Chapter Nine
April 1813
Duke and Duchess of Southwick’s private residence
London, England
“A nd then what happened?” Mara asked, her hands clasped so tightly together in her lap that the blood had leached from her knuckles.
“Aye, don’t stop there,” Jack chimed in agreement from where she’d settled on the armrest of the chaise longue, pointy chin cupped in the palm of her hand. “What ’appened when William came back? Did ye stab him? I would’ve stabbed ’im.”
“No, I didn’t stab him.” Kitty rose to her feet and shook out her skirts. “He tried to make his explanation—briefly—and I left London shortly thereafter. Then I married him. Eventually.”
Jack’s nose wrinkled. “Gross. Why would ye go and do a thing like that?”
“Because she loved him.” Mara stood up and placed a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder. “And I’m sure it was nothing more than a large misunderstanding.”
“I needed him in order to escape an untenable situation,” Kitty corrected. “Love had nothing—love has nothing—to do with it. Thus, my desire for a divorce.”
“I would’ve stabbed him. Right here, in the heart.” Jack drove a fist into her chest as she dove face first onto the chaise longue. “What happened to the madwoman?” she asked, her voice muffled by the cushions. “Did ye at least stab her ?”
“Alessandra died two months later,” Kitty said curtly. “She took her own life by jumping out a window. Then William went to Boston for a year, and I—”
“You came to Southwick Castle,” Mara murmured. “I remember. You said it was because your complexion was in desperate need of fresh country air, but you never made mention of what truly happened between you and Lord Radcliffe. Oh, Kitty. I’m so very—”
“Sorry, yes.” She shrugged out of her sister’s embrace. “It was all very sorry. For everyone. Alessandra was ill. Her mind... it wasn’t right. But William knew what he was doing. He knew what he was withholding from me.”
“Lord Radcliffe is a good man. I’m sure he had his reasons, and we all have our secrets,” Mara said with quiet significance. “You still married him. Despite what he’d concealed from you, you still made the choice to marry him. You made vows, Kitty. Before God. Vows that cannot be easily undone.”
Kitty gave an indelicate snort. “You’re one to talk about vows. If memory serves, you were considering taking a lover not too long ago!”
“You know that’s not true,” Mara hissed, her cheeks turning the same shade of pink as the climbing roses on the front trellis. “I wasn’t going to really take a lover. Not in the way that you’re implying. And since resolving our... marital relations... Ambrose and I have never been happier.”
“Not all marital relations can be resolved.”
“I wish you’d told me this sooner. I could have helped, or at least provided support.” Mara reached out and squeezed her hand. “You are my sister, and I love you.”
Part of Kitty wanted to fling her arms around Mara’s neck and hold onto her like she’d done when they were little girls. The other part wanted to curl up in a dark, damp cave to lick its wounds like an injured animal.
The animal won.
“Come along, Jack.” She slid her hand free of Mara’s grasp and turned toward her charge. “It’s time to go.”
“But I was jest gettin’ comfortable,” Jack complained as she peeled herself off the chaise longue. Her gaze slid to the half empty decanter on the liquor cabinet. “Can we take that with us?”
“No.”
“But—”
“You can stay here if you’d like,” Kitty said, starting for the door. “I’m sure they could use another scullery maid.”
“Scrub chamber pots? The ’ell I will.” Jack sprinted out of the parlor as if her shoes had caught fire, while Kitty hesitated in the threshold.
“I wish that William and I could be like you and Ambrose.” She kept her eyes low. “I see how he looks at you. William does not look at me like that. I don’t think he can, not with all of the guilt he has inside him from what happened to Alessandra and...”
“And?”
“Nothing.” She gave a curt shake of her head. “Our marriage contains a ghost, and there isn’t room for the three of us. I don’t want a divorce, Mara. But I need to be free.”
“I understand,” Mara said softly. “But I would caution you on one aspect.”
Her fingers tapped impatiently on the doorframe. “And what’s that?”
“Make sure it’s your husband you’re running from.”
*
The house was eerily quiet when William entered the front hall. That, in and of itself, told him Kitty was not in the residence, a suspicion confirmed shortly by Stevens.
“Her ladyship”—the valet’s voice dripped with barely concealed disdain—“left before dinner, my lord. She took that... urchin ...with her.”
“You mean Jack?” he asked, handing off his coat and hat to a waiting footman.
