“Is it too much?” He made his voice as soothing as he could. “Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head. “I’ll tell you if I need you to stop. Don’t ask again.”
So he didn’t. He pushed a little more, and a little more, and finally he was well inside her. He kissed her, in case she needed care and comforting, and he drew out a few inches and thrust, gently as he could.
It set his brain on fire.
“It doesn’t hurt too much?” Was he not supposed to ask that, or just not supposed to ask if he should stop? His poor burning-up brain couldn’t remember the rules.
“It hurts a bit.” Her face was pale and determined. “But not too much.”
“Take heart. I can promise you this won’t last long.” She was so absurdly tight about him. He kissed all over her face as he moved in and out, trying not to go too deep or too hard. The pleasure built in him with merciless speed—thank goodness she had no experience against which to measure his performance—and within a too-short time he was pulling out of her to spill into the sheets.
She stayed a little while after that. After being deflowered. Damned if he was going to send her home without placating her sore places by means of some thorough, luxuriant kissing. She liked that, and it kept him from thinking too hard about what he’d done. Only after he’d helped her back into her clothes and seen her safely downstairs, outside, and on her way home; only when he came back to his bedroom and looked at the rumpled linens where she’d been, did he feel his sanity returning, bringing with it a colossal portion of regret.
NO DOUBT Mr. Blackshear was sorry now. What honorable man would not be, after sending a lady home debauched and deflowered? Never mind that she’d been the one to talk him into bed and then into her body. He’d find a way to shoulder all the blame, telling himself he ought to have resisted.
She was so glad he hadn’t resisted.
“The next corner is where we turn.” She’d made Rose walk a long way. She’d felt so restless coming home this afternoon, transformed and unfit for any of her usual daytime occupations, and the walk to fetch her sisters from school had made her more restless still. When Rose had wished to go to the shops in search of a certain shade of purple embroidery silk, she’d been quick to offer her company. Then halfway through that errand she’d realized she had an errand of her own.
“They must be very good, to have given Papa the use of their carriage. They do know all about our family?” Rose, having been at Miss Lowell’s all day, didn’t know that Kate was already supposed to have been in South Audley Street this morning. She’d see nothing to question in this visit.
“They do know. And yes, they are very good.” Miss Smith had been good from the start. Kind, generous, tactful, loyal, and, as of yesterday, downright noble. And while Kate herself might fall woefully short of the standard her friend set in personal merit, she at least knew how to appreciate nobility when she saw it. And how to pay that quality its proper tribute.
I don’t know, she’d answered when Mr. Blackshear asked what she meant to do in regard to marriage. It was still true. She didn’t know what she would do. But she did know now what she would not do. And that was a start.
Louisa sat with one of her sisters in the Smiths’ drawing room, and as Kate and Rose were shown in, she came to her feet and crossed the room to meet them. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother.” She squeezed Kate’s hands. “Mother heard from Lady Harringdon this morning of the loss. We’ve been thinking about you and your family all day.”
Kate made her apology for calling outside of at-home hours, explaining that she’d wished to thank Louisa and her mother at the earliest opportunity for their very great kindness of yesterday. Introductions followed: felicitously, the Smith sister present was fifteen-year-old Caroline, and not only did she wish to see the embroidery silk when that errand was mentioned, and to know for what project it would be used, but the book she’d set aside at their entrance proved to be a novel that Rose had recently read.
Louisa prodded her sister to show the younger Miss Westbrook the house’s library, and to see whether there were any books she might like to borrow. Then, with the younger girls gone from the room, the elder two could speak with perfect freedom.
Kate took the chair nearest Louisa’s place on the sofa. Her friend waited, too well-mannered to broach the obvious questions—How is your father? Was he welcomed when he arrived at Harringdon House? Was he sorry to have gone?—but making a quiet show of her willingness to listen, and her equal willingness to let the subject go untouched.
For now, it would be the latter. Other subjects took precedence.
“Are those the roses Lord Barclay sent?” A bunch of them, creamy white, stood in a crystal vase on a table at the sofa’s other end.
“Oh—indeed.” She hadn’t expected that question, and was clearly set off balance. “I think Lady Harringdon made a deal too much of that, yesterday. Myself, I never supposed he meant anything by them but simple cordiality.”
“They’re very pretty roses.” Her own were pale pink, and equally pretty. She could sit about and wonder how to interpret the fact, or she could impose the meaning most advantageous to everyone. “I would be surprised if cordiality were all he meant to express with them.”
“I don’t know.” Louisa made a brief study of the carpet, color blooming in her cheeks, before she raised her anxious eyes once more. “He was friendly at the Cathcarts’ ball, but didn’t display such marked attentions as would suggest any purposeful sentiment.” Indeed, because he’d been too busy dividing his attentions between a congenial lady who shared his interest in politics, and a mercenary beauty using every art she possessed to try to gain his notice. She couldn’t think back on the night without shame.
“Louisa, I’m going to be dreadfully frank. I hope you don’t mind.” Yesterday, she would have balked at speaking so. Today, having already done things ten thousand times less proper, she didn’t waver for even an instant. “I’ve hoped to make a marriage that can elevate my station, confer on my sisters the consequence of good connections, and advance my family’s return to respectability. Lord Barclay, because of his title and the generous regard he’s already shown my family, struck me as an excellent prospect for a husband. I did attempt to promote my interest with him, for those pragmatic reasons.”
