“Do it then,” she urged, arching against him, meeting him thrust for thrust as her nails raked his back and buttocks in a desperate effort to be ever closer to him. His pace increased until they were both gasping, until suddenly Jack stopped, with sweat dripping from his brow. Before she might even question him, he rolled on to his back with them still joined and pressed her back until she was sitting above him. “Ride me, my bonny Kitty, ’tis yer turn to fook me now.”
Lost in the whirlwind of passion, Kitty did as she was told and began rocking against him, levering herself up recklessly before driving back down on him. He grasped her hips in his powerful hands, pulling her with each descent roughly down as he thrust up into her. Again and still again, they were both crying out into the dim light of the room, their cries echoing against the walls. Kitty arched back, feeling the angle of her penetration change, and caught her breath as the tension coiled and spiraled out from her core as she rode him. “Oh, Jack! Oh, Jack!”
Jack felt her clench about him, felt her release pulsing against him in a rush of heat and gave himself over to defeat. Gripping her hips, he pulled her down one last time against his thrusting drive and lost himself with a hoarse shout that blended with her vocal climax. Kitty fell against him, resting her cheek against his chest as her arms curved under his and around his back. He wrapped his arms around her as well, hugging her to him as he panted deeply, trying to catch his breath, lost in the wonder of what had just happened between them.
As he did every time they made love. It astonished him anew each time. How could it possibly get any better, he always thought, and somehow it always did. His Kitty was so responsive, so passionate. There would never be enough of it to satisfy him completely. She had become a drug to him, so addicted was he to her sweet body. Yet it was so much more. Not just passion, but caring. Friendship. And more.
Not caring to analyze it any more deeply, he turned with her until she was curled by his side. Her long hair tangled about her body and clung to her damp brow. Her entire body flushed with pleasure and repletion. With a tender smile, she reached up to caress his beard-roughened cheek. “Jack,” she sighed, closing her eyes and bending her legs up as she rolled over onto her back. One hand fell up on her pillow, circling her head, while the other scratched lazily at his chin.
Replete with love, Kitty drowsily watched Jack’s face as his hand wandered over her hips and across her stomach, tracing the line of her ribs and the underside of her breast up and over her shoulder, before working his way back down once more. He looked thoughtful.
“What are you doing, my lord?”
“Memorizing you, my love.”
“Perhaps I might just give you a photograph?”
“No, I’m memorizing you so I can always picture you like this. No photograph could show me such a thing.”
“I’ve heard of places that take photographs like that.”
“Why do I need that when I have you here with me?” he asked lightly, then frowned, remembering the conversation earlier. “That reminds me, why was your mother saying you would remain here? Aren’t you returning with us to Scotland? I assumed you would.”
“I’m not sure yet what I will do, Jack,” she said, not wanting to admit to him her unwillingness to return to Scotland only to watch him turn one day to the arms of another woman, his next lover, and eventually to a wife someday. That she thought it might be better to wonder from afar rather than experience the heartbreak first hand.
“You should return with us,” he insisted. “It would save you from those biddies tonight and others like them. Besides, I am not done with you yet and nor would I wager are you done with me.”
“No, I’m not, but…” Kitty bit her lip.
“But?” Jack asked the question as Kitty turned her big, green eyes upon him, eyes so soft, tender and full of emotion that felt his heart clench in response. Suddenly he knew. He knew what she was going to say and sought to stop it with a jolt of panic, but he was too late.
“I want you to know, Jack, there would never be a day I am done with you.” Her eyes held his calmly, not betraying the nerves jumping beneath the surface. The time had come for him to know how she felt…and to assure him she had no expectations from him. “I want you to know I love you, Jack,” she whispered so softly that he barely heard the words.
Jack shook his head in denial. “It’s not so, Kitty, you just think it is. Many women equate what they feel during an affair with…”
Kitty stilled his rebuttal with a finger over his lips, before returning to stroking his chin and cheek tenderly. “I love the man you are – your courage, sense of duty, reliability. I love that you make me laugh and make me angry and make me feel like a goddess. I love that you care for my daughter so dearly and I love the idea of what an incredible father you could be.”
“But still,” he persisted in arguing.
“I felt this way long before we began sleeping together,” she told him, to cease his retort.
Those words stopped Jack’s thoughts dead. “What?”
“I’m saying this isn’t something new, Jack,” Kitty persisted. “I just thought it was time I told you and before you say anything else, I am not looking for you to say anything, or asking anything of you. I know you are content with our arrangement as it is, but before you return to Scotland, I just wanted you to know.”
A thousand thoughts flew through Haddington’s mind. An encaged panic. A rush of powerful self-satisfaction. A potent urge to flee the continent. Another compulsion to take her in his arms and say the words that had never left his lips. Trying to weed out the feelings of alarm ringing through his head, he pulled her into a tender embrace, tucking her head beneath his chin so she couldn’t watch and attempt to interpret the emotions he knew were showing on his face.
