Back at her house in Mayfair, Catherine stared out a window of the drawing room. She paced. She picked up a book and threw it back down.
There were so many reasons why James and she could never . . . It was an impossibility.
First, as she had already realized, James could well have a mistress. Or many mistresses. He was heir apparent to a duchy. He almost certainly had a string of playthings to fill his time.
And James was too young. Why would he have interest in her? She was well past the prime of her beauty and could not compete with the charms of women a quarter of a century younger than she.
And besides, he was an inebriate. No matter that today he had not been drunk. He would return to the bottle soon enough. And young drunks were the worst kind. Because a young man’s passion could become aroused by drink, but when his potency was overcome by the alcohol, he would find other ways to ravage. To dominate. To take.
Oh, Kate. You are a fool.
Because after seeing him at the modiste’s shop, he tempted her even more than ever. In the worst possible way. In a way that would almost certainly lead to ruin. Infatuation would turn into soul-crippling obsession as it had once before in her life.
James had been so different today. And it was more than just sobriety. He had seemed more alive, more tightly wound, more vivid than she had ever seen him.
That was it. He had been sharply drawn in some way today, when before, he had always seemed . . . blurry. Appealing but a little hazy around the edges. Every other time she had been in his presence, he was so relaxed and loose-limbed. That lazy and droll smile. His gray eyes half-lidded and slyly seductive.
Today, his eyes had been piercing. There had been a fire and a purpose behind them. He had been all man, no boy.
Virile.
Oh, she wanted him. Felt crazed for him in a way that was all too familiar. It was how she had been with Roger. When there was nothing that could slake her bottomless appetite but the most sordid kind of rutting.
She was right to have considered James dangerous. He made her dangerous.
James would transform her again into that girl for whom need and love and desire were hopelessly entwined. That girl who would tolerate being used if it meant receiving a glimpse of tenderness or an arousing touch. That girl who would do anything for her lover. And would explode into violence if she could not have what she wanted.
She could not, she would not, she mustn’t.
That was why it was good that there was a man like Sir Francis in her life. A man who did not excite or inflame. A man who could calm and quench.
She had almost made up her mind to say yes.
There were still two hours until dinner. Which she would eat alone. The house was very empty.
She went upstairs.
“I am fatigued, Wright. I’ll have a nap,” she told her lady’s maid. Wright made no comment, even though Catherine had never had an afternoon nap in the three years since Wright had entered her service. She assisted Catherine in removing the pins from her hair and in taking off her dress and hose and shoes and stays and chemise.
Catherine realized she had spent most of her day dressing and undressing. How dull and fruitless. The safe life she had chosen for herself. Made for herself. How little there was to it now, with her husband dead and her daughters out of the house.
Once the nightdress was over her head, Catherine dismissed Wright and lay flat on her back on top of the counterpane.
The window nearest the bed was cracked open a bit and a draft stirred the curtains and washed over Catherine, lifting her nightdress slightly away from her body. The fabric gently grazed her nipples and they stiffened immediately. She put her hands to her breasts and squeezed them gently. Her breasts felt as sensitive as they had when she was sixteen. Yes, when she was sixteen and the blacksmith’s boy had, with her permission, put his hand inside her dress as they kissed the night before she left the Midlands for London. She had ached for that boy, hadn’t she? Ached for him in a simple, sweet way. If only she could be that way with James instead of twisted and crazed. His hands on her breasts, like this, his body atop hers, his mouth on hers . . .
. . . oh, Jamie.
She took her hands from her breasts and got up and closed the window. She slid under the counterpane and turned on her side, determined to banish thoughts of James, Marquess of Daventry, from her head forever. But as she turned, her thighs pressed against each other and she felt the wetness. The throbbing. She thought of the release she might induce in herself with her own touch. And there was no danger, surely, here by herself, alone.
She lifted her nightdress above her waist and put her hand into the thatch of golden maidenhair between her legs. She dampened her finger in her own dew and found the source of rapture, that pearl above the opening. She thought of the blacksmith’s boy. Yes. The most innocent kind of pleasure. She thought of Edward, always so gentle in his desire, so attentive, so eager to please her, so filled with love. Yes, yes. She tried to think of Sir Francis Ffoulkes, but she could not imagine him without a cravat and a tailcoat. No matter. There were others to think of.
Others, like James.
No. No.
She had long ago shut the door on any thoughts of Roger. She could do the same for James.
But her mind would not obey. As her finger slipped faster and faster over her pearl, her mind slipped away until gray eyes and smooth, golden-brown skin and James’ imagined body, long and lean, hovered in front of her.
His hands woven into her hair, holding her breasts, clutching her thighs. His mouth on her lips, her nipples, her cleft. The friction of his torso against hers as he plunged into her over and over again.
She sneezed, a little sneeze.
Slow, sweet, clenching waves rolled over her body, again and again and again. And as she shuddered in climax, she heard him demand with his newfound focus and intensity, “I must have you.”
Her body stilled. For a few moments, she was completely limp. But within seconds, she was consumed by the twin desires to touch herself and to think about James again. Destroying her temporary peace.
How weak she was. How deeply the power of desire ruled her.
She pulled down her nightdress and got out of bed. She made her resolve. She knew what she must do. She must marry Sir Francis Ffoulkes.
Mustn’t she?
