Chapter Eleven
September 1812
32b Canary Street
London, England
W omen, William mused as his carriage made a wide left-hand turn onto Canary Street, were vexing creatures. Obstinate. Willful. Argumentative. Or maybe that was just Kitty. But if she was all those things, what did it make him if he was preparing to knock on her door in the middle of the night and ask—nay, demand—that she marry him?
For a year, he’d dreamt of her. For a year, he’d yearned for her. For a fucking year, he’d sated his urges with his own hand rather than seek the bed of a woman who wasn’t her. For a year, he’d tried to forget her.
Obviously, it hadn’t worked.
While he was in Boston touring factories and attending meetings, she was all he’d thought about. When he’d hit his pillow at the end of a long day and willed himself into oblivion, she’d stolen into his mind like a wisp in the wind.
The scent of her.
The sight.
The taste.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, he came home to London, to Hill House, to Kitty, the woman who had told him all those months ago that she never wanted to see him again.
Even then, knowing she was just city blocks away, he’d bid himself wait. He needed to be patient, to form a plan, as he did with his mergers. Overtaking a company without a preliminary tally of expenses or forming a detailed outline of all the players involved was rash and reckless and rarely ended well. But when the invitation to a ball had been left neatly on the corner of his desk with the rest of his correspondence, he’d known that was where Kitty would be. And he knew where he needed to go.
No.
How that word had sliced through him, straight through muscle and sinew to strike bone.
My answer to your incredibly romantic proposal is no.
Admittedly, the proposal could have been better. He wasn’t a man accustomed to acting on impulse, yet whenever he was with Kitty, that was all he seemed to do. She was impulse, and instinct, and insatiable desire. He couldn’t live without her. He’d tried and failed miserably. He had to have her. Beside him. In front of him. Underneath him.
“Stay here,” he instructed his driver as he climbed down from the carriage. A light rain had fallen as the guests had departed the ball, and his boots splashed through shallow puddles as he made his way to Kitty’s front door and raised his hand to knock.
It was half past one in the morning. Far too late—or early—for house calls. But for once, William didn’t care about the damned rules of decorum. Or what his grandfather thought. Or what the right thing to do was.
Hang morality—he wanted Kitty. Nothing else mattered.
But before his knuckles fell upon the door with its peeling paint and rusty hinges, prepared to rouse whoever he needed to in order to gain an audience with Lady Katherine Holden, he heard a noise from within. A heavy scraping, like furniture being dragged across the floor. Brows gathering, he pressed his ear to the door... and slammed it open with his shoulder when he heard a high-pitched, feminine scream.
Kitty’s scream.
Inside the house it was dark save a lone wall sconce mounted to the chimney breast. He scanned the hall and the front parlor, his gaze moving alertly through the shadows, before another scream and the sound of breaking glass had him surging up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. At the top he was met with a long hallway, the floors stripped bare of carpet. The walls were empty as well, the paper faded around large rectangles where paintings had once hung. He registered these surroundings in the back of his mind as he followed the lingering sounds of the scream to the right and turned the corner to a rage-inducing sight.
Kitty, in her nightdress, clinging by her fingernails to a doorframe while her father tried to wrestle her out into the hall, his meaty hands clamped around her slender waist. Her hair had been pulled from its pins and there was a scratch on her cheek, a crimson streak of violence that immediately brought William’s blood to boiling.
“Lord Holden, release your daughter at once,” he commanded, his voice little more than a guttural snarl. Both Kitty and Eriam swung their heads to look at him. Kitty’s eyes were shiny with fear. Her father’s were glazed with drink and a streak of lust that turned William’s stomach.
“Go away,” Eriam slurred. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“William?” Kitty’s eyes widened with recognition. “What—what are you doing here?”
“Quiet, girl!” Eriam grabbed a handful of hair and yanked.
Kitty cried out.
William charged.
He hit Eriam in the barrel of his chest, separating him from Kitty and taking him to the floor. It was like tackling a lumpy bag of potatoes, if the potatoes were filled with gin and spite. Grunting when a wildly thrown punch caught him in the stomach, he threw himself on top of Eriam and attempted to hold him down, but Kitty’s father was shockingly strong for his age and inebriated state. On a howl that sounded more like a wounded dog than a man, Eriam kicked free and staggered to his feet. Hunching forward, he swiped a hand across his lips. When his fingers came away bloody, he raised indignant eyes to William.
