He hired a carriage and took her to a coaching inn just half a mile outside of Canterbury. It reminded Catherine of the inns she had stayed at when she had left her girlhood home for the first time, on her long, slow journey to London. It was clean with low ceilings. It was not unlike the inn they had stayed at in Duddenhoe End. Perhaps that was why he had chosen it. He wanted to remind her of their first coupling.
As if she needed reminding.
As if she hadn’t spent the coach ride from Dover to Canterbury longing to sit astride him, to kiss him, to undo his cravat and run her hands over his chest and lower still, to touch his member and make it hard again with her hands and her mouth. To lose herself with him inside her.
“Jamie Cooksey and wife. Kate, she is,” James said to the innkeeper. A few coins, a wink from the innkeeper, and five minutes later, she and James were alone in a room with a hearth, a table, some chairs, and a modest bed. And her two trunks.
James took the key that had been given to him by the innkeeper and locked the door and handed the key to Catherine.
“Would you sit, Kate?” he asked her.
After she had sat in one of the chairs, he sat as well.
“You used my birth name as our name with the innkeeper,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Because suddenly I wanted to be a Cooksey, an ordinary man. With my wife. With you.”
“You want to worry every day of the year about the rent or the roof or the hens that won’t lay?”
“I want not to worry that the woman I love won’t have me.” His eyes were calm even as his voice betrayed some emotion with a very slight tremble. “You must know I want you to marry me.”
No, she didn’t know that. Not definitely. She had hoped he wanted that even as she had known it was impossible. Her chest ached.
But he didn’t really want to marry her. He didn’t know her. How darkness tainted her and her desire for him. She could never be his wife, his duchess. He should marry that speculative virginal girl she had imagined for him.
“I know you would not have a happy life with me, Jamie.”
“And I know you’re carrying my child.”
Catherine looked away. Then she looked back at him. She would hurt him now. Thrust the knife in and push him away. Quickly. So it would be over. “Maybe it’s not yours.”
He gazed at her steadily with no sign of insult on his face. “That’s not true.”
“You shouldn’t be so sure of yourself.”
“It has nothing to do with me. It’s all to do with you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know the important parts.” His voice was quiet. Not coy. Not flirtatious or insinuating. Still, Catherine felt herself flush with desire again, thinking how he knew her. She fought it down with anger.
“You know my bosom and my quim and that I sneeze, and because you know these things, you think that you know me?”
James looked taken aback. “I meant that I have seen you mother Harry and Arabella. I saw how you handled Roger Siddons at Ffoulkes Manor and in my rooms. I have seen you face danger. You are a powerful woman, Catherine.” He took her hand and looked at it. “Tiny but powerful. And I long to have that power at my side. I have spent so long as a ne’er-do-well that I need your steel.”
The touch of his hand on hers. She thought of his hand on her breast, her hip. Warmth and aching and wetness flared in her nether regions. All from his hand touching hers. She withdrew her hand.
“I am weaker than you think, Your Grace.”
“Just a moment ago you called me Jamie.”
“I am weaker than you think, Jamie.”
He smiled a little at that. “That’s better.”
She whispered, “If you knew my thoughts, you would know how weak I am.”
“Then let me know your thoughts, Catherine. When we have been alone, we have always spent our time together coupling.”
She hung her head.
He went on. “I am to blame.”
She raised her head. “If you are to blame, it is only because you arouse me so strongly that when I am with you, I can only think of touching you and having you inside me.”
James shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Catherine spread her hands wide on her lap and clenched her thighs with her fingers as if she were holding herself down in the chair. “You asked for my thoughts. Now you regret that.”
“No, no, no. I am just . . . well, what you said made me . . . I needed more room.”
Catherine looked at his lap and saw the front of his trousers were pulled tight, outlining his own arousal.
“You see it is impossible, Jamie. There is nothing between us but lust. We cannot even sit and have a conversation without . . .”
“Without what?”
“Without my turning into some thoughtless wanton woman for you.”
“Catherine.” He looked at his own lap. “At this time, there is only visible evidence that I am a thoughtless wanton man for you.”
“You think your desire is greater because it is external? If you put your hand up my skirt and between my legs, you would find I was ready. For you.”
Jamie rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I’m not going to do that.”
“No,” Catherine said softly. “You’re not. Because you have control. You can set me down in an alley in the middle of Covent Garden when I would have gladly taken you there, in public, against a wall, like a drunken trollop. Even though the repercussions for me would always be worse than they would be for you.”
“You would not have done that!”
Catherine was silent.
“You would have?”
“Jamie, you asked for my thoughts and then you deny they are my thoughts.”
He was the one who was silent now. But only for a few moments.
“You know, Catherine, when you refuse to marry me, you make me think I am not good enough for you.”
