His touch deepened, a finger nudging the entrance of her body. The gentle invasion caused her to shrink backward in surprise. Except that she was on the floor on her back, and there was no place to retreat. She reached down reflexively, her hand going to his.
Leo nuzzled the side of her neck. “Innocent darling. Relax and let me touch you, let me…” She felt the intricate workings of bone and tendon in the back of his hand as his finger slid farther into the fluid softness. She caught her breath, her body grasping helplessly at the careful intrusion.
Leo’s heavy lashes lowered over smoldering eyes, the color of the pale blue heart of a flame. A flush had crossed his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “I want to be inside you,” he said thickly, caressing her. “Here … and deeper…”
An incoherent sound climbed in her throat as the subtle inner teasing drew her knees up and caused her toes to curl. She was suffused with desperate heat, craving things she had no words for. Drawing his head down to hers, she kissed him frantically, needing the voluptuous pressure of his mouth, the thrust of his tongue’
A series of determined raps on the door broke through the lurid haze of sensation. Leo cursed and pulled his hand from between her thighs, and tucked her body beneath his. Cat whimpered, her heart pounding madly.
“Who is it?” Leo called out brusquely.
“Rohan.”
“If you open that door, I will kill you.” The statement was uttered with the vicious sincerity of a man who had been pushed to his limits. Apparently it was enough to give even Cam Rohan pause.
After a long moment, Cam said, “I want a word with you.”
“Now?”
“Definitely now,” came the inexorable reply.
Closing his eyes, Leo drew in a taut breath and expelled it slowly. “Downstairs in the library.”
“Five minutes?” Cam persisted.
Leo stared at the closed door with an expression of incredulous wrath. “Go, Rohan.”
As Cam’s footsteps retreated, Leo looked down at Catherine. She couldn’t seem to stop writhing and trembling, her nerves jangling with agitation. Murmuring quietly, he held her close and rubbed circles on her back and hips. “Easy, love. Let me hold you.” Gradually the frantic need faded, and she lay still in his arms, her cheek pressed against his.
Leo stood and scooped her up easily, and carried her to the bed. He set her half-naked body on the mattress. While she perched on the edge of the bed and fumbled to draw the counterpane around herself, he hunted for her spectacles. Finding them in the corner of the room, he brought them back to her.
The spectacles were beginning to look rather the worse for wear, she thought ruefully, straightening the battered wire frames and polishing the lenses with a corner of the counterpane.
“What are you going to say to Mr. Rohan?” she asked hesitantly, putting the spectacles on.
“I don’t know yet. But for the next two days, until the damned ball is over, I’m going to put some distance between us. Because our relationship seems to have become a bit too flammable for either of us to manage. Afterward, however, you and I are going to talk. No evasions, no lies.”
“Why?” she asked through dry lips.
“We have to make some decisions.”
What kind of decisions? Was he planning to dismiss her? Or was some kind of indecent proposition in the making? “Perhaps I should leave Hampshire,” she said with difficulty.
Leo’s eyes glinted dangerously. Taking her head in his hands, he bent down to whisper in her ear, in what could have been either a promise or a threat. “Anywhere you go, I’ll find you.”
He went to the door, and paused before leaving. “Incidentally,” he said. “When I drew those sketches of you, I didn’t begin to do you justice.”
After Leo had washed and changed into decent attire, he went to the library. Cam was waiting there, looking no happier than Leo felt. Even so, there was a calmness about him, a quality of relaxed tolerance that helped to blunt the edge of Leo’s temper. There was no man on earth whom Leo trusted more.
When they had first met, Leo would never have chosen a man like Cam Rohan for Amelia. It just wasn’t done. Cam was a Gypsy, and no one could claim that a Romany heritage was an advantage in English society. But the temperament of the man, his patience, humor, and inherent decency, was impossible to deny.
In a relatively short time, Cam had become a brother to Leo. He had seen Leo at his worst, and he had offered steady support as Leo had fought to reconcile himself to a life bereft of innocence or hope. And somehow, in the past few years, Leo had regained a little of both.
Standing at the window, Cam leveled a shrewd stare at him.
Wordlessly Leo went to the sideboard, poured a brandy, and let the snifter warm in his fingers. To his surprise, he saw that his hand wasn’t quite steady.
“I was called in from the stables,” Cam said, “to find your sisters worried and the housemaids in hysterics, because you decided to close yourself in a bedroom with Miss Marks. You can’t take advantage of a woman in your employ. You know that.”
“Before you tread the moral high ground,” Leo said, “let’s not forget that you seduced Amelia before you married her. Or is debauching an innocent acceptable as long as she’s not working for you?”
There was a flash of annoyance in Cam’s hazel eyes. “I knew I was going to marry her when I did it. Can you say the same?”
“I haven’t slept with Marks. Yet.” Leo scowled. “But at this rate I’ll have bedded her by week’s end. I can’t seem to stop myself.” He raised his gaze heavenward. “Lord, please smite me.” When it appeared there would be no response from the Almighty, he tossed back a swallow of brandy. It went down his throat in a rush of smooth fire.
