Chapter Four

Chapter Four

More.

Thorne braced himself. That word shook the ground beneath him. He could have sworn the hillside rolled and swayed.

More.What did it mean to her, that word? Certainly something different from the visions his own mind supplied. He saw the two of them, tangled in the heather and the rucked-up muslin of her skirts. This was why he sought out experienced women who shared his definition of “more”—and had no qualms about telling him exactly when and where and how often they’d like it.

But Miss Taylor was a lady, no matter how she denied it. She was innocent, young, given to foolish dreaming. He cringed to imagine what “more” meant in her mind. Sweet words? Courting? A vinegar jar had more sweetness in it than he did. His experience with courting had been limited to courting danger.

That wrongheaded kiss had been just one more example.

Stupid, stupid. His own mother had said it best. Your head’s as thick as it is ugly, boy. You never will learn.

“You can’t just walk away from me,” she said. “Not after a kiss like that. We need to talk.”

Brilliant. This was worse than sweetness, more fraught with danger than courting. She wanted talking.

Why couldn’t a woman let an action speak for itself? If he’d wanted to use words, he would have used them.

“We have nothing to discuss,” he said.

“Oh, I beg to differ.”

Thorne stared at her, considering. He’d spent the better part of a decade on campaign with the British infantry. He knew when his best option was retreat.

He turned and whistled for the dog. The pup bounded to his side. Thorne was pleased. He’d been divided as to whether to leave him with the breeder so long, but the extra weeks of training seemed to have paid off.

He walked toward the place where he’d left the horse grazing, near a wooden stile that served as the only gap in the field’s waist-high stone border.

Miss Taylor followed him. “Corporal Thorne . . .”

He vaulted the stile, putting the fence between them. “We need to get back to Spindle Cove. You’ve missed lessons with the Youngfield sisters this evening. They’ll be wondering where you are.”

“You know my schedule of lessons?” Her voice carried an interested lilt.

He cursed under his breath. “Not all of them. Just the irritating ones.”

“Oh. The irritating ones.”

He tossed the pup a scrap of rabbit hide from his pocket, then began checking over the horse’s tack.

She placed both hands on the evenly mortared top of the stone fence and boosted herself to sit atop it. “So my lessons and your drinking sessions just happen to coincide. At the same times and on the same days, to the point that you know my schedule. By heart.”

For God’s sake. What heart?

He shook his head. “Don’t tell yourself some sentimental story of how I’ve been pining for you. You’re a fetching enough woman, and I’m a man with eyes. I’ve noticed. That’s all.”

She gathered her skirts in one hand, lifted her legs, and swung them to his side of the fence. “And yet you’ve never said a word.”

With her sitting on the stone wall, they were almost equal in height. She crooked one finger and swept a curling lock of hair behind her ear—in that graceful, unthinking way women had of pushing men to the brink of desperation.

“I’m not a smoothly spoken man. If I put my wants into words, I’d have you blushing so hard your frock would turn a deeper shade of pink.”

There. That ought to scare her off.

She colored slightly. But she didn’t back down.

“Do you know what I think?” she said. “I think that maybe—just maybe—all your stern, forbidding behavior is some strange, male form of modesty. A way to deflect notice. I’m almost ashamed to say it worked on me for the better part of a year, but—”

“Really, Miss Taylor—”

She met his gaze. “But I’m paying close attention now.”

Damn. So she was.

He’d been avoiding precisely this for a year now—the possibility that she’d someday catch sight of him in church or the tavern, hold that glance a beat longer than usual, and then . . . remember everything. He couldn’t let that happen. If Miss Kate Taylor, as she existed now, were ever connected with the den of squalor and sin that had served as her cradle, it could destroy everything for her. Her reputation, her livelihood, her happiness.

So he’d stayed away. Not an easy task, when the village was so small and this girl—who wasn’t a girl anymore, but an alluring woman—had her toes in every corner of it.

And then today . . .

A year’s worth of avoidance and intimidation, all shot to hell in one afternoon, thank to that wrongheaded, stupid, goddamned glorious kiss.

“Look at me.”

He leaned forward and braced his hands on the stone wall, confronting her face-to-face. Daring her; daring fate. If she was ever going to recognize him, it would be now.

As she took him in, he did some looking of his own. He drank in the small details he’d denied himself for long months. Her sweet pink frock, with ivory ribbons threaded through the neckline like little dollops of confectioner’s icing. The tiny freckle on her chest, just below her right collarbone. The brave set of her jaw, and the way her pink lips crooked fetchingly at the corners.

Then he searched those clever, lovely hazel eyes for any hint of awareness or flash of recognition.

