Chapter Five
May 1811
32b Canary Street
London, England
W hen William was invited into the private residence of Eriam Holden, the first thing he noticed was the smell. Dank and damp, like flowers left in a vase to wilt. The second thing he noticed was Lady Katherine... and the color of her dress. Not blue, as he’d requested, but a creamy pink that brought out the shimmers of gold in the soft curls surrounding her heart-shaped countenance.
The defiant tilt of her chin as she performed a flawless curtsy in the doorway of the parlor told him that the choice had been a deliberate one, and the sardonic pull of his lips let her know that her challenge had been received.
“You look as lovely as a rose in bloom,” he told her, and to his further amusement she merely nodded, as if the compliment was not only anticipated, but a due to be paid for the privilege of being in her presence.
Some might have deemed Katherine conceited, but William liked her confidence. A woman who was sure of herself was a beautiful creature indeed, and in his twenty-three years of life, he’d yet to witness Katherine’s equal. When he’d spotted her last night across the ballroom... well, it would be poetic nonsense to say that the world had shifted on its axis. But something had moved, compelling him to approach her when it was in his nature to do the opposite. Even then, he’d expected his interest to quickly wane. But after their kiss on the terrace, she was all he had thought about. All he could think about. And the hours from then to now had crawled like a slow eternity of torture.
“What do you have planned for our outing, my lord?” Long lashes, a shade darker than her flaxen mane, swept down, concealing the brilliant blue of her irises as she continued to hover in the doorway.
“A carriage ride through Hyde Park, if you would still find that enjoyable.”
“I find all sorts of riding enjoyable,” she purred throatily.
William’s stomach clenched. Leaving the platter of lukewarm coffee and crumbling biscuits that a maid had brought out upon his arrival untouched, he crossed the parlor and stopped directly in front of her. The air between them vibrated with tantalizing awareness, and were they back in the web of shadows that had shielded them from sight at the ball, he wouldn’t have hesitated to yank her against him and plunder her mouth with his own. But there were rules when it came to young ladies (thus explaining his general avoidance), and even he wouldn’t go so far as to compromise a woman in the middle of the morning whilst standing in her family home.
“Lady Katherine,” he gritted.
Her lashes slowly lifted. “Yes, my lord?”
“Is your father available?” Behind his back, William’s hands curled into fists as he struggled to restrain his baser instincts. A foreign battle, as he was typically a man of supreme composure. Nothing rattled his cool, calm sense of control. Nothing, it seemed, except for Katherine Holden. “I should like to speak with him before we depart.”
The warmth faded from the room with the speed and completeness of a candle snuffer dropping over an open flame.
“My father is currently indisposed.” Tension radiated along the elegant line of her jaw as she turned her head to the side. “Is your carriage outside? I’ve an appointment later in the afternoon that I cannot be late for.”
“It is,” he said, studying her closely.
William understood the complicated relationship that could exist between a parent and their child. He had one with his own father, a boisterous, careless wastrel who would have haphazardly destroyed seven generations of wealth had William not continuously intervened and dragged him from the gambling hells by the scruff of his collar.
As the second-born son, Henry Colborne had spent most of his life wallowing in self-indulgence after marrying a pretty debutante and producing a male heir—the bare minimum required of him. But when his brother—William’s uncle—had snapped his neck racing phaetons in the park, Henry unexpectedly found himself crowned as the new Marquess of Kentwood.
Overwhelmed by the vastness of the fortune at his disposal, he’d spent a quarter of it within a year and had been well on his way to running through the rest before William, with the aid of his grandfather, the Duke of Cumberland, who had always been more of a paternal figure to William than his own father, managed to reel Henry in.
Since then, the marquess’s health had taken a turn for the worse. All those years of drinking and sleeping with anything that moved had finally caught up with him, leaving Henry mostly bedridden with ailments that ran the gamut from gout to venereal distemper. A sad, but not undeserved ending for a man who had systematically squandered every opportunity handed to him, quite literally, on a silver platter.
“If we’re to go out in public, then you should have a proper chaperone.” Unable to stop himself from touching her, William glided his thumb along her cheekbone as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “If your father is not available, is there no one else that can accompany you?”
“I have an older sister, but she is attending a dress fitting.” A shadow flitted across Katherine’s face, there and gone in a blink. “Mara is getting married at the end of the month. To the Duke of Southwick.”
“Why aren’t you with her?”
“Why do you ask so many questions?”
He didn’t . . . usually.
But he could see sadness there, behind the self-assuredness and sharp quips that Katherine built around herself like a wall covered in thorny roses. Sadness that he wanted to rip out with his bare hands, even if it made him bleed. Another foreign sensation that he didn’t know entirely what to do with. So he took a step back, to where the footing was more familiar.
“This was a mistake,” he heard himself say, his tone painfully dry and formal. It was the tone he used when he spoke with his grandfather. A tone forged in the midst of a chaotic upbringing.