“Jamie—”
“No, that’s wrong. You don’t make me think that. I think that because that is who I have been for so long. Not good enough. For my father and mother. And then, I made myself into an infamous marquess. Remarkable only in the worst ways. But I am a duke now. I have to be good enough because I have the job. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and—”
“Some have greatness thrust upon them.”
“Yes. I must accept that I am the last, the thrust upon. But you are the second category, Catherine. And together, we could make sure that our child is the first.”
“Jamie, I must impress on you that my wish to end this between us has never, ever been about your worthiness.”
“Kate, you must see how I can only believe the fault is mine. Where is the obstacle to our marriage? You are with my child. We are both unmarried. We are both of age.”
Catherine laughed ruefully. “Some of us more than others.”
James did not smile.
Catherine got up from the chair and walked from one end of the room to the other and back again, her eyes on the floor.
How was she to tell him this? Her splendid Jamie. She had hoped to spare them both. But now that he was aware of the baby, she knew he would never let her alone unless she told him.
The pain in her chest would swallow her whole, and she could not bring any words forth.
Yet Edward Lovelock, who had known all her secrets and had loved her anyway and trusted her with his daughters, would have wanted her to utter the truth. To set this fine young man free to go on to a better life. A better wife.
She found a way to speak. For Edward. For Jamie.
“I spent almost a decade with Roger Siddons. With him, I was like how I am with you. Quivering with desire, always ready, always wanting more, always hungry. Possessed, obsessed. Willing to do anything for him. I debased myself. I did things on his behalf that I do not wish to speak of.” She stopped pacing and closed her eyes. “But I will tell you, if you wish to know.” The room was quiet. He said nothing.
Eyes still closed, she went on, “And then he released me. I did not escape. I might have stayed in that prison for the rest of my life. How lucky I was that his attention wandered from me. Otherwise . . .”
She opened her eyes and looked at James. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, eyes on her. He was intent. There was no censure there. Neither was there pity. He was listening, an open vessel that she was pouring her poison into.
She dropped her eyes and resumed her pacing. “I spent the next decade with Edward Lovelock. I had my best life with him. He understood me and he loved me and I loved him. But he did not make me wild like you do, Jamie. He soothed me. There was comfort there and there was peace.”
She faced him. “I need peace. I don’t want these unmanageable feelings. And I don’t want to come to hate you, as I came to hate Roger. I don’t want to slit your throat in twenty years. I need to stop this.”
James said slowly, “I think I know what you need.”
Catherine felt her temper flare again. She balled her hands into fists. “You think I haven’t heard that from men all my life?”
James stood.
He reached out and quickly pulled her to him and her cheek was pressed to his lower chest. His arms wrapped around her and she could feel his large hands pressing against her back, pressing her into him.
The suddenness of his embrace caused her groin to ache and throb again. His rough movement, his strong arms controlling her—surely evidence of the violence of his passion—these things aroused her more than a tender touch from him might have. She could feel his heart beating in his chest, under her cheek. And below his waistline, she felt his rigid shaft pushing into her abdomen, up toward her breasts. He wanted her.
She put her own arms around his waist and flattened her hands on his back and her breasts on his abdomen. But she did not turn her face up to look at him. Right now, she could not look at him.
And then nothing. He did not move. He did not kiss her. He held her. Minutes passed. His shaft grew less rigid. She shifted slightly in his arms and he only pulled her closer.
Some tipping point was reached.
She was lost.
But not lost in desire. Lost in grief for the girl she had been and that she wished she could give her Jamie now.
She felt herself dissolve. Her arms and legs grew weak. She almost sagged to the floor but he held her up.
The tears came. She, who never cried. She had prided herself on the genuine weeping she could produce on stage as an actress, but in life, she thought crying was pitiable and weak. She could only remember crying once off-stage in her adult life. When her husband had died.
But she had been so alone, for so long. Kate against the world.
She wept and hiccoughed, and great gasps and sobs shook her body, and still he held her fast. She did not know if she cried for five minutes or for an hour. But it seemed a long time to her. Through it all, he held her and did not move.
The tears slowed, her breathing grew more even, and—she couldn’t help it—she snuffled. And then she felt him take one hand from her back and the sense of loss was so enormous that she almost let out a howl.
Through her tears, she saw something white dangling in front of her face, her cheek still on his lower chest. A handkerchief.
She grasped the handkerchief and as she brought it to her face, she felt his warm hand return to her back and press her once again into him, just as firmly as before.
She wiped her nose and face and waited for him to release her. It was a release that never came. He stood still and held her. There was no stroking, no petting, only his unmoving arms around her, his hands on her back and his solid front holding her up.
