shook her head at him. “Of course I do. I am surprised you remember.”

  “I am not so forgetful as that.” He did not take his gaze from hers as he trailed his hands up her sides. He explored the shape of her waist, her ribs, nearly touched the sides of her breasts.

  She shivered everywhere, a leaf on a tree trembling in the wind.

  No. She stepped back. No, she was not some small thing to be blown this way or that by the whims of her husband. She was solid. She was the tree itself. She was not dangling in the air, ready to fall with the change of the weather. She had sent her roots deep into the earth.

  “You said something about an apology?” she asked.

  He did not react to the harshness in her tone. His lips spread into a smile. “Patience, dear Catherine.”

  A twig snapped beneath his boot as he closed the space she had taken. She could feel the heat of him. Five years was an ache to a body that knew what it was missing.

  He leaned forward, but paused, his lips inches from hers. “Might I kiss you?”

  He was going to make her answer.

  She opened her mouth to say no, but he placed one finger over her lips.

  “I want to kiss you, Cat.” His voice rumbled from deep in his chest, unguarded and unhurried. “More than anything. Please.”

  She would make her own fate. She lifted her heels, arched onto her toes. The edge of his mouth was soft and warm beneath her lips. He smelled of earth, and spice, and the musk of man. Desire burned through her, left her raw and full of want.

  With a smooth glide, she slid her lips across his, a tease of a kiss. She was tempted to part her lips, to take more, to finish what they had started last night.

  Before she could act on that impulse, she dropped back to the earth and stepped away.

  His eyes were hot on her, his cheeks hollow with hunger. He looked like he would protest, as would any starving man. But he took a large breath instead. Fed his hunger with the sighs of the green plants around them, or the whisper of memory, or some other thing she could not fathom.

  He took her hand and twined his fingers around hers, as he used to do. Then he pulled her deeper into the glen, to the large oak tree at the far side. Some years earlier, he’d carved both their initials—JM + CC—in the rough bark of the trunk.

  They stood together, hand in hand, solemnly facing the old tree as if the oak were the vicar reading their wedding vows. The leaves shook and rustled overhead.

  “What a mess we made of things,” he murmured.

  “Yes.” Jamie’s hand had shaken that morning at the altar. Now, it was steady in hers.

  “We lost something we didn’t even know how to value.” He slanted her a glance from the corner of his eyes, slung his next words straight at her heart. “I truly did love you.”

  Her chin jerked down in a nod and sorrow grabbed hold of her, twisted her features into the useless, ugly face of regret. Letting go of his hand, she bent and tugged at a stem of purple mallow.

  The flower stalk left a trail of green on her riding gloves. She pulled off her gloves and dug her bare hands into the yellow hawkbit hiding in the thick autumn grass. A few leaves, tinged with brown, had already fallen. “I loved you too, Jamie.” She spoke the words to the earth, to the leaves.

  “We talk about the past.” His voice was solid and without embarrassment. It drew her eyes up to where he leaned against the oak tree.

  “Five years is in the past.”

  “Do you think it is lost?” He did not ask if she still loved him. She was glad for that, for she feared the answer, and the vulnerability it would bring to her heart.

  “Some part of it is lost, yes. We can never go back to being the same people.”

  “But we are the same people.” The edges of his lips tilted up. “I thought we established that last night.”

  Cat didn’t reply. She sat on the grass and gathered more flowers, then braided the yellow hawkbit and purple mallow together. One bit twisted around the other until they were solidly bound. Together, the flowers made an entirely new creation. She ought to make a wreath for her hair, something pretty and cheerful. “After you left, I would come here to cry.”

  Jamie’s boots appeared by the hem of her skirts. When he dropped to her side, she let him haul her into his arms. “I feel terrible that I ever hurt you like that, Cat.”

  Cat closed her eyes and felt the warmth of his body, the living energy thrumming beneath his skin. She had missed this man. Had mourned his absence. “I know I hurt you as well. I have regretted my actions terribly. But I did apologize at once.” His hand lay on her leg, by her knee. He had removed his gloves and his fingers looked long and tan, colored by a foreign sun. “I feel like you chose every day to be away from me, Jamie. Every day you woke up and decided not to come home.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” His sigh came from deep in his chest.

  “What was it like, then?”

  “Traveling wasn’t so much a choice as it was a habit. It just became what I did. I was always on the move to the next port, the next adventure. Once I was gone, it was simply easier to stay away. I didn’t know how to come back and face everything.”

  A puny excuse if she’d ever heard one. As if drawn by a magnet, her anger centered on his hand, there by her knee. She leaned forward, ostensibly to reach a patch of mallow, but truly to remove his offensive, tanned appendage from her person. “Did you even think of me? Of what my life must be like?”

