Wagered to the Duke (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Karen Lingefelt

  Chapter Five

  Kate opened her eyes to a room that wasn’t her own—or at least it wasn’t the one she’d occupied at Bellingham Hall, for she’d never felt that bedchamber was her own, if only because she happened to think of it as a prison cell.

  And then she remembered that she was supposed to be at Mr. Throckmorton’s house as his new governess. Instead she was at a coaching inn somewhere between York and London—but closer to York.

  She didn’t see Polly anywhere. She didn’t even recall that Polly had gotten into bed with her last night. Kate was quite positive she would have been aware of another person beneath the covers with her. Where had Polly slept, if not with Kate?

  She dressed and pinned up her hair. She’d really hoped Polly would do that for her. She’d always wanted a lady’s maid, if only so she’d have someone to do her hair for her, because she’d never been very good at it. She’d always envied the ladies of the ton with their elaborate coiffures, how their hair curled where it was supposed to curl and stayed smoothly in place where it was supposed to stay smoothly in place. All Kate could manage on her own was a plain, miserable bun pulled back from her face. She didn’t even have bangs to curl into ringlets. Over the past year of exile at Bellingham Hall, where there’d been no visitors and nothing happening, she’d let her bangs grow out until they could almost reach behind her ears, but not quite. Thin strands still fell forward into her face, and wearing her bonnet was the only means to keep them out of the way.

  But she wasn’t ready to don the bonnet yet as she ventured out of the room and downstairs to the dining room, where she thought she might find Nathan or even Freddy or Polly.

  None of them were there.

  “Mornin’, miss,” said the innkeeper’s wife as she filled someone’s teacup. “I’m afraid your brother didn’t leave a message for you.”

  Bewilderment flooded Kate. “What do you mean, he didn’t leave a message for me?”

  The innkeeper’s wife set down the teapot. “Just that. He left without a message for you.”

  “He did what?” Kate exploded as every head in the dining room popped up like the red blemishes that erupted on her face on the most inopportune occasions. Granted, this wasn’t one of them, but she lifted her hand to her face anyway, as if to feel for the traitorous little bumps.

  The innkeeper’s wife planted her hands on her very wide hips. “How many times must I say it? He’s gone and didn’t bother to leave a message for you. My husband even asked him outright if he wasn’t goin’ to leave a message for you and what do you think your brother said?”

  Nausea knotted Kate’s stomach. “I can’t imagine what he might have said.”

  “Well, I don’t see why not, for I should think the answer is obvious. He said, ‘No.’”

  Kate hated to ask, if only because she dreaded the answer, but she asked anyway. “Did he take the carriage?”

  “Aye, of course he did. Oh, and in case you’re wonderin’ where she is, he took your maid with him, which might be another reason he decided not to leave a message for you. They must’ve planned to elope. You do look surprised.”

  “Surprised?” piped up one of the diners. “She looks murderous!”

  For what must have been a full minute, Kate was speechless, partly because her jaw had dropped and all the muscles in her face couldn’t lift it back up again. Indeed, all of her muscles seemed to have failed her, for she felt her legs weakening, and she grabbed the nearest chair to keep from collapsing to the floor.

  So much for being murderous.

  “You may as well sit in that chair and have some tea,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “They left around midnight, so they’re halfway to Gretna by now.”

  Surely Nathan hadn’t eloped with Polly! They’d only met yesterday, and all she’d done from that moment till the moment she told Kate she was going downstairs and out back to use the necessary—which happened to be the last time Kate saw her—was weep and whine.

  What the devil was it with men who were attracted to women like that? Why did men prefer women who were weak and helpless—like Kate’s own mother? How many times had Kate’s mother chided her that if only she weren’t so blasted opinionated, and if only she would stop trying to take charge of every situation she encountered—which was exactly what she’d done at the Blue Rooster in York yesterday—and if only she’d stop showing all the world how much brighter she was than most men, and at least pretend to be weak and helpless and featherbrained, then maybe she’d finally land a husband?

