“I have seen this before but never been inside.” Kittie gazed at it as they approached and then looked up at Alban. “Mr. Lafferty said it was an abandoned huntsman’s home.”
“It was, but it has since been transformed. Come inside.”
• • •
Kittie gazed around her as they entered. It was just one room, but the opulence was staggering: wood paneling, oak trim, a fireplace of gracious proportions. There was a table to one side set with dishes and wine goblets, ruby glass glowing richly in the candlelight.
Alban slipped her shawl off her shoulders, and indeed it was warm enough that her bare arms were not in the slightest chilled. He must have had servants here for hours, cleaning, setting the table, bringing food and wine, laying the fire.
“I thought we’d have a late supper and talk. I know you spoke of how we seem often to be at daggers drawn, and I wanted to make it right before I leave.”
She turned and gazed at him suspiciously. His words were so smooth, his manner so polished. He guided her to the table and they sat, drank wine, and ate fruit and cheese, oysters and delicious sweetmeats. They talked about many things, but never anything of import.
After eating, he guided her to a spot near the fire where a shaggy fur rug softened the cold of the marble hearth. He was solicitous of her comfort, but that wasn’t new. He was ever kind and thoughtful where any woman was concerned, she had oft noted. He didn’t particularly care for Rebecca, nor for Hannah, but he was better than patient with them, showing a real regard for their comfort and desirous of their ease.
She therefore sat on the floor by the fire, threading her fingers through the luxurious fur of the rug and relishing the warmth of the fire. The fine wine had left her feeling mellow and contented, and when he sat down by her and toyed with her hair, she turned her face into his hand, cradling her cheek there. “You’re so kind, sir,” she murmured.
“Not kind,” he said.
“But you are.” She gazed up at him into his dark eyes, searching them.
He drew her closer and pulled her to his chest. “Kittie,” he whispered, “don’t look at me like that. I feel as though you’re . . . you’re looking for something I don’t have, something I never will. Looking for some man I’ll never be.”
“No, no.” She framed his face with her hands, rubbing her thumbs along his jawline. “I don’t think you know yourself well enough. I don’t think you really know . . .” She broke off, not sure what she was trying to say.
He folded her into his arms and pulled her down until they were reclining on the rug. He was too close; she closed her eyes and his mouth covered hers in a hard, smothering kiss, which changed and became gentle, as if he was reining in fiery emotion. She surrendered to the moment, letting rich sensuality wash through her, feeling his mouth suckle hers, noting the hard line of his lean body against her plump form, letting her body soften at the shattering knowledge that he was hardening against her thigh.
He wanted her. He wanted to seduce her, and this whole night was dedicated to that, she thought, the rich food, opulent surroundings, warm fire, just made to heat naked flesh. She could just surrender. She tried to tell herself it would be all right in the morning, that she would be happy she had given in, for once, to her most secret desires. He pulled her closer, almost under him, and his voracious kisses left her limp with need.
But it was no use. Morning would always come, and her life would go on, and she would have to face Lady Eliza, and worse, her own image in the mirror, and explain how she had let her judgment of what was right for herself be seduced with wine and kisses. She pulled away and sat up, rubbing her mouth, righting her clothes. She must look like the veriest tumbled wench. She touched one hand to her hair to find it was pulled from the pins that held it fast.
“Kittie,” he said, but didn’t continue. Instead, his eyes glazed and his motions jerky, he stood and pulled her to her feet. Taking her hand he led her to the shadows in the corner of the room, where a sumptuous bed, dressed with linen and lace, waited.
How planned, how calculated was this seduction. She jerked her hand from his. “I think,” she said, her tone brittle in the overheated room, “that you have me confused with someone else, your grace, someone who would climb into that bed and . . . and spread her legs for you.”
Like a slap, her words rang out and the drugged glaze was gone from his eyes in an instant. “What did you say?”
“You heard me; I won’t repeat myself. But if you think I will be your whore, you’re very much mistaken.” Her anger building, she stomped across the room, grabbed her shawl, and stalked to the door. She stopped and stared back at him where he stood, dumbfounded, by the big bed in the corner. “I thought we had a friendship, but you apparently thought it was all a prelude to my becoming your mistress. You’re no better than your good friend the earl.”
And with that, she left, finding the path with some difficulty, and stumbling down it. For all his presumed gentlemanly attributes, he didn’t follow her, and she took a long and weary hour to find her way in the dark what had only taken them twenty minutes to traverse in the light.
Seventeen
Huddled in her bed with the candle still glowing, Kittie pondered what had happened. She had been propositioned by a duke. Well, that was a step up from carte blanche from an earl, wasn’t it? But it had been such a lovely evening before his attempt to lead her to the bed; she had thought they were finding a way to talk without the verbal jousting they often resorted to. Why did he have to ruin it? Though he likely thought he was doing her some honor.
She jerked awake from her half slumber at the tap at her door. “Yes?”
“It’s just me, Kittie,” Rebecca said from the other side of the door. “May I come in?”
“Of course.”
Rebecca swished in, her grand night attire floating around her in crisp waves. She hopped up on the bed and it creaked. “So, what happened? You were gone quite a while with the magnificent Duke of Alban. Did you . . . ?”
