Hattie Wilkinson Meets Her Match Page 12

  He forced a wry smile and hoped Hattie would believe him. ‘I dislike having my wits clouded. I’ve endured worse pain.’

  ‘It is here if you change your mind.’ She put a small glass beside the bed. He was aware of the intimacy and how her hair fell about her shoulders.

  Gingerly he felt his jaw, sore but unbroken. He wanted her, he wanted to feel her move under him and catch her soft sigh in his mouth as she surrendered to the heat and passion. But he also wanted to hear her laugh, see her smile and above all he wanted to talk to her.

  ‘Is there some reason why you are nursing me?’ he asked in case she decided to leave.

  ‘Instead of Mr Hook?’ Hattie leant forwards and tucked the bedclothes about his body. Impersonal, but intimate at the same time. Her round gown gaped slightly and he caught a glimpse of the shadowy hollow between her breasts.

  He tore his mind away from such thoughts. Hattie nursed his broken body out of compassion and duty. The fact that he noticed her considerable assets showed him that death would have to find another victim. He’d recover. It was merely his blinding headache that bothered him.

  ‘If you like, Rupert could have done it.’

  She laughed. ‘He appeared distinctly ill at the prospect of blood. I’d no wish to torture him.’

  ‘And Johnson, my valet?’

  ‘Your valet was no use. Last seen in the ale tent, according to Mr Hook, rather the worse for wear.’

  Kit silently blessed Rupert’s quick thinking. If they had found Johnson, he would not be here. And despite everything, he was glad to be here. In this room. With Hattie. He valued her friendship. He groaned, remembering the taste of her mouth. He wanted to taste it again, particularly now.

  At her look he said, ‘I gave him the day off. It is his to use as he pleases.’

  ‘You are a generous employer.’

  ‘I can afford to be. Johnson’s ability with boot polish and the starching of neckcloths is second to none.’ He watched her, waiting for the slightest hint of what she was thinking, if she was aware of him as he was of her. ‘No doubt he will turn up early in the morning with a suit of clothes. Johnson takes his job very seriously.’

  ‘It is good to know. I will leave a note for Mrs Hampstead so she isn’t surprised.’

  ‘You still haven’t said. Why did you insist on bringing me here?’

  ‘You saved me from those drunken men and I’m determined you will be nursed with all care and attention.’ She dipped her head. ‘Too many people in my life have died who were not nursed properly. It was time to make sure it didn’t happen again.’

  Her husband. It was painfully simple to guess who she wasn’t naming. Kit hated the twinge of jealousy he felt for Charles Wilkinson, the hero of Talavera. He had to be slipping. He prided himself on not caring about anyone’s past or who they had loved. It was only the present that interested him. Ever. Except

  Hattie’s past interfered with his present. She had the capacity for life.

  He breathed in and his ribs ached.

  ‘Then I’m grateful,’ he said stiffly. ‘You mustn’t feel you should sit up with me. It will take more than a few knocks on my head to kill a reprobate like me.’

  ‘You always insist on painting yourself blacker than you are.’

  ‘I will not have you thinking I am better.’

  ‘It was my fault that you were involved in the fight. I do pay my debts, Sir Christopher, and I owe you a great one.’

  Kit watched how her slender fingers moved in the candlelight. She no longer wore a wedding ring. ‘I enjoyed the fight for the most part. It suited my mood.’

  ‘You enjoyed it?’ She blinked rapidly. ‘How could you enjoy something like that?’

  Kit closed his eyes. It had felt good to work off his excess anger. He wanted to show her that he could do something for her and he had. The bruises and cuts were superficial. ‘There’s a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing someone get what they thoroughly deserve. He should never have done that.’

  ‘But you are hurt. You didn’t have to.’

  ‘What would you have used—your elbows?’ It was far harder to remember how Hattie looked, than to think about the way his hands and face hurt.

  Her jaw became set. ‘I can look after myself. I’ve been doing it for a long while now.’

