Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

But no. Nothing had changed—least of all, his wife.

She stared at him, her lips parted in shock, as if he had announced that he had a penchant for playing vingt-et-un with ravens. She drew her cloak about her. No doubt she wanted to shield herself from his gaze. And like that, it all came back—all the ragged danger of that old intensity—burning into the palms of his hands.

Her cloak was dusty all over and, thank God, falling about her as it did, it hid the curves of her waist. After all these years of careful control, the check he performed was almost perfunctory. Yes. He still controlled his own emotions; they did not jerk him around, like a dog on a chain.

But then, it had been a long while since he’d felt these particular emotions. Ten minutes in his wife’s presence, and already she’d begun to befuddle him again.

“You really didn’t recognize me,” he said.

She stared at him, suddenly mute and uneasy.

No, of course not. All that easy conversation? That, she’d produced for a stranger. A stranger who she believed had intended to seduce her, no less. Ned scrubbed his hand through his hair.

“Two years? There’s been a wager running for two years to seduce you?”

“What did you suppose would happen? You left me three months after our wedding.” Kate turned away. She took two breaths. He could see the rigid line of her shoulder even under all that wool. And he waited, waited for an outpouring of some kind. A diatribe; an accusation. For anything.

But when she turned back, only the clutch of her gloved hand on her cloak betrayed any unease.

That smile—that damnably enchanting smile—peeked out again. “And here I supposed your departure was the masculine equivalent of sounding the bugle to presage the hunt for your fellow gentlemen. You could not have declared it hunting season on Lady Kathleen Carhart any more effectively if you’d taken out an advertisement in the gossip circulars.”

“That’s certainly not what I intended.”

No. His thinking had taken a different cast altogether. When he’d left for China, he’d been young and idiotic; old enough to insist that he was an adult, and not wise enough to realize how far he was from the truth. He’d spent his early years playing the dissolute and useless spare to his cousin’s rigid, rule-bound heir.

He’d made himself sick on the uselessness of himself. When he’d married, he had hungered to prove that he wasn’t a child. That he could take on any task, no matter how difficult, and demonstrate that he had grown into a strong and dependable man.

He’d done it, too.

One woman—one who had already sworn to honor and obey him—shouldn’t have seemed so insurmountable a prospect.

Ned shook his head and looked at Kate. “No,” he repeated. “When I left, I wasn’t trying to send any message. It didn’t have anything to do with you at all.”

“Oh.” Her lips whitened and she looked ahead. “Well. Then. I suppose that’s good to know.”

She turned around and began to walk away. Ned felt the pit of his stomach sink, as if he’d said something utterly stupid. He couldn’t think what it was.

“Kate,” he called. She stopped. She did not look at him, but there was something—perhaps the line of her profile—that suggested a certain wariness.

He swallowed. “That wager. Did anyone succeed?”

She stiffened slightly, and then her shoulders lowered in defeat. Now she did turn around.

“Oh, Mr. Carhart.” It was the first time she had spoken his name since he’d returned, and she imbued those few syllables with all the starch of sad formality. “As I recall, I vowed to forsake all others, keeping only unto you, for as long as we both should live.”

He winced. “I wasn’t questioning your honor.”

“No.” She put her hands on her waist and then looked up at him. “I merely wish to remind you that it was not I who forgot our wedding vows.”

And with those words, she glanced up the packed dirt of the path to where his gray mare stood. She let out a deep sigh and turned away once more. For a second, Ned imagined grabbing her wrist again, imagined himself swiveling her around to face him. She wouldn’t look at him with sadness or that wary distance. In fact, distance was the last thing he wanted between them—

She cast him one final glance and then crossed to his mare, which was cropping grass by the side of the road. “One solution to your logical dilemma?” she said. “Get another boat.”

She took his horse’s reins and wrapped them around her wrist. And before he could say another word, she set off down the track.

Champion’s reaction to Ned’s mare meant that he could not walk close to Kate, not without risking a repeat of that skittish rearing and bolting. He perforce trailed after her, feeling rather like a clumsy duckling to her elegant swan.

