“Yes, and is that not a good thing,” he murmured as he stood up.
Catryn could not think what to say to that. He kissed her on the forehead and left her. She stared at the food, decided she could eat a little more before seeking out her bed, and reached for some of the bread. Perhaps before he returned, she could make up her mind about him. Would she cling to propriety or would she become a daring widow and explore that desire he so easily stirred within her?
Orion sighed as he left the alehouse he had traveled to in the hope of gaining some useful information and got his horse. Morris had been sighted by everyone but him, it seemed. He was always just one step behind the man as well. If the man had been known as some sort of brilliant criminal, Orion could more easily accept his inability to find and stop him from ever being a threat to Catryn and Alwyn again. Yet, the man was a fool and still managed to slip through his fingers.
“Sir?”
Orion turned to find a stableboy behind him. “I can manage my own mount,” he said even as he dug in his pocket for a coin to give the boy, who looked to be on the cusp of manhood.
“I heard you be looking for that fellow in the hideous carriage.”
“Yes.” He idly wondered where such a boy learned the word
hideous
but knew it would be insulting to ask. “You had dealings with the man?”
“I did, and he is a right bastard, he is. Tight with his coin, too.”
And that was why he was about to hear something that could be useful, Orion thought. It always amazed him how so many of his class did not understand what servants were worth. Or what making a servant angry with you could cost you. Servants knew everything, saw everything, and often overheard things you would wish they had not. Treat them badly enough and a few coins could be enough to loosen their tongues. Treat them really badly and, as this boy was about to do, they would go looking for someone to tell.
“Did he still have four big men with him? The men in the alehouse were not certain.”
“Aye, he did. Dumb oxen they were, but quick with their fists and enjoyed using them. My brother will be a long time healing.”
“What did your brother do that drew their attention?” Orion asked even as he tried to think of any of his family’s healers who might be in the area, even one who just had a gift with potions and salves.
“Tried to help the kitchen lass one of them was bothering. She is a good lass with a man wanting to wed with her, so she were not looking to make any coin on her back. Not that that bastard would pay anyway. Could see he was the sort to just take it and not even leave behind a ha’pence. But he would not leave her be, though she was saying no clear as a bell. So me brother tried to get him to leave her. She got away, but my brother got beat on quite a bit before others came and stopped the pig. Toddy, he be the owner, told the whole lot of them to get out.”
That was news he had not been given. Could be the owner did not let anyone aside from those involved know, he decided. The man might have thought it bad for business or he could even have thought to protect the maid.
“Do you know which way the hideous carriage went when they left?”
“Headed out north, toward London, I am thinking. Headed back from where they came, aye? They looked and sounded like London folk.”
Orion inwardly cursed. Somehow Morris had gotten around them. The man was becoming a true thorn in his side. Yet, it could prove to be a good thing, for he had a lot of family in the city.
“Do you know a Mistress Lonee Tantum? She resides in the next village, I believe.”
“I do. Her husband owns an inn there and Toddy sells him his ale. Best ale in the county, it is.” He sighed. “I did hear once that she has a gift for the healing, but she costs and is reluctant to do it often, though she will sell some salves and the like.”
“Take your brother to her.” Orion gave the boy more than enough money to pay Lonee for her work. “If you cannot move him safely, ask her to come here to see to his care. This should cover even that. Tell her that her cousin Sir Orion Wherlocke asks this favor of her. That should ease any hesitation she might have.”
“I always thought she was gentry,” the boy muttered as he finally tore his wide-eyed gaze from the money in his hand and looked at Orion. “She speaks real fine, she does. I listen real careful when I am round her so I can learn the better way of talking and all. You planning on dealing with that bastard in the hideous carriage?”
“If by
dealing with
you mean making him pay for a few wrongs, then yes, I am.”
“Good. Maybe you could add my brother’s hurts in amongst all them wrongs.”
Orion promised he would and then mounted his horse. As he headed back to the inn where he had left Catryn, he cursed his luck. It was lowering enough to accept that he had failed to find the man as he had promised. To now know that the man had somehow managed to get past him and start back toward the city was somewhat humiliating.
Despite his personal embarrassment, he was also pleased by the news that Morris might be headed back to London. There were a lot of people there he could call upon to give him some help. Not everyone could be hampered by whatever shielded Morris from his and Catryn’s gifts. He had a few true trackers in his family who might be able to help. He also knew every place where a man like Morris could hide if he did not foolishly return to his own town house. And if the man was as superstitious as Catryn believed him to be, Orion knew a few of his kin who could scare the man so badly he would never get within miles of Catryn and Alwyn again.
It was going to be difficult to tell Catryn, however. She was as tired of this hunt as he was, and he knew she had been hoping the confrontation with Morris, one that was long overdue, would soon be behind her. Orion could only hope that she saw that there were advantages to Morris returning to the city as clearly as he did.