Kittie felt her cheeks redden at her friend’s bold, if unfinished, question. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean or you would not be blushing.” Rebecca thrust her homely face close. “Did he bed you?”
“He tried. I said no, then left.”
“Foolish woman! I would have said yes in a trice and had him on his back before he changed his mind.”
“Rebecca!”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said with an arch glance and wicked grin. “I know he doesn’t like me, so I shan’t steal him away. But oh, if I could!” She clasped her hands together and rolled her eyes. “He is marvelous, very medieval. Don’t you feel that? All that restrained power. And such a very big man!” She shivered dramatically.
“Rebecca.”
“Big in every way, I would bet,” she said, green eyes wide, mischievous smile turning up the corners of her lips.
“Rebecca!”
“Don’t be a Miss Prunes and Prisms, Kittie. Can’t you at least admit that you were tempted?”
“Yes.” She sighed deeply and let the sensual, slumberous feeling wash through her once again. “Oh, yes, indeed . . . I was tempted.” She threw herself back on the bed and stared up at the bed canopy. “I wanted to.” She sat back up and stared at her friend. “If you can believe it, he had a little cabin set up in the woods, with candlelight and rugs and wine and . . . and a bed, very luxurious, very sumptuous, heaped with cushions and pillows and a white lace counterpane.”
“Good lord, all that trouble and you said no?” Rebecca practically shrieked and gave a little hop, making the bed creak again. “He was being everything delicate, knowing you would not want to do anything under the same roof as his aunt, and knowing you would be uncomfortable at Boden, with his friends nearby. I think you are out of your head, my dear, and I don’t mind telling you that. I would toss my little fish back into the river in a trice if I thought I could reel in such a giant catch.”
“You would aba
ndon poor Sir John? I thought you liked him.” Kittie smiled for the first time in hours.
“I do! But men like the duke don’t come along every day.”
“I know.”
“And really, you didn’t think he would eventually propose, did you? He’s a duke!”
“I know that!” Kittie said. “You don’t have to remind me that he’s too good for me.”
“I ought to slap you,” Rebecca said, her green eyes ablaze. “Too good for you? No one on this earth is too good for you. I only meant his status is such that he will have to marry a duke’s daughter or at the very least an earl’s. It is what’s expected of him. But how much more spectacular that he chose you to bed!”
“We do look at things very differently, don’t we?” Kittie said, shaking her head at her friend’s logic. “And I really didn’t mean that he is too good for me in that sense. If I truly thought that, then I would be grateful for his . . . invitation.”
“And you’re not.”
Kittie shook her head.
“You’re insulted by it, aren’t you?”
Kittie didn’t answer for a moment. “Rebecca, I am, but don’t take that to mean . . . don’t think that I feel that you and Sir John—”
“My dear, don’t upset yourself unduly. I’m not so sensitive as to worry about your opinion of my relationship with Sir John. My situation is unlike yours, and so we cannot react the same way, especially since we are such very different women, in different circumstances and with different feelings. Sir John is going to visit me at my home; we will have a glorious time and then I will release him to swim away,” she said, her hands and fingers fluttering together like a school of small fish heading upstream, “the better man for what I have taught him.”
Kittie giggled, Rebecca laughed out loud, and the two women fell into each other’s arms. But Kittie’s laughter soon changed to tears, and Rebecca cradled her to her bosom, stroking her hair. “My dear, I was loath to say this before, but you haven’t done the unthinkable, have you? You haven’t fallen in love with the dratted man?”
Her sobs subsiding, Kittie wiped the tears from her eyes and straightened. “How can you love someone who doesn’t respect you? But I very much fear I could. I should be grateful for tonight, for it saved me from the abyss.”
Rebecca reached out and stroked back Kittie’s hair. “My dear, you should be married. You really should.” She stopped and shook her head. “Love is the strangest thing, my dear. Tell yourself what you will, I think you must be a little in love with Alban or you would not be so hurt by what you deem his lack of respect.”
“I thought we were friends, at least,” she said, her tone mournful.
“You are thinking as a woman does, my dear,” Rebecca said. “That in wanting to take you to his bed he is showing a lack of respect for you.”
“He should know that I am not the type to become his mistress, or even his fleeting affair. How could I go back to Lady Eliza with a clear heart after spending the night with him? This differs vastly from you and Sir John, Rebecca, for I am his aunt’s paid companion! It changes our relationship. He has all the power, and I have none.”
Rebecca nodded. “I think I see. You reasserted your power last night, though, by rejecting him, did you not?”
Kittie nodded. “Yes. I hadn’t understood truly, until now, but I felt that in our vastly uneven positions, he was . . . was trying to take advantage of my poverty.” She sighed and looked down at the bedcover, plucking at a loose thread. “And I thought we had the beginning of a tentative friendship. Not an easy one, but a friendship, still.”
“You have to learn to think like a man and you will see that respect, friendship and lovemaking are not exclusive of each other in his poor brain.”
“But I’m not in his brain and I’m not a man, and so must conduct myself as I will. As I feel.”
