‘Not by smugglers anyway. I am sure every lover in Porth Karrek knows of its existence.’ Cade drew her into his arms. ‘It’s the perfect place for smuggling kisses and there have been far too few of those lately.’ Rosenwyn had been right about that. The moment rehearsals had started, he’d been thrust into the public eye, everyone wanting to know how the concert was coming along, people stopping him on the street to talk, people inviting him to dinner, not to forget his meetings with the Reverend to make arrangements for the cantata. His days were full from the moment he got up until he fell into bed. There’d been little time to sneak away with her. She was at rehearsals with her sisters, but there’d been no time to repeat their afternoon in Penzance. He was feeling desperate.
‘There isn’t enough time, Rose,’ he whispered, kissing her fiercely, and she answered him with a hunger of her own. Perhaps she felt it, too, this desperation that made every kiss golden.
‘We have time tonight, Cade,’ she murmured, her hand dropping between them to find him, to mould him. ‘I love touching you.’ He loved it, too, the feel of this bold, sensual woman’s hand on him, her merest touch driving him to a place beyond reason. This cave might be such a place where no one could reach them, where the world held no sway.
‘Not that much time, love,’ Cade reminded her with a chuckle. ‘Your father gave me a tankard of ale because he wanted me to know he had his eye on me. He wasn’t just being friendly.’ Still, there might be enough time if he was quick. How might he make love to her here? Would she be amenable to using a wall?
Rosenwyn pulled back and furrowed her brow. ‘My father is a very friendly man.’
‘I am sure he is, but no father is friendly when it comes to his daughters,’ Cade assured her, missing her hand. He was regretting bringing her father up at all now.
‘Well, he’s not here at the moment and we have plenty of time for this.’ Rosenwyn’s eyes sparked with mischief as she dropped to her knees in the sand, her hand working his breeches open. ‘I’ve had this idea since Penzance that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or perhaps it will be the other way around tonight.’
Cade had not thought it possible to get any stiffer. He was quickly revisiting that conclusion now as her words settled in his brain. Sweet heavens, she meant to put her mouth on him, right here in the smugglers’ cave. All the while, he’d been thinking about how he might make love to her here and she’d been leaps ahead of him, a plan already in mind. ‘I should have known you’d have a plan. You have one for everything, even seduction at a bonfire attended by the whole damned town.’
She laughed up at him, her coppery waves spilling down her back, her green eyes on his face as intensely as her hand was on another part of his anatomy, and his heart lurched. What a sight! How would he ever find the willpower to give her up when the time came? But that time was not tonight. She bent her head to him and took the tip of him in her mouth and such silly considerations like the future fled like the nuisances they were. They had no place here in the cave.
Cade gripped the rocky outcroppings of the wall for stability, for contact with reality as her mouth made its way down the length of him. Nothing he could recall had ever felt this good. Her mouth was a symphony of sensations, licking, nipping, sucking. It was all violins and flutes, staccato bursts and long-held notes, gathering crescendos of tension until he couldn’t help but cry out.
Dear heaven, he might die here in this cave from want, from desire, from physically exploding like a shooting star across the night sky. If he lived he might never be the same. His body gathered one last time. Could she tell the end was near? In some remote, practical part of his brain he thought he should caution her. He managed a series of warning grunts, of pleasurable moans and then he gave up and let himself be swept away by the pounding sensations of his release. The wake of his climax swept the beach of his soul clean. There was no debris from the past, no concerns for the future, only now. Only this beautiful woman. Cade sank down into the sand, reaching for her, pulling her close. He would hold on to this moment as long as he could because when he let it go, the past and future would return.
Chapter Fourteen
‘How did you know I’d like that?’ Cade asked once sanity reasserted itself and his body had calmed. He liked holding her, liked having her head against his shoulder. No one else’s would ever feel quite as right there. He winced at the thought and pushed at it, not wanting it. The future was starting to intrude, taking his thoughts to times and places and people that would come. He didn’t want to think of the latter, of Rosenwyn being replaced. Although, logically, she would be, wouldn’t she? It was a dismal thought, but a necessary one. It didn’t seem realistic, based on his record to date, that he would live a celibate life starting in three days.