“You cannot assault a man in his own home!” he shouted.
“And what of assaulting your own daughter?” William looked at Kitty to ensure that she was all right... and the quiet resignation in her beautiful blue eyes stole the very breath from his lungs and turned the edges of his vision red. “You bastard,” he said hoarsely, his attention shifting back to Eriam. “You’ve hurt her before, haven’t you? How many times? How many fucking times? ”
Eriam’s chins wobbled as he lifted them in defiance. “A child needs to respect her father. Katherine has always been too willful—”
The red blurred when William lunged and grabbed Eriam by the lapels of his jacket. He slammed the heavyset man into the wall with such brute force that, had there been paintings, they surely would have fallen.
“William!” As if from a great distance, Kitty’s alarmed voice broke through the haze of scarlet. “William, what are you doing?”
Killing your father , was the first rational response his mind summoned. He managed—barely—not to say it aloud. Bringing his face within an inch of Eriam’s mottled countenance, he spoke through clenched teeth as he willed his hands not to close around Eriam’s thick throat and squeeze until the bastard’s eyes rolled back inside his head. “You will never lay a single finger on her again. Or I’ll snap it, along with your damned neck. Do you understand?”
“L-listen here,” said Eriam, wheezing audibly. “You cannot tell me how to—to discipline my daughter. I’ll do as I see fit—”
He did squeeze.
Just a little.
And felt a dark surge of satisfaction when Eriam began to sputter and writhe, like a fish dangling on the sharp point of a hook.
“Perhaps I did not make myself clear,” he said silkily. “That was not a question.”
“Very—very well,” Eriam gurgled as his face began to turn purple. “I—I understand. I understand!”
“Excellent.” William released his grip and Kitty’s father sagged to the ground in a crumpled heap of stale sweat. “Then we’ve nothing else to discuss.” He rubbed his hands on his trousers, instinctively seeking to rid himself of any greasy remnants of Eriam Holden, and then held his hand out to Kitty, who had remained frozen in the doorway for the entirety of the exchange. “Let’s leave.”
“And go where?” she said, her arm shaking ever so slightly as she threaded her fingers through his and stepped over her father without a second glance.
Anywhere but here, in this bloody house of horrors , he thought silently. How long had Eriam stalked his own daughter? Weeks? Months? Years?
He’d seen the bruises on Kitty’s wrists before. Her arms. Once, even her neck. Small, peppered marks of black and blue that she had always laughingly dismissed with a story of clumsiness or a tumble off her horse. Except on the times they’d ridden together, she’d displayed exceptional skill and ease. And there wasn’t a more graceful creature on the earth than Katherine Holden. Yet he had accepted her excuses, because why would he doubt her? If she were hurt, if she were being hurt, then surely she would tell him. Surely she would confide in him. Surely she would ask him to help her.
But it appeared they’d both been keeping secrets.
“Home,” he said, tucking her in protectively against his side, his chin cradling the top of her head as he walked her slowly, carefully to the stairs. “I’m taking you home, Kitty.”
“It’s the middle of the night. Your servants—”
“Won’t say a word.” A muscle ticked in his jaw as he struggled to calm the turbulent storm raging within. A storm of rage, of anguish and self-loathing. And under it all, under the frothy layers of complicated emotions, a sea of calm. Of hope. Of love. “Kitty, there is something I want to—”
“Watch out!” she gasped, looking behind him.
He spun, shielding Kitty with his body as Eriam came barreling out of the shadows. Instinct drove him to drop his shoulder. It struck Eriam in the side, throwing him off balance. For an instant, he teetered. For an instant, William saw the whites of his eyes as they rolled wildly in his skull. Then he fell, crashing through the thin wooden balusters to the foyer below. He landed face down, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. Blood pooled slowly in a circle around his head. A twitch of his legs, a wet gurgling exhale, and Eriam Holden moved no more.
“William,” Kitty whispered, raising her stunned gaze to his. “What have you done?”
