She whirled to face him, bright flags of color high on her cheeks. “There’s nothing to discuss. You’ve hardly said a word to me in days, and then you make offensive personal remarks—”
“I didn’t mean to be offensive. I merely said—”
“I am not scrawny, you despicable oaf! Am I less than a person to you, that you dare to treat me with such contempt? You are the most—”
“I’m sorry.”
Catherine fell silent, her breath coming hard.
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way,” Leo said gruffly. “And you are not less than a person to me, you’re a person whose well-being I care about. I would be angry with anyone who didn’t treat you well—which in this case happens to be you. You’re not taking care of yourself.”
“Neither are you.”
Leo parted his lips to reply, but he couldn’t think of an effective rebuttal. He opened and closed his mouth again.
“Every day you work yourself into exhaustion,” Catherine said. “You’ve dropped half a stone, at least.”
“The new farms need irrigation systems. I’m the one best suited to design and implement them.”
“You don’t have to dig trenches and move rocks.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
Leo stared at her, considering whether or not to tell her the truth. He decided to be blunt. “Because working to the point of exhaustion is the only way I can keep from coming to you at night and seducing you.”
Catherine gave him a round-eyed glance. Her mouth opened and closed in the same way his had just a moment earlier.
Leo stared back at her with a mixture of wary amusement and growing heat. He could no longer deny that he found nothing in the world more entertaining than talking to her. Or just being near her. Cantankerous, stubborn, fascinating creature … completely unlike his past lovers. And at times like this, she had all the cuddlesome appeal of a feral hedgehog.
But she challenged him, met him as an equal, in a way that no other woman ever had. He wanted her beyond reason.
“You couldn’t seduce me,” Catherine said testily.
They were both motionless, their gazes locked.
“You deny the attraction between us?” Leo’s voice was pitched deeper than usual. He saw a shiver run through her before she set her jaw in determination.
“I deny that one’s rational will can be undermined by physical sensation,” she said. “One’s brain is always in charge.”
Leo couldn’t prevent the mocking smile that rose to his lips. “Good God, Marks. Obviously you’ve never participated in the act, or you would know that the major organ in charge is not the brain. In fact, the brain ceases working altogether.”
“I find it easy to believe that a man’s would.”
“A woman’s brain is no less primitive than a man’s, especially when it comes to physical distraction.”
“I’m sure you’d like to think so.”
“Shall I prove it to you?”
Catherine’s delicate mouth twisted skeptically. But then, as if she couldn’t resist, she asked, “How?”
Taking her arm, Leo drew her to a more secluded area of the kitchen garden, behind a pair of pergolas covered with scarlet runner beans. They stood next to a glass forcing house, which was used to compel plants into flower before they might have otherwise. A forcing house allowed a gardener to grow plants and flowers irrespective of the prevailing weather.
Leo glanced at their surroundings to make certain they were not being observed. “Here’s a challenge for your higher brain function. First, I’ll kiss you. Directly afterward, I’ll ask you a simple question. If you answer correctly, I’ll concede the argument.”
Catherine frowned and looked away from him. “This is ridiculous,” she said to no one in particular.
“You certainly have the right to refuse,” Leo told her. “Of course, I’ll take that as a forfeiture.”
Folding her arms across her chest, Catherine gazed at him with narrowed eyes. “One kiss?”
Leo spread his hands palm up, as if to demonstrate that he had nothing to hide. His gaze never left her. “One kiss, one question.”
Slowly her arms loosened and lowered. She stood before him uncertainly.
Leo hadn’t actually expected her to agree to the challenge. He felt his heart begin to beat in concentrated thumps. As he stepped closer to her, anticipation tightened his insides into knots.
“May I?” he asked, reaching for her spectacles, easing them from her face.
She blinked but didn’t resist.
Leo folded the spectacles and tucked them in his coat pocket. Very gently he tilted her face upward with both hands. He had made her nervous. Good, he thought darkly.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She nodded within the careful bracket of his palms, her lips trembling.
