Indiscreet (10 page)

He even thought briefly of changing his intentions. There was nothing to stop him from offering her marriage if he so chose, he
thought. But the idea was not given serious consideration. He did not want to be married. It was true that he had courted and betrothed himself to Horatia with great haste only three years ago, but that very experience had soured him. He had fallen in love with a woman who had soon thrown him over for a rake. He was that poor a judge of female character. There would have been nothing but misery for him if he had married before discovering the weakness of her character or the insincerity of her protestations of love. Before he married, he would have to meet the woman who was as much a part of his soul as he was.

And that, of course, was romantic nonsense.

No, he certainly would not offer marriage to Catherine Winters merely because it seemed there might be no other way of bedding her. Besides, he knew almost nothing about her. It would be sheer madness to marry a virtual stranger, lovely as she was.

But no amount of sensible thinking as he danced and conversed and waited impatiently for the supper set to begin could cool his ardor. He wanted her and by God he would have her if there was a way of doing so short of ravishing her.

It was with considerable annoyance, then—and something deeper than annoyance—that he greeted the fact that she was nowhere to be found as the gentlemen around him were taking their partners for the supper waltz.

“Ellen is free for this set, Rawleigh,” Clarissa said archly, coming up from behind him as he looked keenly all about. “Do let me take you to her.”

“Pardon me, Clarissa,” he said more sharply than he had
intended, “but I am engaged to dance with her after supper—for the second time. I have reserved this set with someone else.”

“Oh? Who?” Her voice had sharpened too.

He was feeling too annoyed to dissemble. Besides, why should he? When he had found her, he would be waltzing with her for all to see. “Catherine Winters,” he said.

“Mrs. Winters?” she said. “Oh. She must be very gratified, Rawleigh, I am sure, at such a mark of attention. And this is the second time you are to dance with her?”

“Excuse me, Clarissa,” he said, moving away. She was clearly not in the ballroom. Or on the landing outside. Or in the drawing room, where a few elderly people were playing cards. Where was she hiding? Hiding from him? Had she escaped? Gone home? But he had been present when the Reverend Lovering had been called away. She had not gone with him. She had come with the rector and would have to wait for someone else to take her home at the end of the ball. Unless she had walked. Surely she had not been foolhardy enough to have done that alone. Where was she?

There was only one possibility he could think of. He went to look in the music room.

There was a certain amount of light coming through the French windows, across which the curtains had not been drawn. But apart from that she was in darkness. She sat on the pianoforte bench, facing the keyboard but not playing. The waltz music from the ballroom was loud even down here. She did not look up when he opened the door and stepped inside. He strolled across the room toward her.

“My dance, I believe,” he said.

“I never wanted this to happen,” she said.

“This?” He felt hope build. She had not wanted it to happen, but it was happening?

She did not answer him for a while. She ran the fingers of her left hand over the keys, though she did not depress them.

“I am five-and-twenty years old,” she said. “I have lived here for five years. I have made friends and acquaintances here. I have made a meaningful life here. I have made a home of my cottage. I have a dog to love and be loved by. I have been happy.”

“Happy.” He would have to quarrel with that word. “Was your marriage so intolerable that this life—this half-life you have been living—seemed a happy one, Catherine?”

“I have not given you leave to use my name,” she said.

“Retaliate by calling me Rex, then,” he said. “You want me as much as I want you.”

She laughed without humor. “Men and women are so different,” she said. “What I want is peace of mind and contentment.”

“Dullness,” he said.

“If you like.” She was not going to argue the point with him even though he stayed silent to give her the chance.

“Were you happy with your husband?” he asked.

Again she was silent for a while. “I do not cultivate either happiness or unhappiness,” she said. “The one does not last long enough and the other lasts too long. My marriage is not your concern.
I
am not your concern. I wish you would go back to the ballroom, my lord, and dance with someone else. Any woman there would be glad to dance with you.”

“I want to dance with you,” he said.

“No.”

“Why not?” He gazed down at her. Even the arch of her neck in the faint light from the window was elegant, alluring.

She lifted her shoulders. “I do not like the feeling,” she said.

“The feeling of being alive?” he asked. “You are a good dancer. You take the rhythm of the music inside yourself and allow it to move through you.”

“I do not like being observed,” she said. “It would be remarked upon too particularly if I danced with you for a second time. Your sister-in-law did not like it the first time. I have to live here. For a lifetime. I cannot afford to give rise to even a breath of gossip.”

He set one foot on the bench beside her and rested his forearm on his leg. “You do not have to stay here,” he said. “You can come away with me. I will find you a home somewhere where you will not have to worry about anyone's opinion but mine.”

She laughed again. “A love nest,” she said. “With only one man to please. How very desirable.”

