James followed Sir Francis Ffoulkes from Ffoulkes’ town house near Fitzroy Square south toward the river. It was the eve before the house party, and Sir Francis had not left yet for his own manor in Kent. Odd.
Sir Francis turned into a set of tatty buildings. James was able to see which door he entered. That one. Those high transom windows were likely part of that particular set of rooms. Would he be able to climb up? Yes.
Criminy. He had gotten a smear of soot on his breeches. Enfield would be livid.
From his perch, James was able to look down into the large, open space. It was an artist’s studio filled with canvases and easels and rather a lot of mess. There was Sir Francis. And he was speaking to a man. The man looked familiar. It was the man who had ruined Sir Francis’ joke at the club. Had he been Sir Francis’ guest that night or had that been where they had met? No, this was a well-established relationship. Sir Francis had called the man “Roger.” Men addressed men by their surnames or titles unless they had grown up together as boys. These two men had grown up together.
One of the transom windows was cracked open and voices floated up to James.
“—even more desperate than before—” That was Sir Francis. He was upset.
“Calm down, Francis.” That was the other man, Roger. “I know her. I know her like I know myself. I have a plan that will back her into a corner. In fact, she’ll be so eager to marry you, she’ll go to Scotland with you and you’ll have her money before Christmas. I will seduce her—”
A pigeon suddenly became very interested in James and came over to peck at his boot.
“—after you discover us, you will offer to rescue her reputation—”
James tried to shoo the pigeon away.
“—she wouldn’t want to embarrass her daughters. Especially the young one, the unmarried one. I have heard that she cares a great deal about propriety and how things look since her husband died. And this way, I’ll get something, a chance to revisit the pleasures of the past, and you’ll get something—”
The pigeon fluttered off and James missed the first part of what Sir Francis said back to the other man. What was that? Dubois? He had missed something Sir Francis had said about Dubois? He cursed to himself. He was a worthless spy.
The two men were leaving. Together. No time to scramble down, he’d have to stay up here and hope they didn’t look up. There, they were gone. Now to climb down and set off after them.
“Upsidaisy.”
What a dreadful phrase he had adopted. He really must scrub that from his vocabulary.
Oh. Oh, no. A rip in his coat.
He’d have to worry about Enfield later.
Catherine was delighted. The blue silk dress, along with the special stays and the translucent chemise, had just been delivered. In fact, she would not have had the dress in time if the house party had not been delayed. She should not have been so impatient.
And how wonderful to find she could still take pleasure in simple, harmless things, like a pretty gown. Girlish, innocent things, like her daughter Arabella did.
A decision must be made. Should Wright pack any of her lavender dresses? No. She would go to the house party completely out of mourning. After all, she had many lovely dresses from before Edward’s death. Lovely, but not quite in today’s mode. Sir Francis unfortunately had an eye for fashion. She hoped he did not know as much about ladies’ styles as he did about gentlemen’s.
The elegant Sir Francis had been so very solicitous to her since last spring. Respectful letters detailing his intentions. Requests to dance with her at balls. Lovely compliments. At the very beginning of his courtship, he had even offered to pay a call on Thomas Drake to induce him to marry Harry “by force if necessary” when Harry had been seen coming out of Lord Drake’s rooms. Catherine had told him that he was very kind but the engagement had already been announced. No forcing was necessary.
He had been very kind.
And that is what she needed.
Kindness certainly had been what she needed seventeen years ago. She had not wanted love when she had married Edward Lovelock. She had wanted affection from him, devotion from him. Safety. No more want and no more hurt. She had not thought of what her own feelings toward him might be in their marriage. She had initially, selfishly, only thought of what he could give her. And as she molded herself into the role of Mrs. Edward Lovelock, she had discovered that there is more than one kind of love. Despite herself, she fell in love with Edward. And when he died, she discovered that there is no protection from the agony of loss. Protection from regret, yes. She had had that. She knew she had been a good wife to a good man. But his passing had left an emptiness in her heart.
