Lady Midnight (34 page)

And she stubbornly hid her secrets still, even after the shattering intimacy of their lovemaking. Secrets such as her virginity, and the sapphire he saw by accident on the day they met.

Surely his challenge would make her only
more
stubborn, more determined to hold her secrets and refuse to marry him. Even when marriage could make them both happy. Maybe he didn't deserve such happiness, after all the cruel things he had done in the past. But he wanted it, with a sharp yearning he could practically taste. His night with Kate had been a paradise he could never have imagined before, and he wanted her in his arms again. Yet he also wanted more. So much more.

He wanted to watch her beauty change and mature over the years, gray appearing in Kate's ebony hair as Amelia grew up and married and they saw their grandchildren. He wanted to dance with her at assemblies, see her at the other end of the table at dinner parties, and sit quietly by the fire with her on evenings at home. He wanted to walk with her across his estate, talk with her about everything that happened in their days, to grow old with her and die in her arms.

Perhaps Kate's secret was that she did not want the same things; she was just too good-hearted to hurt anyone. If that was true, then he would never darken her threshold again, never press his suit. Yet he sensed that was not the case. When he kissed her, her body rose up to meet his with an eagerness, a yearning, that could not be feigned. She watched him with admiration in her eyes when she thought he did not notice, admiration mixed with a strange anxiety, almost a fear he could not fathom.

So he would indeed be stubborn. He would learn what was keeping her from him, and demolish it if he could. Surely there was nothing so terrible that they had to be apart because of it.

"Michael, are the trunks properly secured?" he heard his mother say, and he turned to see her emerging from the house, followed by her harried lady's maid.

"Yes, Mother. Everything appears to be in perfect readiness," he answered.

She stepped up to the side of the wagon and reached out with her elegantly gloved hand to test the binding ropes. Apparently, it met with her approval. "Very good. I must say, I
am
looking forward to our time in Town. It will be nice to see Charles and Mary again, and attend some of the festivities with my old friends. We are so fortunate that the Prices were able to lease their townhouse to us on such short notice!"

"Fortunate, indeed," Michael said. Or perhaps it was not fortune, but his mother. When she set out to find something, it usually appeared. Even houses in London, unused by their neighbors for the Season.

"Give me my reticule, Rose, and then find your seat in the wagon," she instructed her maid, turning toward the coach as the girl scurried away. "It is past the hour for us to depart if we are to make good time on our journey. Where are Mrs. Brown and the girls?"

"Here we are, Mother," Christina called as she emerged from the front door. Her bonnet ribbons were hastily, sloppily knotted, and her arms were filled with books.

Kate followed, holding Amelia by the hand. Kate, unlike Christina, was as neat and tidy as a bandbox in her gray pelisse and dark blue bonnet. She seemed her usual serene self, the quiet, perfect governess.

But now Michael knew all too well the dark, swirling, passionate depths beneath her pale gray surface. The wealth of secrets she held behind her dark eyes. She took his hand as he helped her up into the carriage behind his mother and Christina, her gloved fingers curled tightly around his for the merest instant. She gave him a gentle, heartbreakingly sweet smile, and the swift glance she tossed him from beneath her lashes was utterly unreadable.

Michael grinned as he shut the carriage door and reached for his horse's reins. Their time in London would surely prove to be most interesting indeed.

Chapter 18

Amelia kicked in her sleep.

The child
looked
like the veriest angel, with her golden curls and blue eyes, but in truth she was a little imp sent to torment people in their sleep. Kate decided this the third time the child's foot connected with Kate's hip, jolting her out of a drowsing sleep.

Kate edged away from Amelia, up against the pillows. The inn they had stopped at for the night was quite decent, as far as inns went. The sheets were clean and aired; the food was of edible quality, and the clientele respectable. But it was also quite small, and Kate had to share a tiny room with Amelia and Christina. She and Amelia took the large bed, while Christina insisted on sleeping in the truckle bed. Kate had thought that a very generous gesture on Christina's part, but now she knew the truth—Christina must have known about her niece's propensity for tossing about in her sleep.

It didn't matter, really. Kate would not be able to sleep well anyway in these unfamiliar surroundings. The small noises in the corridor and from outside the window, the murmurs Christina made as she dreamed about plants, all kept Kate from finding deep, dreamless sleep. In truth, she had not slept well in a long time.

Also, nature called and she had no desire to utilize the already-used chamber pot.

Kate made sure Amelia was safely tucked in under the bedclothes, away from the high edges of the bed, before she got up to look for her gown and shoes. She wore only her chemise to bed tonight, so it was just a moment's work to dress and slip out of the room.

It was quiet in the inn's common rooms, all the guests having long since retired. Only a porter dozed by the front door, and he nodded off again after directing her to the outdoor privy.

Her business concluded, Kate lingered in the deserted innyard. It was a lovely night, clear and fresh, the black sky scattered with a glittering handful of stars and planets. The still air, aside from a faint
eau du cheval,
was clean and cool. It was far preferable to the stuffy bedchamber, and being kicked by Amelia every five minutes. She would vow her hip was still bruised.

Kate smiled ruefully and rubbed at her aching muscle. She glanced around for a place to sit for a moment—and that was when she caught the faint, sweet scent of smoke. She was not alone in the inn-yard after all. She spun around, and saw, with not much surprise, that Michael sat on a rough wooden bench under a gnarled pear tree, smoking one of his thin cheroots.