I killed a man , was the first thought that came to mind. Followed by a resounding, fuck. The guilt—mountains of it—would come later, after the feverish rush in his veins had subsided. But in that moment, in that dark, dingy, dust-filled house, his only concern was for Kitty, not the damnation of his immortal soul.
“It was an accident,” he said, more to himself than to her. “The body will need to be moved. If he’s found like this, there will be too many questions. It was an act of self-defense. No charges will be brought. But still, there will be questions.” Questions and whispers and rumors he was loath to subject himself to—to subject Kitty to—after what had happened with Alessandra. “Where is his bedchamber?”
Her eyes trained on the still body of her father, Kitty was slow to respond. “Down the hall, three doors on the left. Why... why?” What color there was in her countenance drained away when she met his gaze and saw the grim determination there. “William—”
“Go to your room and shut the door, Kitty.”
“But—”
“ Shut the Goddamned door. ” He softened when she flinched. Cursed himself when he reached for her hand and she drew it away. He was handling this poorly, but bloody hell, what practice did he have in killing the father of the woman he loved and then dragging the body back up the stairs? “I’m sorry. This wasn’t... this wasn’t what I intended to happen when I came here tonight.”
“Why did you come here?”
“For you, Katherine.” This time he held onto her fingers even when she tried to pull back. “I came here for you, and when this is done, I’ll be leaving with you.” And then I’ll never leave you again, he swore.
Shimmering pools of blue rose beneath a sweep of tawny lashes. “My father is dead.”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
A heartbeat of silence.
A quick jerk of her finger across her cheek to catch a single falling tear.
A staggered inhale of breath.
“Good riddance.” She retreated into her room without another word spoken, leaving William to do what needed to be done.
Dawn was stealing in through the window in splashes of yellow and pink by the time he had finished getting Eriam into his bed, gone through the brutal process of straightening his neck, mopping up the blood, and placing an empty bottle of gin within arm’s reach.
When he went to fetch Kitty, she was curled in a ball, fast asleep. He lifted her effortlessly, cradling her head on his shoulder as he brought her to his carriage that had waited through the long night and keeping it there all the way to Hill House.
A trio of maids ushered Kitty upstairs to be bathed and changed while he went to his study to send off a missive to the Archbishop of Canterbury requesting permission for a special license to marry. Such petitions were expensive and rarely granted, but money was no object and Charles Manners-Sutton was an old family acquaintance. A reply was received from Lambeth Castle before afternoon tea, and then the only thing left to do was ask Kitty to marry him.
Less than twelve hours after he’d murdered her father.
*
“How are you feeling?” William’s quiet question roused Kitty from where she’d been dozing on a splendidly comfortable chair in the parlor, her face turned to the golden rays of autumn light streaming in through a partially opened window.
She blinked at him, a smile already hovering in the corners of her mouth at the sight of a roguish curl dangling from his temple. A smile that fell abruptly away when her mind sharpened and her recent memories came flooding back.
The ball.
The garden.
The kiss.
The creak of footsteps in the hall.
Her father.
His hands.
William .
“You...” Her throat constricted as her fingers caught in the skirt of her borrowed dress, carelessly wrinkling the expensive silk. “My father...”
“I know.” William sat heavily in the matching chair across from her own. Once they were eye level, she saw the dark, bruise-like half circles atop his cheeks and the slivers of red in the whites of his eyes. The poor man looked exhausted. “Katherine, I’m sorry. I did not mean—”
“Stop.” She held up her hand, as much to halt his words as to stop herself from mutilating her gown, as it really was lovely silk and who knew when she would wear another of its caliber? Who knew what would happen to her now that her father was dead? The man had done her no favors, large or small, but his presence had permitted her to remain in London during the Season. With his death, she’d be required to go into full mourning. How was she to find a husband wearing a shroud of black and abstaining from any and all social events? If she was truly sorry about anything, it was that. If William had taken anything from her, it was that : time.
By killing her father, he’d stolen time from her.
With his unexpected return to England and their subsequent kiss, she’d already decided that her best course of action was to find a replacement for him immediately. She could no longer afford to slowly mull her way through a dozen suitors. Not when her heart was in danger of tripping over William whenever she turned around.
Did she deserve true love?
Yes.
Was she courageous enough to pursue it?
