Chapter Seventeen
Kate wrapped her hand around her reticule, seizing the little notebook within in an iron grip for no other reason than to stop herself from absent-mindedly touching her lips yet again.
They tingled still, nearly an hour later.
As if she could still feel the pressure of Elliot’s lips upon them, still feel the warmth, the softness.
The skin at the nape of her neck still sizzled at the remembered brush of his fingers.
Her own fingertips still tickled at the sensation of his wool coat beneath them.
But her lips bore the brunt of it, and she hadn’t quite been able to keep herself from touching them.
It was the wine, of course, or the port. Or some unholy combination of the two, perhaps. The Crewes’ serving staff had done an able job of discreetly refilling glasses throughout dinner. So discreet a job that she could not say, exactly, how much wine she had consumed.
And it had to be the wine, or else—or else—
Or else she was in very real trouble. Heading inexorably toward an excruciating heartache.
“Kate, darling,” Mama said, her brows drawing in concern. “Are you well? Shall I have the coachman stop?”
“I’m fine, Mama,” Kate managed to eke out through the tightness of her throat with a weak smile, hoping that the shadows clinging to the interior of the carriage would disguise just how poor an excuse for one it truly was.
“A little too much wine, I think. But nothing to stop the carriage over.” After more than a fortnight in London, the carriage sickness had mostly abated.
“You do look a bit peaky,” Mama said, adjusting her spectacles to peer through the darkness. “Ah, well. You might be a bit worse off in the morning for it, but it is a valuable lesson to learn. And it was only a private dinner among friends, so there is no harm done by it.”
Friends. Yes. The spine of the notebook bit into Kate’s palm like a taunt. Elliot had always been her friend, but one of the women whose names she had dutifully inscribed within the notebook he’d given her would be his wife.
Soon enough, one of them would know what it was like to feel his arms around her. To feel the press of his lips, the touch of his tongue. Perhaps he would wrap that woman’s hair about his fingers just as he had done with Kate’s. Stroke the nape of her neck…and elsewhere.
Kate pressed her lips into a grim line to smother the strange little sound that crawled up her throat before it could emerge.
Swallowed hard to force it back down to—wherever it had originated.
“We’re home,” she said as the carriage began to slow, and not a moment too soon.
The carriage was swiftly becoming too tight, too close.
And if she could not recover herself swiftly, Mama would have more questions still.
Best to be elsewhere before Mama could give voice to them, somewhere she might collect herself and tuck away the inconvenient thoughts whizzing about her head.
Mama smothered a yawn in her hand. “Thank goodness,” she said as the footman flung open the door and offered a hand to help her out.
“I don’t mind telling you, dear,” she said as she stepped out of the carriage, “I nodded off there for a while in my chair in the library. These late nights are playing havoc with me. I much prefer our country hours.”
So did Kate, but she supposed she was growing somewhat accustomed to the late nights.
Could she grow accustomed, in the same fashion as she had with the carriages and the London hours, to seeing Elliot with a wife on his arm?
A woman she had selected for him? She pondered these questions with an increasing sense of disquiet as they climbed the steps of the townhouse.
“Welcome,” Hodges said, with a polite bow as he ushered them into the foyer. “Bit of a chill in the air tonight despite the season. Can I interest you in tea?”
“None for me, thank you,” Mama said. “At this hour, all that interests me is my bed. But perhaps…Katie, dear.” Mama turned to smooth one hand over Kate’s cheek in a fond caress. “A bracing cup of tea might be just the thing for you, don’t you think?”
Yes. A hot cup of tea, and a comfortable chair. Perhaps even the escape of a new book to nudge her mind away from the thoughts that had plagued her just lately. “Yes; that sounds lovely,” she said. “Might I take tea in the library this evening, Hodges?”
“Of course, Miss Littlefield,” Hodges said as he closed the door behind them. “It’ll be only the work of a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Hodges,” Kate said, as she followed after Mama toward the stairs and began to ascend.