Patting the horse on the neck, he decided he did not need to race back to the inn and kept the horse at an easy pace. He had a lot to think about and he did not get much of that done when he was around Catryn. Even when he retired for the night, his thoughts rarely stayed fixed on the problem of Morris. He wanted Catryn, more than he had ever wanted another woman in his life. Orion was not sure what to make of that.
Lust was an old companion to him, arriving right along with the hair on his body. Restraint was something he had taught himself, however, as his father had had none and his mother had had too much. In the end, his mother had deserted him just as too many parents in the Wherlocke clan did their own children; those parents who came from outside the clan, anyway. The ones who came from within the Wherlocke and Vaughn clans were better at seeing to their children’s needs, but were not necessarily the best of parents. Some because their gifts consumed them, and some because they themselves had had such miserable childhoods they were trapped into repeating it with their own children. It was one reason so many of his family avoided marriage, or tried to.
Lady Catryn Gryffin de Warrenne was a woman a man married. Orion knew that, yet it was not enough to cool his desire for her. Before he gave in to that need, which he suspected he would if she gave him even the smallest sign of welcome, he should decide if he was ready to toss aside his plan to remain unwed for his whole life. The odd thing was, that no longer looked like such a good plan.
“I believe I have been infected with Morris’s confusion of the mind,” he muttered and almost smiled when the horse tossed its head and snorted.
He took a few minutes to consider the recent marriages amongst his clan. Penelope was a good choice to study, for she had a gift too many were terrified by. Yet he had absolutely no doubt in his mind that Ashton adored her, and could not see any chance that the man would ever hurt her or the children they were so busily breeding. The man had taken in all the children who had lived with Penelope, and their gifts were wide-ranging. Even his powerful, arrogant cousin Argus, a frightening man even to his own family, had found a wife who accepted him as he was, and all of his family. It was enough to raise the hopes of many of the clan who had survived the miserable unions of their own parents.
Catryn was one of them, distant though the connection was. She had a child who spoke to spirits, his current ghostly companion a rogue of a Vaughn, so she understood them in a way few others outside of the family did. Nor had she turned cold and judgmental when she discovered he had three sons. She had been utterly appalled that the children’s own mothers had deserted them. There was, he realized, a lot to appreciate about Catryn aside from the passion that flared between them. It could be that he should not be quite as concerned over a possible future with her as he was. The thought of it did not inspire any urge to run for the hills.
Every instinct he had told him that if he crawled into Catryn’s bed, and she warmed it as he thought she would, it would be the end of his carefree bachelor days. He wanted to say that would be because he loved her, but he had little understanding of that emotion. He liked her, enjoyed her company, appreciated the way she accepted who he was and those gifts that cursed everyone in his family in one way or another, and he lusted after her. Even more important, he realized that he trusted her, completely, and he trusted few outside of his own family. Being as inexperienced as he knew she was, there was a good chance his need to hide his back from sight would not rouse her curiosity. He could even see her accepting his scars. Yet, there lingered the faintest touch of that unwillingness to give up his freedom.
“Perhaps,” he mused aloud, “it is time I grew up.”
Chapter Twelve
A sharp rap at the bedchamber door yanked Catryn from her thoughts. She was just reaching for her pistol when Orion announced himself. Catryn grabbed up her robe, hesitated, and then tossed it on the end of the bed. Wrapping herself up in a heavy woolen robe would not help her succeed in the seduction she planned, she decided, and hurried to open the door.
He barely gave her a glance before going to stand in front of the fire, and that stung. Either the man was far too accustomed to seeing women in a state of undress or she simply did not warrant a second look. Trying not to take that to heart, she shut and latched the door before walking over and standing right in front of him.
A touch of damp on his hair told her that he had paused to wash up. It hung past his broad shoulders in thick waves that she ached to run her fingers through. Catryn was both intrigued and a little frightened by how just standing near him could make her desperate to put her hands on him. The indication that, despite the heated embraces they had shared, he did not suffer from the same need, hurt more than she cared to think about.
“Did you discover anything new?” she asked, becoming unsettled by the silence between them.
“Merely confirmed my original supposition,” he replied. “I have difficulty grasping what his plans are and he has been seen in this area. It appears he may be headed back to London. That was the direction the stableboy said the carriage turned in.”
She could hear the deep frustration in his voice. For a man with Orion’s skills, ones he was rightfully arrogant about, it had to be galling to be thwarted by someone as foolish as Morris. Catryn patted him on the arm and was startled when he suddenly covered hers with his own, holding it in place.
“We did not pass him on the road,” she said.
“No, and that puzzles me, but I am no longer surprised. It may be a good thing, however.”
“How so?”