He cared for Kitty, true enough. Probably more than he had ever cared for another person aside from his sisters and mother. It certainly wasn’t a sisterly affection he felt and couldn’t be confined to mere friendship, for while he valued his friendships with the MacKintosh men, this was definitely nothing like that either. He’d never had a lover he was friends with, so perhaps that was what confused him. Never known a woman he was so drawn to, but he wasn’t ready to define it. Wasn’t prepared to put a label on it.
“I don’t know what to say, my love,” he whispered, feeling that affectionate endearment almost inappropriate in the face of her declaration. He wished he could take the words back.
“I told you I don’t expect you to say anything, Jack,” she assured him softly. “I certainly don’t expect a declaration of any sort, so please relax.” The words were teasing, prompting him to smack her bottom lightly.
“What do you want then?”
“I just wanted to tell you, so when you do eventually go back home you will know that you carry my heart with you.” She placed a tender kiss to his chest.
Jack’s heart clenched again in regret. “But, Kitty, we’re leaving at the end of the week. MacKintosh and I purchased our tickets yesterday for a berth on the RMS Germanic.”
Kitty pushed away from him to stare in disbelief. “But I thought…” I thought we would have more time! I thought maybe eventually you would feel as I do and we would marry and have a family.
“MacKintosh feels he must return as he’s been away for more than six weeks already,” Haddington explained. “He has business obligations he must attend, and political ones as well. Even your sister has mentioned returning soon, you know.”
Kitty nodded. Eve had expressed a need to return before her pregnancy advanced too far. She also had obligations, as she had promised to see Moira out into Society. “But you…”
“I also have business to attend to,” he told her. “I will admit it is not as urgent as MacKintosh’s, but I agreed to return with them. It hadn’t occurred to me you wouldn’t be joining us.”
Kitty shook her head, in denial of his words as much as of her intention to stay. “I hadn’t thought to. The only reason I went was
to avoid Freddie after all. That problem has been neatly solved.”
“Surely you would be happier in Scotland,” he argued, imagining a life in Scotland without her. He wanted her to come back. Needed her too, for reasons he refused to scrutinize. “You should.”
“I don’t know.” Kitty’s mind warred with her heart. The latter urged her to go to Scotland with him, to love him while she could. The former insisted she should stay to avoid the heartbreak that would surely come to her at some point in the future. “I told Mother I would stay.”
“She would understand,” he argued, all the while wondering why he bothered. Her confession would surely make relations between them uncomfortable in the days to come. Perhaps it would be better for him if she stayed and allowed them to make a clean break of it. It would be so much easier on both of them. Still he said, “You needn’t decide now. We booked a suite for you if you should change your mind.”
“Perhaps.”
“Come,” he pulled her back into his arms, pushing aside the panic that had arisen in his heart. “Let’s get some sleep, shall we? It’s been a long day.”
But Jack did not sleep. Even as he held Kitty slumbering in his arms, his mind was fraught with denial. She couldn’t stay behind! He wanted her still, wanted the affair she had promised him. Wanted more…
Chapter 39
To love and win is the best thing;
to love and lose, the next best.
- William Makepeace Thackeray
Four days later, Jack stared up at the gangplank to the RMS Germanic moored at the Port of New York, knowing he would be walking that plank alone. And like those pirates of old, dreaded that walk, already feeling as if he was drowning.
Kitty was not coming with him.
Them, he corrected.
She had decided to stay in New York ‘for the time being’. What that meant, he wasn’t entirely certain. All he knew was she was done with him. He had spent these last days resisting the temptation to argue with her, to beg her to come. But she would not. As she had told him so frequently, it was for the best. Jack was doing his best to believe that.
They pulled the Preston carriage right onto the pier while Maggie Preston’s servants unloaded their trunks, and Glenrothes’ valet and Evelyn’s maid and nursemaid directed them in their efforts to get the luggage on board. Kitty’s nursemaid held the hands of Eve’s little Laurie, Lord Shaftesbury, and wee Hannah, while the two sisters embraced endlessly and wept openly, each begging the other to write often and not to cry.
They parted at last and Kitty turned to Francis while Eve hugged her mother. Kitty exchanged some low words with his friend before MacKintosh kissed first her hand then her cheek tenderly. She looked away with a nod, tears glimmering in her eyes, making Jack wonder what his friend had said to her.
A tug at his arm drew his attention down to the wee lass who was slipping her tiny hand into his large, dark one. Squatting down on his haunches, Jack met Hannah at her own level, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth when she brushed her unruly locks out of her eyes with the back of her hand with unconscious impatience. The gesture would always remind him of her. “Uncle Jack, why do you have to go? Don’t you like us anymore?”
Jack took her hands in his with a gentle squeeze. “I like you very dearly. Didn’t we talk about this already, darling lass? I have to go home. I can’t stay here forever, even if I want to.”
“But why not?”
“I have responsibilities, lassie. Things I must see accomplished,” he answered her question patiently, though it seemed he had done so a hundred times already.
