Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

No. He never had. “Of course not,” she replied as calmly as she could manage. “You just need to…to protect yourself first. I do understand, Ned.”

She just wished she didn’t. She shut her eyes to stave off the salt prickle of tears. She wished she were impractical enough to threaten to run away. But this was what marriage meant: that even though she’d entered into another pretense with him, she would stay. She would learn to stop asking to become a part of his life. She would pretend that his refusal to trust her didn’t hurt. It was another disguise, one as cloying as the one he’d penetrated. And one a thousand times more painful. Because in this masquerade, she had to pretend that his distance didn’t hurt her. Even though it would, every single day.

He reached out and touched her, even now giving her strength that he would not accept in return.

She closed her eyes and let the feeling of loss run through her. His fingers were still on her elbow, strong and warm and steady. That steadiness ached now, and that gentle circling of his fingers against her seemed to sting some deep place inside of her.

Before the hurt could build up, she took her arm gently from his grasp and left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FAT FLAKES OF EARLY SNOW were falling around the stores on Bond Street, but once they hit the ground, they melted into the slushy pavement. Kate remembered the little shop all too well; she’d visited it once, in that hectic flurry that followed her wedding. The night rail she’d purchased there, filmy and gauzy and full of hope, now sat in a chest of drawers in her room. She had used it only the once, a mere handful of days ago. It hadn’t worked as she’d intended it. And now it seemed a token of the dreams she’d once possessed: translucent and insubstantial. It wouldn’t have survived even a good hard rain.

The shop had placed bolts of fabric in the narrow window to advertise its wares. Behind the spread of silks and satins, some cheaper goods were laid out for the less privileged customers—thick, serviceable cottons and warm wools in sober colors. But the front of the display was taken up with colorful bolts of watered silk, satin, creamy muslin and fine striped cambric. Ribbons and lace and a welter of buttons were laid out in an eye-catching formation.

Kate’s eye was not caught by any of them. She brushed off the snow that had collected on her shoulders. In this weather, looking at all that filmy fabric just made her feel cold.

Before Ned had come back to England, she’d believed the feelings she’d harbored about him would simply dissipate over time. Now she wished they could. It was the marriages that could blow away that she envied. As if the people mired in them might simply close their eyes and puff and, like a dandelion, their wishes would be carried on the wind.

This thinking was rather too maudlin for Kate. She’d intended to go shopping; she was a duke’s daughter, and a wealthy gentleman’s wife. Everyone who was anyone—who’d read the gossip columns that were even now being distributed by dirty-faced postboys—would be watching her now. She was shopping, after all. She and Louisa would be famous for that for years.

And while she might wish things were different with Ned… Well. There was no use sobbing over what could not be. And so shopping she would go. Anywhere, that is, but here. She had no need for any more night rails.

Kate had just tipped up her nose and was on the verge of stalking past, in search of a really, truly incredible bonnet, when she felt something pull at her. She looked in the window of the shop more closely, at one of the bolts that her eyes had passed over before.

The fabric was not silky. It was not sheer. It was not the sort of fabric that a lady would use for a night rail. It was the sort of thing that a servant might order. Serviceable. Practical. Warm.

It had been a mistake to overlook that one. Hope tugged at her still, faint but unmistakable.

It wasn’t time for boots or bonnets.

No, she needed to purchase a night rail, after all.

THAT EVENING NED LAY IN BED, the cold of the room swirling around him. The predicament before him was impossible. For the moment Louisa was safe, but her husband still had a legal right to her. There would come a time when Harcroft might stand in court and simply demand that his wife be returned to him. They might be able to refuse, on grounds of cruelty, but no court in England would let Louisa keep her child.

The unscalable wall that was the law was as good a distraction as any from the pain in his leg, and an even better distraction from his conversation with Kate that afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to tell her. But then, after all that they’d been through, she deserved to know who he truly was—and why he couldn’t let himself slip, not even one little bit. The cold of the room helped with that.

He would rather think about Louisa. As little as he relished the prospect, he might call Harcroft out—death would solve all of Louisa’s problems. Except he wasn’t a particularly good shot, and fencing on a broken leg was simply out of the question. Besides, Ned didn’t think he could murder the man in cold blood, no matter what the bastard had done.

