Just Imagine (25 page)

The neckline was low, falling well off her shoulders. She glanced down and saw that the tops of her exposed breasts were still faintly rosy from Cain's hands. She quickly looked away and put on the necklace that went with the gown, a choker of crystal bugle beads drizzling onto her skin like melting ice chips.

The very air around her seemed to crackle as she moved. She slipped on satin slippers with spool-shaped heels, the ones she'd worn at the Templeton ball. They were eggshell instead of the stark white of the gown, but she didn't care.

"Don't worry, Sophronia. Everything's going to be fine." She gave Sophronia a quick peck on the cheek and made her way downstairs, the gown shimmering around her in a crystalline cloud of ice and snow.

Veronica Gamble's smooth forehead betrayed nothing of her thoughts as Kit swept into the sitting room.

So the little kitten had decided to fight. She wasn't surprised.

The gown was outrageously inappropriate for the occasion and quite wonderful. Its remote ice-maiden perfection served as a perfect foil for the girl's vivid beauty. Mr. Parsell, who'd so blatantly wrangled a dinner invitation, seemed stunned by her appearance. Baron looked like a thundercloud.

The poor man. He would have done better to have left her in that dirty dress.

Veronica wondered what had happened between the two of them in the room upstairs. Kit's face was flushed, and Veronica's observant eyes caught a small red mark on her neck. They hadn't made love, that was certain. Cain was still as tightly coiled as a jungle beast about to spring.

Veronica sat on Cain's right during dinner, with Kit at the foot of the table and Brandon next to her. The meal was delicious: fragrant jambalaya accompanied by oyster patties smothered in a cucumber-curry sauce, green peas flavored with mint, beaten biscuits, and, for dessert, rich slabs of cherry pie. Veronica was certain she was the only one who noticed the food.

She was excessively attentive to Baron throughout the meal. She leaned close to him and told him her most amusing stories. She laid her fingers lightly on his sleeve and occasionally squeezed his hard-muscled arm with deliberate intimacy.

He gave her his total attention. If she hadn't known better, she would have believed he didn't notice the subdued laughter coming from the other end of the table.

After dinner, Cain suggested the men take their brandy in the sitting room with the women instead of remaining at the dinner table. Brandon agreed with more eagerness than was polite. Throughout the meal.

Cain had barely been able to conceal his boredom with Brandon's stuffiness, while Brandon couldn't quite hide his contempt for Cain.

In the sitting room, Veronica deliberately took a place on the settee next to Kit, even though she knew the girl had taken a dislike to her. Yet Kit was courteous and thoroughly entertaining once they began to talk. She was exceptionally well read for a young woman, and when Veronica suggested that Kit borrow her copy of a scandalous new book by Gustave Flaubert that she'd just finished reading, Brandon sent her a thunderous look of disapproval.

"You don't approve of Kit reading
Madame Bovary
, Mr. Parsell? Then perhaps we'd better leave it on my shelf for the time being."

Cain regarded Brandon with amusement. "I'm sure Mr. Parsell isn't so stodgy as to object to an intelligent young woman improving her mind. Or are you, Parsell?"

"Of course he's not," Kit said too quickly. "Mr. Parsell is one of the most progressive men I know."

Veronica smiled. A most entertaining evening, indeed.

Cain crossed the hall and let himself into the library. Without bothering to light the lamp on his desk, he pulled off his coat and opened the window. The guests had left some time ago, and Kit had excused herself immediately afterward. Cain had to get up at dawn tomorrow, and he knew he should go to bed, but too many old memories had come back to nag at him tonight.

He gazed out into the darkness with unseeing eyes. Gradually the nighttime rasp of crickets and the soft, wheezy cry of a distant barn owl became less real than the bitter voices of the past.

His father, Nathaniel Cain, was the only son of a wealthy Philadelphia merchant. He lived in the same brownstone mansion in which he'd been born and was a competent, if unexceptional, businessman. He was nearly thirty-five when he married sixteen-year-old Rosemary Simpson. She was too young, but her parents had been anxious to rid themselves of their troublesome daughter, especially to such a well-heeled bachelor.

From the beginning, it was a marriage made in hell. She hated her pregnancy, had no interest in the son who was born exactly nine months after her wedding night, and grew to regard her adoring husband with contempt. Over the years she embarrassed him in public and cuckolded him in private, but he never stopped loving her.

He blamed himself for her restlessness. If only he hadn't forced a child on her so soon, she might have been more content. As time passed, however, he ceased blaming himself for her misdeeds and blamed only the child.

It took her nearly ten years to run through his fortune. She left him for a man who had been one of his employees.

Baron had observed it all, a bewildered, lonely child. In the months after his mother's departure, he stood by helplessly, watching his father being consumed by his unhealthy obsession for his faithless wife. Filthy, unshaven, drowning in alcohol, Nathaniel Cain sealed himself inside the lonely, decaying mansion and constructed elaborate fantasies of everything his wife had not been.

Only once had the boy rebelled. In a fit of anger, he'd spewed out all his resentment against the mother who'd abandoned them both. Nathaniel Cain had beaten him until his nose streamed with blood and his eyes had swollen shut. Afterward, he didn't seem to remember what had happened.

The lesson Cain had learned from his parents had been a hard one, and he'd never forgotten it. He'd learned that love was a weakness that twists and perverts.

Hard-earned lessons were the best-remembered. He gave away books when he finished them, traded horses before he could grow too fond of them, and stood by the window of the library at Risen Glory staring out at the hot, still night thinking about his father, his mother… and Kit Weston.