Leo brought his mouth lightly to hers, kissing her with careful, undemanding pressure. Her lips were cool and sweet. Teasing them apart, he deepened the kiss. His arms slid around her, bringing her fully against him. She was slender but compact, her body as supple as a cat’s. He felt her begin to mold against him, a slow and helpless relaxing. Concentrating on her mouth, he explored her with tender fire, searching with his tongue until he felt the vibration of her soft moan between their lips.
Lifting his head, Leo looked into her flushed face. He was so mesmerized by the drowsy green-gray of her eyes that it was a struggle to remember what he’d meant to ask her.
“The question,” he reminded himself aloud, and shook his head to clear it. “Here it is. A farmer has twelve sheep. All but seven die. How many are left?”
“Five,” she said promptly.
“Seven.” A grin spread across his face as he watched her puzzle it out.
Catherine scowled. “That was a trick. Ask me another one.”
“That wasn’t the bargain,” he said.
“Another one,” she insisted.
A husky laugh escaped him. “God, you’re stubborn. All right.” He reached for her and lowered his head, and she stiffened.
“What are you doing?”
“One kiss, one question,” he reminded her.
Catherine looked martyred. But she yielded to him, her head tilting back as he pulled her against him once more. This time he was not so tentative. His kiss was firm and urgent, his tongue sinking into the sweet, warm interior of her mouth. Her arms lifted around his neck, her fingers groping delicately in his hair.
Leo went dizzy with desire and pleasure. He couldn’t pull her body close enough, he needed parts of her he couldn’t reach. His hands shook with the need to find the sweet pale skin beneath the heavy fabric of her bodice. He kept trying to feel more of her, kiss her more deeply, and instinctively she tried to help him, sucking on his tongue with a little sound of pleasure. The hair on the back of his neck lifted as a chill of delight climbed up his spine to the base of his skull.
He broke the kiss, gasping.
“Ask me a question,” she reminded him thickly.
Leo could barely remember his own name. All he wanted to concentrate on was the way she fit against him. But somehow he obliged her. “Some months have thirty-one days, some have thirty. How many months have twenty-eight days?”
A perplexed furrow appeared between her fine brows. “One.”
“All of them,” came his gentle reply. He tried to look sympathetic as he saw her incredulous outrage.
“Ask me another one,” Catherine said, furious and determined.
Leo shook his head, breathless with laughter. “I can’t think of any more. My brain is deprived of blood. Accept it, Marks, you lost the—”
She grabbed the lapels of his coat and dragged him back to her, and Leo’s mouth fastened on hers before he knew what he was doing. The amusement vanished. Staggering forward with her in his arms, he put out one hand to brace himself against the glass forcing house. And he possessed her lips with rough, wholehearted ardor, reveling at the fe
el of her body arching against his. He was dying of lust, his flesh heavy and aching with the need to take her. He kissed her without restraint, sucking, almost gnawing, stroking the inside of her mouth in ways almost too delicious to bear.
Before he lost all semblance of self-control, Leo tore his lips from hers and held her tightly against his chest.
Another question, he thought dimly, and forced what was left of his mind to come up with something.
His voice was hoarse, as if he’d just tried to breathe in fire. “How many animals of each species did Moses take into the ark?”
Her answer was muffled in his coat. “Two.”
“None,” Leo managed to say. “It was Noah, not Moses.”
But he no longer found the game amusing, and Catherine no longer seemed to care about winning. They stood together, gripped tight and close. Their bodies cast a single shadow that stretched along a garden path.
“We’ll call it a draw,” Leo muttered.
Catherine shook her head. “No, you were right,” she said faintly. “I can’t think at all.”
They waited a little longer, while she leaned into the wild rhythm of his heart. They were both in a daze, mutually occupied with a question that couldn’t be asked. An answer that couldn’t be given.
Letting out an unsteady sigh, Leo eased her away. He winced as the fabric of his trousers chafed his aroused flesh. Thank God the cut of his coat was long enough to conceal the problem. Extracting her spectacles from his pocket, he replaced them carefully on her nose.
