Nothing But Time (21 page)

Kate knew it, too. 
She stared into his bright blue eyes as Brand held her against him.  Heat flared in them, she could feel the muscles tense in his ar
ms as he held her firmly
.
She could see the struggle between body and mind.  “Give in, Brand, just for a moment.”

“You are forever asking me to kiss you, Kate.  Have you no pride?”

Though Kate knew she should be offended, she knew that was what Brand was looking for
in tossing out those words
.  He wanted her angry enough to be the one to leave.  Perhaps finally, he was tired of fighting the attraction between them, tired of being the sane one.  The one with enough will power to walk away.  Brand wanted her to be the one to do it. 

Instead, Kate leaned into his embrace and nuzzled the side of Brand’s neck, relishing his surprised intake of air.  “I’ve spent my entire life with too much pride, I think,” she whispered.  “I never made the first move, never asked a man to kiss me, never begged him to.  I’d beg you, Brand.”

A shudder ran down his length but instead of taking her up on her promising words, Brand released her legs and dropped her to the ground.
  Kate heaved a disappointed sigh.  “And the uptight earl returns. 
Really,
Brand
, I think you might be a whole lot happier with your life if you just let yourself actually live it every once in a while.”

“I live my life fully,” he said tightly
, taking a step away from her
.

“Do you?  Do you really?” Kate taunted
him
.
  Though Brand
didn’t answer, Kate continued.
“I realize I haven’t seen much of your life, Brand, but if this is what you call living, then you’re missing out.
  I’m just saying.
”

“Simply because I don’t avail myself
of
you
r
brazen offering?”

“
What can I say?  You’re a good kisser
, Brand.  Don’t read any
more into than that.”  Kate
said briskly to mask the
disappointment and hurt that his
words left her awash with.  It might ha
v
e been a no-win scenario to gain Brand’s affection.  After all, he had shot her down tim
e
and again but, even though Kate wasn’t comfortable in the role of the aggressor, she realized she wasn’t about to give up on Brand.  There was so
mething special between them, s
omething unique and
well
worth exploring.  If that meant she had to put aside her pride and be the one to take the steps that would bring them together, Kate supposed she’d just have to live with that.

Resolved, she
turned her back on the earl and walked to the door.  “
You know, Brand, y
ou might think me brazen or forward.  Maybe I do to
o
.  This whole thing is unlike me
, monumentally out of character
.  You make me do things I’ve never done before.  Maybe I’m just mistaken in thinking that I do the same thing to you.”

Harrowby did his best
to avoid Kate
following that dist
urbing conversation
, convincing himself that it was best that he nip their inappropriate relationship in the bud
.  H
er words haunted him
though
.  Was he living his life to the fullest?  True, his own dreams had fallen to the wayside when he’d been recognized as the heir to Harrowby, but still he enjoyed his life. 

Didn’t he?

It troubled Harrowby that he could not recall the last time he’d spontaneously acted on his desires and it bothered him even more when he realized that he’d taken to living his life by rote. 
He was utterly detached from the goings on of his own life as he were nothing but a spectator, a
s if he’d been handed a script on the proper life of a peer of the realm and had performed the role superbly with nary an ad lib
.

He was an earl, a gentleman.  He’d lived his entire life confined and bound by its canon. 

And that
life was positively moribund, he realized, wondering how Kate could have so quickly seen it when she hardly knew him at all. 

Riddled
with newfound discontent
, f
or the
next few
days
Harrowby
consciously avoided her…
or at least mad
e her think he was ignoring her
, determined to regain control of his life with
out
her aid.  Still he was unable to stop himself from s
urreptitiously
following
her through her day,
curious to see how a woman in Kate’s position made the most of her own life.  He made
a point of passing
by
the nursery periodically
.  His desire to check up
on Nate and his progress was
a reasonable excuse if anyone w
ere to dare question his presence there
.

What he quickly discovered was that Kate and Nathan spent their day unbound from a schedule of any sort.  Whereas Mr. Scott, Nathan’s former tutor, had set up specific
periods
for daily activities
– mathematics at nine each morning, for example – th
ere seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the pair’s daily routine.

