Dangerous to Hold (6 page)

“So, you were there!”

“And if I was?”

There was a moment when she knew she had made that blunder she had tried so hard to avoid. He rose to face her and his eyes glittered brilliantly. Then he reached for her, and hard, muscular arms wrapped around her, dragging her against thighs of iron and a rock-hard chest. She could feel the brass buttons of his coat digging into
her. Her arms were trapped at her sides. One hand cupped her neck, then his lips were against her mouth.

She moaned, not with pleasure, but in pain. Her jaw still smarted from the blow he had inflicted. She went rigid, waiting for the kiss to end, and the pain to pass.

He took advantage of her passivity and shifted her more intimately against his body. Catherine gasped, and his tongue swept in to take possession of her mouth. This was nothing like the insulting kiss he had forced on her after their marriage in Spain. He was tasting her, savoring her, with more gentleness than she’d dreamed was in him. A shock of pleasure took her unawares, and for a moment she sagged against him. Then she remembered who he was, what he was, and she kicked out at his shins in a fury of shame. He let her go at once.

Her hand went back, but before she could strike him, he grabbed for her wrist. He was laughing down at her.

“So, you’re not one of Amy’s friends,” he said. “I had to find out.”

She struck at him again, but he easily dodged her blow.

“Look, I apologize, all right? If you’d answered my questions in the first place, I would never have put you to the test.”

She hated his winsome grin, detested the sparkle in his eyes, and was thoroughly incensed by the laugh lines that creased his cheeks. It was utterly futile to pit her wits against this reckless devil. One way or another, he would discover what he wished to know.

She felt in one coat pocket, then the other, and produced two grubby handkerchiefs, a piece of ribbon, some loose change, and last, but not least, what she was looking for.

“This is my card,” she said. “Now we have nothing more to say to each other.”

“Miss C. Courtnay,” Marcus read, “of Heath House, Hampstead. Now why didn’t you save us both a lot of trouble and give me this information when I asked you politely?”

Back straight, she marched to the desk, shoved her
bonnet on her head, picked up her muff, then her pistol, and turned to go.

“You forgot this,” he said, holding out her reticule. “There is nothing in it. How strange! Most ladies I know keep their possessions in their reticules and not in their pockets.”

She snatched it from him without breaking stride. He stepped in front of her and politely held the door open. “So it’s true what they say about red hair,” he said, and chuckled. “You really do have a temper.”

This taunt was treated with all the disdain it deserved. Head held high, she strode along the corridor. Let him call out the guards and have her arrested for attempted murder. She could argue a case against him. And if he did start digging into her past, he would never find anything to connect her to Catalina.

He coughed at her back, but she ignored it. “I believe,” he said diffidently, “you are going the wrong way.”

Her steps slowed.

“The way out is this way.”

She breathed in slowly, did an about-turn, and sailed right by him. He said no more till they were on the pavement on Whitehall.

“How do you propose to get home to Hampstead?”

As though he were invisible, she raised her hand and flagged a hackney. Marcus held the door for her. “The King’s Theater,” she told the hackney driver.

“Don’t tell me you’re an actress,” said Marcus, following her inside.

She stared pointedly out the coach window, determined not to be drawn into a conversation. Her participation was unnecessary. He embarked on a flow of chitchat that required no response from her, and which lasted until the hackney pulled up opposite the theater.

He allowed her to pay off the driver and that disappointed her. She would have relished the chance to throw his money back in his face, and his look told her he knew it.

McNally turned at their approach. She allowed
Marcus to help her into the buggy, but the ice in her expression did not thaw. “Home, McNally,” she said.

“One moment,” Marcus advanced toward McNally. “Miss Courtnay has had a slight accident. No, nothing serious. See that she puts a cold compress on her chin when you get her home. Oh, and if she can be persuaded, get some brandy into her.”

“Yes, sir,” said McNally. He knew an officer and a gentleman when he saw one, even if he wasn’t in uniform, and this one had a familiar look. He glanced over his shoulder at Catherine, but was met with a stony stare.

To Catherine, Marcus said, “I shall call on you within a day or so to see how you go on.”

Her features might have been carved from stone. “Drive on, McNally.”

McNally looked at Marcus.

Marcus took a step back, surveyed Catherine’s frozen profile for a long, considering moment, then he grinned. “Drive on, McNally,” he called out.

Only then did McNally click his tongue and bring the reins down on the pony’s rump.

Marcus watched the buggy make a turn and traverse the length of the Haymarket, until it turned the corner into Piccadilly. Then his smile faded and a calculating look came into his eyes. He was almost certain that she wasn’t Catalina, but there was still a small niggling doubt. For all their differences, the resemblance was uncanny, and he had good reason to believe that his erstwhile wife was in England. When he’d seen Miss Courtnay, he’d made the obvious connection. But when she’d opened her mouth, the cultured accent had thrown him. He’d only wanted to satisfy himself that she wasn’t Catalina. But it had infuriated him when she’d tried to shoot him.

He shook his head, remembering his confusion when he’d removed her bonnet and the torrent of fiery-red hair had tumbled around her shoulders. He’d noticed other differences that he hadn’t noticed before. Her complexion was fair. There were freckles on her nose. Her features were delicate, refined. And afterward, when she came to herself, she had not possessed a particle of Catalina’s sex
ual allure. That was something about Catalina he remembered very well. She’d seduced him with her unawakened sensuality. And he, fool that he was, had been taken in by it, believing that he had found the love that had always eluded him.

No, Miss Courtnay was no Catalina, though she had made quite an impression on him in her own way. She was remote and cool on the surface, but easily aroused to temper. It made a man wonder if there was passion there too.

