by Anna Cowan
Kit didn’t dare move for fear that he would stop.
‘Then,’ he said and paused. An expression lit his face that was like hurt, but good in a way she couldn’t articulate. ‘The sprite cracked open – as seeds do, but we’d forgotten that seeds do or were too young to know it – and revealed its most vulnerable, tender centre: a swathe of red silk that seemed so frail against its crusty exterior, but so bright, so beautiful that I knew nothing would ever destroy it.’
His eyes opened, and they were not sleepy, and she had no time to guard against what came next.
‘Last night eclipsed that childhood wonder. You are wild, and hard, and impossible to breach – and I have felt only the faintest lick of the warmth in you.’
He didn’t make a single move towards her, but she was breathing like she’d been running, like she’d been drowning, and her heartbeat rushed past her ears like a thousand needles dropped on marble.
‘I want to crack you open,’ he said.
Chapter Twelve
He was out of control. He had been for some time. He shouldn’t allow himself near her when he was like this – when his need for closeness was so indistinguishable from violence.
‘Touch me,’ he said, and the words were like sex coming out of his mouth.
Her breaths were short and hard. ‘One plus one,’ she said.
‘Two.’
‘Three plus five.’
‘Eight.’
‘Twenty-one times ninety-six.’
‘Two thousand and sixteen. You couldn’t come up with a sum difficult enough to distract me. I want you to touch me.’
She shook her head, which fixed his attention on the rumpus of her hair across the pillow. Her lean cheeks, her scrapper’s nose.
‘You touched me last night.’
‘This is different,’ she said, and curled around to face him. ‘I can’t afford this.’ She sounded almost indignant. Offended. As though her end of the conversation was a heated argument.
‘Katherine,’ he said, only he was really saying, Come. Here.
‘Do you know why all the servants left?’ she asked, fierce in the candle-lit dark.
‘I imagine your father gambled everything away.’
‘I —’ Her eyes widened in quick shock. ‘You notice far too much.’
‘There’s a long scar on the inside of your left thumb,’ he said. ‘You hate brushing your hair. You would have lost no sleep over having Porkie killed, but when you find a spider indoors you’re careful not to crush it when you take it outside. I could put an autumn leaf between your hands when you’re like that, and it would stay intact.’
I could put a human heart between your hands, when you’re like that.
She closed her eyes, breathed out long and hard. ‘My father risked everything. And he lost. And my whole life was changed. I was changed. I won’t gamble everything we have.’ She opened her eyes, gold and feral. ‘Not even for you.’
Jude could make people do what he wanted, and the temptation was like tiny hooks in his skin. He watched her, and she watched him back, and he knew it was no good. He wanted what was inside, and she would never come to him except because she chose to. And with everything he was, he knew a moment of doubt.
‘All right,’ he said carefully, and watched her let go of a breath she’d been holding for some time. ‘But we know each other better now, Katherine. You needn’t wear armour to bed. I have said you’re safe.’
He slid his hand across the sheets, cool cotton rough against his palm. His fingertips found the knuckles of her hands, and he realised they were clutched so tightly together they were shaking, and her body was curled around them.
Her breath caught. He traced the topography of her knuckles, down across the top of her thigh. He watched the tight control of her nostrils and lips as she forced her breathing to remain even and he wound up her shift into his palm.
He couldn’t touch her beneath it, yet. The pain of arousal was familiar; the other thing, reverent and loose, was not.
‘Jude,’ she said, and he was aware that only this woman called him that.
He gripped her knee, the cap of bone snug against his palm, and his thumb traced a line on to her thigh. The firm give of her became all that his hand wanted; he found the upper edge of her stocking. And then he was touching her skin that shied and shivered against the pads of his fingers.
The gold of her irises went into eclipse.
He pressed her flesh, and the thought that his fingers would leave red marks on her was unbearable. It was like one of those hot stones the Scandinavians used to evaporate water, sitting on his tongue.
The covers shifted over them, displacing cold and warmth. She had to lift her leg – just a fraction – so that he could get the stocking past her knee. It was such a small, erotic concession. He pulled the stocking over her foot and imagined the permission Katherine would be giving him if she opened her legs all the way.
Hunger opened in him – and he recognised it. He had almost killed himself to avoid it.
He shoved her leg from him.
‘You can keep the other one,’ he said, his voice unpolished, mortifying. ‘Good night.’
She opened her mouth; he turned his back.
There was a hesitant silence behind him, and then she moved, cold air rushing in under the covers. She’d gone up on her elbow, he thought, and watched him. He was painfully aware of her, ready for anything. When she finally lay back down, she was curved behind him – close enough for him to feel her heat but not touching. Close enough that he could feel the ripples running through her, and subsiding, like the after-effects of shock.
She woke from a dream in which she was suffocating to find her head wedged under his shoulder. She’d burrowed under him while she slept. She eased slowly away and he didn’t wake.
His hair was messy on her pillow and he trusted her to see him like this. Rumpled. Warm. She was close enough to trace the system of veins beneath the delicate skin of his eyelids. One hand was curled by his ear, the elbow flung out against the pillow. She had never seen him so lost to sleep.
