Suzanne Robinson (26 page)

Her thoughts drifted to the beauty of Alexis’s body, and she relaxed against her wall in a near doze. The warmth of the sunshine, the smell of the moist earth, and the stillness of the air all lulled her to sleep. She started when the whinny of a horse awakened her.

Hearing Alexis’s voice, she smiled. He had followed her. She would remain where she was and make him look for her.

She heard rapid steps. The crunch of a boot heel on pebbles, the soft thud of a footfall on grass, the impatient tap of riding crop against thigh. Kate grinned. When in a temper, Alexis always slapped his crop against one body part or another. She started to stand to reveal herself, but his sudden harsh voice made her sink back down.

“Are you mad? Sending me that note was an act of insanity, Hannah.”

“You’ve been home for months and not spoken to me once,” Hannah’s voice said.

Alexis’s tone was low and strained. “I speak to you every day.”

“In front of others. Polite emptiness. You haven’t touched me in all the years since we parted.”

Mouth dry, hands cold with tension, Kate snuggled close to her wall and peered at the two through the ivy that spilled over her hiding place.

Alexis was standing in a patch of sun. Suffused in brilliant light, he held himself erect, his eyes like cold, green water, his expression revealing nothing except a vague distaste.

“Don’t treat me this way,” Hannah said, walking closer to him. “You look at me as if I were a lazy servant in need of dismissal. Oh, don’t bother to protest. You know that dignity of yours is intimidating. When I try to speak to you, I feel as if I’m a subject daring to seek intimacy with my king.”

“This conversation is distasteful to me,” Alexis said. He started toward his horse.

Kate’s spirits lifted with each step he took away from Hannah.

“Fulke hasn’t changed,” Hannah said. “He never touches me.”

Alexis stopped with his back to her.

“I need you, Alexis.”

Facing the woman, Alexis shook his head. “I’m not a fifteen-year-old virgin anymore. I never should have let you touch me. I betrayed Fulke once, but I won’t do that again. I’ve committed too many sins in my life already. Don’t ask me to repeat one of them.”

“I need you.”

“Why me? Surely there have been others.”

Hannah smiled and fluttered her hands in one of her helpless gestures. “You were such a beautiful, sweet creature, and so close. Every day I saw you at fencing practice, learning to shoot, riding. I even saw you swimming once. You had flung off your clothes and jumped into the lake. That evening at dinner your hair was still damp. I imagined your whole body damp and warm and ready. I had to have you.”

“Shut up.”

Hannah rushed at him. Kate almost left her hiding place when the woman clutched his jacket, attaching herself to him like the ivy hugging the Thyme Hall ruins. Alexis attempted to pry her loose, but she stuck fast. He gripped her hands as they crushed the material of his jacket and pushed against her so that she had to leave a space between their bodies.

“I want children,” she said.

At her words Alexis stopped trying to free himself and went motionless. “Christ. What kind of monster do you think I am? I won’t do it.”

“He won’t be able to say anything. What will he do? Say the child couldn’t be his because he hasn’t made love to his wife in years? He won’t admit that to the world, because then he’d have to admit he’s only half a man because of his parents. Did you know they beat him for showing the least sign of affection for females?”

“Stop it,” Alexis said, attempting once again to separate
himself from Hannah. “Fulke can’t help what happened to him when he was young.”

“But what about me?” Hannah shook Alexis by the shoulders. “My beautiful child, you look so much like him, no one would ever know the baby is yours.”

“Except Fulke.”

Kate winced as Alexis thrust Hannah from him with such violence that she fell to the ground. Her sympathy was short-lived, for Hannah was up and chasing after Alexis at once. He was almost to his horse when she caught him. Snagging him by the coat sleeve, she dug in her heels. Alexis veered around and slapped her hand away. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of not looking at what was behind him. He took a step backward, and another, and came up against the trunk of a tree.

They were too far away for Kate to hear what they were saying. She moved an ivy leaf aside so that at least she could see them. As Alexis stumbled against the tree, Hannah closed in. She caught his face in her hands and kissed him. Alexis stiffened. He grasped her shoulders and began to shove. In response, the woman slid one of her hands low between their hips. Alexis’s head snapped back. His mouth formed an O, and Kate could almost hear him gasp. For a suspended moment he stayed pinned against the tree, then Hannah dropped her other hand to his groin. This time Kate did hear him.