“It must have seemed desirable to you once,” he said, “when you married. Unless you married for a reason other than love. I somehow cannot imagine your doing so.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “Please don't let anyone find us here together.” She drew a deep inward breath. “Please.”

“This is my dance,” he said. “Come and dance it with me.” He stretched out his hand to her and returned his foot to the floor.

“No,” she said. “It is too late to join the set now.”

“Here,” he said. “Dance with me here. The music is loud enough and there is quite sufficient open space and no carpet on the floor.”

“Here?” She looked up at him for the first time.

“Come,” he said again.

She set her hand slowly in his and got hesitantly to her feet. But when he set his arm about her waist and took her hand in his, she raised her other to his shoulder and they moved to the music, twirling about the darkened room in harmony together. She really was a good dancer. She followed his lead so that he felt no consciousness of drawing her with him and no fear of stepping on her feet.

They danced in silence. At first they danced correctly, the proper distance between them despite the positioning of their hands. But when he looked down at her and a turn brought the light onto her face, he could see that she danced with her eyes closed. He drew her closer until her thighs brushed his as they moved and he could feel the tips of her breasts against his coat. And then he drew her closer still until he turned her hand to hold it palm in against his heart. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and her hand slid farther about his neck.

The music stopped eventually and they stopped moving.

She was slim and supple and warm against him. She smelled of soap, far more enticing than any of the expensive perfumes with which any of his mistresses had ever doused themselves. He was afraid to move. He hardly dared breathe. If she was in some sort of a trance, he did not want to wake her.

But she lifted her head after a while and looked into his face. He could not see her expression clearly. But her body remained arched warmly into his. He lowered his head and kissed her.

This time her lips were parted too. He moved his tongue along her upper lip from corner to corner and back along the lower lip. She neither withdrew nor responded. She seemed totally relaxed, rather like a woman after love. Except that he had been cheated of the love, he thought ruefully as she drew back her head.

“You do that well,” she said. “I suppose you do everything well. Including seduction. No more, though. I am going to go.”

Later. There was going to be a later. He would not press the point now. This was enough for now. But when it happened, it would not be seduction. It would be with her full consent. Perhaps she did not even realize it yet.

“Come, then,” he said. “We must not wait down here until all the food is gone.”

“No,” she said. “I did not mean to the supper room. I am going home.”

“Who is taking you?” He frowned. “The Reverend Lovering has not returned, has he?”

“I—I have someone,” she said. “You see? I brought my cloak down with me.”

He did not look, but he gathered that it was lying on a chair.

“You do not lie well,” he said. “You were planning to
walk
home alone. Why were you sitting in here, then? Did you not have the courage to do it?”

“There is nothing to it,” she said. “There are no wild animals here and no footpads. There is nothing to fear.”

But he knew from the tone of her voice that he had guessed correctly. She wanted to walk home but was afraid to do so. And she would consider it too early to ask Claude or anyone else to bring out a carriage to take her. So she had sought refuge in the music room, perhaps hoping to remain here undetected until the end of the ball.

“Wait here,” he said. “I shall go up for a cloak and escort you home.”

“You will not!” she exclaimed, her voice outraged. “I will go alone.”

“Wait here.” He set a finger over her lips. “Don't even think of slipping away, Catherine. I will come after you with great noise if you do. I will bring a search party with me to beat the bushes. You will be mortally embarrassed. Wait here until I come.”

“No,” she said. “No. If we were seen together . . .”

“We will not be.” He was at the door already. He turned back to look at her. “Wait here.”

“I will come to supper, then,” she said. But he was out through the door already. He closed it after him, pretending not to have heard her.

If he had planned it, it could not be more perfect. She had not planned it. He was certain of that. But he would make her glad of it. He would make her see how perfect it was.

Catherine.

He could not remember being so obsessed with any woman.

S
HE
did not know quite how she had got into this. She had tried hard to avoid temptation or the possibility of gossip. Dancing with Viscount Rawleigh and going in to supper with him would have offered the danger of both. And so she had left the ballroom and almost the house. She had taken her cloak and gone to the music room, from which she could slip out into the night without being observed by either footmen or other guests. And then she had stood in the doorway, afraid to leave. It was so very dark outside—and the walk back home was over a mile, much of it among the oak trees of the lower driveway.

Just like a child, she had been afraid of the dark.

And so she had sat on the bench of the pianoforte, trying to
get up her courage. Or failing that, she had decided to stay where she was until supper was well over.

It seemed hardly fair that her problems had now been compounded. He was going to be missed. It would take him almost an hour to escort her home and return. She assumed, at least, that he meant to walk with her, not call out a carriage. That would be even worse. He would be missed, and then perhaps someone—Mrs. Adams, certainly—would notice that she was missing too.