“Of course. You did the right thing, my dear. But he meant you no disrespect, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Then he is a fool. He’s a fool not to see what his invitation would imply to me.”
“He’s just a man, for all that he is a duke. The poor dears really have little knowledge of what women think and feel and want. Why should they? They have been raised to think that the planets revolve around their groin.”
Kittie gasped, and then laughed out loud. How good to have a friend like Rebecca, capable of the absurd, but sound of advice.
“I have decided that in future,” Rebecca finished, “I will just ask for what I want. It seems the simplest way.”
Kittie thought about that. “Perhaps you’re right. In this case, then, I shall tell the duke to leave me alone. They’re leaving in two days. I should just tell him I don’t wish to see nor speak to him again.”
“Is that really what you want?”
“One part of me . . . the part I intend to listen to.”
Rebecca gazed at her for a long minute. “I think I understand more than you think I do.”
“Don’t, Rebecca,” Kittie warned. “Don’t think you see things that aren’t there.”
Her friend took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m not.”
“I just have to make it through the next two days, and then I can return to my duties to Lady Eliza with a clear heart. She will need me all the more, for I have no doubt there will be some return of her depression when the duke leaves.”
“Kittie . . .” Rebecca started, then stopped.
“What is it?”
“Let me matchmake for you. Visit me at home and let me find you a husband.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. Your and my idea of what is a good husband might not correspond, you know.”
“Good lord, don’t judge by poor old William.” She twisted her homely face into a grimace. “I was young and desperate and he was my best choice. At least he was clean and kind and good-natured. Much better than some I was presented with as possible husbands, let me tell you. But I know what you need.”
Alarmed, Kittie gazed at her friend. “I think we’ll just leave things as they are. I’m quite content.”
“I would never say you are content, my dear. My personal feeling is that you would have been better off if you had allowed the duke to at least have his way with you once.”
“Rebecca!”
“Kittie!”
They stared at each other for a long moment and then laughed, two friends who would never understand the other’s viewpoint, but loved each other anyway.
But when Rebecca was gone, Kittie took out the velvet sack and once more read the letter from the duchess to her husband. If she had been the duchess, how differently she would have handled their difficult marriage. With the power of a wedding ring she thought she knew very well what she would say to the duke about his autocratic ways and austere manner.
She snuffed the candle and curled up on the bed under her covers, but didn’t sleep. She could only too well imagine how the night would have ended if she was married to the desperately attractive and undeniably arousing duke.
• • •
Alban spent a long morning and afternoon with Lafferty, ordering the changes he wanted made to the property and the work to be done on his aunt’s home. He had thought of some improvements that would aid her in her perambulation of her house, and even his own. If he couldn’t convince her to come to London, or to his home in the country, then the least he could do was make things better for her here in Yorkshire. Independence was so very important to her, and he wondered if he could even find a way to make it so that she could walk up to part of the high fell again, with little help from her companion or maid.
And yet in the back of his mind the scene from the previous evening was replaying itself, over and over, and each time he got to the point where he led her to the bed and she reared back as if he was an adder about to strike. He couldn’t understand it. Was he repulsive to her? He thought not. But she had been insulted and shocked. She said she wouldn’t be his whore. The word had sounded so ugly spat from
her perfect mouth, and any arousal he had felt had dissipated as if he had been showered in icy water.
But what else did she think was going to happen when he took her to the cabin in the woods? All he wanted was to make love to her, and he thought that away from Bodenthorpe Cottage her inhibitions would be loosened. She didn’t think . . . he frowned down at some papers in his hands. Surely she hadn’t expected a proposal of a different sort?
Pondering that notion, he made his way to his aunt’s home, determined to see Kittie and to apologize if he had offended her. He didn’t think he had a single thing to apologize for, but something was bothering her that she would say such offensive words, and maybe in the light of day she would tell him what. She could not feel any loyalty to the earl, when he was so clearly willing . . . or was that the problem?
After all, he had never made his intentions clear. She may have thought she would be better off to be faithful to the earl, who was willing to offer her some sort of settlement or allowance. Maybe that was what she had meant when she said she was not his whore. She was not willing to have a simple one-night tumble. He should just tell her that he would be happy to offer her much better terms than the earl, for he was a generous man.
He entered the house and made his way to the drawing room. His aunt was where he saw her the first day, with a stream of sunlight on her lined face.
“Alban,” she said as he entered. She turned, and her expression was grim. “What did you do to Kittie last night?”
Put on his guard by her harsh tone, he said, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t be evasive. She is a different woman today. What did you do? What did you say to her?”
He took a seat. “I kissed her.” That much was true, after all.
“And? She is not a child to be so agitated by a mere kiss.”
He thought resentfully that her agitation might have a completely different source. After all, the men were leaving in two days. If she intended to leave with Orkenay, then she should be telling Lady Eliza now. She should have told her earlier, so they could find someone to take her place. But how could he reveal that to his aunt if she didn’t already know? “I would ask her, Aunt, if you want to know what is bothering her. I think you may find it has nothing to do with me.”
The Duke's Secret Seduction Page 18