Lady Midnight (32 page)

"Indeed he was." Or perhaps just a fool for falling in love in the first place.

Kate edged away from the lure of his body, pulling the chemise over her head and easing it across her hips. The movement unleashed a wave of sweet, unfamiliar soreness, between her legs and along her back and buttocks. She saw a red abrasion along the tender underside of her arm, a mark of his passion, and she rubbed at it as if that motion would imprint the reminder of his kiss on her flesh forever.

But it didn't, of course. The mark would fade, just like everything else.

She heard the shift and rustle of his movement behind her, and his arms came around her waist, drawing her into the curve of his body as he rested his chin against her shoulder. Kate leaned back into him, reveling in his warmth, the lingering scent of their passion.

"Mmm," she sighed. "This
is
nice."

He kissed her cheek, the side of her neck, before burying his face in her hair. "Marry me," he murmured.

His voice was muffled, rumbling against her flesh, so that at first she thought she misheard him. She
must
have misheard him. "What?"

He drew back, reaching out to turn her to him and tilt her chin up with his long fingers. Staring directly into her eyes, he said it again. Loudly, strongly. Unmistakably. "Marry me, Kate."

Kate gaped at him, robbed of all speech, all feeling, all—everything. For one shining instant, she imagined she
could
marry him. That he could belong to her, that these glorious feelings could be hers forever. The words echoed around her—
Marry me, marry me.
Such simple, easy words, so blithe to say.

Such frightening, impossible words.

A chill like ice crept over her, pushing the warm contentment before it until she thought she would freeze to death. She drew away from Michael's embrace, wrapping her arms tightly about her waist. She couldn't look at Michael, couldn't face him for fear he could see her deceit written on her face. Her unworthiness.

"Oh, Michael,
caro,
I cannot marry you," she whispered. Her throat was dry, scratchy, so she could hardly force any words through at all. Her head whirled in utter confusion.

He didn't touch her, didn't reach for her, as if he sensed how brittle she was. How she would shatter like true ice. "Why not?" he said calmly, as if he was being perfectly reasonable. He leaned back against their nest of blankets and pillows, his hands behind his head.

He just seemed far too sanguine. Too damned
reasonable.
"Because I am the governess, of course!"

"Oh, Kate. Surely you know me better than that? I would not care if you scrubbed pots in the kitchen."

Kate buried her face in her hands, letting her hair fall forward and conceal her in its black curtain. He would care if he knew what she
really
was. What lies she had brought into his home. At first, they had been for her own protection. Then because she cared too much for her new life at Thorn Hill, for the people she had come to love and need. And now—now she could not bear to see disgust in Michael's eyes when he looked at her. Not after the glories they shared, the heaven she found in his arms. She couldn't bear it!

But neither could she marry him, and deceive him for the rest of their lives. She was not yet as low, as dishonorable, as all that.

"You
should
care," she whispered. "You must think of your family...."

"My family!" Michael gave a disbelieving snort. "Kate, my family adores you. Christina is always talking of how Mrs. Brown says this—Mrs. Brown does that. She's been so much more comfortable in company since you came to Thorn Hill. And Amelia cannot do without you. She's been so quiet, and now she has blossomed."

"And I love
them
," Kate said. She pressed her hands hard against her closed eyes, trying to hold back a new flood of tears. "But your mother would not be pleased. Neither, I daresay, would your grand brother and sister-in-law."

"It is true that my mother can be a bit high in the instep. She would come around, though—she is not an unreasonable person. She would be beyond happy to have more grandchildren. And I don't care two straws about Charles and Mary. I never see them, anyway."

Kate shook her head desperately. She
had
to convince him that they could not marry. Yet what was there she could say when he was a man who was not motivated by the things other men of his station would be? "We are too different. It would be a terrible mesalliance."

"Kate, you make no sense. After last night, we
should
marry. And it would hardly be a mesalliance. Everyone would envy me for having such a beautiful, genteel bride."

Genteel.
"Just because we—made love, you shouldn't feel obligated to propose to me. Please, Michael. We cannot marry, and that is all there is to it."

Michael seized her shoulders, swinging her around to face him. He smoothed her hair back from her brow, holding her face between his hands as if she were made of the most precious porcelain. "There is more to it than my family, our stations in life, isn't there?"

Kate stared up at him, at his beautiful features, etched with puzzlement and concern and the seeds of anger. Oh, San Marco, how she longed to tell him! To lay her head against his chest and pour out all the poison of the past. She was so tired, so unutterably weary, and her shoulders ached with the lonely burden.

But there was still that grain of selfishness, that sure knowledge that if Michael hated her, then her heart would break entirely.

Those tears she fought so hard to hold back spilled free, falling down her cheeks in salty rivulets. "Michael, please. Just believe me. I cannot marry you."

"All right,'" he said soothingly, wiping away her tears with the gentlest of caresses. "All right, Kate. We are both very tired. We don't need to talk of this anymore, not now. I never wanted to make you cry, my bonny Kate."

"I—I'm sorry," she gasped, sniffling back those tears. She
was
tired, and utterly confused, and so full of longing and pain and love that she wanted to howl with it all.

"Shh." Michael lay back against the blankets, gently drawing her down with him until she rested against his chest. His arms were secure around her, holding her safe from all the world. "We have a little time before dawn. Let's just sleep a while longer. Everything will be clear in the daylight. It always is."

"You won't leave me now?" Kate murmured. She would have thought all the turmoil in her heart would never let her sleep again this night, but exhaustion made her limbs heavy. Her mind felt drugged, and she could not find a coherent thought. All she knew was she wanted him to stay close.