Finally, she was the one who broke his embrace. She stepped backward, and he moved his arms out of her way. She looked up at him. “You were right.”
He grinned. It was the boyish, delighted grin she had not seen since she had asked him to steal the painting.
She whispered, “I did need that.”
“I thought you might.”
“Don’t gloat.”
“I’m not gloating. I’m happy. Isn’t that allowed?”
He took a step toward her, his arms open as if to embrace her.
“No, no, none of that,” Catherine said, backing away.
“You’re right,” he said and sat down again and crossed his legs and looked at her. “It’s just that you are so beautiful right now.”
She knew her eyes were swollen, her nose was red. “And none of that.”
“You misunderstand me, Catherine. I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m trying to un-seduce you.”
“Un-seduce me?” She couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped from her. “There is such a thing?”
“I hope there is.”
“What does un-seduction consist of?”
He paused. “Friendship.”
She wiped her eyes with a dry corner of his handkerchief that she was still clutching. “You told me that you could never be friends with me.”
“I was angry when I said that. And foolish. Forgive me. I think there is nothing more I want right now than your friendship.”
“You want it more than coupling with me?”
James ran his fingers over his short hair, his healing scar on his head. “Yes. Because I want you to know that even though we desire each other, we can still be good to each other. I can be a good husband, a good father.”
Catherine wanted to tell him that, of course, he could be a good husband and a good father, just not with her, but he cut her off, would not allow her to speak. “You say I am worthy. But deep down, you don’t feel it. You don’t know it. I think that friendship is how you might finally consent to marry me. And I know that friendship can last a lifetime. Does desire? I don’t know.”
His words were sincere and had the ring of truth. “I don’t know, either,” she finally said and sat.
“Perhaps . . . no, you’ll think I’m foolish,” he said.
“Tell me.”
He hesitated a moment more. “Friendship might be why Orsino and Viola in Twelfth Night have such a great love. He comes to know her as his friend.”
“Yes,” she said, “but she knows the lustful reality. That she wants to bed him.”
“You don’t think they were friends? She courts a woman for him.”
“I am not that unselfish. I won’t be doing that for you, Jamie.” Again, James’ possible future wife, the pure, sweet girl of the ton, the daughter of a marquess or an earl, came into her mind.
“The only woman I would ever ask you to court for me would be yourself, Kate. Don’t you think we might be friends?”
“I don’t know. What does friendship look like?”
“Well, to begin with, it looks like two rooms. Two beds.”
Catherine felt a sharp ripple of disappointment course through her body. “Yes.”
“Don’t look so sad, Catherine. I am here. I want you. You know I want you. But let’s talk of other things. Let’s do other things. Ordinary things. Like we did during our days at Christmas, at Sommerleigh. Let us walk and eat and read and laugh and look at the sky. Let us try having something ‘pure and right,’ as you put it.”
“For how long?”
James quirked his eyebrows. “Say, to begin with, a day?”
A day. Catherine considered.
“Yes.”
He held out his hand. She shook it and was careful not to let her hand linger in his grasp.
James found the innkeeper and asked for another room and was amused by the innkeeper’s sympathetic frown. He took some time in his new bedchamber to consider what he had just proposed to Catherine. Already he was gnawed by doubt. Would he be able to keep his hands off her? He must. He must believe this was a possible way forward for them.
All of his instincts—to cradle and caress Catherine, to kiss her pain away, to comfort her with touch—must be suppressed. Too dangerous at this moment, too likely to lead to the torrid coupling that she feared. And that she thought was the sole thing that they shared. Yes, let them be friends. She did not want coddling or pity or even tenderness. She wanted companionship. He must show her that he could give her that. That he was more than a young cock and a full head of hair.
He ran his hands over his short hair, ruefully. He did not even have his locks to offer her any longer.
He walked down the hall and knocked on Catherine’s door and asked her to come and see the Canterbury Cathedral with him. She looked askance, some guarded suspicion in her eyes.
“It’s not an ambush, Mrs. Lovelock. There will not be an archbishop, a special license, and two witnesses waiting for us. It’s just a sight that friends might go and see if they happened to be in Canterbury.”
She acquiesced. Once they were on the street, he held out his arm to her. She hesitated.
“It’s to keep the other rogues and rapscallions away from you,” he said.
“I thought we were going to a cathedral.”
“We are. But one cannot be too cautious. And a friend can take a friend’s arm.”
She took his arm.
“Have you ever been to Canterbury before, Mrs. Lovelock?”
“If you don’t call me Catherine, I will start calling you ‘Your Grace.’ Loudly.”
“Catherine, have you ever been to Canterbury?”
“I have not.”
“I haven’t either. Good. We are on equal footing.”