Nothing.

“You don’t know me,” he said. Both a statement and a question.

She shook her head. Then she spoke what were quite possibly the most foolish, improbable words he’d ever heard. “But I think I’d like to.”

He gripped that stone wall as if it were the edge of a precipice.

She said, “Perhaps we could—”

“No. We couldn’t.”

“I didn’t finish my thought.”

“Doesn’t matter. Whatever you meant to suggest, it won’t happen.” He pushed off the wall and gathered his gelding’s lead, loosing it from the stile.

“You’ll have to talk to me sometime. We do live in the same tiny village.”

“Not for long.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m leaving Spindle Cove.”

She paused. “What? When?”

“In a month’s time.” A month too late, it would seem.

“Are you being reassigned?”

“I’m leaving the army. And England. That’s what I was doing in Hastings today. I’ve booked passage to America on a merchant ship.”

“My.” Her hands fell to her lap. “America.”

“The war’s over. Lord Rycliff’s helping me arrange for an honorable discharge. I’ve a wish to own some land.”

She moved as though she’d hop down from the wall. By reflex, he took her by the waist, slowly lowering her to the ground.

Once there, she showed no inclination to leave his embrace.

“But we’re only just getting to know one another,” she said.

Oh, no. This stopped right here and now. She didn’t truly want him. She was overwrought from the day, clinging to the only soul in reach.

“Miss Taylor, we kissed. Once. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

“Are you certain?” She laced her arms around his neck.

He froze, stunned by the intent he read in her eyes.

Sweet merciful God. The girl meant to kiss him.

He could tell the exact moment she dared herself to do it. Her gaze lingered on his lips, and he heard her sharp intake of breath. She stretched up, and as her lips neared his, he marveled over every fraction of an instant in which she didn’t change her mind and turn away.

Her eyelids slipped shut. He might have closed his eyes, too, but he couldn’t.

This, he needed to see to believe.

She pressed her lips to his, just as the last wash of sunlight ebbed. And the world became a place he didn’t recognize.

She smelled so good. Not just pleasant, but good. Pure. Those light hints of clover and citrus were the essence of clean. He felt washed by that scent. He could almost imagine that he’d never lied, never stolen, never shivered in prison. Never marched into battle, never bled. That he hadn’t killed four men at distances so intimate, he could still recall the colors of their eyes. Brown, blue, another blue, then green.

This is wrong.

A dark growl rumbled in his chest. He kept his hands on her waist, but he fanned his fingers wide.

His thumbs skimmed upward, skipping from rib to rib until they just grazed the soft undersides of her breasts. With the little finger of each hand, he touched the gentle flare of her hip. His hand span was stretched to its limits. This was as much of her as he could possibly hold.

He needed every bit of that leverage to push her away.

When they broke apart, she gazed up at him. Waiting.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“I wanted to. Does that make me loose?”

“No. It makes you soft in the head. Young ladies like you don’t pass time with men like me.”

“Men like you? You mean the sort of men who rescue helpless young ladies in the street and carry puppies in their satchels?” She gave a playful shiver. “Lord preserve me from men like you.”

A timid smile played at the corner of her mouth. He wanted to devour it. To catch her in his arms and teach her the consequences of teasing a fiercely lusting, barely civilized beast.

But saving this girl was the one decent thing he’d done in all his life. Some nineteen years ago, he’d sold the last bits of his own innocence to purchase hers. He’d be damned if he’d ruin her now.

With firm motions, he unlaced her arms from around his neck. He held her by the wrists, making his hands tight as manacles.

She gasped.

“Have a care for yourself, Miss Taylor. I’ll take blame for the kiss. It was a liberty and my mistake. I let a carnal impulse distract me from my duty. But if you’re imagining tender feelings on my side, they’re just that—imaginings.”

She twisted in his grip. “You’re frightening me.”

“Good,” he said evenly. “You should be scared. I’ve killed more men than you’ll kiss in your lifetime. You don’t want anything to do with me, and I don’t feel a damned thing for you.”

He released her wrists. “I’m finished discussing it.”

He was finished discussing it.

Kate only wished she were finished living it.

Sadly, she had another two hours on horseback in which to recline, mortified, against his chest and savor her full humiliation. What a horrid, horrid day.

She wasn’t used to riding horseback. As the miles wore on, her muscles began to knot. Her backside hurt as though it had been paddled. And her pride . . . oh, her pride smarted something fierce.

