“That doesn’t matter.”
His face darkened. “From the first moment I met you, you’ve tortured me and everyone else within reach about the importance of propriety. And now it doesn’t matter?” He gave her an ominous glance before turning to Winterborne. “You should have turned her away at the door, you conniving bastard. The only reason I haven’t throttled you both is that I can’t decide which one of you to start with.”
“Start with me,” Winterborne invited gently.
The air was charged with masculine hostility.
“Later,” Devon said with barely restrained rage. “For now, I’m taking her home. But the next time I see you, I’ll put you in a fucking box.” Turning his attention to Kathleen, he pointed to the doorway.
She didn’t like being commanded as if she were a disobedient poodle. When he was in this state, however, she decided it was better not to provoke him. Reluctantly she started forward.
“Wait,” Winterborne said gruffly. He went to a table near a window and seized something. She hadn’t noticed it before; it was the potted orchid that Helen had given him. “Take this bloody thing,” he said, shoving the pot at Kathleen. “By God, I’ll be glad to be rid of it.”
After Devon and Kathleen had departed, Rhys stood at the window to view the scene outside. A streetlamp shed a weak lemon glow over a line of cab horses, illuminating the puffs of steam from their nostrils. Groups of pedestrians hurried across the wood pavement toward the department store display windows.
He was aware of Quincy’s sturdy footsteps approaching.
After a moment, the valet asked reproachfully, “Was it necessary to frighten Lady Trenear?”
Rhys turned his head to give him a slitted glance. It was the first time Quincy had dared to speak to him so impudently. In the past, Rhys had fired more valuable men for far lesser remarks.
Instead, he folded his arms and returned his attention to the street, loathing the world and everyone in it. “Aye,” he said with soft malice. “It made me feel better.”
Although Devon didn’t say a word during the short ride back to Ravenel House, the force of his anger seemed to occupy every square inch of the carriage’s interior. Clara huddled in the corner as if she were trying to make herself invisible.
Vacillating between guilt and defiance, Kathleen reflected that Devon was behaving as if he had rights over her, which he did not. He was carrying on as if she’d done something to injure him personally, which she had not. The situation was his fault – he was the one who had encouraged Winterborne to court Helen, and he had manipulated Helen into the engagement.
She was vastly relieved when they arrived and she was able to escape the confines of the carriage.
Immediately upon entering Ravenel House, she discovered that a sepulchral silence had settled in her absence. Later, she would learn from the twins that Devon became so overwrought when he’d discovered her missing, everyone in the household had prudently disappeared from view.
Setting the orchid pot on a table, Kathleen waited as Clara took her outer garments and gloves. “Please take the orchid upstairs to the parlor,” she murmured to the maid, “and then come to my room afterward.”
“You won’t need her tonight,” Devon said brusquely. He gave the girl a dismissive nod.
Before Kathleen had fully absorbed the words, twitches of indignation chased across her shoulders and the back of her neck. “I beg your pardon?”
Devon waited until Clara had begun up the stairs, and then said, “Go wait for me in my room. I’ll join you after I’ve had a drink.”
Kathleen’s eyes widened. “Have you gone mad?” she asked faintly.
Did he actually believe he could order her to wait in his room as if she were a strumpet being paid to service him? She would retreat to her own bedchamber and lock the door. This was a respectable household. Even Devon wouldn’t dare make a scene when his actions would be witnessed by servants, and Helen and the twins, and —
“No lock would keep me out,” he said, reading her thoughts with stunning accuracy. “But try it if you like.”
The way he said it, with a sort of casual politeness, sent burning color to her cheeks.
“I want to see how Helen is,” she said.
“The twins are taking care of her.”
She tried another tack. “I haven’t had dinner.”
“Neither have I.” He pointed meaningfully to the stairs.
Kathleen would have loved to decimate him with some scathing remark, but her mind had gone blank. She turned stiffly and ascended the stairs without looking back.
She could feel him watching her.
Her mind revolved in frantic dithering. Perhaps after a drink, Devon would become calmer and return to his old self.
Or perhaps he would have more than one… several… and come to her just as Theo once had, drunk and determined to take what he wanted.
Reluctantly she went to Devon’s bedroom, rationalizing that it would be easier than trying to evade him and play out some farcical scenario. After trudging over the threshold, she closed the door, while her skin blazed and her insides turned cold.
The room was large and grand, the floor covered with thick soft carpeting. The hulking ancestral bed was even larger than the one at Eversby Priory, with a headboard that went up to the ceiling, and disproportionately huge columns adorned with imbricate carvings and strapwork. A richly embroidered counterpane of stylized forest scenes covered the endless plateau of mattress. It was a bed intended for the procreation of generations of Ravenels.