“The Cathedral was where Thomas á Becket was murdered, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, after Henry II said ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?’”
“A reminder that powerful men should speak carefully, I suppose,” said Catherine.
“A reminder not to vex a king.”
“How differently we see things!”
“Yes.”
“Well, you will have to change your mind, Jamie, because I am too set in my ways.”
“Gladly. I will change my mind on every subject to match yours. Except when I’m right, and you’re wrong. Even in friendship, there should be friction.”
She smiled at that. It was the first smile he had seen from her since they walked the streets of Mayfair, away from his rooms and Siddons’ dead body. The smile gave him hope.
After they came out of the Cathedral, James asked Catherine if she was hungry.
“Ravenous,” she said.
Of course, James thought. She had not eaten all day and she was eating for two. He made a note in his head. Catherine might not tell him when she was hungry.
They returned to the coaching inn. James thought they might eat in one of their rooms, but Catherine said, “At a table, in the public eye, Jamie. Please. It will help me.”
They sat at a table and were brought a roasted chicken at Catherine’s request and wine at James’. Catherine liked the meat of the breast of the chicken. James liked the darker meat of the leg.
“Perfect,” James said. “We are like Jack Sprat and his wife. Between the two of us, we will strip the carcass clean. How can you not say that we are ideally suited for each other?”
Catherine laughed and wiped her mouth. “If we liked the same joint of the chicken, you would say the same thing. ‘Oh, Kate, it’s a good thing that a chicken has two legs, because we are two! How perfect!’”
“True,” James said, cutting off another piece of the breast and putting it on Catherine’s plate. “That would be perfect as well.”
“My husband liked the leg of the fowl, too,” Catherine said. Then her face changed slightly. “I’m sorry.”
James was confused. “Why?”
“A man does not like to hear about other men from a lover’s past.”
“Well, we are not lovers. Not today. Today, we are friends. And friends talk about their pasts, if they like, with no fears or jealousies. And I’d like to know more about Mr. Lovelock. He has a lot to teach me. After all, you were happy with him, and he got you to marry him. Maybe you could tell me how he did it?”
She pealed a little laugh and wiped her fingers on her napkin. He looked at her, waiting. She took a sip of wine and met his gaze over the glass. She frowned and put the glass down.
“Do you really want to know, Jamie?”
“Yes. Decidedly. School me.”
Catherine was quiet for a long time. He thought she might cry again and he considered moving to her side of the table and taking her in his arms. But he made himself stay in place. He willed himself to be a friend to her, to hold no expectation, to wish for no particular result.
Finally, she spoke. “Well, when he talked of his daughters, it was with such love and worry for them. Particularly Harry who was so troubled at that time by the loss of her mother. But I could tell from how he spoke about them that he was a man who loved women. Who appreciated the differences but did not see them as diminishing. I was very happy to bear him a daughter, and he was very happy, too.”
“Mmm. Well, I don’t have any daughters. But I would be very happy to have you give me one, Catherine. And I assure you, I love females.”
Catherine laughed and almost snorted. “Like most men, Jamie.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean that I have sisters. Lots of them. Seven. All younger. All unmarried. They are the dearest people in the world to me, present company excepted.”
“Seven? All unmarried. Your poor mother.”
“My poor mother? She isn’t going to do a thing to get them married. It’s going to be up to me.”
“I don’t understand why you are wasting your time here. You have work to do, Your Grace.”
“Well, I promised myself that I would do my best to get married first, so that I might have some useful experience to impart to my sisters. You know, how to catch a man and all that rot.”
“How do you catch a man?”
“Well, first you catch his best friend and then refuse the friend. Next, you appear half-naked—”
“Jamie!”
“—in the dressing room of a modiste’s shop. Then you follow a man and jump on him in an alley and kiss him in such a way as he has never been kissed before—”
“Perhaps we should alter the course of this conversation, friend.” She laid heavy emphasis on the last word.
“Yes, friend.” James realized he should have checked himself. He had turned the exchange into flirtation, and Catherine didn’t want that. “Tell me more about your husband.”
Her eyes shifted from him and went far away.
“He was older than I was. Fifteen years. He was quiet. But he absorbed everything, heard everything, paid attention to everything. When he spoke on a matter, people listened.”
“He was respected.”
“Yes. Before he died, I wanted him to buy a knighthood. I thought it would help our daughters. But he refused. He said, ‘Katie, if a man thinks more of me because of a ‘Sir’ in front of my name, I will think less of that man.’”
“He called you Katie.”
“Yes, he did. And Mary and Harry still call me Mama Katie.”
“And Roger Siddons called you Cath.”
Catherine colored. “All the folk I know from my time on the stage call me Cath.”
“But you told me to call you Kate.”