“Yes.” Stevens’s face pinched inward, as if he’d just caught wind of a terrible stench. “ Jack . Are you aware that yesterday she was caught swinging from the curtains in the drawing room? And the day before that, she used the banister as a slide. A slide , my lord.”
“Sounds to me like our guest is enjoying herself.” To William’s bemusement, he had already started to grow somewhat fond of Jack. While their interactions had been limited to a few dinners and one rainy afternoon spent teaching Jack how to play piquet while Kitty had been at the modiste, the wild youth was entertaining (if a bit of a card cheat), and she kept Stevens on his toes. She also seemed to make Kitty happy... and that had to count for something, as it was more than he could do.
“At this rate, that wretched child will have the house destroyed by the end of the month,” Stevens predicted darkly.
The corners of William’s mouth twitched. “Come now, it can’t be all that bad. Did the countess give you any indication of when she would return?”
“No, my lord, she did not.”
“In that case, I’ll retire early.”
Flickering candlelight guided him up the stairs to the master bedchamber. Swathed in burgundy wall hangings and dominated by a gargantuan four-poster bed complete with canopy, it was a heavily male dominated space. There was nothing of Kitty in here. Nothing but the memory of her perfume and perhaps a blonde hair under his pillow, left there from their last wanton copulation.
He’d have preferred that she slept by his side. Separate bedrooms were never something that he’d aspired to in his marriage. But the wall between them was tallest at night, and barring an evening rendezvous brought on by lust and wine, the door leading from this bedroom to the next remained closed and locked.
He poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter beside his bed and began to undress, forgoing a cumbersome nightdress in favor of sleeping in a loose-fitting pair of cotton drawers, leaving his upper body exposed to the balmy spring air nipping in through a partially cracked window. Picking a tome at random from the bookshelf on the far wall, he settled himself on the mattress, took a sip of his drink, and flipped idly to the first chapter to read by candlelight, an ingrained habit that helped him calm his mind and ready it for sleep... something that didn’t always come easily.
The careless stomp of feet on the stairs alerted him to Kitty’s return. His brow creasing, he pointedly turned to the next page, forcing his thoughts to remain within the parameters of the ink and paper propped against raised thighs. In another world, in another marriage, he might have left his room to greet his wife in the hall. Might have welcomed her back with a searing kiss before tossing her over his shoulder and loping off to the chamber they both shared. Might have blown out the candles and peeled off her garments by the light of the moon. Might have laid her out on the bed with her legs dangling off the side and crouched between them, his mouth salivating at the sweet nectar he could already taste on his tongue.
But in this world, in this marriage, he merely drank his brandy before turning to the second chapter. And it wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t what he’d bloody well dreamt of after that first night when he kissed Kitty on the terrace. But after everything he’d done... after everything he’d done, it was no less than what he deserved.
Abandonment, mistruths, murder .
Who the hell was he?
What the hell had he become?
Falling in love with Katherine Holden had brought out his best qualities, but it had also revealed the worst. It had peeled back the protective layers he’d constructed around himself with painstaking care and then stripped them away fully, leaving him raw, exposed, and vulnerable. The three things he abhorred more than anything else.
Vulnerability was weakness.
Weakness was pain.
Hadn’t he learned that as a young boy, waiting in vain for his parents to notice him? To approve of him? To love him?
When the pain of being ignored and overlooked finally became too much to bear, he’d learned how to lock it away, to hide it within himself and put on a front of cold indifference. A front that Kitty had cracked open wide with her guileless blue eyes and mischievous grin. And just when he’d thought that he had no more need for the vault around his heart, just when he was getting ready to throw away the key that locked the door up tight, he managed to fuck it all the way around.
Not to say everything was his fault.
His pretty little wife was not blameless, although he didn’t blame her. How could he? How could he when he’d never told her? About Alessandra. About the engagement. About Kilmister Park. About any of it. It had been more convenient to tuck it away. To tell himself that it was all taken care of because he was taking care of it—not because he had to, but because if he hadn’t, no one else would.
He’d tucked Alessandra away with one hand and embraced Kitty with the other under the bold, na?ve assumption that never the twain would meet. Until they did. Until the woman he vowed that he’d provide for had threatened the woman he wanted to marry. And he had handled it... poorly.
He saw that now.
He’d seen it then , as it was bloody happening, but he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t a saint. He’d made a mistake. He’d mishandled the situation, and by doing so, had done nothing but cause more hurt. To himself. To Kitty. To Alessandra.
