Suzanne Robinson (30 page)

It was nearing time for dinner. His shoulders ached,
and his elbows and knuckles were bruised from fighting with Val. He didn’t want to face Kate. He knew that if he didn’t speak to her soon, he would never be able to convince her to forgive him and let him make love to her. And if he couldn’t see her and love her, he didn’t think he could face living. He thought of the death ride. More and more, he found himself preferring her company to riding like a demon. When he was with her, he was either too fascinated or too angry to succumb to his guilt.

“Meredith.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Am I ready?” Alexis examined his black evening trousers and jacket. He tugged at his cravat.

Meredith shoved his hands away and put the tie back the way it had been. “Yes, my lord. Shall I tell Lord Sinclair that you and Miss Grey will be down a bit late?”

“I won’t ask how you know what I’m about. Yes, thank you.”

He was knocking at Kate’s door in five minutes. He cleared his throat and tried to smile as it opened. Kate’s mother stood in the threshold dabbing a handkerchief to her eyes. She didn’t look surprised to see him. His smile vanished.

“She never would behave like other girls,” Sophia said. “She wouldn’t listen.”

“What are you talking about?”

Alexis pushed past the woman. Striding across the sitting room, he entered the bedchamber. Petticoats, shoes, and dresses were strewn everywhere. The doors of two armoires were open. Alexis picked up a transparent chemise and stood looking at it.

Sophia came to stand beside him. “She cried for over an hour, and then she started packing. She wouldn’t listen to me. She took a carriage and her maid.”

“But why?”

“My little girl has great courage. But something or
someone has frightened her more than Indian savages or drunken miners ever did.”

He watched Kate’s mother leave, then stepped over a pile of dresses and sat on the bed. He landed on something hard. Rising, he fished beneath the mattress and pulled out a book on paleontology. He sat back down, only to get up again and throw back the mattress. There was a layer of books under it. Picking up a volume of Voltaire, he noticed something sticking out from under the bed. The corner of yet another book.

Curious, Alexis opened a drawer in a bedside table. Nothing there but handkerchiefs. He picked up the cushion of a chaise longue. More books. Books beneath petticoats, inside hats, in the compartment of the window seat. Letting the lid of the seat fall, Alexis perched on it and opened a worn volume bound in gilded leather. There was an inscription.

Alexis turned the flyleaf. It was a history of astronomy. Hypatia. She had been a lovely and learned scholar of Alexandria who had been attacked by a Christian mob, dragged into a church, and scraped to death with oyster shells. Closing the book, Alexis ran his hand over the cracked spine and gazed out at the sky. It was taking on the deep azure glow of twilight. The castle battlements grew dark in contrast, and the merlons looked like stubby teeth in a giant mouth.

“Have I been scraping you to death with oyster shells, my little savage?”

Dropping the astronomy book, Alexis shot to his feet and ran out of the bedroom. She could have given him a chance to apologize. Didn’t she think he was man enough
to face his mistakes? The little menace. She stabbed the earl, then left Alexis to patch up the wound and clean up the mess. He was the one who should be angry, but no, she had to rush off in a dudgeon and leave him feeling guilty. She did it on purpose, and he wasn’t going to stand for it.

He pounded downstairs to find Meredith waiting for him with a cloak.

“This habit of reading my mind is frightening,” Alexis said, turning so that Meredith could drape the cloak over him.

“Yes, my lord. I spoke to Mrs. Grey’s maid. Miss Grey will be staying the night in the village of Thistleborough, the Fox and Hound Inn.”

Alexis rode Theseus as though his demons were chasing him, only this time he was the one doing the chasing. Thistleborough was a good three hours’ ride away. It boasted a railway station. If he didn’t catch her that night, Kate would most likely take a train to London and vanish. He had no doubt she could disappear so that he would never find her.

When he reached the village, the only light in the whole place came from the Fox and Hound. He clattered into the staging yard and roused a groom. It was after eleven o’clock by the time he’d found the proprietor and intimidated him into revealing Kate’s room. He took a moment to catch his breath in the hall, then knocked. Not waiting for an answer, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Kate was curled up in a chair with a book open in her lap. She didn’t look up.

“All right, Maisy,” she said. “I’ll get ready for bed, but I won’t sleep.”

