Trial by Desire

He didn’t seem the least out of sorts to find her here. In fact, he smiled at her, almost as if he knew a joke that she did not. “But I had to shave.”

“I see that.”

It was half the reason her heart had accelerated to this unsustainable pace. With his beard shorn, Kate could see every last feature—chin, lips and, worst of all, that assured smile. She could find only the roughest sketch of the man she had married in this man’s face. The man Kate had married had been scrawny, a youngster barely out of adolescence. That youthfulness had made him seem sweet.

The intervening time had washed the youth from her husband’s features. His jaw was no longer set in awkward apology; now it was square, and he looked at her in clear command. His nose no longer seemed too sharp, too piercing. It fit the look of canny awareness he’d developed.

Once, he’d seemed clumsy, constantly tripping over feet that were too large for the rest of his body. But over the past years, he’d grown into those feet. What had once seemed a surfeit of bumbling motion had transmuted into a restless economy, a sheer vitality highlighted by the sun-darkened gold of his skin.

Her husband had stopped being safe.

“Shall we go in together?” he asked, holding out his elbow.

Even that slight motion tweaked her perverse memory. Where once he’d apologetically claimed the space he needed, constantly pulling his elbows into his side, now he seemed to fill an area far beyond his skin. It seemed an act of bravery to reach out and set her fingers in the crook of his elbow. He radiated an unconscious aura now—as if he were more dangerous, more intense. Give this man a wide berth, her senses shouted.

Instead, she closed her hand about his finely woven wool coat. She could feel the strength of the arm underneath.

“I don’t think we’ll fool any of them, coming in together.” She forced herself to look up, to meet the intensity of his gaze. “If anyone knows the truth about our marriage, it’s the people in the room in front of us.”

His head tilted to one side. “You tell me, Kate. What is the truth of our marriage?”

He did not smile at her, nor did he waggle his eyebrows. His question was seriously meant. As if somehow, he did not know. His ignorance, Kate supposed, must have been bliss for him. For her, however, it sparked a deep ache beneath her breastbone.

“Our marriage lasted a few months. Once you left, what remained faded faster than the ink on the license. And what’s left … well, it could blow away in one tiny puff of wind.”

“Well, then.” He spoke with an air of certainty. “I’ll try not to exhale.”

“Don’t bother. I stopped holding my breath years before.”

Even when he’d been a young, deferential boy, he hadn’t truly been safe. He’d hurt her when he left. Now she felt a stupid surge of hope at his words. A damnable, irrepressible whisper of a thought, suggesting that something might yet come of her marriage.

The real danger wasn’t the strong line of his jaw or the powerful curve of his biceps under her fingers. No; as always, the real dangers were her own hopes and desires. It was that whisper of longing, a list that started with, step one: find a night rail….

Those old girlish wants would return unbidden if she gave them the least encouragement. It wouldn’t matter how lightly he breathed.

And nowadays, she had far more important secrets to occupy her worries than a little scrap of silk.

“Well,” he said, “let’s give it a go anyway. Our guests expect us.” Without waiting for an answer, he set his hand over her fingers, clasping them to the crook of his arm. The gesture was strong and confident. He didn’t know what awaited them. Kate ignored the queasiness in her stomach and walked with him into the room.

After the dimness of the hall, blinding white morning light filled her vision. All sound ceased, swallowed up by an immense shocked silence. Then fabric rustled; a flurry of lavender blurred across Kate’s vision, and before she could blink and get her bearings, a silk-clad form cannoned into Ned beside her, breaking Kate’s contact with her husband.

“Ned,” the woman said, “you ridiculous man. Not a word of warning, not one hint that you’d arrived. When were you planning to tell us?”

“I just landed,” Ned said. “Late last night. You’ll find the missive on your return.”

The woman was Jennifer Carhart, the Marchioness of Blakely. She was Ned’s cousin’s wife, and as he’d explained to Kate after their marriage, also one of Ned’s dearest friends. “I missed you,” Lady Blakely was saying.

Lady Blakely was pretty and dark-haired and clever, and Kate felt a prickle of unworthy resentment arise inside her. Not jealousy, at least not of that sort. But she envied the easy friendship Lady Blakely had with her husband.

