Secrets of Surrender (17 page)

“If we walk out, no man will go back in. We’ll see to that.”

“There are always others who need the work.”

“If those lines are in front of the pits, it won’t matter.”

“They will call out the yeomanry. It will be another Peterloo.”

Jon slammed down his fist. “Stop talking like my wife. Have you forgotten what is down there? Go back to that fine house you built for Harold and borrow his boots and clothes. Come in with me tomorrow if you are forgetting why the danger doesn’t matter to such as us.”

That “such as us” did not include Kyle. He was one of them, but also no longer one of them. This was his home, but he had traveled so far from it in so many ways that each time he returned he was less a part of this world.

He felt it. Nor could he stop it. His ties here were like sand that ran through his fingers no matter how closely he pressed them together.

How long before few even recognized him when he walked these lanes? The day would come when he would enter this tavern and the voices would fall silent while eyes examined the intruding gentleman.

“I am going up to Kirtonlow while I am here,” he said. “I will speak to Cottington about that tunnel.”

Jon’s shrug communicated his lack of faith in that making any difference. He called for more ale and set the conversation aside along with his empty glass.

Kyle returned to the house in time for dinner. Rose helped Prudence set out the food. The conversation revolved around small things the way talk among strangers often did. Finally Uncle Harold could not stand it. He demanded to know what had been learned at the tavern.

“They don’t come here much. Too far to walk after a day’s work,” he explained.

Aunt Pru weakly smiled her apologies for what sounded like lack of gratitude for the house. Kyle let it pass. Harold knew they would not visit much even if he still lived in the village. A man too weak to get to the tavern was a man isolated.

“There is talk of reopening the tunnel,” he said. “I heard of it in December, but it sounds like it will happen for certain.”

“The fools. The greedy fools.” The news agitated Harold so much that he lapsed into a coughing fit.

“At least maybe your father and the others can have a Christian burial,” Pru quietly said.

Rose looked over in surprise. An expression entered her eyes that Kyle had seen several times tonight. Curiosity. Maybe reevaluation. Something was on her mind and this reference to that tunnel piqued it.

Aunt Pru brought out one of her pies. Its aroma was enough to lighten everyone’s mood. Pru had a famous hand at pasties of all sorts. It did not matter if the fruit had been in a root cellar all winter, she still managed to conjure excellence.

He felt like a boy again, anticipating a treat only available then on paydays, when some sugar could be bought.

Prudence sliced. “Rose helped me make it.”

“Did she now?”

“Nothing like cooking together for women to get to know each other,” Harold said. “I’m glad to see your wife likes to bake, Kyle lad. It is good to know you won’t be deprived down there in London now.”

“Rose is an excellent pastry cook,” he said. She beamed at the compliment. He eyed the piece of pie in front of him. “So, I’ve you to thank for this, dear?”

“I did not do much. I only cut the apples.”

He dug in. No, she had not helped much. It tasted wonderful.

Rose watched him swallow every bite. Again that look entered her eyes. Something had her thinking again.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

R
ose wanted some conversation with her husband. It annoyed her when he did not retire with her, but allowed her to go up to the bedchamber alone.

As soon as she got there she realized why he had not accompanied her. Sharing this room meant having no privacy. Preparations normally done separately would now be performed with him right there.

She wondered about that while she removed her dress and stays and chemise and hose. She slid her nightdress on and sat on the bed to take down her hair. She imagined him here, undressing too.

She looked at the bed. Prudence and Harold had shared one all night, every night, for years. They did not go their separate ways after the marital duties were performed. What must it be like, to have one’s life so completely intertwined with another’s?

Quite nice if there were love, she guessed. Horrible if there were hatred. Intrusive if there were indifference.

She heard his boots on the stairs soon enough to know he had indeed delayed in respect for her delicacy. There was a lot of that in this marriage.

She left the lamp burning and climbed into the bed. It was not an overly large one. All kinds of intimacies would be forced on them during this visit.

He knocked before he entered. She doubted Harold had ever knocked to make sure Prudence would allow him in.

She fought the impulse to turn on her side so he too would have privacy. But
he
wasn’t a delicate flower and she wanted to talk.

He removed his coats and hung them in the wardrobe.

“Did you enjoy the pie?” she asked.

He sat on the chair and pulled off his boots. “Yes, very much. It was almost as good as yours.”

She found herself unable to speak. Her heart filled with an emotion sweet and poignant.

The truth was that she made mediocre pies. No one had ever taught her how to do it. As a girl, out of necessity she had experimented until she came up with something deemed more or less edible by her brothers. The result in no way compared with Prudence’s magic.