"I won't leave," he answered. As her eyes drifted shut and the world turned blurry and vague, she felt his kiss against her hair. And she thought she heard him whisper, "Kate the curst. Who are you?"

* * *

Kate's slender body was relaxed and warm in his arms, her hair falling in a black satin river across his bare chest. Michael ran the flat of his palm gently over that hair, along her back in the soft chemise, and then up again. Her breath was a cool rush against his throat, and she trembled under his embrace like a wild, trapped bird.

They were as close as a man and woman could possibly be, their bodies entwined after the heat of love-making, and yet it seemed she was a million miles away from him. More elusive than ever. At some moments, her dark eyes held the sweetest tenderness, the most fiery passion, the flashing sparks of heaven. Then, in the next instant, there would be a torrent of unknowable pain, almost panic. And then—nothing. As if an opaque curtain dropped over her thoughts and emotions, concealing all of her joy and pain alike to his regard.

He would think that he was growing closer to her, that they were closer to
each other,
then—this. When he caught her in his arms, drawing her down against him to urge her to her rest, it felt so like capturing a wild bird in a net, holding it tightly despite its mad efforts to escape captivity.

Michael never meant to invite such panic, such flight, with his proposed marriage. It had been a spontaneous plea—he scarcely knew what he was saying until the words hung loud in the air between them. But he meant it with his whole heart. It seemed
right.
It seemed meant to be. Ever since he saw Kate standing alone on the moor, the loveliest and most distant woman he had ever beheld, he desired her. She intrigued him, drew him in with just one glance from her dark, bright eyes. As he came to know her, watched her settle into his home and family, that intrigue only grew. The more he talked with her, the more he wanted to know. The more he craved just to be in her presence, within the spell of her perfume and the touch of her hand.

And their lovemaking...

His heartbeat quickened to remember, and his body stirred to heated life beneath the rough blankets. He had loved his wife, and he had liked and enjoyed all the mistresses of his past. Ever since a comely milkmaid introduced him to the joys of physical passion when he was thirteen, he had craved the erotic company of women. Their laughter and light touch, their kisses and heady perfumes, gave him unimaginable pleasure, and he worked very hard to please them in return. The cries of a woman as she found ecstasy were more intoxicating than the finest French brandy.

Yet never—not once—had he felt as he did when his body joined with Kate's, and he opened his eyes to see her there beneath him, her throat arched and lips parted. This was beyond pleasure, beyond satisfying the body's cravings. Beyond even the two of them, Michael and Kate, at that moment. He had thought his heart would burst with the exultation, that he would break down and sob into the waves of her hair at the utter perfection of it all.

Even now, when passion was spent for the time being and she slept against him, he felt that wonder. Kate had given herself to him, when she had never done that for another man—not even her husband. It had been a shock to feel her tightness, to hear her breathless, halting confession. Yet it had also sent a primitive bolt of satisfaction through him that she was
his.
His alone.

Now, in the cold air of approaching dawn, he knew that was not so. She was no more his than was the wind or the water, for she was as mysterious as ever. But
he
was
hers,
as surely as if he had torn out his heart and laid it at her feet. She brought something to life in his soul that he had feared long dead—a sparkle of joy, a sense that wrongs could be forgiven, atonement made, and life become new and bright again. The feel of her hand as it brushed against his skin wove a spell of delight. The sound of her voice as she called his name, the way her face glowed when she spoke with Amelia, leaning her dark head close to his daughter's golden one. All those things cast a jeweled net around his heart, imprisoning it so he never wanted to be free again.

She protested that she could
not
marry him. She struggled and pulled against him, and it drove him insane to not know why that was. To not know how he could help her, how he could rid her of that need for flight. There were things he
did
know, though. He knew he would make her smile again, make her see life as brightly as he now did. He knew that, together, they could vanquish any fear or sadness.

And he knew that one day she would be his wife.

Chapter 17

Kate folded the last of her garments and placed it neatly in the battered old valise. The clasp did not close, as usual.

"If I am going to be gadding about all the time, I must use some of my wages on new baggage," she muttered, pinching the stubborn old clasp together.

She stepped back and surveyed her bedchamber. The bed was neatly made; the draperies were drawn back from the windows to let in the waning daylight. Everything was just as she had found it when she first arrived at Thorn Hill. The tall wardrobe was empty of her clothes, the dressing table cleared of her brush, combs, and rosewater scent bottle. Her precious sapphire brooch was hidden deep in her valise. It was almost as if she had never been here at all.

The day she had known, feared, would one day arrive was nearly upon her. She was leaving Thorn Hill. Yet not as her dark imagination would have told her. She was not leaving alone. She was traveling forth in the company of the Lindleys, still safely a part of their odd, beloved household.

Kate sat down in the chair by the window, propping her chin in her hand to stare out at the garden. The landscape had now had a week to recover from the rampages of the rainstorm; the flowers and untrimmed bushes had sprung to a new, green life. They overflowed the walkways even more than before, almost with a bursting enthusiasm for the revival of spring. A solitary gardener, stooped and gnarled in a stained smock, labored at trimming and weeding, assisted by Christina. The girl was bent over a clump of yellow pimpernel, carefully pruning at its delicate branches and examining the cuttings she made in the late afternoon light. Her bonnet dangled down her back by its ribbons, as usual. Kate was surprised that Lady Darcy was not out there to lecture her daughter about her carelessness over her complexion.