When the marchioness pulled away, her husband, the marquess, took her place. “Ned.”

“Gareth.” Ned clasped the offered hand. “Congratulations on the birth of your daughter. I know my good wishes are much delayed, but I only just had the news from the solicitor this morning.”

“My thanks.” The marquess glanced at Kate, briefly, and then looked away without meeting her eyes. “Lady Kathleen.”

Naturally, Ned did not notice that little dismissal. Instead, he clapped his cousin on the shoulders. “I do wish you’d hurry up and spit out an heir, though. It’s uncomfortable dangling on your hook.”

“No.” Lord Blakely spoke directly, almost curtly. But his gaze cut to his wife, who poked him. “No,” he amended with a sigh. “But thank you for the sentiment. I’d much rather have children than an heir. I’ll keep my girl—you and yours can have the damned marquessate when I’m gone.” His gaze flicked to Kate again, as if it were somehow her fault she hadn’t burst forth with twin sons, with her husband half the world away.

Kate should have been playing the hostess here, setting everyone at ease. Instead, she felt as if she were an interloper in her own home, as if she were the one returning after a bewildering absence of three years. And perhaps her feelings had something to do with the precariousness of Louisa’s situation. But this gap, this feeling of not belonging, had arisen long before she had even known the danger Louisa was in.

It had happened so gradually, on her husband’s disappearance from England. Kate had blamed Blakely for sending her husband to China. Foolish; she’d known Ned had volunteered, that he’d wanted to leave as much as she had wanted him to stay. She’d blamed the marchioness, out of a deep envy for the woman’s easy friendship with her husband. Kate had known the response was neither reasonable nor rational, but her resentment at being left behind had been too large to direct at only one person.

Over the years, the familial relationship had quietly strained. A different woman might have made some attempt to mend what had frayed; instead, Kate had excused herself. She had her own set of friends. She didn’t need to add her cousins by marriage to that number.

And so it had come to this: everyone in the room, if they knew what she had done, would see her as the enemy.

Her greatest enemy stood next in line to greet her husband. The Earl of Harcroft was slim and tall. He was Ned’s age, but he looked as if he were still eighteen, his face unlined by worries or age. The earl, Kate thought bitterly, appeared to be quite the golden child. He was a master at cricket, a veritable genius at chess and an expert when it came to appraising Flemish paintings of goat-girls. He gave to charity, never swore and attended church, where he sang hymns in a delightful baritone.

He also beat his wife, taking care to hit her only where the bruises wouldn’t show. It was his legal right, as Louisa’s husband, and if he discovered that Kate had hidden her away, he could compel her at solicitor-point to give her up.

Kate wasn’t about to give him the chance.

Ned relinquished Harcroft’s hand and looked expectantly around the room. “Where’s Louisa?” he asked brightly. “Is she lying in, finally? I certainly hope she hasn’t taken ill again.”

Silence fell. The three guests exchanged glances. Kate’s spine straightened; Lady Blakely subsided into her chair and spread her hands carefully down the light purple of her gown. She did not meet Ned’s eyes. Instead, she glanced at her husband, who by a shake of his head clearly delegated the task of divulging the truth back to her.

“We don’t know where she is,” Lady Blakely said simply. “But you’ve just returned. Don’t concern yourself with it.”

Of course. They’d come to talk with Kate. Not a good sign, then, that nobody in the room was looking at her.

“Jenny,” Ned said carefully. “Are you trying to protect me?”

The smile on Lady Blakely’s face wavered.

“I should think that if I’ve earned anything over the last years, I’ve earned the right to the truth. I’ve proven to you by now that I can help.”

“Ned, that’s not what I meant. I simply thought—”

Ned held up a hand. “Well, stop thinking simply.” He spoke lightly, but again something passed between them, and Lady Blakely nodded.

Oh, it was irrational to feel that stab of jealousy. And it was not because she suspected that anything untoward could happen between them. Lady Blakely was devoted to her husband. Still, that exchange of glances bespoke a trust, a friendship between them that Kate had never had a chance to develop with her husband. All she’d had was a handful of breakfasts, and a smaller handful of nights that had more to do with marital expectation than ardor. She’d had three months to raise her hopes, and years to watch them dwindle into nothing.