The red, glowing tip cast a faint light over the sharp angles of his face, and he was surrounded by a silvery cloud of smoke as he exhaled. It all gave him a very diabolical allure.

The sly smile he tossed her completed the illusion of wicked temptation. Or perhaps it was more reality than illusion.

"My dear," he said. "We really must cease to meet this way."

"Ha," was all Kate was able to say, an odd cross between a cough and a laugh. She should have known better than to leave her bed in the middle of the night, should have known they would find each other. They always did. "If I didn't know better, I would say you are following me."

"I could say the same about you. After all, I was just sitting here alone, innocently enjoying a smoke, when here you appear. I see that you are sharing a chamber with my daughter."

"What?" Kate asked, bewildered by the sudden volte-face in the conversation.

Michael gestured with the cheroot, the red tip like a firefly in the night. "You were rubbing at your hip, which tells me Amelia must have been having a restless sleep. Sometimes, when she has a bad dream, she could go two rounds with Gentleman Jackson himself and emerge the victor. She has a mean right hook."

"And
a mean right foot," Kate said. "She kicks like a mule."

Michael laughed. "Her nursemaid said she would grow out of it, which I sincerely hope is the truth."

"Is there any chance she will grow out of it before we reach London?"

"Now, that I doubt. But come, Kate, sit down for a while. Keep me company while I finish my cheroot," he said. Kate hesitated, thoroughly mindful of the sort of things that happened when they sat together at night, and she glanced toward the inn door. He obviously saw her, because he added, "I promise you will be safe with me. I won't leap on you at all, tempted though I might be."

Kate thought about this, a strange tingle of excitement on her very skin at the thought that
he
might desire
her
as she did him. And she really didn't want to go back to her bed yet. "Very well," she said, and sat down at the very end of the bench, leaving a good two feet between them.

Not that it mattered. She might as well have sat on his lap, for his scent, his warmth, his essence, crept across the distance like stealthy phantom fingers, wrapping around her. She leaned her head back against the rough trunk of the tree and closed her eyes. But that made the scent, the sharpness of the smoke, only more acute. She shivered.

"I'm sorry, Kate. You must be cold," she heard him say. She opened her eyes to see him taking off his coat, the cheroot clamped between his white teeth. He draped the coat over her shoulders, gathering it close at her throat. He was close to her, so close she could see the faint lines fanning from the corners of his bright eyes, the raised pattern of his scars. "Is that better?" he muttered, his hands lingering on the soft skin beneath her jaw.

"Mmm," she sighed. As she stared up at him in the moonlight, a voice whispered insistently deep in her mind.
Tell him.

And she knew, in that flash of a second, what she had to do. What was right. Her heart constricted in cold fear, in a rush of sour panic. But she had to tell him, even if he cast her off here and now, left her at this isolated inn somewhere on the road to London. At least then she would know. There would be no more wondering, no foolish hope.

She had been taught all her life that to lie, to deceive, was a necessity, an imperative to self-preservation. No one could care for her true self, a fanciful, changeable, selfish girl, so she had to hide all of that. Lie, and lie again. Deception became even more essential when she changed her name and fled to England. It became second nature.

Yet she could not lie any longer. Not when she sat here staring into Michael's beautiful angel's face, knowing what she had done to him. She had to try to erase what she had learned in the past, to let it go entirely. She wanted to be a better person.

She wanted to begin to be worthy of him. Even if that meant losing him.

Kate reached up and caught his hands in hers, holding them tightly. "Michael," she said, but her voice was so weak, like a frightened child's. She swallowed hard past the fear. "I must tell you something."

He pressed a quick kiss to her fingers. "So serious tonight, bonny Kate."

"I fear I am more Kate the curst." She couldn't look into his eyes as she spoke, so she stared at their joined hands, as if by doing so she could hold him fast to her forever. "When I told you I could not marry, it was not because I don't want you, don't—care about you. It was because there are things about me that you don't know, things that would make me an unfit wife for a man in your position."

He leaned back slightly away from her, though they still held hands. "Secrets, Kate?"

"Yes. So many of them."

"Then tell me. You know that you can say anything to me—it will not change my feelings. You know all my dark secrets, all the things in my past I am ashamed of, and you did not judge me. I won't do that to you. If you are a thief and Bow Street is after you, I could hide you in the old priest's hole at Thorn Hill. Or in the sheepherder's cottage."

Kate gave a choked laugh at the thought of crouching in a hidden cabinet while Runners tore the house apart searching for her. Truly, only Michael could make her laugh at such a moment. "No,
caro,
I am not a thief. But I
am
a liar, and..." She paused, gathering every ounce of her courage. "A whore."

His fingers tightened convulsively on hers. "I will not let you use such a word to describe yourself, Kate. It's ugly, and a lie—so I suppose you
are
a liar for calling yourself a whore. You were a virgin when we made love."

"Only because I did not have the time to sell that particular commodity before I left Venice." Kate couldn't bear to touch him any longer, now that her unclean self was appearing. She let him go, and turned away to face the silent innyard. "I told you my mother drowned, and I nearly went with her."

"Yes," he answered quietly, soothingly, almost as if she were a skittish colt he feared to spook and drive off. "In a boating accident."