“Not only do I have a vast amount of family in the city but we can trap him within, find him more easily for he is a man who would never dirty himself even if he is trying to hide. Hiding successfully requires getting a little dirty and accepting a lack of comforts. The man must realize that you have allies now and he no longer has Alwyn as a bargaining chip to save himself from prosecution. So we can watch the docks, for it is possible he may be thinking of fleeing the country. I will have a lot of help in doing those things, too.”
She thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “Then that is our new plan.”
“You need to put your robe on,” he said.
The words were so unexpected that it took Catryn a full minute to understand what he had just said, for it had nothing to do with what they had just been talking about. Then, despite the blush she could feel stinging her cheeks, she began to get annoyed. It was scandalous to stand dressed in only her linen nightdress before a man who was not her husband, but
he
was the one who had come to
her
bedchamber. It was also an extremely modest night shift. Her own maid had called it the spinster aunt night shift.
“I beg your pardon, but I believe
you
are the one who came to
my
bedchamber,” she snapped. “This is the customary attire for a woman in her bedchamber so late at night. I also suspect it is far more modest than any you have become accustomed to seeing.” Just thinking of all he had seen and how many bedchambers he might have seen it in irritated her.
“True, it is very modest.” He reached out and took a thick lock of her hair in his hand. “Until you add the allure of this hair. And the fact that I can see how your nipples have hardened and it tempts me, very strongly, to lick them.”
Catryn was stunned speechless. She was also intensely aroused. At least she thought arousal was what made her clench her thighs in reaction to a sudden rush of heat in her nether regions. His voice was deep and rougher than usual and it moved over her skin like a lover’s hands.
“Perhaps I would not object,” she said, and a soft voice in her mind gasped in shock over her brazen words. She ruthlessly ignored it.
Orion studied her face as he idly stroked her hair. Her cheeks were flushed but he could not be certain if it was from arousal or simply a blush. She made no attempt to hide the hard, inviting tips of her breasts. They still shaped the front of her girlishly modest night shift. With any other woman he would have already been carrying her to the bed, but this was Catryn. Despite being a mother and a widow, he knew she was no well-practiced lover or confident seductress.
“Do you understand what you are inviting me to do, Cat? All of it?” he asked.
“I am no virgin, Orion.”
He almost smiled. She was no virgin but she was still very innocent. Orion suspected she had never truly been made love to, not even on her wedding night. She had been used to breed an heir and little else. Everything she had told him about Henry confirmed that opinion. The man had not even tried to please her. It would be wise to begin slowly with her, but he was not sure he would be able to be so wise. Despite all his bachelor-loving instincts telling him to stay far away from her, he wanted her too badly to heed them. That could well mean he wanted her too badly to gently introduce her to the pleasure a man and woman could share.
“You have until I remove my boots to change your mind,” he said as he sat down and began to tug off his boots. “It is not much but it is all I am inclined to grant.”
“I will not change my mind.”
A nervous part of her badly wanted to, but Catryn ignored that voice. That cowardly part did not have the strength to conquer the need that had been growing inside her since the first time she had seen Orion. It did not matter that she could be inviting pain into her heart because he was not the sort of man who had any intention of settling for just one woman. It did not matter that she was certain she knew she was not the sort of woman, being neither daring nor sensuous, who could hold the interest of such a man for long. She would take what she could get and remember it well.
That conviction wavered a little when he tossed his second boot aside and stood up. He took a step toward her and she was strongly reminded of what a big man he was. Catryn stiffened her spine and did not give in to the urge to take a step back. She had been failed by her husband in so many ways, slighted by him again and again, but now she had a chance to mend one of those slights. Now she had a chance to discover exactly what pleasure a man and a woman could share. This man would not fail her in that. She would not allow herself to retreat from the promise in his eyes.
She stood like a soldier ready to be given her orders, Orion thought, as he stepped up to her and brushed his lips over hers. Soft, warm, and sweet, the taste of her lips only added to the craving he had finally stopped fighting. He would have her and deal with the consequences, if and when there were any. A man could suffer many a worse fate than having to spend a lifetime with Catryn.
He picked her up in his arms and took her to the bed. Her soft gasp of surprise pleased him. Orion gently set her down on the bed then sprawled on top of her, resting on his forearms so that he did not put all of his weight on her slender body. As he bent his head to kiss her, he noticed that she had begun to frown.
“You have not darkened the room yet,” she said.
“Why would I have you in a darkened room?” he asked as he undid the front of her night rail and kissed the space between her breasts. “Then I would not be able to see your beauty.”
“But that is the way it is done, is it not?”
Catryn fought hard to hold on to the warmth his light kisses and gentle touch stirred within her, but it was difficult. She was far too aware of all the light in the room. It was a soft light, thrown out by a low fire and a small lantern, but she could see him easily. That meant he could see her with the same ease. Even her late husband had never seen her unclothed body in the light, any light, soft or bright.
