A Lady by Midnight (21 page)

“How long were you imprisoned?” she asked.

“I was sentenced to seven years. But in the end, I only served four.”

The word “only” contained all sorts of lies. Only four years of sleeping on straw so old it had turned to dust, and so thick with vermin that the dust seemed alive. Only four years of surviving on a penny’s worth of bread a day. Only four years of shivering in irons that never were adjusted, even though he grew bigger and taller every month.

Yes, “only” four years of violence, hunger, ugliness, and animal treatment that haunted him to this day.

“The courts took mercy on you?” she asked.

“Mercy? Hardly. England needed soldiers more than she needed prisoners. They released me on the condition that I enlist.”

“So this . . .” She touched the medallion on the right side of his chest. “Is this the symbol of your regiment?”

“Partly.” His chest lifted in a humorless chuckle. “Don’t go fishing for deep meaning in that one. Just too much rum in a Portuguese tavern one night, soon after we shipped to the Peninsula.”

Her hand slipped down his rib cage and to the left, passing right over his heart. He winced at the ripples of pure pleasure.

“And this . . . ?” she asked. “B.C. Who was she? Did you meet her in the same tavern? Was she exotic and big-breasted and terribly beautiful? Did you . . . care for her?”

He stared at her, struggling like the devil not to laugh.

“I hope she was a good person, for your sake. But however well she treated you, I must admit that I’ve formed an irrational, intense dislike of her already. In my mind, I’ve named her Bathsheba Cabbagewort.”

Now he lost the struggle. He bent his head and laughed, long and low.

“Well, there’s something good come out of it,” she said, eyes misty. “I’ve been growing quite desperate to hear you laugh. And it’s just as I suspected.” She touched his cheek. “You do have a dimple, just here. Tell me Bathsheba never saw that.”

He put his hand over hers and drew it downward. He traced the letters on his side with her fingertip.

“B.C.,” he said. “Not a woman. It stands for ‘Bad Character.’ It’s what they mark on soldiers who are drummed out of their corps for criminal offenses.”

“Criminal offenses? What did you do?”

“What didn’t I do would be the better question. Looting, thieving, fighting, shirking duty, insubordination. Everything short of rape, murder, and desertion—and I was primed to attempt the last. So far as I was concerned, His Majesty’s government had beaten and starved everything human from me already. Then they’d sent me to die on the battlefield. Nothing mattered to me anymore, Katie. I had no loyalty, no honor, no morality. I was truly more beast than man.”

“But you changed, obviously. And you did stay in the army, or you never would have come to Spindle Cove.”

He nodded. “After my drumming out, I was sent to Lord Rycliff. He was Lieutenant Colonel Bramwell then. It was his to say what to do with me—prison, death, worse. But he took one look at me and said he’d be a fool to send away any man with my fitness and strength. So he kept me on, made me his personal batman. His valet, in essence.”

“That was very good of him.”

“You can’t know. It was the first time in years that someone had entrusted me with anything. Rycliff wasn’t much older than me, but he was comfortable with command. And he was nothing like my sergeants. He cared about the men in his regiment. He took pride in our mission. I worked so close to him, I guess some of that rubbed off on me. I started to see that there was honor to be found in doing a task well, no matter how small. Starching collars, mending seams, replacing buttons. But mostly the boots.”

“The boots?”

He nodded. “Worth more than my life’s wages, his boots were. Worth more than my life itself, I’d guess. This was the infantry. Every day, all day—we marched, dug, fought. Come nightfall his boots would be covered in dust, muck, blood, worse. I slaved for hours to make them shine again. So he’d look at them in the morning and know there was something worth saving beneath it all. And when I’d finished with his boots, I still didn’t sleep—not until I’d done the same with mine.

“I wasn’t loyal to the army or England so much as I was loyal to him—or maybe even just to those boots. When he took a bullet to the knee—I couldn’t let him lose that leg, you know. No leg, no boot. Would have been giving up half my purpose in life.” He rubbed his face and stared into the fire. “He’s offered to grant me a commission now.”

“Lord Rycliff has?”

He nodded.

“What an honor, Samuel. Don’t you want it?”