A child being raised by children .
Wasn’t that what his governess had said when she thought he wasn’t listening? When he’d been pretending to sleep upstairs while his parents had cavorted below in a drunken orgy of depravity and opium. Or, as they’d referred to it, another ordinary Tuesday evening. But perhaps he ought to be grateful, for it was the combination of all those Tuesday evenings that had made him who he was today, a man of remarkable discipline and self-restraint. A man who recognized the weight and worth of his title. A man who had no intention of following in the footsteps of a spendthrift scoundrel.
His behavior at the ball had been an exception, not the rule, he saw that now. He saw, too, that to be around a woman like Katherine was to illicit the sort of dangerous temptations that his father had fallen prey to. Temptations he’d done his damned best to avoid.
“I apologize for wasting your time, my lady. I’ll see myself out.” He bowed stiffly, then waited for her to step aside and let him pass.
Instead, she tilted her head and pursed her lips.
Lips capable of making even the most pious priest succumb to sin.
“If you are going to waste my time, Lord Radcliffe... then at least make it worth my while.” Her heel jutted back, and the click of the latch plate as the door swung closed was as loud as a gunshot in the enclosed space.
Heat pooled in his loins and he was pike hard even before she grabbed his waistcoat and pulled herself up to his mouth. A tease of a pause, a hint of sanity, and then they were right back on that terrace, in the dark, where shadows blurred reality and caution was a thing to be thrown to the wind.
The door rattled on its hinges as he shoved her against it, one hand cushioning the middle of her back while the other tangled in her hair, sending pins flying in every direction. He swallowed her moan; it tasted of desire and desperation, the kind that threatened to consume a man whole even as it slyly beckoned him closer. Even as it bid him to abandon all rational thought in exchange for raw, unadulterated lust.
She nipped his lower lip and he growled before returning the favor, using his tongue to soothe the bite before plunging it between her lips to feast in a cavern of silky, sensual delights.
At the ball, he’d detected a hint of champagne dancing on her breath. This morning, it was peaches. Rich, ripe peaches. The sort that dribbled juice down your chin when you sank your teeth into them. And that’s what he wanted to do to her. To kiss, lick, and nibble all the sweet parts of her body until his mouth was wet from her wanting.
Until it was soaked .
Her breasts overflowed into his palms when he adjusted his grip on the curves of her body, and she gasped when he flicked his thumbs across her nipples, the points already pressing boldly against the thin fabric of her bodice and the flimsy excuse for a corset she wore underneath. A simple tug and the dress would fall to her waist, exposing inch upon delicious inch of pearly skin to the dappled morning light streaming in through the windows.
As he pictured her clothed in sunshine and nothing else, it took whatever fleeting control still remained in his possession not to free his rock-hard cock, pin her hands above her head, and take what he really wanted. What every piece of him was humming for. What every part of his being wanted more than his next breath.
If he stopped now, it was just a kiss.
A kiss to trounce all kisses in the history of mankind, but still... just a kiss.
Nothing more.
If he stopped now.
Propriety warred with passion as he peeled himself off her and raked his fingers through his hair, grasping the strands by the roots. Requiring distance, he stalked to the nearest window and stared blindly through the clear glass, his mind a muddled mess.
Maybe he had more of his father in him than he cared to admit.
Or maybe his loss of control came courtesy of a half years’ worth of celibacy, as he’d not slept with a woman since ending his affair with a comely widow over the winter. That wasn’t to say he hadn’t sought relief by his own hand, but there was a marked different between a man’s own palm and the soft, yielding flesh of a woman.
Just as there was a difference between a widow and a debutante.
Scrubbing his hands across his face, William started to turn, a formal apology already poised on the tip of his tongue... only to find Kitty leaning lasciviously against the door, her spine arched in a way that put her ample bosom on full display and a hand splayed suggestively below her navel.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked, raising a brow. “Or should we stay here and resume our... activity?”
If they stayed, he’d have her bent over the sofa in a matter of seconds.
Suddenly, a ride through Hyde Park sans chaperone didn’t seem so scandalous.
“After you, my lady,” he said roughly, gesturing at the door, not trusting himself to take his hands off her if he touched her again.
“Thank you, my lord.” She sauntered into the foyer, her lovely derriere attracting the full, unabashed weight of his gaze. A gaze that jerked hastily upright when she abruptly halted and peered at him over her shoulder. “Lord Radcliffe?”
“Yes?”
A dimple he’d not noticed before winked mischievously in her cheek as she tapped her nose with a gloved fingertip. “Eyes up here, if you would.”
“My eyes are up, Lady Katherine.” But as he followed her out the front door, William was left to wonder how the hell he was going to keep them there.
