Chapter 12 #2
The rain started up again, and she held her face up to the sky. No tears for her. Never any tears.
She turned around and started back. Not because of the rain, but because she didn’t want to worry Wright and she needed time to dress and primp and dry her bedraggled hair before dinner.
She wanted to look her best. Sir Francis would have no reason to hesitate in asking her to marry him.
Roger’s presence here changed nothing. If anything, this ghost from her past should make her even more determined in her course.
A mile from the house, she tried to run again, but her sodden skirts betrayed her, and she fell.
How foolish. She went to get up and felt pain in her left ankle.
Wretched ankle. It had been weak ever since she had twisted it two decades ago when she played Imogen in Cymbeline and did all that fencing onstage.
She managed to get up and take a few steps, but the ankle hurt dreadfully. If only she could find a branch for a crutch, but there were no trees in this rolling field.
The rain had slowed, but she was already so very wet. And so very cold.
She heard a voice call out to her. Rescue at last. Catherine turned, wincing as her left foot made contact with the ground and she put some weight on it. She saw the gentleman approaching.
No. No.
First, Roger. Now, him. Evil, cruel happenstance.
He stopped ten feet from her, took off his hat, and bowed. He was staying out of range of her fist, she imagined.
“Mrs. Lovelock.”
“Lord Daventry.”
She nodded, unable to curtsy. He replaced his hat.
“Rotten luck. So sorry to have to break my promise to you, what?” He smiled, and his eyes crinkled. “You are, despite your wishes, seeing me again sooner rather than never.”
He had gone blurry again. This was the old James, the one she had craved in her dreams, not the one who had driven her mad with desire and rage. James as a jester.
“What are you doing here, Lord Daventry?”
“I am on my way to Ffoulkes Manor. And you, Mrs. Lovelock? Why are you in Kent? Here to see St. Botolph’s Priory? Or Hadleigh Castle?”
Catherine’s teeth chattered until she ground them together. “Those sights are in Essex, as I am sure you are aware.” James smirked. “I am also a guest of Sir Francis, my lord.”
He stepped closer to her and took off his greatcoat.
“You are cold, Mrs. Lovelock, what? We can’t have that when I happen to know you are a very warm creature, at your bottom.”
He sniggered, and then Catherine did grow warm with embarrassment, remembering how he had held her last night, under her dress.
James threw his greatcoat over her shoulders. It dragged on the muddy ground. He stepped back and seemed to take in her stance for the first time, how one leg was bearing all her weight, the other bent at the knee so only the toe of her boot touched the ground.
Catherine observed the shift then. The jester was gone, and someone else had taken his place. Someone effective. Competent. Devastatingly competent.
“Permit me?” He was down on his knees in a flash, raising the hem of her dress and unlacing her boot and removing it with the utmost delicacy so he could lay his warm hand on her left ankle. “Does this hurt when I press here? And here?”
She put her hands on him to steady herself and felt the muscles of his back and shoulder girdle flexing and moving as he examined her.
After a minute—a minute in which Catherine discovered his touch thrilled her more than ever—he put one arm under her knees and one around her back so when he stood, she came up with him in one easy motion.
“Upsidaisy,” he said.
She said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was her only means to get back to the manor. She had no choice, and she might not choose differently even if a different choice were available.
He smelled of rain and something else—something that was him. Something James. Some essence of man. To her, it was the smell of paradise.
But it was maddening to be so helpless on so many fronts, all at once.
In his arms, she was inches from his face as he started walking through the mist. She saw the transition at close range, his lids dropping to half mast, his lips curling into a sardonic smile. The jester was back.
“What? No maidenly protests? I am shocked. Shocked.”
“I am not a maiden, Lord Daventry.” She steeled herself for a barrage of innuendo and blatant lewdness, how she had certainly not been a maiden last night, har-har, what fun. But the jokes never came.
James felt this was very hard going.
Carrying Catherine was easy. She fit snugly into his arms; her weight was balanced perfectly. His hat was keeping the mizzle off his face for the most part. He didn’t miss his coat as he was quite warm with walking. He was having no physical difficulties, whatsoever.
But he was having a very hard time controlling his thoughts. Even when he was assessing her ankle, he had imagined raising his hand higher to those soft velvet thighs he had felt yesterday but had not seen. Or even higher still.
Stop.
He had become the lecher he played. A woman in distress and he could only think of fondling her. How foul he was. How angry he would be if someone like him carried one of his sisters with thoughts like these racing through his head.
But how glad he was that the woman in his arms was not one of his sisters. Even if she loathed him.
He thought she might put her arms around his neck, but she didn’t. She kept her arms by her sides, her hands folded over her abdomen. But to have her body so warm against him, her breasts and her lips so close to his mouth even though she was stiff with rage.
A terrible thought rocked him.
“Mrs. Lovelock?”
“Yes?” she answered sharply. “Are you fatigued, my lord? I might be able to walk the rest of the way.”
“No. I just wondered . . . what was your name before you married?”
She cocked her head. “I was born Cooksey but changed it to Cooke for the stage.”
“Catherine Cooke.”
“Yes, that was my name as an actress.”
James said nothing more for the rest of the walk to the manor.