Chapter 23 #2
“I know, I know, here I am, the biggest whoremonger in London, and I haven’t fornicated with my own wife.
But it’s not to be. It was part of our agreement when we married.
I got her money, she got to keep her virginity and her mathematics.
This whole Christmas and having her family here is just on sufferance, you know.
Otherwise, she would be up in the attic sixteen hours of the day, doing whatever she does with numbers up there. That’s what she’s doing right now.”
“I would have thought those circumstances would bring you to London more, rather than less.”
“I would have thought so, too.” James couldn’t see Thomas’ face, but his voice sounded angry. “However, when I go to London, I only long to be back here.”
James walked to the window and turned his back to it so he was looking at his friend.
“Do you love her?”
Thomas smiled, but there was a bitterness to his smile.
“Love? I don’t know what that is. I know what copulation is. I know what friendship is, thanks to you. But I don’t know what love is.”
James nodded. “I see.”
“And, even if I did, I don’t think Harry would ever love me back.”
“Because . . . why? Because you’re not good enough?” It was the question James had asked himself every day since waking up alone in the inn at Duddenhoe End.
Thomas looked confused. “No. Because Harry probably can’t. She has room in her for only one love and that’s mathematics. Do you know she’s never told her stepmother that she loves her?”
“That doesn’t mean she is intrinsically incapable of love, for God’s sake, man.”
“I know, I know. But can you imagine falling in love with someone you think will never say I love you back? It would be like shouting into the void.”
I know, James said silently. I think I am shouting into the same void.
They did play Snapdragon after dinner. James burnt his tongue. Thomas burnt his fingers. Arabella snatched the most raisins from the flaming brandy bowl.
“Oh, Mama, that means I will meet my true love within a year!” Arabella announced. Catherine smiled thinly at that.
James thought the blue flames of the brandy bowl were enormously becoming to Catherine.
Later that night, he lay in his bed in his usual room at Sommerleigh, feeling he had made no progress with Catherine.
While he had waited for her to return to London, he had met with Mr. Bulverton in Isabella’s room.
There had been the mildest of reproofs from Mr. Bulverton about James going to Sir Francis’ house party, almost as if he had expected James to do something of the sort.
And Isabella had airily told him in passing that Mrs. Lovelock thought he, James, was too drunk and too silly.
Today he had worked hard at not being silly. True, he had had two fingers of whisky after luncheon with Thomas in the library, but nothing more than that despite Thomas’ excellent cellar and his own desire for Dutch courage. He could not be accused of being drunk.
But there had been nothing but friendly camaraderie and politeness between him and Catherine.
He rolled to his side. Well, he had ten more days.
Warmth and softness and a pair of arms around his waist, breasts and lips pressed to his back, and she was in his bed with him, naked. He turned to speak to her, and she covered his mouth with hers and gently probed at his burnt tongue.
Later, much later, after he had stroked and caressed and kissed every inch of every curve of her body and she had sneezed three times, and, if he had been a sneezer, he would have sneezed twice himself—after all that, he had said, “Kate,” and again she had kissed him.
Then, despite his best efforts, he had fallen asleep with her in his arms.
When he woke in the morning, she was gone.
The days passed, and they were the most glorious days of James’ life.
The daylight hours were filled with his best friend, laughter, stories, exercise, good food, and his nights were filled with Catherine.
True, the supposedly long winter nights were still too short.
And Catherine came to him silently. Every time he tried to speak to her, she covered his mouth with a kiss, and his attempt to tell her he loved her turned into a yearning and an aching desire to be inside her once again.
Every night, he swore if he could just slake his lust for her, he would find the mettle to tell her he loved her.
Because surely that must be what this all-consuming desire to be with her was.
Love.
Catherine had not known of Thomas’ invitation to James.
If she had known, she would have gone elsewhere for Christmas, stayed with the Dalrymples where she and Arabella were welcome, gone to Wales to visit Mary, or even traveled back to London despite her strong desire to see Harry and make sure she was well.
And she had been so pleased her first week at Sommerleigh, the week before Christmas, to see how Harry had bloomed.
How much weight she had gained, how far she could walk, how much more even her temper was.
Catherine had been completely opposed to Harry marrying Thomas, and now she knew she had been wrong.
Very wrong. Harry was thriving as much as Harry could thrive in this world that was not built for her.
Not for the first time, Catherine’s judgment had failed her.
Then her Jamie arrived. No, that was nonsense, he wasn’t her Jamie. James arrived. All that promise, that youth, that beauty, that tall, rangy body with its ticklish knees.
