anything. It was the whiskey, the dark stair, the man holding her to him. His eyes were so dark in the wavering shadows of candlelight and heavy with desire. He took her mouth anew and she gave herself up to the strokes of lips and tongue now turning her liquid. There was hot breath and more heat where his palm splayed upon her back, and her breasts and belly pressed against the hard wall of his chest, her fingertips gripping his arms. She wanted to feel even more, to make this secret indiscretion a moment to remember every night as she lay on her spinster’s couch.
She shifted her hips.
Abruptly he released her.
Kitty’s breaths came in little jagged bursts. She could do nothing but stare at the mouth that possessed such skill and the eyes that seemed none too pleased.
“Weel, nou ye’ve had yer kiss.” His voice was rough. Rather, rougher than usual. He grasped her shoulder and put her away from him entirely. Peeling her hand from around his arm, he brought the candle between them and wrapped her fingers around the holder, then released both. The flame flickered too hot, but neither moved to widen the space between them.
Kitty’s mouth would not close.
“If you did not wish to kiss me”—her voice sounded foreign—“you needn’t have.”
“Oh, A wished tae.” He drew a thick breath, turned his head away and rubbed a palm across his face.
He pivoted and clattered down the stair. The kitchen door smacked shut behind him. Hand shaking about the candle-holder, Kitty sank back against the wall. She closed her eyes.
She would not regret it. Not until the morning. With the morning would come sobriety and a return to rationality. For now whiskey reigned, and the sensation of his lips on hers lingered, and the desire pulsing inside her was wonderfully welcome.
Tomorrow would be soon enough for regret.
Chapter 7
The following morning Kitty’s head ached, her stomach hung like a sack of sour milk below her ribs, and her cheeks burned incessantly. But this paled in comparison to the news Emily announced on waking her.
“A portion of the stable roof collapsed beneath the weight of the snow and nearly injured Lord Blackwood’s horse. It got off with a minor scratch, however.”
“Good heavens!” Kitty sat up in bed. “Was anyone hurt?”
Emily peered at her. “What a peculiar question to ask, when I have said a horse escaped harm.”
Kitty drew the covers off and turned away from her friend to climb from the bed. Emily was an odd duck, but no slow top.
“I only wondered how it came to be discovered. Ned, I must suppose.”
“Lord Blackwood. He went out to feed the animals and the roof fell while he was within.”
The peer who kissed like a god tended to his own cattle like a stable hand and was nearly injured doing so. Kitty rubbed the sleep from her eyes, her hands unsteady.
“We must be happy, then, that he and the horses are safe.” She drew off the nightshift Mrs. Milch had lent her and shivered in the cold. She reached for her own fine linen garment and pulled on her stockings. Emily came to her to tie the stays about her ribs.
“The gentlemen and some men from the pub are seeing to the repairs now.”
“I hope they are not under the influence of strong drink.” Had he been the previous evening in the stairwell? She had been far too inebriated to judge. He said he’d wanted to kiss her, but he certainly hadn’t looked it after he actually did so.
But, before… She must have imagined that look in his eyes. They hardly knew each other. Yet for a moment an uncanny awareness of something shared had glistened between them.
It was certainly all in her imagination. After all, her imagination had once convinced her that Lambert Poole loved her. Her imagination had made him into a man worthy of being loved.
“Mr. Yale, it seems, can hold his liquor well enough,” Emily commented.
Kitty darted a glance over her shoulder. “I am sorry you must be trapped here with a gentleman you so dislike.”
Emily secured the laces and reached for Kitty’s petticoat and gown. “I do wish we had a button hook.” She began fastening the wool. “I don’t dislike him, Kitty. I disrespect him. The two are far different.”
“Are they?” Kitty saw nothing in Lord Blackwood that she typically admired in gentlemen, no elevation of mind or character. Except something about him was not right. The pieces did not fit together. The steely glint in the backs of his eyes that had been there even as he’d said he wanted to kiss her did not suit the man he otherwise appeared. And how strange his expression when he had come in from the stable earlier and told her he would go out after the servants if she wished.
But perhaps that coldness was only a remnant of his tragedy. And perhaps Kitty was refining upon it far too much and making herself a complete ninny.
“Of course they are different, Kitty,” Emily said soberly. “Liking has everything to do with character and disposition. Respect has to do with a gentleman’s mode of life. But I shall get along well enough until we leave. Lord Blackwood has lent me another book,” she finished as though that was all in the world a woman needed to be happy.
“More poetry?”
“A play in verse. Racine’s
The handsome barbarian with big shaggy dogs liked to read French theater. Her insides felt somewhat trembly too now.
“Has Mrs. Milch prepared breakfast yet?”
“Eggs again. We must make the bread for dinner tonight.”
“You are determined to do so?”
“Of course.”
“How is the road this morning? Has anyone seen the mail coach?”
“Mr. Yale reports that no one has passed yet.”
No escape then from her foolish nerves and this unwise preoccupation, made considerably worse since she now knew far too much about him—his scent, the caress of his tongue, the hard contoured man-shape beneath coat sleeves and waistcoat. She could not think, could not organize her thoughts at all, it seemed, a thoroughly unprecedented state.
Being infatuated with a man at five-and-twenty felt absolutely idiotic. But perhaps it was not so singular. Her mother occasionally showed moderate giddiness over Lord Chamberlayne. Of course, Lord Chamberlayne was intelligent, a consummate gentleman, and a successful politician. While Lord Blackwood … had very large dogs.
She must be mad.
And so bread baking it would be.
Kitty stood before a wooden block in Mrs. Milch’s kitchen, bent over a lump of dough as the inn mistress offered instruction on kneading. In a matter of days she would be sweeping floors and plucking chicken carcasses. Possibly feeding slop to the pigs if there were any pigs to be fed.
“One must press it like this, Mrs. Milch?” Emily queried, brow creased.
“No, miss. Like this. But the Quality shouldn’t be making bread, I still say,” she added damply.
“As like, milady agrees with me.”
“Oh, I haven’t any feeling about it one way or the other.” Kitty didn’t care how she busied herself.
At this point she would do anything to escape her confusion. The snowbound inn was closing in on her with merciless vigor, much as Emily’s knuckles now dug into the dough.