Louisa nodded. She could not fail to notice that all of this was being related in the past tense.
“But observing you with him that same evening, I began to see how very well you two would suit one another. And I’m nothing but delighted to see evidence of his preference for you.” If that preference was not yet fact, it would be, soon enough. The pink roses probably represented what roses from men had always represented, with her: a temporary succumbing to her superficial charms. The white roses testified to the good sense that prevented him from discounting Miss Smith’s merits and compatible mind in favor of mere coquettish beauty.
“I’m not at all convinced there’s a preference.” Louisa’s shoulders settled, slightly, as though she had not quite been able to relax in Kate’s company until now. “But I’ll confess to you I do think highly of him. Please don’t tell Lady Harringdon.” Her smile, confiding and hopeful, lit her eyes brighter than any blue hair ribbon could.
“I shan’t breathe a word.” She ran a finger across her pressed-together lips. Mr. Blackshear had made that same gesture in bed, when he’d insisted she look at his naked form. With her whole body she remembered.
She felt a bit light-headed, and not only from the memories of this morning. She’d just let go of something for which she’d schemed nearly as long as she could remember. She wasn’t likely to find another marital prospect as fitted to her ambitions as Lord Barclay. Not soon, at any rate. Perhaps not ever.
And yet she didn’t feel any disappointment. Rather she felt a sense of satisfaction at her own accomplishments. She was the one who’d cut Louisa’s hair, and made her look so pretty for the Cathcarts’ ball. She would enco
urage her in cultivating Lord Barclay’s attentions, and perhaps find a way to prod Lord Barclay as well. She had a talent for these things. She might find some of the same gratification in realizing someone else’s romantic prospects as in realizing her own.
“If I may follow your example of frankness, I believe there must be many gentlemen for whom your merits will outweigh whatever reservations they might have in regard to your family.” Steadfast, idealistic, good-hearted Louisa. If the baron didn’t fall for her he was the biggest fool on earth. “I hear often from my brother of how society is changing in this respect. I feel sure you’ll make a marriage that will answer all your hopes, and in the meanwhile, you and your sisters may count on whatever advantage the friendship of my family can confer.”
“Thank you.” Kate slipped the words past a tightening in her throat, and lowered her eyes to where her hands sat folded in her lap. She’d imagined the renunciation of Lord Barclay as a sacrifice whose reward would come in the knowledge that she’d done the right thing. She hadn’t expected any benefit beyond that.
But when the younger girls came back from the library, Rose’s face aglow and three volumes clutched in her hands, and when, as they started home, her sister reported that she’d been invited to bring her needlework when she came to return the volumes, so that she and Caroline could have a good look at each other’s projects, a thought took shape that had somehow never taken shape before.
Perhaps some of what she’d hoped to attain through marriage could, after all, be attained by other means. Friendship—maybe even a double friendship with Louisa and Lord Barclay, if everything in that quarter went as it ought—could lend its own kind of consequence. There might be invitations to social events, for her sisters as well as herself, and with no required pretense of intending to be a lady’s companion. There might be real, open cordiality between her family and this one. There might be a friend for Rose.
Altogether, she might not have made quite as much a mess of everything as she’d thought. In fact, she might have achieved some very worthwhile ends.
Arriving home, Kate met with yet another unlooked-for triumph: a letter on heavy ivory-colored paper, franked, the date and signature on the outside nearly illegible. This time, though, the letter was not for her.
“It’s as close to an apology as I imagine I’ll ever have from Edward,” Papa said over dinner. “From Lord Harringdon, that is.” He nodded to Kate, to Sebastian, to Viola, to the younger girls. “Your uncle.”
Never before had the earl been “your uncle” or been referred to as “Edward,” as far back as Kate could remember. This, too, was something won at least in part by her efforts.
Viola, predictably, was unimpressed. “I should think the person to whom he most owes an apology is our mother.” She turned to Mama. “I don’t suppose he troubled to send a letter to you.”
“No, but it would be odd if he did, considering we’ve never been introduced.” No queen, no duchess, no countess could hope to match the grace and nobility with which Mama delivered this reply as she carved out a bite-sized morsel of her poached haddock.
“What did he say, if it wasn’t an apology?” This was really Papa’s business and nobody else’s, but Kate couldn’t help asking. “And does he mean to recognize you again? And what about Mama?”
“It’s too soon to know what will happen.” Papa, too, went on cutting his fish. “Too soon to know even what I wish to happen. Twenty-three years is a long time for someone to be absent from your life, and you get accustomed to doing without him.” His eyes connected with hers. He was talking about his mother, too, and how twenty-three years of distance had eroded his ability to grieve for her. “And Viola is right in bringing up the insult to your mother. I cannot allow any reconciliation that doesn’t include her, and make some acknowledgment of how she was wronged.”
