“I can’t. ” Catherine thrashed in frustration as his hips lifted from hers. As he rolled her over to face him, she glared up at him. Unable to stop himself, he lowered his head and kissed her voraciously, savoring the sound of need that came from her throat.
“A pity,” he said, breathing heavily. “I was working up to something really lascivious.” Rolling off her, he reached for the fall of his trousers, muttering something about the risk of doing himself permanent injury as he tried to fasten them again.
Catherine watched him incredulously. “You’re not going to finish?”
He let out an unsteady sigh. “As I said, all or nothing.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling with desire until her teeth chattered. “Why are you trying to torture me?”
“It’s becoming clear that a lifetime of patience wouldn’t be enough to break through your guard. So I’ll have to try something else.” Leo kissed her gently and left the bed. After he raked both hands through his disheveled hair and straightened his clothes, he gave her a smoldering glance, followed by a grin that seemed to mock both of them simultaneously. “I’m waging war, love. And the only way to win this kind of war is to make you want to lose.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Only a woman made of stone could have lasted against the campaign Leo launched over the next week. It was courtship, he claimed, but there should have been another word for it, the way he kept Catherine constantly off balance with his sweetly subversive charm.
One moment he provoked her into some nonsensical and highly entertaining argument, and the next he was soothing and kind. He whispered whimsical compliments and lines of poetry in her ear, and taught her naughty French words, and made her laugh at inappropriate moments. What Leo did not do, however, was try to kiss or seduce her. At first Catherine was amused by this obvious tactic, and then secretly miffed, and then intrigued. She frequently found herself staring at his mouth, so flawless and firm … she couldn’t help remembering their past kisses, daydreaming about them.
When they attended a private musical evening at a mansion on Upper Brook Street, Leo stole Catherine away as the hostess led a group of guests on a tour of the house. Following Leo to a private corner behind an arrangement of tall potted ferns, Catherine went eagerly into his arms. Instead of kissing her, however, he pulled her into the warm strength of his body … and held her. Simply held her, keeping her warm and close, letting his hands course slowly over her back. He whispered something secretive amid the pinned-up swirls of her hair, the words too soft for her to hear.
What Catherine enjoyed above all was walking with Leo through the Rutledge gardens, where sunlight stuttered through trees and hedges, and the breezes carried the crisp hint of approaching autumn. They had long conversations, sometimes touching on sensitive subjects. Careful questions, difficult answers. And yet it seemed they were both struggling toward the same goal, a kind of connection that neither of them had ever known before.
Sometimes Leo drew back and looked at her for wordless moments as one might stare at a work of art in a museum, trying to discover its truth. It was compelling, the interest he showed in her. Seductive. And he was a wonderful conversationalist, telling her stories about his childhood misadventures, about what it had been like to grow up in the Hathaway family, about the time he had spent in Paris and Provence. Catherine listened carefully to the details, gathering them like quilting scraps, piecing them together to form a better understanding of one of the more complex men she had ever met.
Leo was an unsentimental rogue who was capable of great sensitivity and compassion. He was an articulate man who could use words either to soothe like a balm of honey, or dissect like a surgeon’s knife. When it suited him, Leo played the part of a jaded aristocrat, adeptly concealing the quicksilver workings of his brain. But sometimes in unguarded moments, Catherine caught glimpses of the gallant boy he had once been, before experience had weathered and hardened him.
“In some ways he’s very much like our father was,” Poppy told her in private. “Father loved conversation. He was a serious man, an intellectual, but he possessed a streak of whimsy.” She grinned, remembering. “My mother always said she might have married a more handsome man, or a wealthier one, but never one who talked as he did. And she knew herself to be the kind of woman who would never have been happy with a dullard.”
Catherine could well understand that. “Did Lord Ramsay favor your mother in any regard?”
