Yes, she wanted him. And her attraction to him had only bloomed with each moment spent in his company. Yet the sum of those moments was so small. She’d known Andrew for months before marrying him, and even then her feelings had been as much agitation as passion. She’d been so young, so unsure of who she was and what she was worth. So naive about what passed between a married man and woman. And then her dreams became a nightmare—and the man she’d idolized became her tormentor.
Andrew wasn’t there where he usually lurked at the edges of her mind. When she sought the memories, only John Sharp’s face came into view. And yet he held no power over her. She’d struck him and he’d fallen, impotent to hurt Rose, unable to strike at either of them again. The power of her relief in that moment had altered her, lightened her, as if she’d somehow freed herself of Andrew by standing up to Sharp.
The snick and slide of a key turning in the lock drew Kate’s attention to the door. Ben swept in, carrying a tray. As he set it on the desk, she cataloged a porcelain teapot wrapped in a pretty knitted tea cozy, two cups, a knob of butter, and a plate of scones.
“The message has been sent, and I thought you might be hungry.”
Kate watched him shrug his overcoat from his broad shoulders and trapped her lower lip between her teeth. The hunger she felt had nothing to do with food.
“Not at the moment. Perhaps after a while.”
He slipped free of his suit jacket and laid it over the back of the chair before sitting and reaching for her hands. When she lifted them into his, he began rubbing her skin, attempting to warm her. But she was already warm. His presence kindled a delicious heat low in her belly.
“Tell me what happened.” He asked the question quietly, gently, but with a tone of cajoling. She suspected he knew how much she wished to speak of anything else.
“At first he didn’t realize I was there. I’d gone to fetch water and rags to clean Rose’s wounds. They’d just had a row when I arrived. Rose said he wouldn’t return for days. That was the usual way. They’d argue, he’d attack her, and then he would disappear for days at a time.”
“But he came back.”
“Yes. I came into the room and found him with his hands at her throat. I shouted and he turned on me, snapping and snarling like an angry dog.”
“He hit you.” Ben’s voice turned steely, a muscle ticking at the line of his jaw.
“He pushed me and I fell.”
Ben squinted, as if dubious that the whole ruckus was so simply explained.
“Then he pulled me up by my hair.”
Ben whispered an expletive under his breath. She thought he said the word bastard.
“He ripped my shirt. I didn’t know what he intended, so I reached for my cudgel and—”
“Pardon? Your what?”
Kate pulled her right hand from Ben’s and reached into her skirt pocket to lift the short, weighted object out for his inspection. “Sally gave it to me. Our maid. She said her brother had given it to her to use for her own protection.”
Ben lifted the piece from her hands and hefted it in his palm. “You might have told me you had this. I would have worried about you a little less.”
The notion that he worried about her, cared about her, made her smile. “You worried about me?”
He looked up, his gaze lingering on her mouth. “Constantly.”
Kate lifted her hand to touch his face, drawing her finger along his full lower lip before leaning in to kiss him. Just before her mouth touched his, he pulled back. “Did someone hurt you, Kate? Before Jack Sharp. Before today.”
The question stunned her, forced her to stop and catch her breath. She eased away from him and rose from her chair, ignoring the mild ache in her shoulder and flare of pain in her hip. She walked to the window and pulled the lace curtain aside. Fenchurch Street looked quiet, idyllic, as a slow-falling flutter of snowflakes floated down onto the gaslit street.
“Yes, someone hurt me. He was my husband. Andrew Guthrie.”
Relief poured over her like warm treacle. She’d never told a soul and it was such a relief to finally speak the truth. “I’ve never told anyone, not even my brother.”
Ben’s footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet, but she heard him move behind her before she felt his hands on her. He rubbed her shoulders, then combed a finger through her hair, slipping all of the remaining pins from her ruined coiffure.
When she felt his lips against her hair, she leaned into him, sinking back against his tall, muscular frame.
He wrapped his arms around her, settling his chin on the top of her head. “You deserve so much better.”
“I spent so many years asking what I could have done, why he was so angry with me all of the time. I’m ashamed to admit how long it took for me to place the blame at his feet rather than my own.”
Ben repeated his words, low and husky, against her hair. “You never deserved any of it. He was a fool to do anything but love you.”
Kate turned and Ben dipped his head, as if he meant to kiss her. She reached for him, urging him closer, but then pulled back.
“Who is Anne?”
He reared his head back, though he still held her in his arms, shock clear in his gaze. “Anne? Anne Sutton? How do you know that name?”
“You said her name that night I followed you to your lodgings.” Kate skimmed her gaze over his mouth, recalling that first kiss. “Before you kissed me. Perhaps you thought you were kissing her.”
The teasing tone of her words didn’t inspire any amusement in him.
“I knew who I was kissing. I wasn’t that drunk.” He lifted a hand and ran the back of his fingers along her uninjured cheek. “I wanted to kiss you from the moment I saw you.”
Kate savored the way his touch made her belly flutter. But she still needed to know the answer to her question.
“But who is she? You did say her name.”
