23. The Scheduled Meeting #2
“We’re in the same room now,” he pointed out gently.
“Yes. With Mary present.” Kate glanced at Mary apologetically, needing the reminder that they weren’t alone, that there was a buffer between her and the dangerous pull she felt toward the figure across from her. “No offense intended.”
“None taken, ma’am.”
“I requested Mary’s presence specifically,” Kate continued, her voice gaining strength from the admission. “Because I thought it would make this… easier.”
“And does it?” Jason asked.
Kate finally—finally—forced herself to look at him directly. To really look, to meet those eyes and hold that gaze for more than a fleeting second.
The impact was immediate and overwhelming.
Because those green eyes—Gina’s green beautiful eyes—were, indeed, looking at her in such a way, with such obvious longing barely held in check that it sent her pulse racing a thousand beats a second.
Kate’s breath hitched. Heat flooded through her body, pooling low in her belly in a way that made her want to flee again, made her want to stay, made her want things she couldn’t allow herself to want.
She abruptly averted her gaze once again, unable to give free rein to her impertinent desires; yet that did not prevent the blush from intensifying and spreading across her neck and cheeks, while her hands grew increasingly clammy in her lap.
“No,” she admitted. “But it makes it possible.”
Because without Mary here, Kate wasn’t certain what might happen.
Whether she would run again. Whether she would stay.
Whether she would do something foolish and irreversible, like crossing the space between them and touching Gina’s face just to confirm that the person she’d fallen in love with was real, was still there beneath the masculine disguise.
Jason was quiet for a moment, and Kate could feel the weight of his emotions in the silence.
Jason’s chest felt constricted. Hurt, yes. But also some kind of hope. Because Kate was here. She’d come back after fleeing. She was trying.
“Then I’m grateful to Mary,” he said softly, “for making the impossible merely difficult.”
He saw Kate’s fingers twist in her lap. “We’ll need to practice,” she said abruptly.
“Practice?”
“Conversation. Small talk. The sort of… things that married couples share in public.” He saw her arrange her hair without needing any arrangement. “People will be watching us. They always do. Lady Rutledge particularly. She notices everything.”
He could sense the nervousness in her voice so clearly now. Her subtle stuttering, combined with the way she talked faster than ever.
“What do you suggest?”
Kate was quiet for a moment, clearly thinking. “We should… walk together. Arm in arm. You’ll need to know how to…” She gestured vaguely. “How to touch me. Appropriately. The way a husband would.”
The words seemed to cost her everything. Her jaw clenched. Her hands tightened in her lap again until her knuckles went white. But this did make Jason smile, not widely, more like a hidden smile.
More hope began to accommodate in his chest, piling up little bricks one on top of the other.
“I think I know exactly how to touch you,” he couldn’t help saying, but as he did he instantly felt his cheeks burning as much as he saw Kate’s do the same, he cleared his throat and added, “…as a husband would do, I mean.”
Definitely, not of so much help either.
Kate’s entire body went rigid.
How dare he? The thought flashed hot and immediate. How dare she say such thing? How dare—?
But which pronoun applied? He, seating there in his tailored coat? Or she, the woman beneath who had touched Kate with those hands, who knew exactly how Kate responded, who had mapped every gasp and tremor?
The confusion made her dizzy. Angry. Aroused in a way that horrified her.
Because he was right. She was right. Gina knew precisely how to touch her, where to press, where to linger, how to make Kate forget herself completely.
And the memory of those touches, now recontextualized with the knowledge that they’d been a woman’s touches, made Kate’s skin feel like burning coals; it made that heat build deep within her belly, and even lower still; made her want to simultaneously flee and demand that Gina touch her again, right now, propriety and Mary and everything else be damned.
She gripped the armrest of her chair so tightly that her fingers went numb.
“That’s—” Her voice came out rough, so she cleared her throat. “That’s precisely what I meant. Yes. Appropriate touches. As would be… expected.”
The words were steady, but inside she was screaming.
Suddenly, her mind drifted back to the past—to the country estate, to the study—and she could see it all again with total clarity.
She saw Gina there, pressed against her back, those expert hands sliding beneath her skirts while she was dressed as a man.
The wrongness of it, the impossible rightness of it, the way her body had responded without knowing, without understanding what it meant to want this , to want her —
Kate stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the carpet. Both Jason and Mary looked up in surprise.