“Oh, yes. She had an artistic eye, and she encouraged Leo in his architectural pursuits.” Poppy paused. “I don’t think she would have been pleased to learn that Leo would inherit a title—she didn’t have a high opinion of the aristocracy. And she certainly wouldn’t have approved of Leo’s behavior in the past few years, although she would be very glad that he had decided to mend his ways.”
“Where did his wicked wit come from?” Catherine asked. “Your mother or your father?”
“That,” Poppy said wryly, “is entirely Leo’s own.”
Nearly every day, Leo brought Catherine a small gift: a book, a box of sweets, a collar made of Brussels bobbin lace in a delicate pattern of openwork flowers. “This is the loveliest lacework I’ve ever seen,” she told him regretfully, setting the exquisite gift on a nearby table with great care. “But my lord, I’m afraid—”
“I know,” Leo said. “A gentleman shouldn’t give personal items to a lady he’s courting.” He lowered his voice, mindful of being overheard by Poppy and the housekeeper, who were talking by the threshold of the Rutledge apartments. “But I can’t take it back—no other woman could do it justice. And Marks, you have no idea of the self-restraint I exercised. I wanted to buy you a pair of embroidered stockings with little flowers that run all the way up the insides of your—”
“My lord,” Catherine whispered, a light blush covering her face. “You forget yourself.”
“I haven’t forgotten a thing, actually. Not one detail of your beautiful body. Soon I may start sketching you naked again. Every time I put a pencil to paper, the temptation nearly overwhelms me.”
She tried to look severe. “You promised not to do that again.”
“But my pencil has a will of its own,” he said gravely.
Catherine’s color deepened, even as a smile tugged at her lips. “You’re incorrigible.”
His lashes lowered fractionally. “Kiss me, and I’ll behave.”
She made an exasperated little sound. “Now you want to kiss me, when Poppy and the housekeeper are standing only a few yards away?”
“They won’t notice. They’re involved in a riveting conversation about hotel toweling.” Leo’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Kiss me. One little kiss. Right here.” He pointed to his cheek.
Perhaps it was the fact that Leo looked rather boyish as he teased her, his blue eyes alight with mischief. But as Catherine looked at him, she was nearly overwhelmed with a strange new feeling, a warm giddiness that invaded every part of her body. She leaned forward, and instead of kissing his cheek, she put her mouth directly on his.
Leo drew in a surprised breath, letting her take the lead. And, giving in to temptation, she lingered longer than she had intended, her mouth softly teasing, her tongue shyly touching his lips. He responded with a low sound, his arms going around her. She sensed the rising heat in him, the carefully banked urges threatening to flare out of control.
Ending the kiss, Catherine half expected to see Poppy and the housekeeper, Mrs. Pennywhistle, both staring at them with scandalized expressions. But as she peeked over Leo’s shoulder, she saw that the housekeeper’s back was still turned toward them.
Poppy had taken in the situation with an astute glance. “Mrs. Pennywhistle,” she said glibly, ushering the housekeeper away from the threshold, “do come out into the hallway with me, I thought I saw a dreadful stain on the carpeting the other day, and I wanted to show you … is it here? … No, perhaps over there … Oh, drat, where is it?”
Left in tempo
rary privacy, Catherine looked into Leo’s heavy-lidded blue eyes.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, his voice husky.
She tried to think of an answer that would amuse him. “I wanted you to test my higher brain function.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly. “If you have a match when you enter a dark room,” he finally said, “which would you light first—the oil lamp on the table, or the kindling in the hearth?”
Catherine squinted as she considered the question. “The lamp.”
“The match,” he said, shaking his head. His tone was soft and chiding. “Marks, you’re not even trying.”
“Another one,” she prompted, and he complied without hesitation, his head bending over hers. He gave her a long, smoldering kiss, and she relaxed against him, her fingers sinking into his hair. He finished the kiss with a voluptuous nudge.
“Is it legal or illegal for a man to marry his widow’s sister?” he asked.
“Illegal,” she said languidly, trying to pull his head back to hers.
