Kicking free of the stirrup, she pushed off the saddle and hit the ground feet first, staggering with her momentum before her foot caught on patch of ground, pitching her forward. She stumbled and fell in the weeds, flat on her rump.
Thomas was beside her at once, saying with a casual interest at variance with his tense posture, “Fine in the walk. Questionable at speed. Falling off one’s mount is all very good and fine if one can do it with grace and elegance but you don’t. Are you hurt?”
“I cannot, I absolutely cannot imagine for one moment that anyone as patently ungallant as you could ever have been a serious threat to a lady’s virtue!”
“Fortunately, Cat, this aspect of my personality has never been put to the test. I have never before seen a lady dumped from so easy a gait. I cannot seriously consider you to be injured. Are you?”
Placing her hands on the ground on either side of her, Cat attempted to heave herself up and winced. Her pride, as well as her ankle, throbbed. “Yes!”
Immediately Thomas was kneeling beside her, a look of gratifying concern displacing his previous insouciance. “Where does it hurt?”
Embarrassed, Cat shifted beneath his regard. “It’s nothing much really. I just turned my ankle a bit.”
“Is it broken?”
“No, I’m sure it’s not. I’m fine.”
He bent down beside her and lifted her foot to rest it against his hard thigh before unlacing her boot. She couldn’t suppress a small shudder as he loosened the laces. His brow knotted with concern.
“Really, I’m fine.”
“ ‘Really’ you are becoming redundant, my dear,” he replied. His fingers moved gently about her ankle. His eyes sought hers as his hands soothed over her foot moving farther up her calf for the source and extent of the damage.
“Where does it hurt most?”
“It doesn’t hurt anywhere most.”
A sudden, unbidden memory of Thomas as she’d first seen him unfolded in her mind with startling explicitness. Naked to the waist, his broad shoulders strained with effort. The muscles of his chest stood out in sharp relief, glistening with exertion, his stomach shingled with hard sinew under smooth, tanned skin. She closed her eyes but could still see him thus, huge and perfectly formed. Her eyes flew open and she had an overwhelming desire to touch the curls at the nape of his neck where they lay in silver-kissed darkness.
She felt the rock-solidness of his warm thigh beneath her foot, his hands gentle upon her skin, and was too aware of the hardness and steel of him countered too provokingly by the tenderness and care of his concern. He looked up at her and their gazes held for an instant. His eyes were alight with warmth, concern, and humor. He smiled, and she found herself answering the irresistible lure of it with her own foolish grin…
Dear heavens! she thought with sudden clarity, I love him. God help me, I have, all unsuspecting, added myself to his list of conquests.
Horrified, Cat stared up at Thomas, unable to deny the potent attraction. This could not be! Would he laugh at her or pity her if he knew? Which would be worse? His sorrowful understanding or his horrified concern that she would hound him as any number of tarts last evening had done? If he knew, would he be all sweetly understanding or would he run?
What difference did it make, anyway? She needed to make a brilliant match. Her family needed her to make a brilliant match. It was the most logical course open to them. She would not follow her mother’s lead, sacrificing family for personal gratification. Cat was responsible, practical. She would not entertain rattle-pated notions about an impoverished roué. A handsome, virile, muscular roué. A considerate, intelligent, perceptive… Why did he have to be all of these things and… and poor!
She placed her foot against his stomach and shoved. He fell backwards on his rump, his long legs splaying out on either side of her, a look of stunned incredulity on his face.
“Why don’t you cut your hair?” she demanded. “Just because you must rusticate in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean you need look like the farmer you play at being!”
He watched her warily, as though he feared she’d just lost her mind. “What?”
“I said, ‘Cut your hair.’ ’Tis shamefully long.” The knowledge she was acting like an idiot only fueled Cat’s ire.
“I find,” Thomas said, rising to his feet “that when one is ‘playing farmer’ and spending a great deal of time in the out-of-doors, a longer length of hair keeps the sun off one’s neck, thus safeguarding it from an unnecessary and painful burn.” He dusted his trousers off before continuing. “Now, what the bloody hell is this all about? Or did the fall so jar your brains that you are, in fact, ranting?”