What was wrong with the man? Kissing her, telling her he wanted her, and then so callously pushing her away? After living with his standoffish treatment for an entire year, she supposed she should have known better. But today she’d fancied that maybe she’d found his hidden emotional side. Perhaps, she’d thought, the hardened beast had a tender underbelly—a soft spot, just for her. She couldn’t resist giving it a poke.

He’d all but snapped her finger off.

So mortifying. How could she have misread his intentions so completely? She should have refused his offer of a ride home and spent the night singing for pennies in the Hastings streets instead. It would have been less degrading.

I don’t feel a damned thing for you.

The only consolation was that he’d be leaving Spindle Cove in a matter of weeks, and she need never speak to him again.

Erasing him from her thoughts would be a more difficult trick. No matter how long she lived, this man would always be her first kiss. Or worse, her only kiss.

The cruel, teasing ogre.

Eventually they reached familiar bends in the road. The scattered amber lights of the village appeared on the horizon, just below the silvery stars.

Kate had a quiet laugh at her own expense. She’d left the village early this morning with a heart full of foolish hopes and dreams. Tonight, she returned with her spine wilted from six kinds of humiliation and her arms full of mongrel dog.

“If you’re still taking suggestions, I’d name him Badger,” she said when the silence became too much. “It suits him, I think. He’s all nose and teeth and tussle.”

His reply was a long time in coming. “Call the pup whatever you wish.”

She bent her head and nuzzled the dog’s fur. “Badger,” she whispered, worrying the soft flap of his ear, “you’d never spurn my kisses, would you?”

The pup licked her fingertip. She blinked away a silly tear.

As they neared the church and the heart of the village, she looked to the Queen’s Ruby. Lights burned in nearly every window. The sight kindled a warm glow in her heart. Badger’s tail began to wag, as if he sensed the lift in her spirits. She did have friends, and they were waiting up for her.

Thorne helped her dismount and loosed the horse to graze on the village green.

“Do you plan to come in and eat something?” she asked.

He shrugged back into his coat. “That’s a bad idea. You know there’s talk about me. I’m bringing you home well after dark. Your frock’s torn, and your hair’s a shambles.”

She cringed at the blow to what remained of her vanity. “My hair is a shambles? Since when? You might have said something.”

Tucking Badger under one arm, she plucked at her hairpins with her free hand. His concern for appearances wasn’t unfounded. Small villages were buzzing hives of gossip. She knew she must keep her reputation unsoiled if she wanted to continue living in the Queen’s Ruby and tutoring the gently bred ladies who summered there.

“Just give the dog here, Miss Taylor, and I’ll be on my way.”

In an instinctive reaction, she hugged the puppy close to her chest. “No. No, I don’t think I will.”

“What?”

“We get along, he and I. So I’m going to keep him. I believe he’d be happier that way.”

The severity of his frown seemed to slice through the darkness. “You can’t keep a puppy in a rooming house. Your landlady won’t allow it, and even if she would—a dog like that needs space to run.”

“He also needs love. Affection, Corporal Thorne. Are you telling me you can provide it?” She playfully tugged at Badger’s scruff. “Tell me right now that you love this dog, and I will return the pup at once.”

He didn’t answer her.

“Four little words,” she taunted. “ ‘I . . . love . . . the . . . dog.’ And he’s yours.”

“I own the dog,” he said tersely. “He is mine. I paid coin for him.”

“Then I’ll pay you back. But I will not surrender this sweet, defenseless little creature to a man with no feeling, no heart. No capacity to care.”

Just then the front door of the Queen’s Ruby burst open.

Mrs. Nichols came running out from the inn—as much as the poor old dear could run. Her hands were flapping. “Miss Taylor! Miss Taylor, oh, thank goodness you’re here at last.”

“I’m so sorry to have worried you, Mrs. Nichols. I missed the stagecoach home, and Corporal Thorne was good enough to—”

“We’ve been waiting and waiting.” The older woman put her arm through Kate’s and pulled her toward the door. “Your visitors have been here for hours. I’ve run through three pots of tea, exhausted all possible topics of conversation.”

“Visitors?” Kate was stunned. “I have visitors?”

Mrs. Nichols gathered her shawl about her shoulders. “Four of them.”

“Four of them? Whatever do they want?”

“They won’t say. Except that they’ve insisted on waiting for you. It’s been hours now.”

Kate paused in the threshold, scraping the mud from the soles of her boots. She couldn’t imagine who these visitors might be. Perhaps a family seeking music lessons. But at this hour of night? “I’m so sorry I’ve put you to such trouble.”

“Not a trouble, dear. It’s an honor to have a man of such rank and stature in my parlor.”

A man? Of rank and stature?

“Might I just nip upstairs and see to my appearance first? I’m all mussed from the road.”