She had watched Prudence today, and seen what had been missing all those years from her own baking. She had tasted the difference too.

Yet here Kyle was, lying so she would not feel bad. He could have just not mentioned her pies at all. Just like he could have eaten only one small piece the morning after their wedding.

He probably choked on every mouthful that day.

“Prudence said you would probably visit the vicar today. She told me how he had taught you your first school lessons.” She debated whether to go on. They could live their entire lives without broaching the questions that had risen in her mind today. It might be best to do that.

Only she would not sleep if she did not ask them. The answers affected not only her knowledge of the stranger, but her understanding of the Kyle she knew.

“She said that it was Cottington who had the vicar give you lessons. That the earl was your benefactor. You never told me that.”

He pulled off his cravat. “You never asked.”

“That is true. I never asked. I am asking now. I want to know about this.”

“You want to know for the wrong reasons.”

What was that supposed to mean? “I want to know because you are my husband, and this extraordinary occurrence changed your life and made you the man I married.”

He sat back in the chair and looked at her. “Fine. I came to the earl’s attention when I was twelve. He decided that I had abilities that should be nurtured. He arranged for the vicar to give me lessons, then paid my fees to learn from an engineer in Durham for two years. He arranged that I take entrance examinations to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then sent me there to study architecture. When I returned he handed me one hundred pounds and the largesse ended, although he continued as a friend and as an occasional business partner.”

And that one hundred had been turned into one thousand, then more and more. “It is an amazing story. That you astonish is a given, but I find the earl astonishing too. Why did he extend this patronage to you? Because of your father’s death in the tunnel?”

“He had no idea that I was the son of one of those men. That had happened three years before.” He went to work on his cuffs. “I am not sure why he did it. I think it was because I had thrashed his son. Maybe he admired my audacity. Perhaps he just believed the son needed thrashing and was glad another boy dared to do it for him.”

“You thrashed Norbury? How delicious. It is unfortunate, however, that this story touches on him.”

“Unfortunate but inevitable, Rose. Do not pretend that you did not know where the story would lead when you first asked the question.”

He stripped off his shirt. He poured water in the basin and began washing.

She had never seen him this unclothed since their wedding night. After that he had been no more than a silhouette in the dark. She had felt those shoulders and embraced his nakedness, but not seen it.

The low light flattered him, but his strength would have impressed even in the glaring summer sun. Nothing soft could be seen. No threatening corpulence due to easy living. His muscles did not appear bulky, but just the size and tautness required for his height. Like his face, his body appeared roughly sculpted, and it managed to imply contained energy that waited to burst forth. She wondered if that tension ever disappeared. Maybe when he slept it went dormant.

He so captivated her attention that she almost abandoned the conversation. Her silence drew his attention, and he caught her watching him. He returned to his washing.

“I suppose that I did know where the story would lead,” she said. “That you know Norbury so well has always been a surprise. That you now continue in a partnership with him, and use his family lands—”

“My business is with Cottington. It always has been. Norbury is involved now only because the earl is veryill.”

This conversation was leading onto dangerous ground. She saw the space between them suddenly full of crevices and holes. His tone said it would be unwise to try to walk there.

“If the earl is so ill, Norbury may be in your life a very long time,” she said. “He already has been, from the sounds of things. He is in both our lives now, Kyle.”

He threw down the towel. “When I must see him, I see him. Then he is gone from my thoughts along with his presence. He is not in our lives.”

“How can he not be, with how we met? I feel him; he is like a specter. I do not think that he leaves your thoughts at all where I am concerned. I think that you try hard to forget my affair, but—”

“Yes, damn it, I try hard. The alternative is to want to kill him. For the shameful way he treated you at that dinner. For the way I suspect he treated you before it. I picture him with you and—” His fist clenched and unclenched. He tensed hard, and forced a dark calm on himself. “It is not in my mind when I am with you, however. It does not reflect on you.”

“How can it not? He affects everything. That night affects everything, even how you treat me as a wife.”

“If you are talking about my command about your brother—”

“My brother? Goodness, my brother is one thing we share that Norbury does not touch. I did not like that argument, but at least for once I spoke with the man I married. The whole man. The real man. Not the careful, polite creation who dresses so perfectly and talks so perfectly and gives me pleasure so correctly and with such perfect respect.”

She doubted she would ever see him so surprised again in her life. It only lasted a few seconds. Then his gaze focused on her in a way that made her heart rise to her throat.

“I treat you with respect, like a lady, and you are
complaining
?”