He shook his head. “I’m not made for that. I don’t have Rycliff’s ease with military politics. The open country is where I was best suited, even as a youth. It’s where I belong now. Out in the wilderness, with the creatures that howl and claw and snarl. No social graces necessary.”

There. He’d laid it all out before her. His checkered past, his history of crime and violence. All the reasons he needed to leave England and stay far away from her.

And in response she said the most horrible thing he could imagine.

“Would you take me with you?”

Chapter Nineteen

“T
ake you with me?” he echoed. “To America?”

Kate nodded. It seemed more than reasonable to her. He’d suffered twenty years of violence and misery to pay the cost of her dreams. She could handle living in a cabin.

His brow furrowed. “No. No.”

As she watched, he rose from the carpet and went to the opposite side of the small room, pulling her gown from the screen where he’d hung it to dry and filling a pressing iron with hot coals.

Well. That wasn’t quite the response she’d been hoping for.

“You can’t leave me,” she said. “The world will only push us back together. Haven’t we learned that much? We’re meant to be with each other.”

“We’re meant to be no such thing. You are the daughter of a marquess. You always were, even then. And I was always a lowborn cur. There’s nothing we have in common. Nothing.”

“Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“Of course I do.”

He spread her frock over the table, carefully layering it between pressing cloths. The muscles of his left arm bunched and flexed as he skimmed the hot iron over fabric, working with care and confidence. She never could have dreamed how arousing this would be—the sight of a massive, shirtless man pressing a gown. All she could think of was those hands roving over her body, warming and smoothing her own frayed edges.

“Katie, I want you to have everything you’re entitled to—wealth, connections, Society. The family you always dreamed of finding. It’s all yours now, and I’ll be damned if I’ll ruin that for you.” He put the iron aside. “You can’t be with someone like me. Look at me. That cousin of yours wouldn’t hire me on as a footman.”

If Thorne was this reluctant already, she wasn’t about to tell him the truth of her inheritance. Not yet. He wouldn’t see it as a convenience, only as one more factor widening the gulf he perceived between them.

Which wasn’t a gulf at all. All that separated them was an imaginary line. But someone must take the first step across it, and Kate knew it would have to be her.

“This is about us, Samuel. No one else.” She drew the blanket about her shoulders and rose to her feet. His stubbornness was a thing to be conquered, and she felt her courage rising. “I’m just me. Just Katie.
Your
Katie, as you called me once. I know you have feelings for me.”

He set the iron down, agitated. “I’ve told you, time and again, it’s only—”

“Only desire. Yes, I know you’ve told me that. And I know you’re lying to me. Your feelings go much deeper than lust.”

“I feel
nothing.
” His nostrils flared. He beat his fist against his chest. “Nothing. Do you understand me?”

“I know that’s not tr—”

“Look. These letters.” He pointed to the B.C. marked on the left side of his torso. “Do you know how they make these marks?”

She shook her head no.

“They take a board, about so big.” He measured with his hands. “And on it are protruding nails, forming the shapes of the letters. They press the points of those nails to your skin, and then they give the board a smart whack. With a fist, perhaps. Or maybe a mallet.”

Kate winced. She stepped forward, but he held her off with an open hand.

“And then, when they’ve made all those tiny punctures, they take black powder—you know enough about weaponry to know that it’s corrosive stuff—and rub it in the wounds to make the mark.”

“That must have been torture.”

“I didn’t feel a thing. Just like I didn’t feel these.”

He turned, showing her his back. Kate’s stomach turned as she viewed the lattice of twisted, branching scars that covered his skin.

“Floggings,” he said. “A hundred lashes, for my countless offenses. They laid open my flesh to the muscle, and I swear to you, I didn’t feel a stroke. Because I’d learned how to deaden myself. To pain, to sorrow, to sentiment. To everything.”

Tears stung at the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t decide whether he deliberately told her falsehoods or had convinced himself of these untruths, but she hated hearing him speak this way.

This man felt, and he felt deeply.

“Samuel . . .”

“No. I know what you’re thinking. Today, you’ve remembered some boy you once knew. He was fond of you and kind to you, and he did you a good turn, once. That boy doesn’t exist anymore. The man I am . . . well, you can read for yourself.” He pointed out the marks on his skin, one by one. “Thief. Prisoner. Drunken soldier. Bad character, through and through. I went dead inside long ago. And I feel nothing now.”