“Never mind. I told you I was fine, and I am. If you would be so kind as to catch my mount, we can return to town.”
She bit down on her lip to keep it from trembling. Thomas was standing over her, his feet spread in a belligerent pose.
“You can’t possibly ride, you little fool,” he said.
Only Thomas, with his immense size and tremendous breadth, would ever call her “little.” She was overwhelmed by her newly discovered weakness, by her attraction to this self-confessed rake and profligate. To him, she could be no more than an amusing diversion. Distressed, she turned her head. “I most assuredly can.”
He answered her with a sigh then, without warning, scooped her up in his great arms. She felt the even rise and fall of his chest pressed close to hers. It was a delicious sensation. Too delicious. He adjusted her with a little bounce in his arms.
“This would be a trifle easier if you were to put your arms around my neck. You are a rather healthy armful.”
“Then put me down.”
“Try to regain some of the common sense that I have come to expect from you, Cat. If you walk, or strive to ride, you run the very real risk of further injury. Then how will you be able to dance?”
He smiled, attempting to win back her good humor, his dark gaze inches from her face. Cat could delineate each black, impossibly long lash. “And I swear to you, Cat, a true seductress must, simply must, be able to waltz. So that great oafs such as myself might better fling them from windows and thus have the pleasure of disentangling them from the shrubbery.”
“Have you had the pleasure of disentangling many ladies from shrubbery?” Cat asked, annoyed when the words sounded waspish even to her own ear.
His face went blank then sudden inspiration lit his eyes and he threw back his head and laughed, leaving Cat with the mortifying knowledge that she’d revealed her inane jealousy.
Cat was acting jealous. The absurdity of his one love being jealous of the faceless women from his past had overwhelmed Thomas, and he’d laughed. It was an impolitic thing to do. With Cat sputtering ineffectually in his arms, he’d strode over to his horse and lifted her up onto its broad back, taking the reins of both steeds in one hand to lead them.
The walk back to the hotel proved a silent one. Every now and again Thomas would cast a verbal gambit, which Cat ignored. There was more than the sharp prick of jealousy here, Thomas thought. Cat was glaring at him with such disapproving intensity, he wondered if he had ripped the seam in his breeches when she had kicked him backwards. And “kick” is exactly what she had done, he thought with no small degree of perplexity.
At the front of the hotel, he tossed the reins to the boy and, with cheerful disregard for her protest, swung Cat up in his arms, carrying her to her suite.
Cat held herself rigidly, obviously afraid he was going to drop her. Hoping to reassure her, Thomas tightened his hold, only to be greeted by a look of increasing panic on her lovely features. Arriving at her suite, Thomas kicked the door open and strode into the room, deposited Cat on the slipper chair, and summoned Fielding.
While Fielding fluttered dramatically about Cat’s swollen ankle, Thomas asked, “Can I do anything more?”
Cat merely lifted her grave countenance to his and tonelessly thanked him for his help.
He walked back to his
room, damned if he could figure out what deviled the chit. Such moodiness was uncharacteristic of her. No one who engineered her own successful debut, who was the recipient of the condemning comments of an antiquated religious fanatic, and who single-handedly led a family of eccentrics could afford to be subject to fits of pique. Raking his memory, Thomas searched for some clue of where his own conduct was lacking. He had treated her with a studied casualness and friendly disregard that challenged his playacting ability. And she had always seemed comfortable with that.
She did not suspect the tightening in his loins when she appeared in some new gown, the constriction of his lungs as she laughed at his feeble sallies. He did nothing, he would swear it, nothing to give her a clue as to his true feelings. His hunger was well disguised. He was good at this. He had, after all, made a career of it. And if he was a stranger to unsatisfied longing, by God, he would learn that role too, rather than frighten her.
Chapter 10
A young man, unrecognizable under assorted bandboxes, cartons, and wrapped parcels, groaned and dropped his burden on the bed then beat a hasty retreat, pausing only to wink at Fielding. She beamed even as she muttered, “Well, I never!” and set to work untying the strings that held the packages.
