Borrowed Vows (6 page)

It was strange how she knew the layout of the castle. From the moment she entered, she was completely familiar with everything about the ancient fortress. She was also aware of exactly how to conduct herself, so that when she encountered a footman, she inclined her head just sufficiently and then swept on by in a whisper of emerald silk. It was almost amusing to know how completely she fooled him, but then why should he think of her as anyone other than the real Lady Marchwood? How could a lowly footman from early nineteenth century England possibly detect that beneath her ladyship’s jeweled exterior there was a New Yorker from the future? Indeed, when she caught a glimpse of reflection in a wall mirror, she found it hard to believe herself! But then dreams were like this, weren’t they? The impossible and unlikely happened all the time. She’d once dreamed she walked naked in Fifth Avenue at midday, so why not this?

She crossed the candlelit great hall, from where a grand staircase led up to the private apartments. She paused in the center of the vast chamber, and looked around. History seemed almost tangible in a place like this, where feudal barons had dispensed rough justice, and banquets had been held in honor of kings. But Marchwood now was a gracious aristocratic residence, where medieval weaponry and suits of armor were only decorative.

There was a minstrels’ gallery and a dais, and a beautiful carved screen that still bore traces of its fifteenth-century paintwork. The lower walls were paneled in dark oak, above which the stonework had recently been covered with plaster and painted white, and everything was lit by the candles encircling Tudor wheel-rim chandeliers suspended from a hammerbeam roof. A long table ranged down the center of the stone-flagged floor, and on its highly polished surface there was a vase of beautifully arranged flowers from the castle gardens.

More flowers brightened the hearth of one of the two enormous stone fireplaces that stood on opposite walls, but the second fireplace had been virtually dismantled and was in the process of being rebuilt because some of the Tudor stonework had been damaged. Fresh, newly carved slabs stood in readiness, and the masons’ implements were neatly stacked against the wall. The dust and fragments left by the day’s work had been carefully brushed into a pile to be cleared away by the maids when they commenced their tasks just after sunrise.

She mounted the staircase, but at the half-landing where the stairs divided, she paused again, this time to look at the wall paneling. A dark square marked the place where a painting had recently been removed in readiness for a new portrait of Dane by the fashionable artist, Sir Thomas Lawrence. The portrait had been commenced before Dane left for the Peninsular War, and would be delivered any day now.

Gathering her skirts, she continued the ascent. Her steps took her unerringly along a wide candlelit passage with windows overlooking the courtyard. At last she reached the door of her private apartment, and paused again, her glance moving along to the door of Dane’s rooms a little further on. The fact that he and his wife occupied separate apartments had never signified anything, for the rooms were connected by a set of folding doors. Tonight she meant to go through those doors.

* * * *

She entered her rooms, and found Rosalind’s maid waiting. Josie Lloyd’s slight figure and dark coloring gave her Welsh ancestry away almost as much as her surname. She’d been in Rosalind’s service for five years now, and knew all about the affair with Thomas. When Rosalind wished to send messages to her lover, it was the maid who took them. Like Alice and the dressmaker, Mrs. Fowler, Josie was the illicit lovers’ accomplice. All three assisted in the tangle that was making a cuckold of Sir Dane Marchwood.

Josie curtsied. “My lady.”

“Josie.” Kathryn surveyed her surroundings. She was in a little blue-and-white drawing room. The blue velvet curtains were drawn at windows she knew faced over the terraced gardens and the meadows of the little River March to the south of the castle, and candlelight shone softly over elegant but feminine chairs and sofas upholstered in floral tapestry. Through a doorway she could see the lemon and gray bedroom Rosalind used when she slept alone, and just visible through an archway beyond that was the dressing room.

Like everything else in the castle, Kathryn was immediately acquainted with the rooms and their contents. She knew what was in every drawer and trinket box, and what gowns and other accessories were to be found in the dressing room wardrobes. But it wasn’t her own apartment that interested her; she was more concerned with what lay on the other side of the folding doors.

She turned to the maid. “Is Sir Dane in his apartment?”