“If anyone has the right to the truth,” Kate said with some asperity, “it is I. Louisa is one of my dearest friends. I thought, after she gave birth three weeks ago, the danger had passed. Has something happened to her?” Kate didn’t have to pretend her concern for her friend. “Is she well? And did you come to fetch me to her side?”

Harcroft’s cold gaze fell on her as she delivered this speech. But as much as she quaked inside, she did not let herself show more than natural worry.

Lady Blakely must not have seen anything amiss in her expression, either. She let out a sigh. “There’s no easy way to say this. Louisa’s gone.”

“Gone?” Ned asked, his shoulders drawing together, his head snapping up.

“Do you mean she’s passed on?“ Kate echoed in perfidious concern.

“I mean,” Lady Blakely clarified, “she is missing. She was last seen yesterday shortly before noon, and we are absolutely frantic trying to locate her.”

“Was she taken by ruffians?” Kate asked. “Have you received some sort of a demand letter from abductors?”

Ned turned to Harcroft. “Harcroft. You used to find misplaced books in the Bodleian Library for amusement. How could you be so careless as to misplace your own wife?”

Harcroft scrubbed his hands through his hair. He made a fine picture of a distraught husband, Kate thought bitterly. “You know,” Harcroft said softly, “about the illness she’s suffered. The problems she had conceiving. Well, after she got with child … The physician said some women don’t take to childbirth. Something about too much excitement laid upon the feminine sensibility. She wasn’t herself afterward. The female mind is delicate as it is, you know. She changed during her confinement. She was less biddable, more excitable. More given to hysterics.”

Harcroft shrugged. The gesture conveyed helplessness, and Kate’s lip curled. Helpless, Harcroft was not. Kate suppressed the urge to lift the nearby oil lamp with her delicate, female hands. She felt excited and unbiddable right now; why, she might slip and use her own delicate, female sensibility to bash all that heavy brass into his head.

However satisfying that exercise might prove, it wouldn’t help Louisa.

“And no,” Harcroft continued, turning to Kate, “we’ve had no notes of ransom. Whoever it was that took her—” his voice took on a sour note, and he tilted his head to look Kate directly in the eyes “—whoever it was, packed a valise for Louisa and clothes for the child. They took my son, without his uttering a cry to alert the nursemaid.”

“Oh, no,” Kate said. She froze her face into a mask of perfect sympathy and met Harcroft’s eyes. “Not little Jeremy. What sort of wicked, depraved, awful person would hurt that little angel?”

Her words might have been half lies, but the emotion that crept out during that speech was all real. She only hoped that everyone understood it as sympathy for Harcroft instead of the painful accusation that it was.

He couldn’t know what was in her mind, but his own thoughts could not have been comfortable. The skin around his mouth crinkled and he looked away.

“As I said,” he muttered, “there have been neither threats nor demands.”

“How can I help?” Ned asked. “I assume that’s why you came, right? As soon as you heard I’d arrived? Because—” He stopped and looked at the carefully schooled faces surrounding him. “But no. None of you even knew I’d returned here.”

“They’ve come to speak with me,” Kate said into the intervening silence. “To see if Louisa divulged anything of importance.”

The Marquess of Blakely stepped closer. He was tall, and Kate had never seen him flinch at anything. He was damnably intimidating, and she leaned away despite herself. “And has she?”

Kate shook her head as if trying to recall. “We had planned to see each other again at the Hathaway’s house party in November, if the roads were passable. She made no mention to me of any other plans.”

True enough; Kate had been the one to coax her into action. Kate had laid the plans; Louisa had only agreed.

Kate continued, “She had not spoken of any desire to see anything else. Or—excuse my plain speaking on the subject, but under the circumstances, it seems necessary—anyone else. Louisa isn’t the sort to stray.”

A disappointed silence followed this.

“Perhaps,” Harcroft offered, “you might trouble yourself to recall anything she might have said about Berkswift’s environs. Yesterday evening, a woman alone, answering Louisa’s description, alighted from a hack in Haverton, just five miles from here. The hack had been hired in London, and so the occurrence was much talked about.”

“A woman alone? She didn’t have a child? Where did she go?”

