‘London was disappointing. I need more from life than being an ornament on a husband’s arm.’ It wasn’t untrue, it just wasn’t the reason she’d left. She rose. If she didn’t leave now, he would have all her secrets out of her and perhaps more than she was willing to give.
He rose with her, helping her with her coat, his hands lingering at her shoulders in his customary fashion. ‘I’ll walk you home. There is something I want to ask you.’ He was letting her keep her secrets, but there would be a price for that. Perhaps he would stop pursuing her altogether, another week gone until she saw him again in church. This was the second time she’d refused him and they were both aware of the subtle dance between them, he advancing and she retreating when he got too close. Every time she retreated, time slipped away. He would not be here for ever. That was the double bind, the blessing and the curse. If she waited much longer, the decision would be made for her and Cade Kitto would move back into the world and beyond her.
Outside, it was cold, December weather firmly entrenched. She shivered despite the fur at her throat, but Cade seemed at ease in the wind, his greatcoat hanging open, its skirts swirling as they walked. ‘I need your help with finishing the cantata. I have a week before rehearsals begin. Would you come to the gatehouse tomorrow? I want to play the cantata for you and you can advise me on a section I’m struggling with.’
It sounded delightful, to use her music skills again, but she needed to point out how inappropriate the invitation was. This was England, not the liberal courts of Europe. ‘I am flattered, truly, but an unmarried man doesn’t invite an unmarried woman to his home, even in Porth Karrek.’
Cade gave her a sly grin. ‘I’m not inviting. You are returning these.’ He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out his gloves. ‘You can say I left them at the church. Bring your maid and send her up to the kitchen at Karrek House.’
She smiled at his ingenuity. ‘You’ve done this before,’ she teased. But there was truth behind it. How many times had he made such assignations? Did she dare allow herself to be entangled in such an arrangement? The balance between them would always be unequal. His larks were not her larks. Dashiell had taken her virginity, but she still had her heart. She would not part with it lightly. She knew what it would mean if she returned Cade’s gloves. There would be no going back. She would need to keep a tight rein on her feelings if she wanted to emerge unscathed. She knew, too, what it meant if she did not return his gloves. He would not enquire again. This was the third ask.
At the drive leading to Treleven House, Cade pulled her aside into the trees. ‘There’s something else I need before you go,’ he whispered. ‘This.’
He kissed her long and full, his tongue teasing hers until he wrung a moan of pure pleasure from her. Kissing him was intoxicating, playful and sensual by turn until she was entirely lost in it—in him, in the game—and overwhelmed by the knowledge that there could be so much more if only she wouldn’t hold back. His eyes, his body said as much without words. ‘I’ve wanted this all week, Rose. When I wasn’t thinking of the cantata, I was thinking of this, of the beach, of having you beneath me again, your mouth against mine, your body against mine.’ He moved, his hips hard against hers, his desire evident in the most physical of ways. ‘Do not doubt how much I want you, Rose, secrets and all,’ he murmured at her ear. ‘Say you’ll come tomorrow. You won’t regret it. We’ll take it slow. Nothing will happen that you don’t want.’ That was her fear. It would be easy to want to do it all with him. Even now, with her mind conflicted, her body was roused beyond measure. She knew before she reached the front door she would return his gloves in the morning. She had nothing to lose but her heart.
Chapter Ten
The gloves were the first of many reasons Rosenwyn found to visit the gatehouse during the next week. When Ayleth asked where she was going on Tuesday, she claimed a need to visit Emily Faulkner at Karrek House to look over a pair of silver hair clips she’d ordered for Marianne as a Christmas surprise. On Wednesday she brought cakes and biscuits and other Christmas treats from Treleven House, each day staying longer as the cantata took shape until it became clear the cantata would be complete by Friday, right on schedule.