‘Because I liked it when you did it for me.’ Rosenwyn sighed softly against him, her fingers playing at his shirt. ‘It stood to reason there must be a counterpart for you.’ Her fingers stopped their plucking and Cade sensed she was gathering herself for a question, an important one if she was premeditating it. He braced himself. He didn’t need three guesses to know what it was. ‘We can have more time, Cade.’
He’d been wrong. Not a question. A statement. Rosenwyn didn’t deal with questions. She dealt with certainties. ‘Technically, yes,’ he acceded. ‘Technically, I am a man responsible for his own time. I need not leave immediately. But to what end, Rose? For another week of sneaking away to caves? Does another week or two matter when eventually the outcome will still be the same?’
He dared not breathe the other end of that equation. What if he didn’t leave at all? That was fantastical, beyond the realm of possibility. He might want to stay for her, but there was no way to make that happen. He would not take charity, he would not be seen as a man who lived on his wife’s dowry. He had no prospects to offer her to compensate for that. He would not come to their marriage as an equal, therefore he could not come at all. A Kitto took care of his own.
‘Not if you put it like that. Have I ever told you that you’re a killjoy?’ She looked up at him, laughing.
‘Several times.’ He chuckled. It might never be this easy with anyone else again or this honest. He hated how he was already mentally saying goodbye, already forcing himself to think of the future beyond Porth Karrek, beyond Rosenwyn, but he must. It would make leaving easier.
Rosenwyn shifted beside him, straddling his lap, her knees in the sand on either side of his thighs. She looked him in the eye. ‘Cade, I am going to ask you a very difficult question and I need you to answer truthfully.’ He nodded, his throat dry at the prospect of what she might demand.
‘Cade, do you want to leave?’
How to answer? She knew the implications of that answer as well as he did even if she understood them less. ‘It’s not a question of want, Rose. It’s a question of need. My life is out there.’ He waved a hand to indicate the world beyond their cave. ‘Without my music I have nothing, I am nothing.’ He couldn’t be nothing in Porth Karrek, not even for Rosenwyn. If he stayed he’d shrivel into nothingness, at best a man who’d once been something for a very short time.
‘Let’s try the question a different way.’ Rose was relentless. ‘What if you didn’t need to go? What if everything you wanted, needed, was right here?’ This small space might as well have been Aladdin’s cave of wonders the way wishes were coming to life. Of course he’d thought of it, but that wasn’t how life worked.
‘It’s an impossible what if, Rose. There’s no sense in playing that game. Everything I need is not here, it’s not going to be here and it’s not in our interest to pretend otherwise. It will only make parting that much harder.’
Rosenwyn sat back on her haunches, her smile sad. She was disappointed in him and he hated that he’d disappointed her. It seemed either way he was bound to do it, though. Another woman might have argued that she should be enough to stay for. Rose did not. She mere
ly leaned forward, kissed him softly and disarmed him entirely with her words. ‘I love you, Cade Kitto. I shouldn’t, but I do anyway.’
* * *
He should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it. He should have known Rosenwyn Treleven wasn’t the sort to say ‘I love you’ and just walk away. But it had been easier to let himself believe that than to worry about what she was planning.
Cade fixed his cravat in the mirror of his bedchamber and made his final preparations for the Gwav Gool party Captain Penhaligon was hosting up at the house. He had no excuse not to go. The cantata was a day away and there was nothing more to be done. The choir had got their passage right today, just in time. His two soloists were ready and the little orchestra was passably good, including a few surprises he’d added in private tribute to Rosenwyn’s guidance. It would be his Christmas gift to her when she heard it, a token of how much their time together had meant.