“Let me help you take your clothes off.”

The book sailed off Kate’s lap and banged on the floor. She jumped up and took refuge behind her chair.

“Get out,” she said.

“Young ladies don’t order peers of the realm about.” Alexis stooped and picked up the book. “You ran away, you little coward.”

He glanced at the book in his hand.

“It’s Roman history,” she said. “Unmaidenly, I know, but I haven’t come down with brain fever from overstraining my mind yet.”

He was feeling guilty again.

“What’s unmaidenly,” he said, “is your traveling without a chaperone. And you had the temerity to leave me like a pregnant bride on the altar steps. You will make us the subject of common gossip.”

“If you’ve come to drag me back to save your own reputation as a rake, you can turn right around and go back to your
castle full of mistresses and murderers. Our engagement is over.”

“It isn’t over until I allow it.” He heard his voice raise and saw Kate give a little start. A thrill shot through him when he detected the glint in her eyes. It reminded him of the gleam of a bayonet in sunlight.

“I don’t care what you want!” she shouted at him. “I’m tired of being an embarrassment. I’m tired of pretending to be a well-bred Lady, and I won’t do it anymore.” Her hands worked open and shut on the back of the chair. She lowered her voice. “Don’t you see? I’ll never be a proper gentlewoman. And don’t you dare interrupt me. I’m going to tell you the truth, and you’re going to listen and find out what I’m really like.”

She left the safety of her chair and stood in front of him. Alexis held his breath. He didn’t want to risk a distraction that would stop her from telling him what was making her voice choke and her hands tremble.

“How can you expect me to concern myself with lace patterns and wax flowers? When I was sixteen I shot a prospector who was trying to rape me. I’ve washed dirty underwear for strange men. I’ve doctored whores and served meals to men who’d be put in prison here.”

She cursed and wiped tears from her eyes, then fished in her pocket for a handkerchief. Alexis handed her his, but kept silent.

“Go away, Alexis.” She stopped to dab furiously at her eyes. “Damn. Don’t you say anything. Just because I’m crying doesn’t mean I’m not thinking clearly. I’m just mad. Go home. You don’t want me. Not the real me. And I can’t pretend to be anything else.”

He stepped out of the way as she attempted to shove him aside. She collapsed in the chair again, and he watched her try to cry without making a sound.

“You’re crying,” he said. He shrugged off his cloak and let it fall to the floor.

“I am not,” she said, then gave up and let out a great, long sob.

“Hell and damnation.” He dropped to his knees and tried to take her in his arms. She stiffened the moment he touched her.

“Don’t touch me, you sanctimonious, blue-blooded prig.”

She struggled, got an arm free, and aimed at his chin. He captured her fist and tucked it between their bodies, then saw her open her mouth. Knowing her, he wasn’t surprised when she tried to bite him. He dodged her teeth while fighting to maintain his hold on her. Burnished curls swung at him, and his face was soon obscured by a fine curtain of hair. She bit him through it.

“Ouch!” He grabbed the back of her neck and shoved her face into his shoulder. “Stop it, damn you. I’m trying to apologize.”

Kate went still. He relaxed his grip, and she lifted her head to gaze at him, unsmiling.

“I’ve been thinking and thinking,” she said before he could continue, “but it doesn’t do any good to try to find answers to feelings with logic, so I gave up. Then, tonight, as I was reading, a thought just bubbled up from somewhere inside me.”

Leaning back, she stared into his eyes. “All of us, Mama, Hannah, Ophelia, even Mrs. Beechwith, all of us women are taught from childhood to lock our real selves away in a little prison in our heads, because we learn what the world wants us to be like. Most of us try so hard to be Ladies, to be what everyone says we should be. But all the time there’s this other self inside somewhere. Locked up in chains, suffering, hurting from being told she isn’t wanted. Most of us just don’t listen to her.”

Kate sighed and turned her head away from him.

“Maybe that secret part of us dies from neglect,” she said. “Me? I’m turned inside out. All the parts nobody
wants are on the outside, and I can’t seem to shove them inside and out of sight where they belong.”

“Oh, God, Katie Ann.”

“I accept your apology. Now please get out.”

