by Jane Goodger
“I’m sorry, love, but now that you’re safe and sound—” He stopped, chuckling again. “Really? You were attacked by a sheep? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right. Do I look all right to you? I’m covered with stink, I’m cold, and no doubt I have a very large bruise on my backside.” She pretended to be miffed by his question, but truly, it was rather nice to have Graham look at her with concern, to have had him hold her and kiss her. She’d thought she might never see him look at her like that again. What had happened? Was it only that he’d been concerned?
Graham laid a hand aside her face and smiled gently at her. “And you’ve never looked more beautiful to me.”
Katherine narrowed her eyes, suspiciously. “What is wrong? Why are you being so nice to me?”
Graham stood, stepping back. “I am torn. I think that perhaps I may have made some erroneous conclusions.”
Katherine studied him, and realized he wanted to believe her. He did look quite awful, Katherine thought. His gray eyes had dark circles beneath them and his hair was mussed, the edges damp and curling from the rain. Suddenly, it became impossible to go on as they had a second longer. She loved him. She had to make him believe her.
“Oh Graham, I swear to you. I swear I didn’t plan to be caught. You must believe me.”
Graham pulled out another chair and sat down, looking weary, and Katherine’s heart leapt. “God knows I want to believe you, Katherine. When I thought you might be out in that storm, hurt or ill, it made me quite mad. I can’t control my heart, you see. I have tried, but the blasted thing still loves you. So, tell me everything.”
Katherine closed her eyes briefly and gave a small prayer of thanks. He loved her; he’d just said so. But it was just as important that he believe her. “It turns out Claudia Von Haupt is a very silly thing, but I do like her. I cannot believe I’m saying that, given our history together, but not liking her would almost be the same as not liking a lost puppy. Even though I would be happy to strangle her at the moment.”
Katherine went on to tell Graham about Claudia’s fears of marriage, how she was uncertain she even wanted to marry and live in England. “She was telling me all this and it broke my heart because she didn’t know how lucky she was to be marrying you. I won’t lie and tell you I didn’t wish every day that it was me and not her marrying you. But I knew you had to and I cared enough for you to want that for you, too.”
Graham studied his hands a moment before looking up. “Why did she thank you, Katherine? I was under no misapprehension that Claudia was marrying me for any other reason than that her mother wanted her to in order to garner a title. My feelings in this matter are not relevant as they were not engaged.”
Katherine took a deep breath. “It all happened at Rufford Abbey. We, of course, didn’t know the Von Haupts were going to be there. And Claudia was so happy to see me. I still feel guilty about it. It is astounding to me that she could have been so completely unaware of how I felt about her. She asked me to her room and then she started crying. Sobbing, really. She didn’t want to marry you, she said. She was frightened of you. Isn’t that silly?” Katherine asked.
“Not particularly. Many people are. Go on.”
Katherine gave a small shrug. “She begged me to help her. And I have to say, this made me angry. Here she was, getting everything I wanted, and all she could do was complain. I know you don’t want to hear it, Graham, but I was in love with you even then and when she went on and on about how miserable she was, I wanted to slap her. I told her she was lucky to have you and she’d get used to you. She wouldn’t give up. She wanted me to come up with a plan to get her out of the marriage and I told her I’d think on it, simply to make her stop crying.”
Graham narrowed his eyes. “That’s it?” He was clearly skeptical. “I told you she’s a ninny.”
“I find it difficult to believe even Miss Von Haupt is that stupid.” For some reason, Katherine felt compelled to defend her. “She’s not as stupid as she is very young.”
“You two are practically the same age.”
“Yes, but for some reason I think of her more as my sister’s age.” Katherine reached out and clutched at his hand. “I am so sorry about the money, Graham.”
He let out a small laugh. “To be completely honest with you, I haven’t given it a thought since the moment we got married.”
“Truly?”
“I’ve been rather distracted by other thoughts.” The slightest mischievous look came into his eyes, and Katherine’s heart soared.
“Do you believe me, then?”
