Trial by Desire

A prickle ran up Kate’s neck. Harcroft lifted his cold, unfeeling gaze to Kate, as if he knew the substance of her thoughts, as if he traced every hair standing on end to its inexorable conclusion. “I ask only,” he said, “that I be allowed to impose upon your hospitality while I investigate.”

This was not good. It was very not good. Kate curled her lips up into the semblance of a smile while she tried to arrange her muddled thoughts. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll ring for tea, and you can tell me how I can help.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“JENNY,” NED SAID as Kate stepped outside the room, “before we begin to discuss Louisa, there is something I must ask you.”

Jenny, who had sat next to her husband on an embroidered sofa, smiled up at Ned and motioned him to sit. Ned slipped into a nearby chair and leaned forward. What he had to say next was something that had bothered him for the past hour. Under the circumstances, it seemed unfair to confront her with the question. And yet …

“Why didn’t you write me that the gentlemen of the ton were conspiring to seduce my wife?”

Jennifer Carhart had never, in Ned’s experience, been a coward. Yet she looked away at this, biting her lip. “Letters took so long to cross the ocean,” she finally assayed, not meeting his eyes. “And Lady Kathleen—Kate, I mean—dealt with the wager so matter-of-factly. I didn’t suppose she needed my assistance, and to be quite honest, I suspect she wouldn’t have appreciated my interference. Besides, you … “ She trailed off, her finger tracing circles against her palm.

“I what?”

“You needed time to sort through matters.” Jenny reached over and adjusted his lapels in some invisible manner.

“Christ,” Ned swore.

All those years ago, Jenny had been the one to observe the sum total of his youthful foibles. When he’d made a hash of his life, she had helped him pick up the pieces. She was like a sister to him, and one who had quite literally saved his life. Perhaps that was why she sat here, protecting him, as if he were still that fragile child in need of mollycoddling.

“Next time,” he said quietly, “tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Harcroft’s voice boomed behind Ned, and he turned reluctantly. “Are you telling us that you had great success in your venture abroad?”

“If by ‘success,’ you mean, did I discover the truth? Yes.”

Gareth looked up and leaned forward. “That bad, was it?”

“Worse than even the discussions in Parliament indicated. If matters have not changed, John Company is currently shelling villages at the mouth of the Pearl River, all because China refuses the privilege of purchasing India’s opium. This is not Britain’s finest hour. When we’ve resolved this other matter, we’ll have to have a discussion about what can be done in the Lords. I’ve made notes.”

“And did you find it easy to take those notes?”

“Easy enough.” Ned smiled briefly. “Once I stopped letting the officers push me about.”

Harcroft waved a hand. “We can speak more of that later. For now, we’ll need a plan. The first thing that we must organize is—”

“I thought we were going to wait for Kate to return,” Ned interrupted in surprise. He’d never known Harcroft to be downright rude before. And imposing on Kate’s hospitality, while starting the conversation without her, seemed the height of rudeness.

Harcroft made a disparaging sound in return. “Why bother? What do you suppose she could do to assist us? Go shopping?” He shook his head. “If my wife were hidden on Bond Street, I might turn to Lady Kathleen for assistance.”

Ned’s hands balled at that implied insult.

“Yes, yes.” Harcroft waved a dismissive hand in Ned’s direction. “I know. You feel duty bound to complain. But do be serious. Some women just don’t have the head for anything except frivolity. She’s good at a great many things, I’ll give you. Planning parties. Purchasing a great many hats and gloves. Trust me, Ned. We’ll all be happiest if Lady Kathleen restricts her assistance in this matter to choosing the menu.”

At that precise moment, Kate came back into the room, followed by a servant with a tea-tray. She didn’t meet Ned’s eyes. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She didn’t say anything about the conversation. She didn’t say anything at all. But Ned could tell, by the careful way that she concentrated on the distribution of delicate, gold-edged cups and cucumber sandwiches, that she’d overheard those last few words. And they’d hurt.

Worse, nobody had leapt to defend her. Not even him. And by the way she fixed her gaze on the teapot, she knew that.

When she sat down, she took the chair farthest from their company, as if she were outside the enterprise. Harcroft began outlining his plans for questioning villagers and hiring searchers, and Kate sat in silence, staring into her teacup. Ned could put no words to the prickle of unease he felt watching her. She was dignified and pleasant, every inch the duke’s daughter he’d married.