He’d had it
from one of Nathan’s nannies that Kate had referred to their lack of a scheduled day as ‘going with the flow’
since it was ‘technically summer vacation’ and Kate didn’t believe in ‘year-round’ schooling
.  Once again, as occurred so often when listening to Kate, the saying
s
w
ere
new
to
Harrowby but he appreciated
the
connotations.

Happy smiles wreathed Nathan’s face as he went about his day, lightening Harrowby’s spirit.  Oh, he knew Kate wasn’t lax in her true responsibilities.  Harrowby had caught the pair
hard at work on simple algebraic equations one day.  It was an area of mathematics that Harrowby thought much too advanced for a lad of such tender years, but Nathan explained that Kate made it fun and it wasn’t too hard for him at all.  He told Harrowby that children younger than he, in a class called kindergarten, were being introduced to algebra in the United States and if they could do it, so could he.

Another day, he had stood around the corner listening to them reading Nathan’s history lesson together.  Kate had sounded as amazed as
Nathan had
upon learning that the
Hundred
Years War
had
actually lasted
one hundred and sixteen
years.  Harrowby
had
assumed most people were aware of
this,
yet Kate claimed that it was ‘idiotic’ to name a war in such a misleading way.

He had been hard pressed not to laugh when he heard it.

Harrowby never caught them studying in the little classroom that was set up adjacent to the nursery, however.  Nathan was never seated at a desk while Kate taught or lectured before him as any other tutor might.  Instead, they sat side-by-side on a settee or sometimes at a table to work academically.  It was an arrangement Harrowby and most of the nursery staff thought most
peculiar
.

Other times he
found them in the midst of random amusements.  He had
leaned against the wall in the hallway listening to Kate play the guitar – Geoffrey had informed him that Kate asked for one to be obtained – and sing all sorts of silly songs to his nephew.  One was a quite awful tune regarding great, green gobs of greasy
,
grimy gopher guts.  Though Harrowby found the whole thing quite appalling, he could understand Nathan’s amusement.  Any young lad would find the gruesome
ditty
hilarious. 

Another was a
song
about a farmer who owned a dog named Bingo.  While Harrowby had been entertained at the time, the tune refused to leave his head for the remainder of the day driving him quite mad.

After that, Harrowby was almost hesitant to listen to Kate’s songs until he overheard her one afternoon singing
in
her soft contralto a more sentimental piece she said was called ‘Imagine’.  Its message of peace, compassion and understanding was more heartfelt than any tune Harrowby had ever heard and he wondered if
he
might be able to hear her play again some time.

Encouraged, he had stayed to listen to more only to be confounded by a song about a bullfrog named Jeremiah.  What that had to do with bringing joy to the world, Harrowby simply could not fathom.

Americans! 
Surely,
the whole lot of them could not be so difficult to comprehend!

Kate also produced sounds from the
guitar of
which
Harrowby had never thought the
instrument
capable.  Though he was amazed by the speed in which her fingers moved over the strings, it wailed and screeched in a most r
aucous
manner
tempting Harrowby to cover his ears
. 
Once
again, Nate
enjoy
e
d it, clapping enthusiastically when Kate finished what she called her ‘riff’. 

In the afternoons
, the pair took to the kitchens for what Kate called ‘snacks’.  These usually turned out to be little treats that Nate and Kate would create together
to the dismay of the kitchen staff
.  They made bars – though
Timson
had told him that Cook
wondered how Miss Kallastad could make such a variety of dishes all labeled with the same name
– and
something called
a cheeseburger for luncheon one afternoon
.

Timson
had told Harrowby about
the dish
while shaving him
the following morning
but Harrowby thought the combination of
ground meat, cheese with a handful of other vegetables and bacon
had sounded appalling.  However when his valet had insisted that the earl try it as many of the staff had, Harrowby had to admit it had been unusually tasty. 

Kate and Nathan fished together or hiked about the countryside in the mornings, studied through the afternoons and played games in the evenings.  Every
day Nathan smiled a little more, talked a lot more and improved in an overall manner.

