Beyond Rubies (Daughters of Sin 4)

But then another odd noise jarred a discordant note in the stillness. A throaty purr of satisfaction. Feminine. Kitty stopped a couple of feet from the bed and strained to see in the darkness. She could make out Nash’s handsome head upon the pillow, turned toward the window, and the mound of his body beneath the bedclothes. He gave a soft groan, and Kitty smiled. She’d make him moan even more throatily before long. She’d removed her gown. The four buttons at the back and her front-laced short stays meant she could dress and undress on her own, and relatively quickly, which was what she was doing now, her fingers eagerly loosening the ribbons of her corsetry so that she was only in her chemise when she climbed beneath the covers

Her arrival created more of a stir than she’d expected. Nash jerked upright with a cry, but it wasn’t his surprise that jolted Kitty to the very core. No, it was the wriggling beneath Kitty of a second body followed by a sharp, feminine shriek when Jennie’s head emerged from where, Kitty now realized, she’d been attending to pleasuring her darling Nash’s nether regions.

The two women looked at each other with horror and loathing. Nash, meanwhile, was choking out some kind of excuse. Apology. Kitty didn’t wait to hear it. Gathering her discarded clothes into her arms as she made her sobbing progress from the bed to the door, she dashed into the passageway, ignoring his shout of pain as she slammed the door and obviously caught some tender piece of his body in the process.

Barely able to breathe, she stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, crying as she clumsily put on her stays over her chemise in front of the fire. Susan blinked at her owlishly, crawling up from her pallet to help Kitty slip first her petticoat over her head and then her evening gown.

Kitty had lost one shoe along the way, but she wasn’t going back for it. Her complacency and confidence in Nash’s love had been shattered, and she couldn’t face him right now. She knew he’d come after her. Well, she was reasonably certain he would. He’d try and bluster his way through it. Maybe he’d say he’d mistaken Jennie for Kitty. All Kitty knew was that this was her greatest betrayal, and she had to get away immediately and gather her thoughts.

“I’ll be all right,” she told Susan as she flung herself out of the door and into the dark street, hobbling in only one shoe, and only realizing as the cool night air grazed her cheek that she had nowhere to go. Where did Lissa live? She had no idea. Walking alone in the darkness was madness. The only place she had to go was Mrs. Mobbs’s. She fumbled in her reticule. Thank the lord she had just enough to pay for the journey. And hopefully standing on the cobbles in such a respectable area was not immediately perilous. At least, it wouldn’t be as perilous as if she were standing in the street outside Mrs. Mobbs’s where she felt she could not return to disturb her irascible landlady a second time in one night.

Still wracked with sobs, she waited, but no passing hackney offered salvation. Her mind was in a whirl with what she’d just witnessed. Her heart was breaking. She thought she’d go mad.

Would Nash follow and beg her forgiveness? What would she do then? He’d betrayed her. Just like her father had betrayed her mother. Kitty thought she was cleverer than her mother. She thought she knew what to do once she’d snared her man, how to hold him and make her his—forever. She’d always condemned her mother for failing to hold her father. Maybe she was just like her mother after all. Easily persuaded. Stupid.

Maybe Nash would lurch out into the street, go down on bended knee and ask her to marry him. Would she say yes after he’d deceived her with another woman?

But, of course, he was not going to do that. The best she could hope for was to have him groveling before her. Of course, he must care. But did he care enough to—

“Kitty!”

She turned toward the townhouse, the voice issuing from the stairs from the basement. Nash.

“Kitty!”

But then her name was called from a quite different direction. She heard the jingle of harness; the creak of leather as the heavy equipage of a fine carriage came to a halt right in front of her.

On one side of her, Lord Nash, who’d appeared in breeches, his shirt flapping about his thighs, his dark curls flopping about his face, was begging her to come back.

Meanwhile, in the street, Lord Silverton was leaning out of the carriage win

dow inquiring with concern if she was all right.

“Kitty! I’m sorry! It wasn’t what you thought.” That was Lord Nash. Distraught! Ashamed, but only because he’d been caught. And telling lies! Did he think she was stupid?

“Kitty, has something happened?”

She hunched over, not wanting Lord Silverton to see her distress.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

Despite her grief, there was something familiar and comforting in Lord Silverton’s voice. He had not deceived her. He was a good man, despite the fact he was caught up in some havey-cavey business that was beyond her knowledge. That didn’t matter right now. All that did was that he was offering her a chance not to be caught up in the treachery and deception that mired a woman in misery for following her foolish heart. She couldn’t go back, even as she heard Nash’s voice draw nearer, louder with urgency and self-recrimination.

Oh, she wanted to go to him, but an image of her mother loomed large. She could not be like her mother.

“Forgive me. It was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again. Believe me.”

She wavered. She could go back to him, of course. Probably he’d sent Jennie packing, and his bed would now be free to accommodate Kitty’s warm and supposedly willing body.

But, not yet. Not so easily.

“Thank you, Lord Silverton!” she cried, hurrying toward the open carriage door, taking the hand he offered to help her in. She saw him raise his face and grin across at Nash, who was only semi dressed, with arms outstretched in entreaty, and who now cried, “Good God, Kitty, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t get into a strange man’s carriage, no matter how upset you are!”

But Lord Silverton wasn’t a strange man, and Kitty could do as she liked because she was beholden to no one. It was an unusual situation she’d come to value and, right now, the only advantage she had. No father could thunder at her for behavior, which was no worse than he’d forced her mother into committing. No brother could take the moral high ground because Ned was not like that and she rarely saw him, besides. No husband could claim her earnings for his own, spend her money as he chose, and treat her like the property she was. No, Kitty could do as she pleased, and as Nash had betrayed her, she was going to punish him as much as he deserved.

She was crying by the time she threw herself back against the squabs, dabbing at her face with the edge of her sleeve.

“Here, take this.”