Never a Gentleman (49 page)

Bastard, she kept repeating to herself, although of any insult she could rain on her brother’s head, that would certainly
be the most unlikely. He truly was the one and only Duke of Livingston, holder of all titles and privileges, born to the strawberry
leaves, and certainly happy to remind you if you forgot.

He was nothing like their father, who had been a good duke. A responsible man loyal to his people and generous to his community,
that duke had truly been mourned when he died. When Edwin went, Kate had the feeling there would be a lot of show and no sincerity.

The problem was, he still had the power. And that meant, since he was head of her family, he was legally in charge of her
life.

She worked for hours, tearing the coach apart like a starving woman looking for the last bit of cheese. She unearthed two
blankets, a writing desk, a tiny bottle of scent she didn’t use anymore, three vinaigrettes from Bea’s stash, and a stale
hunk of bread from behind the cushions.

To that pile she added a handful of coins and a small sewing kit she’d been looking for since the Countess of March’s soirée
six weeks ago. No weapons. No escape. No hope. Except she refused to consider that. She would go mad if she considered the
places Edwin might want to incarcerate her.

She must have finally fallen asleep, sitting in the well with her head on the ruined seat. All she knew was that when she
woke it was deeply dark. It took her a moment to realize that the change of speed had alerted her. They were slowing and turning.

Had she been brought to Edwin at Moorhaven? Would he have the effrontery to drag her back home kicking and screaming just
as he was burying his uncle in the family vault? For heaven’s sake, the Archbishop of Canterbury was supposed to preside.
If it was Moorhaven, though, Diccan would be there. It was his father they were burying, after all.

Closing her eyes, as if that could keep the darkness at bay, Kate assessed her options. She loathed the idea of
putting her fate in someone else’s hands. Especially a man. That had never exactly worked well for her in the past. But she
could trust Diccan. No matter the risk to his social standing, he would speak out against Edwin.

The coach ground to a halt. Kate could hear the jangle of harness as the horses settled. She heard men’s voices, and the creak
of the coach as the driver swung down from his perch. She heard the hollow caw of a raven.

And then, nothing. No movement. No voices. No appearance by someone who would offer explanation. Obviously a move orchestrated
to heighten her terror. Considering how dark it was inside the coach, it was working. Already her heart was running an erratic
race. Her hands had begun to sweat inside her calfskin gloves.

Well, she’d be damned if she showed him how frightened she was. Even as her stomach threatened revolt and her hands shook,
she straightened her clothing and tucked up her hair. She repinned her cottage bonnet and pulled on her gloves. Stuffing the
horsehair back into the cushions as well as she could, she perched herself in the center of the seat, a duchess come to call.

And still no one came.

“Edwin!” she called, injecting the proper amount of impatient disdain into her voice. “Games are childish. Let me out so we
can battle this out face to face.”

Suddenly the door was yanked open. It was all Kate could do not to jump. She didn’t, though. Proud of her composure, she turned
to face her brother, or whatever henchman he’d sent to represent him.

She froze. It wasn’t Edwin at all. For a moment, she couldn’t say a word. She could only stare, sick with betrayal. Not him,
she thought. Not again.

“Harry,” she drawled, hoping he didn’t see how lost she suddenly felt. “Imagine seeing you here.”

Harry Lidge made it a point to look around the disaster she’d made of the carriage. “What the hell have you been doing?”

Kate didn’t bother to look. “Redesigning. You know how easily I bore.”

He offered a hand. “Get out.”

She didn’t move. She hated the fact that his hair gleamed like faint gold in the lamplight, that she could see even in the
deep shadows that his eyes were sky blue. He had grown well, filled out into a strong man. A hard man who had survived the
wars with fewer scars than most. He was no longer the boy she’d known, though, and it showed in more than the web of creases
that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. It showed in the unforgiving rigidity of his posture, the impatient edge to
his actions.

But maybe that was just for her.

No, she thought, furious that it mattered.

“I don’t think I will,” she told him. “Not until I understand why. Are you working for Edwin now, Harry? I certainly hope
he’s paying you as much to kidnap me as my father did to desert me.”