  ‘And I’ve been worse.’ He forced his face into a ghost of a smile. ‘Nothing appears broken. I will mend.’

  ‘You will mend because I intend on making certain that you do.’

  ‘Well, I feel that my presence is an imposition. And you even have me dressed in one of your husband’s nightshirts.’ Kit hated that he sounded so ungrateful.

  ‘He never wore it.’ Shutters came down on her eyes, instantly hiding her soul from him. ‘Somehow, I never could get rid of the linen. I found it when I got out the sheet for the bed. It seemed the ideal opportunity to put it to practical use.’

  It annoyed him that even after all this time, she still mourned her late husband. He was under no illusion that when he left a woman, within a few months she had forgotten him. Sometimes the bed they had shared was barely cold before another entered it.

  He certainly made no effort to remember any of them. There might be tears for a little while, but ultimately they both went on their respective ways. It was the way it had to be. Remembering never did anyone any good.

  Kit refused to think about the little boy he’d been, crying for a mother who never came. A mother who never came not because she was dead and living with the angels, but because she had left, unable to stand living with him. He had crouched down on the landing when his nurse thought he was in bed and had heard everything, seen everything. Silently he had willed his mother to glance up at him and stop. She kept walking with a handkerchief pressed to her face. She had been the most beautiful thing in his life and then she was gone, no more than a memory.

  ‘You must have been very close.’ He choked out the words, tearing his mind away from the unwelcome thought. He must have hit his head far harder than he’d considered. Normally he had no trouble in forgetting his mother. The illusion of her exquisiteness and delicacy had been well and truly shattered when he discovered a pile of old newspapers, complete with the criminal conversation trial of his mother, detailing her lovers. ‘That much is clear.’

  ‘Why would you say that?’ Hattie clenched her hands together so tightly he could see the white knuckles. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight.

  Silently Kit prayed that there wouldn’t be tears. He hated tears. He’d lost count of the crocodile tears various women had shed in order to gain some trinket or another.

  ‘You always look away when you speak about him.’

  ‘We weren’t close.’ Her hesitant voice trembled with barely suppressed passion. ‘I found out after he died that I never really knew him at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ To his surprise, he meant it. ‘A wife should know her husband. They should not have secrets.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she snapped and then appeared to recollect where she was. She sat up straighter and smoothed her sprigged muslin. She continued in a self-deprecating tone. ‘I used to be very naïve and believed because a man told you that he worshipped the ground you walked on that he meant it.’

  ‘He didn’t?’ Kit put his hands behind his head. The news that Charles Wilkinson was not a paragon made things easier.

  Hattie was silent for such a long while that he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then, when he was about to whisper her name, she slowly began to speak.

  ‘He had an adored mistress and a scattering of illegitimate children. Born before and after our marriage. I was the socially acceptable wife.’ Her hands shook and she clasped them together until her knuckles shone white as she choked out the words. With each trembling syllable, the words sped up until they became a raging torrent. ‘He feared if he married the woman he truly loved that his father would cut him off without a penny. It would not have been so bad if I had known how he felt, but
I had no inkling. It came as a great shock.’

  She finished on a half-laugh combined with a sob.

  A coward. Powerful and primitive urges filled Kit. He longed to wring his neck for making a woman like Hattie suffer.

  ‘So it was an arranged marriage?’ he asked, trying to understand why someone who was so passionate had opted for something as bloodless as an arranged marriage.

  ‘It was a marriage because he took me out to a summer house and whispered sweet nothings, swearing eternal devotion.’ A single tear tracked down her cheek. She brushed it away before he could capture it. ‘I was in love with the romance of it all. My husband knew the right words to woo me. I only discovered the truth after it was far too late.’

  ‘On your wedding night?’

  Her throat worked up and down. Her entire being vibrated with anguish. ‘Worse, after he died. Stupid fool that I was. I swallowed his lies whole, never questioned. He was away, fighting, most of the time.’

  ‘You never questioned or you didn’t want to question?’ he enquired.