Poor Alessandra, whose fractured mind hadn’t been able to contemplate a life without him, whose jealousy had burned through what remained of her sanity. Whose bedroom window had shattered when she threw herself against it and plummeted to her grisly end.
Blood and roses.
Her life had ended in blood and roses, while his... his had continued on at the pace of a death march.
His parents, oblivious.
His grandfather, on extended holiday.
His secret fiancée, dead.
His relationship with Kitty, ended.
He still remembered, with vivid clarity, the hurt in her eyes when he’d stood on her doorstep in the midst of a drenching rain. His hat in his hand, with water sluicing off his face, he had tried to explain the unexplainable.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
“Yes, we were engaged.”
“Yes, I am responsible for her.”
And then, the worst:
“I cannot leave her in such a fragile state. When she’s better, we can resume our courtship. Until then... until then, I should remain close to Kilmister Park.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed me,” she’d said as sparks of anger had begun to burn through the hurt in those wide pools of endless blue. “If you were engaged to her, you shouldn’t have kissed me .”
How could he have disagreed, when it was the truth? Even though he never had any intention of marrying Alessandra, they were still connected. He shouldn’t have pursued a courtship with Kitty until the lines were clearly drawn, until the two of them had been clearly separated. He shouldn’t have lied to her by omission or presented himself as unencumbered. But he had. He had, because to have not kissed Kitty in those whispers of moonlight would have been like turning his back on the fucking sun.
“Alessandra has doctors who can care for her,” Kitty had reasoned. “You don’t have to be there.”
“I do,” he’d said, even though he knew it wasn’t the answer she wanted or would accept. “I do have to be there.”
“For how long?” She’d glanced over her shoulder into the house and something had flickered in her gaze. Something he’d never seen before, but something he would see in the future: fear. “How long will I have to wait?”
“I am not certain,” he’d admitted. “I don’t know how long it will take for her to stabilize. I do... I do have strong feelings for you, Kitty. I anticipate this courtship blooming into a thing of great significance.”
“Blooming,” she had repeated. “Blooming when , William? I won’t be a man’s second choice.”
“You’re not my second choice. You’re...” But when the words wouldn’t come—how could he give her words he’d never heard himself?—she’d closed the door in his face, as was her due, and he’d gone to Kilmister Park, as was his.
For weeks, months, he’d worked with Dr. Bainbridge and Alessandra to reach a path forward. He’d done everything in his power to help her understand that while he cared for her and her wellbeing, he did not belong to her. The engagement was over. He was not going to be her husband. He was going to marry someone else—if that someone else would have him. When it appeared Alessandra was making progress, when Dr. Bainbridge assured him that she would not escape again, he got in his carriage—on that fateful September 5th—and he tried to leave... until the screams brought him rushing back.
He sent letters off to Alessandra’s family and waited for them to arrive before proceeding with a funeral. He sent a letter to Kitty as well, but if she received it, she did not reply.
Finally, after all that could be settled with Alessandra was settled (aside from the gnawing guilt that her grandfather, Mountbatten, did not share), he made haste for London. For the woman he’d left behind in the rain. But Kitty wasn’t there. She wasn’t any where that he could find. So William did the only logical thing he could think of. He’d left one last letter for her in London and then he’d taken his bruised heart back to Boston, where the Americans’ relentless entrepreneurial spirit had kept his mind busy for the better part of a year while his soul had hardened. And once twelve months had passed, once the first anniversary of Alessandra’s suicide had come and gone, he’d returned to lay flowers on her grave.
Then he’d committed murder.
Jaw clenching, he closed the book he’d been pretending to read and ran his fingers through his hair, disheveling the wheaten strands. After such a tumultuous courtship, had he really expected to have a calm, peaceful marriage? Madness, mayhem, and murder: the building blocks that had started his relationship with Kitty. Now, if she had her way, divorce would end it. And would it truly be that terrible? A legal separation slicing their entwined lives apart. Naturally, the gossip mongers would have a feast. But he’d never concerned himself with what others thought. If he had, his parents’ apathy would have crippled him a long time ago.
William looked sharply at the door when it creaked open and Kitty slipped inside. She wore only an ivory dressing robe belted loosely at the waist, exposing the rounded curves of her magnificent breasts to his ravenous gaze. Her nipples, dusky rose in the muted yellow glow, were clearly visible through the sheer fabric of her robe and already erect. A maid had taken the pins from her hair and it swung loose over her shoulders and down her back in a tousled spill of yellow silk. Her eyes were heavy. Her lips slightly parted.
