Though he heard a sound behind him, Kit did not turn away from the nursery window. It did not matter that it had long since grown too dark to see anything beyond his own reflection. His eyes were focused on the freshly scrubbed floor, from which rose the sharp scent of pine.
The footsteps came no closer; the person to whom they belonged did not speak. Kit clung as long as he could to the hope that Beth had sought him out to demand an explanation. Eventually, however, he would have to face the reality that it was the housekeeper or another servant. As he lifted his gaze to the glass, his resigned sigh fogged the windowpane, blurring but not disguising the reflection of the person standing behind him.
“I thought I’d find you here,” said Mr. Oliver.
“The question,” Kit said, after he’d recovered from his surprise at the identity of his visitor, “is what prompted you to look. Did not Mrs. Rushworth convey my message?”
“She did.”
“Then you should be relieved. You and...Mrs. Goode are free to return to your lives in town.”
Mr. Oliver shifted his weight. “Lady Manwaring, you mean.” The mirror version of his face was oddly misshapen, impossible to read. “She told me you knew—that you’d known one another forever.”
“Did she?” But of course she had. The pair of them had probably enjoyed a good laugh over the idea of a grown man still clinging to childish dreams.
“Come, come, Stalbridge.”
The familiarity of his address rankled. Kit jerked about to face the younger man. “What is it you want, sir?”
Mr. Oliver looked remarkably unperturbed. “The chance to make things plain. Tomorrow will see the arrival of your niece and nephew and, if you don’t look sharp, the departure of the person best able to make your dreadful old house into a home.”
“I suppose now you’re referring to Mrs. Goode?” Kit had had enough. He took three steps across the floor, prepared to push past Mr. Oliver if he must. “I grow weary of this conversation, sir. I’ll bid you good night.”
“Oh, dear. Perhaps I’ve misjudged,” he said, in the mocking voice of a man who fancied himself never wrong. “But your affection for the lady seemed quite genuine to me.”
“I’ve loved Tabetha Holt for as long as I can remember,” Kit growled, grabbing the younger man by his perfectly starched, elaborately knotted cravat and pinning him to the door jamb. “And I’ll love her, and her alone, till the day I die. Don’t try to claim you can say the same, Mr. Oliver.”
“Actually,” he replied with a smirk Kit was tempted to wipe away with his fist, “it’s Manwaring.”
In spite of himself, Kit’s grip slackened, allowing his prisoner to slide free.
“And I believe I can say the same,” he went on. With a few fastidious flicks of his wrist, he straightened his coat and fluffed his rumpled linen. “Well, perhaps not the ‘her alone’ bit. A young man must be allowed to sow his wild oats.” He winked, then sobered. “But rest assured, I do love her.”
“Manwaring.” The name on Kit’s lips sounded garbled, like he’d had one too many pints at the village pub or taken a shot to the jaw. “As in...”
“Comma, sixth viscount. Yes. Pleased to meet you, Stalbridge.” He extended a hand with a flourish, and Kit was too bewildered to do anything but shake it. “And yes, Lady Manwaring is my stepmama, a part she has performed admirably for, oh...” He made a show of calculating, first in his head and then on his fingers. “Twenty-one years, seven months.”
“Your stepmother. Not your—”
“Paramour?” He gave a rueful chuckle. “You did a poor job of disguising your suspicion, Stalbridge. But after Mrs. Rushworth conveyed your unceremonious dismissal, I grew convinced your reservations about my stepmother had been compounded by another matter. Either misplaced jealousy, or...”
“The Mrs. Goode charade.”
For the first time in their brief acquaintance, Kit saw a spark in the other man’s eyes, a hint that behind the façade of indifference and insolence lay something else entirely, something about which he cared a great deal. “It isn’t a charade. Mrs. Goode is a testament to the true importance of what is so often dismissed as women’s work. Men bloviate about politics and business, oblivious to the very stuff that holds the fabric of our society together, the dinners over which wars are begun and contracts negotiated, the balls at which dynasties are formed or broken, the homes to which we all long to retreat at the end of the day. Her book is an acknowledgment that homekeeping is both art and science, proof that its skills can be taught, and a reminder that such knowledge ought not to be the province of only a few.”
“Well said.” Kit’s grudging nod of respect sent a flare of surprise across Manwaring’s face. “But that sounds a great deal to put on the shoulders of one woman.”
