Chapter 37 #2
She felt herself dissolve. Her arms and legs grew weak. She almost sagged to the floor, but he held her up.
Tears came. She, who never cried. She had always prided herself on the genuine weeping she could produce on stage as an actress, but in life, she thought crying was pitiable and weak. She could only remember crying once in her adult life. When Edward had died.
But she had been so alone for so long. Kate against the world.
She wept and hiccoughed, and great gasps and sobs shook her body, and still James held her fast. She did not know if she cried for five minutes or for an hour. But it seemed a long time to her. Through it all, he held her and did not move.
The tears slowed, her breathing grew more even, and—she couldn’t help it—she snuffled. Immediately after the snuffle, Catherine felt James take one hand from her back, and her sense of loss was so enormous she almost let out a howl.
Through her tears, she saw something white dangling in front of her face. A handkerchief.
She grasped the handkerchief, and, as she brought it to her face, she felt his warm hand return to her back and press her into him just as firmly as before.
She wiped her nose and face and waited for him to release her. It was a release that never came. He stood still and held her. There was no stroking, no petting, only his unmoving arms around her, his hands on her back, his solid front holding her up.
Finally, she was the one who broke the embrace. She stepped backwards, and he moved his arms out of her way. She looked up at him.
“You were right.”
He grinned. Boyish, delighted.
She smiled back. “I did need that.”
“I thought you might.”
“Don’t gloat.”
“I’m not gloating. I’m happy. Isn’t that allowed?” He took a step towards her, his arms open as if to embrace her again.
“No, no, none of that,” Catherine said, backing even farther away.
“You’re right,” he said and sat down again and crossed his legs and looked at her. “It’s just you’re so beautiful right now.”
She knew her eyes were swollen, her nose was red. “And none of that.”
“You misunderstand me, Catherine. I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m trying to un-seduce you.”
“Un-seduce me?” A little laugh escaped from her. “There is such a thing?”
“I hope there is.”
“What does un-seduction consist of?”
He paused. “Friendship.”
She wiped her eyes with a dry corner of his handkerchief, which she was still clutching. “You told me you could never be friends with me.”
“I was angry when I said that. Forgive me. I think there is nothing more I want right now than your friendship.”
“You want it more than coupling with me?”
James ran his fingers over his short hair, his healing scar on his head. “Yes. Because I want you to know that even though we desire each other, we can still be good to each other. I can be a good husband, a good father.”
Catherine wanted to tell him that of course, he could be a good husband and a good father, just not with her, but he cut her off, would not allow her to speak.
“You say I am worthy. But deep down, you don’t feel it. You don’t know it. I think friendship is how you might finally consent to marry me. And I know friendship can last a lifetime. Does desire? I don’t know.”
His words were sincere and had the ring of truth. “I don’t know, either,” she finally said and sat.
“Perhaps . . . no, you’ll think I’m silly,” he said.
“Tell me.”
He hesitated a moment more. “Friendship might be why Orsino and Viola in Twelfth Night have such a great love. He comes to know her first as his friend.”
“Yes,” she said, “but she knows the lustful reality. That she wants to bed him.”
“You don’t think they were friends? She courts a woman for him.”
“I’m not that unselfish. I won’t be doing that for you, Jamie.” Again, his possible future wife, the pure, sweet girl of the ton, the daughter of a marquess or an earl, came into her mind.
“The only woman I would ever ask you to court for me would be yourself, Kate. Don’t you think we might be friends?”
“I don’t know. What does friendship look like?”
“It looks like two rooms. Two beds.”
Catherine felt a sharp ripple of disappointment course through her body. “Yes.”
“Don’t look so sad. I’m here. I want you.
You know I want you. But let’s talk of other things.
Let’s do other things. Ordinary things. Like we did during our days at Christmas, at Sommerleigh.
Let us walk and eat and read and laugh and look at the sky.
Let us try having something pure and right, as you put it. ”
“For how long?”
James quirked his eyebrows. “Say, to begin with, a day?”
A day. Catherine considered. “Yes.”
He held out his hand. She held out hers and was careful not to let her fingers linger in his grasp.
James found the innkeeper and asked for another room and was amused by the innkeeper’s sympathetic frown.
He took some time alone in his new bedchamber to consider what he had just proposed to Catherine.