“Impossible, because he’s dead.” Leo resisted her efforts and looked down at her with a crooked grin. “It’s time to stop.”
“No,” she protested, straining toward him.
“Easy, Marks,” he whispered. “One of us has to have some self-control, and it really should be you.” He brushed his lips against her forehead. “I have another present for you.”
“What is it?”
“Look in my pockets.” He jumped a little and laughed unsteadily as she began to search him. “No, you little ravisher, not my trouser pockets.” Grabbing her wrists in his hands, he held them suspended in the air, as if he were trying to subdue a playful kitten. Seeming unable to resist, he leaned forward and took her mouth again. Being kissed while he held her wrists might have frightened her once, but now it awakened something deep and ticklish inside.
Leo tore his mouth away and released her with a gasping laugh. “Coat pocket. My God, I want to—no, I won’t say it. Yes, there’s your present.”
Catherine drew out an object wrapped in soft cloth. Gently she unwrapped a new pair of spectacles made of silver … gleaming and perfect, the oval lenses sparkling. Marveling at the workmanship, she drew a finger along one of the intricate filigreed earpieces, all the way to the curved tip. “They’re so beautiful,” she said in wonder.
“If they please you, we’ll have another pair made in gold. Here, let me help you…” Leo gently drew the old spectacles off her face, seeming to savor the gesture.
She put the new ones on. They felt light and secure on the bridge of her nose. As she looked around the room, everything was wonderfully detailed and in focus. In her excitement, she jumped up and hurried to the looking glass that hung over the entryway table. She inspected her own glowing reflection.
“How pretty you are.” Leo’s tall, elegant form appeared behind hers. “I do love spectacles on a woman.”
Catherine’s smiling gaze met his in the silvered glass. “Do you? What an odd preference.”
“Not at all.” His hands came to her shoulders, lightly fondling up to her throat and back again. “They emphasize your beautiful eyes. And they make you look capable of secrets and surprises—which, as we know, you are.” His voice lowered. “Most of all I love the act of removing them—getting you ready for a tumble in bed.”
She shivered at his bluntness, her eyes half closing as she felt him pull her back against him. His mouth went to the side of her neck.
“You like them?” Leo murmured, kissing her soft skin.
“Yes.” Her head listed to the side as his tongue traced a subtle path along her throat. “I … I don’t know why you went to such trouble. It was very kind.”
Leo’s dark head lifted, and he met her drowsy gaze in the looking glass. His fingers went to the side of her throat, stroking as if to rub the feel of his mouth into her skin. “I wasn’t being kind,” he murmured, a smile touching his lips. “I merely wanted you to see clearly.”
I’m beginning to, she was tempted to tell him, but Poppy returned to the apartment before she was able.
That night Catherine slept badly, stumbling into the nightmare world that seemed as real, if not more real, than the infinitely kinder world she inhabited in her waking moments.
It was part dream, part memory, the recollection of running through her grandmother’s house until she had found the old woman sitting at her desk, writing in a ledger.
Heedlessly Catherine threw herself at her grandmother’s feet and buried her face in the voluminous black skirts. She felt the old woman’s skeletal fingers slide under her wet chin and lift it.
Her grandmother’s face was masked with a sediment of powder, the ashy whiteness contrasting with her artificially darkened brows and hair. Unlike Althea, she wore no lip rouge, only colorless salve.
“Althea talked to you,” Grandmother said, in a voice like dried leaves rubbing together.
Catherine struggled to force out words between sobs. “Yes … and I don’t underst … understand …”
Grandmother responded with a scratchy croon, pressing Catherine’s head on her lap. She stroked her hair, narrow fingers combing lightly through the loose locks. “Did Althea fail to explain adequately? Come, you’re not a clever girl, but neither are you stupid. What don’t you understand? Stop crying, you know I detest it.”
Catherine squeezed her eyes tightly, trying to stop the tears from slipping out. Her throat was tight with misery. “I want something else, anything else. I want a choice.”