“You think if you take her,” Cam said, “it would be a mistake.”
“Yes, that’s what I think.” Leo took another swallow of liquor.
“Sometimes you have to make a mistake to avoid making an even worse one.” Cam smiled slightly as he saw Leo’s baleful expression. “Did you think you could avoid this forever, phral?”
“That was the plan. And I’ve managed quite well until recently.”
“You’re a man in his prime. It’s only natural to want your own woman. What’s more, you have a title to pass on. And from what I understand of the peerage, your primary responsibility is to produce more of yourselves.”
“Good God, are we back to that again?” Scowling, Leo finished his brandy and set the glass aside. “The last thing I want to do is sire brats.”
Cam lifted a brow, looking amused. “What’s wrong with children?”
“They’re sticky. They interrupt. They cry when they don’t have their way. If I want that kind of company, I have my friends.”
Settling in a chair, Cam stretched out his long legs and regarded Leo with deceptive casualness. “You’re going to have to do something about Miss Marks. Because this can’t continue. Even for the Hathaways, it’s…” He hesitated, searching for a word.
“Indecent,” Leo finished for him. He paced across the room and back. Stopping at the cold, dark hearth, he braced his hands on the mantel and lowered his head. “Rohan,” he said carefully. “You saw what I was like, after Laura.”
“Yes.” Cam paused. “The Rom would say you were a man who grieved too much. You trapped your beloved’s soul in the in-between.”
“Either that, or I went mad.”
“Love is a form of madness, isn’t it?” Cam asked prosaically.
Leo let out a humorless chuckle. “For me, undeniably.”
They were both silent. And then Cam murmured, “Is Laura still with you, phral?”
“No.” Leo stared into the empty fireplace. “I’ve accepted that she’s gone. I don’t dream about her anymore. But I remember what it was like, trying to live while I was dead inside. It would be even worse now. I can’t go through it again.”
“You seem to think you have a choice,” Cam said. “But you have it backward. Love
chooses you. The shadow moves as the sun commands.”
“How I enjoy Romany sayings,” Leo marveled. “And you know so many of them.”
Rising from the chair, Cam went to the sideboard and poured himself a brandy. “I hope you’re not entertaining any thought of making her your mistress,” he said matter-of-factly. “Rutledge would have you drawn and quartered, no matter that you’re his brother-in-law.”
“No, I wouldn’t, in any case. Taking her as a mistress would create more problems than it would solve.”
“If you can’t leave her alone, you can’t keep her as a mistress, and you won’t marry her, the only option is to send her away.”
“The most sensible option,” Leo agreed darkly. “Also my least favorite.”
“Has Miss Marks indicated what she wants?”
Leo shook his head. “She’s terrified to face that. Because, God help her, she may possibly want me.”
Chapter Fourteen
For the next two days, the Hathaway household was a hive of activity. Vast quantities of food and flowers were brought in, furniture was temporarily stored, doors were taken off their hinges, rugs were rolled up, and the floors were waxed and polished.
Guests from Hampshire and surrounding counties would attend the ball, as well as families of distinction from London. To Leo’s disgruntlement, the ball invitations had been eagerly accepted by a multitude of peers with daughters in marriageable circumstances. And as the lord of the manor, his duty was to act as host and dance with as many women as possible.
“This is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me,” he told Amelia.
“Oh, not at all, I’m sure I’ve done worse things to you.”
Leo considered that, running through a long list of remembered offenses in his mind. “Never mind, you’re right. But to be clear … I’m only tolerating this to humor you.”
“Yes, I know. I do hope you’ll humor me further, and find someone to marry so you can produce an heir before Vanessa Darvin and her mother take possession of our home.”
He gave his sister a narrow-eyed glance. “One could almost infer that the house means more to you than my future happiness.”
“Not at all. Your future happiness means at least as much to me as the house.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly.
“But I also happen to believe that you’ll be much happier when you fall in love and get married.”
“If I ever fell in love with someone,” he retorted, “I certainly wouldn’t ruin it by marrying her.”
The guests began to arrive early in the evening. Women were dressed in silk or taffeta, jeweled brooches glittering at low rounded necklines, hands covered with wrist-length white gloves. Many feminine arms were adorned with matching bracelets in the new fashion.
Gentlemen, by contrast, were dressed with severe simplicity in black coats and matching creaseless trousers, and cravats in either white or black. The clothes were tailored with a touch of welcome looseness, making natural movement far easier than it had been in the constricting garments of the recent past.
Music floated through rooms abundantly dressed with flowers. Tables draped in gold satin nearly creaked beneath pyramids of fruit, cheese dishes, roast vegetables, sweetbreads, puddings, joints of meat, smoked fish, and roast fowl. Footmen moved through the circuit of public rooms, bringing cigars and liquor to men in the library, or wine and champagne to the card rooms.
The drawing room was crowded, with clusters of people all around the sides and couples dancing in the center. Leo had to admit, there was an uncommon number of attractive young women present. They all looked pleasant, normal, and fresh-faced. They all looked the same. But he proceeded to dance with as many of them as possible, taking care to include wallflowers, and he even persuaded a dowager or two to take a turn with him.