*
After their first circle around one of Hyde Park’s less-traveled bridlepaths, Kitty fancied herself smitten by Lord William Colborne. By the end of the second, she was convinced that she’d fallen in love. This was not a particularly unusual event; by her count, she’d been in love no fewer than two times before. But the severity of the fall... that was notable.
When she was a girl of fourteen with stars in her eyes, she’d tripped over Lord Theodore Plinkton but had quickly recovered her balance after she wrote out Lady Plinkton in her journal and found the name to be distasteful.
A year later, she’d kissed James O’Connor in the broom closet and had almost dropped to her knees (and not just because he’d asked her to). But once she’d recovered from the shine of his blue eyes, she’d realized that a stable boy, while undeniably handsome, could not provide her with the future that she sought.
Since then, she’d been more careful with her heart. What remained of it, anyway, after an upbringing that had hammered it down into a shape that was hardly recognizable. But as she sat across from William in his gleaming black barouche carriage pulled by a pair of quality gray thoroughbreds, Kitty found herself quite flat on the ground. And it wasn’t just because he was wealthy, titled, and sinfully attractive (although those things certainly didn’t hurt).
It was the way he held her when he kissed her. As if they were lost at sea in the midst of a storm and he was keeping her head above water.
It was the way he looked at her. As if she were a vice he didn’t want but an addiction he couldn’t quell.
It was the force and power he exuded. As if he were a man who was accustomed to getting every single thing that he desired, no questions asked.
But there were some downsides that she needed to consider. He was only an earl, not the duke that she’d had her mind set on. He also wasn’t a husband who would be easily manipulated into doing whatever she wanted.
But what alternative did she have?
As soon as Mara was married, she would move out, and Kitty would be left to fend for herself. It was no secret that her sister had taken many a vicious blow caused by her impertinent tongue. Mara was the obedient daughter, Kitty the willful, and their father... their father was a monster whose drunken rages had led him to do terrible, terrible things.
Like murdering their mother.
But they didn’t talk about that.
Kitty didn’t even like to think about it.
Because some secrets were meant to be kept, and the night Eriam Holden had shoved his wife down the stairs while his daughters cowered under a blanket in their room was one of the biggest secrets of all.
A morning carriage ride through the park with the Earl of Radcliffe and no one to chaperone her but the driver was a mark on her reputation that Kitty was willing to risk. But being renowned throughout the ton as the offspring of a murderous drunkard? That was a scandal of gargantuan proportions. No gentleman worth his money would want to be associated with such a family.
She didn’t want to be associated with such a family.
And if she married William, she wouldn’t have to be. If she married William, she could start fresh and leave her past behind. If she married William, she could be the grand lady she’d always envisioned. Which meant, for the indeterminable future, she needed to be on her very best behavior.
No losing her temper.
No catty remarks.
Most importantly of all, no more passionate encounters in the parlor.
If she was going to be a countess, then she needed to act like one, as it was evident that her future husband was a man who appreciated rules and decorum, or else he wouldn’t have asked to meet her father... or stopped at a kiss.
Starting now, she was going to be poised.
Starting now, she was going to polite.
Starting now, she was going to be perfect .
“You never told me, my lord, what business took you to Boston,” she said, demurely folding her hands in her lap as the horses slowed to a walk in order to safely navigate a narrow bridge, their iron-shod hooves clopping loudly on the stone.
“I am considering purchasing a company and moving it to London.”
“Moving an entire company across an ocean? That seems like a daunting task.”
Sinewy muscles rippled under the fine cut of his ebony tailcoat as he stretched his arms across the top of his seat. “I am not one to be deterred by a challenge, Lady Katherine.”
Her lips curved. “A fine attribute, to be sure.”
“Indeed.”
They both fell quiet as the carriage traveled along at a leisurely pace past a fragrant hedge composed entirely of lilacs. Reaching out, William grasped a violet bloom and twisted it neatly off its branch. Kitty blinked when he held it out to her.
“For me?” she asked, somewhat dumbly.
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Unless there’s someone else sitting across from me.”
“I... thank you,” she said, accepting the gift with fingers that trembled ever so slightly.
It was foolish, to be undone by such a small, insignificant gesture. Men had given flowers to women for as long as courtship had existed. But up until this very moment, they hadn’t given them to her .
Compliments and kisses?
She’d received both in abundance.
But a flower . . .
This flower, from this man . . .
It meant something. Surely it had to mean something. Or else what was the bloody point of anything?
“Thank you,” she repeated, cradling the lilac against her chest with all the care of a newborn babe.
“You’re very welcome, Lady Katherine.”
“Please...” She bowed her head to sniff the flower. When she looked up again, it was with a truly genuine smile. Not the kind that she practiced for hours in the mirror to make certain that she didn’t show too much of her teeth or that her nose didn’t wrinkle or her cheeks didn’t bulge. But a smile straight from her heart. “Call me Kitty.”