His expression, if possible, grew colder. “You don’t get to ask questions, Your Grace. You get to answer them. Now, get down
before I drag you out bodily.”

“Go to hell, Harry.”

Harry didn’t answer. He just reached in and yanked her out of the carriage. When she shrieked and fought, he tossed her over
his shoulder and turned for the building Kate could see only as a deeper shadow in the darkness.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” she shrilled. “Put me down!”

She managed to land a particularly good kick to his chest, briefly taking his breath. He reached up and swatted her on the
bottom.

She was breathless with rage. “Damn you, put me down.”

“When I’m finished.”

She saw legs on the way by, and one woman’s skirt. So Harry had staff here. Was that good or bad? Was he to keep watch over
here, or simply desert her?

What was she going to do?

By the time she could think to argue, Harry had hauled her into the house, up a dim, grimy set of stairs and into an even
grimier bedroom, where he proceeded to dump her on the bed. She bounded back as if the mattress were on fire and scrambled
to her feet. She was suddenly afraid and disoriented. This made no sense. She couldn’t even think of what to ask first.

“When did you start doing Edwin’s bidding, Harry?” she demanded, settling her skirts so she couldn’t dwell on how her voice
had begun to rise. “Are you under the hatches, or do you need another promotion?”

“I don’t work for Edwin,” he said, his voice dripping ice. “I work for the government. And I have the dubious pleasure of
keeping you here until you give us some answers. Where is it, Kate?”

Her hands stilled on her skirt. Kate found herself blinking like a child. “The government?
Our
government?” She laughed, even angrier that she sounded shrill. “Pull the other one, Harry.”

He took a threatening step closer, his rugged features as hard as granite. “Oh, I think you know perfectly well what I’m talking
about. Just before he died, the Surgeon told us. You’re mixed up with the Lions. Do you have it,
Kate? Do you have the verse with you? Because if you do, we’ll find it.”

“The verse?” she echoed, stumbling back from him, only to have her knees fold and land her back on the bed. “The verse we’ve
been searching all over creation for like a lost Easter egg?
That
verse?”

He merely tilted his head.

“I don’t have your bloody verse,” she snapped, still feeling pathetically overwhelmed. And then, the second betrayal sank
in. “You really believe the Surgeon? The man whose favorite pastime was carving poetry into people’s foreheads? Are you mad?”

“Not as mad as you if you think I’ll fall for your stories again.” He stepped back toward the door, and it was all Kate could
do to keep from reaching out to beg him not to lock her in.

“Don’t,” was all she could say.

Harry stopped, his eyebrow quirked with disdain, but she couldn’t get another word out. “What?” he asked. “No clever quotes?
No Latin or Greek or German, Kate? I’m disappointed.”

From the bottom of her toes, she scraped up all that was left of her self-respect. “Latin, Harry? You must have me confused
with another one of your prisoners. A dowager has no reason to spout any foreign language, except, occasionally, French.”

“What happened?” he retorted. “No more ignorant farmers to impress? I would have thought you’d find a head other than mine
to hold your book learning over.”

He couldn’t possibly believe that. Hadn’t he heard her at all?

“Now then, Your Grace,” he said, his voice a razor. “You
can make this easy or you can make it hard. Your luggage is being searched even as we speak. If we don’t find it there, you’ll
be searched. You can cooperate or not.” He shrugged. “It really makes no difference. We’ll find it. Until then, you can consider
yourself my prisoner.”

Kate couldn’t seem to form words. She couldn’t seem to comprehend what Harry was saying. She didn’t even recognize this Harry.
She’d known him once; an open, easy-going son of the earth with a brain too big for farming. She had loved him once, with
the passion reserved for a first love. She’d seen him as the hero who would save her from the future her father had planned
for her.

But he hadn’t been her hero. He had betrayed her. And over the last ten years, grown into this implacable, humorless, spiteful
man.

She was, to put it bluntly, at his mercy. God help her.

“I don’t have it,” she repeated, rising to her feet like a doomed Mary, Queen of Scots. “I wouldn’t recognize it if it came
up and asked me to dance. Now, stop being such a bully and let me get back to Bea.”