“Oh, milady!” she cooed, hauling out a pretty confection of lace and satin. “I never seen such a beauteous thing! Swear to Gawd, I haven’t. A chemise, ain’t it?”
Cat looked at the garment without interest and nodded. Immediately Fielding was solicitous.
“Hurts awful, does it? Perhaps we just ought to have the local leech look at it? Or maybe take a restorative in the seawater? I heard that Lady Renville—”
“No, Fielding. My ankle is fine,” Cat said dispiritedly.
“It’s brave you are, milady.”
At this, Cat finally smiled. “On the contrary, Fielding. I am the rankest coward.”
“Coward? Who’s a coward?” Hecuba asked from the adjoining suite. She appeared a second later, just as Fielding pulled up a dress of silver muslin and indigo tambour work.
“How very fetching!” Hecuba breathed.
She lifted her chin at Fielding, who was staring at her in amazement. “I meant but to say, ’tis a pretty piece of workmanship though entirely unsuitable as garb.” Hecuba darted a glance at Cat, continuing casually, “Though were one to wish to draw attention to oneself, this would do the trick. What other snares of the devil have you secreted in there, Fielding?”
Needing no further encouragement, Fielding proceeded to rend packages with enthusiastic fervor. But Hecuba’s sharp gaze remained focused on Cat’s unnaturally still figure.
“Fielding, take these dresses down to the laundry and have them pressed immediately. And don’t you dare show your pert face up here without them. If you aspire to being a lady’s maid, personally supervising your lady’s gowns is of the utmost importance.”
“Yes, mum.” Fielding dutifully gathered an armful of brilliant-colored silks, satins, muslins, and lace.
As soon as she had left, Hecuba took a seat beside her great-niece. “It’s Montrose, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” came the quavering reply.
“Fustian! I may not approve of the conduct of your generation, but that does not mean I have turned blind. I have seen this coming for days.”
Cat turned toward Hecuba. “Seen what coming for days?”
“Your infatuation, Cat. Don’t bother denying it.” Hecuba held up her hand. “What else could it be? Off you traipse, unchaperoned, with one of the beau monde’s most notorious blades—very foolish, most unwise—only to return hours later in the arms of a now thoroughly perplexed rake, your face a brown study.
“What has happened to our two cozy coconspirators?” Hecuba asked. “I will tell you! For I once had a… a friend who entered into a similar ‘platonic’ liaison with just such a man. She, too, finally succumbed to a one-sided infatuation.”
“What happened to her?” Cat asked.
“Well, she didn’t sit about in a consumptive stupor waiting for him to come up to scratch. She was proud. She quickly ascertained the uselessness—and unattractiveness—of pining and set her sights on other, more appreciative suitors!”
“Oh, Aunt Hecuba!” Cat covered the older woman’s hands with her own. “I am so sick of schemes! I am tired of being vivacious, amusing, and unattainable. I want to be attained!” She covered her face with her hands and commenced to bawling.
Hecuba pulled Cat’s head onto her plump shoulder, patting her.
“It makes me so angry!” Cat sniffled. “All the plotting and planning and scheming. It’s so bloody much work making oneself agreeable to men!”
“Except with Thomas,” Hecuba said. Cat nodded.
“And yet, Aunt Hecuba, he’s the worst of the lot! He’s so attuned to all this ridiculous posturing that he can give lessons in it!”
Hecuba lifted Cat’s chin with a single finger and gazed steadily into her red, bleary eyes. “You must keep your pride, Catherine. It is ultimately all we are left with and therefore sacrosanct. Even if it needs be manufactured, it is essential. There now.” She patted Cat on top of the head again and shoved herself upright. “I’d better see how Fielding is mismanaging the ironing.”
She squinted down at Cat. “Leave off blubbering too, Cat,” she said curtly. “You always look horrid after you’ve cried. Your nose runs.”
