Lord Blackwood did not return to the inn. Mrs. Milch planned dinner for five o’clock, remaining with Emily in the kitchen all day, leaving Kitty to wallow in confusion and frustrated intent. As she was a woman of action, those emotions had never been her fond companions.
She set about decorating the place for Christmas. Clipping bits of low-hanging branches from an old pine at the edge of the yard, she tied them with green and white ribbons. A basket of cones arranged around a thick candle with a gold cord purloined from her reticule made a lovely centerpiece.
She was considering what might be done to rearrange the furniture in the sitting room for greater comfort when hushed voices came to her from the rear foyer.
“It’s quite precious, Milch.” Mr. Cox’s tone seemed abnormally tight. “I shan’t be happy to discover that one of your people here has taken it.”
The innkeeper made a coughing sound. “Well now, sir, you needn’t be worrying. If you dropped it about here Mrs. Milch is bound to find it while she’s cleaning and it’ll be restored to you right and tight.”
“It had better be, or I’ll make things very uncomfortable for you, Milch.”
“Now, now. That won’t be necessary. Could be you lost it before you arrived?”
“I did not.” But the gentleman didn’t seem quite as adamant, rather more anxious now. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Kitty busied herself arranging cushions. Mr. Cox emerged into the chamber.
“How convenient for you to come along, sir, for I am contemplating shifting these chairs about but they are too heavy for me to move.”
Kitty had never before witnessed a man so obviously shake off anxiety and don an amiable façade.
“I would be happy to assist you, my lady.”
They accomplished the remainder of her project easily enough. She thanked him and went to her bedchamber to straighten her hair and don the single accessory she possessed, a pair of ear bobs she carried in her traveling purse. Her mother had given her the pearls set in antique gold during her first season in town. Kitty’s father apparently had chosen them three years earlier, on her sixteenth birthday, not understanding that they were too mature for a girl.
Now she understood better why her mother had not allowed the gift. Her father’s mistress had chosen them, the woman Kitty never once met but who shared his life for thirty years.
Kitty fiddled with the ear bobs between her fingertips. Lord Blackwood said she should not have been with Lambert. He assumed she had been Lambert’s mistress, as everyone did. They were not wrong, to a degree. She had given herself to Lambert Poole when she was foolishly young and in love, and then again when she sought information that would ruin him. She had made her spinster’s bed; she could be no respectable gentleman’s bride now. But her behavior with a barbaric Scot made it perfectly clear that she needed a man in her life.
No. She needed that man. A man wholly unsuitable for her in every manner except one in which he suited her better than she had ever imagined possible. Hurried and unsatisfying, her experiences with Lambert had not prepared her for Leam Blackwood. Beneath the Scot’s heated gaze and strong hands she felt as helpless as the bird Ned had brought home for dinner, and just as easily consumed.
Innocent … as she had been when she first met Lambert—not during her first season in society, but years before that, at the age of fifteen, in Barbados. At that time her father’s mistress had taken precedence in his life. Kitty’s mother sought to win him back and she had not wanted her daughter to witness the struggle. Conveniently, the earl was rusticating his eldest son for yet another occasion of unfilial behavior. Aaron went along with his twin as always, and Kitty and her governess were sent too.
Lambert, managing his father’s neighboring plantation, came to Kitty in secret, encouraging her to sneak away from her governess to be with him. Aaron soon discovered it and brought it to an end, and Kitty was sent home to England heartbroken, not believing what Aaron told her—that Lambert hated Alex and only wished to use her dishonorably. Four years later, after their family emerged from mourning the earl’s death, Kitty finally made her bows to society and met Lambert again in London.
He pretended to still love her. She believed his promises and she finally gave her innocence to him.
But in all of that, in the tumult of girlish infatuation, she had never felt the heady confusion and sheer, unrelenting desire she did now.
She set the pearl earrings in place, smoothed her tired skirts, and for the hundredth time that day tried not to think of the earl’s words, that he did not know who she should have been with, that he had nearly called out Lambert three years earlier at that ball. Upon what grounds she could not guess, and it made her stomach flip over. He had adored his wife and remained faithful to her in refusing to again marry. Society accounted him an incorrigible flirt, but not a philanderer; he did not engage in indiscriminate affairs. He would not take full advantage of her.
In the corridor Mr. Yale appeared, trailed by a wolfhound.
“My lady.” He bowed. “I understand you are to thank for the holiday aspect of our surroundings below. You are all graciousness.”
“Sir, we stand upon the most brief acquaintance, I realize—”
“And yet one feels as though we have all known one another an age,” he finished with his slight smile.
“I suppose there is a sense of familiarity due to our remarkable circumstances.” A familiarity that had encouraged her to wrap her arms and mouth around a stranger in the alcove beneath where she now stood.
“No doubt.”
“Will you cease teasing Lady Emily?”
His brow lifted. “Ah, a champion arises for Marie Antoine.”
“Do not imagine you can flummox me, Mr. Yale. I have two brothers and both are masters at plaguing me.”
“I know that you can hold your own in company a great deal more exalted than mine.”
Kitty’s tongue felt dry. Everyone knew of her involvement in Lord Poole’s exile. It would never be forgotten.
