She slowly relaxed against him. “Yes,” she said, on a sigh. “I suppose I do.”
“You do,” he whispered, and gently kissed her temple.
“Why did it have to happen this way?” she asked after a few minutes of silence. “I was ready to respect Dr. Carrighar’s students as fellow magic users. I just assumed they’d be like Ally’s husband and be able to respect me in turn.”
“I don’t know.” He let his hand drop down slightly and brush across her breast. She shivered again but did not pull away.
“I suppose it isn’t all of them. Mr. Sheehan and Mr. O’Byrne seem to be able to endure me, though Mr. Sheehan sometimes goes a little too far in the other direction and thinks my sensibilities are too fine to permit me to study magic.”
“Nonsense.” He bent his head and placed a soft kiss on the side of her neck while letting his hand wander to her breast again. She made a soft sound deep in her throat and arched her back slightly. Damn it, he was enjoying this too much. He should be feeling much guiltier right now, should be having to force himself to touch her like this, but all he was conscious of was how good she felt.
Was he doing it right? She seemed to be enjoying it too, so maybe he was. Whenever his friends at Oxford or Göttingen had tried to cajole him into visiting brothels with them, he’d always claimed a headache or too much work or not enough money. He had been taught to be gallant to women, but to touch and be intimate with one he did not love seemed like a crime.
How different it was to touch and kiss his Pen. He moved slightly under her weight on his lap; could she feel just how much he was enjoying this?
“You don’t mind that I’m a witch, do you?” Her voice was lower and huskier than he’d heard it before, and her hand had strayed under his coat and was pressed against his chest, on the silk of his waistcoat.
“Not at all,” he murmured. “I love everything about you. I love your face and your laugh. I love to talk to you and dance with you and look at you and touch you—” He slid his hand over her breast and down her waist to her thigh. Her breath caught, then released with a faint “ohh” as he caught a handful of her skirt and petticoats and pulled them up her leg, and then another.
“I love to kiss you.” He caught her mouth and kissed her hard and deep, then drew back and looked at her. “I want to wrap myself around you like a cloak and feel every inch of you under me.”
Her eyes were half closed, as if he’d mesmerized her, so he kissed her again and felt her lips open under his. “Niall,” she whispered into his mouth.
He’d finished rucking up the hem of her skirt and felt the fine linen of her drawers under his fingers. Only a thin veil of cloth lay between his trembling hand and the warm skin of her thigh. “Pen,” he moaned. “Please, let me touch you. Let me love you—”
“Niall, no.” She stiffened as he caressed her, and though her voice was still low and throaty, there was a distinct note of finality in it. “We can’t do this. It’s not right.” She gently lifted his hand from her thigh and pushed her skirts back down.
“But you don’t understand. I have to. . . .” He kissed her again, hard and desperate. Dear God, how could he explain to her that it was for her own good to let him ruin her?
She returned the kiss for a moment, long enough for him to regain hope. Then she turned her head.
“I want you too, Niall—oh, so much! But I can’t let you do this,” she said quietly.
“I should think not!” said a shocked voice from the doorway.
Pen nearly bolted off Niall’s lap, but he saved her the trouble by leaping to his feet. Fortunately, she slid sideways onto the sofa rather than straight down to the floor and looked up to see Lady Keating, wide-eyed and pale, her gloved hand clutching the polished latch of the door for support. She still wore her maroon shot-silk mantelet and bonnet as well as gloves; evidently she had just come in.
“Mother!” Niall said, giving her a short, abrupt bow. His face had gone very white.
She straightened and let go of the door but did not respond as she crossed the room and held out her hands to Pen. Pen rose, still feeling breathless, and tried to read Lady Keating’s expression. She saw anger there, but it did not seem to be directed at her. Indeed, Lady Keating pulled her closer and put a protective arm about her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” she murmured, looking into Pen’s face.
“Yes, I’m—I’m quite well. Just a little overset—” She was about to explain about Eamon Doherty and how Niall had been trying to comfort her and perhaps got somewhat carried away, but Lady Keating interrupted her.