  She gave a sickly smile. ‘It made it easy to keep my illusions. I lived for his letters. They were so sweet and so full of promises.’

  ‘Were you in love with him?’ He held up his hand, appalled that the question had slipped out. ‘That was bad of me. I apologise. I have no right to ask.’

  She turned her blue-green shimmering eyes to him. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I ever loved him or just the idea of him,’ she said in a deadly calm voice which contrasted with her earlier anguish. ‘When I found out about his perfidy, I discovered that I couldn’t tell anyone about the truth of the marriage.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve my pride. I paid his debts and settled his other loose ends in the most expedient fashion. Then, Stephanie needed help and so I gave it, selfishly gaining a new start to my life where no one could pity me.’

  ‘And no one knows about it? Not even your sister?’

  ‘You know now.’ She wiped her eyes with fierce fingers. ‘I didn’t want you to have some mistaken idea about my marriage. Or how I might feel about my late husband.’

  Kit’s heart leapt. Her marriage was far different from the one he’d imagined. He wasn’t competing against some perfect ghost, but rather she’d been damaged in some way because of her late husband’s heavy-handedness. It put the kiss they had shared in an entirely different perspective.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I had no idea.’

  She dipped her head. Her hands were folded in her lap. ‘You can’t lose something you never had.’

  He watched her without saying anything, but he could see she was teetering on a knife’s edge. He doubted that she would have shared this information even a few hours ago. The fight had changed everything. He was very glad it had. The minor discomfort of a few bruises and pulled muscles was nothing compared to the relief of not competing against a ghost.

  ‘What would he have wanted for you?’

  ‘What he would have wanted is no concern of mine.’ She shook her head. ‘Stephanie keeps telling me that he’d have wanted me to marry. Charles Wilkinson was a dear friend of my brother-in-law’s. Every time she brings the subject of remarriage up, I become more determined to stay a widow.’

  ‘You are allowing him to define you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Her nostrils quivered like she was a wild deer, catching the scent of a hunter.

  ‘You devoted your life to making Charles Wilkinson seem respectable. Why on earth did you do that?’ Kit asked, keeping his voice soft and steady. He wanted to release her from the prison she’d encased herself in. Misplaced guilt. She had sealed herself off from love and desire. She denied her passionate nature. ‘Where has that led you? Are you any happier for it?’

  ‘Since when did my happiness become any of your concern?’

  ‘Since I decided to fight for you. What happened, happened, Hattie. You can’t change it, but you can stop allowing your life to be defined by it. It is not good to live in fear. You are a passionate woman. Why must you shut yourself off from life?’

  ‘I will accept that you have no idea what you are saying due to the laudanum.’

  Before Kit could protest she stood up and walked out of the room. Kit clenched his fist and slammed it down on the bedclothes. Since when did he break his rules about non-interference? It was better to allow her to go. Her life was nothing to do with him. She should be able to lead the sort of life she wanted, even if it was limited.

  He should be thanking his lucky stars for the narrow escape. There could never be a future with her. He shuddered with the memory of the taunts he’d suffered, and the way respectable women had turned away from him in his youth after they had found out The Scandal.

  * * *

  Hattie laid her fevered cheek against the cool plaster of the hall and attempted to regain some measure of control. Her hand trembled so much that the wax spilt, burning her wrist. She set the candle down on the floor and forced herself to breathe in deeply.

  She had made a mistake, a colossal mistake. She’d vowed never to speak about her husband’s betrayal. Ever.

  Now she’d confessed the bald truth to a man who was little more than a stranger, simply to keep from confessing how she felt about him!

  What was worse—he’d said the things she had known in her heart. Every single word was true as much as she might wish it were a lie. She had allowed herself to be defined by Charles and what he’d done. She had hated what he’d done to her, but everyone considered her to be the grieving widow. How could she besmirch the memory of a hero? She’d used it as a way to lick her wounds for years but it was hypocrisy of the highest order. She had stopped living. Her dreams were just that—dreams.

