“Oh, it’s simple,” Amelia said impishly. “Lord Ramsay is a peer with a full head of hair and all his teeth, and he is still in his procreating years. And if he weren’t my brother, I suppose I would consider him not bad-looking.”
“He’s very handsome,” Catherine protested without thinking, and flushed as Amelia gave her an astute glance.
She applied herself to drinking her tea, nibbled at a breakfast roll, and left in search of Beatrix. It was time for their morning studies.
Catherine and Beatrix had settled on a pattern, beginning their lessons with a few minutes on etiquette and social graces, and then spending the rest of the morning on subjects such as history, philosophy, even science. Beatrix had long mastered the “fashionable” subjects that were taught to young ladies merely for the purpose of making them suitable wives and mothers. Now Catherine felt that she and Beatrix had become fellow students.
Although Catherine had never had the privilege of meeting the Hathaway parents, she thought that both of them, particularly Mr. Hathaway, would have been pleased by their children’s accomplishments. The Hathaways were an intellectual family, all of them easily able to discuss a subject or issue on an abstract level. And there was something else they shared—an ability to make imaginative leaps and connections between disparate subjects.
One evening, for example, the discussion at dinner had centered on news of an aerial steam carriage that had been designed by a Somerset bobbin maker named John Stringfellow. It didn’t work, of couse, but the idea was fascinating. During the debate about whether or not man might ever be able to fly in a mechanical invention, the Hathaways had brought up Greek mythology, physics, Chinese kites, the animal kingdom, French philosophy, and the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci. Trying to follow the discussion had very nearly been dizzying.
Privately Catherine had worried about whether such conversational pyrotechnics would put off potential suitors for Poppy and Beatrix. And in the case of Poppy, it had indeed turned out to be problematic. At least until she had met Harry.
However, when Catherine had tried to delicately raise the issue with Cam Rohan early on in her employment, he had been very decided in his reply.
“No, Miss Marks, don’t try to change Poppy or Beatrix,” Cam had told her. “It wouldn’t work, and it would only make them unhappy. Just help them learn how to behave in society, and how to talk about nothing, as the gadjos do.”
“In other words,” Catherine had said wryly, “you want them to have the appearance of propriety, but you don’t wish for them to actually become proper?”
Cam had been delighted by her understanding. “Exactly.”
Catherine understood now how right Cam had been. None of the Hathaways would ever be like the denizens of London society, nor would she want them to be.
She went to the library to procure some books for her studies with Beatrix. As she entered the room, however, she stopped with a gasp as she saw Leo leaning over the long library table, writing something on a set of spread-out drawings.
Leo turned his head to glance at her, his eyes piercing. She went hot and cold. Her skull throbbed in the places where she had pinned her hair too tightly.
“Good morning,” she said breathlessly, falling back a step. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding.”
“I came to fetch some books, if … if I may.”
Leo gave her a single nod and returned his attention to the drawings.
Acutely self-conscious, Catherine went to the bookshelves and hunted for the titles she had wanted. It was so quiet that she thought the pounding of her heart must have been audible. Needing desperately to break the pressing silence, she asked, “Are you designing something for the estate? A tenant house?”
“Addition for the stables.”
“Oh.”
Catherine gazed sightlessly along the rows of books. Were they going to pretend that the events of the previous night had never happened? She certainly hoped so.
But then she heard Leo say, “If you want an apology, you’re not going to get one.”
Catherine turned to face him. “I beg your pardon?”
Leo was still contemplating the set of elevations. “When you visit a man in his bed at night, don’t expect tea and conversation.”
“I wasn’t visiting you in your bed,” she said defensively. “That is, you were in your bed, but it was not my desire to find you there.” Aware that she was making no sense at all, she resisted the urge to smack herself on the head.
“At two o’clock in the morning,” Leo informed her, “I can nearly always be found on a mattress, engaged in either of two activities. One is sleeping. I don’t believe I need to elaborate on the other.”
“I only wanted to see if you were feverish,” she said, turning crimson. “If you needed anything.”
“Apparently I did.”
Catherine had never felt so extraordinarily uncomfortable. All her skin had become too tight for her body. “Are you going to tell anyone?” she brought herself to ask.
One of his brows arched mockingly. “You fear I’m going to tattle about our nighttime rendezvous? No, Marks, I have nothing to gain from that. And much to my regret, we didn’t do nearly enough to warrant decent gossip.”
Blushing, Catherine went to a pile of sketches and scraps at the corner of the table. She straightened them into a neat stack. “Did I hurt you?” she managed to ask, recalling how she had inadvertently pushed on his wounded shoulder. “Does it ache this morning?”
Leo hesitated before replying. “No, it eventually eased after you left. But the devil knows it wouldn’t take much to start up again.”
Catherine was overcome with remorse. “I’m so sorry. Should we put a poultice on it?”
“A poultice?” he repeated blankly. “On my … oh. We’re talking about my shoulder?”
She blinked in confusion. “Of course we’re talking about your shoulder. What else would we be discussing?”
