The Carhart Series Read online

  Every scrap? No. There was one last scrap remaining, and it was jagged enough to slice through that nascent trust.

  She had no notion what he would do if she told him the truth about Lady Harcroft. If Ned knew that Kate was the cause of his hours of search, would he still look at her with that same light in his eyes?

  Maybe he would take her side. Support her. Congratulate her ingenuity.

  Kate sighed. Be practical.

  No. The practical answer was that he would shrink from her. That he would turn Louisa over to her husband. That he would shake his head at her, and the dragon-tamer would disappear. Because for all the apparent kindness of his words, his actions bespoke a rather different sort of trust.

  It was night, and Kate was alone. Again. After all that heated talk this afternoon of trust, their marriage was still a mere token of what it could have been. Kisses—and no more. The absence left her hollow, as if she’d been burned to a shell by some dark fire.

  And as to that last little thing, she was still as much a coward as ever.

  Because this afternoon, as he’d held her, she had stood still and unmoving under his touch, content to simply soak in the feel of his hands against her. She’d been as passive as a lily-of-the-valley, tracking the path of the sun across the sky.

  With time, all ink faded. If she did nothing, this memory—like the ink on their marriage license—would eventually bleach into nothingness. All that support, all his help—all that controlled anguish she’d felt in his hands on her—and still, he wasn’t coming to her.

  Perhaps it was because of that controlled anguish that he wasn’t coming.

  Everything Kate knew about the marital act, she had gleaned from her own limited experience, years prior, and the whispered discussions conducted among married ladies—which tended toward metaphor. Sly innuendo to Harcroft notwithstanding, she imagined she had a pretty good grasp of the process—from both the male and the female point of view.

  Men, she had been told, required fairly regular release. They obtained this either through their wives, or through access to mistresses. Without that…well, the consequences hadn’t been spelled out to her, but any time the matter came up, every lady had nodded in concert. If there was one thing the ladies of the ton had agreed upon, it was that consequences attached under such unfortunate circumstances. And for the men, they were Exceedingly Dire.

  Fever? Perhaps. Excruciating pain? Probably. Irrational behavior? Well, that would explain a great deal about gentlemen.

  Ned had claimed that he’d honored their wedding vows. That assertion had seemed simply inconceivable to her at the time, given what she’d been told by her friends. But if he was telling the truth, he was suffering. It would, perhaps, underscore the fundamental irrationality that had kept him from visiting her bed, when she was obviously willing to do her duty.

  Yes. Irrational behavior, resulting from deprivation, would explain a great deal about her husband—and so many other men.

  Besides, if she offered him relief from that one condition, perhaps he would not judge her so harshly when he discovered what she had been doing.

  Before her mind could go over the reasons why she didn’t dare do it, she stood and walked to her chest of drawers. Long ago, her maid had brought that night rail to Berkswift. That one—the one she’d planned to use when their marriage was young and innocent. It was nothing but flimsy silk and ribbons. Better yet, it spoke what she wanted without her ever having to say anything aloud. Near-nakedness spoke louder than words.

  She took off the modest nightdress her maid had left for her and slipped the silk gown over her shoulders, her hands trembling slightly as she fastened it in front. Even with the fire burning in her room, she felt a chill in the air.

  The temperature wouldn’t matter much longer.

  She walked briskly to the door connecting their rooms and threw it open. She was struck by a blast of cold air. Her skin pebbled and she felt her nipples contract in protest.

  For some reason, he had built no fire in his room.

  A branch of candles on a chest of drawers cast a pale and unforgiving light. The wood posters of his bed threw ominous shadows at her. Her eyes adjusted to the light as she brought her arms about her for what little warmth they would give—and she saw Ned.

  He was seated on the edge of his bed. His mouth had fallen open in surprise.

  And—oh, God, Kate stopped breathing again—he was naked. Completely, utterly, gloriously naked in all this cold air. The light painted his skin bronze all over—as if he were a cold, hard statue of a god, frozen in place, instead of a man made of warm flesh and blood.