“No child. But an auburn-haired woman with deep blue eyes—it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“It must be.” Kate shook her head. “Louisa would never leave Jeremy, not for any reason.” It had, in fact, been a sticking point of their plan—convincing Louisa to allow Kate to take her child in London, so that when Louisa traveled she would not be so easily identified. A red-haired woman with a newborn was too memorable, and looking as Louisa did would only have made her shine, like a lighthouse set on the shore.

“Perhaps,” Kate ventured, “you might tell me if there is anything that happened that might have precipitated her flight. It might help my memory.”

She didn’t want to be the only one telling lies here. Let Harcroft announce that he’d hit her in the stomach, and promised to break her infant son’s arm if she told anyone.

“I can think of other ways to jog your memory.” Harcroft stepped closer.

For a second, Kate shrank from him. She, of all people, knew the violence he was capable of. Then Ned moved to stand beside Kate. It was foolish to feel more secure because of a man who had abandoned her years ago. But she did.

“For instance,” Harcroft said smoothly, as if he had not just uttered a threat, “you might allow yourself time to think about the matter. You could report to me if you recall anything important.”

“Of course. I will send a messenger the instant anything comes to mind.”

Harcroft shook his head. “No need for that. Ned, my friend, you asked me if you could help. A hired hack left my wife a mere stone’s throw from here, and no accounts yet have that woman leaving the district. I’m convinced she’s nearby.”

A prickle ran up Kate’s neck. Harcroft lifted his cold, unfeeling gaze to Kate, as if he knew the substance of her thoughts, as if he traced every hair standing on end to its inexorable conclusion. “I ask only,” he said, “that I be allowed to impose upon your hospitality while I investigate.”

This was not good. It was very not good. Kate curled her lips up into the semblance of a smile while she tried to arrange her muddled thoughts. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll ring for tea, and you can tell me how I can help.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“JENNY,” NED SAID as Kate stepped outside the room, “before we begin to discuss Louisa, there is something I must ask you.”

Jenny, who had sat next to her husband on an embroidered sofa, smiled up at Ned and motioned him to sit. Ned slipped into a nearby chair and leaned forward. What he had to say next was something that had bothered him for the past hour. Under the circumstances, it seemed unfair to confront her with the question. And yet …

“Why didn’t you write me that the gentlemen of the ton were conspiring to seduce my wife?”

Jennifer Carhart had never, in Ned’s experience, been a coward. Yet she looked away at this, biting her lip. “Letters took so long to cross the ocean,” she finally assayed, not meeting his eyes. “And Lady Kathleen—Kate, I mean—dealt with the wager so matter-of-factly. I didn’t suppose she needed my assistance, and to be quite honest, I suspect she wouldn’t have appreciated my interference. Besides, you … “ She trailed off, her finger tracing circles against her palm.

“I what?”

“You needed time to sort through matters.” Jenny reached over and adjusted his lapels in some invisible manner.

“Christ,” Ned swore.

All those years ago, Jenny had been the one to observe the sum total of his youthful foibles. When he’d made a hash of his life, she had helped him pick up the pieces. She was like a sister to him, and one who had quite literally saved his life. Perhaps that was why she sat here, protecting him, as if he were still that fragile child in need of mollycoddling.

“Next time,” he said quietly, “tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Harcroft’s voice boomed behind Ned, and he turned reluctantly. “Are you telling us that you had great success in your venture abroad?”

“If by ‘success,’ you mean, did I discover the truth? Yes.”

Gareth looked up and leaned forward. “That bad, was it?”

“Worse than even the discussions in Parliament indicated. If matters have not changed, John Company is currently shelling villages at the mouth of the Pearl River, all because China refuses the privilege of purchasing India’s opium. This is not Britain’s finest hour. When we’ve resolved this other matter, we’ll have to have a discussion about what can be done in the Lords. I’ve made notes.”

“And did you find it easy to take those notes?”

“Easy enough.” Ned smiled briefly. “Once I stopped letting the officers push me about.”

Harcroft waved a hand. “We can speak more of that later. For now, we’ll need a plan. The first thing that we must organize is—”

“I thought we were going to wait for Kate to return,” Ned interrupted in surprise. He’d never known Harcroft to be downright rude before. And imposing on Kate’s hospitality, while starting the conversation without her, seemed the height of rudeness.