“Yes. I wanted you to have your own name for me, quite apart from those others.”
James smiled.
“You share it with only one other person.”
“Oh?”
“A blacksmith’s boy from the Midlands.”
“Oh.”
“Whom I last saw thirty years ago and who’s dead in the wars these twenty-seven years now. The Flanders Campaign.”
“What was his name, Kate?”
“Jamie Hill.” She studied his reaction.
“Good name.” He drank some wine.
She looked down at the table and whispered, “I’d still like to call you Jamie.”
He leaned forward. “I would like for you to, Kate. But only if the association is a happy one for you.”
She looked up and met his eyes. “It is. It helps me remember a time when things were simpler. When I was simpler.”
He felt this was good. Very good. He was entirely willing to share the names Kate and Jamie with a dead blacksmith’s boy since the boy made her feel innocent. Anything that helped her see that what they had could be the “pure and right” ideal she longed for and not the shame she felt about her past.
He cleared his throat. “Well, a difficulty presents itself. I don’t have daughters to prove to you that I love women—”
“But you have sisters!”
“Pshaw! A weak substitute. And no one could say that I was respected. And I have not rejected my title. I am not sure how I am going to get you to marry me.”
“Well, Edward married a wounded woman. I am not that anymore. Perhaps I need to be wooed differently, now.”
“How?”
Catherine smiled shyly in a way he had never seen before. “I think today was a good start.”
They stood in front of the door to her bedchamber. She took her key from her reticule and opened the door.
“I’m in the room down this way in case you need me,” James said.
She nodded. He thought she might kiss him. But she did not. She went into the room and closed the door. He waited until he heard the key turn.
In the morning, he made a point of being outside her door when she came out, and she smiled when she saw him.
They hired a horse and a trap and went out into the surrounding countryside to picnic.
She seemed more lighthearted today than she had ever been before. And she was less guarded than yesterday, certainly. She touched his hand gently to get his attention. She brushed a crumb stuck in a stray whisker on his chin after he had eaten a cheese sandwich.
“Not my clean-shaven Jamie today.”
“That’s what happens when you leave your valet in London,” he grumbled.
“I’ll shave you tomorrow.”
“You?”
“Yes, I learned from a backstage dresser at the Theatre-Royal. You’ll be in good hands.”
That night again, she slipped into her own room alone, with no kiss, no sign of longing.
He had thought this chasteness between them would only last a day. Damn.
She woke early. Just before waking, James had been there, hovering on the edges of her consciousness. But he had not been touching her as in previous dreams. He had not been naked. He had been grinning at her, fully dressed, in a garden. She had a warm feeling, she wanted to see him immediately, but she did not feel an ache, a throb, a thumping in her chest.
She dressed and went downstairs to ask for a basin of hot water and linen towels and soap and some shaving gear. Finally, she went and knocked on his door. She felt calm and assured in a way she hadn’t before. She felt . . . herself in a way she hadn’t for years.
“I borrowed the razor from the innkeeper, but I think it will do. Sit there, Jamie, in front of the window. Take off your shirt. It’s the only one you have here, and I don’t want to get water and soap all over it.”
He took off his shirt and she had a moment when she drew in her breath sharply. The triangle of muscle that came off his shoulders and crowned the tops of his arms. The fine, golden-brown hair on his forearms, almost matching the color of his skin, hard to see unless it glinted in the sun. The smooth skin of his chest. The beautiful smell of him.
It’s a body, Kate, just like any other body. Her pulse calmed.
She set to work, softening his whiskers with the hot water and soap, then turning his head this way and that as she scraped his jaw, his chin, and very carefully, his top lip, taking care around his philtrum. She wiped the soap from his face.
“There!” She stepped back. She had done it. She had been physically close to him and his body and had felt an appreciation and a warmth, but she had not felt driven to do more to him than shave him.
James felt his face. “That’s very good. Not quite Enfield, but very good. You can have a job as a replacement valet to the Duke of Middlewich.”
Catherine curtsied and affected the accent of her girlhood. “Will that be all Your Grace be needing this morning?”
He put his shirt on.
“If we are going to stay in Canterbury any longer, I think I will need some clothes.”
“Are we planning to stay in Canterbury longer, Jamie?”
“Would you like to stay, Kate?”
“I don’t know what we will do, surely, we might despair of finding more sights to see, but I am afraid to leave when things are going so well.”
“You think things are going well?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “You took your shirt off. And I controlled myself. It was a good test.”
“Shall I take it off again?” He went as if to lift it over his head.
“No! I mean, no, thank you. Lead me not into temptation, Your Grace.”
“You have taught me a lot about women, Kate.”
She wiped the razor clean. “In what sense?”
“I think my torso is as important to you as yours is to me.”