“Cat…” Leo looked away from her. To her surprise, there was a tremor of laughter in his voice. “When a man is aroused and left unsatisfied, he usually aches for a while afterward.”
“Where?”
He gave her a speaking glance.
“You mean…” A wild blush raced over her as she finally understood. “Well, I don’t care if you ache there, I was only concerned about your wound!”
“It’s much better,” Leo assured her, his eyes bright with amusement. “As for the other ache—”
“That has nothing to do with me,” she said hastily.
“I beg to differ.”
Catherine’s dignity had been mowed down to nothing. Clearly there was no option but retreat. “I’m leaving now.”
“What about the books you wanted?”
“I’ll fetch them later.”
As she turned to depart, however, the edge of her bell-shaped sleeve caught the stack of sketches she had just straightened, and they went spilling to the floor. “Oh, dear.” Instantly she went to her hands and knees, gathering up papers.
“Leave them,” she heard Leo say. “I’ll do it.”
“No, I’m the one who—”
Catherine broke off as she saw something among the drafts of structures and landscapes and the pages of notes. A pencil sketch of a woman … a naked woman reclining on her side, light hair flowing everywhere. One slender thigh rested coyly over the other, partially concealing the delicate shadow of a feminine triangle.
And there was an all-too-familiar pair of spectacles balanced on her nose.
Catherine picked up the sketch with a trembling hand, while her heart lurched in hard strikes against her ribs. It took several attempts before she could speak, her voice high and airless.
“That’s me.”
Leo had lowered to the carpeted floor beside her. He nodded, looking rueful. His own color heightened until his eyes were startlingly blue in contrast.
“Why?” she whispered.
“
It wasn’t meant to be demeaning,” he said. “It was for my own eyes, no one else’s.”
She forced herself to look at the sketch again, feeling horribly exposed. In fact, she couldn’t have been more embarrassed had he actually been viewing her naked. And yet the rendering was far from crude or debasing. The woman had been drawn with long, graceful lines, the pose artistic. Sensuous.
“You … you’ve never seen me like this,” she managed to say, before adding weakly, “Have you?”
A self-deprecating smile touched his lips. “No, I haven’t yet descended to voyeurism.” He paused. “Did I get it right? It’s not easy, guessing what you look like beneath all those layers.”
A nervous giggle struggled through her mortification. “If you did, I certainly wouldn’t admit it.” She put the sketch onto the pile, facedown. Her hand was shaking. “Do you draw other women this way?” she asked timidly.
Leo shook his head. “I started with you, and so far I haven’t moved on.”
Her flush deepened. “You’ve done other sketches like this? Of me unclothed?”
“One or two.” He tried to look repentant.
“Oh, please, please destroy them.”
“Certainly. But honesty compels me to tell you that I’ll probably only do more. It’s my favorite hobby, drawing you naked.”
Catherine moaned and buried her face in her hands. Her voice slipped out between the tense filter of her fingers. “I wish you would take up collecting something instead.”
She heard his husky laugh. “Cat. Darling. Can you bring yourself to look at me? No?” She stiffened but didn’t move as she felt his arms draw around her. “I was only teasing. I won’t sketch you like that again.” Leo continued to hold her, carefully guiding her face to his good shoulder. “Are you angry?”
She shook her head.
“Afraid?”
“No.” She drew a trembling breath. “Only surprised that you would see me that way.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not like me.”
He understood what she meant. “No one ever sees himself—or herself—with perfect accuracy.”
“I’m certain that I never lounge about completely naked!”
“That,” he said, “is a terrible shame.” He took a ragged breath. “You should know that I’ve always wanted you, Cat. I’ve had fantasies so wicked, it would send us both straight to hell if I told them to you. And the way I want you has nothing to do with the color of your hair, or the appalling fashions you wear.” His hand passed gently over her head. “Catherine Marks, or whoever you are … I have the most profane desire to be in bed with you for … oh, weeks, at least … committing every mortal sin known to man. I’d like to do more than sketch you naked. I want to draw directly on you with feather and ink … flowers around your breasts, trails of stars down your thighs.” He let his warm lips brush the edge of her ear. “I want to map your body, chart the north, south, east, and west of you. I would—”
“Don’t,” she said, scarcely able to breathe.
A rueful laugh escaped him. “I told you. Straight to hell.”
“This is my fault.” She pressed her hot face against his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have gone to you last night. I don’t know why I did it.”
“I think you do.” His mouth grazed the top of her head. “Don’t come back to my room at night, Marks. Because if it happens again, I won’t be able to stop.”
His arms loosened, and he released her to stand up from the floor. Reaching for her hand, he pulled her up with him. The sheaf of fallen papers was retrieved, and Leo took up the sketch of her. The parchment was neatly ripped, the pieces folded together, and ripped again. He gave her the shreds of paper and molded her fingers around them. “I’ll destroy the others as well.”
Catherine stood without moving as he left the room. And her fingers tightened over the strips of parchment, crushing them into a damp knot.