Harcroft made a disparaging sound in return. “Why bother? What do you suppose she could do to assist us? Go shopping?” He shook his head. “If my wife were hidden on Bond Street, I might turn to Lady Kathleen for assistance.”

Ned’s hands balled at that implied insult.

“Yes, yes.” Harcroft waved a dismissive hand in Ned’s direction. “I know. You feel duty bound to complain. But do be serious. Some women just don’t have the head for anything except frivolity. She’s good at a great many things, I’ll give you. Planning parties. Purchasing a great many hats and gloves. Trust me, Ned. We’ll all be happiest if Lady Kathleen restricts her assistance in this matter to choosing the menu.”

At that precise moment, Kate came back into the room, followed by a servant with a tea-tray. She didn’t meet Ned’s eyes. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She didn’t say anything about the conversation. She didn’t say anything at all. But Ned could tell, by the careful way that she concentrated on the distribution of delicate, gold-edged cups and cucumber sandwiches, that she’d overheard those last few words. And they’d hurt.

Worse, nobody had leapt to defend her. Not even him. And by the way she fixed her gaze on the teapot, she knew that.

When she sat down, she took the chair farthest from their company, as if she were outside the enterprise. Harcroft began outlining his plans for questioning villagers and hiring searchers, and Kate sat in silence, staring into her teacup. Ned could put no words to the prickle of unease he felt watching her. She was dignified and pleasant, every inch the duke’s daughter he’d married.

She was also hurt. And looking at her, he could not help but feel as if … as if, perhaps, he’d forgotten something.

Not her; he’d never forgotten Kate. Not their vows; he’d struggled long and hard with how to both cherish Kate and keep her safe from the darkness he knew lurked inside him.

No. After what she’d said in the hall, he was certain he’d not done well by her, and he was not sure how to patch matters up. If he could even do so. She had said their marriage might blow away with one gust of wind; he had no idea how to bring it to life. He wasn’t sure if he could do so, without also resurrecting his own dark demons alongside. But what he did know was that if he kept silent now, if he did nothing to try to mend the hurt she’d just been given, he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror any longer.

He stood and walked to her. Behind him, Harcroft was still nattering on. “These days,” he was growling, “nobody gives a fig about the husband’s rights. Too many newfangled notions interfering.”

Standing above his wife, Ned could see the fair lines of her eyelashes. She didn’t darken them, and as she gazed down into her teacup, those fine, delicate hairs fluttered. Without lifting her eyes to Ned—he wasn’t sure if she was even aware of how close he stood—Kate blew out her breath and added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, followed by another.

The time they had together had been damnably short. But those days spent breaking fast with Kate had been time enough for Ned to know that his wife never took sugar in her tea.

“In fact,” Harcroft was saying behind them, “the very notion of Britain is founded on the rights of a husband.”

“Husbands’ rights,” Kate muttered. “In a pig’s eye.”

“Kate?”

Kate jumped, her teacup clattering in its saucer. “That is the second time you’ve come up behind me in as many hours. Are you trying to do me an injury?”

From her private reaction, she didn’t think much of marriage—either Lady Harcroft’s or her own. Perhaps they had compared notes. He didn’t know what to do, except to try to make her smile.

“Am I interrupting a private conversation between you and your teacup?”

Kate stared down. Even Ned could see the liquid was practically viscous with dissolved sugar. How many spoonfuls had she dumped into it? But she said nothing.

“I must be,” Ned continued. “No doubt you and your tea have a great deal to converse about. Can I call it merely tea?” She looked up at him in surprise. “I’d hate to insult your efforts to transform it into a syrup, after all.”

A reluctant smile touched her lips, and she set down her worthless, oversweetened beverage. And oh, he didn’t know why, but he reached out and laid his hand atop the fingers she had freed. The delicate bones of her hand felt just right against his skin.

“Let me guess,” Ned said. “I’ve mucked up the forms of address. You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t thought about etiquette and precedence in years. You’re a duke’s daughter, and furthermore, you are the tea’s only natural predator. According to Debrett, that means—”