A burble of laughter escaped Cat. Hecuba smiled and started for the door.
“Aunt Hecuba?” Cat called.
“Yes?”
“Your friend? The one with the unrequited attachment?”
“Yes?”
“Did she find a replacement for the unappreciative rake?”
Hecuba’s nose rose in the air. She sniffed.
“Many.”
Chapter 11
Resolving to put their relationship back on safe ground, Thomas headed for the anterooms of the hotel, looking for Cat. She was not in her suite, though Hecuba and the maid were. Hecuba’s answer to his query as to her whereabouts was terse.
“Though she was not gravely injured, I instructed her to rest. The girl never listens to me, though. She has taken herself off somewhere to pout. Fielding here,” Hecuba tilted her black-turbaned head in the maid’s direction, “has strapped up her ankle so she won’t be very quick on her feet, Montrose. You should be able to run her to ground easily enough. Any more than that, I will not say.”
“Fielding,” Thomas said in exasperation, “where is Lady Catherine?”
The maid looked disapprovingly at him. “Why?”
“Cat is right,” Thomas muttered. “I have been far too lenient in my expectations of my staff. ‘Why,’ Fielding? Because I wish to have my way with her, or perhaps to beat her, or merely to devour her. Now where is she?”
Fielding’s mouth dropped open. She had never seen Master Montrose lose his temper before. While she suspected there was more aggravation than anger in it, it was still a formidable sight.
She hastily sought to recoup her situation. It was a good position she had in Mr. Montrose’s household, even in spite of Mrs. Medge.
Hecuba patted the maid’s hand consolingly. “He’s a wicked man, m’dear, evil black-eyed womanizer that he is. I shouldn’t answer if I were you.”
“Fielding…” Thomas ground out.
“She went to the conservatory, sir. Sorry I am for my impertinence, sir. I’m hoping you’ll mark it down as the sap-skulled rattling of a feeble mind under the influence of,” here Fielding paused and narrowed her eyes on Hecuba, still patting her arm, “her betters.” But before she had finished the sentence, Thomas had strode from the room.
In answer to Thomas’s inquiries, a porter directed him to the conservatory at the east end of the hotel. He stepped from the dark hallway into the sunlit expanse of a greenhouse. Someone had transformed the alley behind the hotel into a glass-encased fantasy. Brick paths wound between tall palms and fig trees. A miniature brook g
urgled in its diminutive bed before disappearing under dense ferns. Sun filtered in from between the lacy tapestry of vines hanging high overhead.
His entry amongst the lush green vegetation was masked by the sound of running water so that he spied Cat before she was aware of him. She was studying some flowering bromeliads. As he watched, she lifted her arms and stretched them high above her. Yawning hugely, she tilted her head back, closing her eyes to the warm touch of the sun on her face.
“Yawning is gauche,” he said, because anything else would have been too tender, too desperate.
She didn’t even open her eyes. “Very,” she said. “So please spare yourself more of the same by taking yourself off to where you will no longer be subject to witnessing such unladylike gestures.”
“Dear me, no. I am all eagerness to see what further examples of unfeminine behavior you might exhibit.” He dragged an iron chair from where it had been tucked amongst the greenery and perched himself on its edge in an attitude of dramatized expectation.
“Perhaps I shall burp,” she suggested, opening one eye.
He clucked his tongue. “Not unfeminine, merely coarse. I do not burp.”
The other eye flew open so both regarded him balefully. “I shall swear. Certainly that is a masculine habit.”
“Only amongst common males.”
“All right. I shall smoke a pipe. I shall ride astride and I shall wear breeches like Lady Skeffington is reputed to do!”
“Why do you insist in seeking out the most thoroughly unfeminine women in the realm as your examples?”
“Better to follow a woman’s example than mindlessly heed the dictates of men.”
Thomas considered her statement. She took his momentary silence as disapproval and, already tense, warmed to her discourse. “ ’Tis true! How patently ridiculous you men make us! How unfair you treat us in your paternal assurance that you know best what is feminine, as opposed to unfeminine, behavior.”
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