Chapter Twenty Seven
A warm summer rain. The air turned sweet and heady, redolent of the flowers blooming in lush profusion as the soft rain drew forth their scents, and Kate drew it into her lungs with every breath.
Elliot was already stripping off his coat to drape it over her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death,” he said as he wrapped the fine wool garment around her.
“I won’t. It’s really rather warm.” She could feel the rain saturating her hair, misting upon her skin. “But your coat will be ruined.”
There was the flash of that beloved dimple in his cheek. That smile he held in reserve only for her. His fingers ran down her arm, and he collected her hand in his. “It’s ruined already. I tore it climbing over the wall.”
A laugh fluttered out; joyful, delighted, drifting like a bird through the rain-drenched air.
“Did you?” she asked, charmed, as she pulled at the fabric of the coat wrapped around her, searching for the offending tear—and there.
Not even on a seam, where it might have been repaired, but a rough, jagged rend that would make the whole garment fit only for the rag heap.
He’d caught it on something as he’d come over the wall.
A wall he’d climbed only to reach her, to plead with her for just a few minutes of her time in the faint hope that she would grant it.
Now, there would be all the time in the world. She would no longer be counting down the days until the bulk of his time was reserved for some other woman, but the days left until he was only hers.
“It’s late,” he said, pressing his cheek to hers. “You should go in.”
Not yet. She’d had done with one of them going off somewhere the other couldn’t follow. Done with the stress and the strain they’d endured. Done with the words left unsaid—and not nearly enough time in his company as she would have liked.
That was the thing about London. One had to take one’s moments of privacy as they came. To enjoy them while they lasted. And to hold fast to them as long as possible.
Kate linked her fingers through Elliot’s, relishing the instinctive squeeze of his own around hers.
“I want to show you something first,” she said, and danced backward upon the rain-slicked grass deeper into the garden, tugging upon his arm to urge him to follow. “It’s my favorite place in the garden.”
“I have got a suspicion,” he said, as he trailed along in her wake, inexorably pulled past the hedgerows and into the clinging darkness, “that I know the one already.”
Yes, she thought. He would. Because they were so alike in so many ways—with the same loves, the same passions. They found peace and comfort in the same things, and here in the garden, shielded from the volatility and madness of London, was one place she had found it.
The garden was not large, but the talents of the gardeners and the loving care with which they tended to it was evident in every step one traversed.
Past the hedgerows with their perfectly-pruned branches and near the rear wall, there was a private bower with a stone bench and a lovely patch of perfect green grass, where blooming wisteria had been woven overhead.
At daybreak, when the sun was newly up and the birds had come to chirp out their morning songs, one could lay upon the grass, peer up past the borders of hedges and through the overhanging tangle of the wisteria vines, and see only sky.
A slice of the countryside, captured right here in the heart of London.
The looming townhouses blocked from view, the soft grass beneath one’s back, and the whistle of the breeze through the leaves.
In the daylight, it was lovely. But now, at night, with the glow of the moon shining bright behind the cover of the clouds, it was magical.
The cover of wisteria blossoms blunted the rain to a drizzle. Kate shrugged out of Elliot’s coat—ruined anyway, he’d said—and spread it out upon the grass. Her nightgown clung to her skin, the thin linen soaked through.
Elliot sucked in a breath. “Kate,” he said, and there was a mournful sort of longing woven through his voice, and a wealth of suffering besides. “We can’t be out here much longer.”
“Who is going to know?” she teased lightly, recklessly. The meticulously-pruned foliage did more than hide the view of the city—they hid the view from outside looking in. A tiny world which felt at this moment to have been built only for the two of them, right here in the garden.
His shoulders were warm beneath her hands as she braced her palms upon them and pushed herself up to her toes to brush a string of kisses across his cheek, down his jaw. He made a sound deep in his throat; a muted groan, as if he wrestled with himself.
Almost as if it had happened against his will, his hands settled at her waist. A shiver chased across her skin as a brisk breeze slid over her. Elliot murmured, “I told you that you were going to catch your death.”
“I won’t if you keep me warm.”
Another groan, one he could not quite swallow down before it found freedom, rumbling in the scant space between them like the distant echo of thunder.