Already he was gnawed by doubt. Would he be able to keep his hands off her?
He must. He must believe this was a possible way forward for them.
All of his instincts—to cradle and caress Catherine, to kiss her pain away, to comfort her with touch—must be suppressed. Too dangerous at this moment, too likely to lead to the torrid, mindless coupling she feared. And that she thought was the sole thing they shared.
Yes, let them be friends. She did not want coddling or pity or even tenderness. She wanted companionship. He must show her he could give her that. He must show her he was more than a young cock and a full head of hair.
He ran his hand over his short hair. He did not even have his locks to offer her any longer.
He walked down the corridor and knocked on Catherine’s door and asked her to come and see the Canterbury Cathedral with him. She looked askance, some guarded suspicion in her eyes.
“It’s not an ambush, Mrs. Lovelock. There will not be an archbishop, a special license, and two witnesses waiting for us. It’s just a sight friends might go and see if they happened to be in Canterbury.”
She acquiesced. Once they were on the street, he held out his arm to her. She hesitated.
“It’s to keep the other rogues and rapscallions away from you,” he said.
“I thought we were going to a cathedral.”
“We are. But one cannot be too cautious. And a friend can take a friend’s arm.”
She took his arm.
“Have you ever been to Canterbury before, Mrs. Lovelock?”
“If you don’t call me Catherine, I will start calling you Your Grace. Loudly.”
“Catherine, have you ever been to Canterbury?”
“I have not.”
“I haven’t either. Good. We are on equal footing.”
“The Cathedral was where Thomas á Becket was murdered, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, after Henry II asked, Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”
“A reminder that powerful men should speak carefully, I suppose,” said Catherine.
“A reminder not to vex a king.”
“How differently we see things.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you will have to change your mind, Jamie, because I am too set in my ways.”
“Gladly. I will change my mind on every subject to match yours. Except when I’m right, and you’re wrong. Even in friendship, there should be friction.”
She smiled at that, and her smile gave him hope.
After they came out of the Cathedral, James asked Catherine if she was hungry.
“Ravenous,” she said.
Of course, James thought. She had not eaten all day, and she was eating for two. He made a note in his head: Catherine might not tell him when she was hungry.
They returned to the coaching inn. James thought they might eat in one of their rooms, but Catherine said, “At a table, in the public eye, Jamie. Please. It will help me.”
They sat at a table and were brought a roasted chicken at Catherine’s request and wine at James’. Catherine liked the meat of the breast of the chicken. James liked the darker meat of the leg.
“Perfect,” James said. “We are like Jack Sprat and his wife. Between the two of us, we will strip the carcass clean. How can you not say we are ideally suited for each other?”
Catherine laughed and wiped her mouth. “If we liked the same joint of the chicken, you would say the same thing. Oh, Kate, it’s a good thing a chicken has two legs, because we are two! How perfect!”
“True,” James said, cutting off another piece of the breast and putting it on Catherine’s plate. “That would be perfect, as well.”
“My husband liked the leg of the fowl, too,” Catherine said. Then she winced. “I’m sorry.”
James was confused. “Why?”
“A man does not like to hear about other men from a lover’s past.”
“Well, we are not lovers. Not today. Today, we are friends. And friends talk about their pasts, if they like, with no fears or jealousies. And I’d like to know more about Mr. Lovelock.
He has a lot to teach me. After all, you were happy with him, and he got you to marry him. Maybe you could tell me how he did it?”
She pealed a little laugh and wiped her fingers on her napkin. He looked at her, waiting. She took a sip of wine and met his gaze over the glass. She frowned and put the glass down.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. Decidedly. School me.”
Catherine was quiet for a long time. He thought she might cry again, and he considered moving to her side of the table and taking her in his arms. But he made himself stay in place. He willed himself to be a friend to her, to hold no expectation, to wish for no particular result.
Finally, she spoke. “When he told me about his daughters, it was with such love for them. And worry. Particularly for Harry, who was so troubled at that time by the loss of her mother. I could tell from how he spoke about them that he was a man who loved women. Who appreciated our differences but did not see them as diminishing. I was very happy to bear him a daughter, and he was very happy, too.”
“Mmm. Well, I don’t have any daughters. But I would be very happy to have you give me one, Catherine. And I assure you, I love women.”