He inhaled deeply through his nose and looked at the ceiling a moment before speaking. “I knew her many years ago. I was a law student then at the Inner Temple, following in my father’s footsteps. But I was dissatisfied with theory and books and wanted to take action. I left off studying law to join the Metropolitan Police and asked Anne to marry me.”
He paused and bit his lip, scrutinizing her carefully, and Kate realized her eyes had gone wide. She reached up for the front of his vest.
“Go on. Please. Tell me the rest.”
“She refused me. She blamed it on my decision to join the police force, but I later learned she’d long harbored affection for my friend. A good friend and classmate. Edward Langdon.”
Ben grasped Kate’s hand and moved it down to his vest pocket.
“Take it out.”
She tugged his pocket watch out and a folded piece of paper came with it.
“Yes, that too.”
He turned the pocket watch in her palm so that she could see the back and read an inscription there.
“Always brothers.”
Kate looked up to find him smiling one of his breath-stealing smiles.
“My, my. You read Latin, you conceal a cudgel in your pocket. I can’t wait to learn all your secrets, Kate.”
He knew the worst of it, and he still smiled at her with admiration. The seduction in his tone melted her.
“My father was a doctor. I learned a bit of Latin here and there.” She tapped the slip of paper he held in his hand. “But what’s this?”
“See for yourself.”
Kate unfolded the document and read that Ben had been suspended from the detective force on the very day she’d met him in The Ten Bells. No details regarding the cause of his suspension were included, except for the single word Conduct.
He answered her unspoken question. “A scuffle with a suspect.”
There was more. She could see it in his eyes.
“I was reinstated earlier today.”
“That explains the bruises and the pain you were in the night we met.” Kate lifted her hand to touch the
skin near his eye and across the high arch of his cheek where the bruises had been. “So you weren’t on duty when I asked to help you find Rose?”
Ben lifted a hand to tug at his ear, shifting his gaze to the waning fire in the grate. “I’m afraid not. No.”
He turned back to her with his head tipped, eyes hooded, as if gauging how angry she might be.
“Then what of our wager?”
She loved the grin of relief that broke over his face, revealing his dimples.
“I was sure you’d forgotten.”
“Not at all. You found Rose all on your own, so I do owe you a kiss.”
Kate leaned into him, lifting her heels off the floor and her face toward his. But he didn’t bend down to meet her. Instead he lifted his hand, cupped her jaw, and ran his thumb along the edge of her bottom lip.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet, low, and smoky deep. “There are two reasons I must decline.” He slid his hand down to wrap it around the back of her neck, slipping his fingers into the hair at her nape. “In a way you did help with Rose. Your presence would have put her at ease. I considered how you might have treated her, and it caused me to take more care.”
He leaned closer, and his heat, the familiar spicy scent of him, made Kate breathless. “A-and the other reason?”
“You owe me nothing. Everything between us should be freely given.”
Kate wanted to kiss him again, more than she’d ever wanted to kiss anyone in her life.
A knock sounded on the door and she stilled in his arms.
“Who could it be?”
He ignored her question and kissed the tip of her nose before stepping away and unlatching the lock on the door. Two young men entered wordlessly, carrying a tub half-filled with water between them. An older woman followed with a bucket of steaming water and a few pieces of clothing folded over her arm. She emptied the water into the tub the moment the boys sat it near the fireplace, and placed the clothing at the edge of the bed. One of the young men slipped a piece of soap from his pocket and placed it on the desk.
None of them said a word, but Ben thanked them each in turn and placed a coin in their palms as they exited the room. Then he turned to Kate.
“I thought you might like a soak. I’ll wait down in the pub. Half an hour?”
He’d lifted his suit jacket from the back of the chair and started toward the door before Kate found her tongue. “No.”
When he stopped and turned back to face her, Ben’s gaze held a trace of concern.
“Stay with me. I don’t want you to go.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Stay with me.”
The firelight lit her skin with a glow as richly burnished as her hair and Ben had never seen more beautiful eyes than the clear blue-gray gaze of Kate Guthrie as she stared at him.
“Kate.”
She moved toward him while lifting her hands to the buttons of her shirtwaist. Slipping the fastenings one by one, she stopped just within his reach.
“Help me?” Kate spoke the words as a question but didn’t wait for an answer before clasping his hand and positioning his fingers near her still-fastened buttons.
Though she’d moved toward him like a seductress, he saw the slight quivering of her lip, the nervousness in her gaze. But he saw desire in her eyes too, and it seared a trail straight through his body—chest burning, groin aching, hands itching to touch her. He’d been attracted to Kate the moment she’d walked into The Ten Bells, despite his vow, despite the fact that no other woman had turned his head in years. But his hunger for her now was so potent it made him tremble.
“Yes, love. I’ll help you.”
Ben damned his shaking hands as he slipped the last of the small pearl buttons at the front of Kate’s blouse. A delicate silk chemise embroidered with purple flowers peeked through the panels of her blouse. Beyond the keyhole opening of her chemise, gathered at her neck with a flimsy silken knot, the luscious curve of her cleavage made his fingers itch to reach inside and stroke her flesh.
Her words stoked his lust-clogged thoughts. “Touch me.”