“Why do you think women love to go to museums and look at the marble Greek gods there? We do not have brothels, like the men.”
“You go to ogle, eh?”
“Well, not me. I am a respectable widow. With a friend who is willing to take his shirt off for me, if I ask nicely.”
“Me?”
She threw a towel at him. “Yes, you. Now, let’s go eat breakfast.”
They went to breakfast and then to St. Augustine’s Abbey. At dinner that night, Catherine discovered that the innkeeper had a tall eighteen-year-old son who was the roughly the same size as James. James asked if he could buy the son’s best shirt and have the shirt be put in his room.
“Now this shirt and cravat you are wearing can be laundered while you wear the new one, Jamie,” Catherine said over the dining table.
“But my trousers. And my waistcoat and coat! And my hose is dreadful.”
“Do you want to go back to London? Or shall we send to London for your clothes?”
“No! You think that things are going well. So do I. We’ll stay. And if we send to London, it will just bring Enfield down our heads. He would arrive, full of indignation, with my trunk.”
“Yes, that wouldn’t do, would it? The coat and waistcoat can be sponged and pressed tomorrow and we will have your trousers and hose laundered at the same time as the shirt. You will stay in bed tomorrow until the trousers are dry.”
“Will I stay in bed alone with no clothes on, Kate?” James smiled and winked.
Catherine drew her brows down, trying to halt his mischievous flirtation before it aroused her. “A friend might come and sit in the same room as you and converse. Or read. Or play cards.”
“Tomorrow will be the fourth day of our friendship.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think we might become closer friends, in time?”
Catherine turned her head and looked at him sideways. “As close as you and my son-in-law are?”
“Well, I was thinking perhaps a good deal closer than that.”
Catherine became serious. “I think your notion that we be friends, that we talk as friends, has been a very good one. I am finding myself capable of managing my feelings. Especially those of a carnal nature.”
“You . . . you don’t look on me as a nephew, do you?”
“Jamie, you know that my problem is quite the opposite. What made you say that?”
“Something Thomas said last month. About our Christmas at Sommerleigh.”
“Well, I was pretending, as were you, at Christmas. Here I am not pretending. I am trying.”
“Good. I don’t want you to pretend.”
“And I don’t want you to pretend, either.”
“Yes, you do, Catherine. For now. And that’s fine.”
“What are you pretending, Jamie?”
“I’m pretending that I don’t want to take you upstairs and rip your clothes off.”
Catherine had a moment of unbridled desire where her nipples hardened under her dress, her pearl throbbed, her heart raced, she grew dizzy.
But she waited. The moment passed.
“I’m glad,” she said, and laid her hand on top of his where it rested on the table. “I’m glad you want that.”
“Do you want it, Kate?”
“Yes,” she said and withdrew her hand. “But you were quite right. It’s not what I need.”
At that, James looked so hangdog that Catherine laughed. “I’ll come keep you company tomorrow while you’re in bed.”
The next morning, after breakfast, they went to his room together and she turned around and told him to strip, to put on the innkeeper’s son’s shirt, and to get back into the bed. He did as she said, glad to have her managing him even as undressing with her in the room made him long to manage her, her body, her desire. What had he been thinking when he came up with this fool plan?
She took his clothes down to the innkeeper’s wife. She was gone quite a long time, giving instructions James imagined, and he grew restless. Finally, she returned.
“I got some playing cards from the innkeeper and—what do you think, a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women.”
James groaned.
“Or we could talk,” Catherine said.
“You could come sit on the bed,” James said, patting the mattress next to him.
“I’ll sit in this chair,” Catherine said, but she drew it close to the bed.
They talked this way, he in the bed and she in the chair, for hours. They spoke of their childhoods, their childhood loves. He asked her about her use of a sword and realized she was, of course, the boy that he had seen at Antonio’s last autumn. They spoke of Catherine’s dreams for Arabella’s happiness and James’ dreams for his duchy and his sisters. James confessed his previous career and his double life to her and she congratulated him on his acting and warned him that it would not be so easy to deceive her in the future.
Future. She thought they had one then. Together. But James was wise and did not comment on her use of the word.
James asked Catherine to recite for him. She knew all her roles still from years ago, but she also knew long stretches of other speeches off by heart as well. James applauded her version of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V.
“Quite like Joan of Arc, you were. If she had been English, that is.”
Morning turned to afternoon and Catherine stood and stretched and yawned. “I think I’ll go take a nap, Jamie. I’ll have your clothes brought to you when they’re dry. And since he had no luncheon, let’s eat at five o’clock. Yes?”
“Yes,” James grumbled and picked up the cards. “I suppose I’ll play Patience if I can’t convince you to nap here with me.”