Manwaring hesitated. “Mrs. Goode is...more an idea than a person, I suppose you might say.”
“Books don’t write themselves.”
“No, well, of course there’s someone behind the name...”
Not Beth. Kit felt sure of it. Not because he thought her incapable of changing the world. But he’d been skeptical from the first that she would have chosen this particular way of doing it. When he thought back to her supposed secretary’s behavior, however, how swiftly and surely the young man had taken charge of the nursery project...
“The person behind the name is not who the world expects,” Kit suggested. Nor what the world accepts. “But...” he began, gradually piecing the situation together, “when Mrs. Rushworth wrote, and the book’s publisher intervened, you found you needed someone, a lady, to embody those high ideals. And Beth agreed—”
“Volunteered,” Manwaring corrected.
“In hopes of sparing the reputation of someone dear to her.”
The younger man shot Kit a wary look but did not deny it.
“Then,” Kit concluded, “through simple bad luck, she ended up here, with someone to whom she was previously known.”
Manwaring’s brows rose. “Whether it was bad luck remains to be seen.”
Kit considered that reply for a long moment. Earlier, Manwaring had mentioned the person best able to make your dreadful old house into a home. Kit had taken it for a reference to Mrs. Goode. For so long, he’d focused his misgivings about Ferncliffe on superficial matters, the sort of things a noted expert in design could fix.
“Beth has no idea what to do with the nursery, has she?”
“If you refer to paint colors and wallpaper and furniture, no. Certainly not.” The younger man’s curl-covered head tilted as he looked Kit up and down. “Does it matter?”
Kit looked around the barren space. It needed a lot of work, to be sure. But the emptiness in his life couldn’t be filled by redecorating a few rooms. Only love could complete the transformation.
And that, he suspected, was the real secret of Mrs. Goode’s Guide to Homekeeping.
“To me?” he said. “Not a jot.”
Manwaring gave a crisp nod. “Well, well. I begin to think you might be capable of appreciating what else she has to offer.”
“Now I just have to persuade her to stay,” he said.
To his credit, Manwaring did not try to tell him it would be easy. Instead, he reached into his breast pocket, removed a little notebook, tore out a sheet of paper covered with writing, and handed it to him. “That might help.”
Without his spectacles, the words were indecipherable, a jumble, just like his thoughts. “I—” Was there a chance? Hope was once more fluttering its wings against his chest in a ticklish dance, and all he could manage to say was, “Thanks. And I—I’m sorry about your neckcloth.”
Manwaring waved off the apology. “You don’t imagine I wore my best linen to travel into the wilds of Hertfordshire, do you?”
With a somewhat baffled half smile and a shake of his head, Kit tucked away the note and turned toward the door.
“I’ll stay a bit longer,” Manwaring said, still behind him. Kit paused to send a questioning glance around the empty room. “Whatever happens, you’ll still need this nursery put right,” the younger man explained. “And Mrs. Goode does have a reputation to consider.”
Kit gave another, heartier smile, nodded his thanks, and stepped to the stairs. Fortune—good fortune—had brought the one he loved back into his life.
Now to help Beth see it in the same light.
* * * *
Assuming that the quiet rap of knuckles against her bedchamber door was a signal from Oliver, Tabetha readily opened it, eager for an explanation of what had transpired.
Instead, she found Kit standing there, one arm propped against the doorframe.
“May I...?”
Following her bath, she’d donned only a dressing gown, and damp tendrils of hair still clung to her neck. As his gaze traveled down her body, he seemed to forget whatever he’d been about to say. His words trailed away, and the smile slipped from his expression, to be replaced by something considerably more intense.
She encircled his wrist with her fingers and tugged him into the room.
“You can’t be spotted standing there,” she reasoned. It would be shockingly improper for the master of the house to be seen conversing with a lady guest in dishabille.
After an impossibly long moment, Kit nodded. “I wanted to see you—though, of course, I hadn’t any notion I’d see quite so much....” With a twitch of his upper body, as if the movement required effort, he shifted his focus to something on the far side of the room. “My apologies.”
“I take it you’ve spoken with Oliver.”
“I have.”
