* * *
As soon as she’d cleared the mess, Kate went down to breakfast. She found the marquis already seated. He rose to see her seated, asking after her health and explaining that his family kept later hours. Then he beckoned a footman, and before long a plate heaping with food—kippers and salt herring, eggs and porridge and cakes—was placed before her.
She toyed with her food while the marquis kept her company, regaling her with delightful anecdotes about his family history. She made every effort to attend him, but her eyes kept straying toward the door, anticipating Kit’s arrival.
“You must miss your sisters, Mrs. Murdoch.”
Kate started. “Oh. My sisters. Yes. Very much.” In truth, she hadn’t given much thought to her sisters these last few days. She had been entirely caught up in her own affairs. But now, she did.
How Helena would love this castle. She would love the beauty of it, the graciousness. She would find in the library any number of companions to keep her company over the long winter months. Charlotte, on the other hand, would not be so captivated. She would find the isolation burdensome—unless she found a worthy opponent for her acerbic tongue and agile mind.
“I hope someday that they, too, will be able to visit my home. I know how important family is. My own is most dear to me.” For a moment, a shadow of melancholy crept over the marquis’s handsome face, but he shook it off. “I have spent so many years putting to rights my inheritance, I have neglected my personal life, I am afraid. I think it is time to change that.”
Kate did not reply. She was thinking of her sisters and wondering how she could have left them so far from her thoughts.
The marquis cleared his throat, drawing Kate’s attention. “I believe it is time that my family came out of mourning,” the marquis said, setting down his napkin with the air of a man who has come to a momentous decision.
“Milord?”
“We cannot shut ourselves away in the castle forever. Especially here in the north, where the customs regarding mourning are not so strict and every person’s absence from our small society is counted a hardship by their friends and neighbors. Unless”—he looked at her worriedly—“you think we have not yet paid adequate respect to the deceased?”
“I am certain you have,” Kate hastened to reassure him.
The marquis smiled with brilliant and undisguised relief. “Good. Well, the thing is, we have been invited to a small gathering at the MacPhersons’ two days hence. I had written and declined, but now I think perhaps we ought to go after all. I would not like you to think we are dull.”
“Please, milord, I do not need to be entertained.”
“Of course not. But”—he leaned forward, charming in his sincerity—“I want you to like us.”
“I would have to be of a particularly unpleasant disposition not to do so, sir.”
“Well, then,” he said, “I want you to like us a great deal. For I hope you will stay with us.”
Kate froze. He could not possibly mean what she thought he’d implied.
Seeing her embarrassment, he hurried on. “At least until spring. The trip back would be too uncomfortable to contemplate. You will stay, won’t you?” His gaze was warm and direct, without evasion or pretense:
The marquis was courting her. Kate stared.
“I can send for your sisters to join us.”
My God! He really was courting her! She waited for the ecstatic leap of her heart. It did not come.
“I hope you do not think me precipitous? What with the house party and all.” He was decidedly not talking about the party and they both knew it. “Tell me, Mrs. Blackburn,” he asked worriedly, “do you think it too soon? I have often recalled your delightful company in Brighton, and I am so very glad to become… reacquainted.”
She didn’t know what to think. Certainly she had realized he once felt a certain partiality for her—it was the basis upon which she had shored up the courage to ask him for financial aid. But she never imagined that he felt anything deeper. Now, he waited for her answer.
She would be a fool not to encourage him, but the words she ought to say lodged in her throat. She would force them out. “I will be guided by you in this, milord.”
“You will? Of course you will.” He smiled, pleased, and leaned back in his chair. “We will visit the MacPhersons. It will only be a small gathering, most suitable for our first appearance in public, just five or six families for the weekend.
“We live far enough apart that we generally stay a bit when we go. Not overlong,” he said hurriedly, as if she might be seeing a future as a perennial house-guest. “Four or five days.”
“Yes, milord.”
He rose from the table. “I shall send word at once that our circumstances have changed, and we would be honored to accept their invitation. Uncle Kerwin adores Mrs. MacPherson. Her family was stripped of their title in ’45, and he derives no end of pleasure in calling her countess and she no end of pleasure in hearing it. And Lady Mathilde will be delighted to be let loose on the neighbors once more.”
She smiled, feeling like a cheat and a fraud and hating herself for feeling that and hating Kit for causing that feeling.
She would not feel this way. It was ridiculous. She was not some silly heroine in a medieval troubadour’s song, eternally belonging to one man because she had spent a night in his bed. Other ladies both grander and lower than she had had lovers and married elsewhere and lived happily thereafter. She would be one of them. She would think of Kit MacNeill and she would smile, and if right now she felt closer to tears, she must be nearing her courses because she wasn’t such an imbecile!
