bottom step of the stairs to the bedrooms.
Where did the strength to resist come from? Or was it simply common sense reasserting itself the moment his drugging mouth left her hot skin?
‘No! Nick, put me down!’
He paused, still halfway through the doorway, then bent to find her mouth.
‘No!’ Katherine twisted her head away and instantly he set her on her feet. She found herself standing on the second step, high enough to meet him eye to eye. ‘Nick, what do you think you are doing?’
‘Making love to my wife.’ He was breathing hard, but somehow he kept his voice light.
‘But you cannot! We will never get an annulment if you do—what are you thinking of?’
He raised one hand and twisted an errant lock of her hair between his fingers. ‘Do you want an annulment so badly?’
‘Of course I do!’ Katherine stared at him as though he had lost his senses. ‘You cannot want to be tied to this sham of a marriage any more than I do.’
‘You were willing to be a true wife to me in Newgate.’ His voice was still light and in the gloom she could not read his face.
‘But we had a bargain and I could not break that, it would have been dishonest,’ Katherine protested. ‘And anyway, you were—’ She broke off, appalled at where that train of thought was leading her.
‘Going to be hanged, so that would have drawn a convenient line under the whole messy business?’ Now he sounded angry.
How dare he? she thought, I did not start this. ‘That is not what I meant and you know it. You promised me an annulment in a month’s time. What you were about to do would have made that impossible.’
‘I promised you that we would get an annulment if you wanted one. I thought perhaps that after tonight you might not want that.’
‘Oh! You arrogant …’ Katherine fought for words. ‘You thought you would seduce me, did you? I am sure you would succeed with many women—after all, you appear to be very good at it, doubtless as the result of much practice.’
‘And why would I want to seduce you?’ He shifted slightly so the light from the room struck his face. His voice was dangerously calm, but his eyes were hard with anger.
‘Other than simple carnal desire? Presumably you would feel humiliated by having to tell your family that your marriage was about to be dissolved.’
‘More humiliated than living with the thought that I had seduced an unwilling woman? I thought we understood each other, Kat. It appears I was quite out.’ He stepped back from the stairs and took the edge of the door in one hand. Kat found her eyes unable to leave the long finger where the mark of his signet ring still showed white against the tanned skin. On her own hand it seemed to burn with its own heat. ‘I suggest you go to bed before we start hurling the fire irons at each other like a real married couple.’
He reached out and picked up a chamber stick from the side table. ‘Here, madam wife, a candle to light you to bed. I wish you a goodnight. It will doubtless be better than the one I anticipate.’
Chapter Twelve
Katherine passed a night of restless wakefulness interspersed with dream-racked snatches of sleep. She kept trying to push away the memories of Nick’s caressing hands and demanding lips, but whenever she tried her strangely aching body recalled her to the recollection of every touch, every frisson. Their furious exchange of words at the end she simply refused to recall.
In an effort to distract herself, she attempted to rehearse how she should greet his father and brother the next morning. What should she wear? What would Mr Lydgate senior expect of his unexpected new daughter-in-law? And when would Nick reveal the true state of their marriage and the news that his sham wife had saddled him with a vast debt?
Unfortunately the image she conjured up of her father-in-law closely resembled Nick in forty years’ time and in the throes of an icy rage. This was not comforting, and the knowledge that her in-laws would be utterly justified in being appalled and angry on discovering her existence did nothing to help.
Tossing and turning uncomfortably in an effort not to disturb Jenny’s untroubled slumbers, Katherine tried to plan for what she should do once she had obtained her annulment. Somehow she would have to earn her own living.
Gloomily she reviewed her talents. She was an adequate, but not exceptional, needlewoman. Setting up in a millinery or dressmaking business was not therefore to be thought of. She had an excellent grasp of languages, but no talent with any musical instrument so becoming a governess was beyond her reach. Her earlier confident assertion to Jenny that she could earn her living teaching French and Italian now seemed hopelessly over-confident. Housekeeper or companion appeared to be the only options for a living wage, however modest.
Neither was likely to pay so much that she could hope to discharge her debt. All she would be able to do was salve her conscience by sending what little she was able to save each year to the moneylenders under her own name, but concealing her whereabouts. Goodness knows what the effect of the interest would be upon the total. I am going to go to my grave in debt, she thought despairingly, struggling not to think harshly of Philip, heedlessly pursuing his own pleasures somewhere on the Continent.
When the clock downstairs struck three the treacherous voice of temptation began to whisper in her ear. Let him make love to you, it murmured insidiously. You love him, you want him. He knows what the consequences are, he will pay your debt and you will never have to worry again.
Katherine lay still, wrestling with herself until her conscience won. No, she could not do it, not and live with herself afterwards. And at last she dropped off to sleep.
The next morning they breakfasted in their rooms and Nick went down with John to pay their shot. The effusiveness of Paul Carson, the landlord, made him feel uncomfortable, as though he was back under false pretences, as indeed an inner voice told him he was. Banished, he had sworn never to come back; now he wrestled with the uncomfortable thought that he was using Kat as an excuse to do the right thing and return.
That was considerably less uncomfortable to his peace of mind than the memory of last night and the recollection of the vivid anger and betrayal on Kat’s face as they had stood, eye to eye, on the inn stairs. How had he misjudged her so badly? He was not inexperienced with women, he thought ruefully as he strolled out into the yard to see if John needed any help hitching up the team. With Kat it seemed that every instinct was awry.
Without a word spoken he took the head of the wheeler and backed it into the shafts while his mind raced. She had seemed yielding, aware of him. In his arms she had responded with an innocent passion that turned his bones to water even as it fired his blood. But she was having none of him, it seemed, however dire her circumstances.
With a shake of his head he cinched the girth and turned to see what else needed doing. But he was too near home now for physical effort to distract him from his circling thoughts.
And what would his father say to Kat? One word of disparagement and he would turn on his heel and leave, he resolved grimly. She might be determined to free herself from him, but his honour and his instincts would fight her every step of the way. Never mind that he had married her expecting to be dead days ago; now she was his first concern over family and all other duties.
‘That’s all right and tight,’ John said, twisting the reins around the brake. He regarded Nick with an uncomfortably intelligent eye. ‘And where do we go now? Sir.’ The last word was an afterthought, not a disrespectful one, but a clear indication that John had still not made up his mind about the man Jenny was happy to refer to as ‘the master'.
Nick leaned against the nearside shaft and began to explain the route that was as familiar to him as the back of his own hand. John’s