“Will you treat her civilly, please, sir? She is young and bookish and hasn’t the knack for the regular concourse of ladies and gentlemen.”
He studied her a moment, in his face intelligence and thought. Kitty could not but wonder again how he and the earl had come to be such close companions.
He took her hand and bowed over it, this time deeply.
“It will be my pleasure to abide by your wishes, my lady.” But his eyes twinkled, mischief just beneath the surface.
She smiled. “Really, sir. You could at least—” Boots tread upon the stair and the dog’s tail set up a racket slapping against the wall. Lord Blackwood entered the corridor.
“Back so late, Blackwood? Your animals returned hours ago.”
“Flirting wi’ the leddy, Yale?” He looked perfectly at ease and not at all like he had kissed her out of her senses that morning.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Mr. Yale released her hand and moved toward the stair. “Leaving that to a better man than I, old chap.” He descended.
The earl set his hooded gaze on Kitty and she could not bear the lazy caress, not after seeing something so different in his eyes when he had held her. But she must pass by him to go downstairs.
Silence stretched. She fidgeted.
“This is extraordinarily awkward and not at all pleasant,” she muttered, entirely bereft of every social grace and attitude of comportment.
The corner of his very talented mouth twitched. “Than A’m tae take it ye winna be casting yerself at me again?”
“Oh, good heavens.” Her face flamed. “You haven’t any civility at all, have you?”
He laughed outright. Amid her complete consternation, and no little shame over her thorough hypocrisy, Kitty had the urge to laugh as well.
“Well, you needn’t be so plain speaking,” she insisted, hiding her smile. “I am exceedingly mortified.” And still exceedingly in need of his hands on her. Simply looking at him made her hot and a little hungry.<
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“Scots be a practical folk, lass.”
“I’ve heard that. But I had never seen it in action before and frankly wish I hadn’t still.”
“Forgie a puir fellow, than.” He bowed, never releasing her gaze.
“For precisely what? No! Don’t answer that.” She covered her face with a hand, an action she had never, ever once affected. But her palm seemed stuck to her nose. She was falling apart. “Good Lord, I haven’t any idea what to do or say now.”
Through her fingers she caught a glimpse of his eyes glimmering with pleasure.
“Mrs. Milch has called dinner early,” she mumbled. “Country hours for the holiday, I daresay.”
She moved forward, entirely tongue-tied and perfectly, gloriously alive beneath her skin. It felt so good to laugh inside, like a girl again, the girl she had put behind her at far too young an age.
She passed him. He grasped her arm, barely a touch that ground her to the spot like a Chinese candle planted in earth, bursting with fire.
“Lass.” His voice was unmistakably husky. “A winna take it amiss if ye chuise tae cast yersel at me again.”
Delicious weakness spilled through her. She tilted her gaze up.
“You will stare at my mouth quite distractingly often, won’t you?” she said breathlessly.
“A canna seem tae nae.”
She was trembling in his touch. She could do nothing for it. He bent his head, his mouth mere inches from hers.
She whispered, “You are not being consistent, my lord.”
“Naither be ye, lass.”
Kitty swallowed around the lump of courage in her throat.
“What do we do now?”
He paused, then: “Whitiver ye wish.”
She gulped in air, drew away, and hurried down the steps. She did not know exactly what she wished, only that for the first time in an age she looked forward to the next minute, the next hour. She felt like a girl awaiting her first Christmas. Like a gift, wrapped up, waiting to be opened by the Earl of Blackwood.
Chapter 9
Nothing had happened between Kitty and the Earl of Blackwood at that masquerade ball three years earlier. Nothing of any rational substance. Yet he remembered it as something significant. And it had changed Kitty’s life, a life set on a single, wretched track until that moment.
Five years earlier, after Lambert took her innocence, then told her she must be content to have him as a lover but not a husband, Kitty had taught herself to spy. For the sake of revenge. To satisfy her angry soul.
In society she did not hang upon his sleeve. Rather, she made it a habit to remain at a slight distance from him in company, straining her ear to hear his conversation, especially hushed conversation with gentlemen. When he moved through a ballroom or parlor, she followed discreetly.
She believed herself infinitely clever; she was collecting information. A man such as he—who used an innocent girl the way he had used her—must have other secrets at least as dishonorable.
His secrets were in fact considerably more dishonorable.
She redoubled her efforts.
When he noticed her doggedness, she allowed him to believe she still harbored hopes of marriage.
He mocked her. On occasion he even bragged, revealing more than he should and making her despise herself that she had once admired such vanity and arrogance. Occasionally he propositioned her, finding her in private, making certain they would not be disturbed. She bore his embraces so that she could gain access to his pockets, his billfold, even once his private apartments.
Endeavoring to appear sincere, she suggested to him that perhaps she would find herself in an interesting condition, then he must wed her, to which he replied that were that to occur it already would have, that she was deficient, and that he certainly would not continue to meet her privately otherwise. She submitted to a secret examination by a physician to prove her determination to him; what she learned there hurt nearly more than she could bear. But the hope of revenge masked the pain.
All for the cause of revenge.