“You know and I know that if I get in that bed there would be no napping to be had.”
James looked up hopefully at that but she had turned and gone out the door.
His clothes were brought to him at four o’clock and he asked for hot water, too. He washed his whole body, standing up, scrubbing himself. He thought he might shave but remembered that if he did not, Catherine might shave him on the morrow. She would stand close to him while she plied the razor and would touch his face and neck. He decided not to shave.
The trousers were not quite dry but they were clean, as were his hose. His coat and waistcoat looked respectable.
At five o’clock, he went to Catherine’s door and knocked.
Catherine opened the door.
James gaped.
He knew that blue silk. That fine shimmery cloth. Months ago, hadn’t he himself made her sheathe her breasts with such a silk?
But now that silk went from her shoulders to her toes in the shape of a dress, surely the one that Madame Beauchamp had been making for her last autumn. It had a square neckline cut low. Very low. Given that her breasts had enlarged with her pregnancy, it appeared that at any moment her bosom might spill over the top. The small bit of the translucent chemise that showed was like a bit of enticing froth framing the square of the chest. And yes, the color of the dress matched her eyes perfectly.
But James was not looking at her eyes.
“I’ve spent the last hour thinking I had better take it off. And then I change my mind. What do you think, Jamie? Should I wear it?”
James stepped into the room. “I think that this should be the only dress you wear for the rest of your life.”
“Do you like this best of any gown you have ever seen me in?”
The perfect cream and pink skin sloping into the roundness of her bosom, the dark shadow between her voluptuous breasts, the promise of what was just below the neckline of the dress, which were those exquisitely sensitive nipples that James could conjure easily in his head. In truth, James could not remember any of Catherine’s other dresses.
“Uh, I think there is only one thing I have ever seen you in that I like more.”
“Let me guess, Your Grace. You prefer me in . . . nothing?”
Jamie groaned. “Am I so predictable then?”
Catherine bit her lip. “But is it too daring for dinner in a coaching inn?”
Jamie considered. “Yes. Let’s have dinner in this room, Kate.”
Catherine almost pouted. “But we have been cooped up all day.”
“Change the dress and we’ll go downstairs and eat and take a stroll and we’ll come back up here and you can put it on again.”
“You don’t want to be seen with me in this dress?”
“Right now, Catherine, I don’t want any other man to see you in that dress. In time, I may have the control for that, but not right now.”
“The innkeeper’s wife helped me with the buttons since the dress was made for a lady with a lady’s maid, so you’ll have to unbutton me, please.”
She turned around to show him the buttons. He closed the door behind him. He gulped. “There are so many. And they’re so small.”
She looked over her shoulder. “Only ten. Be careful, Jamie.”
He stooped and felt very clumsy as he began with the top button. “There. Nine to go.” After several minutes, he freed the last button and Catherine raised her arms and he drew the dress over her head, leaving her in stays, chemise, petticoat, almost as fully dressed as she had been before.
Except the chemise and the cups of the stays were translucent and he could see the skin of her breasts and the pink of her areolas. He shifted weight from one foot to the other.
She took the dress from him and walked to her trunk and laid the dress carefully in it and turned and drew over her head a rose-pink dress that had been waiting on a chair.
“Shall I help you?”
“No, this is a dress I can do myself.” She put her hands behind her neck and did something there and then put her hands behind her and did something at her middle back to fasten the dress. “You know I was not planning to have a lady’s maid in France, so I only brought dresses I could arrange myself. Except the blue gown. I didn’t want to leave that behind. I’ve never worn it.”
James felt guilty. “Do you want to wear it, Catherine? I’m sorry, I’ve robbed you of some pleasure. You should wear it.”
“Nonsense. I don’t want you fretting that someone is looking down my dress. Let’s go and eat dinner.”
They ate. They took a walk into the center of the city and back to the coaching inn. Catherine thought it might be the most idyllic evening of her life. The air was warm, but not too warm. There was a slight breeze. The sky was perfectly clear. There was a perfume of lilacs in the air. And she was on James’ arm.
“I am glad we got out and about today.”
“Yes. What should we do tomorrow, Kate?”
Catherine didn’t even know what they should do in the next hour. “Today’s not done yet. I want to wear my dress for you.”
They returned to her room. The sky was darkening so she closed the curtains and lit candles. She took off the pink dress and heard James’ breathing change a bit. She slid the blue silk over her head and put her back to him and waited.
She felt his hands, tentative, begin to button her dress.
“Start at the bottom, Jamie, that will make it easier.”
“Oh, yes,” he said and shifted his hands. He hummed a little as he worked with the buttons. She felt his breath on her neck, and she thought she could also feel his concentration, his care.
“That’s done,” he said.
She stepped away from him and turned.