  She picked up the chair and slammed it back down on all fours. “Dash it!”

  The innkeeper’s wife patted her on the shoulder. “I know, dearie. She must have been workin’ her wiles on him for quite some time. And right under your own nose! Now do sit down and have some tea.”

  Kate finally slumped into the chair, fisting both hands on the edge of the table as a serving girl set a brimming teacup in front of her. Steam rose before her eyes and almost certainly blasted out of her ears.

  Nathan must have deduced that she wasn’t really Margaret Hathaway, unless Polly told him. He must have concluded she was an imposter scheming to fleece him, just as he’d surmised yesterday. He must have felt his only recourse was to abandon her at the first opportunity.

  However, that did not explain why he’d taken Polly with him. Kate nearly seethed in rage. Perhaps Polly had offered herself to Nathan in exchange for his taking her back to her mam in Leeds. Oh yes, Kate had noticed how Polly would pull back her cloak so it fell over either side of those enormous bosoms that looked as if they needed a platter not only to serve them to whatever man she attracted, but to hold them up.

  At this very moment Nathan was probably curled up with Polly in the carriage, his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel while Polly pulled down her bodice to give him access to those breasts that were so much bigger than Kate’s. No doubt they were joking about what a harridan Kate was and how she thought she could fool him by pretending to be Miss Hathaway. Polly had very likely sung the entire opera, and by now she was surely taking her bows over and maybe even into his lap.

  For some odd reason, that infuriated Kate even more than the knowledge that he’d stranded her here. But then her heart sank like a stone into the pit of her stomach. She had no money. She’d been totally, stupidly reliant on the charity of Nathan Fraser, who’d been reluctant to take her to London but for her insistence on honoring her brother’s, or rather, Frederick Hathaway’s debt. Only what had Nathan owed her in return? Absolutely nothing.

  “There now, miss, ’tisn’t as bad as all that,” the innkeeper’s wife reassured her. “Your other brother is still here, though he seems quite the slugabed since he hasn’t come downstairs yet.”

  That could only be Freddy, and it was all Kate could do not to spit. Freddy! The blackguard who started all of this. Granted, no one had forced her to propose switching places with his sister except Kate herself, but the fact remained it could never have happened in the first place if Freddy hadn’t wagered Meg in a card game and lost.

  Suddenly she was feeling murderous again.

  She sprang from the chair. “Where is he?”

  “Up the first flight of stairs, fourth room on the right. Really, miss, you should have some tea first to settle your nerves. You don’t want him to wake up and see you in such a fury.”

  “Oh yes, I do.” Kate stormed out of the dining room and up that first flight of stairs. She charged straight down the hall, counting the doors on the right as she passed. One, two, three, four!

  She didn’t even bother knocking, and she wasn’t at all surprised the door was unlocked, allowing her to throw it open and crash right in. Freddy was too much of a lackwit to bother with something as complicated as a key, and besides, what did he have worth stealing? He had no coin, and any self-respecting thief would surely rather slither away empty-handed than settle for pinching Freddy’s hideously embroidered waistcoat.

  The shutters were closed, blocking out the
daylight, so Kate could barely make out his form on the bed. She threw the covers back to the very foot of the bed and gasped.

  He was naked.

  Yet he only stirred, emitting a low groan.

  Kate turned back to the doorway, as if she expected to see the innkeeper’s wife and serving girl on her heels, hoping for their own glimpse of masculinity. She threw the door shut. She’d never seen a naked man before, unless she counted the replica of Michelangelo’s David that graced a remote corner of Carswell Park, the ancestral home of her paternal Uncle Peter, the Marquess of Carswell.

  For years she’d been forbidden to go near that part of the estate. Then one day, while her mother was bedridden with another one of her headaches, Kate had stolen out to see if the rumors were true. She’d found the statue and spent the rest of the afternoon staring at it. Thereafter, whenever they visited Uncle Peter, she never passed up a chance to rush in where her mother feared to tread and behold the magnificent David with his magnificent—

  She rushed over to the window to open the shutters and throw light upon Freddy’s nakedness.

