She hadn’t really been expecting him to answer—just to provide more obfuscation. But what he’d said well and truly shocked her into silence. If it wasn’t exactly like madness, how close did it come? His elbow jostled her, and she realized he’d removed his hat from his head and held it against his chest.
“I asked a physician,” he told his hat. “And so I know that much. It’s not madness. It’s madness if you can’t control what you do or say, or if you’re unaware of reality. I’m always aware of reality, when it happens. And I’m entirely in control of my own actions. All the time. I can do whatever I want.”
What he wanted was to sleep in the freezing cold, shutting her out.
“I can do whatever I want,” Ned repeated slowly. “I just… Sometimes I don’t want.”
“What don’t you want?” The carriage turned; as it did, Kate pressed full against him again.
She felt the shrug of his shoulders. “When it starts, I don’t even want to get up in the morning. When I was nineteen, it came for the first time. I stayed in bed for weeks. My mother thought I was ill, but the physician could find nothing wrong with me. I just didn’t want to get up.”
“That doesn’t sound like a thing.”
“It’s easier if I think about it as something separate. The alternative is that I am that thing. That every few years, I wake up one morning and I decide to act as if I’m a different person. No, Kate. I’d rather think of those times as if they were a brief, bitter winter. As if it were something outside me. I can’t explain it, except to say that I’m not mad and you shouldn’t ever have to worry about it.”
“Not worry about it? But—”
He raised his gloved hand to cover her lips. “No. Don’t make me into some sort of wounded creature, one that you need to tend to wellness. There’s nothing to heal here, Kate, no dragon for you to slay. There’s nothing but a beast that I’ve already managed to tame. It raises its head occasionally. In the past, it tried to defeat me. But it won’t. Not ever again. I don’t need help. I don’t like help—it makes me want to do even less.”
“But—”
“It’s nothing.” His hand hit the side of the carriage for emphasis, and the carriage rumbled to a stop. It took Kate a few moments to realize they were stopping not because of that ill-timed rap, but because the carriage had arrived at their London townhome.
Ned reached over and grasped the door handle, holding it in place to preserve that brief space of privacy. The door rattled, and then, as the servants realized it had been blocked from the inside, stood still.
“You don’t have to worry,” he repeated. “I don’t stay in bed any longer, when it comes. I’m prepared for it now. I practice for those mornings when I can’t bear to get up, because I know they’ll come again. I practice by doing things I don’t want to do.”
“Such as…”
“Such as running three miles in the morning, and when I don’t think I can possibly manage it, running three more. Like sleeping with the windows open, without a fire.” He met her gaze. “Occasionally, abstaining from intercourse when I desperately desire you. I make myself strong enough so that those times don’t matter.”
“That seems…” Kate trailed off, groping for a word. Odd? Inexplicable? Extremely cold? Nothing seemed to fit, and so she raised her chin. “That seems like something you should have told me about.”
She could have helped. She could have done something. The inkling of a plan started to assert itself.
In answer, he let go of the latch and pushed the door open. A footman greeted them; Ned turned his head, and like that, his tension disappeared into a wicked grin.
“Well,” he said flippantly, “I have much more fun making you laugh. Don’t you think?”
He stepped down; she stared out the doorway of the carriage in disbelief. He hadn’t—he really couldn’t have packed away the conversation as if it hadn’t happened. Kate stood so rapidly, she almost struck her head against the roof of the carriage. “Ned, you—you…”
Her words sputtered out into cold silence. Exhaling, she gathered her skirts and stumbled to the door of the carriage. But he hadn’t left her; he’d taken the footman’s place, and as she stood at the edge of the steps, he held out his hand to help her alight. His fingers were warm, even through both their gloves. “I’m good at jokes,” he said to her, his voice so quiet she strained to hear it even above the velvet silence of the night. “When we married, I was excellent at playing the buffoon. After all, it’s better to have your sins chalked up to tomfoolery than it is to have everyone realize that you occasionally succumb to this cloying thing that is not quite madness.” He grinned again, and that expression was so at odds with the seriousness of his tone that Kate shook her head.