  But what flesh. She sighed in appreciation. What had seemed an imposing breadth of shoulders when covered in wet linen was an impossible expanse of chest, hard and corded. The muscles of his arms were tensed and contracted, almost as if he were in pain.

  Almost? The way he looked at her, his lips caught in a surprised half grimace, he must have felt a great deal of pain. It could not have been even a second before her gaze dropped from his lightly furred chest to his navel. It might as well have been an eternity, though, for the blankness that enveloped her mind.

  Her husband was not only naked; he was erect. And his hand was clasped around his member.

  Luckily, she did not say the first idiotic thing that popped into her mind. Unluckily for her, she did say the second. “Ned. It’s really cold in here.”

  “Ah.” His voice seemed casually companionable, in sharp juxtaposition to the muscled rigor of his body. “Kate. This is not the most convenient time to talk.”

  No? Her mouth went completely dry, and she was bereft of speech. He was touching himself—there—and oh, God, they’d had marital relations before, but so long ago, and always in the dark. She’d never even seen him. She just had the memory of her hands, her flesh; the feel of him inside her; the flash of his skin illuminated in moonlight. That feeling of want, never quite satisfied, and hidden behind the necessity of procreation.

  On those long-ago nights, he’d never even lit a candle.

  What a crying shame that had been. She stepped inside his room and pulled the door shut behind her. It was even colder than she’d believed. One hard swallow, and she banished the dryness in her throat. “On the contrary.” She was unable to take her eyes off him. “This is very convenient. I didn’t come here to talk.”

  He let out a shaky breath, a puff of white in the chilled room. His eyes slipped down her form. “Oh? I—I suppose I can see that.”

  That—and by the way his eyes lingered, a great deal else. Marriage wasn’t a matter of love, but of bringing together families and estates and producing children. Intercourse could be enjoyable, just as it was enjoyable when she touched herself. But it was not a matter for easy discourse. Despite whispered conversations with the other married ladies, all of that practicality had left her damnably bereft of improper vocabulary. Her husband stared at her, frozen in the act of…the act of… Kate’s internal lexicon, built up of proper words used by proper women, deserted her on this point. Even among married women, lurid discussions were composed of circumspect euphemism. One offered comfort to one’s husband, or perhaps one engaged in intercourse. Their discourse ranged to washing women and carrots precisely because proper ladies didn’t use those other words.

  Whatever those other words might have been.

  It seemed simply criminal to Kate that she’d learned one hundred words to describe the weather in French, and not one that would encompass the stroke of a man’s hand down his own penis.

  But she didn’t need a dictionary to instinctively grasp the import of what he’d been doing. She certainly didn’t need a primer to comprehend that jealous desire that rose up inside her. Whatever the word for it, she had caught him in the act of doing to himself every improper thing Kate longed to do to him. She swallowed back hysterical, inappropriate laughter.

  “Didn’t you think to build a fire before…um…before?”

  “Before I wh
at?”

  “You know.” Kate gestured helplessly, her hands inscribing a wide circle.

  Perhaps her circle was too wide—or perhaps he wanted to make her uneasy—because he simply shrugged. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  She shook her head in embarrassment.

  “Before I took off my clothing?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And took… Took the matter…”

  “Before I took the matter in hand?” he finished with a wry smile.

  “Yes. That.”

  “To answer your question, tonight I needed it cold. If not, I would have wallowed in the luxury of this too completely. Cold sharpens the senses. Heat dulls them.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes fell on his body—her husband’s body—naked, spread out before her. He was hard; his body was so clearly willing to oblige her in this particular point of their marriage. She had a thousand questions. Does that feel good? Does the cold help with your release?

  Could we build a fire now?

  What she settled on was, “Can you do that to me?”

  He shook his head. “Pardon?”

  She stepped forward into the lamplight. “You’re my husband.” Her gaze fell again to that thick, rigid rod between his legs. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her. Maybe he’d just wanted the privacy of…of the thing. He reached for a silk banyan that lay across the bed linens.