“Of course you are, my dear child.” She smiled and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then turned back to Niall. Her expression turned glacial. “I am utterly appalled at your behavior. Not to mention disappointed. Have you so forgotten yourself? Have you forgotten what we—” She pressed her lips together then, as if to prevent any more words escaping them, but her blazing eyes spoke for her.
To Pen’s surprise, Niall’s shock slowly changed to something else. The color returned to his face as he squared his shoulders and met his mother’s angry stare. A silent, electric conversation seemed to pass between them. “I haven’t forgotten, madam,” he replied quietly.
His words seemed to strike Lady Keating harder than a physical blow. “You . . . you . . . ,” she spluttered. “You’re just like any other man, thinking with the wrong part of your body. After all that I’ve—”
This time she pressed the knuckles of her hand against her mouth to stop her words, shaking with repressed emotion. “Out of my sight,” she hissed. “Go!”
Niall looked at his mother, then met Pen’s eyes. She wasn’t sure what she saw in them: Was it apology? Regret? Longing?
“Niall,” she mouthed soundlessly, not sure what she wanted to say. He dropped his eyes, bowed again, and stalked from the room.
Lady Keating let out a slow, shuddering sigh. Pen glanced at her and saw that her eyes were closed. Oh, lord. What did one say to a woman who had just walked in on you dallying with her son, even though it had been his idea . . . ?
No, that wasn’t fair. She’d enjoyed Niall’s kisses and caresses. Was enjoyed a strong enough word? She’d been almost as swept away by sheer physical sensation as he . . . almost.
Two things had stopped her from letting him go any farther. One was the fact that she still wore a linen towel pinned into her drawers to catch the last of her monthly flow; if he had found it there she would have died of embarrassment on the spot.
Even if that hadn’t been the case, though, she still would have stopped him: After all, they weren’t married or even engaged. Heavens, they’d just acknowledged their feelings for each other a scant two days ago. If he were to ask for her hand, she knew she would say yes. But she would not become intimate with him until they were married. Her body belonged to her, and her alone, until she shared it with her chosen husband.
After what they had just experienced together, Niall would surely ask her to marry him. Maybe she could ask Lady Keating to chaperone her home, and then Niall could ask Papa for her. In another two or three months, they could be walking down the aisle of the church at Mage’s Tutterow, starry-eyed and glowing—
“Are you sure you’re all right?” The fury had left Lady Keating’s voice, but she still sounded agitated and anxious.
“Yes, I—I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
There was a peculiar intensity to the question. Ah. Was Lady Keating concerned that something more than kissing had taken place before she walked in? “Quite sure,” she replied firmly.
“Thank God for that.” Lady Keating dropped to the sofa as if her legs would no longer hold her. She pulled Pen down to sit beside her, took her hands, and gazed at her with an earnest expression. “My dear, I must apologize for Niall’s behavior.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to.” This was so embarrassing. She couldn’t very well say, “But I liked it, thank you,” could she?
“I must. Niall is . . . well, how were you to know he wasn’t to be trusted alone with you? True, I’ve let him take you walking, but I assumed that a public street was a safe venue for you to be together without my chaperonage. I’ve been so delighted by what I thought was the growing regard between you two. I thought perhaps that the affection of a good and virtuous girl would change him and make him put aside those habits he had acquired.” Lady Keating looked away with a little sigh.
“Habits?” What was Lady Keating talking about?
“I blame myself entirely. I should never have let him wander the Continent without a proper guardian to keep rein on him. It was a disastrous decision.”
Now she was totally mystified. “I don’t understand. I thought that . . . his studies abroad . . . he always mentioned companions—”
“Oh, yes. His studies.” Lady Keating gave a bitter little laugh and half turned away from Pen. “Indeed, he had companions. Companions of the worst possible sort for a wealthy, impressionable, lonely young man. Oh, how can I explain to an innocent, gently bred girl like you? I’m afraid that when Niall left Ireland, he also left behind his restraint and judgment and became . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t say it. It cost a great deal of money to hush up the worst of it, though. Thank God the police closed down that hideous club in Paris. That was a near thing, keeping his name out of the papers. The young women in Rome and Berlin were safely confined, I heard, but I hope the payments will be enough to keep them safely in their own countries . . . and that no other women show up on my doorstep with unexpected grandchildren. And then his health—the doctors assured me after his last examination that the disease had been caught in time and that his need for the absinthe was finally under control, but I still worry.”
