Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

But she did not. She was more vulnerable than ever—but for the first time, with his eyes on her, she realized that in this, for all of his jokes and casual airs, they were evenly matched. He wanted her. He wanted her so desperately that he feared his own response, so powerfully that he’d fled to China and stayed there for three years.

When he came, she felt it clear to her toes. He met her gaze afterward. They didn’t touch. He stood and walked away to a basin of water that stood on the other side of the room. Slowly, the heat dissipated again, and she was left with nothing but a thin layer of silk and the frigid temperature of the room.

IT HAD BEEN A FEAT of impossible proportions, what Ned had accomplished, knowing that Kate was holding a secret back from him. He had yet to earn her complete trust and so he’d kept himself from the final consummation, no matter what his body had desired. But he had been in charge. He had been in control—not his body, nor his own foolish wants. It had been proof of the sort he’d longed for.

See? I’m not some boy, to be led about by my desires any longer.

He set the towel down and turned back to Kate. As he did so, all his fine self-congratulations faded. She was laid out on his bed, the thin film of her gown displaying rather than hiding the lines of her body—sweet, enticing curves, all the more appealing because he could still feel the echo of her skin against his hands.

She lay on his bed, the embodiment of everything warm and comforting.

There was a reason he hadn’t lit a fire. Some men might relax their guard, might simply forget about their troubles. Ned, however, had learned that there was always danger. He heard a siren song of home and heart, of comfort and no further need for strife. What she didn’t understand was that he could dash himself on the rocks of complacency as easily as on darker shoals.

He knew. He’d done it before.

She smiled at him. “Ned. Are you going to have someone lay a fire?”

He wasn’t quite sure what he’d hoped to accomplish these last few moments, but he suddenly realized what he’d managed to give her. Satiety without satisfaction; the illusion of closeness, without any actual penetration.

And now, when it was over, she was beginning to realize there was nothing left but the cold. It had won out again. In the mirror above the basin, he saw a little shiver go through her.

“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t sleep with a fire.”

She sat up in bed and stared at him. “Some people go without comforts. Usually it is because they cannot afford them.”

True. He couldn’t afford himself too much comfort—any more than he could give up the regimen of physical exercise he engaged in. Comfort was the enemy. Comfort was complacency. Comfort lulled him into believing that he did not need to worry about the future.

She huffed. “You don’t sleep with a fire? Well, I do.”

Her import was obvious. She wanted to stay the night, wanted to lie down next to him in bed and tempt him all night with the brush of her limbs against his, the scent of lilac on her skin. It would be so easy to succumb to her, to wallow in the warmth of her. It would be easy, right up until the moment when it was not.

But it would be weakness to light a fire just because the air was a little cold. Just as it was weakness to indulge in one’s desire for intercourse, merely because a woman was willing.

She looked at him levelly. “You’re not saying anything. Does that mean you want me to go?”

“Not exactly.”

She gathered the shreds of her gown about her. “Well. That hurts.”

She had confessed her hurt to him so easily, without worrying what he might think of her. Ned felt a twinge of oh-so-unworthy jealousy.

Just before he’d left for China, he had once sat in on a set of meetings that his solicitor had arranged, so that he might hire an estate manager. He had not known what sort of questions to put to the candidates, beyond requesting letters attesting to their character and competence.

His solicitor, however, had filled the time. The man hadn’t interrogated the potential workers on their views about agriculture or animal husbandry—questions that Ned might have found relevant. Instead, he’d concentrated on questions that seemed irredeemably useless.

“What,” the man had asked each fellow earnestly, “is your greatest weakness?”

It was a stupid question because it was nothing but an invitation to spout falsehoods. No man had ever answered with, “I drink to excess and beat my children.” Instead, the vast majority of them had come up with answers that were carefully crafted to avoid any appearance of weakness at all.

“I am so eager to serve my masters,” one fellow had said, “that I must sometimes take extra precautions so as not to work on the Sabbath day, in violation of God’s commandments.”