Perhaps not.
She’d loved William, and look where that had gotten her. Look what that had gotten her: twelve months’ worth of misery and missing him. Now he was back, her father was dead, and she would have to remove herself from the marriage mart or risk ruining her reputation and any chance she had of making a favorable match.
“Will my father’s demise arouse any suspicion?” she asked bluntly.
William gave a curt shake of his head. “No, but you and the Duchess of Southwick will have to make funeral arrangements. I can help—”
“Heaven knows Mara needs something to do.” Belatedly, Kitty considered her sister’s feelings and felt her first true twinge of remorse. Not for Eriam—good riddance to him, as she’d told William—but for the pain his death would undoubtedly cause her more emotionally sensitive sibling. Mara had wanted to believe their father had become better, and she’d let her believe it because it was either that or risk being dragged away to Southwick Castle to live under Mara’s hovering thumb. She wouldn’t burden her sister with the truth—that Eriam had only gotten worse—which meant Mara would don her mourning clothes with a genuine sense of mourning.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps some sins were too big to be forgiven. Perhaps some secrets were too big to be forgotten.
“He killed her,” she said, feeling the piercing burn of William’s stare as she lowered her gaze to her lap. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Mara and I don’t speak of it. I shouldn’t be speaking of it now, but... well, what does it matter?” A bitter smile twisted her lips. “He pushed her down the same stairs that claimed his own life. Poetic justice, I suppose. Mara saw it all. I was hiding under a blanket. I don’t remember how old I was. Nine, maybe. Or ten. Ten sounds right. I don’t think he did it on purpose, but he still did it, so it counts the same, wouldn’t you say?”
“Katherine...” William’s voice, raw and ragged, caused her chin to lift and their eyes to meet. “Are you telling me that your father murdered your mother?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and her hackles rose at the flicker of pity that she saw in the depths of his obsidian gaze. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, leaping up from her chair to stab a finger at him. “This is precisely why I never told you. Why Mara and I vowed to never tell anyone. Because of that look. The one on your face. The look that would follow us around for the rest of our lives if people knew the truth.”
William’s countenance went blank as he straightened in his seat. “Last night, when I arrived and your father was hurting you... that wasn’t the first time.”
Kitty pursed her lips. She didn’t want to be trapped in this conversation, but she was the one who had opened the door. Now she had no choice but to walk through it into a room that she’d spent her entire life guarding. “No.”
“How many times has he put his hands on you before?”
“I’ve no idea.” She gave a negligent shrug. “I lost count a long while ago.”
It wasn’t pity that flashed in William’s eyes when he surged forward, closed the space between them in a single step, and grabbed her by the arms, fingers wrapping painlessly around her flesh to yank her against him. It was pure, unadulterated fury. “You should have told me,” he growled.
“As you told me about Alessandra?” she countered, ignoring the leap in her belly that always came from being this close to him.
“That’s different.”
“A secret is a secret, William.”
“I could have protected you.”
Instead, you left me.
She didn’t say the words out loud, but they were there nevertheless, swirling around in the chasm of hurt they’d both been digging since the night they’d met each other. Lies stacked on lies. Secrets stacked on secrets. And under it all, a passion that they’d never been able to control.
“I could have protected you,” he repeated, so quietly that she wondered if he was speaking to her... or himself. “I’m sorry, Kitty. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there.”
“It’s over,” she said, striving for a flippant tone that fell flat upon delivery. “What is done is done, and I for one am glad—”
“Marry me,” he interrupted, his palm cupping her cheek. “I want you to marry me. I want you to be my wife. I want to make sure that I am there when you need me.”
She expelled her breath on a frustrated hiss. “It’s not that simple , William.”
“Why not?”
“Because...” But for once, she didn’t have an answer. There was no barbed quip on the tip of her tongue. No ready defense. No argument. Given the events of the past twelve hours, why shouldn’t she marry William? In the midst of a storm, a ship would be foolish to turn away from the nearest port in hopes that a better haven might be around the next bend.
Maybe she was wrong, Kitty reasoned. Maybe... maybe marriage was the one thing that would fix everything.
After all, how much worse could things get?
“Very well,” she said, leaning into the weight of his hand. “I’ll marry you.”