She was furious to hear a note of pleading creep into her voice. It stiffened her spine, at least, so she could brace her
feet on the floor and confront the enraged stranger she’d once known so well. Or thought she had.

“The verse,” was all Harry said, crossing his arms and leaning against the door. “Give me the verse and you can go… well,
maybe not. If you have the verse, then you’re a traitor. Maybe I should just lock you in the cellars right now and be done
with it.”

It was all Kate could do to keep her composure. She could only hope that Harry didn’t understand how much that threat terrified
her. She could barely stand in this
room. It was infested with shadows and dark corners, just a candle away from darkness. She refused to imagine what would happen
in a cellar.

She couldn’t let Harry know that or he would make good on his threat. She could no longer trust his basic decency.

“You don’t understand,” she said, taking a step forward, closer to freedom. “Bea can’t simply be abandoned. She isn’t strong.
She’ll fret herself to flinders wondering where I am. I have to get back to her.”

Harry took another step back toward the door. “Give me the verse and we’ll see.”

Her temper snapped. “I don’t
have
the bloody verse!”

He shrugged. “Then tell me where it is.” He stepped through the door. And then, as if daring her to argue, he waited there
with one foot in the room and one in the hallway, taunting her with his freedom to move.

“Diccan will kill you for this,” she snarled.

He stopped, his stare implacable. “Diccan was the one who told me to do it.”

Kate wondered whether shock really had a sound. She thought she heard a whirlwind; she thought she heard the echo of a cold
void. “Don’t be absurd.”

Diccan would never do this. He would never threaten her with Harry, much less darkness. He knew… no, she realized, he didn’t.
Only Bea knew. But Bea wasn’t here.

She snapped out of her reverie just in time to see Harry back through the door. She grabbed him by the sleeve. “A candle!”
The one in this room was short and sputtering.

“The verse,” he answered and turned away.

“You bastard!” she almost screeched, pulling him back. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you know perfectly well
I don’t have the verse. Now let me get back to
Bea before she makes herself ill. Or have you also taken to torturing old women?”

It was as if she’d snapped some restraint in him. Suddenly Harry spun around and advanced on her, forcing her across the dark
room until her back was pressed against the peeling, dingy wall. He kept pressing forward, crowding her with his body, battering
at her with the fury in his eyes.

Her first instinct was to cower, to throw her arm up to protect herself. Her second was to hold herself perfectly still. She
knew too well that cowering only made it worse.

“I told you,” he said, his voice suddenly low and insulting. “Give me the verse and you’re free.”

She had nowhere to go. Harry loomed over her, heating the air between them. She wanted to spit at him, to simply laugh and
walk away. But inexplicably, caught like cornered prey, her body suddenly remembered. It wouldn’t move; wouldn’t fight. It
began to soften, to open, to
want
, and she hadn’t wanted in so long she’d forgotten the feel of it.

Even if she didn’t want Harry, her body did. It remembered how she’d hungered for the scent he always carried, horses and
leather and strong soap. It remembered how he’d touched her with the raw wonder of an explorer. It remembered how it felt
to trust those guileless blue eyes enough to offer him her virginity.

It only lasted a moment, that sense of elation, before she remembered exactly what it was she had once wanted. Before she
fought the urge to curl into herself and hide. And that made her angrier than ever.

Somehow she must have betrayed her momentary weakness, because suddenly he was smiling like a wolf. “On the other hand,” he
murmured, leaning even closer,
too close, only small inches away, “maybe you want me to find it myself. Shall I look for it? Should I strip you myself until
I can see every inch of milky white skin? Should I search you, slipping my hands under your breasts to make sure you haven’t
tucked it inside, where it would be warm and damp?”

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t tell if it was fury, fear, or arousal, even though her nipples tightened with his words
and a light flared in her belly. She couldn’t breathe because he was taking the last of her air. She couldn’t think because
he was too close.

“I could do it,” he whispered, his mouth next to her ear. “All I’d have to do is kiss you, right here behind your ear. You’d
let me do anything, then. Wouldn’t you, Kate?”