“First, I have got to get out of this gown. No, no”—she gave a little wave, staying Hodges’ offer before he had even begun to speak—“I can manage well enough on my own. No need to wake anyone else to assist me.”
A little crinkle of amusement settled into the fine lines wreathing Hodges’ eyes. “Very well, Miss Littlefield. Your tea will await your return,” he said as he turned to go.
Kate trudged up the stairs, feeling the weight of the evening upon her shoulders grow heavier with each step.
Was it the tightness of her bodice and the stays beneath which constricted her breathing, or was it the pounding of her heart that caused such discomfort? Perhaps she’d know once she’d changed.
“Good night, darling,” Mama said breezily as they reached the landing where they would part ways. She placed a gentle kiss upon Kate’s cheek and murmured, “Don’t stay up too late, now.”
“I won’t, Mama.” Probably, between shedding herself of a less-than-comfortable gown and the soothing properties of tea, she’d be near to nodding off within minutes.
If she could manage to shed her mind just as easily of the knotted tangle of thoughts that had strung itself haphazardly across it, that was to say.
As she stripped out of the gown and the stays and the voluminous petticoats beneath, she did breathe a bit easier.
A fraction; a hair. But every time she caught sight of herself in the cheval glass tucked into a corner of her room, she found herself searching her reflection therein for…
some elusive something, something she could not put a name to.
It occurred to her only after she had donned her nightgown and wrapped herself into her dressing gown that she had been looking for a change in her reflection because she felt changed.
This evening something within her had changed so severely, so utterly, that she had been certain down to the bottom of her soul that it would show upon her face, or else upon her person as if it might as well have been scrawled upon her skin in ink.
She did not look changed…but she was changed.
It wasn’t the gown and stays which had been too tight. It was the bubble of riotous emotions roiling and expanding in her chest which had caused that wretched constriction. It was her heart, beating so hard she could see her pulse pounding in her throat, hear the rush of her blood in her ears.
Tea. As a proper Englishwoman, Kate had yet to encounter a problem which a good cup of tea could not solve. Or at the very least served to settle one’s humors enough to go about solving said problem oneself. Barefoot, she crept from her room and padded down the long hallway toward the library.
The light which peeked out from beneath the closed door suggested that Hodges had come and gone already in that eerie efficiency which all of the duke’s serving staff seemed to possess.
A tray sat upon a little table near her favored reading chair; a lovely large overstuffed thing that one simply sank into upon sitting.
A teapot, a single cup, and on a small plate of its own, the thoughtful addition of a pastry leftover from this morning’s breakfast.
You smell like Mrs. Norris’ walnut pastries.
Kate’s pulse jumped. With trembling fingers, she sloshed a measure of tea into the cup and cast back the near-scorching liquid in one swallow. At least the burn of her tongue distracted from the lingering tingle of her lips.
She drew in a deep breath, caught the familiar, comforting scent of old books and binding glue.
This library was a good deal smaller than the one at Longthorpe Manor, but no less well-tended.
Tall shelves wreathed the room, climbing straight up to the ceiling and packed to the gills with volumes.
The dowager duchess’ romances were tucked into the corner on a shelf all their own, owing to the sheer number of them.
Kate had devoured a few of them already during her time here in London, either out in the garden when the weather was fair or tucked away here in the library when it was not.
Even the rigorous demands of the Season left her with an hour or two of freedom each day to escape into a book, and there was something remarkably soothing about lazing about with a book in hand, rather than reading in the frenzied bursts of a few pages at a time that she had had to manage at home.
She could benefit from that sort of respite now. A book was just the thing to soothe her from such a profound disquiet. Her fingers traced the spines; a mix of cloth and leather bindings. How many of these had Elliot read himself?
Good Lord, what was wrong with her? Plucking a book from the shelf at random, Kate scurried back over to the abandoned chair and cast herself into its plush seat.
There. Comfortable at last, for the most part.
The chair had been fashioned to accommodate larger frames than her own; her toes dangled a few inches above the floor, peeking out from beneath the hem of her dressing gown.