  “Oh, no,” she said quietly. “Please don’t cover yourself.”

  He looked up at her, his hand clenching on the cloth. “Kate, I have no right to make demands of you.”

  “Why not? You’re my husband. Men who don’t exercise their marital rights become irrational.”

  He frowned at that.

  “Or feverish, or they have headaches or some such. I never did find out. But I have some idea how these things work.”

  “You do, do you?” His lips twitched.

  “I am only thinking of your health,” she said piously. But her gaze strayed again to impious territory, and she bit back a sigh.

  “Why? I left you. I have not been as good to you as you deserve. I—”

  “You,” Kate said quietly, “are an idiot. If you have need of me, do you suppose I would flinch away? Do you think me so weak that you cannot lean on me on occasion? Don’t you understand—you aren’t the only one who can make demands. I’m your wife, and I wish to God you would treat me like one. In every way.”

  “As you may recall, I can be a terrible beast.” He didn’t move. “And you still don’t trust me.”

  Kate crossed over to him and sat down on the bed. The cotton batting of his mattress gave way under her weight. It sagged; as a consequence, his body canted toward her. Ned didn’t pull away. But he didn’t move closer, either. Instead, he looked at her, his eyes dark and dilated. “I’m freezing.”

  He didn’t pull her close, as she’d hoped. Instead, he watched her warily. “I don’t like to lose control.”

  Kate inched her fingers across the coverlet toward his now free hand. His knuckles were heated, even though he’d been sitting in the cold. “Ned,” she whispered, “let me inside your control.”

  A shiver passed through him, from his shoulders on down. The transparent silk that covered her offered scant protection from the chilled air. She fumbled with the knot of ribbons in front. It was awkward to try to remove the garment one-handed, but it felt right to keep her fingers pressed on top of his. The material slid past her shoulders.

  His eyes fell to see what she had bared. Beneath the nightgown, her breasts were peaked, the nipples poking into the fabric, her skin pebbled.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t desire me,” she said. “And I won’t pretend, either. Let me inside. You’re not the only one who will descend into irrationality if we continue on this path of abstinence.”

  His member twitched in what appeared to be happy agreement. But he stared at her for a long while before speaking. “I thought you’d take lovers,” he finally said. His voice was low and hoarse. “I assumed you would, when I left.”

  After all that had happened, after all that had passed between them this past week, she hadn’t thought that he could still hurt her. But it stung. His words stung so badly—his casual assumption that she would give herself to another, and the even more casual assumption that he would have simply accepted that outcome instead of fighting to keep her his—that she almost turned away. But she’d asked him to let her inside.

  He’d left her. She wasn’t going to like everything he had to say. And as much as the possibility frightened her, if she never risked hurt again, she’d never have happiness, either.

  Kate pulled his hand close. “It’s not about my honor. It’s… Well, I thought about infidelity at first. It would have been easy enough. I wanted to make you really and truly sorry for abandoning me. I imagined that Lady Blakely would send you word, and you’d come rushing back to me, all hotheaded anger.”

  “Ah,” he said slowly. “When you imagined me rushing back, did I challenge your lover to a duel?”

  “On bad days,” she said with some asperity, “you lost.” But she drew a circle on the back of his hand with her thumb.

  That little scene was so much supposition—a fanciful drama, to contain the shape of her own tortured desires. Because what she’d really imagined was that her husband had cared about her, enough to come rushing to her side. “I did think about what I would do if I returned to find you’d taken a lover.”

  “And did you think about challenging my hypothetical lover to a duel?”

  “No.” He raised his eyes from their joined hands to look her in the face. “In my imagination, I was given the chance I squandered when first we married. This time, I would court you. I would seduce you. I would show patience and care and I would convince you that this time, you would choose me—not have me foisted upon you by some happenstance of fate. I wanted to earn your regard, not have it handed to me by default.”

  “Well. You’re seducing me now.”

  He ran his thumb along her wrist. Such a tiny point of contact, to send such a jolt through her. “No, blast it. You’re seducing me, which I have to say is rather unfair of you. I want to prove that you can rely on me, that I’m not some foolish man driven only by irrational lust. I want—I need you to know I’m not Harcroft, to be swept up in a surfeit of emotion.”