“I’m afraid Chase insists on it. How you won him over, I will never know.”
“I adore Chase. And he’s a very good judge of character, you know.”
Graham looked down at their joined hands, his brow furrowed. “You are telling me the truth. If I find you are not, Katherine, I fear it could very well destroy me.”
“I swear to you, Graham. I wanted to marry you, but I was resigned to the situation I found myself in. It was horrible to be in love with you and pretend otherwise. To encourage Claudia to go through with it when in my heart of hearts I only wanted you for myself. But I knew it could never be.”
“I’m not completely unhappy, Katherine,” Graham said, a small smile touching his beautiful mouth.
“Tell me you believe me. Tell me that you know I never planned to compromise you. Tell me.”
He drew her face to him and kissed her. “I believe you.”
Katherine threw herself against him with a sob, kissing him over and over. Then she pulled back and frowned at him. “You put me through a terrible time, Graham. From the moment I met you, you’ve been just awful.”
“I know. You bewitched me,” he said, grinning.
“Don’t you smile at me. It won’t work. What on earth were you thinking, trying to seduce a girl you thought was a maid?”
“If I’d been bent on seduction, Mrs. Spencer, I would have succeeded. I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times. And I still haven’t come up with an answer. I was going to ask you to be my mistress.”
Katherine’s mouth opened in shock. “Mistress! You scoundrel.” “Indeed. Mr. Chase was even going to arrange it for me.”
This shocked Katherine even more. The staid and proper Mr. Chase, arranging for Graham to have a mistress at the same time he was negotiating an engagement with another girl? “Why would Mr. Chase do such a thing?”
“Because, my darling, he knew I was in love for the first time in my life.”
Oh, that did take away some of her bluster. Rather all of it. “You were in love with me back in Brighton?”
“Desperately. And when you disappeared, I was a bit lost. And then, there you were, the American heiress I couldn’t have. It was torture. I know what I did was wrong, but how could I stay away from the woman I truly loved?”
Katherine raised one eyebrow. “You could have married me. At least then we’d have some money from my father.”
“I felt my happiness didn’t matter as much as the well-being of my people. I still believe that.” He gave a small shrug.
“I know it had nothing to do with greed,” Katherine said. “Perhaps my father will come around someday when he sees what a wonderful husband you are.” Katherine furrowed her brow as a thought came to her. “Did you ever tell my father of your suspicions about me?”
“No, I did not.”
“So you accepted blame for what happened.”
“Of course,” he said, as if the very idea of laying the blame upon her was absurd.
“Why? I did draw you to that room. You fully believed I had set a trap. Why not tell my father that?”
“I saw no need to have your father angry with you. He clearly adores you and it seemed to me rather poor of me to blame you. You didn’t force me to kiss you, after all. If it had been a trap, I went quite willingly.”
“It wasn’t a trap,” Katherine said darkly.
He grinned. “I know that now.
” Graham let out a breath. “Now, if you don’t mind, I fear my nostrils are singed enough from that smell emanating from you. What say we get you cleaned up.”
Katherine eyed the tub, still steaming and terribly inviting, then looked down at her still-soaked and muddied dress.
“I’ll be your lady’s maid this evening, shall I?”
The question was casual, but when Katherine looked up at Graham, her face flushed from the heat she saw there.
“No funny business,” she said.
Graham gave her an innocent look.
“At least not until I’m clean.” Graham let out a growl and kissed her breathless.
“I’m sorry, love, I cannot make any promises,” he said as he hunkered down to remove her mud-caked boots. “Here, stand up and let’s get this dress off you. And throw it in the rubbish.”
Katherine stood and let Graham unbutton her dress, smiling, her eyes drifting partially closed as his knuckles skimmed her breasts. She was trying to control her breathing, but the sight of his hands slowly undoing her dress was incredibly erotic. When all the buttons to her waist were free, he pushed her gown off her shoulders and kissed what he’d just revealed as he drew her mud-caked dress down and over her hips.