On Thursday, she began to resent Friday. She didn’t want this to end. Watching him work was intoxicating, kissing him was addicting and, like any good addict, she knew kissing Cade wouldn’t always be enough for her. It was already not enough. Every day she wanted a little more of him, a little more of his mouth, his body, his mind, his soul. But she couldn’t have those things for free. She’d have to give a little of herself in exchange and there was no guarantee she’d get that piece back. That frightened her. She might have survived Dashiell Custis, but it had cost her something. She’d believed him. She’d trusted Dashiell and he had not been worthy of either her belief or her trust.
Cade was struggling too, that became evident as Friday arrived. Each day he’d become a little more withdrawn with his words and more physical with his passion. There was a desperation to his kisses. Perhaps this was what it was like to live with an artist? Mood swings and emotions always on the surface as they created. But Rosenwyn had seen him in Chegwins’. Whatever was driving him was about more than an artistic temperament.
* * *
Late Friday afternoon, Cade finished playing the accompaniment for the last aria. The room fell silent. He stretched at the bench, rolling his shoulders to relieve the taut muscles. She rose and went to him, kneading his shoulders with firm, practised hands. This had become another of her self-prescribed duties in assisting. ‘You’re tight.’ She massaged the base of his neck, her hands on bare skin. Even with her present, he didn’t wear a cravat when he worked and his shirt was loose affording her access. ‘Do you need me to play some of it?’ When his shoulders hurt too much to play or his hands cramped from composing, she had played for him, playing back the music he’d written. They’d made a good team.
‘I think we’re done.’ Cade leaned back, his head against her stomach, his eyes closed. We. That had become a new addition over the week. We. Our. Us. They were together in this. He reached a hand up and took hers where it worked at his shoulder. ‘I should walk you home and then I can tidy the piece up tonight. We can go into Penzance tomorrow and have copies printed.’ He sighed. ‘Just in time, too. Rehearsals can begin Sunday afternoon.’ She knew what that meant. On Sunday, it would be nine days until Christmas Eve. Ten days until Cade was free to go, no longer required to stay in Porth Karrek. They would go into Penzance tomorrow, the nearest town with a printing press, and then their life in the little gatehouse would come to a close. There would be no more reason to visit him, to work with him.
‘We should celebrate tomorrow.’ Cade craned his neck and looked up at her with those disarming blue eyes. It was the first time he’d shaken off the megrims that had plagued him during the week. As for herself, she’d never felt less like celebrating. This was the part she’d warned herself against, the part where she had to realise this association meant less to him than it did to her. There had been women before her and there would be women after her, women who would massage his neck, bring him food, see to his laundry and in exchange he would shower them with his kisses, his smiles, the gift of watching a genius at work.
‘Perhaps we could have a celebratory meal in Penzance, one you didn’t have to cook.’ His grin faded and he turned around on the bench to face her, to wrap his hands about her waist and draw her on to his lap. ‘The cantata is finished on time. Don’t you want to celebrate, Rose?’
Rose. She hardly remembered when he’d stopped calling her Rosenwyn and adopted the familiar, so naturally had their intimacy grown. ‘I am happy the cantata is done.’ She smiled. He’d worked hard. How could she tell him she was unhappy it was finished? Or that she didn’t want him to finish it because of what it meant. For a girl who liked Christmas, she was in no hurry for it to arrive this year. ‘I will miss this. I enjoyed w
orking with you.’ She’d felt useful in a way that transcended assembling charity baskets. She’d used her music this week. She missed that part of her life in London.
His brow furrowed as he studied her. ‘This is not the end, Rose. We have time yet. There are rehearsals.’
‘And all the festivities.’ She smiled again, looking for the silver lining. Maybe if she smiled enough she’d convince herself she was happy. ‘We have the bonfire and the Gwav Gool party.’ She stopped, getting no response from him. Ah, so it wasn’t just the gin and cake progression that prodded his ghosts. It was the whole of Christmas. It hit her in full force how awful that he’d been consigned to write a cantata to celebrate a season he despised in a place that held difficult memories. No wonder it had proved difficult to start.
Her arms went about his neck and she breathed him in, all soap and winter spice. ‘Why don’t you like Christmas, Cade?’