“No!” He tore her hands from his body. “By God, there are too damned many women in my life.”

He had dropped his riding crop when she touched him. Snatching it up, he slashed it through the air as Hannah reached for him again. Then he mounted Theseus and vanished into the forest, leaving Hannah to fend for herself.

Kate watched the woman bury her face in her hands and weep. It was some time before Hannah recovered and was able to leave the ruins. When she did, Kate braced her
arms on the top of the wall and pushed herself to her feet. Her legs were stiff and cramped.

The bitch. Hypocritical, scheming, deceitful bitch. No, Hannah couldn’t help it. Fulke was the monster. No, Hannah was. She’d seduced Alexis when he was fifteen. Fifteen, dammit.

“Oh, hellfire.” Kate scooped up her book and started pacing.

“How many women does he have?” she asked the trees. “Let’s see. There is Mrs. Beechwith, the countess, Lady Churchill-Smythe, the Dinkles, Mademoiselle St.-Germain, and now Hannah. And there was Ophelia. The man could earn his living as a stud.”

What an intimidating thought. Kate sank down on top of a crumbling wall and sighed. Why would he want her when he had so many lovely and eager women pawing him? Another, even more melancholy thought occurred to her. Alexis was used to being sought after, pursued, courted.

Before Papa had discovered his gold, she had thought how wonderful it would be to have lovely, expensive clothes. When she got them, it had taken only a few months for those wonderful satins and silks to become as ordinary to her as cotton. If diamonds were as numerous as sand grains, no one would want them.

Women scattered themselves at Alexis’s feet like grains of sand, so he couldn’t be expected to treat them like diamonds. Poor Hannah, poor Mrs. Beechwith and Ophelia.

Poor Kate.

Oh no, not poor Kate.

Launching to her feet, Kate headed for the clearing where her horse waited. “Watch out, my lord marquess. This is one grain of sand who is going to turn herself into the biggest, fattest diamond you ever saw.”

Considering the provocations to his temper, Kate wasn’t surprised when she returned from Thyme Hall to learn that Alexis had visited his estate room, tongue-lashed his secretary, and taken himself off to the Dower House. She went to her room to change and to hide her book. Since she had decided to alter her ways, she’d hidden all her interesting volumes. Only approved religious tomes were left, and poetry.

Wordsworth, for example, was allowed. Kate hated Wordsworth. All that gushing about daffodils and budding twigs and clouds. Nature herself would grow nauseated if she had to listen to such driveling raptures. “O Cuckoo! Shall I call thee Bird,/Or but a wandering Voice?” Kate gritted her teeth. She could still hear Hannah’s hushed voice lisping that line.

She was stuffing her book under her mattress when her maid came in with a
letter. Half an hour later she was running downstairs with the letter and her reply in hand. She sailed down the last few steps, skirts flying. She hit the carpeted floor and dashed around a corner, then was suddenly caught and spun around.

“Kate?”

“Hellfire.”

Kate bit her lip. It was Alexis, and he’d seen her running. He was with the Earl of Cardigan and Lord Sinclair, and he was frowning at her in that detached way he had when he was furious and couldn’t show it because there were witnesses.

“Is there something wrong, my dear?” he asked.

Propriety and convention forgotten, Kate burst out with her wrath. “That idiot Poggs has gone and fired my ship designer.”

If she hadn’t been so angry, she would have taken a warning from Alexis’s tense jaw and Fulke’s frown. She didn’t, and went on.

“I don’t care if Wainwright does drink bourbon and keep three harlots in his house. He builds the fastest clipper ships afloat, and he’s going to build them for me.”

There was a choked whoop from the earl. Fulke excused himself and took the amused Cardigan with him. Kate glanced at Alexis and bolted. He caught her again and dragged her into a room near the stairs. Slamming the door shut, he towered over her.

“You’re a disgrace.”

“I’m sorry, but Poggs—”

“I don’t care about Poggs. You embarrassed yourself and me. Again. In front of Fulke and Cardigan, no less. Fulke already thinks you’re fast. Now he’ll be sure you’re a degenerate.”

