He knew that what he said hurt Strand, but in this, even with Strand, he needed to make himself absolutely clear. There was no force in the world capable of making Thomas quit his claim on Cat.
The sound of male voices droning from beyond the door leading to Thomas’s rooms alerted Cat to the fact that his mysterious meeting was being conducted in his room. Ah well, she thought, I’ll just find my reticule and be off before they even know I’m here.
She rummaged silently amongst her things, unable to discover the misplaced beaded bag. It wasn’t beneath her fans or in the drawers. She had last seen it breakfasting in Thomas’s room. Drat! Well, she would just have to breach the walls of the masculine sanctum and apologize. She could not very well hie herself off to a café without a penny to her name. She moved to the door.
“And now you would leave her?” It was Giles Dalton’s voice.
“How can I not? How can I not go when to stay would only breed the utmost contempt, if not in Cat then in myself?”
The words froze Cat’s hand in the act of reaching for the handle, tolling a death knell. Her heart hammered upward in her throat. Thomas was leaving? She turned as if in a trance and began retracing her steps.
Thomas was leaving. Why? Her shaking legs unable to support her any further, she sank to the ground beside the bed. If she hadn’t heard the words in Thomas’s own voice, clear, imperative, unshakable in their conviction, she would not have believed them.
The days of companionable dialogue, the debates, the affability, the laughter… But now, in view of what she’d heard, she revisited his formality, his polite distance, replayed the moment he disengaged her hand to put it on his sleeve. She had thought he was trying to forestall gossip. That had been what he had been doing, wasn’t it? She begged herself to answer yes. But another seed, one of black uncertainty, had taken root.
But the nights! Surely such intensity could not be feigned? Surely here was proof of his… what?
Feigned? the voice of idiot reason argued. Why must it be feigned? Thomas was a man associated with all matters of sexuality. He was a rake. Was it so surprising he would make the best of the situation in whatever way he could?
Perhaps the care he took in pleasuring her was merely what all his other lovers had experienced. It made abundantly clear how he had achieved his reputation. For Cat could not imagine a more skilled, tender, or impassioned lover.
But had he ever spoken of love? the voice continued. Have I? she countered.
Her mind became a tumultuous explosion of questions. Her perspective shifted with bewildering speed as she struggled to bring meaning to the meaningless words she had heard Thomas utter. She had the sensation of being suspended high above an eroding precipice, the future suddenly yawning threateningly before her.
I am not thinking clearly. I must think what to do. But how can I confront him when I am in terror of his answers? I cannot stay waiting for him to abandon me. I cannot think here. Not with Thomas so close. I must go.
Rising unsteadily to her feet, Cat forced herself to straighten. She went to the small desk and penned a note, then rang for Annette to start packing her things. Marcus was departing for Bellingcourt in the afternoon. She would go with him. She would go home.
A sudden thought finally caused her sobs to erupt, strangling in her throat.
She could go to Bellingcourt. But it wasn’t home anymore.
Chapter 33
Well, thought Cat looking around her old bedchamber at Bellingcourt, this was a stupid idea.
It looked unfamiliar but felt alien, as though some stranger lived there. It was filled with her youthful leavings and empty of those things that now defined her. She stared out of the rain-sheeted window, into the night, pulling the satin ribbons from her hair and preparing for sleep. If only she could sleep.
She’d been at Bellingcourt for two days. It had started to rain the evening she and Marcus had arrived. And it had rained ever since, relentless deluge that swirled from the leaden skies buffeted by strong spring winds.
She plucked at the fastening to her gown. She had left Annette in Brighton, unwilling to take the shocked, so proper maid to her family seat. Annette wouldn’t have lasted a day here, anyway.
Her family had greeted her with all the enthusiasm her long sojourn merited. Only Timon and Simon were not there to greet her, Simon having purchased a commission in the Lancers with Thomas’s moneys and Timon enrolled at Oxford on a similar boon. Cat hadn’t known. Thomas had never told her he had begun to bolster the flagging estate as long ago as last autumn. And he had sworn the rest of her family to secrecy.