  It was the first criticism she’d ever heard him utter of his friend. She wasn’t sure how to respond. But if there was a surer way to bring this conversation to a halt than to discuss Harcroft, Kate didn’t know it. She looked up at him in cool regard. “Are you saying it’s irrational to want me? Is this going to run along the lines of the reasons why you refuse to light a fire?”

  He walked his fingers up her wrist, up the curve of her arm to the crook of her elbow. And now he leaned in until his face was inches from her.

  “Hardly.” His voice was dark; his breath came hot against her lips. “I’m fairly certain I don’t deserve you.” She could actually see the mist his breath made in the cold.

  “Naturally.” Her voice seemed calm, but her heart was racing. “Luckily for you, I’ve decided to take you as my lover anyway.”

  He peered into her eyes. “You seem to have forgotten my many flaws. That’s not like you. Are you sure you’re my wife?”

  His naked chest brushed her breasts as he leaned toward her. She could feel the heady weight of him poised above her. His flesh, so warm, was in sharp contrast with the cold air. Her own skin quivered in anticipation. He brought his hand up to touch the side of her cheek, and he brushed her jawline. A shiver went through her, a sweet portent of pleasures to come.

  She could taste his kiss before he touched her lips—a mingling riot of mint and sherry. His other hand came to her shoulder and he guided her down, down until her spine met the mattress. For an instant, he looked into her eyes. He held himself above her, the muscles in his arms corded to support his weight. And then he lowered his whole body atop her, from the hard planes of his chest to the weight of his t
highs. She could feel his erection pressing into her belly. His mouth found hers, and her mind emptied of everything except desire.

  She wanted his kiss, and his mouth opened to hers. His lips were warm against hers; they moved slowly, yet firmly. His hand slid down her side; she could feel his touch through the thin fabric of her half-discarded nightgown, trailing down her ribs. There was nothing between them but a scant layer of silk, and even that seemed too much.

  No wonder he’d not started a fire. He was a blast-furnace himself, his body searing hers.

  He pulled back for breath. “Feeling feverish?”

  Her blood was pounding in her head; her own breath came only in short pants. And she was hot all over, from the palms of her hands to the core of her body. She nodded shortly.

  “Do you have a headache?” His tone was solicitous. “Or any pain? Or do you find that you are thinking irrationally? Women who don’t find release often do, you know. I’m only thinking of your health.”

  She stared up at him, her mind completely blank for a bare instant. Then she remembered what she’d told him when she came in—her worries about the symptoms of male abstinence. She smacked his shoulder with her fist. “Are you mocking me, at a time like this?”

  “Are you laughing?”

  She was; her breath froze around him.

  “Then it worked,” he said. “You definitely are irrational. That’s what I was waiting for.”

  His hand crept up to encircle the swell of her breast. Hot and cold warred against her skin, the frigid temperature of the room contrasting with the heat of his fingers. Her nipples tingled in anticipation.

  “It would be wrong for me to take advantage of you in such a state,” he intoned piously.

  “It would be more wrong if you didn’t.”

  He drew a figure eight atop her breast; his thumb feathered briefly over her aching nipple.

  “Ned,” Kate said, “stop playing and do it.”

  He was still looking her in the eye. He smiled again and raised one eyebrow. “If you insist.”

  And then he leaned down and closed his mouth around her nipple. She had a moment to feel the warmth of his breath. It enfolded her, like that instant of silence between the stab of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Not the particular it she had meant but, oh, she wouldn’t stop him, and the cry she let out was the farthest thing from a protest. The heat of his tongue around her nipple overtook her. She felt the sweetness of the connection clear from the bottoms of her feet to the palms of her hands, a powerful tingling net cast about her. Her thighs parted; she pressed up against him in unspoken longing, in years-old desire. This was supposed to be practical. But there was nothing practical about her want, about the deep well of longing that overtook her.