Pen stared at her averted profile. Women. Payments. Disease. “Are you saying that Niall—”
“I had hoped never to have to admit any of this to another soul, least of all to you, my dear girl. You two seemed so fond of each other. I thought, ‘Ah, now he has seen what true love is, not just lust and depraved sensation.’ I had hoped that he had seen the errors of his ways, that he would treat you with the honor and respect that you deserve. . . . That in falling in love with you, he would reform.” A tear fell on the tan kid glove in her lap, spotting the leather. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I am so sorry. So very, very sorry.”
Pen sat still as a peculiar numbness crept over her. This was impossible. Could she have heard Lady Keating correctly? Had Niall spent his years on the Continent in a drunken round of debauchery?
“He is still my son—my only son—and I love him. I had so hoped you would be his salvation. There is no one I would rather have for a daughter-in-law.” Lady Keating squeezed her hand, and another tear trickled down her cheek.
Niall, a profligate? A rake? A drunk and a lecher? How could it be? She’d never had the least hint that he was anything but what he appeared to be: a handsome, educated, charming young man.
But she knew how Lady Keating adored her son. She could never say any of those things about him—those horrid things—if they weren’t true.
Now everything began to make sense: Lady Keating’s eagerness to promote their friendship and her anxious hovering over them. Then, in a rush of words and pictures, memories of Niall assailed her . . . memories that now seemed two-sided: the compliments, the hand holding the night of the dinner party, Doireann’s hints about Niall’s past, his dancing the entire evening with Charlotte Enniskean . . . had it all been just a game? A more subtle continuation of his sordid past?
“It—it can’t be,” she whispered.
Lady Keating finally met her eyes. “My poor darling, I’m afraid it is.”
“But . . . he loves me! I know he does.” As she looked at Lady Keating’s pale face, it blurred in a haze of unshed tears.
She sighed and shook her head. “Not in the way that he should. You are very attractive, my dear. I fear that his attentions to you were inspired more by the thought of a challenge than any finer emotion.”
“A challenge? To what?”
“Your virtue, of course.”
Her virtue. Pen buried her face in her hands, hardly noticing Lady Keating’s arm around her shoulders or her murmured words of comfort. Was that all it had been? An elaborate attempt to seduce her? Why her? Why not Charlotte Enniskean or any other woman in town? Why did it have to be her?
“I loved him,” she muttered. “I actually told him I loved him.”
“It is very hard not to love him. He is worthy in so many ways—handsome, knowledgeable, polished. I have not yet given up hope that he might be reformed someday. It is so sad. I had hoped you would be the one to help reform him—”
Pen interrupted her with a laugh, a short, harsh sound that she did not know she was capable of making. “Yes, well. It doesn’t appear as if he wants to be reformed by me.”
Lady Keating reached up and took Pen’s chin in her hand. Her fingers were cold and trembled slightly. “My dear, you don’t know how much your pain hurts me. But there is another way you could help him, if you don’t despise him utterly.”
Pen dropped her eyes from Lady Keating’s intense gaze. Did she despise him? Of course she did; she’d hoped to marry him, but all he had been interested in with her was a game, to make her another notch in his bedpost. But despise him beyond all recall?
She remembered their talks and spirited discussions of history and politics, interspersed with companionable silence. There had been real friendship between them at first; no other young man of her acquaintance had been so intelligent, so stimulating a conversationalist, so much fun. Could she forget that side of him so completely as to loathe him?
“N-no,” she said at last. “I—I don’t wish to see him, but I can’t wish him ill.” Well, not too much ill. Nothing that would leave scars. At least, not deep ones. “I hope that he can overcome this . . . defect someday and live a happy, upright life.”