She had been very clever. Very proud. And very cold.
Then, in her twenty-third year, it came to an end. The night she made the acquaintance of a cretin of a Scottish lord. A very handsome cretin. A cretin with dark, fathomless eyes. In a ballroom filled with costumed revelers, the earl’s gaze seemed to say to her what her heart had told her for years already—that she was better than vengeance, that she must release the past and allow herself to live again.
Moments later, beneath her breath and with perfect poise, she told Lambert she was finished with hating him or caring about anything he did. And since then she had been free, until six months ago when he tried to hurt Alex and she finally ruined him.
Now, settled into a soft chair in the parlor of the Cock and Pitcher, she studied the Earl of Blackwood as she had once studied Lambert. The draperies were drawn against the cold night without, candles glimmering and firelight filled the chamber with a warm glow, the aromas of cinnamon and wine tangling in the warm air. She spoke with the others, even the earl on occasion. But, using her old skills, she listened to him almost exclusively, and watched.
She noticed interesting things.
As the evening progressed and dinner became tea, then more whiskey for the gentlemen, his gaze upon Mr. Yale altered. At first it grew watchful. Then concerned. Mr. Yale exhibited no change except perhaps a more relaxed air as he sipped his spirits.
Emily and Mr. Milch produced a dish of brandy with raisins floating in it. The concoction was set aflame and a game of snapdragon ensued during which Kitty burned two fingertips and the earl did not take part but seemed unusually pensive, if such a man could be said to think deeply.
Kitty felt like a spy, or what she imagined a spy might feel like. But this time no sticky discomfort accompanied her covert attentiveness, no niggling sense that this activity did not respect her, that she pursued her basest urges in such an endeavor.
It seemed remarkable that lust did not now rouse the guilt that vengeance once had.
Or perhaps not merely lust.
As he had three years ago, now he shifted his regard to her through the fire-lit chamber, his eyes dark with a mystery that should not be there, but still she saw it. She feared lust did not suffice to explain her feelings, which did not make any sense at all; she knew nothing of him.
From his spot on the floor between the dogs, a grinning Ned set bow to strings, fiddle trapped between chin and shoulder. With a glass of wine and the earl’s gaze warming her blood, Kitty smiled.
Sunk in a soft chair, she felt like a pampered cat curled up before the fire being watched by a dog. A dog with unclear intentions and a gorgeously firm jaw.
“Aha!” Mr. Cox exclaimed. “We shall have music to celebrate the birth of Our Lord and Savior tonight. And singing. We must have singing.” His bright blue eyes smiled, but with an odd glitter that seemed unnatural as they darted back and forth between her and the earl.
“Will ye sing for us, Lady Kath’rine?” the Scot said.
“She never sings.” Emily had eschewed spirits tonight, and now seemed intent upon her book but happy enough in company.
“She did at one time, lass. Like a lark.”
Kitty could say nothing. That night at the masquerade ball after turning off Lambert, she had sung.
He stood beside her turning pages as she played, whispering that she would regret her decision and come back to him eventually. After that night, she had not been able to sing again.
Emily poked her nose up. “Why don’t you sing now, then?”
“I haven’t the feeling for it any longer.”
“It does not require feeling, Kitty, only the proper vocal apparatus and a suitable chest cavity.”
“I am continually astounded at the accomplishments of ladies,” Mr. Cox put in, but again an odd note tinted his voice. “They sing, dance, paint with watercolors, speak French and Italian, embroider, and perform all number of domestic tasks. Why,
if I had a wife I would give her roses and chocolates every day in thanks for such bounteous talent and effort.”
“Rather expensive habit that would become,” Mr. Yale said, unwrapping a pack of cards.
Cox chuckled, peculiarly brittle. “Ah, but she would deserve it.” His gaze darted to the earl, then away.
“Why don’t you have a wife, Mr. Cox?” Emily asked. “You must be thirty. Don’t tradesmen like yourself seek early in their careers to marry daughters of impoverished nobles and assure a connection within society that can be useful to their business interests?”
Mr. Yale smiled with undisguised pleasure.
Kitty sat forward. “What my friend means to say—”
“It’s quite all right, Lady Katherine. I don’t mind it at all, and I suspect she has the right of it.” Mr.
Cox darted another glance across the parlor. “I’ve been traveling in the Americas for several years now and haven’t had the opportunity to look about me for a suitable life’s partner.”
Emily’s brow beetled. “Lord Blackwood, you were married, were you not? You even have a son.”
Kitty’s heart tripped.
“Aye.”
“What was marriage like?”
In the silence the cards cracked as Mr. Yale’s fingers split them, and the fire snapped.
“I mean to say, my father wishes me to marry shortly and I haven’t the taste for it at all.” Emily’s pretty face seemed so sincere. Kitty could not rescue her, or the earl. She wanted too much to hear his response. “I think it might be unexceptionable to be married to a person one liked. But I wonder what it would be like to be wed to a person one does not care for.”
“A wretched stew, I should say.” Mr. Yale stacked the cards.
Emily set her book down. “I should too.”
Kitty could not bear it that her friend’s pretty green eyes had dimmed.
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