She was also hurt. And looking at her, he could not help but feel as if … as if, perhaps, he’d forgotten something.

Not her; he’d never forgotten Kate. Not their vows; he’d struggled long and hard with how to both cherish Kate and keep her safe from the darkness he knew lurked inside him.

No. After what she’d said in the hall, he was certain he’d not done well by her, and he was not sure how to patch matters up. If he could even do so. She had said their marriage might blow away with one gust of wind; he had no idea how to bring it to life. He wasn’t sure if he could do so, without also resurrecting his own dark demons alongside. But what he did know was that if he kept silent now, if he did nothing to try to mend the hurt she’d just been given, he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror any longer.

He stood and walked to her. Behind him, Harcroft was still nattering on. “These days,” he was growling, “nobody gives a fig about the husband’s rights. Too many newfangled notions interfering.”

Standing above his wife, Ned could see the fair lines of her eyelashes. She didn’t darken them, and as she gazed down into her teacup, those fine, delicate hairs fluttered. Without lifting her eyes to Ned—he wasn’t sure if she was even aware of how close he stood—Kate blew out her breath and added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, followed by another.

The time they had together had been damnably short. But those days spent breaking fast with Kate had been time enough for Ned to know that his wife never took sugar in her tea.

“In fact,” Harcroft was saying behind them, “the very notion of Britain is founded on the rights of a husband.”

“Husbands’ rights,” Kate muttered. “In a pig’s eye.”

“Kate?”

Kate jumped, her teacup clattering in its saucer. “That is the second time you’ve come up behind me in as many hours. Are you trying to do me an injury?”

From her private reaction, she didn’t think much of marriage—either Lady Harcroft’s or her own. Perhaps they had compared notes. He didn’t know what to do, except to try to make her smile.

“Am I interrupting a private conversation between you and your teacup?”

Kate stared down. Even Ned could see the liquid was practically viscous with dissolved sugar. How many spoonfuls had she dumped into it? But she said nothing.

“I must be,” Ned continued. “No doubt you and your tea have a great deal to converse about. Can I call it merely tea?” She looked up at him in surprise. “I’d hate to insult your efforts to transform it into a syrup, after all.”

A reluctant smile touched her lips, and she set down her worthless, oversweetened beverage. And oh, he didn’t know why, but he reached out and laid his hand atop the fingers she had freed. The delicate bones of her hand felt just right against his skin.

“Let me guess,” Ned said. “I’ve mucked up the forms of address. You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t thought about etiquette and precedence in years. You’re a duke’s daughter, and furthermore, you are the tea’s only natural predator. According to Debrett, that means—”

“I am not!” she said. But she hadn’t lost that shine in her eyes. Maybe, if he made her laugh again, he could resume where they’d left off. Maybe he could bridge the gap between them with humor.

“You’re not a duke’s daughter?” He looked about the room in exaggerated confusion. “Does anyone else here know that? Because I shan’t tell if you won’t.”

Her hand shifted under his, and he won another reluctant smile from her. This, too, Ned remembered—his attempts, at breakfast, to make her choke on her toast and reprimand him for making her cough. It had seemed a dangerous endeavor then, even in the bright light of day.

“Don’t be foolish,” she admonished.

“Why not?” He reached out and tapped her chin.

She tilted her head. And then, he remembered why conversing with her had always seemed so dangerous. Because she looked up at him. The years washed away. And for one second, the look she gave him was as old and complicated as the look Delilah had once given to Samson. It was a look that said Kate had seen inside his skin, had seen through the veneer of his humor to the very unamusing truth of why he’d left. She might have seen how desperately he needed to retain a shred of control over himself … and how close she came to taking it all away.

His wife had been a threat when he’d married her. She’d been a confusing mix of directness and obfuscation, a mystery that had dangerously engrossed him. He’d found himself entertaining all sorts of lofty daydreams. He’d wanted to slay all her dragons—he’d have invented them, if she lacked sufficient reptilian foes. In short, he’d found himself slipping back into the youthful foolishness he had forsworn.

He’d run away. He’d left England, ostensibly to look into Blakely investments in the East. It had been a rational, hardheaded endeavor, and he’d proven that he, too, could be rational and hardheaded. He’d come home, certain that this time, he would leave off his youthful imaginings.