He found little comfort in the fact that so many of the emotions she aroused in him were angry ones. It bothered him that she made him feel anything at all. But since the afternoon she'd invaded his house, veiled, mysterious, and wildly beautiful, he hadn't been able to get her off his mind. And today, when he'd touched her breasts, he'd known there'd never been a woman he'd wanted more.

He glanced over at his desk. His papers didn't seem to have been disturbed tonight, so she hadn't slipped in when he'd gone out to the stable to check on the horses. He probably should have locked up the ledgers and bankbooks after he'd found evidence of her snooping, but he'd felt a perverse sense of satisfaction in witnessing her dishonesty.

Her month was almost up. If tonight was any indication, she'd be marrying that idiot Parsell soon. Before that happened, he had to find a way to free himself from the mysterious hold she had on him.

If only he knew how.

He heard a soft sound in the hallway. She was roaming again, and tonight he was in no mood for it. He stalked across the carpet and twisted the doorknob.

Kit spun around as the library door crashed open. Cain stood on the other side. He looked rough, elegant, and thoroughly untamed.

She wore only a thin nightdress. It covered her from neck to toe, but after what had passed between them in her bedroom earlier, she felt too exposed.

"Insomnia?" he drawled.

Her bare feet and unbound hair made her feel like a hoyden, especially after spending the evening with Veronica Gamble. She wished she'd at least put on her slippers before she'd come downstairs "I—I didn't eat much at dinner. I was hungry, and I wanted to see if there was any cherry pie left."

"I wouldn't mind a piece myself. We'll look together." Even though he spoke casually, she sensed something calculating in his expression, and she wished she could keep him from following her to the kitchen. She should have stayed in her room, but she'd barely eaten anything for dinner, and she'd hoped a late-night snack would fill her stomach enough so she could sleep.

Patsy, the cook, had left the pie under a towel on the table. Kit cut a small piece she no longer wanted for herself, then handed Cain the pie plate. He grabbed a fork and carried everything over to the kitchen door. As she sat at the table, he opened it to let in the night air, then leaned against the doorframe to eat.

After only a few bites, he set aside the pie. "Why are you wasting your time with Parsell, Kit? He's a stiff."

"I knew you'd say something unpleasant about him." She jabbed her fork at the crust. "You were barely civil all evening."

"While you, of course, were a model of courtesy to Mrs. Gamble."

Kit didn't want to talk about Veronica Gamble. The woman confused her. Kit disliked her, yet she was also drawn to her. Veronica had traveled everywhere, read everything, and met fascinating people. Kit could have talked to her for hours.

She felt the same kind of confusion when she was with Cain.

She toyed with one of the cherries. "I've known Mr. Parsell since I was a child. He's a fine man."

"Too fine for you. And I mean that as a compliment, so pull in your claws."

"Must be one of those Yankee compliments."

He moved away from the door, and the walls of the kitchen seemed as if they were closing in on her. "Do you really think that man would ever let you ride a horse in britches? Or trounce through the woods in your skirts? Do you think he'll let you curl up on the sofa with Sophronia's head in your lap, or show Samuel how to shoot marbles, or flirt with every man you see?"

"Once I marry Brandon, I won't flirt with anyone."

"Flirting's in your nature, Kit. Sometimes I don't even think you know you're doing it. I've been told that Southern women acquire the knack in the womb, and you don't seem to be any exception."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment. You need to look elsewhere for a husband."

"Strange. I don't remember asking your opinion."

"No, but your future bridegroom will have to ask for my permission—that is, if you want to see the money in your trust."

Kit's heart skipped a beat. The stubborn set of Cain's jaw frightened her. "That's only a formality. You'll give your permission to whomever I choose."

"Will I?"

The pie clotted in Kit's stomach. "Don't toy with me about this. When Mr. Parsell asks permission to marry me, you'll grant it."

"I can't fulfill my responsibility as your guardian if I believe you're making a mistake."

She shot to her feet. "Were you fulfilling your responsibility this evening in my room when you… when you touched me?"

A sizzle of electricity coursed between them.

He looked down, then slowly shook his head. "No. No, I wasn't."

The memory of his hands on her breasts was too recent, and she wished she hadn't brought it up. She turned away. "Where Brandon's concerned, I know my mind."

"He doesn't care about you. He doesn't even like you very much."

"You're wrong."

"He desires you, but he doesn't approve of you. Ready cash is hard to come by in the South. What he wants is your trust fund."

"That's not true." She knew Cain was right, but she denied it. She had to make certain he wouldn't stand in the way of her marriage.

"Marrying that stiff-necked bastard would be the biggest mistake of your life," he said finally, "and I'm not going to be part of it."

"Don't say that!"

But as she stared at that implacable face, she felt Risen Glory slipping away from her. The panic that had been nibbling at her all evening clamped down hard. Her plan… her dreams. Everything was slipping away. She couldn't let him do this. "You have to let him marry me. You don't have any choice."

"I sure as hell do."

She heard her voice coming from far away, almost as if it didn't belong to her. "I didn't want to tell you this, but…" She licked her dry lips. "The relationship between Mr. Parsell and myself has progressed… too far. There must be a wedding."

Everything went stilt between them. She watched as he took in her meaning. The planes of his face grew hard and unrelenting. "You've given him your virginity."

Kit managed a slow, unsteady nod.

Cain heard a noise roaring inside his head. A great internal how! of outrage It echoed in his brain, clawed at his skin. At that moment he hated her. Hated her for not being what he'd believed—wild and pure. Pure for him.

The nearly forgotten echo of his mother's scathing laughter rattled in his head as he fled the stifling confines of the kitchen and stormed outside.

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