Harrowby knew he had to be pleased by their progress.

He might have been if he hadn’t miss
ed
her so much himself.

Kate captivated him
.  Everything she represented was like a flame to him and he was but a helpless
moth.  He wanted her physically
but
,
more than that
,
he wanted to be within
range
of her easy affection and relaxed demeanor. 
It hadn’t taken more than a
few
day
s
beyond realizing that life had become absolutely mundane
for him to
also understand
that Kate
was correct in assuming that there was more he wanted
from life
.

There were things he wanted to do that he’d never done before… and nearly every
one of them involved his nephew’s new
tutor
.  Kate made him want to eschew the rules in a way he
hadn’t dared his entire life. 
How could he think to just push it all to the wayside?  Better yet, why hadn’t he done so long ago?  He’d been unhappy with his life for an age, long before the earldom had descended upon him.  He’d though
t
himself caged by the responsibility with no chance for escape.

His life was routine, offensively so.  The only things he took for himself were the Leander Club and his private passion, both which he kept a veritable secret from Society… as if he were ashamed to have interests other than those approved for a man of his station. 
G
entleman of the
ton
did not wean physical exercise from sculling.  They boxed or fenced for sport.  Gentlemen had their clubs, their horses available when diversions were needed.  He had
even
kept a high-
class mistress for some time, as that was the acceptable standard for men of his rank.  For a decade, Harrowby had relented to
Society’s
credo, setting his
own
interests aside in favor of socially acceptable amusements.

He’d lived thirty years under the yoke of Society, so thoroughly bridled that he’d never even felt the true sting of the bit.  Thirty years of living in a haze.  To break free and do as he wished would be a bold move, one that would surely see him ostracized if he went to lengths beyond what the
ton
could bear, but Kate was right.  He wasn’t living his life.  It was drifting by without his participation and perhaps it truly was time for him to take control.

The idea
was
appealing to him, a man who’d been bound by structure and rules his entire life
, but where did one begin?  How would Kate suggest he combat the rot of his routine life?  Did he dare ask?

***

“
Come on,
into bed, buddy,”
Kate said to Nathan as she put him to bed one night about a week after beginning her duties as his tutor.  It wasn’t strictly a part of her official duties but she enjoyed doing it. 

Usually.  On this night, sleep was far from Nate’s mind.  “Did you see
all the guests in the garden today?”

“Wasn’t I with you
in the garden as well
?” she answered
his question
with one of her own.

“Mother never had so many guests at one time before,” he went on, bouncing onto the bed.

“There were a lot of people.”  Mrs. Ryder’s modest gathering of guests for her house party had blown Kate’s mind and Brand’s as well from what she had seen.  There must have been close to forty people
staying in the mansion
and, o
ver dinner, Marta, Mary and Nan
had gone on and on about this baron or that countess or some duchess and their demands for their rooms or special needs.  There were guests everywhere she went, turning the mammoth mausoleum of a mansion into a bustling downtown hotel. 

Amid it all, she had watched from the nursery windows as the guests had gathered on the lawns the previous afternoon to play croquet.  The dozens of ladies present had competed for Brand’s attention with furled parasols and batting lashes.  They were so obvious that Kate hadn’t known whether to be ill or envious as Brand smiled down at them.  Her only consolation was that, despite the smiles, Brand didn’t truly seem to be enjoying himself.

There was that at least.

Nate bounced on the bed again reclaiming her attention and Kate sighed f
or
an entirely different reason.  Being trotted out for introductions to the guests had left Nathan wired and restless.
Getting him to calm down from the excitement to go to bed was a trial.  “Come on now, let me tuck you in.”

“You mean ‘tuck up’,” Nate corrected
with one last bounce before
he
finally
snuggled down under the covers.

“You’
re right.
”
S
he nodded
and pulled
the quilts up to his chin
bending over to kiss him goodnight
.  “I keep getting that one wrong.”

“You get a lot of things wrong.
”
H
e delivered the blow with sweet honesty.