“No, no. That won’t do, my dear.” The inn’s landlady tugged her inside. “One can only keep a marquess waiting so long.”

“A marquess?”

While Mrs. Nichols closed the door, Kate turned to catch her reflection in the looking glass. She jumped in her skin when she found herself nose-to-button with Corporal Thorne instead.

“I thought you weren’t coming in,” she accused his lapel.

“I changed my mind.” When she finally dared look up, she found his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He asked, “Do you know any marquess?”

She shook her head. “The highest-ranking man I know is Lord Rycliff, and he’s an earl.”

“I’ll go in with you.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary. It’s a parlor, not a crime den.”

“I’ll go anyway.”

Before they could argue it further, Kate found herself being hustled into the parlor. Thorne followed close behind. Several of the rooming-house guests lined the corridor. They gave her wide-eyed, speculative glances as she moved past.

When they reached the parlor, Mrs. Nichols pushed Kate through the door. “Here’s Miss Taylor at last, my lord and ladies.”

With that, the landlady shut them in. Kate could hear her on the other side of the door, chasing the residents away from the corridor.

There seemed to be a dozen guests in the parlor, though a quick count assured Kate they numbered just four. Wealth and elegance crammed the room. And here she stood in a torn, dirt-streaked frock. Her hair wasn’t even pinned.

A dark-clad gentleman rose to his feet and bowed. Kate had barely managed a slight dip of a curtsy when a loud, collective gasp nearly guttered the candles.

“It is her. It must be her.”

Kate swallowed hard. “Er . . . I must be who?”

A pretty young woman rose from a chair. She looked a few years younger than Kate, and she wore a frock of spotless, snowy muslin and an embroidered jade-green shawl. As she came to the center of the room, her expression was one of pure wonderment. She regarded Kate as one might a ghost, or a rare species of orchid.

“It must be you.” The girl raised her hand and stretched two fingertips to the birthmark at Kate’s temple.

Kate flinched out of instinct. She’d already been called a witch and a child of shame for that mark today.

Now she found herself wrapped in a warm, impulsive hug.

Caught between the two of them, Badger yipped.

“Oh, dear.” Kate pulled back, flashing an apologetic smile. “I’d forgotten him.”

The young woman in front of her laughed and smiled. “The pup is right to object. Where are my manners? Let’s begin again. Introductions first.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Lark Gramercy. How do you do?”

Kate clasped the proffered hand. “Delighted, I’m sure.”

Lark turned and indicated her companions in turn. “Here we have my sister Harriet.”

“Harry,” the woman in question said. She rose from her chair and pumped Kate’s hand firmly. “Everyone calls me Harry.”

Kate tried not to stare. Harriet, or Harry, was the most stunningly beautiful woman she’d ever seen. Without a trace of adornment in the form of rouge or jewels, her face was a symphony of perfection: pale, luminous skin, wide eyes, wine-red lips. A small beauty mark on one cheekbone added a sultry punctuation to the sweep of her dark eyelashes. She wore her jet-black hair parted to the side and pulled back in a severe chignon that emphasized the swannish curve of her neck. And despite all her classic feminine beauty, she was dressed in what seemed to be men’s attire. A chemisette with hardly any frill at the neck, a waistcoat cut in the style most gentlemen wore, and—most shocking of all—a divided skirt of gray wool, hemmed several inches too short for modesty.

Good heavens. Kate could see the woman’s ankles.

“My brother Bennett is off traveling the Hindu Kush, and our other sister, Calista, is married and living up North. But we have with us Aunt Marmoset.” Lark patted the shoulder of a seated woman in her later years.

Kate blinked. “I’ve heard you wrong. I thought you said Aunt—”

“Marmoset. Yes.” Lark smiled. “It’s properly Millicent, but as a child, I could never pronounce it. It always came out Marmoset, and the name just stuck.”

“I resemble the name more every year,” Aunt Marmoset said good-naturedly.

“Yes, old dear,” said Harry dryly. “I was just complaining the other day, if I have to pluck you down from one more tree—”

“Oh, hush. I meant I’m small and spry and infectiously adorable.” The diminutive older woman stretched a bony hand toward Kate. Her grip was warmer and stronger than Kate would have expected. “It’s remarkable to see you, child.”

Before Kate could puzzle out the old woman’s meaning, Lark was making her final introduction.

“And this is our brother Evan. Lord Drewe.”

Kate turned to the gentleman standing near the window. The marquess, she presumed.

Lord Drewe made a deep, formal bow, which she tried to repay with her best curtsy. Here was a man, as they said, in his prime of life. Handsome, assured, worldly, and though he was doubtless responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of tenants and dependents, he appeared to be in command of no one more than himself.