With his arrival, Sommerleigh became a prison.
Every morning, she returned to her own bed, vowing she would not go back to James' room that night.
And every night, the throb between her legs and the fear she would never have him again would unite in an irresistible siren song, and she would rise from her bed, tiptoe down the hallway and through his door, shedding her nightdress on the floor of his room, and climb into the bed with him.
And every night had been like the first—tender yet fierce, deeply satisfying yet wild and stirring.
But always, always, always dangerous. She dared to let the demon out of the cage every night, not sure she would be able to haul it back in the morning.
Perhaps, one day, she would not have the strength.
The threat of that made her tremble in fear.
Twelfth Night was the guests’ last night at Sommerleigh.
There were cakes, of course. Arabella performed a piece from a puppet show she had seen with the Dalrymples.
James told an amusing story about the arrival of the three wise men and the wrong turns they made on the way to Bethlehem.
And Catherine was cajoled into performing, as well.
She chose to recite Viola’s monologue from Act II, scene two.
After all, it really was Twelfth Night, why not do Twelfth Night?
For her, there were no associations between the role of Viola and that odious painting by Roger Siddons.
The person in the painting was someone else entirely.
That person still lived inside Catherine and threatened to destroy her life even now, but that person was not Viola, despite the costume.
Viola never looked at her lover like that.
Viola did not despair at knowing herself and how vile she was.
Viola lived in a comedy, and comedies must end in marriage. Happily-ever-after.
When she finished with O time! thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me to untie, she saw James staring at her.
When she came to his bed that night, he put his hand over her mouth before she could kiss him.
“I must tell you,” he said. “I have loved you since I was ten years of age.”
She blinked.
“I saw you. When I was ten. As Viola. First, I thought it might be splendid to be your twin brother Sebastian. And then I thought I’d rather like to have you in love with me.
I remember thinking the duke, that Orsino, was a fool to want Olivia when he could have had you.
And I remember being jealous. I loved you then, as I love you now. ”
He slowly removed his hand from her mouth and waited.
She rolled onto her back.
“The seduction of an older woman,” she said, “is a delicate thing. I have loved you since age ten does not arouse as much as one might think.”
“But I don’t want to seduce you, Kate, I want—”
She got out of the bed, found her nightdress on the floor, and pulled it on over her head. James got out of bed, too.
“I told you I love you, and you’re leaving?”
“No,” Catherine said. “I mean, yes, I’m leaving. But no. You didn’t tell me you loved me. You told me you loved Viola.”
“I meant, I mean, I do love you.” He stood naked in front of her.
She hardened her heart. She made her voice harsh.
“You couldn’t possibly mean that.”
She fled the room.
The next day in the carriage on the way to London, James sat across from Catherine and Arabella. They both kept silent as Arabella prattled about the scenery, their Christmas, what she was going to do as soon as they got to London. Finally, Arabella nodded off and slept.
James leaned forward.
“Please, Catherine, give me some hope you can love me as I love you,” he whispered, hoping not to wake Arabella but still be heard over the wheels of the carriage.
Catherine looked out the window. “There are plenty of other women to give you hope, my lord. You don’t need it from me.”
“I know I need you. Please look at me.”
She shifted her blue eyes from the window to his face.
“Once we return to London, please promise you won’t run from me or refuse me.”
Catherine looked at James for a long time as if she were learning him off by heart. Then she looked down at her lap.
“We’re pretenders. Both of us. I’ve pretended many things.
I’ve pretended our differing ages, our differing ranks, my past, your future—and my weaknesses, particularly my weaknesses—I’ve pretended none of these matter.
But, of course, they do. I know why I’ve pretended.
What else is there for me to do when faced with my Jamie?
You make me mad with desire, and so I would have pretended anything, I think, to have you—”
James' mind roiled as his heart leapt into his mouth and his groin ached. He made her mad with desire. Were there any sweeter words in the universe? But she was still speaking.
“—but why you walk around London one tenth the man you really are . . . it’s a waste and a shame, James Cavendish.”
She cleared her throat. “I last played Viola when I was nineteen. The company had difficulty finding a short-enough man to play my twin Sebastian and make the role-swapping and mistaken identity convincing. That was the end of my time in the part. You were two then, were you not? Even if your mother or your nursemaid had been crazed enough to take you to the theater, and I have never heard of such a thing—but even if they had, you would not remember. You are in love with quite another woman.”