“We…” Kate’s voice was unsteady suddenly. She smoothed her skirts with trembling hands, not daring to look directly at either of them. “We should continue this another time. Perhaps. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow would be—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She was already moving toward the door, her steps quick now, desperate for air, for space, for anywhere that wasn’t this room with those eyes watching her and that body she now couldn’t stop imagining without the layers of masculine disguise.
And then, she was gone, the door closing behind her with more force than she’d intended.
Jason sat frozen in his chair, staring at the door Kate had just fled through for the second time in less than an hour.
The pain was unbearable now, sharp and devastating and utterly complete. His chest felt hollow, carved out, as though Kate had taken something vital with her when she’d run.
She can’t even bear to be in the same room with me.
The thought resonated like an echo in his mind amidst the sudden silence, louder than any word spoken aloud.
His hands, still resting on the arms of the chair, began to tremble.
He pressed them down harder, trying to still the shaking, trying to maintain some semblance of composure even though Kate was no longer there to see it.
But it was useless. Everything was useless.
He’d seen the look on her face, the rigid tension in her entire body, the way her knuckles had gone white gripping the armrest, the panic in her voice.
Disgust. That’s what it had to be. Revulsion at the memory of his touches, now that she knew the truth of what—of who—had been touching her for real.
I’ve ruined her , he thought, the realization settling like lead in his stomach. I’ve made her feel violated, tainted by my deception. Every intimate moment we shared, every touch, every kiss—all of it is contaminated now by the knowledge of what I am.
A knot so painful formed in his throat that he had to gasp for air.
His entire skin prickled with shame over what he had done; every hair on his body stood on end, from his arms all the way up to the nape of his neck.
He could feel his masculine posture beginning to collapse, could feel Gina threatening to surface right here in the drawing room.
“Well,” Mary said, oblivious to all of this—unaware of how Gina was crumbling down in that very instant. “That went… better than expected?”
Jason couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not. He turned to look at her, and something in his expression must have shown the devastation he was trying so hard to contain because Mary’s face immediately frowned with concern.
“Sir—”
“She can’t stand to be near me.” His voice came out raw, stripped of its usual modulation. “Did you see her face? The way she fled as though—” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence. As though I’m something monstrous.
He closed his eyes.
“That’s not what I saw,” Mary said gently, moving closer.
Jason shook his head, the movement almost violent. “But I did, Mary. I know what I did to her by—” His voice broke. “By touching her. By making her believe—”
He couldn’t continue. The words lodged in his throat, too painful to voice.
He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor just as Kate’s had moments before. “I need—” His hand grasped his tie, as if he wanted to rip it off to breathe better. “I can’t—”
“Sir, wait—”
But he was already moving, his steps quick and unsteady, heading for the door without looking back. He couldn’t stay in this room where Kate had fled from him twice, couldn’t bear Mary’s sympathetic gaze or her attempts to soften what was so painfully, devastatingly clear.
Kate couldn’t stand to be near him. And he couldn’t stand to remain in the space where that truth had been so thoroughly confirmed.
He pulled the door open and stepped into the corridor, not knowing where he was going, only knowing he needed to be anywhere but here.
Mr. Moore moved through the corridors of the Sullivan household without conscious direction, his feet carrying him while his mind remained trapped in the drawing room, watching Kate flee from him again and again in an endless, torturous loop.
He found himself at the front door before he’d made any decision to leave. His hand reached for his hat and coat with mechanical movements, the gestures so practiced they required no thought.
“Sir?” One of the footmen appeared. “Shall I call for the carriage?”
“No.” The word came out harsher than intended. Mr. Moore forced his voice to steady. “I’ll walk.”
“But sir—”
“I said I’ll walk.”
He stepped out into the London street, pulling the door closed behind him with more force than necessary. The air outside was cool against his face, but it did nothing to ease the burning sensation in his chest, the hollow ache that made breathing feel like work.
She can’t even bear to be in the same room with me.
The thought repeated with every step as he walked without destination, turning down streets he barely registered.
People passed by—gentlemen coming and going, ladies being escorted to her engagements, street vendors calling out their wares of the day.
Normal life proceeding as though his world hadn’t just shattered over and over.
His feet eventually found their own purpose, carrying him away from the respectable neighborhoods, down toward the docks where the taverns grew rougher, where a gentleman in fine clothes drew second glances but no one would question his presence.
Men came to these places to forget. To lose themselves in drink and noise and the company of others seeking oblivion as well.