She approached him slowly, in small increments, just as she would approach a cornered wild animal she didn’t want to frighten away.

“Do you feel this?” She tilted her head and leaned in to kiss his neck. The scent of him made her pulse with longing.

“Katie . . .”

“What of this?” She stretched to kiss his cheek, allowing her lips to linger on the hard edge of his jaw. “Or—”

He seized her by the arms, pushing her back. “Stop.”

She dropped her gaze to his chest, surveying all the marks and scars he’d collected since they parted in her childhood—all of them incurred, in part, for her. The enormity of what those marks represented eclipsed any fear or sorrow she’d ever known. She could scarcely comprehend the magnitude of his suffering, but she forced her mind to stretch, to try. He’d sacrificed everything, including the only home he ever had. He’d bought her a bright, shiny future at the cost of his own freedom.

How could she not love him? How could he deny loving her?

“My whole life,” she began, her voice faltering, “I clung to just a few scraps of memory. No matter how bleak my surroundings, those vague recollections gave me hope that someone, somewhere, had cared for me, once. And I always believed, to the very center of my being, that one day someone would love me again.”

“Well now you’ve found the Gramercys. They will—”

“You. I found
you.
” She put her hands on his chest. “The Gramercys are wonderful people. I’m so fond of them now, and they’re fond of me. But they never knew I existed. My poor mother . . . she seems to have been too preoccupied, and then too sick to give me much love. None of them were that force I carried all along, that hope that sustained me for years. That was you. All you.”

A tear spilled down her cheek. “ ‘Be brave, my Katie.’ I remembered you saying that. You can never know what those words meant to me, and it was your voice, all along. And if—”

He closed his eyes and pressed his brow to hers. “Katie, I beg you. For your own good, stop this.”

“And if you deny it now . . .” She worked her hands high enough to frame his face. “If you deny that you care for me, you’ll make my whole life a lie.”

He shook his head. “You’re dreaming. Or confused. Overwrought by the day, perhaps. You can’t mean to suggest you’d give up everything here. The Gramercys, the wealth, all your friendships.”

“To be with the man I love? Absolutely.”

“Don’t.” His arm whipped around her and he turned, pressing her against the wall. “Don’t say it. You can’t love me.”

“Are you doubting my sincerity? Or are you forbidding me to love you?”

“Both.”

He pinned her with a glare that was stern and fierce and ice-cold blue. So blue it made her heart sing. At last she knew why she’d carried that memory of blue in her heart.

It was him. It had always been him.

His jaw tightened. “I have nothing to offer you. Nothing.”

“If that’s true, it’s only because you’ve already given me everything a man could give. You saved me, Samuel. Not just the once, but so many times. You stepped in front of a horse whip. You took a melon to the head. You caught an adder in your bare hand, you dear, foolish man.”

“I did that for the dog.”

“
My
dog. Which you let me keep, even though you prized him yourself.” She stroked his cheek, trying to soften his expression. “I know you care. And I know you want me.”

He didn’t try to deny that part. The desire in his eyes was knee-melting.

“When you look at me that way, I feel so beautiful.”

“You
are
beautiful.” He sighed deep in his chest. His hands slid up and down her arms, caressing her roughly. “So damned beautiful.”

“So are you.” She put a hand to his bare chest, tracing the defined ridges of his musculature. “Like a diamond. Hard and gleaming, and cut with all these exquisite facets. Inside . . . pure, brilliant fire.”

She slid her hands to the back of his neck, plunging her fingers through the velvety nap of his short hair. The clipped ends teased the webs between her fingers, setting off sparks of sensation throughout her body. She drew his head down to hers until his lips—so strong, so sensual—filled her vision. And then she closed her eyes and explored those lips with her own. Pressing slight, tender kisses to each corner of his mouth. Capturing his top lip between both of hers, and then giving the lower its due.

Nothing separated her breasts from his chest but a single layer of linen, which quickly heated and softened between them. A heavy ache settled in her breasts, and her nipples came to tight, desperate points. She rubbed them against his chest, hoping to soothe the ache, but only inflaming her desire.

And his, apparently.

