Vermillion (The Hundred Days Series Book 1) (33 page)

Not now, not yet
. He would
tell her, when they got to Brussels. Old wounds faded slowly, and he wanted to
turn the feelings over in his mind, to be enough at peace with them to give his
confession the eloquence it deserved. That
Kate
deserved. Years with Caroline
– or without Caroline, he corrected, had left him starved. If he spoke now,
Matthew was afraid of making himself a fool.

With a last teasing kiss, Kate
lifted from his lap. Their bodies were two again, and Matthew groaned at her
absence. She slid the wrapper back up her arms, tying it slowly, seduction in
reverse. He watched her, disappointed and mesmerized, until she was again
covered. He adjusted the flap of his trousers for the barest amount of modesty
and consigned his shirt to whatever dark corner it had landed. Leaning back in
the chair, he crossed arms behind his head and studied Kate.

She settled on the floor, resting
against his cot, and extended a leg to straighten her stocking. It was a
gesture, he decided, entirely calculated to stir him up all over again. The
illicit sensation of straddling the border between clothing and naked flesh
during lovemaking provoked his lust like nothing else. The mischievous glint in
Kate's eyes hinted she perceived this quite well.

Witchcraft
.

She glanced up, catching his gaze on
her, and for the first time he could recall she truly blushed. He suspected
their minds followed a similar tack. “Three times in as many days.” He grinned
at the fetching way she ducked her head. “I came to you for some sort of relief,
and now I'm doubly afflicted. You're a terrible doctor.” He finished with a
wink.

“After a thorough examination, I
declare you perfectly fit.” They were the first words she'd spoken, and her
voice was beautiful to his ears, full of laughter. She tossed him a pirate
smile, head falling back against his cot. Then, her brows furrowed. “What's
this?” Her hand fished in the dark space beneath his bed, pulling out her shawl
and holding it up. “What is this doing here?”

He pulled in a breath and let it
escape slowly, scrounging for a reasonable explanation. “You forgot it in my
quarters,” he offered lamely.

Her brow peaked with suspicion. “Why
is it under your bed?”
            “I enjoy having it close by.”

She was stifling a laugh; he saw the
tell-tale twitch of her lips. “For what purpose?”

Shrugging, he smiled. “There is but
one, Kate.”

“Shocking,” she gasped. “You had it
at least a
week
before we...before our first night!”

He nodded honestly. “And you were
paramount in my thoughts for every one of those seven long nights.”

She shook her head, waves bouncing
fetchingly, open disbelief on her face.

“You truly had no notion why I had
come that first night?” he asked.

Kate pressed hands to her cheeks.
“No idea. Not at first, anyhow.” Her laugh was wry. “I
should
have, but
you surprised me. I was too worried about your pained expression to make sense
of the obvious.”

He hesitated, working up his
courage. “Did you not think of me that way, in all the months we had been
acquainted?” There was a little twinge in his chest, at the idea she had
perhaps not shared his feelings for very long.

“You know better than that,” Kate
chided. She leaned in, taking his hands and tugging insistently until he slid
from the chair. He planted on his knees in front of her, scooting close, and clutched
her fingers.

“I thought of you in
every
way, Matthew. As my confidante, my friend,” She smiled, “My
enemy
.” Her
smile dimmed a moment. “No, not enemy. That's not right. An ...opposing ally,
perhaps?”

He pulled her hand to his heart. “I
was always on your side, Kate.”

“Unquestionably.” She beamed,
absolutely radiant in the dim lamplight. “And you should not imagine, just
because I was slow to fit the puzzle together, that there were not moments when
I longed for what we just shared. Nights when I lost sleep enjoying the memory
of your smile, the way my hands felt on you.”

He perked at the information. “The
way your hands felt on me?”

“Er, generally speaking,” she
fumbled, glancing away.

Matthew studied her face intently,
until it became plain she would offer no further information. He tucked a stray
lock of hair behind her ear. “Why did you not come to me, Kate?”

“Were you certain, when you entered
my tent, that I would not turn you away?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Exactly.” She paused, seeming to
chew on something a moment. “Besides, you were a married man.
Are
a
married man. You have given your word. I would never ask you to break it.”