“What are you doing?” he said hoarsely. “It’s late, Kitty, and I don’t have the energy to fight with you. Not tonight.”
“I didn’t come here to fight.” She closed the door with a subtle nudge of her bare heel and then leaned against it. Her fingers, long and elegant, went to the knot over her left hip... and his mouth went dry when she pulled and her robe fell open before slithering to the floor in a pool of white. “I came here for you.”
“You don’t want me.”
A poignant smile briefly shaped her lips. “I’ve always wanted you, William. Even when I shouldn’t. Even when I tell myself not to. This”—she tapped the side of her head—“knows better, but this”—her hand trailed slowly down her body, tracing over hill and valley before she touched herself between her thighs—“has never listened. And it doesn’t feel like listening tonight.”
It was a bad idea.
A bloody terrible idea.
Coming together in the cover of darkness wasn’t going to fix what was broken in the light. Then again, maybe nothing could fix what was broken. Maybe... maybe it was better to simply make do with the shattered pieces. Because as loath as he was to admit his own weakness, having half of Kitty was better than having none of her.
He left the bed and shed his trousers in one fluid motion, revealing a hard cock sprung to attention. Meeting her at the door, he grasped her wrists and yanked them above her head, pinning them to the wood before he took her mouth and devoured it, tongue thrusting boldly between plump lips to lick and savor.
She kissed him back, their passion as wild and sprawling as Scottish heather in the heat of summer.
Abandoning his grip on her arms, he fell to his knees in front of her and nudged her thighs apart. She gasped when he licked the small nub nestled in a bed of dark blonde curls, nails skimming across his scalp before anchoring in dual fistfuls of hair. She nearly ripped out the strands by the roots when he plunged his tongue inside of her, but there was immense pleasure to be found in the haze of pain. Jutting his palms up against the half-moon curve of her hips, he held her fast to the door as he feasted on all that was sweet with a hint of tart. Blackberry filling without the extra measure of sugar.
When her legs quivered, when her toes curled, he continued to ruthlessly plunder and pillage, taking more. Taking everything her delectable little body had to give and then some. Only when she wilted on a dreamy sigh, only when his arms were the only thing holding her upright, did he rise to his feet and carry her to the bed.
She squealed when he tossed her on top of it, bouncing harmlessly on the mattress before scrambling to the other side, a half-hearted attempt at escape in a game that they both enjoyed. Snaring her ankle, he pulled her into the middle of the bed and pounced with a low, rumbling growl, nipping her shoulder before flipping her over to stare triumphantly into sapphire-blue eyes burning with desire.
Thick lashes fanning low over to the tops of her cheeks, she stretched her arms above her head, lazily arching her back and drawing his animalistic focus to her stunning breasts.
“Do you want me , William?” she purred.
“Yes,” he said harshly, muscles tensing as he held himself poised above her.
“Then take me.”
So he did. On top of her, with her legs wrapped around his buttocks. Underneath of her, with her sitting astride riding him better than any horse. Behind her, with her round arse pushed flush against his loins and his cock buried to the hilt in wet, velvet heat.
He took her again, and again, in countless ways, in a myriad of positions, always teetering along that razor-sharp edge. Pouring all of himself into all of Katherine. Into the woman that made him gnash his teeth in frustration even as he yearned to hold her close. Into the woman that was the source of all his dreams and the cause of all his nightmares. Into the woman he should have left, who wanted to leave him. But that would mean giving this up, and that... that, he would never do.
Katherine was his , Godammit.
His wife.
His lover.
His nemesis.
Whether she wanted to be or not.
When they finally came, when release rolled like a wave, it consumed them both in a fierce, fiery crash and they collapsed in a breathless heap side by side, Kitty dazed with a wrist draped limply across her temple whilst William lay with a knee raised and an arm crooked under his head.
Reaching blindly for the brandy he’d set aside earlier, he took a sip and then passed the glass to his wife. With a murmur of assent, she sat up just high enough to drink, and one side of his mouth raised in a superior male smirk when she sputtered, wrinkled her adorable nose, and shoved the brandy back into his hand.
“That’s not wine.”
“No,” he agreed before he finished the remaining contents. “It isn’t.”
Silence reigned, not entirely uncomfortable, and William’s eyes began to grow heavy before he felt Kitty stirring beside him.