He offered his arm in wordless invitation—a truce—and Catherine took it.
“What does ‘bugger’ mean?” she asked unevenly, as he led her out of the kitchen garden.
“If I told you,” he said, “it would lead to improper thoughts. And I know how you hate those.”
Leo spent much of the next day at a stream on the west side of the estate, determining the best site for a waterwheel and marking the area. The wheel would be approximately sixteen feet in diameter, equipped with a row of buckets that would empty into a trough from which the water would course along a series of wooden flumes. Leo estimated that the system would irrigate approximately one hundred and fifty acres, or ten generously sized tenant farms.
After laying out plots with the tenants and laborers, hammering wooden stakes into the ground, and wading through a cold, muddy stream, Leo rode back to Ramsay House. It was late afternoon, the sun a condensed yellow, the meadows still and breezeless. Leo was tired, sweat-soaked, and annoyed from battling gadflies. Wryly he thought that all the romantic poets who waxed rhapsodic about being out in nature had certainly never been involved in an irrigation project.
His boots were so caked with mud that he went to the kitchen entrance, left them by the door, and went inside in his stocking feet. The cook and a maid were busy slicing apples and rolling dough, while Win and Beatrix sat at the worktable, polishing silver.
“Hello, Leo,” Beatrix said cheerfully.
“Heavens, what a sight you are,” Win exclaimed.
Leo smiled at both of them, then wrinkled his nose as he detected a bitter stench in the air. “I didn’t think it was possible for any odor to eclipse mine at the moment. What is it? Metal polish?”
“No, actually it’s…” Win looked guarded. “Well, it’s a kind of dye.”
“For cloth?”
“For hair,” Beatrix said. “You see, Miss Marks wants to darken her hair before the ball, but she was afraid of using dye from the apothecary, since he got it so wrong last time. So Cook suggested a recipe that her own mother used. You boil walnut shells and cassia bark together with vinegar and—”
“Why is Marks dyeing her hair?” Leo asked, striving to keep his tone ordinary, even as his soul revolted against the idea. That beautiful hair, gleaming gold and pale amber, covered with a dull, dark stain.
Win replied cautiously. “I believe she wishes to be less … visible … at the ball, with so many guests in attendance. I didn’t press her for answers, as I felt she was entitled to her privacy. Leo, please don’t distress her by mentioning it.”
“Does no one find it odd that we have a servant who insists on disguising herself?” Leo asked. “Is this family so bloody eccentric that we accept any manner of strangeness without even asking questions?”
“It’s not all that strange,” Beatrix said. “Many animals change their colors. Cuttlefish, for example, or certain species of frogs, and of course chameleons—”
“Excuse me,” Leo said through clenched teeth. He left the kitchen with purposeful strides, while Win and Beatrix stared after him.
“I was leading to some very interesting facts about chameleons,” Beatrix said.
“Bea, darling,” Win murmured, “perhaps you’d better go out to the stables and find Cam.”
Catherine sat at her dressing table, contemplating her own tense reflection in the looking glass. Several articles were neatly arranged in front of her: folded toweling, a comb, a pitcher and basin, and a pot filled with a strained dark sludge that looked like boot blacking. She had painted a single lock of hair with the stuff, and was waiting for it to take effect, to see what color had been imparted. After her last disaster with colorant, when her hair had turned green, she was taking no chances.
With the Hathaway ball only two days away, Catherine had no choice but to drab down her appearance as much as possible. Guests from surrounding counties would attend, as well as families from London. And as always, she was afraid of being recognized. However, as long as she obscured her appearance and kept to the corners, no one ever noticed her. Chaperones were most often spinsters or poor widows, undesirable women who had been assigned the task of watching over young girls who still had their best years ahead of them. Catherine was scarcely older than those girls, but she felt as if there were decades between herself and them.
Catherine knew that her past would catch up with her someday. And when it did, the time she had spent with the Hathaways would be over. It had been the only period of real happiness in her life. She would grieve to lose them.