“Of course.”
“And this afternoon, might I entice you into taking a ride? I have a well-behaved lady’s mare in the stable. Or we could drive along the cliffs. The views are spectacular. The choice is yours.” He held his hands palm up and grinned boyishly, teasingly, charmingly. “What do you want?”
“A drive would be lovely.” What do you want?
“I shall see to it at once. Shall we say one o’clock?”
“Yes.”
He left to finish up some correspondence and free his afternoon, and she stayed behind in the breakfast room, somberly regarding the china plate before her. It was edged in gilt, bracketed by heavy silver knives and forks. A crystal goblet stood at its upper edge. Beneath her feet lay a thick carpet. A footman stood beside the door, stationed there for one purpose, to see to her every comfort. A fire blazed in the hearth, and the room was warm, blessedly warm even here, in the most northern reaches of Scotland in the middle of November.
What do you want, Kate?
She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s face, dulled with sadness, and Helena’s hands, the bones showing through the backs, the nail beds blue with chill, and finally Charlotte, her pretty face animated by her extraordinary relief as she swept out of the bare rented rooms, kissing her sisters’ cheeks and whispering, “The entire season, Katherine! Can you imagine the Weltons’ generosity? I shall be in London for the season!”
But Charlotte wouldn’thave a season, not unless the marquis provided one. Kate’s lips twisted with self-derision. She would not offer her sisters as an excuse for her intentions. Helena and Charlotte were only part of any reason she would accept the marquis if he should offer for her. Did she intend to accept him?
What do you want, Kate?
She rose from the table, and the footman leapt to open the door for her. She walked out into a large, well-lit hall, moving past generations of painted Murdochs toward the library on a carpet so thick her passing was soundless. She needed to think. What do you want, Kate?
The question, she decided, should be what she did not want. She did not want to be hungry. She did not want to be cold. She did not want to worry about her future or that of her sisters. She did not want to be afraid. She did not want to be desperate. She did not want to be poor.
There. She had answered the question.
She put her hand on the library handle, her jaw clenched in frustration because while she knew quite clearly what she did not want, she knew just as clearly what she did.
The door opened. Kit MacNeill looked down into her eyes.
And he was standing right before her.
TWENTY-ONE
MAKING RESPONSIBLE CHOICES
HE HADN’T ANY RIGHT to look so good when he looked so disreputable. The stock about his throat was cheap, his linen shirt threadbare, his coat old, and his boots scarred. But his hands… Kit had beautiful hands. Not soft and pink, but calloused and rough, his fingers lean and strong and masculine. They were, she noted, scrubbed clean. But where was his regimental jacket?
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a captain?” Where had that come from?
The corner of his mouth lifted. “The matter never came up in the course of our conversations. Besides, it hardly bore mentioning.”
“I thought you were an enlisted man.”
“I was an enlisted man, and as such found myself in the right places at the right times, or perhaps I should say the wrong places at the wrong times. Either way, I survived and was given battlefield commissions for my luck.”
He tilted his head regarding her sardonically. “And if I was an enlisted man, why would I be here rather than with my regiment? Surely the daughter of a colonel must have wondered about that?”
She looked away, embarrassed. “I thought you might have deserted.”
“Such a kindly estimation of my character.”
“You have gone to great pains to tell me your character is flawed and unworthy; you can’t suddenly decide that I am being unfair when I take you at you word.”
“Touché.” He grinned, and she wished, profoundly, that he wouldn’t. He was far too handsome, far too approachable, when he smiled like that.
“Besides,” she continued gruffly, looking away from him, because looking would become wanting, “I could not conceive that you would sign up after all that had happened to you.”
“I was drunk.”
No one would ever accuse MacNeill of sugar-coating his history. A twisted smile played about his lips, as though he had read her thoughts. “I play the lead in no heroic tales, Kate, just common and vulgar ones. You mustn’t see things that aren’t there. But I didn’t come to confess my shortcomings. You know those full well.”
“Do I?”
“Covetousness.” He raised his hand as if to touch her face and hesitated. “Anger. Pride.” The backs of his fingertips brushed a tendril of her hair slowly away from her face. “Bigotry against my betters.” She stilled, apprehensive lest he take a greater liberty, more apprehensive that he would not.
“Yes. You know in how many ways I’ve failed.”
“You have never failed me,” she breathed, her gaze tangling with the silvered frost of his.
His thumb touched the corner of her eye and lightly brushed her lashes. She turned her head, just a small movement, but enough to force a closer contact. She heard his breath check, and then his thumb was feathering a line down over her cheek, along her jaw to the point of her chin. He tilted her head up, looked down into her eyes. “I’ve come to tell you that I will be leaving soon.”
