Chapter 9
Nine
Catherine stared out a drawing room window. She paced. She picked up a book and threw it back down.
There were so many reasons why James and she could never—
An affair was an impossibility.
First, James likely had a mistress. Or many mistresses. He was heir apparent to a duchy. He almost certainly had a string of playthings to fill his time.
And James was too young. Catherine would never hold any interest for him. She was well past the peak of her beauty and could not compete with the charms of women a quarter of a century younger.
And besides, he was an inebriate. No matter that today he had not been drunk.
He would return to the bottle soon enough.
And young sots were the worst kind. Because a young man’s passion could become aroused by drink, but when his potency was overcome by the alcohol, he would find other ways to ravage. To dominate. To take.
Oh, Kate, you are a fool.
Because none of those things mattered to the lust demon. After seeing James today, he tempted her more than ever. In the worst possible way. In a way that would almost certainly lead to ruin of the most degrading kind. Infatuation would turn into soul-crippling obsession, as it had once before.
He had been so different today. And it was more than just his sobriety. He had been more virile, more alive, more vivid than she had ever seen him.
That was it. Today, he had been sharply drawn when, before, he had always seemed .
. . blurry. Appealing, but a little hazy around the edges.
Every other time she had been in his presence, he had been so nonchalant and loose-limbed.
That languid smile. His gray eyes half-lidded, sleepy and seductive.
Today, his eyes had been piercing. There had been a fire and a purpose behind them.
Oh, she wanted him. Felt crazed for him in a way that was all too familiar. It was how she had been with Roger, when there had been nothing that could slake her bottomless appetite but the most sordid kind of rutting.
She was right to have considered James dangerous. He made her dangerous.
James would transform her again into that girl for whom need and love and desire were hopelessly entwined.
That girl who would tolerate being used if it meant receiving a glimpse of tenderness or an arousing touch.
The girl who would do anything for her lover and would explode into violence if she could not have what she wanted.
She could not, she would not, she mustn’t.
This was exactly why she needed a man like Sir Francis in her life. A man who did not excite or inflame. A man who could calm and soothe.
She had almost made up her mind to say yes.
Two hours remained until dinner, a meal she would eat alone. The house was very empty.
She went upstairs.
“I’m exhausted, Wright. I’ll lie down for a rest,” she told her lady’s maid.
Wright made no comment even though Catherine had never taken an afternoon nap in the three years since Wright had entered service.
She assisted Catherine in removing the pins from her hair and taking off her dress and hose and shoes and stays and petticoat and chemise.
Catherine realized she had spent her whole day dressing and undressing. This safe life she had chosen for herself had turned dull. How little there was to it, with her beloved husband dead and her daughters out of the house.
Once the nightdress was over her head, Catherine dismissed Wright and lay on top of the counterpane.
The window nearest the bed was cracked open, and a cold draft stirred the curtains and washed over Catherine, lifting her nightdress slightly away from her body. The muslin gently grazed her nipples, and they stiffened immediately.
She put her hands to her breasts and squeezed.
They were just as sensitive as they had been when she was sixteen.
Yes, when she was sixteen and she had taken the blacksmith’s boy’s hand and put it inside her dress as they kissed the night before she left the Midlands for London.
She had ached for that boy, hadn’t she? Ached for him in a simple, sweet way.
If only she could be that way with James instead of twisted and crazed.
His hands on her breasts, like this, his body atop hers, his mouth on hers . . .
Oh, Jamie.
She could not tolerate the ache, the longing.
She got up and closed the window. She slid under the counterpane and turned on her side, determined to banish thoughts of James, Marquess of Daventry, from her mind forever.
But as she turned, her thighs pressed against each other, and she felt a throb, her slick arousal.
She thought of the release she might bring herself with her own touch.
And there was no danger, surely, here by herself, alone.
She lifted her nightdress above her waist and put her hand against her thatch of golden maidenhair.
She dampened her finger in her own dew and found the source of rapture, that pearl above her opening.
She thought of the blacksmith’s boy. Yes.
The most innocent kind of pleasure. She thought of Edward, always so gentle in his desire, so attentive, so eager to please her, so filled with love.
Yes, yes. She tried to think of Sir Francis Ffoulkes, but she could not imagine him without a cravat and a waistcoat.
No matter. There were others to think of.
Others, like James.
No. No. She had long ago shut the door on any thoughts of Roger. She could do the same for James.
But her mind would not obey. As her finger slipped over her pearl faster and faster, her mind slipped away until gray eyes and smooth skin and James’ imagined body, long and lean, hovered in front of her.
His hands buried in her hair, holding her breasts, clutching her thighs. His mouth on her lips, her nipples, her cleft. The friction of his chest and abdomen against hers as he plunged into her over and over again.
She sneezed.
Slow, sweet, clenching waves rolled over her body, again and again and again. And as she shuddered in climax, she heard him demand with his newfound intensity, “I must have you.”
She stilled. She was limp, empty. But in a matter of seconds, she was consumed by the twin desires to touch herself again and to think of James. Her temporary peace was shattered.
How weak she was.
She pulled down her nightdress and got out of the bed. She made her resolve. She knew what she must do. She must marry Sir Francis Ffoulkes.
Mustn’t she?