“You could have said as much. I'd
have set you straight.”

“I'm careful with my heart,” she
admitted softly. “What has grown between us...I do not give myself over to it
lightly.”

She meant Patrick, of course.
Caroline's coldness was something he had learned to live around, while
Patrick's love was something Kate had learned to live
without
. She
carried hurt and regret in a way he could not fully comprehend. “I've never had
enough of Caroline's love to miss it,” he confessed bitterly.

“Help me understand, Matthew. This
cannot be simple infidelity. Too many couples in London seem to take that in
stride.”

More than she realized, he wagered.
A faithful match was the most noteworthy sort in London. Men and women married
for all manner of reasons besides love. In due time, other things began to
share their bed; lust, politics, resentment, excitement. A man would lie with
his mistress on the grounds of not wanting to 'burden' his wife. The wife would
visit her lover under the excuse of advancing her husband's political career.
Strangers under the same roof. He knew the feeling well.

Matthew raked fingers through
still-damp hair. Perhaps he would feel better, confiding in Kate. Besides, she
had shown him that trust, when their places were reversed. He took a breath and
prepared to jump.

“Caroline was my
brother's
fiancée, first of all.” He nodded, acknowledging her wide eyes.       “She
would pay a call with her mother, or I would see her at a ball, and such
jealousy would well up. There was something sensual about her that made me feel
as though we were undressing one another when we spoke. I wanted just such a
woman. At least I
thought
I did, at the worldly age of nineteen. Chas
certainly did not deserve her, by my estimation.” He paused, recalling some of
the uglier details he had long ago put away.

“He wasn't capable of fidelity, even
till the wedding day. I never quite reckoned out how such a foul-tempered
drunkard charmed women so easily. Or how a woman like Caroline, or the sort of
woman I
thought
her to be, was fooled by him.” He stared at his finger,
the pale band from his ring all but gone. “But I don't think she
was
fooled, not any longer. Chas had a fortune and the same bad habits. They were
eager to marry because they were birds of a feather.”

“Isn't it funny,” breathed Kate,
wriggling against his side, “That our hearts, so capable of seeing the truth of
people, can be so blind?”

He realized she was talking about
herself as much as him and nodded. “Mine certainly was.” Matthew snapped his
head, trying to shake off a wave of self-pity. “Her father gambled their estate
into total ruin, then ran off to France and shot himself just weeks before my
brother died.” His laugh tasted bitter. “Charles...He was found face down in a
horse trough behind a doss house. Fell in too sodding drunk to climb out. The
gossip nearly killed my mother.”

“Unfathomable.” Kate clasped a hand
to her mouth, eyes wide.

“At least what was left of the
family estate was safe. Highgate lands have been in my family four-hundred
years, and were nearly lost in two.”

Matthew paused again, stilling
himself against a flood of emotions. When he had pulled the cork, he had been ill
prepared for how fast the old resentment would bubble over.

“When Caroline hinted that she would
have me in my brother's place, it never occurred to me to question her motives.
I was ecstatic. A soldier with nothing more distinguishing in his future than
the army. Suddenly I had a title and a beautiful fiancée.”

Kate laced her fingers tighter into
his, eyes turned down. “Didn't you worry, even for a moment that she might be
false?”

“I should have. Neither of us came
to our wedding bed a virgin. I'm no hypocrite. I would not have cared, except
she had led me to believe otherwise. A habit of hers, as it turned out.”

“Misleading you?”

“Mmhm.”

Kate's head fell heavy against his
ribs. “Your poor mother. She saw what Caroline was from the beginning.”

“Entirely. But when she was Chas'
fiancée, I think mother felt there was a kind of justice in it. They deserved
one another.”
            She clucked her tongue. “Your mother loves you so much. Your
marriage must have gutted her.”

“She could not tolerate Caroline or
her mother, Lady Linsley. Adelaide's feud with them is a long-standing and
public one. But Caroline's brother Edward...he was the exception.”