  His hand slipped from her leg. “All the time.”

  “Why did you never write?”

  She could feel the shift of his body as he subtly drew away from her as well. “I did get reports on you.”

  Reports? “So you sent your spies to watch me? What did they tell you?”

  “That you seldom returned to London. That you were quiet.”

  “Lonely.” She hadn’t had the heart to go back to London. Not after the scandal she’d caused.

  “I never wanted you to be lonely.” Sadness marked his voice. He pulled her back against his chest. “I thought about you all the time.”

  Cat started to push away from him again, but he stilled her motions with the band of his arm. “Please, let me hold you.”

  With a sigh, she leaned back against him. He pulled off her riding hat and she rested her head on his chest. Still, she did not understand. “How could you have thought about me and yet not thought to return?”

  “I don’t know how to explain. It’s not a this or that kind of thing.” Jamie leaned to the side. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up. “I apologize for being gone so long, Cat. I am full of shame that I did not write. From
the depths of my being, I apologize.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice was a bare whisper. She’d been waiting for this moment for years. Why, then, did it feel so empty? No, not empty. Aching. Raw.

  “I want us to be married.” His eyes searched hers. Emotion bracketed the firm line of his mouth. “I would like the future we once dreamed of together. With children, and travel, and a long life together.”

  “It’s not so simple.” She turned in his arms so she faced him.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just…too much has happened between us. You hurt me terribly. We hurt each other terribly.”

  “I’d like to put the past behind us. To perhaps start over.”

  She looked at him a long time. “Start over?”

  “Yes, like your families.” With a wide sweep of his arm he indicated the path back to the cottage. “I think we should both vow to forgive each other.”

  “How?” She recognized the coldness around her heart. She did not know if she could ever forgive him.

  “What’s done is done. In many ways, it is dead.”

  “It is hardly dead,” she scoffed. “It is braided into our past. We don’t get to pick and choose which memories shape us more than others.”

  “But neither should we dwell on the worst of them. There were plenty of happy moments as well, both before our wedding and after.”

  He made it sound impossibly simple. “How am I to trust you not to hurt me again?”

  His shoulders dropped with a heavy sigh. “I am not going to spend five years traveling the world again, Cat. I can promise you that.”

  “But you could still leave me. You could go to London, or take a mistress, or retreat into the far corners of your mind.”

  “I don’t want any of those things.”

  “But what if you simply want to feel this way because it is more convenient? After all, you do require an heir.”

  He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent to whisper against her cheek. “I have wanted you since you were sixteen and came to my mother’s picnic, twirling your new parasol. You must believe that.”

  He wanted her, but did he still love her?

  She pushed the thought aside and considered the shaded notch in the forest. Green, green, everything inconceivably green. Living things bustled with the business of living, no matter that winter lay around the corner.

  What was their secret? How did the earth sleep so soundly through the cold of winter and never fail to arrive fresh and hopeful the next spring?

  Cat leaned forward and placed the flowered, braided wreath atop her head. She had to tell Jamie the entire truth, to make him understand.

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He watched her, waited. She cleared her throat, found only the simplest words. “I was with child.”

  He froze. He was stone. He was ice. He was solid oak.

  “A few weeks after you left, I discovered I was increasing.”

  “My God, Cat.” The words were as much sigh as sound. “What… Why…?”

  “It was not meant to be.” Her throat hurt. She could say no more, so she shrugged.

  The green glen held its breath. Everything hushed around them. Pressure built in her chest. Cat undid the top button of her riding jacket. She took a deep breath.

  This memory was not one that would just disappear. A baby had grown within her womb. A life had flourished. Had been lost.

  “A child.” Jamie brushed his hand over his face. He appeared pale, stricken. “How did I not know this?”

  How did he not know this? She wanted to laugh. He’d been gone.

  “Why did no one inform me?” he pressed again. Something wild lit his eyes. She knew that feeling. The tangle of beauty and loss and confusion.

  “It was early, and I did not make the news known.” She had feared word of the babe would bring Jamie home, when his wife could not. And in the next breath, she had feared even a child would not make him return.

  He reached out to touch her. His hand hovered over her knee, then pulled back. “Was there pain?”

  “Some.” The heartbreak had been worse. The feeling of being emptied out, the unnameable grief. Even now, tears prickled her eyes with their sharp thorns. She blinked them away.

  “Do you think…? Could my absence have caused…” He cleared his throat.

  “I was never ill. The doctor said I should have been ill, had the babe been healthy.”