  She turned and gasped again.

  This wasn’t Freddy. This was Nathan. And what lay between his muscled thighs was much bigger than what she’d seen on the David statue, stiffly pointing toward him like a thick, red arrow.

  Kate felt a deep, shuddering ache between her thighs. It spread up her belly and tingled in the very tips of her breasts, and she knew it wasn’t just from relief that he hadn’t abandoned her, after all.

  It was a feeling very similar to the one that sometimes swept through her late at night as she lay in bed, wishing, aching for someone to lie next to her and keep her warm and sated and loved.

  “What the hell?”

  The unexpected words pushed her back from the bed. She clamped a hand over her mouth, though she didn’t know why she bothered, for she was speechless.

  He propped himself up on his elbows. “Did the cat get your tongue, Miss Hathaway, or did your own burning curiosity kill the cat before he could do so?”

  Thus far he’d made no move to pull the covers back up. Kate wondered if that was a good omen or a bad one.

  Still keeping her hand over her mouth, she mumbled, “I’m sorry, I thought you were Freddy.”

  “You thought I was who?”

  She finally managed to wrench her hand away from her mouth. “Freddy. I thought you were Freddy.”

  Now he sat up. “Your brother?”

  Oh, dear. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat directly in front of her, gazing at her intently. To her consternation, his organ was now pointed at her, as if it meant to accuse her of something sinful—like looking at it. That being the case, Kate had to wonder why her eyes hadn’t melted out of their sockets or why she hadn’t turned into a pillar of salt. Or maybe she had and just didn’t realize it, because she couldn’t move and couldn’t look away from it.

  “Are you usually in the habit of approaching your brother’s bed in the morning and throwing back the covers?”

  “No, no! Not at all!” she cried, as her heart hammered against her ribs. “I would never do such a thing—I mean, I’ve never done such a thing before, and I never would, at least not to my own brother. You must believe me, Nathan!”

  “That’s right, we did agree we should call each other by our first names. And yours was what again?”

  No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t wrench her gaze away from that masculine length now aimed at her. “Kate. Katherine. No, Kate. Katherine but Kate for long. I mean short.” Dear heavens, but she was babbling like water spewing out of a naked stone cherub, or a naked stone nymph, into a garden fountain. Only she wasn’t the one who was naked.

  He finally stood up, and she dodged around to the other side of the bed. “Oh, I do wish you’d don your breeches already, or at least step behind that screen in the corner. Upon my word, if I’d only known you weren’t wearing anything beneath the covers…”

  He now had his back to her. As he headed for the screen in the corner, she noted the movement of powerful muscles in his back and, below that, a very taut posterior. Another odd wave shimmered through her lower belly, and it felt rather nice.

  “You were saying?” he asked.

  What had she been saying? “Perhaps I’ll just wait outside while you get dressed.”

  He was so tall that once behind the screen, she could still see his broad, muscular chest covered with tendrils of dark hair. “So why are you still standing there? Or do you still mean to finish your other sentence before you go to wait outside?”

  Flustered and befuddled, she backed her way to the door. “What other sentence?”

  “If you’d only known I wasn’t wearing anything beneath the covers—then what? Am I to believe you wouldn’t have thrown them back?”

  Certainly that was what he was supposed to believe. Kate knew jolly well that if she’d known he was totally bare beneath the blankets, she still would have thrown them back. But she wasn’t about to admit it.

  “I’ve lived for many years in Scotland,” he added, “where men don’t wear anything beneath their kilts, so it stands to reason they wouldn’t wear anything beneath the bedcovers, either.”

  “Well, you’re in England now,” she retorted. “And in England, men wear nightshirts.”

  “Ah, so you not only expected to find Freddy here, but you expected him to be relatively decent.”