“But Poggs—”

“To the devil with Poggs. How many times must I ask
you to act as if you deserved the honor of being the mistress of Castle Richfield?”

Humiliation washed over Kate. An awful heat spread up her neck and into her face, and she swallowed the thick lump that had formed in her throat. Alexis was still talking, but she didn’t hear him, so overwhelming was her misery. She was going to cry, and she couldn’t stop the tears.

Dear God, don’t let me cry.
She swallowed again. Her eyes filled. She closed them in hopes of holding back the tears. She would have succeeded if Alexis hadn’t suddenly lunged at her.

Without warning she was lifted off her feet. He carried her to a couch and sat down with her on his lap, hugging her to his chest. That hug released the tears. All she could hear was his soft, low voice whispering apologies while she sobbed.

“I didn’t mean it, little savage. I’m sorry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I said. Kate, stop crying.” He snapped at her. “Stop it at once. You’re making me feel like a hound.”

She sniffled, then hiccupped and chuckled. Alexis drew in a breath. Placing his hands on either side of her face, he tilted it up. He kissed her wet cheeks, her eyes, and finally her mouth.

Drawing back, Kate touched his lips. No longer drawn and stiff with anger, they were one of the few soft parts of his body.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me too.”

“It’s just that you are so unexpected. You rage like Medusa, but if I get angry with you, you crumble like damp sugar.”

Kate blushed and studied the toes of her shoes. Her feet couldn’t touch the floor when she was in his lap.

“My sweet.”

“Mmmm.”

“You don’t cry often, do you?”

“Hardly at all.”

“That’s probably why.” He pulled her close again and pushed her head against his shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“Hannah cries all the time. So does Georgiana Dinkle and the twins, and most of the women I know. You never cry, so when you did just now, I could have cut out my tongue for being the cause.”

“Don’t do that.” She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “I like your tongue.”

That remark got her kissed most thoroughly. Before she realized it, she was on her back on the couch and Alexis’s hands were roaming beneath her skirt. He was so quick, she had only gotten the first word of a protest out of her mouth by the time he was lodged between her legs. The rest of her objection drowned under his mouth. He lifted his hips. She heard the rustle of fabric, then in a single movement he was inside her.

She didn’t understand how it could happen so quickly. He pulled almost all the way out of her, then thrust deeply into her. lifting himself on his hands, he pushed against her so hard, she wanted to scream. She forgot to be shocked. She didn’t care about anything but what he was doing. He arched his back and rocked back and forth faster and faster. Her loins tingled, and a pressure built at the center of her pleasure. The more she sought to feed it, the more overwhelming the sensations became. Finally she cried out and jerked against him frantically. In the last throes of her own climax, she felt him spasm and explode with release.

Kate held Alexis as he throbbed inside of her. He lifted his head, and they exchanged a look of complete bafflement.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We forgot everything, everything. Oh, Alexis, do you think we’re depraved?”

“You aren’t,” he said. “You aren’t the one who made sure to lock the door even though he was furious.”

“I didn’t care if the door was locked.”

He grinned. “That is the greatest compliment a woman has ever given me.”

She giggled. Alexis drew in his breath and stiffened, then he kissed her and withdrew. Feeling the warm stickiness of his seed on her thighs, Kate quickly pulled her skirt down while Alexis refastened his trousers.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“Yes.” He handed her his handkerchief. She blushed, and he turned his back. “I’m sorry, my love. You’re not used to this at all.” He came back to her and sat down. “We have to think.”

“Yes, we do.”

“I don’t usually rape virgins, you know.”

“You’re scared too.”

“Out of my silk underwear.”

She slipped her hand into his. “I was hoping you would know something about it, seeing that you’ve had so much practice.”

“None of it seems to matter when I get near you.” He squeezed her hand. “I must be losing my wits.”

“Mine are already scattered from here to the next county.”

She allowed Alexis to help her up. He kissed her and unlocked the door.

“I must leave you before I make a rutting monster of myself again.” He went out into the hallway. “I will escort you to dinner, if I have recovered by then.”

Kate smiled. As he started walking away from her, she heard him mutter to himself, “I’m going to have to do something. This can’t continue.”