Just one more minute, she promised herself, and counted down the seconds.
She walked downstairs into . . . chaos. From halfway down the stairs she counted four liveried men and a maid. Two of the men were carrying a chest between them, another clutched a sheaf of papers to his chest, the fourth ducked into the parlour calling out, ‘Fionn, the piano won’t fit through the window, and the lads haven’t cleared the —’, and the maid was carrying folded linen.
She would go down in just a moment. She would call out to them just as soon as her breath stopped stabbing her throat on its way out. Wait. She had to breathe in as well. That was important.
‘Kit?’ It was Tom, behind her. She shut her eyes tight. Oh, God.
‘Kit, are you all right?’
She realised she was sitting down, and tried to make herself stand and face him. He sat beside her before she could, and she took his hand firmly. To show him they would be fine. Everything would be fine. She would make everything fine.
‘It’s happened again, Tom,’ she said. ‘Just like last time.’
She thought she’d spoken evenly, but Tom’s expression said she hadn’t.
It was just – she remembered it. Suddenly, vividly. The sick kick in her stomach, the queasy knowing of something-not-right when the men and maids had come and taken everything away. She’d sat on a step then, too – the grand steps, out in the entrance hall – and watched her father’s back, because people always listened to her father. He would make things right.
His neck was red, and he was arguing with a man in a cheap coat. She watched his neck go so red it looked bruised, and that made her think of the man in the paper who was hanged but hadn’t died right away.
Abe Sutherland’s collar loosened, became crooked, as his hand ran across the back of his neck, under his shirt. Then Mother appeared, and Kit was glad, because a maid was crossing the marble floor with Mother�
�s lilac satin folded over her arms, and now she would undo the mistake. But there were no calm words or smiles. Her mother ran at Abe and screamed, My mother’s Ming vase. Bastard. She died without— And these filthy women. You break my heart!
Kit would never forget it. How ugly her mother was when her calm was shattered. Her voice ringing out in the emptying space. You break my heart. Worse, somehow, than the sway of her favourite doll’s arm over the edge of the box, as a man carried it off.
‘It’s happening again,’ Kit whispered, and just as soon as her brain unfroze she would figure out why. Where she’d gone wrong. She’d been so, so careful, and still it hadn’t been enough.
‘Darling,’ Tom said, and kissed her tense knuckles. There was an off note in his voice. ‘These people were sent by Lady Rose. They’re not taking things away.’
Laughter. That’s what was wrong. He sounded like a gleeful boy. Nothing like the white, pinched little thing who had looked to her to fix everything.
‘They’re not?’ she said, dizzy and stupid with relief.
‘They’re bringing things,’ he said. ‘Food and furniture and a piano and paintings and rugs and one hundred boxes of pure wax candles – don’t ask me why, I haven’t a clue how we could possibly use them all.’
Jude came down just before eleven, walking as though he’d been pulled apart and put back together slightly wrong. He had a pale blue wig pinned with vicious precision on his head, and instead of making him look more haggard, which would only have been fair, it made him look fragile. Sensitive.
Ha.
She’d purposely not gone up to shave him – left him stranded up there until she felt she could adequately deal with him. She’d had an army of servants to manage all morning, and hadn’t felt the need to add a whimsical duke to the pile.
His arms were clasped across his chest, dressing robe wrapped tightly around him, a rich silk shawl thrown carelessly over his shoulders.
He was shaved and made up, and she didn’t know whether he’d managed the task himself, or whether his servants were in league with him. His arrival downstairs hadn’t caused any smothered smiles, and the maids bobbed curtsies at him as if by rote. Kit couldn’t decide whether it was worse that the servants knew what her own family didn’t, or that they didn’t know, thereby tying her and Jude tighter into the deceit.
Jude glared at the men carrying furniture and goods and taking measurements and making notes as though he hadn’t had the slightest thing to do with them being here – and they’d been sent from hell specifically to torture him.
He didn’t even seem to see her as he made his way past her, into the kitchen.
‘Rose,’ she said, taking hold of his arm. ‘We have to talk about —’
‘Coffee,’ he said, his voice coming out rough and scratchy. ‘In the name of all that is good, give me coffee before you say another word.’
‘We don’t have any —’
‘You there.’ He rounded on one of the footmen coming through the doorway holding a list. Kit had, apparently, stopped existing the moment she denied him coffee. ‘Bring me a cup of coffee. Don’t be longer than ten minutes.’
Everything about him – voice, posture, expression, the very unconscious fact of his entitlement – spoke of centuries of master and servant.
‘Yes, my lady,’ said the footman. He actually ran out into the hallway – he ran. Kit stared after him.
‘Weren’t you about to pester me about something?’ said Jude from the kitchen, his head buried on his arms at the table. ‘Oh, God, Katherine, never let me drink again. Ever.’
She came to stand by him, meaning to bring up the matter of the upheaval he’d caused – and Jude leaned his head against her hip.
‘You are an evil woman,’ he said in a pitiful voice. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to shave in a mirror? Every time I told my hand to go left it went right. I was poking myself in the eye like a madman half the time.’