Graham swallowed heavily, the sight of her in her corset and chemise, both still wet, causing a surge of heat. Stepping behind her, he moved her hair—stiff from the mud—aside and made quick work of the loosely tied corset. Off it went, joining the ruined dress on the floor. When he returned to her front, his eyes dipped to where her dusky nipples were clearly showing through her chemise.
“I’m not certain I can do this without ravishing you,” he said, his voice husky.
“Do try, I feel positively filthy. Look at my hair,” Katherine said, pulling up a clump of hardened locks. “Just think of the stink.”
Graham chuckled. “I’ve an idea. Let’s rinse your head before you get into the bath. If you wash your hair in the tub, you’ll soon be washing in a mud puddle.”
He led her to the sink and she leaned over, giving him an enticing view of her backside. He simply could not resist placing his palm against her delicious bum. Katherine let out a little squeal and straightened. “Please, Graham, do try to resist my charms at least until this muck is off me.”
She bent over again and Graham squeezed his eyes shut. Had she no idea what seeing her bent over the sink, her lovely cheeks clearly visible through her damp bloomers, was doing to him? His arousal grew painful, and it was all he could do not to press himself against her just to relieve some of the building pressure. But he knew doing so would do nothing but torture him. With a sigh, he began pumping the water, smiling when she let out a small scream as the cold water hit her head. He continued to work the pump with one hand while she rinsed the mud away, but he couldn’t resist placing a hand on her neck and caressing her there. Katherine finally squeezed the water from her hair, stood, and threw herself against him.
“You are a cad,” she said, then pressed her mouth against his. His hands immediately went to her lovely bum, and he pulled her against him. My God, he would never get enough of her. He’d wanted this feeling since the day he’d met her, this feeling that he could have her whenever he wanted, that he didn’t have to hold back, that he could truly love her without being ashamed.
“Take your bath. Quickly, love. And then we’re going to bed. And you’re going to stay in my bed all night. And all day tomorrow. And I’m going to make love to you a hundred times.”
“That seems excessive to me,” she said with a smile.
“No. It doesn’t,” Graham said. “In you go. Take off that chemise and those silly bloomers and get clean.” Graham turned his back, only because he knew if he watched his wife disrobe completely, she’d never quite make it to the water. Instead, he focused on other things than the fact Katherine was behind him, stripping herself completely. He heard the wet plop of each garment hitting the floor, the sound of the water as she dipped one leg, then the other, and her sigh as she sank into the still-warm water.
“Oh heaven,” she said. Graham, not two feet away from his naked wife, would not describe his current predicament as heaven, but he knew the faster she got clean, the faster he’d have her naked and in his bed. Finally.
He turned. If God had been standing there with a chastising frown, he still could not have resisted. “My God, Katherine.” It was all he could manage, seeing her sitting upright, her uptilted breasts wet and soapy, her skin impossibly smooth and white. With a siren’s smile, she slowly lowered herself into the water until she was completely submerged with only her shiny knees poking above the surface. When she emerged, still smiling, her hair was slicked back from her forehead.
“Come wash my hair, Lord Avonleigh.”
Mrs. Alcourt—or perhaps it had been Juliana—had left a small pot of hair shampoo on a table next to a towel. He held it up to his nose and smiled. “Nice,” he said, dipping his hand in and scooping up a small bit onto his fingers. Katherine leaned back and sighed when he began massaging the soap into her hair, but frowned when he felt the grit on her scalp from the stubborn mud. “Did you take a bath in that mud puddle?”
“I very nearly did. You ought to train your sheep better,” she said.
“It’s very nearly mating season, love, and that ram perhaps saw you as a threat to his territory.”
“But I’m a girl!”
Graham chuckled, loving the feeling of her silky hair beneath his fingers. “I don’t think that ram knew it. But I do,” he said, letting his soap-slippery hands drift slowly down until he cupped her breasts. He moved his thumbs over her nipples, and she arched upward, much like a cat when it’s petted. In fact, the sound she let out resembled a purr. He watched, one side of his mouth lifting as she slipped beneath the water, rinsing her hair and rising up so suddenly, some of the water sloshed over the edge.