Had meant. Past tense. It was all past tense now. The fourth Sunday in Advent was behind him. He’d spent it in church, then at rehearsal, and then the evening at Treleven House making kissing boughs with Rose’s family. The cantata performance was ahead of him tomorrow. Then he would leave. Cade considered himself in the mirror. The last party before Christmas. The last party before a lot of things. He wanted to look his best, to have one last memory of Rose, smiling and laughing with him before he disappointed her.
She’d asked him to consider staying. She’d said she loved him. He’d made no adequate response in Penzance and she hadn’t brought it up again. It was just as well. That conversation had only one outcome no matter how many times they repeated it. Rosenwyn wanted the impossible. He simply could not give it to her without losing himself and that defeated the whole reason for wanting it in the first place. It would be an impossible conversation. But it would not happen tonight. This evening would be for fun and entertainment, for making memories. He was going to enjoy every moment of it and worry about making decisions later. Cade took a final look in the mirror and set off for the big house.
It was snowing outside; big, fluffy flakes landed on the shoulders of his greatcoat, a blanket already shrouding the ground in white. Cade smiled and lifted his face to the night sky. Snow was the perfect touch, the pièce de résistance to a night of magic, a night out of time, a night when anything was possible for the moment, like snow off the ocean.
He’d never experienced Gwav Gool from the inside, always from the outside, the grubby-handed little boy peering in through the windows. It had awed him as a small child, the glow of candles, the tables groaning with food, the rich, thick pieces of pies: Pesk Pie with its prawns, Stargazy pie, fish pies of all sorts courtesy of Abel Menhenick’s bakery at the centre of it all. Already, as he approached the house, music spilled out, dancing music, another occasion for the villagers and the gentry to mingle. Tonight was a night for remembering the good of the old year and looking forward to the new. Perhaps this year would bring new opportunities for him with the Royal Academy in London, or opportunities he had yet to discover on the Continent. Perhaps those opportunities would at last drown out the ghosts of his past and the ones he was accumulating in the present.
All thoughts of past and present fled, though, at the sight of Rosenwyn on the greenery-draped staircase. She was coming down from the retiring room, surrounded by her sisters, although he hardly noticed them. How had he ever thought they all looked alike? Rose stood out, a flame among them. Tonight, she wore a gown of soft pink silk with rose-gold bobs at her ears, a veritable Christmas rose. His Christmas Rose if he chose. His, not just for the moment or a few days, but his for always. If he chose. She smiled when she saw him and the temptation to throw his fears into the fire and let them burn surged. What if he was wrong? What if he could live here? What if she was all he needed? But that wasn’t true, was it? He couldn’t stay here or he’d die.
‘You look dashing tonight, Mr Kitto.’ She took his arm, her eyes appraising him privately, suggesting she’d like to peel him out of his carefully assembled clothes. ‘Falmage was looking for you. He said he had something to discuss. Shall we go find him?’ She fairly glowed.
‘First, I want to dance with you.’ Cade drew her towards the ballroom. ‘I’ve never been to a Gwav Gool before. I want to enjoy it. We’ll see Falmage later.’ If this was to be the end, he wanted it to be a night to remember. A night of dancing with this woman he loved but couldn’t have.
‘Never?’ she queried as he led her to an open space on the dance floor.
‘No—remember, my father was a Methodist. Dancing and music were not appropriate.’ He swung her into a polka-like country dance, immediately picking up the fast tempo. When had it become a simple matter to talk of his childhood? Of his father? Perhaps she had changed that about him, too. He smiled at her and tightened his grip about her waist. This was not a proper ball. No one would care if he held his partner too close. Tonight he wanted to breathe her in, every vanilla spice, Christmas-scented breath of her, to store up every sight, every sound of her against the days to come. When he left, he wouldn’t leave as he’d arrived, resenting Cornwall, resenting the life he’d had here. He might not embrace his Cornish past, but he’d come to terms with it, thanks to her.