“Did you not know that?” she asked.
A heartbeat later she silently cursed her stupidity. This man was neither inexperienced nor saintly. She knew he had had more experience with women, bedded more women, than Henry probably ever had or ever could have hoped to have done. Willing women, pleased to climb into his bed, who did not have to be drugged. It was not something she wanted to think about, either, especially as it clarified in her mind the idiocy of her question. So did the sting of a blush upon her cheeks. The faint smile he was giving her revealed both kindness and a touch of amusement. She supposed she was fortunate he was not laughing outright. Loudly.
“Your husband preferred the dark?” Orion continued to undo her nightdress. “Such a foolish man. Perhaps he did not wish you to view his many faults.”
“Henry was handsome and quite fashionable.”
Orion slipped his hands inside her nightdress, gently clasping her full breasts. She had known Orion would give her an experience she had never had before, could show her that a woman could actually enjoy the bedding, but she now wondered if she had the courage to let it happen. With each stroke of his hands he was stirring a wildness within her she did not recognize and a craving she feared would linger long after he left her.
And he would leave, she thought, shivering with pleasure when he lightly nipped the side of her neck. This affair she had daringly embarked on would not last. She had known that from the first moment she had begun to wonder what his lovemaking would be like. It was foolish to give in to cowardice now, just because of a little light. Instead of worrying over what he was about to see, she would savor all that she was about to see. A smile curving her mouth, she began to undo his shirt.
Just as she bared his chest and slowly moved her hands from his taut stomach up to his broad shoulders, he kissed her. This was what she wanted, what she needed. The weight of his body on hers, the warmth of his skin, even the scent of him. It all fed the pleasure that was rushing through her body.
That pleasure dimmed ever so slightly when he removed her nightdress and tossed it aside. She had never been naked with a man, and it was not as easy to allow it in the heat of passion as she had thought it would be. Suddenly she was far too aware of her vulnerability, of the exposure of all her physical faults, of those faint scars left by childbirth. The fact that Orion was still more dressed than undressed did nothing to still her growing unease. Nor did it please her, for she had a need to see him, to freely touch his skin.
“You have not yet shed your own clothing,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Oh, I will shed all that is necessary. Soon.” He nipped at her bottom lip.
“Do you have a large, hairy wart you are trying to hide?”
His warm breath flowed over her lips as he laughed. He did not answer her jest, however, just kissed her. Catryn knew she ought to press for a reason why only one of them was naked, but her determination faded with each stroke of his tongue within her mouth. He tasted so good, made her feel so good, that she did not want all the pleasure she was enjoying to be disrupted by questions.
Orion savored the way she softened beneath him, the last of her inconvenient curiosity fading. He had not considered the possibility that she would question him about how slow he was to shed his own clothing. The women he bedded usually believed it was their beauty and the lust they stirred in him that made him too eager to remove all of his clothes. He let them believe it, even encouraged the idea that he was in such great need of them that he simply did not wish to waste a single moment. Catryn had so little vanity he doubted she even considered that possibility.
Since he was not sure he could stop her from catching a glimpse of his back if they remained lovers for any length of time, Orion decided this one night would be all they would share. Then he looked down at her lush body, ran his fingers over the warm, soft skin of her breast, and kissed her. He knew that plan would never work. He had known it from the first time he had kissed her. She tasted too sweet to turn away from. All he could do was ply all his usual tricks to keep anyone from getting a good look at his back and pray they continued to work. Orion realized that seeing that look of distaste or horror on Catryn’s face would cut him far deeper than the whip that had scarred him ever had. His mind told him she would not react in such a way, but the rest of him cringed at the thought of running the risk that he was wrong.
Catryn held Orion close as he kissed her, stroking the inside of her mouth with his tongue as he stroked her body with his clever hands. Everywhere he touched her, her skin came alive, growing warm and sending that warmth into her veins to reach each and every part of her. When he did as he had threatened and licked at the aching tips of her breasts, her breath caught in her throat. For a moment she forgot how to breathe. The ability returned when he drew her nipple deep into his mouth and sucked, her captured breath escaping her in a long, soft moan of delight.
This was what those happily married women and daring widows whispered and smiled about. Catryn had both disbelieved and envied them. Now she knew those smiles and whispers had been born of sweet memories, and envy pushed aside disbelief.
Lightly calloused fingers slipped between her legs and Catryn’s thoughts scattered. The only time she had ever been touched there was just before the joining had begun. She struggled to cling to the pleasure Orion had filled her with and push aside the cloudy memories of discomfort.
“You have become a little tense all of a sudden, Catryn,” Orion said, his breath warming the hollow of her throat. “Have you changed your mind?” He lifted his head to look at her.
“No,” she replied in as firm a tone as she could manage. “It was but the unwanted intrusion of an old, bad memory.” She wrapped her arms around him and held him close again.