“You, madam, are clean.”
“One more time.” And she disappeared again.
“Are you done torturing me?” he asked when she came up again.
“I think you deserve a bit of torture for treating me so shabbily. Shame on you for believing such a horrid thing of me.” She said the words lightly, but Graham knew she was hiding a deep hurt.
“I’m sorry. Come here. Stand up and I’ll dry you off.” She stood and he wrapped the towel around her. She looked up at him, her eyes dark, her long lashes spiked from the bath water, and he could see the doubt in them, the worry. “I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to doubt you, believe me. I thought I was every kind of fool for loving you still.”
Tears filled her eyes and his heart hurt just to see them. “I thought I’d lost you forever,” she said. “That there was no way you would ever believe me. I couldn’t prove my innocence. What changed?”
Graham stared at her lovely face, wishing he could point to a moment when he’d realized fully she never could have betrayed him. “I don’t know. I only know I could no longer go on not believing you. It never made sense to me, and yet I felt I was a fool to believe my heart.”
She got up on her toes and kissed his jaw. “I don’t blame you for doubting me. The evidence was damning. I only wish you’d come to your senses a bit earlier.”
She looked adorable wrapped up in the towel, her feet bare on the cool tile. “As do I,” he said, then scooped her up, ignoring her squeal.
“What are you doing?” she asked, laughing.
“Carrying you off to my lair to ravish you.”
“Oh good,” she said, and kissed his neck. “I rather like being ravished.”
It seemed as though he flew up the stairs, her body molded to his, arms wrapped tightly around him. “How would you know? You haven’t been ravished yet.”
She pulled back and gave him a skeptical look. “I haven’t? I quite remember feeling as if I’d been ravished.”
He stopped right before entering his bedroom, his heart nearly bursting. “You have not been ravished. Not properly. But that is goin
g to change tonight.”
Mr. Chase was in his room when they entered. They startled the old gent, who appeared to be dozing on a chair set in one corner.
“No need for you this evening, Mr. Chase,” Graham said, throwing back his covers with one hand before depositing a giggling Katherine on the bed.
Chase stood with great dignity and nodded. “Very good, sir.” But just as he was closing the door, he smiled and gave Katherine a wink.
“You have him wrapped around your finger, don’t you?” Katherine shrugged. “I have no idea what you are talking about.” She went to turn out the lamp, but Graham stopped her.
“Tonight I want to see you.”
Katherine lay back, her head propped against the fluffy pillows. It was the first time she’d been in her husband’s bed and she rather liked it. His was much finer than hers and his pillows softer. It would be a pity to return to her own lumpy mattress and skimpy pillow.
Graham started to undress right in front of her, and Katherine realized she was about to get her first look at her husband completely naked. And she, other than the towel, was also bare. On other nights, her room had been nearly dark, with only the dim light from the fire lighting her room, and she’d never been unclothed. He disrobed quickly, giving his ruined shoes a grim look before tossing them aside.
And then he was naked, every glorious inch of him. He had a fine form, a well-muscled chest sprinkled with a nice amount of manly hair and a firm, flat stomach. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look below that enticing line of hair that seemed to point directly to his . . . man part. Though she did want to take a look at the part of him that had been inside of her. His body was so unlike hers that Katherine was fascinated by it. She took a shaky breath, darting a look to his arousal, jutting forward, then up to his face. He looked slightly bemused and very intense. She’d missed seeing that heat in his eyes when he looked at her. He came forward to stand beside the bed, his member nearly even with her head. Goodness, it was so . . . male.
“Touch me, Katherine.”
She darted a look to his face, then back down, knowing he meant for her to touch his member. Holding out one finger, she touched the very tip, startling a bit when it moved. He took her hand gently and wrapped her hand around him, squeezing, showing her how he wanted her to touch him. As she explored, amazed at the silky hardness of him, a small drop glistened at the tip and she touched it with her index finger.