She heard him swallow, felt a shudder tremble through him as he fought to retain some semblance of nobility, of propriety.
“Kate,” he said, his voice lowered by an octave at least, “I am not going to violate the trust your mother has placed in me.”
Poor, dear man. Waging a valiant and ultimately futile war against his own desires.
Kate toyed with the fabric of his cravat, delicately manipulated the sodden fabric from its intricate knot and pulled it free.
Touched her lips to the side of his neck and relished the sudden strength of his hands at her waist, the tight, impulsive grip of them.
She slid her hands down his chest, found the buttons of his waistcoat, nudged them open one by one, spreading the fabric wide over his shirt, the fine white linen of it rendered nearly translucent in the rain.
“Kate,” he said again, and his voice sounded so dry and crackling, despite the moisture hanging thick in the air. “Katie. Please.”
She slipped the top button of his shirt free of its loop. “How soon can we be married?”
“Not soon enough,” he grated out, the words tinged with misery. “A proper wedding takes time to arrange. I’ve got to get a license and a ring. You’ve got to have a gown. There’s announcements to be made, a wedding breakfast to be arranged—”
“What about a wedding that isn’t quite so proper as all that?”
His breath shuddered out on a fretful sigh. “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “It would be a scandal.”
“You like a bit of scandal,” she accused. Another button undone, and he seemed to shed a bit more of his composure with each she eased free. “And I think I could do with being a little scandalous.”
Another button, and she slid her fingers through the sparse golden curls that peeked through the opened sliver of his shirtfront, provoking a shiver.
He said, “It would be more than a little scandalous. People will think—” His hands slid around to the small of her back, grabbing fistfuls of her nightgown as she loosed yet another button. “People will think we had to marry.”
“What does it matter what they think, if we are going to marry anyway?” And there, the last button. Her fingers touched smooth skin, warm and lightly dusted with that gold fleece, felt the frantic race of his heart beneath them. “What would we need? To marry scandalously?”
A rough sound deep in his throat, as if he were gritting his teeth against an answer. “Witnesses,” he said at last. “A ring. A few hours free to appeal to the Archbishop for a special license, and to find a clergyman willing to perform the ceremony on scant notice.”
“Hmm.” Kate scraped her nails lightly over Elliot’s bared flesh and enjoyed the indrawn breath that seared the air. “A ring could probably be had quite easily, no?”
“Bond Street,” Elliot gasped. “The best jewelers are on Bond Street.”
“And the witnesses…there’s Mama, of course, providing the weather turns fairer and she has managed to rid herself of her headache. There’s Hodges and Mrs. Norris—and there’s Richard and Rebecca. Would they—”
“Yes. Without question.”
Kate smiled at the tortured tenor of his voice and rocked up onto her toes to brush her lips against his. “Then will you marry me tomorrow?”
“Kate,” Elliot pleaded, the dip of his brows conveying the depths of his struggle. “A proper wedding…”
Wrong answer. Kate shimmied free of his hold, and the wet linen of her nightgown slipped right between his gloved fingers as he fought to keep her close.
“Do you know,” she said as she gathered bunches of the fabric in her hands and dragged the drenched garment off over her head, “If we were married, Hodges would not likely eject you from the house. Particularly if he had witnessed it himself. You could stay here…with me.” The nightgown dropped to the ground near his coat.
“Christ.” There was a wet plop as his waistcoat fell to the grass.
With jerky, uncoordinated movements, Elliot yanked off his gloves and stripped his shirt off over his head, where it landed with unerring accuracy beside the nightgown she’d tossed down.
A makeshift bed formed of damp, discarded garments.
Undone, he reached for her with hands that trembled with longing, stifling a groan as his bare fingers touched her bare flesh.
“Katie,” he said, in a grim, fatalistic voice against her ear. “I am going to violate your mother’s trust in me.”
A laugh tripped off of her tongue, and she sank alongside him onto the damp bed of clothing. A few drops of rain loosed from a cluster of wisteria blossoms overhead sprinkled down upon them.
“But tomorrow,” he said, as he cupped the nape of her neck and drew her up for a kiss, “we are going to be married.”