Duke Herheart Final (11 page)

Michael
.

Kathryn’s brain began working in overdrive putting the pieces together. Michael and his first wife Catherine had been unhappily married in approximately 1810 or 1811 so she thought based on the snippets from her conversation with Cassandra. Here she was in what she now knew to be an estate near Wilton in the year 1816. Kathryn’s breath caught and she looked closer at the image of the man while her mind’s eye added definition, angles, and texture and light and a raised brow to the plain painted face. She added color to his skin and a slight curl of the lips and she saw him clearly for the first time.

The painting was of Michael.

How had she not realized it before?
It had not been until she saw the dashing French spy look-alike in person that she had revisited the people in the picture. Now that she could recall all four of the paintings, there had indeed been a dark-haired stunner who very much resembled the man who had just ridden off. There was also her favorite of the mounted Cavalry officer, the sour couple she had purchased and a fourth. It was of a man with hounds, a more jovial looking blonder version of the other three. The Frenchman had stood, posed on his hearth with a sword.

As all of the confusion and frustration and unanswered questions of the morning coalesced into one unbelievable theory, she concluded that her presence here must be due to the painting. It was a most bizarre, unrealistic, crazy, insane…could she keep on going…theory but it was the only one that explained why she had been found and rescued by the man whose picture she had bought. Had he needed her? Did someone need her help and had she somehow been brought here by magic or conjuring. Did he have powers or was it just the power of one little magic painting?

And were the other paintings magic and were they here? Hope, thrill, and excitement grew, meshing with determination until she fairly burst from her room to search out the other artwork. This time, she didn’t crash into her tall, firmly built host as she hurried out into the hall, but Kathryn was equally as distracted as she realized something about Michael that had been different from the Regency Romance characters she so loved. He wasn’t lean and narrow-waisted as they usually were.

He was solid muscle and much more so than he had been in the painting.

No, he was more like GI Joe with bulging biceps and rock hard thighs, totally flat belly from the looks but not thin at the waist, probably able to bench press a woman. Michael looked like a big muscular soldier—like 62

Duke of Her Dreams – Olivia Ritch

an Army Ranger—who had probably lugged, toted, slogged, fought hand-to-hand, and maybe even carried a wounded comrade or two on his back. His was the body of a workhorse who had done other equally manly activities every day for the last five years.

When she reached the foot of the stairs, Kathryn slowed her pace, ready to face the man into whose life she had somehow fallen.
Should
she tell him about the portrait?
There were consequences and rewards on both sides of that argument. If she did tell him, then maybe he would believe her and offer her assistance in getting home or maybe he would think the opposite, that she was a stalker come to find herself an eligible rich widower. The possibility that showing him the picture would lend credibility to her story was very tempting.

She took a calming breath and pushed open the study door, fully expecting him to be standing like a statue with his hands behind his back.

Instead, he was lounging casually in the chair by the hearth, a book open on his lap. He stood immediately upon seeing her.

“M’dear Miss Ragland, you have joined me. I was beginning to wonder if you had forsaken our entertainments?” he inflected the words playfully and she wondered if he had been suggesting an illicit hidden meaning.

“I’m so sorry. I noticed you had a visitor so I took my time. Was that wrong?”

He bowed over her hand, released her, and motioned to the chair adjacent to the fire arranged opposite his. “No, you were quite right. That business was unexpected and I appreciate your forbearance.” She noted the brittleness in his voice. He seemed like he was trying really hard to sound nonchalant and she was very good at recognizing dissembling.

“Was there a problem, something wrong? You seem stressed out a little,” she prodded him.

“Stressed out? No let me guess, anxious, worried, concerned.

American slang you told me earlier, correct?”

“Very good, Captain, you are a fast study.”

“Fast is not a compliment.”

“Oh? Where I come from it means quick-witted. What does it mean to you?”

“Of loose morals,” he said blandly.

“Oh. Not a compliment. Very well, Captain, then you are quick witted. There?”

