Chapter 11
Catherine sat beside Aaron for a long time. She watched him slumber beneath his blanket of brandy, weighed down by the waking world. His clothing was dishevelled, the laces of his shirt loosely tied. She bit her lip as she pondered the birthmark.
Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe the birthmark is precisely where it should be. I have not always been able to rely on my own senses.
She thought of the times when she had been told by her Aunt and Uncle of conversations that she had no memory of.
Or which she remembered, but differently to how they described.
Always to their advantage. Always put down to the illness, the same illness that had claimed her parents.
She moved closer to Aaron, studying his face.
So different and yet, so the same. The boy transformed into the man. There is cruelty there. Coldness. Brutish strength.
She tried to remember the boy who had been her companion and childhood friend, and saw the picture, distorted now by broken glass. Her gaze flicked from one to the other until her eyes grew unfocused and her head swam.
Leaning back against the wall beside him, she shuttered her eyelids for a brief moment.
The illness was returning, the feeling of infirmity.
The aches in every limb. Aaron couldn’t possibly know.
But would he really have administered poppy juice to her?
Was that just a ruse to quell any rebelliousness? Keep her docile?
“Catherine,” came a croaky whisper.
His voice tugged at her heart. There was such plaintive emotion in it. His stony exterior had been stripped away by the drink, revealing the frightened boy that lived within the armor.
“I’m here,” she winced at the sudden pain in her stomach.
Aaron’s eyes fluttered open and met hers. They were inches apart.
“Your eyes are golden. You are a goddess, for certain,” he whispered.
His own eyes had the soft darkness of peaty loam. They were portals to a gentle soul hidden by his outward appearance.
“You are in pain,” he murmured, brows creasing.
“I am always in pain. It is the nature of my burden,” she sighed, “it will pass, and one day, it will trouble me no more.”
She spoke fatalistically, but not wanting to be melodramatic.
“Do not say that,” he muttered.
“Would you care?”
“Of course!” he replied hotly.
“You have given no sign of it one way or the other,” she mumbled.
A wave of nausea swept through her, and she found her forehead touching Aaron’s. He held her by the shoulders, hands strong and unyielding. Even a disease must give way before such power.
“I do so now,” Aaron pressed.
“Ah, but now… it is too late. When you are riddled with drink, it does not count for much.”
“In vino veritas.”
“If only I could be worthy of veritas without vino,” she mumbled.
“I do not like this conversation,” he replied, face darkening.
Catherine found a moment of painless clarity. She laughed, her ingrained meekness shed for the moment.
“I do not like much of what has happened to me, but saying so will not help me. We must... play the hand we are dealt. Is that not what you used to say?”
She closed her mouth abruptly as Aaron stroked her cheek with his thumb. His touch moved her beyond the mundane. Beyond the dust sheets and the old furniture. Beyond the smell of brandy.
She tried to reminisce of those idyllic childhood times, but something in his touch refused to allow her to bring those memories to mind.
Instead, she was transported elsewhere, somewhere entirely more sensual and less innocent.
She tilted her face, and the touch of his thumb became his hand, cupping her cheek.
His rough thumb stroked her lips, which she parted for him, breathing out in shallow, desperate gasps.
“I couldn’t agree more. There is little point in wishing. It has never served me well.”
“When we were children, we used to wish all the time,” Catherine whispered.
“Did we?”
She peeled open her eyes and found him distracted by her face, entranced in his study of her. Then he became aware of her gaze, and his look sharpened.
“Yes, I suppose we did,” he mused aloud. “As children often do. When they grow up, they give up childish fancies.”
“And it serves us no better. Perhaps we should still be wishing for that which we don’t have.”
“A recipe for misery.”
“Or hope.”
Aaron laughed, a harsh sound, sharp as the broken edge of a fishing hole in an ice pond.
“Hope?” he asked, “Where have you met such?”
“In your company. Many times. I hoped for the chance to travel, to read, and to write. To experience. You hoped for...”
Aaron fell silent. Catherine waited, but he did not finish her sentence.
“I will not say what I hoped for except victory,” he said at last.
“Over whom?”
“Everyone.”
He levered himself to his feet. Catherine felt bereft of his touch. She lifted her hand to her face as though seeking some trace of it still, lingering on her skin.
Aaron swayed slightly, scowling around the room. He winced and reached into the sleeve of his shirt to remove a wayward piece of glass, discarding it carelessly. Catherine’s eyes widened as the movement revealed his upper right arm through the laces of the shirt.
There was the birthmark, dark against his pale skin. And on the wrong arm.
Aaron caught her staring and glanced down at his shirt. He laced it up, hiding any sight of what lay beneath.
“What are you staring at?” he demanded.
“Your birthmark,” Catherine said, rising weakly.
“You stare at deformity. That is rude.”
He strode away, banging into a piece of furniture and swearing, kicking at it and sending another piece tumbling in a crash.
Catherine instinctively covered her ears at the sound, flinching as she had learned to do when faced with her Aunt and Uncle’s violent tantrums in the past. Aaron stopped, breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice suddenly soft in contrast to his earlier rage, “you do not have to be afraid of me.”
Awkwardly, he righted the furniture he had upturned.
He looked back, and Catherine immediately quelled the urge to cower before him. She fought to overcome the instinct for fear that she had learned back at Haventon.
“I was not trying to frighten you,” he exhaled, kneeling beside her as though to avoid towering over her, “that is not the kind of man I am.”
“Then what kind of man are you?” she asked, voice trembling.
“One who cannot leave a defenseless woman in the face of abuse?” he answered with a sheepish grin. “I could have walked out of Haventon without looking back. But I could not bring myself to abandon you to them.”
