Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
He hired a carriage and took her to a coaching inn just outside of Canterbury.
The inn reminded Catherine of the places where she had slept on her long, slow journey to London when she was sixteen.
Small and snug and clean. It was not unlike the inn at Duddenhoe End.
Perhaps that was why James had chosen it.
He wanted to remind her of their first coupling.
As if she needed reminding.
As if she hadn’t spent the coach ride from Dover to Canterbury longing to sit astride him, to kiss him, to undo his cravat and run her hands over his chest and lower still, to touch his cock and make it hard again with her hands and her mouth. To lose herself with him inside her.
“Jamie Cooksey and wife. Kate, she is,” James said to the innkeeper. A few coins, a wink from the innkeeper, and five minutes later, she and James were alone in a room with a hearth, a table, some chairs, and a bed. And her two trunks.
James took the key that had been given to him by the innkeeper and locked the door and handed the key to Catherine.
“Will you sit?” he asked her.
After she had sat in one of the chairs, he sat as well.
“You used my birth name,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Because suddenly I wanted to be a Cooksey, an ordinary man. With my wife. With you.”
“You want to worry every day of the year about the rent or the roof or the hens that won’t lay?”
“I want not to worry the woman I love won’t have me.” His eyes were calm even as his voice betrayed some emotion with a very slight quaver. “You must know I want you to marry me.”
No, she didn’t know that. Not with certainty. She had hoped he wanted that, even as she had known it was impossible. Her chest ached.
But he didn’t really want to marry her. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know how darkness tainted her and her desire for him. She could never be his wife, his duchess. He should marry the virginal girl she had imagined for him.
“I know you would not have a happy life with me, Jamie.”
“And I know you’re carrying my child.”
Catherine looked away. She would hurt him now. Thrust the knife in and push him away. Quickly. So it would be over. She met his eyes.
“Maybe it’s not yours.”
He gazed at her steadily, with no sign of insult on his face. “That’s not true.”
“You shouldn’t be so sure of yourself.”
“It has nothing to do with me. It’s all to do with you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know the important parts.” He was serious. Not coy. Not flirtatious or insinuating. Still, Catherine felt herself flush with desire again, thinking how he knew her. She fought it down with anger.
“You know my breasts and my quim and that I sneeze and because you know these things, you think you know me?”
James looked taken aback. “I meant I have seen you mother Harry and Arabella. I saw how you handled Roger Siddons at Ffoulkes Manor and in my rooms. I have seen you face danger. You are a powerful woman, Catherine.” He took her hand and looked at it.
“Tiny, but powerful. And I long to have that power at my side. I have spent so long as a feckless ne’er-do-well that I need your steel. ”
The touch of his hand on hers. She thought of his hand on her breast, her hip. Warmth and aching and wetness flared in her nether regions. All from his hand touching hers. She pulled her hand away.
“I am weaker than you think, Your Grace.”
“Just a moment ago you called me Jamie.”
“I am weaker than you think, Jamie.”
A small smile. “That’s better.”
She whispered, “If you knew my thoughts, you would know how weak I am.”
“Then let me know your thoughts. When we have been alone, we have always spent our time together coupling.”
She hung her head.
James crossed his legs. “I am to blame.”
She raised her head. “If you are to blame, it is only because you arouse me so much that when I am with you, I can only think of touching you and having you inside me.”
James uncrossed his legs and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Catherine spread her hands wide on her lap and clenched her thighs with her fingers as if she were holding herself down in the chair. “You asked for my thoughts. Now you regret that.”
“No, no, no. I am just . . . well, what you said made me . . . I needed more room.”
Catherine looked at his lap and saw the front fall of his trousers was pulled tight, outlining his own arousal.
“You see it’s impossible, Jamie. There is nothing between us but lust. We cannot even sit and have a conversation without . . .”
“Without what?”
“Without my turning into some thoughtless, wanton woman for you.”
“Catherine.” He looked at his own lap. “At this time, there is only visible evidence I am a thoughtless wanton man for you.”
“You think your desire is greater because it is external? If you put your hand up my skirt and between my legs, you would find I was ready. For you.”
James rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I’m not going to do that.”
“No. You’re not. Because you have control. You can set me down in an alley in the middle of Covent Garden when I would have gladly taken you there, in public, against a wall, like a feral creature. Even though the repercussions for me would always be worse than they would be for you.”
“You would not have done that.”
Catherine was silent.
“You would have?”
“Jamie, you asked for my thoughts and then you deny they are my thoughts.”
He was the one who was silent now. But only for a few moments.
“You know, when you refuse to marry me, you make me think I’m not good enough for you.”
“Jamie—”
“No, that’s wrong. You don’t make me think that.
I think that because that is who I have been for so long.
Not good enough. For my father and mother.
And then I made myself into an infamous marquess.
Remarkable only in the worst ways. But I am a duke now.
I have to be good enough because I have the job.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and—”
“—some have greatness thrust upon them.”
“Yes. I must accept I am the last, the thrust-upon. But you are the second category, Catherine. And together, we could make sure our child is the first.”
She shook her head. “My wish to end this has never, ever been about your worthiness.”
“You must see how I can only believe the fault is mine. Where is the obstacle to our marriage? You are carrying my child. We are both unmarried. We are both of age.”
Catherine laughed ruefully. “Some of us more than others.”
James did not smile.
Catherine got up from the chair and walked from one end of the room to the other and back again, her eyes on the floor.
How was she to tell him this? Her splendid Jamie. She had hoped to spare them both. But now that he knew of the baby, she knew he would never let her alone unless she told him.
The pain in her chest would swallow her whole, and she could not bring any words forth.
Yet, Edward Lovelock, who had known all her secrets and had loved her anyway and trusted her with his daughters, would have wanted her to speak the truth. To set this fine young man free. So he could go on to a better life. A better wife.
She had to find a way to speak. For Edward. For Jamie.
“I spent almost a decade with Roger Siddons. With him, I was like how I am with you. Quivering with desire, always ready, always wanting more, always hungry. Possessed, obsessed. Willing to do anything for him. I debased myself. I did things on his behalf I do not wish to speak of.” She stopped pacing and closed her eyes.
“But I will tell you, if you wish to know.”
The room was quiet. He said nothing.
Eyes still closed, she went on, “And then he released me. I did not escape. I might have stayed in that prison for the rest of my life. How lucky I was that his attention wandered from me. Otherwise . . .”
She opened her eyes and looked at James. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, gray eyes on her. He was intent. There was no censure there. Neither was there pity. He was listening. He was an open vessel, and she was pouring her poison into him.
She dropped her eyes to the floor and resumed her pacing. “I spent the next decade with Edward Lovelock. I had my best life with him. He understood me, and he loved me, and I loved him. But he did not make me wild like you do, Jamie. He soothed me. There was comfort, and there was peace.”
She faced him. “I need peace. I don’t want these unmanageable feelings. And I don’t want to come to hate you as I came to hate Roger. I don’t want to slit your throat in twenty years. I need to stop this.”
James said, “I think I know what you need.”
Catherine felt her temper flare again. She balled her hands into fists. “You think I haven’t heard that from men all my life?”
James stood and reached out and pulled her to him. Her cheek was pressed to his lower chest. His arms wrapped around her, and she could feel his large hands pressing against her back, pressing her into him.
The suddenness of his embrace caused her groin to ache and throb again.
His rough movement, his strong arms controlling her—surely evidence of the violence of his passion—these things aroused her more than a tender touch from him might have.
She could feel his heart beating in his chest, under her cheek.
And below his waistline, she felt his rigid shaft pushing into her abdomen, up towards her breasts. He wanted her.
She put her own arms around his waist and flattened her hands on his back and her breasts on his abdomen. But she did not turn her face up to look at him. Right now, she could not look at him.
And then nothing. He did not move. He did not kiss her. He held her. Minutes passed. His shaft grew less rigid. She shifted slightly in his arms, and he only pulled her closer.
Some tipping point was reached.
She was lost.
But not lost in desire. Lost in grief for the girl she had been, the girl she wished she could give him now.