“Leaving?” he asked, keeping his tone deceptively neutral as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, her hair tumbling down the middle of her spine in a tangle of curls.
“I sleep better in my own chamber.” She started to stand and cast a questioning glance over her shoulder when he leaned sideways and grasped her by the elbow, his fingers wrapping around the delicate web of green veins hovering just below the surface where her pulse fluttered steadily.
“And if I requested that you remain here? With me? Would that be so terrible?”
She turned her head, shielding her countenance from his view. “We’ve discussed this—”
“No, we haven’t. We fuck,” he said flatly. “And we fight. There’s nothing in between.”
“Is that so terrible?”
“Is it what you want?” he challenged, holding firm to her arm when she tried to pull it away. “Because I don’t.”
“What I want is a divorce.”
“Yes, I am aware. You’ve made that abundantly clear. But I’m not letting you go, Katherine.”
“Why the bloody hell not?” she asked shrilly. Under the pad of his thumb, her pulse began to race. “You don’t love me, William. You married me out of guilt, and I married you to better my situation. We both know it. We may keep our secrets from everyone else, but not from each other.”
“You’re right.”
“Furthermore, I—what?” she broke off, incredulous. “ What did you say?”
“You’re right.” It was the first—now the second—time he’d ever spoken those two words aloud to Kitty, words he’d kept compressed down deep, where the real truth lived. The truth he didn’t share with anyone. Not even himself. “Our courtship was a fucking disaster from the beginning to the end. I wish it had been different. But it wasn’t. And we can’t change that. I can’t change what happened to Alessandra, or my part in it. I can’t change that I withheld my engagement from you. I can’t change that I left you. I can’t change what I did to your father. Of course I feel guilty, Kitty.” He released her elbow to run his hands across his face. “I killed two people. And before their blood was even dry, I married you. What kind of man does that make me?” Indescribably weary, he closed his eyes and let his head fall against the mahogany headboard with a soft thud . “What kind of husband?”
For a moment, there was nothing but quiet in the black behind his eyelids.
The heavy rasp of his breathing.
The creak of the bed.
The pop of a wick as a candle burned low.
“William, you...” Kitty’s sigh was as light as a snowflake spinning to the frozen ground. “You’re not a bad man and you’re not a bad husband. I am... aware that I can be difficult. Selfish. Conceited, certainly. Quick tempered, maybe a little. But I’m not a bad woman. Neither of us are bad people, even after what we’ve done. But that doesn’t mean we’re good together .” She placed her hand on his thigh, fingers spreading across taut muscle. “We shouldn’t have married. It was impulsive and reckless. We made a mistake. That’s all. A mistake that I am trying to correct.”
He opened his eyes to find her staring at him. Not with anger, as was so often the case these past few months, but with compassion. With empathy. With understanding.
All things being equal, he’d have preferred the anger.
“I would give you the moon, if you wanted it,” he rasped. “But I won’t give you this, Katherine. I can’t. There will be no divorce. You won’t leave me.”
Her eyes flashed before she withdrew her hand. Lifting a corner of the coverlet, she covered her breasts. “Then give me a reason to stay, William. Tell me what I want to hear. What I have to hear, if we’re to try building anything from this pile of ash.”
Love. She wanted words of love, of affirmation and adoration. They were words that he should have been able to give freely. Words that were just that... words . Spoken in one breath and gone in the next. Except they weren’t just words. Not to him. Not to the boy who had never heard them himself. And not to the man who didn’t think he deserved to feel them.
If he told Kitty he loved her, he would mean it. In his heart. In his head. In the depths of his blackened soul. But to love her, to love her completely , would also mean abandoning his guilt. It would mean absolving himself of his sins. Of the crimes he’d committed and the pain he’d inflicted, both on purpose and by accident.
And that... that he wasn’t ready to do.
“I’ve given you all that I can. All that I’m capable of.” He rubbed the heel of his hand into the center of his chest where his heart remained hard and unyielding. “I care for you, Kitty. Deeply. That will have to be enough.”
“But it isn’t.” She took the coverlet with her as she slid off the bed. “It isn’t enough, William. It is never going to be enough. I spent my childhood waiting for love from a father incapable of giving anything but slaps and kicks. I won’t spend my adulthood doing the same. I refuse.”
“I would never hit you,” he said, stricken.
“No, you wouldn’t. But there are other ways to hurt the people you care about.” Her mouth thinned. “You should know that better than anyone.”
He gritted his teeth. “Kitty—”
She was already gone.