Her heart beat thickly in her throat, flutters of alarm taking flight in her belly. No. “When?” No! “Not today?”
“There is no reason to stay and every reason to go,” he said soberly.
She shook her head. “No. Not today.”
He closed his eyes briefly, evidence of some inner struggle flickering briefly across his lean features. “When will you be ready for me to leave?”
She didn’t know. Next month? Next week? Never? The idea that she might never see him again, that when he left the castle it would be with the specific goal of searching for a traitor and murderer, set her limbs trembling and her breath staggering in her lungs. But not today. “Maybe… in a few days.”
He held her gaze. “Tomorrow, Kate. Don’t ask more than that. I beg you.”
He would do whatever she asked. He’d sworn to it. He would even stay, and for as long as she bid him do so. But she could not tether him to her with a vow. She could not ask him to stay and witness her encourage the marquis with every remembered wile at her disposal. She was bad, yes, but not wicked.
“Tomorrow.” Her voice broke, and she shut her eyes, not wanting him to see her in tears.
“Do you know what the first thing I noticed about you three years ago was?” he asked softly. “It was your courage, Kate. I grew up respecting courage above everything except loyalty. When I saw you that first time, you were like a brand, so fierce and so valiant.”
She scoffed, sniffing, amused in spite of her sorrow. “That was not courage, Kit. That was fear.”
“I did not know your father, Kate, but in the army I learned his reputation. Colonel Roderick Nash was a just officer and a thoughtful tactician. But above all, he did what needed to be done, without hesitation. You’re like that, Kate. You have that courage.”
“Rubbish!” She was nothing like her father.
Kit caught her chin in his strong fingers, moving closer. “Your mother was already dying, and your older sister hadn’t woken to the fate awaiting you, and your younger one was still trying to make sense of it. In one short year, everything you were and everything you expected to have and to be had been stripped away from you. All comfort and security vanished. A lifestyle. A husband. A father. All gone. But you knew what had to be done, and so you did it.”
He tilted her face so that the light streaming in from the high windows fell full upon her visage. “What can one call that but courage? Your father would be proud.”
He was wrong. Her father would not be proud. She was a coward. She would not give up wealth and comfort and security. Not for pride. Not for love. She couldn’t.
But she could steal one more moment, one more kiss. Boldly, she put her hand on his chest. His heartbeat thundered beneath her palm. She edged closer. Her hem brushed across the tips of his boots.
“Kit.” Her fingers curled against his muscular chest.
“Someone might come in,” he whispered, his voice dark and hopeless and tender.
“I don’t care.”
“Yes,” he avowed, a tincture of savagery in his pronouncement, “you do. You should. You’ll be safe here, Kate. Well cared for. You’ll live the life you once had.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll be safe.” He was still worrying over her safety. “I saw this Captain Watters and his men heading for Clyth this morning. He’ll find those responsible for your cousin’s death.”
He did not know Charles had been involved with the smugglers and that that is what had occasioned his death. He needn’t worry over her safety. She wasn’t a smuggler, nor had she betrayed anyone.
But yourself.
“I am not rich,” she said, seeking to reassure him without breaking the marquis’s confidence. “I am not going anywhere unescorted. The marquis is well aware of the situation in the region, and I am certain he will take every precaution.”
“And whoever was at the castle on the moors was hunting me, not you,” he went on, searching her face. “You’ll be safer without me, in fact.
“I can’t stay, Kate.” His tone demanded that she acknowledge the impossibility of his staying, that she understand that he was not abandoning her.
Everything you want is within your reach, Kate Blackburn. All you have to do is watch Kit MacNeill walk out the door. “Of course you must go.”
He suddenly reached out and cupped the back of her head, pulling her roughly toward him. His breath had gone ragged. She melted eagerly against him, her lips opening.
“God help me,” he muttered roughly. “Not without a kiss”
He crushed her mouth beneath his. All the want and frustration and pain of longing filled that kiss, blistering her with desire. She met his passion with equal ardor, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and pulling him closer, molding her body against his as if by doing so she could somehow become part of him, kissing him back with all the yearning and hopelessness inside her. For one fleeting instant, he held on to her as if he would never let her go.
Then he did.
“I have to leave.”
She couldn’t let him go without knowing… without letting him know… without hope…
“The marquis has accepted an invitation for us to visit his neighbors tomorrow,” she whispered. “When we return… he asked me to stay on.”
Kit’s body tensed, but his eyes remained fixed on hers.
“I…” She swallowed. “Can you think of any reason why I should not stay here with him?”
Five heartbeats. That is how long it took, she discovered, to break a heart. Five heartbeats during which hope rushed, welled, suffused her with joy, and—
“No,” he said. “No. I cannot.”
—died.