Thomas’s aid had extended to her sisters, too. Enid was to be presented this season, Thomas having persuaded a dignified matron to champion her. Even little Marianne was filled with tales of the wondrous generosity of Cat’s husband.
Husband. Thomas would be amused to learn her new title caused so much joy in her family. Even in cousin Emmaline.
Emmaline had received Cat at the door, expressing a patently insincere welcome home and immediately following the greeting with a query as to how long Cat intended to stay before she rejoined “kind Mr. Montrose.” Cat did all she could to assuage the older woman’s obvious fear of being shipped, posthaste, back to Wales.
Wearily, she began unlacing her boots. She was exhausted. For two days she had been at the tender mercies of her family. Two days of her sweet, good-natured sisters’ heavy-handed interrogation. It was driving her mad.
This morning Marcus had taken her on a tour of Bellingcourt, pointing through the pouring rain the various improvements he had implemented, the repairs that had been made to the home farm and were being done on the stables. He even made her sit for ten minutes while he proudly inspected a flock of—heaven help her—dolefully dripping sheep in the lower pasture. Apparently Marcus had procured “a loan made by Mr. Thomas Montrose which is being repaid quarterly at a rate agreeable to both lender and borrower.”
Cat unhooked the pearl choker Thomas had given her on their wedding day, feathering her fingertips over the satiny balls.
“Wear them close to the skin and they shall develop a sheen as glorious as your skin,” he had whispered.
They were not the words of a man on the verge of abandoning his wife.
Other phrases, small gestures, arose as she finally drew the bedclothes over her tired body. Sleepless hour after sleepless hour, she tossed, his words haunting her to sleep.
“You are the most attentive of husbands, Thomas,” she had teased him at the end of one long, wonderful day. “You must need a rest from me.”
“But, m’dear, the only ease I find is in your company.”
His voice gave way to his image, the memories of their nights together pursuing her: His body pressing into hers. His hands ever eager to bring her pleasure. His voice compelling her as she spiraled upwards toward the inevitable release.
He tantalized her with the climax he controlled, sating her only to reawaken the hunger within minutes of completion, bringing her again and again to rapture.
“What do you want of me?” she had asked dazedly as he sank his full, hard length into her, the muscles of his chest leaping with exquisite constriction.
“Want?” he had rasped, his midnight gaze riveting her until she felt she would be lost, translated by the intensity of his thrusts into a part of him, absorbed into his great body. “Everything. Heart and body and mind. All of you.”
Bolting upright in her bed, Cat dragged her hands through her hair. Confusion slowly replaced the pain. It did not make sense. He felt something for her. He must. No man who claimed to hate hypocrisy could breathe those words!
But with her own ears she had heard him say he was going to leave her.
Finding no answer for the riddle upon which her future hung, Cat tried once more to make sense of it.
Perhaps he wanted the convenient marriage he had originally proposed. Perhaps he meant merely to begin the pattern of daily life he wished to follow: he, going a
bout his business and she, hers. Perhaps he meant for them to live apart to pursue their own course. Hadn’t his proposal outlined such a plan? Hadn’t he been clear? Had she misread or merely dismissed his plans because she so desperately wanted there to be something else?
Had he seen in her physical abandonment a future in which she clung to him with disgusting tenacity? Did he worry she would cause remark with her undiluted attentions? She already had, hadn’t she? Was she too obvious? She didn’t know!
She knew nothing. Nothing except that she loved Thomas. Loved him enough to want his happiness. His life had been so bereft of it. He was so hard on himself, so contemptuous of his past.
Crawling back beneath the blankets, Cat stared at the high, black ceiling. She knew it well. She had studied each corner for hours during the past two nights.
There was no peace for Cat at Bellingcourt.