‘It’s a busy time of year for composers.’ He tried to joke. ‘We spend the season putting together your entertainments.’ He kissed her lightly at first, his hand threading its way through the careful bun at her nape until he cradled her head in his palm. She felt his mouth smile against hers. ‘All those rehearsals and festivities mean I have to share you and maybe I don’t want to.’ She sensed he was covering something up with his flattering words, but it was easier to believe in it than question it.
* * *
Cade did not want to walk her home. He wanted to walk her upstairs to his bedroom, to take down her hair, to undo her gown, to make love to her until her body was imprinted on his so that he’d forget his demons and she might forget hers. He was not the only one with ghosts to lay and hers were in evidence today. The end of the project was forcing her towards a decision; he was forcing her towards a decision—to open up to him, body and mind. He wanted to know her, he wanted her to know herself, to stop hiding.
He kissed her, long and slow, his hand sliding up her skirts, along the curve of her calf, over the length of silk-stockinged thigh until he reached the warm core of her, curls already damp. Would she allow him? ‘Often pleasure exorcises our ghosts or at least settles them,’ he murmured against the shell of her ear. ‘Let me give you a little pleasure, Rose.’ He touched her then, finding the tiny nucleus at her core. She gave a sharp, sweet gasp of acquiescence to him, to pleasure, encouraging him. Had he ever wanted to give a woman pleasure this badly?
She moaned against his lips, his mouth taking her cry with a kiss. She pressed against his hand, moving against his palm, her body searching for more and even then, he felt the frustrated restraint in her, the restraint that exerted itself even now when her body was on the brink of pleasure, of satisfaction. ‘Let go, there is no harm in this pleasure, Rose,’ he murmured his encouragement, his own voice husky in anticipation of her fulfilment. ‘Let me watch you fly for just a moment, Rose.’ Perhaps she would do it for him, if she wouldn’t do it for herself. In the next moment the choice was beyond her. Whatever restraint she had lost the battle, overcome at the end by pleasure. She cried out, bucking against his hand, her arms about his neck gripping him tight as if he were her only anchor in a storm and Cade revelled in it. He revelled in her joy, her discovery, the awe in her eyes and the shadow as she breathed, ‘I didn’t know... I didn’t know. Oh, sweet heavens, Cade, I didn’t know.’
But he knew. In a blinding strike of insight, Cador Kitto, man of the world, knew. There had been a man before. One who had disappointed her, physically, emotionally. Anger for the unknown cad who’d not shown her pleasure simmered in Cade. Rose deserved the best a man had to offer. Their eyes met, locked. He whispered a single word, ‘Who?’
She didn’t dissemble, didn’t pretend she didn’t understand what he was asking. She simply shook her head. ‘No one of any consequence. It is in the past.’
That wasn’t true. Her ghost was in the present, every time they kissed, every time he touched her, every time desire surged between them, and demanded she acknowledge it—the past was there. ‘You are afraid of desire,’ Cade pressed her, fearing the worst. What had happened to create that fear? ‘Who hurt you?’ Whoever it was, Cade would dust off his rapiers and call him out.
‘It’s not like that, Cade.’ Her hand soothed the lines from his brow, understanding what he thought, and she quickly disabused him. ‘I hurt myself. He did nothing without my permission, permission I should not have given.’ She bit her lip and attempted to move off his lap. He held her tight. If she left him now, he would lose the moment. ‘I should not have allowed this.’ She tried again to rise.
‘I cannot let you go thinking you are to blame. That somehow you are the source of your own hurt.’ He certainly didn’t want her thinking she’d played the wanton on his lap. Her pleasure had been at his invitation, not hers. She had every right to enjoy it. ‘Tell me what happened, Rose.’ He would, by God, fix it and put her world to rights as she had done for his.
Chapter Eleven
Rosenwyn shifted on his lap. She did not want to tell him. No one liked admitting how foolish they’d been, especially to someone they cared about. It would only prove his belief that she had indeed lived a sheltered and naïve life. ‘It’s too embarrassing. You will think me the most green of girls.’ She’d made one mistake and it had cost her everything a young woman held dear, her one recommending attribute to men of good birth, the sort of men her parents wished her to marry.