He didn’t regret the kiss. She’d kicked him, actually kicked him in the shins, and that had never happened to him before. Just thinking about it made him laugh out loud. She amused him, and that too was a first. And she also aroused his curiosity.

There were questions that continued to tease his mind. She still had not told him what she was doing at Amy’s house. And there were other things that puzzled him: her panic when he’d first run into her; why she was going alone around London late at night; and most puzzling of all—why she was armed with a pistol. As much as anything, that’s what had convinced him that she was Catalina.

Miss C. Courtnay was a puzzle he meant to solve.

His first port of call, he decided, would be Amy. He and Amy went back a long way. She’d once been his mistress, but now they were friends, good friends. If Amy knew anything, she would tell him.

Marcus remembered the reverie very well. He’d been hiding out in
El Grande’s
mountain retreat, recovering from his wounds, and his mind had wandered to England. He’d dreamed of balls, and beautiful English girls in their pale, transparent gauzes, with fragrant hair and soft skin.

And here he was living the reverie, propping up one of the pillars of Lady Tarrington’s magnificent ballroom, and he was bored out of his mind. Nothing had changed in the five years he’d been out of England, fighting the French. The same tedious conversations went on around him; the same beautiful girls hung on his every word; the same tawdry
affaires
flourished among the married set. Only the names and faces had changed. If his hostess had not been his godmother, he would have turned on his heel and made his escape.

Welcome home, Marcus
, he thought ruefully, and drained the champagne in his glass.

He remembered that it was on an evening just such as this that he’d had a notion to do something different with his life. His twenty-ninth birthday had loomed on the horizon, and he’d felt as old as Methuselah. He’d seen everything, done everything, and that was a sad state of affairs for a young man who had yet to come into his prime. Everything was too easy. There was nothing to strive for. His financial affairs were managed by the best professional minds money could buy, and his half brother, Penniston, ran the day-to-day operation of the Wrotham estates as well as any steward they could hire. There was no need for him to marry and beget heirs if he chose not to. If anything happened to Marcus, there were two half
brothers who could succeed to the title. Gaming, drinking, and wenching had become his way of life. He’d had everything that could make a young man happy, only he wasn’t happy, he was restless, and there was no explaining it.

He couldn’t remember who had first made the wager. He remembered there were four of them, and that they had decamped none too graciously from Lady Castlereagh’s ball. They’d ended up in some high-class brothel and had just been serviced by the best whores that money could buy.
The best that money could buy.
That thought had been running through his mind. He hadn’t wanted the best that money could buy. Just once in his life, he’d wanted something that couldn’t be bought. He’d voiced the thought aloud. One thing led to another. Someone mentioned the hard lot of a soldier’s life, and before the night was over, his friends had wagered that if he could endure a soldier’s life for as long as six months, they would eat their curly-brimmed beavers with the sauce of his choice.

It was meant as a joke. No one expected him to take the wager seriously. In fact, the wager had nothing to do with his decision. The novelty of a soldier’s life had suddenly appealed to him, and he had acted on impulse.

It was an impulse he had come to regret many times during that first year. After a while, he’d simply ceased to think about it. He was a soldier. He had a job to do. It became a matter of honor to drive the French out of Spain. Two months ago, it had culminated at Waterloo, and after that his country no longer required his services.

He’d come full circle, only now he was five years older and had acquired a little wisdom. He didn’t want to take up the old life. Surviving when thousands of one’s comrades had fallen could do that to a man. He wasn’t a monk, by any means. His perspective had changed, though, and so had his tastes.

For no apparent reason, there came to his mind a vision of a red-haired termagant. Amy had been no help to him there. In fact, she’d had a good laugh at his expense when he’d described the girl. No respectable ladies ever attended her parties, she’d told him. He hadn’t told her
the girl’s name, or pursued the matter, not wishing to cause Miss Courtnay any embarrassment. He’d waited a day, to give her temper time to cool, then he’d gone out to Hampstead to see her.

She’d tried to order him off the premises, but he was as stubborn as she, and eventually she’d thrown up her hands and allowed him to enter. He’d spent a good hour with her, and had learned a great deal just by observation. The house, itself, told its own story. It was in decline, fading away like some aging belle. Money was obviously in short supply. From chatting to her woman as she’d served tea and cakes, he’d learned that Miss Courtnay’s Christian name was Catherine, that her father, the good doctor, had served in the Peninsular Campaign, that Catherine had been with him, briefly, in Portugal, and had returned to England when he’d died suddenly in some tragic misadventure.

Catherine’s look had challenged him to make something of it, but he was beyond suspecting her of being Catalina by this time. She was too English, too demure, too genuine. His godmother would have called her an aging spinster, but that’s not how he thought of her. Her tongue was as tart as a lemon, but her eyes could very easily be induced to simmer like hot coals. Temper. He wondered just what he’d have to do to turn that temper into passion.

There wasn’t much point in thinking about it. Their acquaintance would be fleeting. For one thing, they didn’t move in the same circles, and for another, she’d made it quite clear with those eloquent eyes of hers that the Earl of Wrotham was definitely not one of her favorite people, which disappointed him, because Miss Catherine Courtnay was quite possibly the most interesting woman he’d met in a long, long time.

He came to himself with a start when a country dance was announced. A footman with a tray of champagne glasses approached. Marcus relinquished his empty glass, and shook his head, indicating he did not want another. From the corner of his eye, he observed his godmother bearing down on him with a vision in pink, a young, gawky girl who looked to be about eighteen or
nineteen. In his younger days, he would have run before he would have partnered one of the shy young wallflowers. He’d preferred the dashing flirts or the more worldly, married ladies with complacent husbands. He was mellowing in his old age, decided Marcus, and he turned with a gracious smile to do his duty.