The English countryside smelled like dust and autumn sunshine. His wife walked ten yards ahead of him. She strode as if she might outrun his existence entirely, if only she put one foot in front of the other quickly enough. Maybe it was madness, that he imagined he could catch the scent of her on the breeze—that half remembered smell of fine-milled soap and lilac. It was even more foolish to watch her retreating backside and wonder what else might have changed about her while he wasn’t looking.

Her hair, or what he could see of it from under that floppy gray bonnet, was still such a pale blond as to appear almost platinum. Her eyes still snapped gray when angry. As for her waist… He hadn’t lied when he said he recognized her by the feel of her waist in his hands. He hadn’t touched her often, but it had been enough. She was delicate, with that fine, elegant figure and those pale gray eyes ringed by impossibly long lashes.

When he’d married her, she had seemed like some bright creature. A butterfly, perhaps, its wings vibrant and shimmering in the sunlight. When she had smiled at him, Ned felt himself wanting to believe that it would be June forever, all warmth and blue skies. Instinctively, he’d shied away from that promise of eternal summer. After all, one didn’t talk to a butterfly about the coming snow, no matter how bright its wings appeared to be.

Fewer than twenty-four hours back in England, and he’d rediscovered how much of a threat his wife still posed to his equanimity. A man in control of himself wouldn’t have wanted to press her against that damned gritty stone wall, in broad daylight. A man in control of himself enjoyed his wife within the careful, pleasant confines of marriage.

Well. Ned had faced down a captain in Her Majesty’s Navy. He’d issued orders to an officer in the East India Company. He wasn’t the foolish boy who had left England, eager to prove himself. And he wasn’t about to let a little desire get the best of his discipline now.

The road ran on, and a fine sheen of dust gathered on the wool of his coat. They turned off the track and onto a wide, tree-lined way. Ned knew the road well. They were approaching Berkswift, his childhood country home. He supposed it was her home now, too; odd, that their lives had intertwined so, even in his absence.

As he walked down the lane, the lazy smell of cultivated earth recently turned in preparation for winter wheat, wafted to him. Even before they broke through the line of trees that shielded the estate from the road, Ned could conjure up the image of the manor in his mind—the golden-rose of the stone facade, the three long wings, the graveled half ring out front for carriages. At this time of the morning, the yard would stand empty, waiting to be filled by the day’s activities.

But as they came through the final copse of young birches, they did not find quiet. Instead, the drive was busy: positively boiling with servants. The cause of their work was clear. Three heavy black carriages stood on that circular drive before the house. Ned could make out a coat-of-arms, picked out in blue and silver, on the one standing nearest him.

In front of him, Kate stopped. Her entire body froze, her posture as rigid as a duelist poised at thirty paces. As he came abreast of her, she cut her eyes toward him.

“Did you invite him?” She gestured toward the coat of arms. ?

??Did you invite him here?” She had not raised her voice, but her pitch had risen a note or two.

“I just arrived in England myself.”

“That’s not an answer. Did you invite the Earl of Harcroft?”

That would be Eustace Paxton, the Earl of Harcroft. Most of the ton was related in some twisted fashion. Harcroft was Ned’s third cousin, twice-removed, on his father’s side. They’d been friends, of a sort, for years. He’d married even younger than Ned had. And just before Ned had left London, Lord and Lady Harcroft had done Ned a favor.

Kate was still watching him, her lips compressed in sudden wariness.

“No,” he said slowly. “The only one I’ve spoken to so far was my solicitor.” And even if word of his return had traveled, as no doubt it would, Ned didn’t see how Harcroft could have mustered himself out of bed in time to actually beat Ned to Berkswift, and traveling by heavy carriage no less.

Beside him, Kate frowned, as if he’d committed some egregious breach of manners. Maybe he had. Eight months aboard ship and a man forgot a great many things.

“I think that’s Jenny and Gareth’s carriage in front. Maybe they’ve come with Harcroft?” Gareth was his cousin, Gareth Carhart, the Marquess of Blakely; Jenny, his marchioness.

Kate smoothed her skirts with her hands, brushing them away from Ned subtly, as if whatever disease of gaucherie he carried might be catching.