Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

Her hands clenched the bedcovers uselessly.

And then he looked into her eyes and thrust forward. His fingers clenched around her wrist. His mouth gritted; not in pain, but in the onslaught of pleasure. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in.

There was nothing between them but the smooth slide in and out, the friction, the heat that built between them. She had no control over her body, nothing in her head except the feel of his skin against hers, the grind of his pelvis, the pleasure building once again.

He reached his climax first; his thrusts grew stronger; his fingernails bit into her wrist. He let out a hiss between his teeth, and the hot rush that filled her, the sure knowledge that she had given him the pleasure he gave her, was all she needed. She clamped around him. And then she was spasming around him again—insanely, perfectly, completely his.

NED COULD NOT FIND WORDS afterward. None of them seemed right; they didn’t seem to fit the intimacy they’d just shared. Any words he could imagine would only emphasize what he’d given her—and what he’d hidden behind that tender display.

But then, Kate didn’t know what he hadn’t said. She turned against him, her hand falling on his naked hip. “You were right.” Her words were soft against the silence, but still he prickled, inhaling cool air. She trusted him. Her breath, warm against the hollow of his throat, bespoke security. She cinched her arm around his waist, unconsciously molding herself against him. That posture, that welcome confidence, had to be genuine.

“You knew about Louisa,” she said quietly.

“Perhaps I should have said something to you.” He traced his finger idly down her shoulder. Easier than looking in her eyes.

“But why did you not do something more about it?”

For a second, Ned’s heart froze. He should have, he realized. Should have intervened, offered to take the matter off her hands. He should have insisted—

“After all,” she continued, “when I was younger, every time it seemed to me I had hit upon something interesting to accomplish, my father always found someone else to do it for me. It made me think that I was supposed to be some helpless creature. An accomplished lady is one who plays the pianoforte, who speaks six languages. Who can converse with her dinner partners on Byron and Shakespeare. Accomplished ladies aren’t allowed to accomplish anything of value.”

“Ah.” Ned felt a restless sense of familiarity at those words. Truth be told, most gentlemen didn’t accomplish anything, either. She hadn’t wanted him to take the burden from her, after all. She wanted a challenge. He knew what that felt like.

He hadn’t realized women longed for the same things men did.

“Now you know the truth,” he told her. “You’ve saved a woman from her husband.”

Her hair brushed his chest as she shook her head. “No,” she contradicted.

He was about to tell her that Lady Harcroft would be safe when she spoke again.

“I’ve saved seven.”

“Pardon?”

“Do you recall the circumstances under which we first met?”

“We encountered each other in the servants’ quarters at a ball.” In point of fact, Ned had followed her in—not alone, accompanied by Gareth and Jenny. “You never did tell me what you were doing there, except to feed me some story about needing to help an old nursemaid.”

The story hadn’t explained everything. But then, he’d been so wrapped up in his own problems he’d accepted her tale without question.

She sat up, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, that much was true. It just wasn’t the full truth. You see, when I was sixteen, I discovered that my old nursemaid had broken a limb. A duke’s daughter is allowed at least to bring baskets of jellies to her dependents—and so I did. In the course of the visit, however, I discovered that her husband had caused the accident. It wasn’t the first time.”

For all the dire seriousness of the subject matter, she was warming to the conversation. As she spoke, she gesticulated with her hands.

“That first one was easy,” she continued. “I just arranged for passage across the Atlantic with a bank draft waiting for her on the other side. Now she owns a bakery in some odd place in America—Boston, I think.”

She took the injuries seriously, Ned knew. But that light in her eyes was about more than the seriousness of the injury. How much of herself had she been hiding? His chest felt tight and uncomfortable. There was more than a twinge of jealousy mixed in with his feelings of astonished respect. When she had been sixteen, she’d been saving women from violence, unbeknownst to her father.

And what had Ned been doing?

Wagering on horses. Weathering the aftermaths of his first bouts of drinking.

“Louisa,” Kate said, “is the seventh one I’ve spirited away. She’s the first lord’s wife, though. And she has definitely been the hardest.” She looked over at him. “You’re—you’re not going to insist that I stop, are you?”

Ned shook his head.

“I love my father,” she said, “and he adores me. But he thinks of me as his little poppet, a delicate thing to be shielded from all difficulty. My mother trained me to throw parties and perform gracious acts of charity. I love them, but these last years, I’ve been glad to have the excuse to remain here. In Kent, they would never have let me do so much.”

There was a wistful quality to her voice, and Ned was reminded again of what he’d thought earlier. She was lonely. She hadn’t had any true family—or at least, not anyone who knew the truth of her. She leaned against him. “Oh, parts of this will be so much easier, now that I know you approve. Do you know what I’ve had to do to get the funds for my bank drafts?”

Ned shook his head again.

“I’ve had to go shopping. I have an account with several dressmakers. I purchase extravagant gowns. They write up the bill with twice the amount, and then slip me the rest in bank notes. I am famous in the ton for my shopping.”

Harcroft had remarked as much. And now that Ned thought the matter through, he had never seen his wife wear the same gown. “Woe is you,” he said dryly. “I can tell you absolutely despise that.”

“Oh, yes. It’s a winning proposition for me in more than one regard. After all these years of silence, it feels extraordinarily freeing to talk of it.”

She trusted him. It was precisely what he wanted. After all, he’d vowed to make things right with her. He was doing it.

So why did her warm hands feel like ice against his heart?

She trusts me only because she doesn’t know the truth.

He wanted to get out of bed and walk away. At a minimum, he wanted to turn from her, to give her the ridge of his spine. He’d gotten precisely what he wanted. And now he wanted her to take it back.

“Now, what do we do about Louisa?” she asked. Her voice was growing lazy with sleep. And that simple word—we—left Ned biting his lip.

That certainty in her voice, that confidence in her breathing, the evenness of every inhalation—it was all because he’d fooled her. He’d made her believe he was strong and capable, the sort of powerful man who might face down rampaging horses and raving husbands alike. She believed in him, and the weight of her belief sat upon his shoulders.

She didn’t know the truth. She didn’t know that every few years, winter came upon him, replacing the warmth of summer. That all her trust was reposed in a man who might crumble.

Yet he hadn’t crumbled the last time the darkness had come. For years he’d fooled people into believing that he was strong and capable. For years, they’d believed him. And so long as he kept his mouth shut—so long as he just put one foot in front of the other in the morning—well, nobody would ever need to know.

Least of all Kate.

“We’ll see her in the morning. Everything will work out—just you see.” It was more a promise to himself than a vow he could make to her. He would take care of her. He wouldn’t ever let her fall. She didn’t need to know about Ned’s own idiotic problems.

She didn

’t find his reassurances ironic. She seemed, in fact, to take his strength for granted, a trust that warmed him almost as much as it left the palms of his hands cold. His promise seemed to settle into his skin. No; when faced with this sweet trust, winter wouldn’t matter. He simply wouldn’t let it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

AS MUCH AS KATE WISHED to spend her time exclusively with her husband, when morning dawned, her responsibilities overwhelmed her. They were going to have to do something about Louisa. Now that the earl was aware that Kate was involved, the matter had become a thousand times more dangerous.