  At the mention of Freddy, she suddenly remembered the real reason she’d burst into this room in the first place. The very sight of Nathan and his—well, the very sight of him had wiped all other thoughts from her mind as if they’d never been.

  “I thought you’d left me!” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she realized they not only sounded desperate, but they made her sound like a jilted, clinging lover. As if she thought there should be something more between her and this man besides what little there already was, especially at this moment.

  Only why would she think such a thing? She knew she was beneath his touch.

  She hastily amended, “What I mean is, I went downstairs and the innkeeper’s wife told me you’d already left, and that you’d taken Polly with you.”

  “So you came all the way up here to confirm that for yourself?”

  No, she’d come up here to kill Freddy, or at least inflict great pain on him for being the instigator who got her into her present coil. If not for him and his doleful sister, Kate would be eating scones and jam with Mr. Throckmorton’s brood this very moment. Her stomach suddenly growled loudly in hunger, and she pressed a hand to her middle as if to suppress the embarrassing noise.

  She fixed her gaze on the floor. “Yes, you might say that, especially since I truly couldn’t believe you’d do such a thing—at least I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Just like you want me to believe that if you knew I wore not a stitch beneath those covers, you never would have thrown them back?”

  “Exactly. Yet even though I didn’t want to believe you’d left, still I had cause to fear the worst, since I couldn’t find Polly anywhere. And I realize now that she and Freddy must have left. Without me.” It all made sense to her now. Freddy and his sister’s maid had decided to commandeer Nathan’s carriage and thus make their own way back home to Leeds, with as much regard for Nathan and Kate as Freddy had shown for poor Meg.

  “Then what makes you think I’m the one who left?”

  “The innkeeper’s wife told me only that my brother had left with my maid. And since you were pretending to be my brother last night, I thought she meant you, and of course I know you don’t want to take me to London.”

  Nathan donned a shirt. “So you might say he’s abandoned you. Again.”

  Relief washed over Kate, even as she wondered how she should look and behave at this moment. Should she show herself to be relieved, or should she feign dejection?

  At the very least, she was certainly confused. She leaned against the door, hesitant to lea
ve until he said something more, like offering to take her to London, after all, since it should have been clear to Nathan that Freddy didn’t want her.

  He emerged from behind the screen, tucking his shirt into his breeches. “I’m afraid there’s only one thing to do, Miss Hathaway—”

  “Kate,” she corrected him. “We’re still supposed to be brother and sister, even if Freddy doesn’t think I’m his sister. I certainly don’t feel as if he’s my brother.”

  “I understand. As I was about to say, there’s no help for it. I shall simply have to take you back to Leeds myself.”

  Panic seized her. “You can’t! You won’t!”

  “Do keep your voice down,” he admonished her gently.

  She ignored the advice. “There is nothing for me in Leeds. Nothing!”

  “That may be, but surely you don’t still expect me to take you all the way to London.”

  “Then put me on the stage to London!”

  He stepped closer to her. “I will warn you one last time to keep your voice down. I have no need to travel on the stage when I have my own carriage. Now—”

  “But Freddy took the—” She could say no more, for he pulled her against him and locked his arms around her as he covered her mouth with his own.

  As if by instinct, she closed her eyes and froze, too shocked by the intrusion of something rough and velvety sliding past her parted lips and between her teeth to do anything but whimper in bewilderment as he subdued her flailing tongue with his own.

  Good God. Was he kissing her? She’d never been kissed before. Or was this some savage Scots way of stifling her? Why else wouldn’t he just clamp his hand over her mouth?

  Perhaps because that only would have made her struggle more. Instead she felt herself weakening in his embrace, leaning into his hard, massive chest, grabbing the fabric of his shirt as if she never wanted to let go of him—or allow him to let go of her. Yet it felt as if he wasn’t so much stifling her as he was tasting her. Exploring her, as if by probing her tongue with his own, he might learn all her secret desires. Sure enough, a new fire simmered deep in her core, heating her with the same longing she’d had when she’d surveyed him in all his masculine glory.