“That is the kind of boy you were, too,” Catherine said.
Aaron shrugged, half-turning. “As I said, my memories of childhood are hazy at best. If you say it was so, then it was so.”
“I promise you that it was. It is.”
She studied him, righting herself up and brushing dust from her clothes.
He raked a hand through his hair, sweeping it from his face.
That face had the austere cruelty of a Renaissance statue.
Beautiful, perfectly crafted, but cold and hard.
His honey-brown eyes appeared almost black in the half light, darkened further by his propensity for scowling.
But those eyes were magnetic. Thoughts fled and words dried on her tongue under that stare.
She could only look back and be reminded of the intimacies they had shared already.
It colored her cheeks, and she noted the twitch at the corner of his mouth, a smile quickly smothered.
“Something is funny?” she asked.
“Nothing about this is funny,” Aaron replied, mouth tightening back into a sword blade.
“You smiled.”
“I did not.”
“I was watching and I saw it distinctly.”
“It is dark and you are tired. And unwell.”
Catherine felt the cramp at that moment but tried to keep the pain from her face. She suddenly felt unbearably cold and had to clamp her teeth shut to prevent them from chattering.
“As I said earlier, I am not...” she began, and Aaron arched an eyebrow, stepping closer to her.
“You are flushed but shivering,” he gently touched her forehead, “and warm to the touch. Are you having muscle cramps?”
Catherine shook her head, closing her eyes as he pressed the back of his hand against her head.
His other hand gently enclosed her upper arm, holding her steady.
She swallowed, the feeling of illness temporarily leaving her, as though driven out by his caress.
She gazed up into his eyes, unblinking and, for the moment, utterly lost.
“Your eyes are...”
“Merely eyes,” Aaron interjected smoothly, “I think we should get you to bed. I shall request McKay for a draught of Mother’s Milk.”
“No!” Catherine snapped, spurred by the mention of what she knew to be poppy juice, “I do not know that I have ever had that stuff until I came here!”
Aaron frowned. “I assure you, you did. I am rather… familiar with the signs.”
Catherine pushed him to arm’s length but stopped, her fingertips resting upon his chest. She was unable to break free further.
Unable to push him out of arm’s reach. She licked her lips as he took a step toward her.
Instead of contact from fingertip to chest, now her hand was flat against the slabs of muscle that wrapped him.
Her lips parted at the sensation of tightly controlled strength.
Power held in check by an even greater power—sheer will.
“You are unwell, and I promise to take care of you,” Aaron whispered, his voice hypnotic.
“But I do not know if I can trust you…” she whispered back.
“You can trust me to selfishly protect my own interests, which are not served by a sickly wife,” he answered calmly but with a cold voice, “you can trust me not to abandon you or harm you. I am a gentleman and take the duty of a gentleman more seriously than those who have known nothing else.”
It felt as though he were pressing towards her.
He didn’t seem to be moving, but her arms bent with the force of his magnetism, allowing him to move closer.
Her breathing amplified as though she were expending real effort keeping him at arm’s length.
Her fingers flexed, unable to stop herself from feeling his flat, muscular chest. She allowed them to trail down, savoring the feel of him. The utter masculinity.
“Have you known something else?” she murmured, suddenly.
It was as though a bubble had burst.
Abruptly, the real world came crashing in on them. Aaron stepped away, looking away from her and then back. His hair fell over his narrow, dark eyes. It was pure suspicion, mirroring the sudden feeling that overwhelmed Catherine.
He is hiding something. I was right! I am not safe!
“No. Of course not.”
Panic seethed through Catherine’s veins. She backed away from him, glancing at the door. Terror gripped her, oddly out of proportion to anything that had physically taken place. She knew it, but couldn’t break free of the assault of sheer panic that suddenly held her in a vice-like grip.
Aaron’s face changed, transforming to one of concern, and then her head was spinning. The room went dark.
“McKay, a second small draught is called for,” Gideon said as he lowered Catherine gently onto the canopy bed.
“At once, Your Grace.” McKay withdrew quietly.
Gideon opened the chest at the foot of the bed and retrieved additional blankets. He spread them over her with careful hands, tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear, then sank onto the chair beside her.
Bronze hair spilled across white linen, framing a porcelain face of haunting beauty. For a long moment, he simply watched her sleep.
“I wish I could be free of you. I do not particularly like being vulnerable to anyone…” Gideon whispered, “Attachment is weakness. It seems I need a wife to secure the investment of the Quakers, though. What am I to do?”
Her eyelids fluttered, and she stirred in her sleep.
Without thinking, he soothed her, cooing wordless sounds and stroking her brow until she rested more peacefully.
Her skin was naturally pale, though now a touch flushed with the effects of the poppy juice dependence.
Her features were perfectly feminine. Radiantly beautiful.
“You are drunk, brother!” came Aaron’s voice behind his shoulder.
Gideon shut his eyes, as if darkness alone might banish the apparition. It always found him like this—when his guard was lowered, his strength spent.
“You should never be Duke. I should. I would never have allowed a woman to stand between me and my ambitions.”
“I defeated you,” Gideon muttered, pressing his eyelids tighter still. “I am Duke—and you are dead.”
A cool breath of laughter brushed his ear. “I will always be the son Father chose. You will always be the exile he tolerated.”
Gideon opened his eyes and found himself looking into Catherine’s.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked, sleepily.
“Myself. A bad habit,” Gideon lied.
“You said... Aaron...” Catherine murmured, but sleep was already drawing her back into its embrace.
I must keep my distance from her from this point on. She is too dangerous and might just discover all.