His good left arm rested around her waist. He flexed his arm muscles, lifting her off her feet and drawing her pelvis flush with his. The hard ridge of his arousal pressed against her sex. The pleasure was blinding. Deafening. Numbing. It was as though all her senses sank inward, downward, the better to concentrate on that source of solid, delicious pressure between her legs.

She ground her hips against it. She could not have done otherwise. And when she’d done so once, all she wanted was to do it again.

He groaned and nipped her earlobe. “Katie, I want you. I can’t make it poetry. I can’t make it sound anything other than crude, because it is. I want you in my bed. I want you under me, holding me. I want to bury my cock so deep inside you.”

The carnal words made her blush and stammer. “I—I want those things, too.”

She wished she could have managed a more sophisticated reply. But the words worked well enough to earn her a kiss—a wild, passionate storm of a kiss—and then she was lost in the tempest of heat and longing.

His tongue thrust deep into her mouth, possessive and hot, coaxing her instinctive response. Her heartbeat quickened, and a matching pulse beat at the juncture of her thighs.

When he broke the kiss, he was breathing hard. “You should go. Leave me.”

“Never.”

“If you stay, I’m taking you to my bed. And once I bed you, you’re mine. Always. You must know that.”

“Yes.” A thrill shot through her. “I want nothing more.”

She gasped as he plucked her from the floor and carried her to the mattress. One-armed, as though she weighed nothing.

While she lay there, he stood back and began wrestling with the closures of his breeches. He worked left-handed, and clumsily. After a few moments she couldn’t bear the suspense.

“Won’t you let me help?” She sat on her knees and reached for the buttons. The buckskin was butter-soft and stretched taut as a drum. Her mouth dried as she worked one row of buttons loose, freeing one side of the falls. Then she reached for the small row of closures in the center. She slid one fingertip beneath the waistband to aid her efforts. When her touch grazed his belly, he flinched, ticklish.

Kate smiled. She loosed one button, then another, exposing the dark line of hair that widened and thickened as she moved lower. It seemed she couldn’t look her fill—until the moment when she grasped the final button, and then she couldn’t bear to look at all.

She tilted her face upward and found him staring down at her. His face was grim with restraint and his eyes dark with hunger. She slipped the last button free and watched his face as she slid her hand inside his breeches, exploring the hot, hard flesh within.

She marveled. He was so solid, so sleek, so intriguingly textured.

And so big.

Goodness. She was meant to take
all
this inside her?

As Kate watched him, his eyes fluttered closed and his head fell back. He pushed into her grasp with a strangled moan. She loved the sensual abandon in his expression, but she worried about the physical dimensions of his ardor. With every inch her sliding fingertips explored, he seemed to grow longer still—and she grew increasingly doubtful about the logistics involved in this enterprise.

Perhaps her sense of touch was misleading her. Maybe if she looked the organ head-on, it wouldn’t seem so intimidating.

She dropped her gaze and pushed his breeches down over his hips. Up it sprang from a thatch of dark hair. A thick, dusky curve of pure impossibility.

Were all men like this?

She put her hand on him again, since he seemed to enjoy it. He filled her grip, and then some. Kate suddenly had the urge to call a temporary halt to this entire interlude and pay a hasty call on a few of her married friends. Then she’d return wiser, worldlier, and prepared with some kind of soothing poultice for afterward.

He gripped her hand, squeezing tight. “Enough.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No. No. It’s too right. Too good. I won’t last.”

Since she didn’t suppose she could implement her first plan to dash out for education and herbal remedies, having this over with quickly didn’t seem like a bad alternative.

“I don’t mind if it’s fast,” she said shyly.

For the second time in an hour she heard him laugh. It was such a lovely, gruff sound, she didn’t even mind that he was laughing at her.

“You should mind.” He stepped out of his breeches and set them aside.

She felt so stupid. He’d been with many women, and no doubt all of them had been accomplished in a way that actually mattered. Proficient in bed sport, rather than arpeggios.

“I’m sorry. I haven’t any useful experience to draw on. I just hope you’ll tell me what pleases you.”

“You please me.” He sat next to her on the mattress and drew the fabric of the borrowed shirt aside to bare her shoulder. His lips traced the slope of her neck.