She should have said a very firm no to being escorted home. She should have insisted on going back up to the ballroom. Even now, she should slip out alone. He would not find her in the darkness. And she did not believe he would put into effect his threat to make a loud noise in search of her. He would not gather a search party. It had been a foolish threat meant for a gullible female.

Oh dear Lord, she had not thought she was still gullible to the wiles of men.

But she must be just that. She was still standing undecided in the music room when he returned, looking more satanic than ever with the folds of a dark cloak swinging about him. Without conscious intention, she had put on her own cloak, she realized. She drew the wide hood up over her head and shivered.

“Now,” he said briskly, “we may leave.”

“This is not right,” she said. “It is very improper.”

He raised his eyebrows. She wondered if he knew how very arrogant he looked when he did that and decided that he probably did. “Afraid, Mrs. Winters?” he asked.

She was—afraid of him, afraid of the darkness outside, afraid
of going back to the ballroom with him. She hated being afraid. She hated feeling weak and vulnerable and under the control of a man. Just like that other time. Except that it was worse this time. This time if she stepped outside with him, she would be doing so voluntarily, knowing exactly what Society could do to her if the truth were ever known.

But what could Society do that it had not already done? Society did not care about her any longer or even know about her. How foolish now to care for her reputation. Except that . . .

“Mrs. Winters?” He was standing at the French windows, one hand on the door handle, the other stretched toward her.

“No,” she said, moving toward him. “I am not afraid, my lord.”

As soon as she had passed him and stepped onto the terrace and he had closed the door behind him, he set an arm about her waist, encircling her with a fold of his cloak as he did so. He hurried her across the terrace and onto the dark lawn. She drew in a sharp breath. They were not going to walk down the driveway?

“It is a little quicker this way,” he said, “and a little more private.”

A little more private
. The words burned themselves on her mind and she heard her teeth chattering. His arm was warm and firm about her. She could feel his thigh and his hip with her own, firmly muscled, very masculine. Her body was still aching with desire from their waltz and the kiss that had followed it.

A little more private.

Would she be able to resist him? Would she want to? Would she have the willpower? Oh, this was beginning to remind her . . .

It was so very dark. Her eyes had not quite accustomed themselves to the darkness even though she had sat in the darkened music room for half an hour or longer. And yet he was moving with confident strides.

“It is so dark,” she said aloud, and heard with distance the thinness of her voice.

He stopped and turned her against him before kissing her—with wide mouth this time. “You will come to no harm,” he said. “I was notorious in the army for my ability to see in the dark. Besides, I came here often as a boy. I would know the way blindfolded.”

You will come to no harm.
She almost laughed aloud.

It was worse when they got among the trees. She would not have been able to see a hand before her face if she had held one there, she was sure. And the ground was more uneven. But he held her securely to his side and his pace slowed only a little. He really did seem to know just where he was going. And yet she waited for him to stop. She waited for—for ravishment. Though she was not sure it would be that. She was not sure she would have even that much consolation afterward.

“Ah, here we are,” he said after what seemed a long age of tense silence—tense on her part anyway. “My sense of direction has not failed me.”

And this time she
did
see. A faint gleam of light from among the branches of the trees shone on the latch of the postern door. The road was just the other side of it and her cottage a mere few steps away. He really had brought her straight home, then. Her knees turned weak with relief. And this was even better than
having gone down the driveway and through the village. Late as the hour must be, there was a strong chance that they would have been seen in the village.

It was so dreadfully improper to be out alone with him at night like this.

He released his hold on her to open the door and look cautiously out, both ways.

“No one,” he said. He reached a hand for hers. She could see almost clearly now that the door was open and the sky was visible beyond it. “Come.”

But she held back. “I can go alone from here,” she said. “Thank you. It was very kind of you to escort me, my lord.”

There was silence for a moment and then a chuckle. “Is that my cue to make you my most elegant bow and to deliver my most polished speech about its having been an honor and a pleasure?” he said. “Come. I will see you home. There may be a score or two of footpads waiting to pounce upon you between here and your cottage. How would I forgive myself if you came to harm?”

He was laughing at her. Half of his face was caught in the dim light of the sky beyond the door. He was so very handsome. She had waltzed with him tonight—twice. Once in the ballroom and once in the music room, when the dance had become not just intimate and romantic, but also lascivious. The music and the rhythm had been a mere excuse for their bodies to touch and to move together. He had kissed her tonight and she had kissed him.

If there had been any doubt in the last couple of weeks, since his first appearance at Bodley, there was none left. All the barriers and masks and armor she had built up about herself in five
years had crumbled and disappeared without a trace. She could no longer pretend that she was not a young woman with a young woman's needs and yearnings. And perhaps they did not even disappear with youth. Perhaps it had been foolish to try to persuade herself that she could wait them out.