His arm came about her as they walked up the steps.
“But—”
“I didn’t tell you, Kate, because I didn’t want you to know. I won’t have you looking at me and seeing weakness. I don’t need anyone to feed me gruel and wipe my chin. Besides, the more people know, the more real it seems.”
The last seemed like such a superstitious thing to say. Kate frowned at her husband. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he swept through the front door, as if he could guide the conversation as easily as if he were leading her about a dance floor. He was shunting her aside again. It was a different sort of abandonment, compared with traipsing off to China, but it was an abandonment nonetheless. It was a denial of what their marriage could be, of what she could be to him, if only he would let her.
If he thought she could not even hear the truth, he didn’t really trust her at all.
Kate locked her knees and braced her slippers against the floor, and he stopped.
“No.” Bare denial was all she had.
A second footman paused behind her, in the act of reaching for her wraps.
“My lady?” A hint of bewilderment touched his voice.
“No,” Kate repeated, her tone subdued, “we won’t be needing your services any longer tonight.”
Ned didn’t contradict her. Instead, he leaned against the drawing room door and watched as the footmen departed. After they were alone, he pushed off the wall and wandered into the parlor. A low fire flickered in the grate, but gave off barely a glow. Ned made no move to take a candelabra with him, or to light the oil lamps.
It would be a mistake to think he was pushing her away. No; he was holding her as close as he dared. But she wanted him to dare more. Kate held her breath and waited.
He seemed nothing but a silhouette to her, his back lit by the gleaming lamp in the hall beyond. She almost couldn’t fit his features to the shape of his profile; the sharp line of his nose, the stubborn jut of his chin. The silence seemed smoky with possibility.
“Well?” he finally said. “I thought you wanted to pose some questions. Is there anything you should like to know?”
“I thought you didn’t want to answer me.”
“I don’t.” His breath hissed out, a faint approximation of a chuckle. “So I’ll do it. Lovely how that works, isn’t it?”
There were a thousand things she might have asked him. When did this “thing” come? How had it started? Was there anything to be done about it, besides accept his suffering? But in the darkness and the silence, nothing mattered except one small detail.
“Will you not let me help because you think I’m not capable of it? Because you think I’ll break if you lean on me?”
He shook his head. “Kate,” he said quietly, “you are the most indomitable woman I know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Really. If you were tossed in a den of lions, you would order them to sweep the bones of the lambs they’d devoured for breakfast out into the refuse pile—and they would not dare disobey. If you were abandoned in a wilderness, you’d rebuild ancient Rome, from the humblest fountain to all its marble halls. And you’d do it using your bare hands, and perhaps a pocketknife for assistance.”
“I have no interest i
n being left in the wilderness, Ned. If I’m as capable as you keep saying, why don’t you trust me to help?”
For a moment, he didn’t respond. And now the silence preyed upon her, resurrecting old doubts, older hurts.
He’d been lying. All those fine words about lions and Rome and indomitability—they’d been tales, spun to comfort her.
Kate didn’t want comfort, and she didn’t particularly care for lies. Not now.
“Ah,” he finally said in tones of amusement. “I suppose…I suppose that some of it is what jealousy looks like.”
“Jealousy?”
“I told you men were beasts. Do you want to know how unworthy I really am?” He turned to her quietly; she took a step back. Her backside hit a sharp edge—her hands splayed out behind her onto polished wood. She’d bumped a table, just above her hips in height.
“Jealousy? But—”
He straightened and moved toward her. She could not see his features, but his shoulders were held rigidly as he walked. He seemed a tall blaze of smoldering emotion. And he was coming closer. She swallowed.
“Calm and control come so easily to you. Even when you’re most upset, you’re always in control.” Those words, from another man, might have sounded harsh and embittered. From Ned, they felt like a caress.