Her lower lip trembled a bit before she cried plaintively. “But who will comb my hair? It hurts when nurse Betsy does it.”
“Ask your mum, she will be glad to help,” he assured her, yet Jack nearly felt as if his own lip were trembling in return. “You must be a brave girl, Hannah. We will see each other again one day.”
“Are you certain?”
“I am.”
The little girl threw herself into his arms, almost knocking him off his feet, before he returned the embraced fiercely. “I will miss you, Uncle Jack,” she sobbed.
“I will miss you, as well.” Jack kissed the top of her head, feeling an unfamiliar burn in his eyes, and stood with her in his arms as Kitty finally approached. They had said their good-byes earlier in private. It had been one of the most difficult moments of his life. Harder than he had imagined it might be. And something he had no desire to dwell upon. Instead, he offered a tight smile as she held out her arms for her daughter and Hannah fell into them with a sob. “You shouldn’t have let her come,” he chided in a low voice.
“She deserved her chance to say goodbye,” she returned briskly, then cringed as the steamship blew its mighty horn while Hannah covered her ears with both hands. When the noise finally faded away, she offered Jack a shrug and a smile and pulled a flat envelope out of her pocket, holding it out to him. “I guess that means it’s time for you to go. Here, this is for you.”
“What is it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Don’t worry so, Jack,” she smiled. “Just a parting gift. Promise you won’t open it until you’re at sea, all right?”
Jack eyed the envelope curiously, but nodded his acceptance before pocketing the packet. Unable to walk away, he just stared down at Kitty for a long while, aware that Eve and MacKintosh had already moved off to the gangplank.
“I will miss you, Jack.”
Holding out her hand to him as if she truly expected him to shake it genially, Jack fought the urge to draw her into his arms and kiss her senseless but restrained himself, knowing Kitty didn’t need more gossip to her name. He took her hand but instead of shaking it, bowed over it elegantly pressing a hot kiss to her palm. “Goodbye, my love.”
“Goodbye, Jack.”
There was a ring of finality to her voice that continued to grate on Jack’s nerves long after he boarded the ship and stood at the rail with Francis and Eve to wave their farewells to Kitty, Hannah and Maggie as they waited below. He stood staring down at her for a long while, even as the ship pulled away from the pier, his gut burning with regrets.
MacKintosh finally spoke six low words and departed with a slap on his back, and those words resounded for a long while as he watched New York fade into the distance.
“You are a complete fool, Merrill.”
Chapter 40
The happiest people in life have three things:
a true love, a best friend,
and best friend who is their true love.
- Anonymous
Manhattan, New York
Early October 1892
“This is impossible!” Kitty complained, not realizing she spoke out loud.
“I think the draping on the front of the skirt is looking rather lovely,” her mother offered as the seamstress continued to pin a row of tiny pleats into the waist of gown. “It will be all right, you’ll see.”
“Oh, Mother! It’s not the dress. I wish it were!” Kitty ignored the outraged seamstress and stepped down off the platform sitting on the edge of it instead, her elbows propped on her knees.
“Is it Mr. Hayes?”
Hayes’ petition for an appeal had been denied, lacking any new witnesses or evidence that might exonerate him. His father had pushed for a stay of execution, a lesser sentence and even a pardon. He’d spent, Judge Fulmont told her over dinner several weeks past, an indecent amount of money attempting to bribe everyone from warden to governor but to no avail. The only concession he had managed was that Freddie be executed by the newer method of electric execution through the recently adopted electric chair, and that it be done in private at Auburn prison with just himself and the required witnesses and officials in attendance. That had suited Kitty just fine as she’d had no intention of attending. The execution had taken place the previous week. Though the electric chair had previously been reported as an unreliable and especially painful instrument of execution, she heard he went easily
.
Kitty still wasn’t certain how she felt about those reassurances. Perhaps she felt he should have suffered at least marginally for all the torment he had inflicted upon others, and for taking the life of an old man who hadn’t even the chance to defend himself. She chose now to remember her father as he had been, a towering, brawny Irishman who lived, laughed and toiled in equal measure.
Though already freed from marriage, Freddie’s demise freed her from any threat he might deliver in the future but, for the most part, for her it had ended months ago with the trial. All she cared to focus on since then was moving on with her life. True to her word, Maggie Preston had bullied or coerced all her friends to accept Kitty back within the fold of Society. Though they were still in mourning, many of the Knickerbocker matrons had made their way to the Preston door to offer their support and sympathies. One had even towed along her widowed son, thinking that if she must accept Katherine Hayes, she might as well do it as a wealthy new daughter-in-law. Though Kitty had declined as politely as possible, dozens of mothers had kicked themselves for not thinking of such a windfall first and proceeded to seek her out constantly with their bachelor sons. Not only was Kitty was possibly the wealthiest heiress in New York’s history, but even their spoiled offspring could be content with a bride so beautiful.
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