All of them.
The door was flung open, shattering Catherine’s quiet contemplation. She turned in her chair and saw Leo in remarkable disarray. He was sweaty and rumpled and filthy, standing there in his stocking feet.
She jumped up to face him, recalling too late that she wore nothing but a crumpled chemise.
His hard gaze raked over her, missing no detail, and Catherine turned red in outrage. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Have you gone mad? Leave my room this instant!”
Chapter Thirteen
Leo closed the door and reached Catherine in two strides. He hauled her forcibly to the pitcher and basin.
“Stop it,” she screeched, flailing at him, while he pushed her head over the basin and poured water over the lock of hair she had saturated with dye. She spluttered furiously. “What is wrong with you? What are you doing?”
“Washing this slime from your hair.” He dumped the rest of the water on her head.
Catherine yelped and struggled, managing to slosh water over him as well, until there were puddles on the floor and the carpet was soaked. They fought until Catherine found herself on the wet layer of wool covering the floor. Her spectacles had flown off, leaving the room a blur. But Leo’s face was only inches above her own, his hot blue eyes staring into hers. He subdued her without effort, pinning her wrists, her torso, as if she had no more substance than a garment rippling on a clothesline. He was very heavy on her, muscle and weight and masculinity supported in the cradle of her thighs.
She twisted helplessly. She wanted him to let her go, and at the same time she wanted him to lie on her forever, his hips pressing hers harder, deeper. Her eyes turned wet.
“Please,” she choked out. “Please don’t hold my wrists.”
As he heard the note of fear in her voice, his face changed. He released her arms at once. She was gathered up against him, her dripping head clasped to his shoulder.
> “No,” he muttered, “don’t be afraid of me. I would never—” She felt him kiss the side of her face, the edge of her jaw, the frantic working of her throat. Waves of warmth slid over her, sensation rising in the places where they pressed. She let her arms remain limp and outstretched on the floor, but her knees tightened on his body, holding him instinctively.
“What does it matter to you?” she asked against his damp shirt. “What do you care what color my h-hair is?” She felt the hard wall of his chest beneath his shirt, and she wanted to delve beneath the garment, rub her mouth and cheeks through the dark fleece.
His voice was soft and fierce. “Because it’s not you. It’s not right. What are you hiding from?”
She shook her head weakly, her eyes swimming. “I can’t explain. There’s too much … I can’t. If you knew, I would have to go. And I want to stay with you. Just a little longer.” A sob slipped from her throat. “Not you, I meant your family.”
“You can stay. Tell me, so I can protect you.”
She swallowed back another sob. There was a hot, irritating trickle on the side of her face. A tear had slid into her hairline. She lifted a hand to brush at it, but he had already put his mouth there, his lips absorbing the trail of wet salt. Her trembling hand curved around his head. She hadn’t meant to encourage him, but he took it as such, his mouth finding hers hungrily. And she moaned, lost in a flood of urgent feeling.
He slid an arm beneath her neck, supporting her as he kissed her. She felt the excitement in him, heard it in the rasp of his breathing as he searched and teased and licked deep. His weight lifted from her, his warm hand settling on the damp fabric covering her midriff. She might as well have been naked for all the concealment the chemise provided, her nipples rising tightly against the transparent chill of fabric. He kissed her over the wet muslin, his mouth fastening over the rosy veiled point. Impassioned, he tugged at the tie of her chemise and spread the garment to reveal the shapes of her breasts, high and small and round.
“Cat…” The rush of his breath against her damp skin made her shiver. “I could die of wanting you, you’re so lovely … sweet … God …” He drew a flushed bud into his mouth, circling it with his tongue, tugging softly. At the same time his fingers went to her intimate flesh, tracing the delicate slit, stroking until she was open and wet. She felt the gentle pass of his thumb over a place of excruciating sensation, the caress sending fire up to the base of her throat. Her hips lifted into the soft stroking, and he teased her lightly, tenderly, until pleasure hummed through every part of her and an extraordinary promise of relief hovered just out of reach.