Though she’d been expecting the answer, those two words still sent little spikes of pain into her heart. Now he knew she’d been deceiving him; no wonder he was acting so strange. “I’m sorry, Kit. Please believe, I never meant to—I’ve been his protector for twenty years. I had to do this for him. But I never imagined that keeping him from harm would hurt...you. Oliver and I will go, just as you asked. At first light. You needn’t—”
“Twenty-one years, seven months,” he murmured, still not looking at her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Twenty-one years, seven months: that’s what he said. The precision of it struck me. I had the distinct feeling he could have rattled off the tally, right down to the day. But until just now, I didn’t fully understand the significance.” His shoulders tautened beneath his coat. “From what, exactly, did he need your protection?”
She had to moisten her lips to reply. “His father. Oliver was a grave disappointment to him. As was I, in my way. I never managed to give him another son, you see. Worse, I insisted on standing up for the one he had.”
Kit nodded heavily, a gesture that conveyed understanding rather than agreement. “My God, Beth,” he breathed, and despite the despair in his voice, she relished the sound of her name on his lips. “I was appalled when your father insisted on your marrying Manwaring. But I never imagined... If only I’d—”
“What could you have done?” she protested, trying to reassure him. “We were young—and I, at least, was foolish. I convinced myself Papa was right: it would be charming to be addressed as Lady Manwaring. I—I never stopped to think it might mean the end of Beth.”
“Twenty-one years, seven months,” he repeated incredulously. “It must have seemed an eternity.” At last his gaze snapped to her, and a self-deprecating laugh gusted from his chest. “But it’s still only a fraction of the time I’ve spent hopelessly in love with you.”
The pop! of her mouth flying open was audible in the stillness of the room. The sudden pounding of her heart seemed to get in the way of thought, of words. Eventually, she got enough control over the muscles of her jaw to whisper, “Hopelessly?”
“Yes, and there’s no sense in you denying it. You thought of me as a bothersome older brother, always spoiling your fun. I was nobody, the son of the steward. No match for Miss Holt. I could never have convinced you, or your father—”
“No,” she agreed. “You’re right. It was perfectly hopeless.” Oh, how she longed to step closer to him, to soften the blow of those words, but she feared her legs might not hold her up. “It does not therefore follow that the situation is still without hope.”
Kit sucked in a ragged breath, like a drowning man starved for air and saved in the nick of time. “Beth?” he rasped.
“This afternoon, when I kissed you, I made an unexpected discovery. The seed must have been planted so long ago, buried so deep, I never even knew it was here”—she laid her hand over her heart—“waiting....”
Kit closed the few steps that separated them and settled his hand over hers. “That’s how you keep a seed safe until it’s ready to bloom.”
She searched his face, his eyes, such a curious, wonderful mix of the familiar and the new. “I’m afraid I’ll wake up and all this will have been a dream. I—I’m afraid you’ll discover I’m not really the woman you need. I’m no Mrs. Goode, after all.”
“I don’t want Mrs. Goode. I want you, Beth. Will you marry me? Let me spend the rest of my life being what you need?”
Do what makes you happy, Oliver had said. She had been shying away from thoughts of marriage and domesticity and a house in the country because she’d been so miserable before. But the problem hadn’t been with those things; the problem had been her late husband.
How different the prospect of such a life looked now, when she imagined Kit beside her.
“Oh, Kit.” Freeing her hand, she flung herself against his chest. “Yes. Yes.”
And then her mouth was on his, communicating what words could not.
His answering kiss was both a reminder that he had always known her and a quest to learn more. While he pressed his palms to either side of her head and skated his fingertips along her scalp, she rose up on her toes to bring them closer, to help him plumb her depths.
Earlier that day, wrapped in his arms, she’d been aware of the solidity of his body, the heat of him, even through layers of clothing. But now, dressed in almost nothing, she could think of little else but the moment when there would be even less between them. Slipping her fingers beneath his coat, she slid the garment over his shoulders. A satisfied grin curled her lips when he shook it free of his arms and she heard it settle against the carpet with a soft whump.
One of his hands trailed from her cheek, along her throat, and over her collarbone, tracing the valley between her breasts to tangle in the silk tie at her waist.
“Am I moving too fast, Beth?” he murmured against her lips. “I don’t want to rush this—rush you.”
Her chest was heaving as if she’d just run up three flights of stairs. “We’ve waited more than twenty years. I don’t think anyone could describe that as rushing.”
She felt his smile. “No. I suppose not.” With the slightest movement of his fingers, the tie, already loose, gave up all pretense of holding the sides of the dressing gown closed.