Sir Francis would understand that. After all, he had lost his wife recently. And surely, she could come to love Sir Francis, in time.
With him, she would find peace, once again. The peace that had been destroyed by James.
No. Don’t think on him.
“Mrs. Lovelock?” Wright spoke.
Catherine started. “Yes?”
“Begging your pardon, the slippers you want to wear with your new dress, I have just noticed that the heel is loose on this one.”
Oh, bother. Catherine inspected the shoe herself. It was a little thing of blue satin that had been made for her five years ago. Yes, the heel was loose and would likely come off during her first evening wearing it.
There was nothing for it. She was leaving early tomorrow and it was evening now. She herself would need to pay a visit to her cobbler. She knew Mr. Quinn lived above the shop, but it was not fair to ask Wright to go in her stead and persuade him to fix the shoe at this late hour. But Mr. Quinn could not say no to Catherine herself.
Catherine told Wright to go downstairs and order the carriage to be made ready. Catherine snatched a cloak from the piles of clothing she had considered taking to the house party and discarded. It was a cloak she had used in the first months after Edward’s death, a deep black velvet with a large hood. Quite warm. It would do.
“But, of course, Mrs. Lovelock, if one of your wee shoes has a heel off. ’Twill be the work of a moment.”
The gravy stains on the napkin stuffed into the top of his shirt showed Mr. Quinn had been in the middle of his dinner when Catherine had knocked on his door and called out to the windows above the shop. She would need to compensate the man well for his trouble. Really, she was quite pampered.
As Mr. Quinn took out his tools and spoke to himself—“oh, aye, I remember this pair”—Catherine gazed out the window of his little shop. She had not realized how unsavory this neighborhood became at nightfall. Several of the men walking about were unsteady, red-faced, intoxicated. A frowsy woman, undoubtedly a whore, was trying to ply her trade on the pavement. And, across the street, a man walked furtively, staying in shadows, darting from doorway to doorway.
That man was James.
He seemed much the same as he had been in the modiste’s shop. Alert, intent on something. And wholly, entirely, thoroughly irresistible.
And she was drawn to him like she was a compass needle and he was her true north.
Without thinking, Catherine stepped out of the shop. Her coachman and footman were checking on the horses and conversing in low voices. They did not see her. She went around the back of her carriage and crossed the street.
She was very glad of her black cloak now. She pulled it around herself and the hood over her bright hair. Catherine flattered herself that she faded into the encroaching shadows of the night.
She had no idea what she was doing. Pursue a man through the streets? Pure folly. But she only knew she needed to be close to him, as she had been in the modiste’s shop. Her heart thumped wildly and she could feel a sweet, fierce excitement tinged with desperation coursing through her body.
She followed him for hundreds of yards. But, in the area around Covent Garden, she lost him.
He disappeared, dissolved, vanished.
She knew these streets. The Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane was close by, back behind those other buildings. She turned in a full circle, searching the pavement, but did not see James.
And now she felt unsafe. A man in working clothes lurched up to her and she drew back in fear. But he was merely heading to the gutter to vomit. Three other men, dressed as gentlemen, walked past her and one reached out and touched her cloak. But he continued on with his friends, laughing at “the whore in mourning.”
She would go to the theater. That is what she would do. She would find the doorkeeper Joseph or a stagehand and pay him to go back to Mr. Quinn’s shop and fetch her carriage. This alley would take her through to Longacre Street, the shortest way.
And then a hand reached out from the alley and dragged her into the shadows.
It was him. Beautiful him. Beautiful, dangerous him.
He clenched Catherine’s wrist.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
“I—” She tried to wrench away but his grip was too strong.
“You can have no business here, Mrs. Lovelock. I know you followed me—”
James broke off mid-sentence, listening. The only sound Catherine could hear was her own rapid breathing.