“Yes, my lady, I heard him enter a minute or so before you came in.” Josie took a lighted candle through to the dressing room, and soon Kathryn heard the chink of porcelain as water was poured from a large jug into a bowl. The thought of being attended by a maid was strange, but Kathryn knew she must proceed as Rosalind would, so after a minute or so she followed Josie into the dressing room.

The maid unhooked the delicate emerald silk gown, and for the first time Kathryn realized she wasn’t wearing any undergarments. It simply hadn’t occurred to her before, but the moment the gown slithered to the floor, she found herself standing completely naked. She was startled. Rosalind didn’t even wear the proverbial stays? How very shocking of her. Or was it? She seemed to recall having read something about Regency ladies dampening their gowns to make them cling to their legs, but even so, it seemed a little daring to go out with only a gown to spare one’s modesty. Unless, of course, Rosalind had gone out that night prepared for her assignation with Thomas... Yes, that was more likely the truth. How convenient and time-saving to slip out of a gown and get down to business with only Thomas knowing about the absence of undergarments.

As she washed her face and hands she became aware that something very important about Rosalind was being withheld from her. She sensed it more than actually knew it, and the feeling was unsettling. Just as had happened earlier in the evening, when she didn’t know what vital thing Rosalind had told Thomas, she was conscious of another mysterious blank in her knowledge, although this one came unbidden and unprompted. What was it? Another skipped chapter or switched channel?

Josie brought a lace-trimmed cream silk nightgown and slipped it over Kathryn’s head, but as the maid began to tie the little pink ribbons at the throat, Kathryn shook her head. “I’ll finish things myself now, Josie. You may go.”

“But your hair, my lady ...”

“I’ll attend to it.” Kathryn knew the real Rosalind wouldn’t do her own hair, but every minute now was prolonging the wait before she could go through those folding doors to Dane.

Clearly taken aback, Josie curtsied. “Very well, my lady. Good night.”

“Good night, Josie.”

The maid went to the doorway, but then hesitated. “About tomorrow night, my lady. Do you still wish to wear the plowman’s gauze gown if Mrs. Fowler doesn’t complete the new one in time?”

“Yes.”

“My lady.” Josie withdrew.

Kathryn reached up swiftly to pull out the jeweled comb and countless hairpins keeping her coiffure firmly in place. How on earth Rosalind managed to make passionate love without disturbing so much as a curl, she simply didn’t know. Unless, of course, hairdressing was one of Alice’s many accomplishments. Yes, on reflection, it probably was.

She picked up a tortoiseshell-backed hairbrush and began to draw it gently through the long golden curls to which she was so unaccustomed. Her own bobbed style was so much easier to manage, she thought a little wistfully, but when she looked in the dressing table mirror and saw the sort of hair many Hollywood stars would kill for, the wistfulness evaporated. Maybe she should think of growing her real hair as long as this. She continued to study her new self, taking in the pale but beautiful face, and the enchanting wide green gaze. “Kathryn Vansomeren, you’ve become quite an eyeful,” she murmured.

The clock in the bedroom behind her struck two, and she put the hairbrush down and got up. It was now or never. She went to the folding doors, but then her nerve began to fail her. What if she couldn’t pull this off? What if the real plot went a way she didn’t like? Maybe there was a mistress her subconscious hadn’t remembered! No, that couldn’t be so, or Alice wouldn’t have promised what she did.

She lowered her eyes for a moment. Alice might have promised, but it all depended on Kathryn Vansomeren, who suddenly wasn’t quite as confident as she needed to be. During her fling with Harry, he’d done all the seducing, but now it was her turn. Playing the seductress was something she’d only thought about, a fantasy she’d toyed with in the hours of quiet frustration when Richard slept beside her. Was she really capable of putting those secret ideas into practice? Could she go through these doors now and use virtually untested erotic wiles successfully upon a man like Sir Dane Marchwood?

Her dwindling courage began to ebb away fast, but then she remembered the electrifying effect Dane had upon her. With him she knew the fantasy could become reality. Her resolve swept back again and she drew the doors aside to walk through.

Chapter Seven

The apartment beyond was in darkness, except for the moonlight in the bedroom, where she saw him standing naked by the open window looking out at the night. If he knew she was there, he gave no intimation.