She went to stand near the hearth, where a fire had been lit, and flexed her cold fingers in the radiant heat.
In a few minutes, the door opened, and Devon entered the room.
Kathleen’s heart began to beat so heavily that she could feel her rib cage vibrate from the blows.
If the drink had calmed Devon down, there was no obvious sign of it. His color had heightened to a shade of rosewood. He was moving too deliberately, as if to relax would unleash a storm of violence contained beneath the surface.
Kathleen was driven to break the silence first. “What happened in Hampshire —”
“We’ll discuss that later.” Devon removed his coat and tossed it to the corner with a carelessness that would have made his valet weep. “First we’re going to talk about what impulse of madness caused you to put yourself at risk the way you did tonight.”
“I wasn’t at risk. Winterborne wouldn’t have harmed me. He’s your friend.”
“Are you that naïve?” His expression was positively feral as he stripped off his waistcoat. The garment was hurled aside with such force that she could hear buttons crack as they hit the wall. “You went uninvited to a man’s house and talked alone with him. You know that most men would interpret that as an invitation to do whatever they wanted with you. Holy hell, you didn’t even dare to visit Theo in that manner when he was your fiancé!”
“I did it for Helen.”
“You should have come to me first.”
“I didn’t think you’d listen, or agree with what I had to say.”
“I’ll always listen. I won’t always agree.” Devon yanked at the knot of his necktie and ripped the detachable collar from his shirt. “Understand this, Kathleen: You are never to put yourself in that position again. Seeing Winterborne leaning over you… My God, the bastard didn’t know how close I was to killing him.”
“Stop doing this,” she cried fiercely. “You’ll drive me mad. You want to behave as if I belong to you, but I don’t, and I never will. Your worst nightmare is becoming a husband and father, and so you seem determined to form some kind of lesser attachment that I do not want. Even if I were pregnant and you felt duty-bound to propose, I would still refuse you, because I know it would make you as unhappy as it would make me.”
Devon’s intensity didn’t lessen, but it changed from anger into something else. He held her with a gaze of hot blue infinity.
“What if I said I loved you??
?? he asked softly.
The question drove a spike of pain through her chest. “Don’t.” Her eyes smarted with tears. “You’re not the kind of man who could ever say that and mean it.”
“It’s not who I was.” His voice was steady. “But it’s who I am now. You’ve shown me.”
For at least a half minute, the only sound was the crackling, shivering fire on the hearth.
She didn’t understand what he truly thought or felt. But she would be a fool to believe him.
“Devon,” she eventually said, “when it comes to love… neither you nor I can trust your promises.”
She couldn’t see through the glittering film of misery, but she was aware of him moving, bending to pick up the coat he had tossed aside, rummaging for something.
He came to her, catching her arm lightly in his hand, drawing her to the bed. The mattress was so high that he had to fit his hands around her waist and hoist her upward to sit on it. He set something on her lap.
“What is this?” She looked down at a small wooden box.
His expression was unfathomable. “A gift for you.”
Her sharp tongue got the better of her. “A parting gift?”
Devon scowled. “Open it.”
Obeying, she lifted the lid. The box was lined with red velvet. Pulling aside a protective layer of cloth, she uncovered a tiny gold pocket watch on a long chain, the casing delicately engraved with flowers and leaves. A glass window on the hinged front cover revealed a white enamel dial and black hour and minute markers.
“It belonged to my mother,” she heard Devon say. “It’s the only possession of hers that I have. She never carried it.” Irony edged his voice. “Time was never important to her.”
Kathleen glanced at him in despair. She parted her lips to speak, but his fingertips came to her mouth with gentle pressure.
“Time is what I’m giving you,” he said, staring down at her. His hand curved beneath her chin, compelling her to look at him. “There’s only one way for me to prove that I will love you and be faithful to you for the rest of my life. And that’s by loving you and being faithful to you for the rest of my life. Even if you don’t want me. Even if you choose not to be with me. I’m giving you all the time I have left. I vow to you that from this moment on, I will never touch another woman, or give my heart to anyone but you. If I have to wait sixty years, not a minute will have been wasted – because I’ll have spent all of them loving you.”
Kathleen regarded him with wonder, a perilous warmth rising until it pushed fresh tears from her eyes.
Cradling her face in both hands, Devon bent to kiss her in a brush of soft fire. “That being said,” he whispered, “I hope you’ll consider marrying me sooner rather than later.” Another kiss, slow and devastating. “Because I long for you, Kathleen, my dearest love. I want to sleep with you every night, and wake with you every morning.” His mouth caressed her with deepening pressure until her arms curled around his neck. “And I want children with you. Soon.”
The truth was there, in his voice, his eyes, on his lips. She could taste it.