“You don’t want to be like Althea?” The question was spoken with unnerving gentleness.
“No.”
“And you don’t want to be like me?”
Catherine hesitated and shook her head slightly, afraid to say “no” again. She had learned in the past that the word should be used sparingly with her grandmother. It was an unfailing irritant regardless of the circumstances.
“But you already are,” Grandmother told her. “You’re a woman. All women have a whore’s life, child.”
Catherine froze, afraid to move. Her grandmother’s fingers became talons, the stroking changing into a sort of slow, rhythmic clawing on her head.
“All women sell themselves to men,” her grandmother continued. “Marriage itself is a transaction, in which a woman’s value is tied to purposes of copulation and breeding. At least we, in our time-honored profession, are honest about it.” Her tone turned reflective. “Men are foul, brutish creatures. But they own the world and always will. And to get the most from them, you must practice submission. You’ll be very good at it, Catherine. I’ve seen the instinct in you. You like being told what to do. You’ll like it even more when you’re paid for it.” Her hand lifted from Catherine’s head. “Now, don’t trouble me again. You may ask Althea all the questions you like. Mind you, when she began on her career, she was no happier about it than you. But she quickly saw the advantages of her situation. And we all have to earn our keep, don’t we? Even you, dear. Being my granddaughter affords you no entitlement. And fifteen minutes on your back will earn you as much as other women earn in two or three days. Willing submission, Catherine.”
Feeling stunned, as if she had just fallen from a great height, Catherine had left her grandmother’s study. She knew a momentary, mad urge to bolt for the front door. But without a place to go to, without money, an unprotected girl would last only a matter of hours in London. The trapped sobs in her chest had dissolved into shivers.
She went upstairs to her room. But then the dream changed, the memories transforming into dark vagaries of imagination … becoming a nightmare. The stairs seemed to multiply, and the climb became difficult and she went upward into deeper and deeper shadows. Alone and shivering with cold, she reached her room, illuminated only by the glaze of moonlight.
There was a man sitting at the window. He was straddling the frame, actually, one long leg placed firmly on the floor, the other swinging
negligently outside. She knew him from the shape of his head, from the powerful lines of his silhouette. And from the dark, a velvety voice that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.
“There you are. Come here, Marks.”
Catherine was suffused with relief and yearning. “My lord, what are you doing here?” she cried, running to him.
“Waiting for you.” His arms went around her. “I’ll take you far away from here—would you like that?”
“Oh, yes, yes … but how?”
“We’ll go right out this window. I have a ladder.”
“But is it safe? Are you certain—”
He put his hand gently to her mouth, silencing her. “Trust me.” His hand pressed harder. “I won’t let you fall.”
She tried to tell him that she would go anywhere with him, do anything he said, but he was covering her mouth too tightly for her to speak. His grip became hurtful, clamping on her jaw. She couldn’t breathe.
Catherine’s eyes opened. The nightmare fell away, revealing a far worse reality. She struggled beneath a crushing weight, and tried to cry out against the callused hand that covered her mouth.
“Your aunt wants to see you,” came a voice in the darkness. “I ’as to do this, miss. I ’as no choice.”
In the space of just a few minutes, it was done.
William gagged her with a tight cloth that bit into her mouth, a large knot pressing hard against her tongue. After binding her hands and feet, he went to light a lamp. Even without the aid of her spectacles, Catherine perceived that he wore the dark blue coat of a Rutledge Hotel employee.
If only she could get a few words out, plead or bargain with him, but the knotted lump of cloth made coherent sound impossible. Her saliva spiked unpleasantly at the intensely acrid flavor of the gag. There was something on it, she realized, and at that same moment she felt her consciousness breaking into pieces, scattered like an unfinished puzzle. Her heart turned sluggish, pumping poisoned blood through her collapsing limbs, and there was a ballooning, thumping sensation in her head as if her brain had suddenly become too large for her skull.