Another man’s greatest weakness had ostensibly been a proclivity for boiled sweets.

It hardly seemed a surprise. Only an idiot or a very brave man would confess his true feelings. Ned kept his greatest weakness lodged deep inside him, hidden from common view. It was a deep, frightening chasm of inadequacy, which he had learned to hide behind a veneer of humor. He’d papered over that chasm these past years, but he kept it in check with what Lady Harcroft had called black magic tricks. Cold at night. Exercise in the morning. Tricks designed to keep him firmly in control of himself.

Everyone lied about weakness. Everyone, that was, except Kate. She admitted fear and hurt without pausing at all.

It was not just that she owned up to her weakness. She owned her weakness; it did not own her.

She did not need to tiptoe around it. She did not need to grab control and hold on, unwilling to let go. She just said it aloud.

She stared at him, and he realized he’d been silent all along.

He wanted her to stay. He wanted to own not just her body, but her easy self-possession. To feel the strength of her seep into him as she slept beside him at night. All he would have to do was light a spill from the oil lamp and start the kindling going with a little bit of fire.

She wouldn’t understand what that bit of warmth would mean to him. She would see it as light and heat, not another aspect of his control, ceded to someone else. She had no way to know what he feared, had no need to fight the encroaching darkness.

“Right.” She stood and gathered her night rail about her. Even cloaked in that filmy material, she seemed as regal as a queen. “Well, then. I suppose I should go.”

She started to walk away from him.

He stood, took three strides across the room and grabbed her arm.

She looked up at him, her eyes implacable in the reflected lamplight. “What is it?”

He couldn’t say what he meant, so instead he simply hugged her to him. She was soft and lovely, and she smelled like lilac in summer. “It’s not you,” he muttered into her hair. “It’s the fire.”

She pulled away and raised one eyebrow. “That’s comforting,” she said in a tone that suggested she was anything but comforted. And before he could damn himself with faint explanations, she left the room.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE MORNING WAS STILL GRAY and misty, the sun not yet over the horizon when Ned arose to say his farewells to Harcroft. The man had dressed and breakfasted by the time Ned’s boots crunched the gravel on the drive. Harcroft’s carriage waited, the boot loaded with the trunks the man had brought.

Ned put out his hand. “Best of luck to you,” he said. “And Godspeed.” The latter he meant; he couldn’t wait until Harcroft had put miles between him and Kate. The former sentiment was about as insincere as he could manage.

The earl clasped his arm briefly and then looked around. “Think on what I told you the other night. Think on it carefully. Because if you do find Louisa here, you’ll have to act in my stead.”

God forbid. Ned shook his head. “I thank you for your concern. You’d best be off. You’ve a long journey ahead of you, and you’ll need every hour of daylight.” He glanced behind him.

“Lo

oking for your wife?” Harcroft asked dryly. “Still nervous about her, eh? Still asking for her permission for every touch, and cringing like a child if she says no?”

“Not quite.” Ned saw no reason to share the complicated details of his life with a man who believed that intimacy ought to be conducted with fists and blows. He looked away in exasperation.

But Harcroft must have read agreement into his averted gaze because the man clapped him on the shoulders. “There. If that doesn’t motivate you, nothing will. Trust me. True men don’t ask. They take.”

In Ned’s estimation, real men didn’t throw tantrums if their whim was thwarted.

“Quite right,” he said. “And, oh, do look at the time! You really should be on your way.”

“Come, Carhart. Tell me you’ll rein your wife in.”

“She’s my wife.” He glanced over at the man. And it really is none of your concern. “Why does it matter so much?”

Harcroft chewed his lip before leaning in close to impart his secret. “Because I think she may have instigated whatever happened with Louisa. I’ve been thinking it over, and Louisa didn’t start truly questioning my authority until she and Kate became friends. In fact, I’m sure of it. Your wife set her against me in some female fashion. I’m certain of it, although I can’t prove how—although with women, one has to just trust one’s instincts.”