Chapter Twelve
In the month that followed, Leo deliberately kept himself too busy to see much of Catherine. Two new tenant farms required irrigation schemes. It was a subject on which Leo had developed a certain amount of expertise while Cam worked with the horses and Merripen supervised the timber harvesting. Leo had designed water meadows that would be irrigated with rills and ditches leading from the nearby rivers. In one place where the channel would run too low to be let out naturally, they would require a waterwheel. The wheel, provided with buckets, would lift out the necessary amount of water and send it along a manmade canal.
Shirtless and sweating under the soft blaze of the Hampshire sun, Leo and the tenants dug ditches and drainage canals, moved rock, and hauled soil. At the end of the day Leo ached in every muscle, nearly too tired to stay awake during dinner. His body toughened and became so lean that he was obliged to borrow trousers from Cam while the village tailor altered his clothes.
“At least work keeps you from your vices,” Win quipped one evening before supper, rubbing his hair affectionately as she joined him in the parlor.
“I happen to like my vices,” Leo told her. “That’s why I went to the trouble of acquiring them.”
“What you need to acquire,” Win said gently, “is a wife. And I’m not saying that out of self-interest, Leo.”
He smiled at her, this gentlest of sisters, who had fought so many personal battles for the sake of love. “You don’t possess a molecule of self-interest, Win. But as sound as your advice usually is, I’m not going to take it.”
“You should. You need a family of your own.”
“I have more than enough family to contend with. And there are things I would much rather do than marry.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, cut out my tongue and join the Trappist Monks … roll naked in treacle and nap on an anthill … Shall I go on?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Win said, smiling. “However, you will marry someday, Leo. Both Cam and Merripen have said that you have a very distinct marriage line on your hand.”
Bemused, Leo looked down at his palm. “That’s a crease from the way I hold my pen.”
“It’s a marriage line. And it’s so long, it practically wraps around both sides of your hand. Which means you will someday marry a fated love.” Win raised her fair brows significantly, as if to say, What do you think of that?
“Romas don’t really believe in palm reading,” Leo informed her. “It’s nonsense. They only do it to extract money from fools and drunkards.”
Before Win could reply, Merripen entered the parlor. “Gadjos certainly know how to complicate matters,” he said, handing a letter to Leo and lowering to the settee.
“What is this?” Leo asked, glancing at the signature at the bottom. “Another letter from the solicitor? I thought he was trying to un complicate matters for us.”
“The more he explains,” Merripen said, “the more confusing it is. As a Rom, I still have trouble understanding the concept of land ownership. But the Ramsay estate…” He shook his head in disgust. “It’s a Gordian knot of agreements, grants, customs, exceptions, additions, and leases.”
“That’s because the estate is so old,” Win said wisely. “The more ancient the manor, the more complications it’s had time to acquire.” She glanced at Leo. “By the way, I’ve just learned that Countess Ramsay and her daughter Miss Darvin wish to come for a visit. We received a letter from them earlier today.”
“The devil you say!” Leo was outraged. “For what purpose? To gloat? Take inventory? I’ve still got a year left before they can lay claim to the place.”
“Perhaps they wish to make peace and find an acceptable solution for all of us,” Win suggested.
Win was always inclined to think the best of people and believe in the essential goodness of human nature.
Leo didn’t have that problem.
“Make peace, my arse,” he muttered. “By God, I’m tempted to get married just to spite that pair of witches.”
“Do you have any candidates in mind??
?? Win asked.
“Not one. But if I ever did marry, it would be to a woman I was certain never to love.”
A movement at the doorway caught his attention, and Leo watched covertly as Catherine entered the room. She gave the group a neutral smile, carefully avoiding Leo’s gaze, and went to a chair near the corner. With annoyance, Leo noticed that she had lost weight. Her breasts were smaller, and her waist was reed slender, and her complexion was wan. Was she deliberately avoiding proper nourishment? What had caused her lack of appetite? She was going to make herself ill.
“For God’s sake, Marks,” he said irritably, “you’re getting as scrawny as a birch branch.”
“Leo,” Win protested.
Catherine shot him a look of outrage. “I’m not the one whose trousers are being taken in.”
“You look half dead from malnourishment,” Leo went on with a scowl. “What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you eating?”
“Ramsay,” Merripen murmured, evidently deciding a boundary had been crossed.
Catherine shot up from her chair and glared at Leo. “You’re a bully, and a hypocrite, and you have no right to criticize my appearance, so … so…” She cast about wildly for the right phrase. “Bugger you!” And she stormed from the parlor, her skirts rustling angrily.
Merripen and Win watched with open mouths.
“Where did you learn that word?” Leo demanded, hard on her heels.
“From you,” she said vehemently over her shoulder.
“Do you even know what it means?”
“No, and I don’t care. Stay away from me!”
As Catherine stormed through the house, and Leo went after her, it occurred to him that he had been craving an argument with her, any kind of interaction.
She went outside and partway around the house, and soon they found themselves in the kitchen garden. The air was pungent with the smell of sun-warmed herbs.
“Marks,” he said in exasperation. “I’ll chase you through the parsley if you insist, but we may as well stop and have it out right here.”