Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

They sparkled with deceptive friendliness.

“No,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t look at me. Look at yourself.”

Her hair was so light it was almost colorless. Her skin seemed wan; her dress fitted to her form, bound and corseted and drawn in on itself, as if she were so insubstantial that she needed whalebone to prop her up. She looked like a dainty, breakable lady.

“I’ve seen you before,” Ned said quietly. “But I think it’s high time I look again.” His hand came up; she could see it in the reflection, before the callus of his thumb swept alongside her face. “First, there’s the line of your jaw. A perfect curve, held high. It’s one triumphant, resolute sweep. This line—” his finger traced it back again, and the hairs on Kate’s arm stood up “—this line says you are a woman who will brook no nonsense. I believe I have discovered that before.”

Kate swallowed. In the mirror her neck contracted.

His hand slid down that smooth expanse of skin.

“Then there are your shoulders.” His thumb spread along her collarbone. “I have never seen them bowed by fear or drawn together in weariness. You carry your shoulders high, and no matter the weight that is set upon them, you do not falter.” His voice dropped.

As he spoke, his hand traveled down her spine. She could feel the heat of him through the layers of muslin and whalebone as that hand traversed the curve of her back. When he reached her waist, he slid his hand around her front to grasp her own. His fingers entwined with hers, briefly; then he turned her hand palm up, in his.

“I’ve heard,” he said dryly, “that fortune-tellers can see your future in the palm of your hand. What do you suppose I see in yours?”

Her hand was dwarfed by his, her fingers seeming wan next to his. The color of his hands made her think of long days aboard ship, of adventurous treks with strange beasts cavorting nearby and strong men with sharp cutlasses. She could feel the heat of him, as if all the sun absorbed in that golden brown skin were emanating from him now.

Next to him…

“I look small,” she said. And fragile. The kind of woman to be set to side, for fear that she would shatter. That was all anyone had even seen in her.

“I think you look delicate,” he corrected. “Delicate and indomitable, all at once. I see no tremor in your hands, Kate, no fear, no smallness of character.”

“But I—”

“And when I look into your eyes,” he said, “I think you are as implacable as an archangel.”

He closed his hand around hers; her fingers curled into a loose fist, cradled in his. “Your feelings,” he said, “are your own. And if you hold them tight to your chest, nobody need ever see beneath the surface.”

As he spoke, he leaned into her. His words brushed her skin in little puffs of breath.

“Nobody need see a thing. But I want to,” he breathed.

She turned her head to look up into his eyes. And that, assuredly, was a mistake, because if her stomach had been in knots before, the knot clenched into a tangle of Gordian proportions when she looked in his face. She could not have unraveled herself from his gaze, and when she tried—when she glanced away—her eyes alighted upon his lips. Strong and smooth, powerful and gentle.

It left her with the most curious fluttering feeling in her belly. Not that he was going to kiss her—but that he had already done so. Her lips already burned with the impression that his words had left on her. Her skin flamed with the possibility of his nearness. And no matter how practical she told herself to be, rational thought fled before his words.

When Kate parted her lips and stood on her tiptoes, turning in his embrace, it seemed she was merely bringing the words he had spoken to their physical conclusion.

She kissed him, not because she wanted to bring him to his knees, but because he had lifted her off hers. She tasted him, and he tasted of salt and man and the power that the right woman could wield in the right place. And he kissed her back, giving no quarter.

He pulled away. “No, Kate,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to intimidate you. I don’t want you to fear me. I want to look at you and finally see what I’ve been missing these long years. You’re a damned Valkyrie.”

He turned her back to the mirror. Kate felt almost on the edge of tears.

She didn’t want this—didn’t want her secret dreams to come true, didn’t want to hope again. But it was too late. She was already yearning for this. She was already yearning for him.

“It’s not quite true. I am afraid,” she stated baldly. “If I were a Valkyrie, I would not be. I wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“In the stories,” he said, his voice a dark rasp against her skin, “the heroine always slays the dragon and lops off his head. The villagers rejoice and build a bonfire, and darkness never again falls on the land.”

She could feel his hands at her side, warm and powerful. “But those,” Ned continued, “are only fairy stories. In reality…”

He smiled at her in the mirror, a lopsided smile. There was something faintly wicked about that expression, as if he were about to impart to her a great secret, one that had been closely guarded by a centuries-old society. She swayed unwittingly against him.

“In reality,” he whispered, “the dragons never die, and the big sword-wielding buffoons in unwieldy armor cannot slay them. Real heroes tame their dragons. Your fear, my—” He cut himself off, and that sad half smile burst into an incandescent grin. If she had not been awake to the flitting expressions that passed his face, she wouldn’t have noticed the suddenness of the change.

“Your what?” she prompted.

“I went to China to slay dragons. Instead, I tamed them.”

“I thought you went to China to examine the Blakely holdings in the East India Company, to see if the rumors you had heard were true.”

He shrugged, and in that instant she remembered what he’d said. Your feelings are yours. And what were his feelings in all of this?

“Does it matter why I went?” he asked. And he must have intended the question rhetorically, because before she could answer, he continued. “I can’t change the past. All I can do, Kate, is try to make up for it. And that means that if you still flinch from me—if the memory of the pain I’ve caused you is still too strong—I won’t get angry. You deserve my patience.”

“And where will you be?” Kate’s voice shook. “All this time, while you’re waiting in patience for me to trust you. Where will you be?”

“Where will I be?” She could feel his breath whispered against her. “I’ll be right where I should have been this whole time. When you think your castle walls will fall, I will shore them up. When you are afraid you cannot stand, I will hold you upright. I ought never have left. And when you understand that you need do nothing but lean…”

His hands clasped her waist, strong and gentle, holding her up without restraining her. She might have leaned back then.

She didn’t.

“When you lean,” he whispered into her ear, “this time, I will catch you.”

Oh, she was as dangerously vulnerable as ever, and as like to fall against him.

And that she believed him, that she believed he would be there to catch her, believed that this time he wouldn’t leave her…that, perhaps, was the greatest danger of all.

THAT, NED DECIDED after Kate left, had been idiotic.

It hadn’t been idiotic to look at her. It hadn’t been stupid to pledge himself to her. And the kiss had been every kind of clever, even if it had been her idea to begin with.

No, the foolishness had been when he’d forgotten himself so far as to let that admission slide off his tongue.

Your fear, my—

He’d cut himself off, not out of intelligence, but for want of an adequate word. He’d been saved by his lack of vocabulary, not any sense of propriety or self-preservation. Her fear, his… What was it, then, that dark thing that belonged to him? He thought of it more as that moment, sun striking metal, with him fee

ling bereft of every other option. He carried it with him even now. Not anything she needed to know about.

Foolishness might have done. Stupidity, as well. But neither of those words captured the height and breadth of the beast that Ned had tamed. And neither conveyed the sheer darkness that resided in him. It was foolish. It was stupid. But then, he’d learned that if he held the leash on his own reactions tightly, they could do him no harm. It was his own private madness, his own hidden dragon. Kate had single-handedly stymied the Earl of Harcroft. She would never trust Ned if she knew the extent of the beast he’d kept hidden from her. She had no idea how useless he had once been. But he would prove to every one of them that it didn’t matter any longer.