  Neither did she want everyone to know of her humiliation. Even now that burning sense of shame filled her. She hadn’t been able to keep her husband happy. He had secretly laughed at her feeble attempts. His mistress had taken great delight in showing her the letters. She knew nothing about making love. Sensible and unattractive, lacking any real fire or passion. She’d longed to scream that he was wrong. But how could she when she had lived her life without passion?

  Hattie hugged her arms and sank down to the floor. She wanted to feel passion, the real sort, the feeling-utterly-alive sort that she had felt when Kit kissed her at the Roman ruins. She had never had that all-consuming feeling before. She wanted to be alive, instead of existing.

  When she had discovered the mistress’s address, she had visited her. Hattie had not wanted Charles’s miniature, but throwing it on the fire had seemed less than charitable. She had packed it up along with a few personal items so that the children would have something to remember their father by. Afterwards,

  Hattie had been sick in the street. The obvious love that woman had for Charles contrasted with her infatuation and fantasy of the perfect marriage.

  All she’d wanted to do was to run away and hide. And she had—all the way to Northumberland. She’d been successful as well.

  Undone by a man’s nightshirt. How pathetic was that?

  Hattie pressed her hands against her eyes and tried to control the shaking in her limbs. She refused to cry after all this time. Not again and most definitely not over him.

  It had been a mistake to insist that Kit return to the Dower House, rather than allowing the doctor to look after him. And then she had further compounded the mistake by sitting up and watching him sleep.

  What he must think of her! She hardly knew what she thought of herself! All she knew was that she could not have gone on with the pretence that somehow she had loved Charles with a deep and unyielding love when he’d asked.

  She wanted to cleanse the knowledge of him and their marriage from her soul. She wanted to live her life rather than being defined by the old one.

  Hattie stood up straight, and brushed the tears from her eyes. ‘I’ll live. Whatever happens. No one is going to laugh at me again. At the same time as writing me letters of sweet promise, Charles moc
ked me in those to his mistress. She showed them to me. Sometimes even now, I wake up in a sweat remembering the phrases. That stops now. I start living the life I was meant to.’

  She picked up the candle and started down the hallway to her room. Kit did not need her to play nurse. She was through with being pathetic. She would be strong and aloof. She’d do her duty. And then she’d start to follow her dreams.

  ‘Hattie? Harriet? Wait.’

  She continued to walk towards the stairs, pretending she had not heard him call. The great Kit Foxton could survive the night without her panting over him, like some love-starved widow.

  ‘Wait.’ The note of despair tore at her heart.

  She half-turned and saw him standing in the doorway of the sickroom with tousled hair and a shadow of beard on his chin. The voluminous white nightshirt revealed his muscular calves and bare feet. And where on any other man it would have looked ridiculous, somehow, on Kit, it highlighted his absolute masculinity.

  ‘You were supposed to stay in bed.’

  ‘You were supposed to stay by my side.’ He gave the semblance of a smile. ‘Looking after me. My nurse flees—what choice do I have but to go after her?’

  Despite her misgivings, a hot spark smouldered its way around her insides. She wanted to touch his skin and see if it was silky smooth. If she took one step towards him, she’d be in his arms. She curled her hand into a tight fist about the candlestick and turned away from the enticing picture.

  ‘It is late. Back to bed with you,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘And if I don’t get some sleep, I will be in no fit state tomorrow. Tomorrow is sure to bring a steady stream of visitors, well-wishers and the downright curious. Your exploits will be picked over for days to come. The talk of the village.’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as heroics. Don’t disabuse me of the notion.’

  ‘Heroics, if you must, but now is not the time for you to be up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be if you acted sensibly and stayed. I believe I offended you. It wasn’t my intention.’

  ‘It is nothing to do with you. Nothing at all. I’m tired. I need to rest.’ Hattie concentrated on keeping the candle steady. ‘If you need someone, I’ll wake Mrs Hampstead.’