It was a dangerous tack to sail into, that line of questioning. He let out a breath, and then—she was watching his eyes—his pupils contracted, slowly but surely, until all that malevolent attention focused on Kate. If his lack of attention had made her shiver, that focus froze her to the bone.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Why would you keep her from me?”
He took a step toward her, and Kate flattened herself against the wall.
“Why would you keep her from her lawful husband?” Harcroft asked. “Why would you think she needed to stay away from me? Do you imagine she has anything to fear from me?”
He took another step. Kate made to sidle away from him, but he rammed his hand into her shoulder, slamming her into the wall. The force of the blow pushed her against one of the carved cornices that decorated the doorway. The wood embellishment bit into her back. Kate stifled a cry of pain.
“Because surely, any obedient wife would know she need feel no fear of me right now. That’s what you feel, isn’t it? Fear?” His hand clenched on her shoulder. “Louisa would want for nothing at all, so long as she followed the commands of her husband. Any God-fearing woman would never set a foot outside the path dictated to her by the man she’d made a sacred vow to honor.”
“Get your hands off me.” Kate set her hands on Harcroft’s chest and pushed, but the man didn’t move. “I don’t know what you’re speaking about.”
“But then, what would you understand of God-fearing women?” Harcroft pushed close into her. She choked on the angry smell of smoke on his clothing. Taproom smoke. “A God-fearing woman wouldn’t lead her husband astray. When I left Ned this morning, he had promised to start canvassing immediately. Yet not a few hours later, he was traipsing about the village, gazing into your eyes. Why would you distract him from his duty, if you weren’t afraid of what he might uncover?”
“You’ve lost your senses.” She pitched her voice to carry. Any second now, a footman would hear them. He would intervene, and then Harcroft would have to let her go.
“Have I? God-fearing women don’t steal other men’s wives away. Do they, Kathleen?”
Maybe the servants wouldn’t come. But Kate wasn’t the sort to cower and wait. She was tired of feeling scared, of cowering and waiting for help. She grasped the ends of his cravat and twisted, hard. The cloth scraped against her hands. He choked, and pulled his hands away from her involuntarily. He scrabbled at his neck, grabbed the ends of the cloth she’d ripped loose and pulled it off.
Kate skittered sideways.
He glared at her. “You goddamned bitch.”
“I told you to get your hands off me.” Kate’s heart was pounding.
He raised his arm in threat.
What she said next wouldn’t matter—not to him, she didn’t think, because a man who would hit a woman didn’t need an excuse. But it mattered to her that she not placate him, that she not give him even that much power over her. She balled her hands. “Get out of my house.”
His fist flew. She just had time to turn away, to keep from getting the brunt of the blow against her mouth. His hand smashed against her neck as she turned. For one second, she was so numb, so surprised that he’d actually done it, that she didn’t even feel anything. Then she felt the stinging ache of it.
He grabbed her elbow and tried to pull her around. Kate ground the heel of her shoe into his boot. He yelped—a decidedly unmasculine sound—but wrenched her arm. A shooting pain traveled up her shoulder, and she bit her lip.
“Where is my wife, Kathleen?”
His breath felt clammy against her ear, and she shook her head.
He only yanked her arm again, harder. “I said, where is my wife, Kathleen?”
Kate pressed her lips together in defiance. There was nothing Harcroft could do to make her divulge that information. Every violent impulse he indulged now he would visit on Louisa a thousandfold if he found her. Harcroft would eventually have to leave her house. But if Kate spoke now, Louisa would be stuck with her husband for the rest of her life, however long—or short—that might be. Kate would not speak. Harcroft pulled harder, and the shooting pain burst into stars.
“You think you understand,” Harcroft ground out into her ear. “You don’t know anything. I love my wife. You’re completely wrong. I just want to keep her safe.”
“You should be careful,” Kate said as distinctly as she could manage with her cheek planted against the wall. “I’m a woman. I’m quite delicate, and I think I might faint if you continue.”