“You needn’t concern yourself with that.” Half the table separated Mama from Papa, and still she managed to sound as though they were speaking in private. “I’ve lived my whole life without Lord Harringdon’s approval, and never felt the lack. What matters is what will make you happy. It’s reasonable to suppose a truce between long-estranged brothers might have that result.”
I want you to be happy. All else seems secondary to that. Countless things conspired to make Kate think of Mr. Blackshear. She’d told him to speak to his brother, and he’d kissed her on the nose and asked who she might marry.
“As to what he said, Kate, much of that will remain between me and him. But some I can share, and I suspect this will be of particular interest to you.” Papa smiled down the table at her. “You were right in some of your suppositions. Lady Harringdon’s attentions to you were the result of my brother’s wish to do something for this family, no doubt to assuage his guilt over having cut us off so long ago. He also said his wife is very pleased with you and pronounces you a credit to your Westbrook blood. Oh, and here’s what came as a surprise to me: I find it was through Edward’s doing that Lord Barclay was referred to me, when he put it about that he’d like a barrister to help him study speech.”
Even before she’d had her note from Lady Harringdon, then, the earl had been thinking of Papa, looking for small, inconspicuous gestures he could make; ways he could reach out and benefit his brother’s family. And still, yesterday when he might have asked her to fetch her father to the dowager’s bedside, his courage or his brotherly feeling had failed him.
And then he’d had another chance. By her own doing—and Miss and Mrs. Smith’s, and Mr. Blackshear’s, with help from Mr. Kersey—Papa had come anyway, and Lord Harringdon had decided to write this letter. Thus a person progressed toward a worthy goal, it seemed, a step forward and a step back and the occasional intervention of other people to guide him back the right way when he’d stumbled off the path.
She shifted in her chair, and felt a sharp reminder of how she’d stumbled off her own path that morning. Lain down in a gentleman’s bed and got up again without her virtue. It felt like something someone else had done, a whispered report at which she pursed her lips and shook her head. It also felt like the only logical outcome of her three years’ acquaintance with Mr. Blackshear. As though from the moment they met, they’d been making their haphazard way toward that culmination.
What will you do, hereafter?
I don’t know. I wish things could be different.
She reached for her glass. “Mr. Blackshear owes a debt of gratitude to Lord Harringdon then, doesn’t he, for this opportunity with Lord Barclay?” Singular, how everything wove itself together, or rather, how it had all been woven together from the start.
“I shouldn’t advise him to send a note of thanks.” With visible gusto Viola seized this new opportunity for disapproval. “I doubt the earl bothers to open any mail from a gentleman who has a profession, and no title in his lineage.”
Vi didn’t even know the worst. Lord Harringdon certainly wouldn’t welcome any correspondence from a man with Mr. Blackshear’s shocking connections. Perhaps even Lord Barclay would find the matter too unsavory, once he learned of it, and thus would end all Mr. Blackshear’s hopes of political opportunity.
Maybe not, though. Society was changing, Louisa had said. Lord Barclay had already proven himself extraordinarily fair-minded in regard to her own connections. Surely if there was a man capable of overlooking the unfortunate marriage in Mr. Blackshear’s family, and judging Mr. Blackshear strictly on his own merit, the baron was that man.
She stole a glance at the long-case clock. Mere hours since she’d left his rooms, and all she wanted was to see him again, and tell him of all that had happened since they’d parted, and hear what had happened with him. But if he blamed himself for her ruin, it might be a great while before his next call here.
I wish things could be different.
She’d been a coward. I love you, she ought to have said. Help me have the courage to choose with my heart. Tell me I’m strong enough to bear a descent in station, and clever enough to help
you make your way back up. He might have answered, as he’d done once already, with that gentle explanation about her not being the right sort of woman to stand at his side. But at least she’d know she’d been brave enough to ask. Brave enough to be honest.
Never mind. She would count herself lucky in his friendship, and hope for at least the beginning of reparation with his brother, if that was what Nick wanted. Without reference to herself she would wish for his happiness, because that was what you did when you loved someone.
HE’D IMAGINED, ignorantly, that a footman would answer his knock. And that he’d consequently have a minute or so, the time it took to climb the stairs, in which to orient himself to his surroundings and make his last small preparations for this meeting that still felt a bit ill-advised.
But it was Will himself who stood there when the door swung back, his cheerful, unguarded expression suggesting he’d just stepped away from an amusing conversation and felt equal to whoever or whatever he might find on his doorstep.
He’d always had the most ridiculously readable face. His brows now lofted a quarter inch and came back down: that was surprise. The laughter left his eyes like a candle blown out. No anger or coldness came in to take its place; instead he looked curious, and ready to see where this unexpected twist in his day’s narrative would lead. “Nick.” At the sound of his voice, it suddenly felt like only yesterday that they’d last spoken. “Come in.”
“Do I intrude?” But Nick was halfway over the threshold already.
“On my glittering dinner party with all the leading lights of the ton? Hardly.” Will shut the door behind him. “We do have company, but nothing on which you need fear intruding. Take off your coat and come upstairs.”
Cathcart was Nick’s first thought; Martha was his second. His third thought was that Will seemed remarkably at ease considering one of the siblings who’d cut him off had just appeared at his door after nearly a year of silence.
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