Without thinking she wanted to stroke him to give comfort. Then she thought, and did it anyway. Fingers down the back of his collar, fur a soft shush against her hand. She kept the touch firm, rubbed his neck slowly.
Every part of him froze. He didn’t pull away. After what seemed a very long time, he gave a sigh, and his shoulders relaxed by the tiniest fraction.
‘Where is Miss Sutherland?’
The voice boomed in the hallway and Kit and Jude sprang apart. She cursed the Squire to an early and unpleasant grave.
‘Ah, Miss Sutherland,’ he said from the kitchen doorway, and she wished he would talk instead of shouting.
‘Sir Winston.’ It’s beneath you to be under the thumb of a bit-part villain like the Squire. ‘As always, it’s a pleasure to see you. I’ll bring tea into the parlour.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, eyes hungry on Lady Rose, ‘I find it a charming novelty to socialise in the kitchen.’
It came forcefully to Kit that if Sir Winston of Millcross thought it a novelty it was beyond farcical for the Duke of Darlington to be comfortable sitting at their battered wooden table. She glanced at his blue head. Not comfortable exactly, more like excruciatingly hungover. But he didn’t seem to mind the kitchen any more, or even notice where he was.
‘I have heard rumours this morning,’ said the Squire in his jovial shout, and advanced a couple of steps towards the table. ‘Apparently I have hired on a new maid named Daisy – and half the county’s in love with her. Looks suspiciously like our Lady Rose.’
His laugh slid greasily down Kit’s insides – the worse because he apparently thought he and Lady Rose were sharing a joke. The lady in question showed no sign of hearing him.
‘What d’you make of that, eh, Lady Rose?’ The Squire moved even closer.
Jude looked up at the Squire, and Kit stopped breathing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Did you say something?’
She thought she’d seen him being ducal before now. He’d turned an icy glance on her more than once – put her effortlessly in her place. That, she realised, had been the reflection of a dream of what he could be. Even rumpled, even seated, even in a state of undress, he looked down his nose at the Squire.
His eyes didn’t go icy, they turned to blue fire. His indignation – his disbelief that this rotund man from the country would dare to talk to him – did not need to be spoken. The Squire took a sharp step back and it still was not far enough.
He took another.
‘Cease bothering me, little man,’ Jude said, his voice husky and sweet.
The Squire opened his mouth but could not speak. He gave a quick bow, and his eyes lighted on Kit as he turned to leave.
‘Sir Winston, wait!’ She forced herself to say it, even though Jude would think less of her for it. ‘I’ll bring tea to the parlour. Please don’t leave.’
‘I wouldn’t want to stay and risk being a bother,’ he said. ‘But you’ll come and see me tomorrow. For tea.’
He wouldn’t mention the loan outright in front of Lady Rose, but Kit knew they were going to talk about interest tomorrow. He would raise it. Again. The ten guineas would be worse than useless.
The Squire nodded and left, almost colliding with a whole calf.
‘Morning, sir,’ said Angus, his face flushed, above the carcass.
Kit couldn’t quite bring herself to glare at Jude, because she had just been forcibly reminded that he was a duke. And right now he was a duke who was filling her house with hundreds of guineas worth of goods.
Her gratitude felt as close to forgiveness as made no difference.
Two of Darlington’s neat footmen brought a late breakfast into the parlour. Kit felt a bit silly, sitting there being waited on in her own home. And she wanted to lie back against the new sofa, with stuffing as firm as a pig’s backside, and loll and smile and give orders all afternoon.
‘Thanks, Joshua. Ronald.’
‘Kit,’ said her mother, after the footmen had left with a quiet ‘Ma’am’, ‘if we’re going to have hired help do please refrain fro
m befriending them.’
Kit would have made some retort – given some expression to the sudden fear that as they gained material comfort her mother would be less and less like the woman she loved – except that Ma was cradling the fine china cup in her fingers as if it were a newborn chick.
‘Of course, Ma.’
‘Kit,’ said Tom, chewing absently on some toast and frowning at the London broadsheets he was reading. ‘Didn’t you say you met the Duke of Darlington when you were in London?’
The Duke, who was curled up in the old armchair nursing his third cup of coffee of the morning, had been moaning gently ever since the food was brought in. His moaning stopped.
‘You —’ Her mother sat bolt upright in her chair, and said a brief prayer for strength. ‘You met a duke and you didn’t tell me? Oh, dear girl, I hope you didn’t offend him?’
‘Now why is that the first thing you think of when you hear that I met a duke?’ Kit was annoyed, and conscious of feeling a tiny bit guilty. She hadn’t offended him. She had called him a bit of inconsequential fluff, to his face.
She snuck a quick look at him, and saw something she probably wasn’t meant to. He flushed when he saw her looking, and smiled unpleasantly.
Before she could say anything – or, thank God, before he could say anything – Tom laughed. ‘The broadsheets love him,’ he said. ‘The Duke, I mean. He cuckolded someone, Lord M—’
‘Marmotte,’ murmured Kit and Jude together.
‘Tom,’ Ma scolded at the same time, drowning the word in a mouthful of tea. She had to scold him, because cuckolding was a distasteful topic for the breakfast table, but Kit knew her: she’d be ravenous for gossip.