Kate found herself rather awed in his presence. She could understand Mrs. Nichols’s excitement now.

“The ancestral home is in Derbyshire. But we have a property over near Kenmarsh,” Lark explained. “It’s called Ambervale. Just a cottage, really. We’ve been summering there.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all.” Kate dropped into a chair so the marquess might be seated. “And you’ve come to Spindle Cove for . . . ?”

“For you, Miss Taylor,” Lark said, taking a seat nearby. “Naturally.”

“Oh. Were you wanting music lessons? I offer instruction in voice, pianoforte, harp . . .”

All the Gramercys laughed.

Behind her, Thorne cleared his throat. “Miss Taylor has had a long day. Surely your business can wait for the morning.”

Lord Drewe nodded. “Your concern is duly noted, Mister . . .”

“Thorne.”

“Corporal Thorne,” Kate put in. “He’s in charge of our local militia.”

She might have embellished the introduction, she supposed. He’s good friends with the Earl of Rycliff, or He served honorably on the Peninsula under Wellington. But she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward him at the moment.

She lifted Badger. “He gave me a puppy.”

“And it’s a lovely puppy,” Aunt Marmoset cooed.

Lark clapped her hands with impatience. “Corporal Thorne is right. It’s ungodly late. Harry, just show her the painting.”

Harry rose and came forward, bearing a rectangular, paper-wrapped parcel.

As her sister removed the paper covering, Lark chattered away. “I needed a summer project, you see. Ambervale is quiet, and I do go a bit mad without something to occupy my hands. So I decided to go through the attic. Just old crockery, mostly. A few moldering books. But tucked back under the rafters, I found this canvas wrapped in a tarpaulin.” Her voice pitched with excitement. “Oh, do hurry, Harry.”

Harry continued at the same pace. “Settle your feathers, pigeon.”

At last she had the thing unwrapped and held it up in the lamplight.

Kate gasped. “Oh my Lord.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified by her accidental blasphemy. Cursing, in front of a marquess?

The Gramercys didn’t seem perturbed, however. They all sat quite calmly and quietly as Harry revealed a painting of a reclining, flagrantly nude woman tangled in white bedsheets and a red velvet counterpane. Swollen, ruby-tipped breasts rested like twin pillows atop a rotund, creamy belly. The woman in the portrait was obviously pregnant.

And she looked like Kate. She looked a great deal like Kate, save for some differences about the eyes and chin, and the absence of any birthmark. The resemblance was uncanny, disturbing, and readily apparent to everyone in the room.

“Oh my Lord,” Kate breathed.

Lark beamed. “Isn’t it gorgeous? When we found it, we just knew we had to search you out.”

“Put that away.” Thorne stepped forward. “It’s vile.”

“I beg your pardon,” Harry replied, proudly propping the nude painting on the mantelpiece and standing back to admire it. “The female form is beautiful in all its natural states. This is art.”

“Put it away,” Thorne repeated in a low, threatening tone. “Or I will make it kindling.”

“He’s just being protective,” Aunt Marmoset said. “I think it’s sweet. A little savage, but sweet.”

Harry yanked Lark’s jade-green shawl from her shoulders and draped it over half the painting, obscuring most of the nudity. “This backward little village. Philistines, all. When we showed it to the vicar, he developed a stammer and visible hives.”

“You . . .” Kate swallowed hard, staring at the painting now boldly displayed above the fire. “You showed this to the vicar?”

“But of course,” Lark replied. “That’s how we found you.”

Kate crossed her arms over her chest, feeling unaccountably exposed. She leaned forward and peered at the face of the woman in the painting. “But it can’t be me.”

“No, Miss Taylor. It’s not you.” With a long-suffering sigh, Lord Drewe stood and addressed his siblings. “You’re making a right hash of this, I hope you know. If she wants nothing to do with us after tonight, you’ll have only yourselves to blame.”

What on earth could he mean? Kate’s brain made a lazy twirl in her skull.

The corporal addressed the room in a deep, commanding voice. “I’m giving you one more minute to start making sense. Otherwise, I don’t care if you are lords and ladies—you’ll be leaving. Miss Taylor’s under my protection, and I won’t have her treated ill.”

Lord Drewe turned to Kate. “I’ll make this brief. As my youngest sister has attempted to explain, I am the much-beleaguered head of this traveling circus. And we’ve been waiting for you, Miss Taylor, because we believe you may be a part of it.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “A part of what, precisely?”

He gestured with one hand, as though it should be obvious. “A part of the family.”