“The year wis ’eleven, lass. A hadn’t onybody.”
His brother and wife had both perished in ’ten. But he’d had his son. Some men of course cared little for their children, like Kitty’s own father.
He wrapped a clean strip of linen about her arm, his hand brushing her breast as though it were nothing. As though he did not even notice it, while Kitty’s entire being awoke.
His hands stilled.
“Are you finished, then?”
“Aye. Ye’ll be all right nou.” He drew the blanket over her arm, stood, and moved away.
But she would not be all right. Amid the pleasure and frustration, he frightened her.
Kitty did not understand Leam Blackwood. A man had shot her, presumably intending to shoot him. The earl would not tell her the truth about the poetry, the shooter—any of it. On the surface he seemed the simplest of men, easy tempered and somewhat indolent, rather in the fashion of his big dogs. But she feared he hid a great deal behind those hooded dark eyes and rough speech.
She was angry and hurt, and infatuated, and confused. The man who caused it all seemed entirely unrepentant. The remainder of her sojourn in a remote Shropshire inn did not appear in the least bit promising.
Early the following morning, after a restless night during which her arm ached dreadfully and elsewhere inside her more so, the remainder of Kitty’s sojourn at the inn abruptly became much shorter.
Madame Roche appeared upon the inn’s threshold, snow clinging to her cloak, her full cheeks patches of bright rose, and as stunningly French as ever. Her raven hair streaked with silver was swept up beneath a neat little cap of violet taffeta and dyed ostrich feathers, and her gown was gloriously inappropriate for both traveling and the season, short puffy sleeves and a crinkling mass of tulle all sparkling with tiny purple and black sequins.
She lifted her lorgnette to study the parlor and dining area, and with a little sniff pronounced it
“
“The mail coach came through at dawn this morning,” Mr. Yale explained, entering and removing her coat. “Blackwood posted to the farm Cox told us about and found them. And now we are beset by females.” He grinned and stepped out of the way to admit two other women.
Kitty went forward and clasped hands with Madame Roche, smiling at her maid and Emily’s. “We are so glad you are well.”
“
“Lady Marie Antoine,” Mr. Yale drawled, “you have the most unusual servants.”
“Yes. But they are very good to me.”
Kitty glanced back. The earl had entered, carrying in a bandbox and another parcel from the second carriage. She turned and hurried up the stair to be un-peaked. It seemed she could not wait another moment to don a fresh gown.
If mortal woman had been created to tempt mortal man, then Leam was the first in the queue to sin.
Appearing at luncheon newly gowned in elegant rose and ivory that caressed her curves, her shimmering hair loosely arranged with sparkling combs he had once removed, Kitty glided like a goddess across the parlor. That he preferred seeing her with nothing on at all and her hair tumbling about her shoulders—and had spent the endless night thinking along those lines and with great effort holding himself back from knocking on her door despite the certainty that she would repel him—did not help matters any.
He escaped, again flinging himself into the snowy cold but this time with thorough futility of purpose. He pretended he was looking for the shooter. He knew perfectly well the fellow was long gone. Men like that knew better than to linger, and the dogs had searched the place thoroughly the night before and brought up nothing.
Cox had departed before dawn, even before the mail coach came through, claiming he had an appointment he mustn’t miss. Pen, standing sentry at the time, said he had departed in an easterly direction. Yale had gone pale hearing the news. He’d been out of the parlor when the shooter attacked, it seemed. Leam plowed through knee-high snow-banks along the river anyway, his feet blocks of ice, his nose and head frosted. At least the dogs were stretching their legs. Cox might well be the fellow trailing him and the one who had tried to shoot him. Or he might not. Leam might have only suspected him because he flirted with Kitty. Because he himself had wanted her entire attention.
By God, it was a good thing he was no longer an agent of the crown. He wasn’t thinking straight.
Since the moment Kitty Savege had kissed him two days earlier, he hadn’t been in his right mind. He did not bed respectable ladies, even those who’d had lovers already. Neither did he haul them up against barn walls and maul them. The mere notion of some scoundrel doing that to his sisters or his cousin Constance had his fingers itching for a pistol.
He had put her in danger. Now he would leave her be, as he had last night with great difficulty.
And as soon as he had a particular word with her.
He rounded the smithy’s, tracking back to the inn along the rear yard. He found the others in the parlor. Wyn lounged by the hearth, dozing by all appearances. The attitude never fooled Leam. The Welshman was as alert as he with an assassin so close by. Likewise pretending—to read, on her part—
Madame Roche flickered Yale quick, interested glances. Lady Emily sat with her nose in a book, oblivious.
Kitty stirred a cup of tea. She lifted her dark lashes, her raincloud eyes as richly expressive as they had been in the intimacy of her bedchamber, then again in the stable when she told him good-bye. Just as she had done before with other men, she’d said.
He cleared his throat. “Lady Kath’rine, might A hae a maument o yer company beneath the eave?”
He gestured with her cloak laid over his arm. She stood and came toward him. He draped the cloak about her shoulders. The brush of her fingers as she grasped the collar went directly to his groin.
“Just without?”
He nodded.
The Frenchwoman looked on with undisguised interest. Leam motioned Kitty before him, and outside. He pulled the heavy door shut and followed her into the angle of sunlight cutting across the porch beneath the overhanging roof where a million heartbeats ago he had first held her and discovered her thundercloud eyes. Icicles made a jagged curtain above his head and she raised her face to his.
“Have you decided to tell me the truth after all?” she said without preamble, all soft curves yet sharp mind set on a single course. He scanned her face. Beauty. She was so beautiful the angels might have sculpted her from a fragment of the heavens.
“Nae.”
“I believe I made my position perfectly clear yesterday afternoon, my lord. I will have the truth from you about the shooting and poetry and what have you, or you will have nothing more from me.”
He could not respond.
“Well, then.” Her lips made a firm line. “I cannot imagine what you must say to me that merits this privacy.”
Anger prickled in him. She had insisted she was no schoolroom miss. Her touch in the dark of midnight had proven it. But, by God, she must have given herself to some extraordinary cads before him. At least one, Leam already knew.
“Lass.” He stepped closer. There was no easy way to say such a thing. “An ye find yerself wi’ child, A’ll dae the right thing by ye. Ye’ve anely tae tell me.”
By the acute glimmer in her eyes it seemed he had chosen perhaps the wrong difficult way to say it.
“That is gallant of you, my lord, and I daresay I should be comforted. But you have nothing to concern yourself upon that account.” She moved to brush past him toward the door. He took gentle hold of her uninjured