“Forgive me,” he murmured and leaned his body against hers, pressing her against the wall of the alley. His hands were on both her wrists now, his arms enclosing her, trapping her. Her breasts were pressed against his abdomen. He bent his head down.
He kissed her.
His mouth on hers.
Oh. Oh. Jamie.
His lips, smooth with just the slightest bristle surrounding them at this late hour in the day, parted slightly and she could taste—what was it?—an apple.
She had not been kissed on the mouth since the last few months of her husband’s illness. But she knew that was not the explanation for the fire that immediately licked at her core and at the peaks of her breasts. Enormous, yearning lust that pushed her lips open, welcoming, wanting, demanding a deeper kiss.
That deeper kiss never came. James’ lips did not open wider. His tongue stayed in his mouth. But he rubbed his lips against hers, at first lightly and then with a growing pressure. He made a grunting noise.
James was giving her a stage kiss. Catherine had had many stage kisses in her career as an actress. A few had not been like this; they had been delivered by leading men who knew she was powerless to stop them from thrusting their tongues in her mouth while on stage. But most had been like this—a simulacrum of passion with a minimum of contact. Respectful.
This kiss was an insult. An anguish and a rage began to build.
She heard voices and footsteps and James increased his pressure on her mouth.
“—it can’t be helped. We should leave tonight to be there by morning—”
“Hold.”
“What is it? Oh, yes, Lord Daventry, how unexpected.”
“Ha! Daventry, having it off with some whore!”
She knew that voice. Those voices. Too much was happening too quickly.
James let go of her wrists and put his hands on both sides of her face and broke the kiss and turned her still-hooded head away from the voices, even as he turned his face toward them.
“Yesss,” he slurred, “and iffen you,” he hiccoughed, “fellows might be good enough to go away, I might manage to get it hard enough to get the job done.” He took one of his hands from her face and fumbled with the buttons on the fall of his breeches.
This was met by jeers and cries of, “Good luck with that!” and, “See you on the morrow!” and within seconds the voices were fading, moving down the street away from their alley.
James stepped away from her. She stayed pressed to the wall. Her heart was coming out of her chest. She hungered for the pressure of his body against hers, his mouth on hers, even if it was only pretense.
“My apologies, again.” His voice was strained. “We must get you away from this place. Even under normal circumstances, this is not a safe place for a lady—”
This time it was Catherine who heard voices, sensed movement. She did not calculate or think. She launched herself at James, climbing up his body to wrap her legs around his waist, screeching with laughter, until her face was level with his and she began kissing him enthusiastically, moaning, humping him.
What’s fine for the gander should be perfectly fair for the goose.
She heard some male laughter through her own noises and could make out the words “lusty wench” and again, the voices faded. She slowed her thrusts against him. She stopped her histrionic moans. She could feel James’ hands under her haunches, holding her, pulling her into him. She loosened her grip around his neck and trailed one hand up into that curly hair she had longed to touch for months, filling her fingers. She softened her mouth and as she pulled on his hair, she gave him a kiss.
A. Real. Kiss.
And then his tongue was in her mouth and she could feel his hard cock, with only the fall of his breeches separating him from her wet, hungry cleft.
James had been deeply aroused by pressing Catherine into the alley wall and feeling her body against his. He had found it extraordinarily difficult to keep his kiss as circumspect as it had been. And, yes, there might have been a better way to hide her from the passersby, a better way to obscure his own reason for being in the alley, but it was her. He couldn’t help wanting to touch her.
He was genuinely startled by suddenly having his arms full of a noisy, squirming female, seemingly ardent, intent on reducing him to a pile of quivering mush. But as she quieted, he began to realize the hands he had without thinking put under her cloak and her dress and her petticoat to hold her up were cupping the naked skin of Catherine’s buttocks. Like all upper-class women, she did not wear pantaloons and he thrilled to have his hands on the bare flesh of her haunches, so warm, so firm and yet smooth and pliable.