“Come,” he said again, more softly. More irresistibly.

She did not take his hand, but she slipped past him through the doorway and onto the road. She felt for a moment almost as if she had been slapped with reality. He stepped out after her, closed the door, and set his arm and his cloak about her again.

Toby barked when they were coming up the path and when she opened the door. Barking sounded so very loud in the middle of the night. She was so concerned with shushing him that she forgot about turning in the doorway, bidding Lord Rawleigh a firm good night, and closing the door between them.

“Silence, sir,” he said in a firm, quiet voice, and Toby fell silent, wagged his tail, and trotted off into the kitchen—doubtless to his comfortable perch on her rocker.

Then the hall was in darkness as the outer door closed. And she was in his arms, his cloak all about her, and being kissed again.

Except that it was not really a kiss. Not by her definition, anyway. His mouth was open and somehow so was hers, and his tongue was plundering deep into her mouth. It was an unbearably intimate kiss. Almost as intimate . . . His hands were beneath her cloak, cupping her breasts, doing something to her nipples that made them tight and hard and sent sensation sizzling through
her breasts and down through her womb to her thighs to set them aching and throbbing.

And then his hands were behind her, moving firmly downward, cupping her buttocks, bringing her hard against him, lifting her slightly so that she could feel the hardness of his own need of her.

It must feel thus to drown, she thought—this frantic need to come to the surface, to gulp in air, this opposing instinct to stop fighting, to make it easier upon oneself, to let happen what was going to happen.

“Catherine,” he murmured against her lips, his voice low and husky. “So very beautiful.”

She could not think. She could not organize her thoughts. His hair was thick and silky between her fingers.

“Take me upstairs,” he said against her ear. “This is better done horizontally than vertically.”

This
. The joining of their bodies. His coming inside hers. For pleasure. Although she had never known pleasure in such a way, she knew that with him she would. Now. Tonight.

She could no longer remember why it was undesirable to be his mistress. She needed a man's body so desperately.
His
man's body. Him. She needed him.

To be his mistress. For how long? A week or two while he was still at Bodley? He would be tired of her by then. He would not take her away with him as he had suggested sometime recently—she could not remember when. She would be alone again. How would it feel—the aloneness and the emptiness after having been his mistress for a brief time?

Perhaps she would not be quite alone. Perhaps he would leave her with child.

He had been kissing her throat and trailing his mouth up over her chin to her mouth again.

“Come,” he said.

“No.” Her voice sounded flat, dispassionate. She had not quite realized she was going to speak until she did. But she knew that it had to be said again. “No.”

He moved his head back a few inches. She wondered if he could see her. His face was just a shadow.

“You are not going to be difficult, are you?” he asked her.

“Yes.” Her voice was a little stronger. “I believe I am. I want you to leave now, please.”

“My God.” She found that she was pressed against the wall, his hands bracketing her head, braced against it. “Am I a fool? Is my imagination so vivid that I have misread your response? When we first waltzed? In the music room? On the walk home? Here? I cannot have imagined it. You are as much on fire for me as I am for you.”

“And therefore,” she said, “we go to bed together. It is perfectly logical, is it not?”

“Yes.” He sounded baffled and irritated. “Yes, it is. Catherine—”

“I will not be your mistress,” she said.

“Why not?” His head moved an inch closer to hers. “Why ever not? Do you believe I will mistreat you? I am accustomed to giving as much pleasure as I receive.”

Even then a treacherous desire stabbed through her.

“I will not,” she said. “And I do not have to give a reason. I will not. I have told you so before. I tried to avoid you tonight by retiring to the music room. I tried to stop you from bringing me home. I tried to stop you from coming beyond the postern door with me. I have been very clear in my denials.”

“As your body has been very clear in its invitations,” he said. He was definitely angry now. “You want marriage, is that it, Catherine? You set your favors at the highest price of all. Well, I will pay it. Marry me.”

She was shocked into silence for a few moments. “You would marry me,” she said, “in order to go to bed with me?”

“Precisely,” he said. “If there is no other way. I want you that much. Are you satisfied?”

“Yes, I am satisfied,” she said, cold suddenly and as far from feeling desire as she had ever felt. She brushed his arms aside when they reached for her. “I am satisfied that my reason and my common sense have been advising me well for the past two weeks. I am not just a female body, my lord. This is not an empty shell. There is a person inside. A person who dislikes you and resents your arrogant assumption that a few kisses and caresses are sufficient to establish your right to make use of my body for your pleasure. You have done nothing but pursue me since I first mistook you for your brother and smiled at you. Even though I said no quite clearly when you first called on me, you would not believe that any woman could be insane enough to resist you. Well, this woman prefers insanity to becoming your possession.”