Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight. Julia London
back to her eyes, unsatisfied. He began to move inside her, pushing up with a long, heavy stroke. “I want to hear my name on your lips, Katherine. Say it again.”
She did, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to repeat it two, five, ten times. Instead, she kissed him and met his thrusts with her hips.
After today there would be no reason to ever say his name at all.
* * *
THE MADDEST OF mad dashes from her carriage to the house should have been enough to protect her, but the clop and creak of a coach and four left no time for escape and Katherine knew, even as she rushed past Dodd so quickly she nearly knocked him over, that her tryst with James in the carriage was as good as discovered.
“Katherine!” Phil’s voice called out, still a few houses away.
Hang it all, Phil needed a quiet domestic hobby very, very badly. With a desperate tug Katherine pulled her cloak’s hood more tightly over her horribly dislodged hair and tried to make it up the stairs before Phil could get to the doorway.
“Katherine!”
Like a burglar caught in the act she froze on the landing and turned—just a little—as Phil swept past Dodd into the house. In the center of the entrance hall Phil stopped and looked up. “For heaven’s sake, Katherine, did you not hear me calling?”
The entire neighborhood had likely heard her calling. “What is it, Phil? I’m feeling ill and I need to lie down.”
“Dearest, of course you’re feeling ill. I heard what happened and I’ve called twice to see you already—did you not come directly home?” She came to the foot of the stairs. “Tell me you haven’t done anything rash.”
Katherine swallowed a hysterical laugh. The soft flesh between her thighs felt sweetly raw and damp, and her still-sensitive nipples pressed tightly inside her stays. Her entire body thrummed with sensations that nothing in her past—except that fiery encounter in her cabin—had prepared her for. Rash? No, she hadn’t done anything rash.
“I had to speak with Lord Deal,” she said.
“Not about marriage. Please tell me not about marriage.”
“About traveling to Scotland. Now please, Phil, I really do need a rest. My head aches like the devil.” She started up the second flight of stairs and hoped Phil would let her go. It was not to be.
“Something’s happened.”
“Of course something’s happened,” Katherine snapped. “I’ve been all but ordered to marry.” Good God, now Phil was climbing the stairs after her. “I told you my head aches and I need to rest before it’s time to dress for Lady Effy’s.” God help her, she didn’t know how she would meet James’s eyes tonight after what they’d done.
“What you need—” somehow Phil managed to fly up the stairs twice as quickly as Katherine “—is to tell me whatever you’re not telling me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Rubbish.”
Pit her against a shipload of bloodthirsty corsairs, or a gale that pushed thirty-foot swells over her deck, and she had courage aplenty. But confess to Phil what she’d done in the carriage? That was another matter entirely. She strode toward her rooms as though they would provide some kind of safety.
“Are you all right?” Phil asked, all concern as, naturally, she followed Katherine into her dressing room. “Have you been crying?”
“Certainly not.” Blast it all, the looking glass on the dressing table was right there, letting Phil see her face. She turned, but there was nowhere to hide.
“Are you sure? Katherine, your hair! I can see from here that it’s—”
“Enough!” Katherine turned, finally facing Phil. Anger surged through her but fizzled into something weak and soft and suddenly she feared maybe she would cry.
Marry me, Katherine. Oh, God.
“I got caught in a gust of wind,” she explained, removing her hood. It sounded reasonable enough. “One of those powerful blasts that comes up between buildings.”
Phil raised a brow. “Powerful enough to fling a bit of debris against your neck and leave a mark?” She came forward until their skirts touched, searched Katherine’s face, and looked Katherine right in the eye. “You’ve taken a lover, Katherine, and if it was Lord Deal I shall run you through with your very own cutlass.”
“Devil take you.” Katherine turned away and wrenched open one button on her cloak, then another. “It’s you that ought to be run through.” The looking glass proved that sure enough, there was a tiny red mark where her neck curved into her shoulder. “I must have scratched myself.”
“Your lips are swollen.”
“Nerves. I’ve been chewing on them all morning.”
“Your cheeks are red and abraded.”
“Did I not just tell you I got caught in a gust?”
“Your dress is torn.”
“It isn’t!” Katherine frowned into the reflection. Good God, it was. Right there—right above her breasts, a bit of trim had torn away and hung limply down. Warily she met Phil’s knowing eyes in the looking glass.
“Captain Warre,” Phil guessed.
Oh, God. Phil’s softening expression brought the full weight of reality bearing mercilessly down. The urge to tell Phil everything—the lovemaking, the proposal—came up hard and fast. She swallowed it whole.
Phil came up behind her and brushed a fallen lock from Katherine’s shoulder. A line creased between her delicate brows. “He didn’t hurt you...”
Katherine shook her head and thought of Mejdan. He hadn’t hurt her, either. But that was where the similarity ended.
“Quite the opposite, I suspect,” Phil said with a little smile. “But tell me—the hearing ended not two hours ago. How can you have returned from his bed so quickly?”
Katherine’s face warmed.
Phil laughed, soft and comprehending. “Ah, the carriage. I should have known. My, but he’s clever. And impatient. But I suppose there will be plenty of time to explore the joys of a bed after the wedding.”
Katherine turned from her and went to the window. “You of all people cannot possibly believe that I would marry Captain Warre.” She imagined exploring the joys of a bed with him every night as his wife, and her heart squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. No limpstaff, he.
“Katherine, don’t be a fool!” Phil cried, following. “If not him, then who? Good God, you are thinking of Lord Deal.”
She could not belong to James and still belong to herself, and one captivity in a lifetime was enough. Lord Deal was someone she could control. “The union makes sense.”
“For a woman of mature years who isn’t already in love with another man! You cannot possibly believe this will make you happy. For heaven’s sake, Katherine—” Something in the street caught her attention. “Someone’s coming to the door.” A figure in a gray woolen cloak was painstakingly making its way up the walk below. “Katherine, I think it’s Millicent!”
Katherine recognized her the moment the words left Phil’s mouth. She spun away and strode out of the dressing room with Phil in her wake. For Millie to have returned here after the way she left meant something must have gone very badly. A dozen possibilities hurtled through her mind as she hurried down the main staircase as quickly as damnable fashion would allow, leaving the topic of her folly with James behind. They had reached the main landing when Dodd led Millicent into the foyer, where she pushed her hood onto her shoulders and clutched Dodd’s arm, nearly collapsing against him.
“Millicent!”