Her gaze lingered upon him, taking in the perfection of his broad shoulders, slender waist, tight buttocks, and well-shaped muscular thighs. It was the sort of body that would look as good in modern designer jeans as in the best tailoring from Regency Bond Street, and he was the sort of man who’d been irresistible to women since time began. Dark, dangerous, devastating Sir Dane Marchwood.

She wanted to say his name, but although her lips moved, no sound came out. Then she knew he was aware of her presence, for he spoke without turning. “I believe you’ve made a mistake, madam, for this is my apartment, not yours.”

“It’s no mistake.”

“Then you come to me as a lamb to the sacrifice, to allay my suspicions.” He turned at last, and the moonlight caught a golden chain and pendant around his neck.

Now she saw all of him, the contemptuous twist of his lips, the dark hair on his chest and loins, and his potent masculinity, soft and slumbering now, but when aroused ... A powerful excitement began to flow through her, quickening her pulse and heartbeats, and tightening her breasts so her nipples stood out. She was conscious of a dull ache deep within, the ache of desire. How had she never realized just how erotically susceptible she was? Every sense was alive to him, the blood flowing warm and eager through her veins. There was no modesty in the way she felt. She wanted to be one with him, to feel that magnificent virility thrust in to the hilt. But though she thought all this, she made no response to what he said, and her silence was misinterpreted.

“So you
are
a sacrificial lamb,” he murmured sarcastically, going to a small table and pouring himself a glass of cognac from the decanter standing there.

For a split second she was reminded of Richard, and the Scotch he drank the day they’d quarreled about the vacation. But it was only a split second, and then Richard Vansomeren was lost in the mists of the future as she gazed at Dane. He wasn’t self-conscious about his nakedness; in fact, it was almost as if he used it to mock her, for he made no move to put on a robe or conceal his loins.

She met his eyes. “Dane, I’ve come to you tonight because I want you,” she said at last. How true
that
was right now!

“Perhaps I don’t want you, madam, or hadn’t that occurred to you?”

“Of course it’s occurred to me, and if you don’t, then I cannot blame you.”

“No, you certainly can’t,” he said coldly.

She was conscious of the pendant around his neck. She knew it was a miniature of his first wife, beautiful flame-haired Elizabeth. She of the mysterious bitter legacy. Kathryn went closer to him. “I want to make amends, Dane,” she said.

“Amends? I doubt you can, madam, for nothing can wash away the stain of adultery.”

“I haven’t committed adultery, Dane, but can you honestly say you’ve been equally faithful to me?” she countered.

He paused. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”

“Of course.”

He gave a short laugh. “My God, how desperate you are to creep back into my good books. Why, Rosalind?”

“Because I love you.”

“Forgive me if I take that with a pinch of salt. There’s still the small matter of the lover my intuition tells me exists.”

“I keep telling you I haven’t got a lover.”

“That isn’t how it appears to me, so go back to your apartment, Rosalind,” he said wearily.

She remained where she was. “If I must prove my love for you, then I will,” she said softly, undoing her nightgown and allowing it to fall to the floor.

His gaze moved slowly over her, but then returned coldly to her face. “I take no man’s leavings, madam.”

“If I’m any man’s leavings, sir, that man is you.”

Anger flashed into his eyes. “Don’t insult me with this charade, Rosalind. We both know you never wanted this match, and that during my absence you’ve been she-catting in another man’s bed!” Suddenly he flung his glass across the room at the fireplace, where it shattered into a thousand pieces.

She flinched at his fury. “No, Dane, it’s not true!”

“Oh, yes it is, madam.”

She went to him and sank to her knees with her head bowed. “Please don’t turn me away, Dane,” she whispered.

She heard him exhale slowly. “What’s this? Has that old harridan been brewing potions for you?” he asked softly. “Has she concocted something to turn my ice-wife into a creature of flesh and blood?”

He didn’t move away and for a moment she thought his fingers touched her hair. He was close enough to touch, to caress ... She longed to feel his warmth, and suddenly could no longer resist. Looking up, she reached out slowly to put her trembling fingertips against his thigh. The contact seared through her like a flame as she slid her fingers tentatively over his flesh. If this was a dream, it was headier than reality...