He crossed his arms over his chest and clamped his hands under his armpits. “It’s a miracle of a dress, Kate.”
She felt warm under his gaze so she curtsied and fluttered her hand in front of her face as if it were a fan. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
He nodded and looked at her. There was a silence. A coach drew up to the inn and the sounds of the horses and the ostler speaking to the coachman filtered up to her room.
“Well,” he said. “Good night.” He turned.
Catherine had not thought much further than wanting to wear the dress for him. Why? To inflame his ardor? Yes. She wanted him to look at her with desire. She wanted him to feel what she was feeling. But there was something more.
She stepped quickly in front of him and laid a hand on his chest.
“Tell me your thoughts, Jamie.”
He looked at the floor. “You know my thoughts, Kate.”
“I don’t.”
“I think I’m a fool to have taken a woman who desired me and turned her into a friend.”
“Shall I tell you my thoughts, Jamie?”
He groaned and kept his eyes on the floor. “Will I be able to bear them, Kate?”
“Yes, you must.”
He raised his eyes to her face.
“My thoughts are that . . . you have been very wise. You had a woman who did not trust herself with you. In fact, and in truth, she may not have trusted you, either. But now, she is a good way along to trusting both parties.”
“Good,” he said, but his tone was mutinous.
“In fact, she may be close to being all the way there.”
His brows knit and he grabbed both her hands.
“Do you mean it, Catherine? Don’t toy with me.”
She had had three—no, three and a half days—of peace and companionship and even joy with him. A short time, yes. But in those few days, he had shown her that what she thought was impossible was possible. That she could simply be with him. Be herself. Astoundingly, be herself. Not someone’s mother or wife or widow or mistress. Or Ophelia or Viola.
Just herself. Some essential Kate.
And simultaneously, she had found that he was the ideal person to be with. For her. For her to be herself. Which was something she had craved for almost thirty years.
He was sincere. Thoughtful. Tender. Ready to laugh with her. Ready to disagree with her. Ready to love her. Yes, he inspired a devastating lust in her, but maybe, with his help, she could hold onto herself while still laying in his arms.
He had shown himself to be a man who wanted what was best for her, not just the satisfaction of his own desires. A man who would be the most admirable sort of affectionate husband and doting father. A man who deserved all of her love. And wanted her love, as flawed as she was.
And now she knew the truth deep in her heart. She loved him. All of him.
“I mean . . . that I think we should . . . be lovers again.”
He was on her. His mouth on hers, his hands on the small of her back, her shoulders, her neck, her face. She felt a flare of heat and an ache between her legs and she met his lips with hers, his tongue with hers. She put her hands to his head, forgetting for a moment, and when she found no locks in her fingers, she grabbed his nape and pulled him closer.
And then he took himself away from her. Six, seven feet away. Painfully far away. He was panting, as was she.
She did not know what to say. “Thank you,” she gasped, “for not ripping the dress. Will you take it off me now?”
“Hang the dress. I don’t care about the dress.”
She looked down. “I thought you liked the dress.”
“I do.” He was regaining his breath. “But I don’t care about it.”
“Oh.”
“You must answer me, Kate Cooksey, Catherine Cooke, Mrs. Lovelock. You have not answered me.”
She almost laughed. She bit her lip instead.
“You have not asked me, James Cavendish, the Most Noble Duke of Middlewich and Marquess of Daventry.”
He felt himself redden. He hadn’t, had he? He had told her that he wanted her hand in marriage but he hadn’t asked.
But now he would ask. And he thought there was a very good chance she would say yes.
He felt at his waistcoat pocket. Empty. The sapphire ring he had carried from London was gone. Blast. It was in his own room. Under his pillow. He had taken it out this morning when his clothes had been laundered and sponged and he had forgotten to replace it. He needed Enfield organizing him.
He held a finger up. “A moment.” He was out the door and at his own door, fumbling with the key. And to the bed and there was the ring. And back to Catherine’s room, ring in his fist.
He stepped in and closed the door behind him. She was so beautiful, and it wasn’t the dress. She could be in the stained muslin gown she wore to his rooms months ago, and she would still be beautiful.
The thought that she could be his forever made his knees weak. And the knowledge that she was carrying his child made him want to weep. Still, Catherine deserved a man who could get through a proposal.
He walked to her and got on one knee.
Suddenly, she seemed shy, almost girlish. She was having a hard time meeting his eyes.
“Kate,” he said and took her left hand with his left hand. He opened his right hand and the large blue sapphire shone and sparkled. “I must have you . . . marry me. Will you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I love you, Jamie.” She sneezed.
“Bless you,” he said and he slid the ring onto her finger.
He made a promise to himself in that moment. No matter what, he would not rip the dress.