The name stabbed at his heart with a
depth that surprised him after so many years. “I loved Ned the way I ought to
have loved my own brother. He was young and handsome, full of military
enthusiasm. No swearing or drinking in the presence of ladies, but he would
ride hard at a French battery and never blink an eye.” Kate laughed, and he
answered in kind. “Truly the king could not have boasted a more loyal soldier.
He was forced into service by his family's reverses, but I think he had
secretly longed to join his whole life.”

“And naturally, you encouraged it,”
she said.

“When he came to me asking for a
loan to purchase his commission, I was happy to do it. Caroline was furious.
Two soldiers in the family? Embarrassing. Ned and I secretly took a good
measure of enjoyment spiting her. How terrible is that?”

Kate stayed silent, but the sour
slant of her mouth answered as clearly as any words.

“I could spin you a long tale, but
the heart of the matter is, Ned fought and died under my command in Portugal.
Slashed in the face by a French scout who betrayed our regiment.” His fingers
flexed unconsciously at the memory. “I pressed my hand to his throat while he
bled to death and got shot in the ribs in the process.” The words spilled out
in a rush, each one tearing the wound in his heart, even after so long.

Her arms slipped around him in a
gesture of comfort, but he hardly noticed. “I was sent home, to mourn and
convalesce. Make no mistake, I fully appreciated that my wife had lost her only
brother. I was prepared to take up the blame. It would have been healing,
strange as it sounds, for her to rage at me – I certainly felt I deserved it.
Instead, she was sullen, withdrawing from me entirely. When I came to her,
seeking an embrace for comfort, she shrugged me off. It seemed to baffle and
annoy Caroline if I showed even a hint of anguish at Ned's loss.”

Kate wore a dubious frown. “Did
she
mourn her brother?”

He smacked a hand against the knee
of his trousers. “Absolutely. I believe her grief was genuine, and I do not
think it has ever healed. She was jealous of anyone who even hinted that they
loved Ned as she did.”

Many times over the years, it had
occurred to him that Ned was the only person she ever had loved.

“Guilt and uselessness ate at me,
and I began to drink. I threw myself into the bottle, Caroline threw herself
into society, and somewhere in the following year Mercier Pitt crossed her
path. By then I had been stripped of all husbandly roles, save that of
'income'
.”

“Pitt...Pitt...” Kate repeated the
name softly, trying to place it.

“He was at the officers' dinner in
Nivelles.”

Kate's hand flew to her chest. “How
did you keep the reins on your temper? I wouldn't possess enough
self-discipline in your shoes to keep from strangling him.”

He laughed, believing her claim was
probably true. “He was under my command in Portugal. I learned to tolerate him
because I was not permitted to shoot him. Whether his being my subordinate
influenced Caroline's choice, I can't say, but I assume it did.”

He could imagine her taking pleasure
in the awkward sort of triangle. Matthew laughed again, this time at himself.
“I was wounded at being a cuckold, until I reflected on just what he had taken
from me. Thanks to Pitt, Caroline was rarely home when I slipped in at the
cock's crow, soaked with gin and her waiting to flay me with her razor tongue.
He had practically done me a favor.”

Kate squeezed his hand. “You did not
truly believe that...”

“I had loved her violently once, and
I desperately wanted her love in return. I hated that she would not give it to
me, and that I humiliated myself continuing to try.”

She rubbed thumbs over the backs of
his hands. “You were as miserable then as you were a few weeks ago. Something
made you stay.”

Matthew hated to remember it, an old
dim sorrow that had awakened in his memory the day he held Martha's baby.
“There was a pregnancy. It could have been his or mine; I'm not certain I
cared. There was no better reason for us to reconcile than a child. I wanted a
baby, and I was certain we would reconcile.”

Kate, perceptive as ever, scooted
into the last breadth of space between them. She fitted herself into the crook
of his shoulder and slid her arms fully around him. He inhaled the scent of her
hair, felt the last beads of sweat at her temple where it pressed to his chest.
Stroking fingers up and down the crisp fabric of her sleeve, he pushed on.

“The morning Caroline woke to find
spotting on the sheets, my heart stopped. I was a madman, consigning her to
bed, dragging the doctor across London with blustering threats.” Matthew shook
his head. “Put me in front of five-thousand troops, but do not task me with a
personal crisis.