“No.” He kept one arm around her and brushed aside her hair with the other hand. “I listened to you, so you have to listen to me. We’ve arrived at the same conclusions by different paths. I’ve been scraping you with oyster shells.” He heard her catch her breath, but he rushed on. “I’ve been scraping at what you call your outside since we met, trying to peel away your layers of gold to find a nice, comfortable surface of tin, when all the while it was the gold I wanted.”

She was quiet. When she didn’t speak, the fear that had sent him riding out into the night to find her returned.

“If you leave me, I don’t think I will care about what is happening to my family, or my wounded at the Dower House, or fixing my castle. If you don’t love me, I might as well jump into my own oubliette.”

He was afraid to look at her. During his little speech, he had addressed her clasped hands. Assembling his courage, he lifted his gaze to the woman who had turned his life into a carousel full of music, brightly painted horses, and joy. She was watching him with eyes framed by damp lashes. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth, then her pink tongue shot out to moisten it.

“I’m a Fallen Woman.”

Alexis took his final risk. “Not if you’re married to the evil ravisher of your innocence.”

“Are you sure, Alexis?”

He was tired of talking. He made a kiss his answer. Kate was quiescent at first, as if she didn’t quite believe he knew what he was about. As he deepened the kiss, she made a little gasping sound and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Later neither of them could remember how her gown
got ripped or at what point his trousers ended up dangling from the bedpost. Alexis did remember tunneling beneath the covers and coming to rest on top of a deliciously soft body.

He ran his fingers through the long, copper tresses that shone against the white of the pillows. He spent an eternity kissing her, and another caressing her breasts and nipples. He was curling his tongue around a hardened peak when Kate slipped her hand between them, and he felt it close around him. The little devil had known her hand was cold. Alexis cried out at the icy touch and arched his back. He shot forward, deeper into her grip, and she squeezed him. He felt blood churning in his groin and tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him. He laughed.

“All right, all right. Together.”

After their lovemaking, he fell on top of Kate’s moist body and panted. His face burned. He could feel her hands still roving over his back and buttocks. Exhausted, he made no protest when she reversed their positions. She straddled him, then laid her head on his shoulder and licked his neck. He wriggled, and she laughed. She kissed his lips, snuggled back down on his shoulder, and sighed.

“Have to get married,” he said, his voice slurred, “before my seed takes root like a weed in a vegetable patch.”

Kate didn’t say anything, and he thought she’d fallen asleep. He was drifting off when he felt a hand on his thigh. Fingers dug into the muscles. They traced a path to his inner thigh and caressed. His eyes flew open at the resurgence of life in his groin.

He grinned at her. “You’re going to marry me for my title and then pleasure me to death, aren’t you?”

Again there was no answer. The exploring fingers reached the top of his thigh and then darted to his groin. Alexis whooped with amusement and pounced on Kate. She was smirking at him. He forced her legs apart and caressed her with his erection.

“I warn you,” he said as his hips began to move. “I’m going to defend myself with every weapon I have.”

She closed her eyes and squeezed his bottom. “That was the whole idea. I wanted to see all your weapons.”

She would have a fairy-tale life if it weren’t for all the people who were mad at her. Kate returned to the castle with Alexis to find that Mama was angry at her for running away without explaining why. Lady Juliana was furious because when they got back, they told everyone they’d decided to marry in three weeks.

And Fulke. Fulke had taken the news worse than he had his wife’s death. He exploded at Alexis, and the two men had to be separated by Val and the butler.

After that incident, Kate avoided her detractors by making visits to Maitland House and surveying the renovations. During that time, even after the Earl of Cardigan left, Alexis was busy with official men in black suits who kept showing up and questioning servants, the family, and especially Val.

All that questioning dug beneath the fluffy layers of her happiness with Alexis, prickling her nerves. Hannah had died by someone’s hand, and that person was still unknown. And the more she thought about Hannah’s death, the less Ophelia’s seemed an accident. Kate couldn’t bring herself to believe that her cousin wouldn’t wake if her room caught fire. Yet nothing indicated that Ophelia had died other than by misadventure. Then there was that incident of the stones from the keep almost falling on Alexis. Two deaths and a near death, and no one thought the amount of ill fortune remarkable.