When he took a step backward, the better to take in what had been revealed, she had to close her eyes against his stark expression, carved like granite by the firelight. Her body at forty-one wasn’t what her body had been at twenty, all coltish long legs and pert breasts. “Not quite what you’d imagined?” she whispered.
“No.” The sudden gruffness of his voice made her shiver. “So much better. My God, Beth.” The hand at her waist smoothed over the curve of her lower belly before settling on one round hip. “So soft and plush and”—he closed the slight distance he’d put between them and brought his mouth to the curve of her jaw—“kissable. I hardly know where to begin.”
The tip of his tongue against her throat, the tiniest of movements, set off a series of progressively larger explosions in her breasts, her belly, the place between her legs. Though it was cool in the room, so far from the hearth, her skin was on fire. One shrug of her shoulders sent the dressing gown to the floor, baring her entirely to the night air. To him. “Anywhere,” she told him. “Everywhere. Just—I need you, Kit. I’ve always needed you. If only I’d realized—”
“Hush,” he commanded, nipping sharply at her earlobe. “None of that. This is a moment for looking forward, not looking back.”
“All right,” she agreed, emboldened by the heat of his breath. “Then tell me, what have you most looked forward to?”
“Learning the taste of you.” The boldness of his answer made her whimper, the eager sound caught in her throat. “Hearing you cry out in ecstasy.” The hand cupping her head dropped to her breast, his callused thumb brushing across her nipple, and the unexpected pleasure of the sensation drove the whimper from her throat and past her lips as a gasp. “I fantasized about spending hours sampling each delight. But now that the moment’s finally here, I—” The hand at her hip tightened convulsively, snugging her against his erection. “I want to—”
“Yes,” she hissed. “Make me yours.”
Releasing her with a nudge toward the bed, he shucked off his remaining clothes, tossing them aside with the sort of carefree abandon she’d somehow thought Kit incapable of. Boots, breeches, waistcoat, each one flying in a different direction, a spectacle of lust, but she had eyes only for him. His shoulders were as broad as she remembered, the muscles of his legs as finely hewn as she’d suspected. And then he lifted his arms above his head to strip off his last remaining item of clothing, and the long tails of his shirt rose high enough to reveal—well.
Twenty years ago, perhaps, his stomach had been tauter, the hair on his chest a shade or two nearer to brown. But it was impossible to imagine his cock had ever been more impressive than it was at this moment: thick and hard and straining toward what it wanted, straining toward her. She fumbled behind her for the edge of the bed, sank down on the mattress, and parted her legs in blatant invitation.
“You want this, Beth,” he said as he stalked toward her. “You want me.”
Was he asking her? Or trying to persuade her? But she did not need convincing. She held out her hands, encircling his erection the moment it was within her reach.
He hissed at her touch, the searing heat of his flesh making her own feel comparatively cool. One of his hands settled heavily on her shoulder, pushing her onto the mattress, while the other slipped between her legs. She was wet already, eager, but he teased her nonetheless, stroking first one and then another finger inside her, circling her nub with his thumb.
Already, her climax tingled at the base of her spine. Could he sense it? “Come inside me,” she pleaded, brushing the head of his cock against her damp curls, nudging his fingers away. Her need shocked her. All her married life, sex had been a chore, and pleasure something reserved for moments when she was alone. But this...this must be why some called it lovemaking, the joining of both bodies and hearts. “Please.”
He obliged. One deep, perfect thrust of his hips that made her cry out with the rightness of it. “Mine,” he grunted, pinning her to the bed with his weight, and yes. Yes! She was Kit’s. Some part of her had always been Kit’s, and now he was finally hers, filling her, each stroke driving her further along the road to release.
She wrapped her legs around his pelvis and held him to her as she shattered. Then, as she lay pliant and open beneath him, he changed both the angle and tempo of his thrusts, urging her to gather up the pieces of her soul and come for him again. “Yes, again,” he whispered against her hair, his thumb once more seeking out that little bundle of nerves and coaxing her toward another climax. “Come with me.”
And she did, her inner muscles rippling in time with the hot spurts of his seed.
With another, sleepier grunt, he clambered over her, dragging her into the bed with him, their limbs a wonderous, sticky tangle.
“I love you, Kit Killigrew,” she said, the words muffled against his shoulder. Then, with what strength she had left, she curled her hands around his back, clinging to something that had almost slipped through her fingers.