Kate leaned back against the table. It wiggled lightly, and she heard some ceramic object—a vase set upon it, perhaps—rock, but there was no escape from his intensity. She folded her arms about herself, but the gesture offered scant protection.
“I’m jealous,” he continued, “of the way that you let nothing stop you—not fear, not even marauding, brutish husbands. If you’d found yourself bebothered by some odd thing, you’d never stay in bed. You would face it calmly and matter-of-factly, and then simply vanquish it with a shake of your head. If you wanted to prove yourself, you’d never have run off to China to do it.” His fingers brushed her cheek.
He was towering over her now, the heat of his thighs radiating into her legs.
“I’m jealous,” he whispered, “of every breath that enters your lungs through your lips.” He was so close, she could almost taste his words, wafting to her on the wind. “It’s utterly unfair that you should be so self-possessed, when I am desperate to possess you for my own.”
Kate’s breath sucked in. “That… Actually, that can be arranged.”
He set his hands on her hips. “How many petticoats are you wearing tonight?”
“Five.”
He leaned down to her. “I hate them all.” He held her, his hands clamped about her waist, his body canting over hers.
“Take them off,” she suggested.
His fingers cut into her flesh through all five of her hated, useless petticoats. Then he lifted her a few inches into the air and deposited her atop the polished table behind her. It creaked as she settled onto it, but subsided into silence. “No,” he said. “It would take too long. I’ll get used to the jealousy.”
He pressed against her, his body hard and demanding. He parted her legs, his hands sliding up to her knees. She felt a momentary breeze against her thighs—and then he stepped into that space. His fingers slipped upward. She couldn’t see his hands to anticipate where they would fall. The touch on her thigh came as a tickling surprise. He leaned down and nuzzled her ear. Oh, yes, the ear; sensation blossomed and she let him possess her.
How long they stood there, his hand caressing her leg beneath her skirts, his lips nibbling the curve of her ear, she did not know. But when his hand slipped up her leg, he found the slickness of her desire. He slid across her sensitive flesh. Yes. Touch me there. Kate bit back a shaky moan; he let out a shuddering breath.
She reached up for a taste of him. Her skin ached to brush against his; her mouth found his in the dark. That long kiss transformed into a fumble, his hands against hers, racing to undo the buttons of his breeches. He leaned over her, adjusting her legs—and then he filled her, thick and hot.
She stretched around him. This wasn’t self-possession; it wasn’t any sort of possession at all. Instead, it was an admission, a deep-seated requirement, as if the circling of his hips had become as necessary as breath.
He rocked into her, slowly, steadily. The table creaked under her weight and his thrusts. He kissed her throat, up to her chin. His kisses came in time with each thrust. His breath was on her lips, as if she were his air; his tongue met hers, as if she were the only taste he desired.
He was holding himself back from release; she could feel it in the tensing muscles of his shoulder through his coat, in the exquisite control as he took her. Beads of sweat slid down his face. She could feel what waited in the burn of her own body, in the delicious coiling of pleasure in her center. She lifted her hips to his, and pleasure enveloped her, starting in her slippered toes and thundering through her as relentlessly as an autumn squall.
His thrusts came harder, filling her with sweetness as she reached for ecstasy. Her world shuddered; a great crashing noise sounded in climax.
And then he grasped her hips. He didn’t cry out, didn’t so much as let a moan escape him. The only evidence of his passing pleasure was the clutch of his hands on her.
After what he’d done to her—in the drawing room, with the hallway wide open for anyone to see, she realized—his own release seemed curiously restrained. And she realized as he pulled away, adjusting his clothing, it had been restrained. Because for all Ned’s talk of self-possession, he had been the one to possess her. He’d been the one to give her pleasure. And even in the throes of ecstasy, he’d maintained control.