As for his other plan… He’d planned to draw Harcroft out himself, but how was that possible now?

In the midst of these thoughts, the door that connected Ned’s room to Kate’s swung inward on silent hinges. He didn’t hear it; it was only the movement of air that alerted him to her presence. He clumsily lurched onto his elbows. A warm breath wafted to him from her room.

Or maybe the warmth came from Kate herself. She had donned a night rail that trailed thick fabric, covering her hands, curling up to her neck. Far more demure than the flimsy scrap of material she’d put on before, and yet the tableau still struck him straight through to his gut. He forgot everything—the persistent, throbbing ache in his leg, the cramping worry that had taken over his mind.

Lit by moonlight, she seemed like some ethereal creature, scarcely touching her feet to the floor.

He swallowed. “Kate.” The word trailed off into nothingness. He didn’t know what to say to her.

She wanted to help him. It seemed such a reasonable thing for her to ask. From some other man, she would have had instant acquiescence.

But then, she’d married him. And he had nothing but a complex prickle of requirements that she had to negotiate. If he could not rely on himself, the only assurance he could offer her was the certainty of his failure. He’d failed before; he wouldn’t do so again. If he gave in to her demands, if he let himself grow soft…well, he’d barely be able to trust himself. He needed to be strong, not just for himself, but for her.

She held up one finger. “Shh,” she admonished. “Don’t say anything.”

And maybe she was right. Anything they said would disrupt this moment in the moonlight. It would break whatever spell ensorcelled him now. Words would only bring them back to reality.

She floated toward him. She was even walking silently, as if she were some unearthly spirit visiting him, rather than a woman composed of flesh and blood. The only sound she made coming forward was a gentle swish of fabric, coupled with the quiet exhalation of her breath. His own breath had stopped long ago. How, then, was his heart still thudding so monstrously?

Maybe this was the solution, then. To let their marriage lapse into this unreal thing by moonlight. No hard questions. No difficult thoughts.

She came up beside him and he turned on the bed to face her. The act caused his leg to twinge. Even the most ethereal of spirits could not hold off reality for long. Pounding rhythm did not, at this moment, appeal to him. Drat.

“I have a gift for you.” Her voice was low.

And oh, if he’d been able to get up on his knees, if he’d been able to grab hold of her and bring her beneath him, he would have had a gift for her, too. It was the only sort of gift he could imagine giving her, the silent caress of his body.

She lifted the thick material of her wool gown two inches, and set her foot on the bed next to him. He leaned forward, to trace a finger down her ankle—but caught up short. A discordant note sounded in the sylphlike fantasy he seemed to be having. She w

asn’t bare-footed like the pixie he’d imagined her to be. He glanced up at her in puzzlement.

“Stockings,” she explained. “Thick stockings.”

Her voice wasn’t low and spiritual; it was bright and cheerful. That tone sounded a second discordant note. He stared at her covered foot for just a moment too long, trying to reconcile his thoughts about ghosts and ethereal spirits with the undeniable oddness of warm, woolen stockings.

“Um,” he finally managed to say. “Stockings are the gift? Why are you wearing them?” He glanced dubiously at her tiny feet. “I don’t think they would fit me.”

She looked down at him and tilted his head up. “They’re for me. Like the night rail. So I can sleep with you in the cold.”

Something painful wrenched inside him. “Oh, Kate. There’s no need—”

She covered his mouth with her fingers. “You seem to be operating on the belief that when I tell you I want to help, that I want to swaddle you up so you can’t move and do everything for you. That’s not what it means, Ned. I want to help you. And if what you need is to make sure you feel strong, I will help you feel strong. If you need me to set you an impossible task just so you can complete it before breakfast, send me the word, and I’ll find you a dragon to tame. ‘Help’ need not be an empty, cloying affair. Sometimes…it really can help.” She sat down on the bed next to him and took his hand. “You don’t have to do everything alone anymore, Ned. Let me walk with you.”

His head buzzed. He felt it like a tickle in the back of his throat. It filled him, those words, and he couldn’t even say why or how or with what. He pressed their en tangled fingers to his forehead, as if he could push the burn of emotion away. She was not a sprite, then, come in moonlight to tiptoe away at dawn, but a woman—one better than he could have imagined. And she wasn’t going to leave.