And all the while he hunted for glimpses of Catherine Marks.
She was wearing a lavender gown, the same one she’d worn at Poppy’s wedding. Her hair was caught in a smooth, tight chignon at the back of her neck. She watched over Beatrix while remaining discreetly in the background.
Leo had seen Catherine do the same thing countless times before, stand quietly among the dowagers and chaperones as girls only a little younger than herself flirted and laughed and danced. It was absurd that Catherine should not be noticed. She was the equal of any woman there, background be damned.
Somehow Catherine must have felt his gaze on her. She turned and glanced at him, and she couldn’t seem to look away any more than he could.
A dowager captured Catherine’s attention, asking a question about something, and she turned to the dratted woman.
At the same time, Amelia came up to Leo’s side and caught at his sleeve.
“My lord,” she said tensely. “We have a situation. Not a good one.”
Glancing at his sister with instant concern, Leo saw that she wore a false smile for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. “I had despaired of anything interesting happening this evening,” he said. “What is it?”
“Miss Darvin and Countess Ramsay are here.”
Leo’s face went blank. “Here? Now?”
“Cam, Win, and Merripen are talking to them in the entrance hall.”
“Who the devil invited them?”
“No one. They prevailed on mutual acquaintances—the Ulsters—to bring them as guests. And we can’t turn them away.”
“Why not? They’re not wanted.”
“As improper as they’ve been in coming without invitations, it would be even worse for us to reject them. It would make us appear exceedingly ungracious, and to say the least, it wouldn’t be good manners.”
“Far too often,” Leo reflected aloud, “good manners stand in direct opposition to what I want to do.”
“I know that feeling well.”
They shared a grim smile.
“What do you suppose they want?” Amelia asked.
“Let’s find out,” Leo said curtly. Offering her his arm, he escorted her out of the drawing room to the entrance hall.
More than a few curious gazes attended them as they joined the other Hathaways, who were speaking to a pair of women dressed in sumptuous ballgowns.
The older, presumably Countess Ramsay, was a woman of average appearance, a bit plump, neither attractive nor plain. The younger woman, Miss Vanessa Darvin, was a raving beauty, tall with an elegantly turned figure and a lavish bosom, all nicely displayed in a gown of blue-green trimmed with peacock feathers. Her midnight hair was arranged in a perfect mass of pinned-up curls. Her mouth was small and full, the color of a ripe plum, and her eyes were sultry, dark and heavily lashed.
Everything about Vanessa Darvin advertised sexual confidence, which Leo had certainly never held against a woman, except that in this girl it was a bit off-putting. Probably because she looked at him as if she expected him to fall at her feet and start panting like a pug dog with a respiratory ailment.
With Amelia on his arm, Leo approached the pair. Introductions were made, and he bowed with impeccable politeness.
“Welcome to Ramsay House, my lady. And Miss Darvin. What a pleasant surprise.”
The countess beamed at him. “I hope our unexpected arrival does not inconvenience you, my lord. However, when Lord and Lady Ulster made it known that you were giving a ball—the first at Ramsay House since its restoration—we felt certain that you wouldn’t mind the company of your nearest relations.”
“Relations?” Amelia asked blankly. The kinship between the Hathaways and the Darvins was so distant as to hardly warrant the word.
Countess Ramsay continued to smile. “We are cousins, are we not? And when my poor husband passed on to his reward, may God rest his soul, we found consolation in the knowledge that the estate would pass into capable stewardship as yours. Although…” Her gaze flickered to Cam and Merripen. “We had not expected such a colorful variety of in-laws as you seem to have accumulated.”
Fully comprehending the unsubtle reference t
o the fact that both Cam and Merripen were part Gypsy, Amelia scowled openly. “Now see here—”
“How refreshing it is,” Leo interrupted, trying to stave off an explosion, “to finally be able to communicate without the interference of solicitors.”
“I agree, my lord,” Countess Ramsay replied. “The solicitors have made the situation regarding Ramsay House quite complex, have they not? But we are only women, and therefore much of what they relate goes right over our heads. Isn’t that right, Vanessa?”
“Yes, Mama,” came the demure reply.
Countess Ramsay’s pillowy cheeks puffed out with another smile. Her gaze encompassed the entire group. “What matters most is the bond of familial affection.”
“Does that mean you’ve decided not to take the house away from us?” Amelia asked bluntly.
Cam settled a hand at his wife’s waist and gave her a warning squeeze.
Looking taken aback, Countess Ramsay regarded Amelia with wide eyes. “Goodness me. I’m not at all able to discuss legalities—my poor little brain fairly collapses when I try.”
“However,” Vanessa Darvin said in a silky voice, “as we understand, there is a chance we may not be entitled to Ramsay House, if Lord Ramsay marries and sires offspring within a year.” Her gaze slid boldly over Leo, traveling from head to toe. “And he seems well equipped to do so.”
Leo arched a brow, amused by the delicate emphasis she placed on the term “well equipped.”
Cam intervened before Amelia could utter a scathing reply. “My lady, do you have need of lodging during your stay in Hampshire?”