  She could only glance at him beneath her lashes. “I’ve never told anyone, Jamie. Not even my brother.”

  There was so much shame wrapped up in that time. So much failure. Still, she could not understand why this had happened to her. What had she done to deserve such a sad fate? She told herself it was natural. She told herself many women experienced the same thing. But it only helped a bit. She had cherished that baby.

  She had failed as a mother. Failed as a wife. Failed as everything she had been raised to be. Lost everything she had most hoped for.

  THE TALL OAK SIGHED with the wind. Jamie stared at the play of shadows across the glen.

  Cat had been with child. He’d almost been a father.

  Joy and pain and disbelief knotted within him. So many years ago…the babe was long from this world, a distant memory to the ancient oak. But it was new to him.

  He’d almost been a father and not even known it.

  With a hard motion, he scrubbed a hand through his hair, felt the pull of his roots against his scalp. He did not know how he should feel. How did one manage such news? A baby. His child.

  He dropped his hand, hammered a hard fist against the earth. Dammit, he should have been there. He never should have stayed away so long.

  “I wish I had been there with you.” His voice was quiet. The same quiet one uses in a house of God. The hot knife of loss made his chest ache. Made his breath tight.

  “Yes.” Cat said the word on a swallow, as if she could not hold it back.

  She’d always wanted children. Had often talked of the large family they would have together. And she’d gone through the loss of the baby alone. “I am so sorry.”

  She did not look at him. Simply removed the braided wreath from her hair and turned it in her hands.

  He wanted to scoop her up. To carve out her sorrow and bear it himself. She had carried this burden alone for too long.

  “Thank you for telling me.” He contented himself with pulling her back against his chest. He buried his face in her hair, smelled the hope of late-summer roses. “One thing I know to be certain, you deserve to be happy.”

  He hoped he could be the man to make her happy. He’d done so once. Certainly he could do so again.

  He would do his damndest to try.

  Chapter Seven

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Cat received a note from Jamie requesting the honor of her presence at dinner that evening. She took her time with bathing and dressing. Discarding gown after gown, she chose a dress she knew would delight her husband. Cut low off the shoulder, the elegant peacock blue silk shone against her pale skin while a satin sash emphasized her waist. Long earbobs of sparkling sapphires were her only adornment.

  Something had changed between Jamie and her that afternoon. Something she did not expect. It was as if she had removed a corset and breathed deep, full breaths. She had not recognized the burden her secret pregnancy had been.

  Turning this way and that, she checked her appearance in the long mirror. Excitement curled low in her belly, tingled up her spine. When was the last time she had dressed for a man? She had forgotten the naughty thrill of it.

  Jamie waited for her. Jamie, who desired to have a future with her again.

  Jamie, who wanted her in his bed.

  Her hands shook as she pulled on her long white gloves. She was a fool to do this, to allow him back into her heart.

  So true a fool is love.

  She took a deep breath and went to meet her future.

  He was standing in the drawing room, as ha
ndsome as ever. His dark hair was swept back from his forehead, his tanned face clean-shaven and relaxed as he considered a portrait of his mother. Soft shadows settled beneath the hard edges of his cheekbone and jaw, under the curl of his lower lip. A tumbler of amber liquid, brandy most likely, dangled from his fingers.

  Turning at her footsteps, Jamie swept his gaze over her. His impossibly blue eyes met hers. He smiled and something hot pulsed through her blood. It felt true and easy, the smile she gave him in return.

  Her husband put down his drink and crossed the room to bow over her hand, as courtly as any suitor. “I am humbled before your beauty, Lady Forster. You steal my thoughts like fine wine.”

  “You flatter me, Lord Forster.”

  He straightened, but did not let go of her hand. “No, I would like to flatter you, but I cannot recall the simplest bit of poetry.”

  She warmed under his praise. “You just saw me this afternoon.”

  “Not all of you.” His gaze landed on the full tops of her breasts where they pressed up against the tight bodice of her gown.

  Men were too easy. But oh so enjoyable.

  “Cat.” The sound of her name rumbled out from deep in his chest.

  “Jamie.”

  “I am going to take you to my bed tonight.”

  A jolt of pleasure shot down to her feet and made her toes curl. “So certain of yourself, are you?”

  He flicked his gaze up to hers and stepped forward. Touched her with the heat of his body, with the spicy scent of his shaving powder. “I will make you mine again, Cat. And I won’t let you go.”

  Her breath caught in her throat, trapped by the heated look in his eyes. She did not doubt his intentions. But what did she want?

  She wanted to be taken, to be ravished, to be made his.

  She wanted sovereignty, independence, unequivocal control.