“Unwieldy but much more appropriate.”

The unexpected laugh lit her face and sent golden rays of light dancing from her honeyed hair and earthy eyes. She was really truly 63

Duke of Her Dreams – Olivia Ritch

exquisitely gorgeous. Not in a portrait artist, perfect chit of the
ton
way, but in a dazzling, goddess, Valkyrie-like unusual natural way. He really could not believe how susceptible he had become to her beguiling face in such a short time.

“So, can I be nosy and ask about the visitor?”

“Nosy,
you
, Miss Ragland?” his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Michael hoped to vex her, somehow distract her into not asking why Jules had called. He didn’t know what to tell her yet as he was not one to lie but he just wasn’t ready to share any of his suspicions. He certainly did not know her well enough to suppose how she would respond to

‘someone tried to kill you in your room with poison laced tea’. Yet, she still managed to surprise.

“I-I need to know who he is. I’ve…seen…him before.”

All of Michael’s senses focused on her words. She had been in the inn, on the street, in Michael’s own house with him and nowhere else, or so she had said. None of those were places where Jules could possibly have been so she must have seen him before coming to Hawthorne. That realization unnerved Michael and that recurring pang of jealousy was unwelcome. Very real and potent, but unwelcome nonetheless.

“Do you know my friend, the Earl of Weatherford?”

“No.” She hesitated and he thought she might not answer. “Is he French?”

“Miss Ragland. I cannot follow your mind. What makes you think the Earl is French?”
Bloody hell, she had seen him or known him to be
French. What was she about
?

“He looks like…”
all the English spies that I’ve read about who
blend in so well behind Napoleon’s own lines because of their gorgeous
French features
“…he’s got Mediterranean blood. Does he?”

“Yes, you are very perceptive. Julian Thornton’s mother was a French émigré who married the Earl of Weatherford and settled happily here in the English countryside in the 1780s long before Napoleon fully destroyed the Bourbons and made himself Emperor. She was reputed to be the most sought-after beauty of her time but was quite happy to settle here with the reclusive Earl.”

“Did the French Countess love her English Earl?”

“I understand…with a passion…” he answered wistfully.

“Her son must look very much like her.”

Demmit to hell, he was a dark Lucifer. Of course, he looked like the former beautiful Lady Weatherford. What was Kathryn about noticing Jules’ good looks? A pang of jealousy spiked swift and sharp through Michael. He had never in his life been jealous. His brother had been a 64

Duke of Her Dreams – Olivia Ritch

jealous fool, and his cousin Harold and his Father some of the time, but he had never been jealous. He was the second son. Second sons were notoriously
not
jealous people. Now, he was jealous because this woman had noticed his friend.

Kathryn Ragland was a wanton
houri
to be asking him about another man, a beautiful one was she not? No. In fairness, she was flesh and blood, susceptible to Julian like so many were and he
was
envious, plain and simple. “Her beauty was widely regarded and Julian…he is well-received by the ladies.”

“I am sure he is. Thankfully, I’ve never been a fallen-angel type myself.”

Surprised, he asked, “What, you are not enamored of the Earl?”

“Well, your friend, who looks very French, is amazingly gorgeous from what I could see but in a very threatening, unapproachable way. My tastes run to earthy and wholesome.”

He stood looking at her, body turned half from her toward the fire, and she tilted her head in question. His jealousy had receded only a little but with her, for some inexplicable reason, he had to know. He just couldn’t help himself. “What of me Kathryn? What do you see?” Even as the words came from his mouth, Michael could not believe the impulses that had brought him so low. No matter, he still had to know.

Kathryn regarded him for a long while knowing her answer would reveal much more than he was probably interested in hearing but she realized on some primal level her complimenting his friend had possibly wounded his pride. She would tell him the absolute truth.