The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle, no more than a mist, by the next morning. Cat rose early, unable yet to face the goodwill of her family. Unwilling to offend them with a spoken desire to be alone, she donned a heavy cape and slipped through the back door. Passing the kitchen garden and orchards, she wandered down toward the small creek that traversed the borders of Bellingcourt.
The air was thick and fragrant with the scent of moist soil, new grass, and budding trees. A heavy mist intensified the clarion call of birds, an unseen choir breaking the stillness of the early gray light. The dew saturated her half boots and clung to her thick wool mantle. She paused, experiencing her first real peace since leaving Thomas for Bellingcourt. Perhaps it was no longer home, but it was still beautiful. A sense of calm overtook her.
She would give Thomas what he needed. She would not struggle any longer with questions for which she had no answers. He had said he would leave her. She would accept that. He had also said he would not divorce her and would want heirs. She would accept that. She would learn to welcome him when he appeared. If she must learn to live with only a piece of Thomas, so be it.
She would survive.
“You know, m’dear, I am growing deuced fatigued of all your confounded notes.”
Cat spun around. Thomas stood a few paces from her, leaning against the trunk of a burr oak, his arms folded across his broad chest. “And this onerous habit of bustling off leaving half your clothing behind works havoc with the servants. Annette has given notice.”
The dew caught in his dark hair, curling damply upon his tanned throat. His expression was composed, but his eyes burned in his handsome face.
Her gaze devoured his beloved figure. He was magnificent. His cravatless linen shirt was open at the throat. His greatcoat was flung back over his wide shoulders. His boots were mud-spattered and dull.
“What are you doing here?”
“Why, I’m here with my wife, of course. She seems to have taken a notion to visit her family manse and unaccountably forgot to pack her husband along with the rest of her things. Really, my love, for someone known for her relentless practicality, you show a marked tendency of late for impetuous action.”
“You are supposed to be gone.”
A frown deepened the lines bracketing his well-sculpted lips. He pushed himself off the tree, stalking toward her.
“Gone? Why?”
“Because.” Drat! How could he just stand there, so handsome and nonchalant, when she had been stretched on a rack of misery for three days? Her lower lip started to tremble and she bit it, mindful of the promises she had just made to herself. “Because that is the type of marriage we are to have. You said so yourself. You are to go your way, and I, mine.”
“And this means you can just up and leave me whenever the whim dictates?” He leaned closer to her.
“I left you a note.”
“Oh, yes.” He rocked back on his heels, his eyes becoming shuttered. “And a pretty, nice little bit of noninformation it was, too. ‘Thomas, I am going to Bellingcourt. I will contact you later. Your wife, Catherine Sinclair.’ And your name, by the way, is Catherine Montrose.”
Cat blinked, unprepared for the anger with which his last words erupted. Why would such a simple mistake enrage him so? “Really, Thomas, I don’t know what you are so angry about. I am giving you the freedom you outlined.”
The fire in his eyes died, his expression becoming unreadable. “What freedom?”
Cat was getting angry. She had tried to be sophisticated as well as munificent. But to have the blackguard stand there feigning confusion when not a few days ago she had heard him say he was leaving her was untenable. She wasn’t going to allow him to play this ridiculous game any longer.
“You egotistical, monstrous man! I am referring to your convenient, practical, pathetic excuse for a proposal!”
Thomas’s eyebrows shot up in a nearly comical display of offended dignity. Except Cat didn’t feel like laughing. She felt like clawing him.
“You didn’t like my proposal?” he asked stiffly.
“I hated your proposal! ‘We will raise nice sheep together,’ ‘your input as a land manager will be invaluable,’ a ‘civil union’! If you have need of a land steward, hire one!”
Unbelievably, horribly, the corners of his mouth began to quirk. “But why should I hire one when fate has conspired to hand me wife and steward in one?”
“Oh!”
“Come along, Cat.” He stretched out his hand. “We must bid your family good-bye before we leave for London. The season begins in a few weeks, and I have a desire to see you queen it over the ton.”