Fumbling in his haste, Ben tugged at her blouse, slipping it down her arms, then untangled the knot of her chemise, tugging it low to slide his fingers over the swell of her breasts. He dipped his head to taste her skin where his fingers stroked her. She reached back to begin loosening her stays, thrusting her breasts so high he saw the peach dusk of her nipples at the edge her corset, just under the fabric of her chemise.
She turned around, gazing back at him over her shoulder, and lifted her hair out his way.
“Would you help unlace me?”
Ben’s fingers had never felt less nimble. He reached for her corset, tugging and pulling, blessing the swish of fabric against fabric when one blasted lacing finally released an inch more of her. When they’d finally liberated her from the fabric cage, Ben lifted her chemise over her head, then slid his hands slowly down her back, smoothing away the imprint of her corset. The fastening on her skirt was blessedly easy, but she wore several petticoats underneath. When she finally turned around, standing before him in only her drawers and stockings, it took a measure of strength Ben didn’t know he possessed to help her step out of her remaining clothing and into the tub. He longed to touch her, taste her, run his tongue along every inch of her body, but she needed tenderness, care, more than he needed to ease the ache in his groin.
Kate leaned back in the tub, her petite figure sinking chin-deep into the water. She searched around the bottom of the tub and lifted a handful of sopping fabric out toward him.
Ben silently blessed the innkeeper’s wife for her foresight and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He took the fabric from Kate and scrubbed it against the square of soap the innkeeper’s son had left on the desk. The calming odor of lavender rose from the soapy cloth.
“It smells of lavender, like you.”
He lifted the washcloth so that Kate could smell it too. She smiled. “You know my scent?”
“Mmm. It’s haunted me every day since we met.”
He scrubbed the cloth gently along her arm, sweeping it across her neck and shoulders and down the length of her other arm. Then he dipped lower, whispering the cloth over her breasts, watching her nipples, just below the water, stiffen at his touch. Then lower, sliding his hand down her belly, intent on exploring the curves of her body as much as getting her clean. When the cloth dropped from his fingers, he couldn’t stop touching her, skimming his hands down to her hips, touching the crease of her thigh, just cresting the curls at the apex of her legs.
Kate’s breathing quickened, her eyes lit with a desire as deep and profound as his own. “Please. Don’t stop.”
Ben loved how she invited him to touch her. There was nothing coquettish in her tone, no feigned shyness, no attempt to play demure. His Kate was bold, honest, the bravest woman he’d ever known.
Slipping his finger through her curls, he leaned in close, pressing his mouth to her temple. He kissed her as he slipped his finger inside. Tight, warm, wet—he pressed deeper and savored her moan. Moving his mouth to ear, he traced the outer shell with his tongue, then whispered in her ear as he began to stroke her. “Kate. Beautiful Kate. So brave.”
She reached down to grasp his wrist and he thought she wished him to stop.
“Come in with me. There’s room enough for two.”
Ben doubted very much that both of them would fit in the narrow basin, but a wave of desire washed over him with Kate’s words.
“You’ll have to take this off.” She eased the knot of his neck cloth loose and began unbuttoning his shirt. “And those.” Tipping her head, she glanced down at his trousers and a deliciously mischievous grin lifted the edges of her mouth.
“Kate.”
He spoke her name as a plea and a question. What she offered him was more than he deserved but everything he wanted, had wanted from the moment he’d met her. But he needed to know she was certain. He needed to know she was free.
It wasn’t
the time for questions and he agonized over breaking the spell, but he had to know.
She’d slowed her progress, only unbuttoning enough of his shirt to slip her hand inside. Stifling a moan, his breath caught when her finger grazed his nipple and she rested her palm, warm and wet, against his chest. Could she feel his frantic heartbeat? He prayed she did. He wanted her to know what she did to him.
“Forgive me, Kate, but are you…” Ben faltered at the quizzical look in her eyes and the way her hand tensed against his skin. Yet he had to know, had to ask. “Are you engaged?”
She stilled as if he’d broken the spell, ruining a moment that might never come again.
Damn! Damn his curious mind, his constant doubt. He’d never intended to trust another woman, to allow anyone into his life, yet Kate had slipped beneath every defense. Her scent, her voice, her bloody-minded determination, her heart for those in need—everything about her drew him toward her. He’d met her at his worst and yet she still gazed at him with desire, always offering him a measure of trust and respect that he craved.
He waited, drowning in fear, hanging by a tattered thread of hope. He’d take back the bloody question if it meant he could see that wanton fire in her gaze again, and feel her hands moving over his body.
“No. I promise you—”
Her mouth was soft and welcoming when he kissed her, cutting off her words. Ben didn’t need her promises. He needed to kiss her, to touch her and taste her sweetness. When they were both breathless, he lifted his head.
“Are you ready to come out of there yet?”
“You’re not coming in?”
Glancing down at his bulky frame, he shook his head. “I think we’ll need a larger tub.”
Her answering smile made his chest flutter like a caged bird. That smile spoke of more than this moment, more moments, a future between them, and a streak of possessiveness, the kind he disdained in other men, swept through him. It burned him from the inside with a blazing certainty—Kate should be his.
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