She realized in wonder that somehow, in the past months, his heart had indeed changed. He was becoming the man fate had intended for him to be… his true self… a man who could make commitments and meet his responsibilities, and most of all, love without holding anything back.
Sixty years? A man like that shouldn’t have to wait even sixty seconds.
Fumbling a little with the watch chain, she lifted it and slipped it over her head. The glimmering gold timepiece settled over her heart. She looked up at him with swimming eyes. “I love you, Devon. Yes, I’ll marry you, yes —”
He hauled her against him and kissed her without reserve. And he continued to kiss her hungrily as he undressed her, his mouth tender and hot as he ravished every exposed inch of skin. He removed everything but the little gold watch, which Kathleen insisted on keeping.
“Devon,” she said breathlessly, when they were both naked and he had lowered beside her, “I… I should confess to a small prevarication.” She wanted complete honesty between them. No secrets, nothing held back.
“Yes?” he asked with his lips against her throat, one of his thighs pressing between hers.
“Until recently, I hadn’t really checked my calendar to make certain I was —” She broke off as he used the edge of his teeth to delicately score her throat. “— counting days properly. And I had already resolved to take full responsibility for…” His tongue was playing in the hollow at the base of her neck. “… what happened that morning. After breakfast. You remember.”
“I remember,” he said, kissing his way down to her breasts.
Kathleen grasped his head in her hands, urging him to look at her and pay attention. “Devon. What I’m trying to say is that I may have misled you last night…” She swallowed hard and forced herself to finish. “… when I said that my monthly courses had started.”
He went very still. His face was wiped clean of all expression as he stared down at her. “They haven’t?”
She shook her head, her anxious gaze searching his. “In fact, I’m quite late.”
One of his hands came to her face, a tremor running through his long fingers. “You might be pregnant?” he asked huskily.
“I’m almost certain of it.”
Devon stared down at her dazedly, a flush covering his face. “My sweet, beautiful love, my angel —” He began to look over her intently, pressing kisses along her body, caressing her stomach. “My God. This settles it: I am the luckiest sod in England.” He laughed quietly, his hands wandering over her with reverent gentleness. “I have some good news to share as well, but it pales in comparison to yours.”
“What news?” she asked, her fingers lacing through his hair.
He was about to explain when a new thought seemed to occur to him. His smile faded, his expression turning perplexed. Adjusting his position so that he could look directly into her eyes, he said, “Your condition would have become obvious before long. What were you going to do? When were you going to tell me?”
She glanced up at him sheepishly. “I had considered the possibility of… going somewhere… before you found out.”
“Going somewhere?” He looked thunderstruck. “Leaving me?”
“I hadn’t made a decision —” she began apologetically.
A low growl interrupted her, leaving no doubt as to what he thought of that idea. He leaned over her, radiating ferocious heat. “I would have found you. You’ll never be safe from me.”
“I don’t want to be —” she began, and would have said more, but he had taken her mouth with a deep, aggressive kiss.
Grasping her wrists, Devon pinned them over her head to stretch her out beneath him. After anchoring with his weight, he entered her in a single thrust. As he slid deeper, again and again, she struggled to breathe around the jumbled pleasure-sounds in her throat, moans and half-formed words. Spreading herself wider, she tried to take as much of him as possible.
He was claiming her, pumping slowly, pausing almost imperceptibly before each thrust to allow her to brace against him. His fingers laced with hers, his mouth voracious, lavishing her with kisses. The pleasure advanced in rolling waves, causing her to writhe until her body was out of rhythm with his.
He reached down to her hips and pinned them firmly to the bed so that no movement was possible. She whimpered, receiving each thrust without being able to return it, while her inner flesh worked on him convulsively as if to compensate for her outward stillness.
His breath caught as he felt her reach the summit, shudders of physical joy making her press up against him so desperately that her slim hips almost lifted his weight. Groaning, he pushed deep and held, the heat of him flooding her, while she clung to him with every part of herself, pulling in every hard pulse of his release.
A long time later, as they lay entwined and talked drowsily, Devon murmured, “Will you tell Helen tomorrow that she no longer has to marry Winterborne
?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“Good. There’s a limit to how much discussion of betrothals a man can endure in one day.” Picking up the gold watch, still on its chain around Kathleen’s neck, he traced its smooth casing over her chest in an idle path.
She pushed out her lower lip. “You still have to propose to me.”
He couldn’t resist bending to take her lip between his and tugging lightly. “I already did.”
“I meant properly, with a ring.”
The watch ascended the rise of her breast, the skin-warmed gold sliding over the tightening peak. “It seems I’ll be off to the jeweler’s tomorrow.” Devon grinned as he saw the flicker of anticipation in her eyes. “That pleases you, does it?”