Taking a deep breath to gird her loins and calm her skittering nerves, she spoke. “You, Captain, are maybe the sexiest man I have ever met, maybe ever seen.” She stepped back, kept her hand to herself and the smile from her eyes so he could not misconstrue her compliments for making a pass at him. “You have…please don’t think I am trying to flatter you, but rather am just being honest…the most…hottest body I’ve ever seen. Captain, you’re well…you’re…melting hot. There, all that’s the truth.”

Michael had let his head fall back against the seat at her candid words about his being sexy. He wasn’t sure sexy and hot and melting were words he would ascribe to himself but they were all very flattering, warming, words of desire that made his pulse race, and his heart pound in his breast as he watched her totally comfortable recitation of his charms. Never in his life had any woman looked him in the eye and told him he was ‘the most’ anything. They had flattered, cajoled and hungered greedily for him but no one had ever unmanned him with the 65

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kind of genuine direct assessment that Kathryn had.

That she sat across from him completely comfortable with what she had done fascinated him even more. She was just being honest she said, or was it candid. She complimented Julian for his Byronic beauty but in the same breath said …

“Captain, I have just paid you a compliment and I realize that we are now well past the hour in which you promised me entertainment. What’s it going to be? Are you singing, doing a two-step, a monologue, maybe miming, piano, dueling with swords? Out with it!”

“Kathryn Ragland,” he said as he stood, then bowed with a ridiculous flourish, “be treated to a poetry reading.”

Kathryn bit back a look of surprise. “Poetry? You? Who are you reading?”

“Me.”

“You? You write poetry?” She was incredulous; it made him laugh.

“I assure you, you will recognize this as my work.

There once was a lady so fair

With golden streaks in her hair

She showed up in town

Without even a gown

And he whisked her off to his lair!”

“No way!” She laughed so hard tears began streaming down her face and he joined her because, well, her joy was infectious. “I always knew you were a predator…is this your lair? Do I need to worry?”

Michael regarded her almost stoically and replied.

“There was a lady fleet of feet

He picked her up from nearby street
She questioned where he might lead

He answered that she wouldn’t bleed
She fought her aches to stay astride
He fought his welling desire to hide”

“Did you write that one down or just come up with it right now off the top of your head?” She was staring at him and he tilted his head and shrugged. Right now with her he was somehow acting the ridiculous romantic. He crossed the space separating them and she stood to meet him. Kathryn reached for his face and Michael turned his check to accept her palm. A lance of desire raced through the contact. He put his hands 66

Duke of Her Dreams – Olivia Ritch

on her shoulders to bind her but in reality to steady himself from the wave of physical need that was roiling up into his breast. “I am going to kiss you very hard,” he growled, his burning eyes pinning her gaze.

“Yes,” she whispered. “You do that…and I will respond very urgently.”

He crushed his lips against hers and she melted instantly into his chest, parting for him instinctively, reaching for his nape while pulling one knee to his hip as if she was going to crawl up his front. He was stunned. Hers was the reaction of an experienced woman. She was no virgin. He pulled back from her to search her eyes.

“Michael, where I come from…this is not so foreign,” she said, her voice a low seductive whisper. “I am not going to ravish you or demand you marry me.”

“I admit, I am surprised at your…” He had pulled away from her further but did not release a loose hold on her lower back.

“Interest? Response? It’s okay. You don’t offend me. I realize it was too much for you. Can I just go ahead and tell you the truth?”

“You seem to always tell the truth Kathryn. Please.” He could not actually step away from her or relinquish her touch even though he was taken aback by her blatant sexuality, absently rubbing the length of the long muscles of her back with his hands.

“I’m not a virgin and…I like some of the activities that men and women do together, the pleasures we can give each other. But I want to make clear, if I do anything with you it’s because I want to and it feels good, not because you are the master here or that I expect anything in return. Is that
clear
?”

Using his catlike reflexes, he grabbed her waist and pulled her to him. “Kathryn, you are so much more…than any…than any…” he could not finish.
Than any woman who has been in my life, in my home, part of
me.

“It’s okay, Michael. I’m sorry I freaked you out. You are really hot you know and your poetry turned me on.”