“Some women,” he spat, “have delicate sensibilities. Then there are women like you—false serpents in human form, who tempt real women to go astray. Where in God’s name is my wife?”
His fingers gripped her arm; Kate could feel his nails press into her skin, cutting through the fabric at her wrist. She took a deep breath and shoved ineffectually at him with her free elbow, but he didn’t move.
“If I pull back your arm,” he said cruelly, “eventually, it will pop out of its socket. In the process, it will cause you excruciating pain. I should hate to cause pain to anyone.”
“Even if ‘anyone’ happens to be a serpent in human form?”
“I am,” he said, “essentially a gentle, unassuming creature.”
He sounded as if he really meant it. She held her breath and stared at the wall he’d pressed her cheek into. And then she laughed. She laughed even though she knew it would enrage him. She laughed, even though she knew he would follow through on his threat and wrench her arm from its socket.
She laughed so that Harcroft would know that no matter how hard he hit, or how badly he hurt her, he could not win. That she would not be the weak, sniveling creature who waited on help to arrive, who dithered before obstacles until it was too late.
And he needed to know that now, because if she scraped and begged before him, sniveling for mercy, he would just visit his wrath upon her all the harder.
“You aren’t stronger than me,” she said. “Not with all your muscles. No matter how hard you strike me, you aren’t stronger than me. And that must make you furious.”
His eyes glittered with all the fury she’d anticipated. His hand tightened on her wrist; she rose on her toes as he turned her arm. She kept that smile on her face, flattened against the wall, her eyes clenched tightly shut. She didn’t dare let him see how much he hurt her.
And then Harcroft gave a pained cry of his own, and that wrenching pressure on her arm vanished. Kate turned in time to see Ned lift him by the lapels of his coat and slam him against the wall.
“I told you,” Ned said, his voice gravelly, “I told you to leave my wife alone. But no. You didn’t listen.”
Harcroft waved his legs furiously in the air, but he was as ineffective as a beetle overturned on the pavement, struggling to right itself. “No, I told you,” he squeaked. The whine of his voice seemed impotent against Ned’s dark anger. “I told you I would find my wife by any means necessary.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” Ned said in a dark voice. “You’ve driven away the woman you believe you deserve, and so, in the absence of having your own wife to do violence to, you’ve chosen mine.”
“I—”
“To think,” Ned continued, “there was a time when I actually respected you. When I first came back to England, I took pity on you. When you told me Louisa was missing, I felt sorrow. I have no idea when or how your wife disappeared. I was out of England, as you know. But as matters stand, if my wife helped Louisa escape you, she has my full, unmitigated support. If I had been here, I would have stolen her away myself.”
Oh.
Even with her arm tingling, Kate felt a sudden rush of warmth and safety at those words. He meant them. He did.
“You can’t mean that. You can’t mean to foster such suborning. It will lead to chaos, if women make decisions—”
“I should hardly think so,” Ned said. He didn’t seem to be getting tired, holding Harcroft against the wall with one hand, but he gave the man a s
hake for good measure. “I don’t see the fabric of my life eroding, just because my wife happens to have a brain in her head. In fact, it’s actually one of her most attractive qualities. If you’d allowed your wife to make a few decisions of her own, instead of trying to control her with blows, perhaps you wouldn’t be here.”
Harcroft didn’t say anything. He’d stopped struggling against Ned’s inexorable hold. But his lips compressed to a hard line, and his eyes blazed with fury. His breathing was ragged; by contrast, Ned’s chest rose and fell as if he were not doing anything more strenuous than sipping tea.
It was in that moment that Kate realized something quite startling. Her husband was magnificent. It was not just the contour of his arm, that hidden strength that held the man who’d threatened her against the wall. It was not just the ease with which he defended her.
It was that assumption he made, without even glancing at her, that she was doing the right thing, that she was strong rather than weak, decisive rather than dithering. It was as if he had turned everything everyone saw of her upside down.