But Cat sidled backwards, out of his reach. She tried to regulate her voice, matching his insouciant tone. She failed.
“I am not going with you!” she shouted.
“Yes, you are,” Thomas replied with dangerous quietness.
“No, I am not! I have had enough of your polite inattention. Knocking at my door. Steering me about Brighton by the elbow as though to touch my arm would give you a case of the French pox. Avoiding my eye. Calling me ‘madam’ for God’s sake!” She felt the tears overspill her lids and dashed them angrily away, “And… and after our exquisite nights together! Oh, Thomas, how could you?”
“Exquisite?”
She felt her cheeks grow hot. Fine, she thought wildly, why not end this scene without any dignity left at all? Why not?
“Yes, exquisite! Rapturous! Wondrous! At least they were to me. I do not have the advantage of a past which dulls the impact of these experiences. I am sorry I have not yet acquired enough bronze to take them for granted. But yes, damn it, to me our nights were exquisite!”
He was grinning openly now, his wide, mobile mouth displaying a set of strong, white teeth. “Cat, you are overset.” He placed a calming hand on her arm. She shook him off.
“Can you not understand the King’s English? I am not going to put up with your diffuse courtesy during the day and your too intent lovemaking at night. ’Tis too great a discrepancy for a poor, simpleminded, naive idiot like me to deal with.”
Ignoring her waving arms, he grabbed hold of her wrists and hauled her to him, wrapping her in his iron embrace. “Madam, you are coming with me. You are my wife, and I am not going to hear any more about my ‘advantageous past.’ I am sick unto death of my past and the hold it has had over my life—no, our lives!”
He was growing angry himself. She could hear it in the tight growl of his words.
He continued, “I am not going to spend my days scuttling about trying to avoid some tart whom I bedded a decade ago because she might remind you there were other women in my past! But that is all they are! The past! Nothing more! So be it!”
“Thomas,” she began, but he gave her a little shake, his eyes burning with unbridled convictions.
“Listen to me, Cat. The past is done. Over. You said so yourself. You are my wife, my companion and you are my love. The first and only love of my entire thirty-two years. I have waited a lifetime for you, and I will have you!”
Cat stared at him, once more opening her mouth to speak, but he would
have none of it.
“If I promised you a marriage of polite recognition and accommodation, I lied. I lied and you will just have to live with that. I want you with me. Now, tomorrow, tonight, and for all the rest of my bloody days. And you will be there if I have to follow you about the face of the earth, your little notes in one hand and the rest of your luggage in the other. Do you understand?”
She nodded mutely. Love burned, blazed, exposing itself with absolute clarity in his onyx eyes. Unguarded, direct, vulnerable. His love could be no less apparent than the sun burning brightly through the scattered remnants of the morning fog. Her arms swept to pull his dark, beautiful face to hers. But he held her back.
“And you love me!” he shouted. “Damn it, Cat. You love me.”
“I love you, Thomas.”
“And as for inattentive politeness. I shall attend you, madam, until we both burn to cinders with my attentions. Now, please, say it again. Please. For I have waited a lifetime for your words.”
“I love—” Her last word was smothered by his mouth.
Her lips opened under his for a long minute before she tore her mouth free. Lovingly, she brushed the hair from his forehead. She kissed the corners of his eyes, his high cheekbones, his temples, his jaw, and his mouth again. Finally, she wrapped her arms about him and held him as tightly as she could.
“I thought you were going to leave me. I heard you say so to Strand. I heard you tell him if you did not leave, it would be a hypocrisy you could not live with,” she whispered against his heated skin. “I thought it was what you wanted.”
“Oh, Cat. They want a captain to play soldier for them. I agreed. I could not hope for your love if I let men die while I wooed you. I would not respect myself. How then could I hope to win your heart?”
“My heart? My heart is yours! My heart, my body, my very soul, are yours. They have been for a very, very long time.”
Promise Me Heaven Page 28