And then an entirely different kiss. So tender. Soft lips on his, the softest he had ever felt, like cushions of silk. He had never had a kiss like this before. Ever. Such a gentle thing that produced such a violent reaction in him. Blood coursed and his cock grew harder and strained his breeches, reaching toward her. Momentarily, he wondered if her other lips were just as soft.
His tongue was then between her lips, exploring her mouth, entering it and withdrawing. The ecstasy to feel her own small tongue reaching out to his and pushing back into him. Teased by the warmth and the wetness, her hands on his head drawing his mouth into hers, James answered by pulling her hips even closer to his waist.
He was not conscious of much besides her body and his own, but he knew that they were in the exact position he had conjured in his mind a few weeks ago when he had imagined taking her in the modiste’s fitting room. Holding her, he controlled her entirely in this position. With the undoing of a few buttons on his breeches, her sex would be against his and he could enter her, draw her down on top of his member and plunge into her deeply, just as he had wanted to that day. He could take her. She would be his.
But, no.
This was not what he wanted. This was entirely wrong.
For one thing, with both of his hands holding her up, he could not touch her breasts. He was greedy now and wanted all of her, including her breasts. But she was very light. Perhaps he could shift her weight onto just one hand and forearm and free one of her breasts with the other hand as he had almost done in his dream last week?
For a second thing, he had not yet assessed her arousal—he was more than ready but had she become dewy, was she ready for him, should he touch her, should he kiss her longer and harder first, so that her folds might naturally open and widen for him?
And third . . . what was the third thing?
The third thing was that he was not an animal.
He pulled his mouth from hers and gently put her down.
Her breasts heaved. Her breathing was as rapid as his. Her skin was flushed and her lips were wonderfully dark pink and swollen from their kisses. But her lips flattened now as she gritted her teeth. She rearranged her skirts and backed away from him, one, two, three steps. He thought she might turn to flee and he reached out and caught her arm.
“I’m sorr—”
His words were cut off by a slap.
He barely felt the blow but it startled him into dropping her wrist.
Catherine was shocked when James broke the kiss and pulled her off him and set her down. She had been ready to have him, savagely, here in the alley, her legs around his waist. She had been more than ready for him. Ravenous for him.
And then he had put her down. Made it clear he didn’t want her, despite the very hard shaft in his breeches.
And now her own engorged sex ached. Her lips tingled and her nipples were pierced with pain. And her pride hurt. Her vanity was in shreds.
He stood apart from her and looked at her with those gray eyes. Eyes she had thought at first so seductive and then so intelligent and now she saw were merely judging. He must be disgusted by her. She had thrown herself at him, participated in his game of deceiving the passersby, and then betrayed her own desire for him. She had been ready to enjoy him in public, like the most vulgar kind of whore.
She loathed him almost as much as she loathed herself.
And she hated herself profoundly right now.
So, when he tried to stop her from getting away, escaping from this hell she found herself in, when he grabbed her arm, she reacted as she would to a stranger trying to hold her captive.
She hit him.
She meant to hurt him. But she knew she hadn’t. She was small and her arm was for taking gentlemen’s arms, for holding fans, for writing letters, for arranging flowers, not for open-handed blows. But the slap had its desired effect. He let go of her.
“I never want to see you again,” she finally spat out.
His cheek was reddening from where she had slapped him. He bowed and kept his eyes down.
“There will be no difficulty with your request, Mrs. Lovelock.”
She swept past James, out of the alley, trying to remember the best route back to her cobbler’s.
She was definitely marrying Sir Francis. As soon as possible. Before she was reduced to subjugation by her own weakness. Before she ruined herself all over again. Before lust became riddled with violence as it had been before. Before her life became ruled by catastrophic obsession with James and dictated by the aching slick need between her legs.
She was on the edge of the precipice. She. Would. Not. Fall. Over.
She could not.