“Kate,” he said, without taking his eyes off Harcroft, “what should we do with this carrion-eater?”
“We’ve sent him home once. I suppose we can do it again.” Kate shook her head and gingerly touched her wrist. “We haven’t any use for him here.”
“Shall I decorate his face for him, before he takes his leave of our fine hospitality?”
“I should think there has been enough decoration for now.” Kate thought of the fine network of bruises she’d seen on Louisa’s arm. She thought about the spreading ache from her fingers on up to her shoulder. “The last thing we need at this point is violence. Isn’t that the case, Harcroft? I say that because I am, in fact, a gentle creature.”
“There,” Ned said. “Now you see why I turn to my wife for consideration in these important decisions. Because if it were up to me, I would break every bone in your body before I tossed you in the water trough to cool off. What do you think, Kate? May I break one rib? Please?”
Kate smiled. “If he comes back, break everything.”
“There. Mercy and justice, all in one delightful package. I shall put you down now, and you will walk out the door.”
Harcroft licked his lips and turned to them as Ned let him down. “You will regret this,” he said. “You will both regret this.”
“I know,” Ned said, shaking his head sadly. “I already do. I shall have to make do with envisioning your body bloodied and in need of a physician. But we all suffer disappointments.”
“I won’t give up. You can’t send me away.”
“And I—” here Ned stepped forward “—I am not going to let you hurt my wife. Not for any reason, and certainly not for no reason at all, which is what you appear to have. You are not welcome here any longer, Harcroft, and you’d damned better crawl off and lick your wounds. You have some nerve, threatening my wife just because you can’t beat your own any longer. Now scramble away.”
Harcroft took one step toward Ned, his hands clenched into fists. And then he turned—and he scrambled.
Kate watched Harcroft scamper down the hall. Beside her, Ned’s chest heaved. He flexed out his hand. He stared at the empty hall, his eyes focused unseeingly on nothing. His head bowed, finally, and he scrubbed that hand through his hair.
“Hell,” he said. “I think I might have finally said too much. What have I done?”
Saved me, she thought, before the rest of his speech caught up to her.
“You mean—you knew?”
He looked away. “Um. If you mean, did I happen on Lady Harcroft in the shepherd’s cottage a few days prior? Well. Perhaps.”
Oh, God. Kate’s stomach fluttered. “Are you dreadfully angry with me for not disclosing it earlier? Do you want me to stop?”
“I am ablaze with curiosity as to how you managed such a tremendous feat in secret. But angry?” He looked in her eyes. “It took me years to trust myself. You’re allowed to wait at least a week. Now, if you had actually loaded the pistol Lady Harcroft pulled on me, then I would have been wounded by your mistrust.”
“She didn’t.” Kate’s hand covered her mouth.
“She did.” He smiled faintly. “But you needn’t worry. We saw eye-to-eye shortly after.”
He let out a sigh. “Damn me. I had it all under control—Harcroft actually believed I was on his side. I had allayed all his suspicions. One little setback and the next thing I know, I’ve ruined it all.”
“Ned. Are you joking?”
“If I had been in control of myself—”
Kate held a finger up to his lips. “I have had it up to here with your control,” she said, her voice shaking. “There is a time and a place for control. And that time and place is not when a man is threatening to rip your wife’s arm out of its socket. That is the moment when you are allowed to lose control and crush him like the worm that he is. You think too much of your control.”
He looked down at her, the afternoon light catching his eyelashes in gold. “Do I?”
“Yes.” Kate shook the last of the smarting pain out of her wrist and looked up at Ned in return. If she said the word, he might run after Harcroft and pound the man to a delightful pulp. Or, better yet…
She placed her hand on his and gazed into his eyes with all the pent-up yearning of the past three years. “In fact,” she said with a tight little smile, “I wish you would lose control again.”
Chapter Fifteen
CONTROL. IT WASN’T EVEN some last vestige of control that had kept Ned from breaking every last bone in Harcroft’s body. It had been nothing more than an animal instinct to protect what was his, to stay here, growling, hunkered down over the object of his desire in unthinking possession.