“I am not complaining. I know that I am fortunate to have such a considerate lover. I just think that you are so careful with that respect for reasons that sadden me.”

He did not like the criticism. No man would. “It sounds like you know my mind and my reasons better than I do, Rose.”

She should retreat, apologize, be silent and grateful. Only if she did, all he would remember was an insult that she had not intended to give.

“Perhaps I do, Kyle. Or maybe the little that I know of your mind has me misunderstanding. Just tell me this. If not for that terrible night, if not for my affair, would you feel that you needed to be so carefully respectful? If you had married an innocent girl from this village, or a woman who had never been called a whore, would you even think of such a thing all the time? If you had not been born in this village, but in a manor house, and offered me marriage under other circumstances, would you believe it so important to treat me like a lady?”

At least he did not look even more angered by her outpouring. Intense and serious, but not furious. The time pulsed by so slowly, so silently, that she regretted her words anyway.

“I am sorry. I should not have—” She picked at a loose thread on the coverlet. “I just sense, when we are together—you are almost always wearing your perfectly tailored coats, Kyle. Even in bed when you have nothing on in reality.”

She had made a bad situation worse. She flopped onto her back and pulled the coverlet high, to hide from the flotsam of the shipwreck she had no doubt just made of this marriage.

She wished that she were a writer or poet and could explain what she meant. She wished there were words to express how she felt the way his birth and hers, his redemption and her scandal, his awareness of her affair and her need to
not
be treated like a whore, had built these invisible barriers of formality.

Impossible to explain. Unlikely to change. She should accept how it was. She should scold her heart so it did not keep stretching toward something unknown in that aching, restless way. She should—

“The coats do not fit well when I am here, Rose. For all the tailor’s skill, they become too tight when I come home.”

His quiet voice flowed to her through the tense silence.

“I expect that is uncomfortable.”

“Damnably so.”

“Then again, perhaps they are always too tight, and you only notice when you come home.”

“I think that you may be correct about that.”

She sat up again. His attention had turned to the low fire, and his own thoughts. He stood with one forearm resting on the mantel while he gazed at the flames. Their light illuminated him beautifully.

The sight mesmerized her. The whole chamber seemed to fill with the glow from the hearth. Its warmth entered her.

“Actually, I have also noticed that my garments seem tight since I came here, Kyle. Perhaps it is the air. Or the pies.”

He smiled. “Then you should remove them.”

“I have no practice in taking off these garments. I was trussed in this corset the day I was born.”

He looked at her. Her heart skipped and began a rapid patter. Even the day he proposed he had not allowed her to see his desire so boldly.

He strode toward her. “I’ll be taking that as an invitation, Rose.”

He grabbed her in an embrace so strong, so supportive, that her knees left the mattress. He kissed her possessively, hard, asking for nothing and everything. He put no restraints on his desire this time. He pulled her into its whirlwind of untamed power.

The kisses claimed, commanded, and aroused her fast. She could not have stood against the way he took control of her even if she wanted to. She had asked for this, and she allowed her own savage reactions to have free rein. They overwhelmed her initial fear and surprise.

Hot kisses. Hard and deep and biting and devouring. Arms of steel held her up to the fury scorching her neck and mouth. Shock upon wonderful shock slashed through her body like arrows of fire. He called forth her primitive self until she moaned from the glorious assault and lost all restraint.

He set her down so she knelt again, on the edge of the bed. He caressed up her thighs beneath her nightdress. His hand smoothed over her hips and her bottom. A sly, erotic touch traced down her cleft. A stunning quiver followed that path to where his fingers teased at her.

She moved one knee to encourage him to continue that delicious torture. He did, but broke the long kiss. With his other hand he swept her nightdress up to her shoulders and over her head. It fell down her arms, onto the floor at his feet.

He looked down on her nakedness with an expression made severe by desire. His caress glossed over her breasts while his other hand flicked and teased below. The dual sensations left her trembling, weakened by pleasure and wobbling on her stance. She leaned into him for support until her face smoothed against his chest.

A hand on her nape pressed her closer until her cheek rested on taut skin. “I can remove the nightdress, Rose, but the rest of the garments you will have to shed yourself.”

She understood. His encouragement emboldened her. She placed her palms on his chest, feeling and seeing at the same time. Her mere touch raised his desire even more and made a new tightness flex through him.

She caressed more purposefully. She watched her hands smooth over his chest, sliding down and over the hard ridges of his muscles and ribs. He looked at her just as she did him, his own caresses and touches on her body mimicking her strokes on his. Their hot breaths met and merged in increasingly frantic kisses while the sensations pushed them both further into madness.