Cade bent his forehead to hers with a smile. ‘You know my secrets, surely you can give me one of yours in exchange. It is just the two of us here in the gatehouse. Your secret will be safe with me, whatever it is.’
‘It’s not my secret I’m worried about. It’s me,’ Rosenwyn confessed. ‘You might not look at me the same way.’
‘Your resistance makes me all the more curious—isn’t that what you said to me on the beach?’ Cade gave a soft, encouraging laugh. ‘It’s not the looking at you differently that worries you. It’s that you think I might reject you. Did you reject me after I told you about my family?’
‘It’s not the same,’ Rosenwyn argued.
‘I think it is. I risked much in telling you about my family. You are the daughter of a gentleman, a child of privilege and I have some fame, that’s true. But at the end of the day I am still a miner’s son, a poor boy. I have no rank, only what the notice my talent brings me. To open myself to you was an enormous risk.’ He whispered at her ear, ‘Trust me, Rose. Tell me who put the hesitance in your kisses, the question in your pleasure?’
There would be no more coaxing. The parlour was silent except for the sound of flames licking logs in the fireplace. He was offering her a bridge, a way to cross over, a way for them to be together. This was about more than sharing an experience, it was about reciprocating his trust in her with her trust in him. He’d trusted her with his story, trusted her with his music. He wanted the same from her. If she could not give him that, they would end right here on the piano bench. He would walk her home because politeness demanded it, but she would not go into Penzance with him tomorrow, would not sit beside him in the family pew at church, would not steal kisses from him beneath the kissing bough. Those were just superficial things she’d lose. The real loss would be in losing him, in losing the right to watch him work, the right to watch him struggle, the right to help him in both. She wasn’t ready to let go, not yet.
Rosenwyn drew a breath for courage. She could not tell him the sanitised version she’d told her sisters. She would have to tell him all of it. ‘His name was Dashiell Custis, the younger son of a viscount. I met him two years ago in London during the Season and we fell madly in love, or so I thought. He flattered me with flowers and gifts and waltzes every night. He made no secret of courting me and I made no secret of liking it. He was fun and reckless. He was handsome and charming and broke. I knew he had no money, only a small property in Hertfordshire that came from an aunt. But one doesn’t care about the money when one thinks they’re in lov
e. I didn’t. I had money enough for both of us.
‘He wanted to elope. The Season was coming to a close and he said he didn’t want to wait for a long engagement during which we’d be separated most of the time. He had to go to Hertfordshire and, being unmarried, I could hardly accompany him. Why not marry, he argued. We could go there together and put the place to rights. The idea appealed to me.’
Cade laughed softly. ‘I’m sure it did, Miss Fix-It. You might be the only woman in England who would delight in renovating a ramshackle estate for her honeymoon.’
‘That might be true.’ She smiled, delighting in the knowledge that Cade knew her so well. In the months she and Dashiell had been together, he’d never understood her as well as Cade did after only a few weeks. ‘I didn’t get the chance to find out. Eaton had heard rumours of the elopement at his club and other rumours, too: rumours that Dashiell’s property was mortgaged, that his need for money was immediate, so immediate he was willing to marry a Cornish country girl to get his hands on some blunt. He couldn’t wait for an engagement. The people who had loaned him money weren’t a gentleman’s bankers, willing to take an engagement as collateral for later payment.
‘Eaton came to me straight away and told me. It stopped the elopement, but...’ She paused here as if to warn him of what came next. ‘I’d already slept with him. I was that sure of him, that sure we’d be man and wife within the month. There was no reason to wait and I let him talk me into it because I wanted to. He was so earnest in his wanting, so eager. All that was true, just not for the reasons I thought. The sooner he could bed me, the sooner he could ensure his claim to me. If I was pregnant, all the better to bind me to him. There’d be no turning back. I simply wouldn’t be able to.’ She tried for a smile and a laugh to minimise the desperate straits she’d faced.
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