Desire? Hell, desire barely covered it. His hands tingled with the need to feel that visceral crunch of breaking bone. If Ned shut his eyes, he still saw that satisfying image of Harcroft lying bruised and bloody in the aftermath of his fury. It wasn’t about reason or rationality; it was about that hot, unending rage that had filled Ned when he’d stepped into the corridor and seen that bastard—that pretentious, arrogant bastard—with his hands on Kate.
Everything had ceased to exist but the roar in his ears, and the next thing he realized, he’d latched his hands around the bastard’s throat. He flexed his fingers even now, but he could not shake off that murderous hatred. Harcroft had placed his hands on Kate.
He turned to her. Her breathing was only now beginning to even out; her hands were trembling. She hadn’t shaken one bit when that bastard was manhandling her; she hadn’t even betrayed the slightest tremor. She’d been as strong and unyielding as a stone cliff battered by the ocean’s rage. And perhaps that was why he’d held on to his civility by the bare thread that remained—because she had been strong enough not to lose control. And if she could maintain her cool demeanor…well, he could, too.
He didn’t know what to say to her, and so he reached out and took her hands in his. Her bones seemed so damned thin, so impossibly fragile. He could feel, now, the aftereffects of that frightening episode. Her hands were cold. Her eyes, when he looked down into them, were wide, as if just beyond Ned’s shoulder she could see the vista of what might have been. She let out a shaky breath—one, then another, and Ned looked down, away from her fear. If he let himself see it any longer, he would lose control. He would leave now and hunt Harcroft down. God knows what he might do if he actually caught him. Ned felt capable of any violence.
“Are you well?” He knew the question was stupid even as he asked it.
Still, she nodded.
Looking down had been a mistake, too. Because now he was caught by the veins in her wrist, that thin spider-tracery that formed a network. He could feel her pulse slamming against his fingertips. And there, at the edge of the lace of her cuff… Oh, God.
Every scrap of discipline kindled into heat. He slid her sleeve up her arm.
He had no words for the inchoate rage that welled
up, hot and bitter, in his stomach. He had no label to put to the emotion that filled him in that devastating instant. Because there, tracing up her delicate skin, were the unmistakable red marks that Harcroft’s fingers had left on her. They were branded deep into her skin. The imprints were bright red for now; in a few hours’ time, they would purple and bruise.
That bastard had hurt his wife.
He looked up into Kate’s eyes. He couldn’t think what to say, how to apologize. He’d been enforcing an artificial distance between them because he feared if he spent much more time in her intoxicating presence, he’d succumb to complete savagery.
He’d been right. Language deserted him. There was no room for words in his mind; just that limitless, unspeakable rage. He held her hand—gently, even though every muscle in his body screamed to contract.
And then, as if to tempt his anger, he saw the impression the wall had made against her cheek—the red-on-white mark where that bastard had slammed her into the plaster, the tiny scratch where the rough surface had drawn a bead of blood.
“I take it all back.” He could not clench his hand around hers, could not even squeeze his hand. He had to stay in control. “I am going to kill him.”
It wouldn’t make it better, though. Nothing he did now would heal that cut, would undo the pain she had felt. She’d needed him, and once again, he had been gone, thinking of himself when he ought to have been thinking of her. He’d vowed that he would find a way to be a good husband not two days ago, and already he was forsworn.
Worse, whatever semblance of civility he had, he needed just to keep from crushing her hand. All his dark wants, all his savage desires—they were welling up in him now. A gentleman would walk away until he gained control—but the last thing Kate deserved after her bravery was solitude.
“I am going to kill him,” Ned repeated, “just as soon as I work up the fortitude to let go of your hand.”
“Don’t,” Kate said. And for a second that word, too, was meaningless—that silly implication that Harcroft’s life ought to be spared. She could not have meant anything so vapid.
The Carhart Series Page 55