“Oh, my dear, that is all I wish for him as well. It is all I think about, all I work for.” She took a deep breath. “Perhaps the time has come for me to share some other information with you. It is not . . . it is not something that I have told anyone else, ever. Too many people could be hurt by it, and so I have kept it to myself all these years.” She looked at Pen with an expression half proud, half ashamed, in her green eyes. “Niall is not Lord Keating’s son.”
Oh, dear. What should she say to that? Wasn’t Lady Keating aware of the gossip that even she, a newcomer to Cork, had heard? “I—” she began.
“No, my dear, you don’t have to say anything. What can you say to such a statement? Nevertheless, it is true. Before my husband inherited the title, he was a soldier, an officer in the Duke of Cumberland’s Fifteenth Dragoons. I came to London when they were there—we had been married only a few years, you know. And then I met the duke.” She sighed, and her eyes grew dreamy and distant. “I tried, but I could not deny my feelings for him when he indicated his interest in me. My marriage had been an arranged one. This was love. We had a brief time of heaven together, but I was already married, and he was the king’s son—there was no future for us. I have his son as a living reminder of that love.
“Niall has always been a restless boy. He has his father’s brilliance and boundless energy as well as his handsome face and figure. His poor father—Lord Keating, that is—is a good man, but he has been ill so long that he has never been able to be a father to him, and so Niall fell by the wayside. But I have dreamed . . . if Niall could be united with his father—his real father—perhaps it would give him the strength and purpose to turn his life around and prove himself worthy of such a parent. It would give him his proper place in the world. Do you see? Do you understand what I hope for?” She took Pen’s hands and gripped them.
Pen remembered all the unpleasant things she wanted to inflict on Niall when he spent the evening glued to Charlotte Enniskean at the Whelans’ dance. Funny that it never occurred to her to do anything
to Charlotte. Was it because, deep inside her, she knew it had been his fault?
Men! First Doherty and now Niall. Was this all they cared about? Getting under a girl’s skirts? Their education, their future, their very honor were forgotten or ignored at the sight of a pretty girl. Or else they coldheartedly pursued women who they thought could be helpful in their careers, like that awful Lord Carharrick who’d chased Persy last year. No wonder it had taken Ally so long to find a man she could respect enough to marry.
Lady Keating cleared her throat. There was an odd note in her voice as she spoke. “Niall attempted a great wrong on you, and he will be made to pay. I cannot let what he tried to do go unpunished. But we can ensure that it never happens again, if you will help me.”
Oh, it certainly never would happen again. At least not to her. “I think so, but how can I be of help in this? What can I do?”
“Ah, a great deal.” She fixed Pen’s eyes with hers once more. “Listen.”
Pen waited, unable to tear her eyes away from Lady Keating’s. Then she heard it: a soft sighing sound, as of wind blowing through long grass, and a thin, silvery thread of tune.
“Music,” she whispered. “I hear music.” Or was it music? Was it just the wind playing those sweet, flutelike notes?
“Yes.” Lady Keating’s eyes narrowed in concentration.
The musical sighing grew louder, and now Pen could feel it, a warm, gentle breeze that blew across the back of her neck, lifting the fine hairs that had escaped from her coiffure after Niall’s passionate embraces. Or was it something else that sent shivers down her spine—an otherworldliness, a sense of something that was not from the here and now?
“What is it?” she whispered. Now a scent of greenness and moisture surrounded them, like a spring meadow just after a rain.
“Can’t you guess?” Lady Keating smiled, then leaned forward and gently blew into Pen’s eyes. She blinked, and in that instant the library, with its comfortable sofa and shelves of books and curios, vanished. Instead, she and Lady Keating were standing on the crest of a great grass-covered hill under a lavender-blue sky. All around them, rolling plains of grass stretched away, dotted with lower hills and clumps of tall trees. On the horizon, the dark line of a forest met the grass, but how far away it was Pen couldn’t judge because the air, though clear and invigorating, seemed to shimmer slightly as the wind blew through it.
Betraying Season Page 20