They danced and they ate, and danced some more, no one counting how many times he led her out to the dance floor. Everyone was too busy buzzing about the surprise announcement Captain Penhaligon would make that night. Most of the dances were round dances anyway, but at least he could see her, the light in her eyes, the joy with which she danced and the secret glances she’d send his way. She was in high spirits and they were contagious.
* * *
He had nearly forgotten Falmage until Falmage himself sought him out shortly before midnight.
‘I have a proposition to discuss, Kitto.’ Falmage offered him a glass of champagne from a passing tray. ‘I’ve been hoping to catch you between dances, but your partner has kept you busy.’ He took a swallow of the champagne. ‘I don’t know what your plans are, but I have a property near here that I don’t use. It’s going to ruin and I’ve been looking for a way to use it that might enrich the community. I think I’ve hit upon an idea. A conservatory, a music school, and I’d like you to head it up. You wouldn’t just be a schoolmaster, of course. There’d be other obligations, special compositions to compose for holidays and other milestone occasions. Concerts to give throughout the year. We could drive over tomorrow and look the property over and press out the details. What do you say?’
Cade stared at the tall, dark ducal heir in disbelief. When something sounded too good to be true, then it probably was. Then he remembered other things: how Falmage and Rosenwyn had wandered off at the bonfire, how Rosenwyn had been relentless with her ‘what if’ scenarios in the cave. Had she known Falmage planned to make the offer? Reality hit, like a punch to the gut, so hard that he nearly dropped his champagne. She’d hadn’t just known, she’d been the one to put the idea to Falmage.
‘I don’t rightly know what to say, my lord,’ Cade replied stiffly and truthfully. Anger bubbled up inside. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to happen and what he’d known would happen when two people from different classes acted on their attraction. A footman passed and he placed his untouched champagne on the tray. ‘If you will excuse me, my lord.’ Not Eaton. Not Falmage. But my lord. He did not hobnob with the mighty the way Rosenwyn did, throwing around their Christian names as if they were brothers. He had been on the brink of forgetting his place after four weeks of too much familiarity.
‘Forgive me, Kitto, if I have erred in some way.’ Falmage was flummoxed. ‘I was under the impression the overture would be welcome. I did not mean...’
‘I’m sure you did not. Again, excuse me.’ Cade left Falmage standing alone, giving the other man no chance to respond. He needed to find Rosenwyn. They had to discuss this immediately. What other plans had she put into motion without discussing them with him? He fou
nd her in the hall, chatting with her sisters. She smiled when she saw him, no doubt expecting good news.
‘I’ve spoken with Falmage.’ His tone was terse, he was holding on to civility by a thin thread only for the sake of her sisters. His hand was at her arm. ‘If you would come with me, we must talk. Privately.’
Chapter Fifteen
He’d talked to Eaton! There could only be good news that way. The air outdoors was bracing, the snow still coming down. Rosenwyn wrapped her arms about herself. Perhaps Cade would take his jacket off and slide it about her shoulders. Her dress was made for indoors and dancing where it was warm, but of course Cade would want to celebrate and it would be best to do that out here, just the two of them. She would have to act surprised when he told her. Eaton’s offer was the perfect Gwav Gool gift, the perfect cap to this wonderful night of dancing with Cade, laughing with Cade. He would see now that he could stay, that they could be together, that there wouldn’t be any living off his wife’s dowry.
‘How dare you go behind my back and beg? I told you explicitly not to do such a thing!’ The ferocity of Cade’s accusation was stunning and so unexpected that all she could do was stare as she processed the words in confusion.
‘What did Falmage say?’
‘He offered me a position at his brand-new music conservatory,’ Cade growled, pacing on the front porch of Karrek House. ‘So new, in fact, it didn’t even exist until two days ago.’
‘How is this a problem? I fail to see the source of your anger,’ Rosenwyn retorted, her mind having wrapped itself around the words. ‘You have been handed a golden opportunity on a silver platter. This is wonderful news, Cade. You can stay, you can have meaningful, music-centred work.’
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