Ah, she thought dazedly, I am the one who is jealous. She wanted all of him, without reservation. But that greedy urge passed as the pounding of her blood faded. For a long while they stared at each other, breathing heavily. Then he took a step—an oddly crunching step—and swore.
“Damn,” he said quietly. “Whose brilliant idea was it to decorate these tables—these lovely tables, set at such a perfect height—with vases?”
Kate glanced down in confusion. It took her a moment to understand what those tiny shards were, glinting in the dim light. That final crashing noise she had heard as she reached ecstasy had not been a product of her fevered imagination.
She couldn’t help herself. Despite the unquiet misgivings inside her, she started laughing. She pulled Ned close and buried her face in his shirt. He was sweating; so was she. It was a warm autumn evening; she was still wearing those five hated petticoats, and his heart thumped in rapid time with her own, through every layer of their clothing. His hand patted the damp hair on her head.
“Next time,” she said, “remove the petticoats. Please.”
She could feel his cheek press into a smile next to hers.
It wasn’t possession. It was still some damnable form of inequity, where she let him have all of her, and he held himself back. She could cry about it. She could accuse him of poor sportsmanship.
But what good would that do? She’d take what she could get, and fight for the rest as best she could.
She let out a long breath, exhaling her fears away. “With glass strewn underfoot, I see we have only one option.”
“Oh?”
It hurt to smile, but she did it anyway. His arm snaked around her waist.
“Have you seen how thin my slippers are?” she whispered in his ear. “With all this danger about, you’ll have to carry me to bed.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, the glass had long been swept away. But as Kate left her house, she felt a chill prickle up her neck, as if danger itself were still present. She had one silk-slippered foot upon the carriage steps, one kid-gloved hand on her footman’s shoulder.
There was a man standing on the pavement, not three yards behind her. He was dressed in the blue uniform of a metropolitan police officer; the cuffs of his jacket were frayed at the edges. He watched her, and as she halted, he walked toward her.
“Are you Mrs. Carhart?” he asked. As he spoke, he sh
ifted his truncheon from one hand to the other. He didn’t look as if he planned to use it. His gaze dropped down her form—not in sexual interest, but in wariness.
Kate turned from the carriage that awaited her. She drew herself up to her full height—which, compared to the man who approached her, seemed nowhere near full enough. Still, in her experience, officers and servants alike were more likely to speak with respect if they knew precisely with whom they were speaking. Short as she was, the yards of lace at the hem of her gown would make the man think twice. Lace was dear; more importantly, it was a symbol that she was the sort of woman who could purchase such a thing and wear it, even on something so mundane as a morning call. Police officers did not often mix with ladies.
“Officer,” she said sternly, “I am more properly addressed as—”
“Yes or no will do, ma’am.”
Kate touched the pearls at her neck. “Yes, but I am La—”
He interrupted her again before she could finish.
“Well, then. I have a warrant sworn out for your arrest, and you’re to come with me.”
All those yards of lace stopped feeling like armor. Instead, she felt nakedly vulnerable. “My arrest?” No. She wasn’t going to flutter like a useless sparrow. She balled her fists. “See here, Officer.” She glanced at his jacket collar, where his designation was marked. “Officer 12-Q, what do you mean by ordering my arrest?”
Officer 12-Q took another step forward. “Didn’t,” he explained. “The warrant’s signed by Magistrate Fang. I don’t order anything—I just execute it. If you’ll excuse the witticism.”
She stared at him blankly.
“I just execute it,” he repeated. “Execute. See? Heh. Heh.” Despite that odd chuckle, Officer 12-Q had not even broached a smile yet.
Kate let her blank stare take on a chilly component.
“I suppose,” the officer allowed slowly, “it would be less amusing to you, what with your having to stand trial and all.”
“Stand trial! On what charges? And when?”
The man came forward, and Kate stepped backward. Beside her, her footman winced. No doubt he was trying to figure out precisely how far his loyalty to his employer stretched.