To his credit, Oliver waited until the sound of Kit’s footsteps had faded before skewering her with a glance. “I take it you and Lord Stalbridge have some prior acquaintance?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” She moved to the nearest window. A misty rain blanketed the scenery. Her thoughts were no clearer. “He and I were...friends, long ago. When we were children.”
Not only children.
He’d been four and twenty the last time she had seen him, and she on the cusp of her twentieth year, soon to be a wife. A man and a woman, each absorbed by their individual griefs—the death of his father, the death of her innocence—but reaching out to offer the other comfort.
But how was it possible, after all this time, for her body to call up the memory of his embrace? How hard and lean he’d been after a summer’s walking tour, how she’d clung to him a moment longer than was wise and let herself wonder what it might be like to marry him instead....
She tipped her forehead against the glass, grateful for its chill.
“He was the elder son of my father’s steward. Papa told me once that Mr. Killigrew belonged to a branch of an old, noble family, but I never dreamed Kit stood to inherit all this....” She peered down onto what might have been a terrace, its stone walls and urns shrouded in gray. “I don’t think Kit knew, either. His brother Edmund and I were the same age, and endless trouble to him. Then I married. And now, Edmund’s...gone.”
Oliver’s hand settled on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mamabet.”
Tabetha’s breath huffed from her lungs, part sigh, part knowing laugh. “My mama once scolded me for asking what a scoundrel was, and when she wanted to know how I had even heard such a word, I had to confess I’d been listening to two of the housemaids discussing Edmund. He couldn’t have been more than seven at the time. Oh, Edmund... And poor Kit, always left to see things put right.” She glanced around the freshly scrubbed nursery. “I’ve been thinking about all that’s changed, but I guess some things never do.”
“No,” Oliver agreed. “They don’t.” His observant gaze was still focused on her, rather than the room, and she had the strangest sensation his words referred to something other than Edmund Killigrew’s peccadillos.
“So.” She levered herself away from the glass and forced a briskness into her voice. “What are Mrs. Goode’s plans for this place?”
One dark brow curved fractionally higher, but Oliver’s answering nod was similarly brisk. Pointing with the end of his pencil, he launched into a dissertation on light and color, the best use of space, and current theories about children’s need for active play and opportunities to exercise their imaginations.
Fascinating and impressive though it was, Tabetha’s mind began to drift and eddy like the fog outside, swirling into the other neglected corners of the house, and wondering why Kit had never...
“I’m sorry,” she said, jerking herself back to the present place and time. “Did you—did you say you were thinking of painting a mural of the fall of the Bastille along this wall and framing the doorway to resemble a guillotine?”
“The blade would be rubber, of course,” Oliver explained earnestly. Then his lips quirked. “I wanted to see if you were paying attention.”
Chagrined, she nevertheless pressed her mouth into what she hoped would pass for a maternal scold.
“Perhaps you should go rest,” he suggested. “Recover from your...what was it again? Carriage sickness?”
Despite the obvious teasing, he was offering her an avenue of escape, and she seized it. “I’m not really much use to you up here anyway.”
Oliver didn’t disagree. But when she stepped to the door, he called after her. “Mind you don’t tell him all Mrs. Goode’s secrets.”
Tell...him? Did Oliver imagine she was going to seek out Kit?
She spun back to face him, to chide him, to correct him. Silhouetted by the window behind him, Oliver’s posture was that of a confident young man. But in his voice, she’d heard the echoes of the unsure, misunderstood boy he had once been. Don’t tell...
She’d kept his secrets even from his father, her husband.
What could be more difficult than that?
She nodded solemnly. “You have my word.”
Certain that Kit would have returned to his study, she directed her steps in quite another direction, toward the floor they’d skipped entirely in their earlier tour of the house and on which she assumed, by process of elimination, she would find the guest chambers. She wasn’t tired—or carriage sick—but it was somewhere to go, somewhere she could be alone to think. Surely after she’d freshened up, she would feel more herself.
She’d expected to be guided by the bustle of servants. What she found was a corridor of closed doors, save one. All was dim, quiet. Perhaps she’d mistaken her way. Curious, she followed the light coming from the solitary open door.
What lay beyond it was not, as she’d expected, another corridor, or a stairwell, or even a bedchamber, but a large sitting room. Too large to be called cozy, despite the fire in the hearth. Its crackle was inviting, though its warmth stood little chance of penetrating the high-ceilinged room. Half a dozen tall windows ought to have made the space bright and airy, but whoever had decorated the room had framed them in draperies they’d probably called tobacco or chocolate or bronze. In Tabetha’s vocabulary, they were merely brown.
Kit was sprawled in a chair before the fireplace, holding a book but not reading it; with his other hand, he twirled a pair of spectacles by one earpiece, and his gaze was focused on the dancing flames.
She really should leave him to ruminate in peace.
Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the threshold.
At the sound of her steps, Kit scrambled to his feet, tossed the spectacles aside, and dropped the book onto the chair’s seat. “Beth! I didn’t expect—come in! Please, join me.” She followed his gaze to a tea tray on a nearby table. “Or perhaps you’ve already...?”
Tabetha shook her head.
“No, no—of course. When Mrs. Rushworth brought this, I asked her to send a tray to the nursery as well. But there hasn’t been time. Let me ring for another cup, then, or—or better yet, you take this one.” He picked up the lone saucer and held it out to her as she sat down on the chair across from his—a chair in which, she gathered by its unforgiving frame, no one had ever sprawled. “I haven’t touched it. You’ll want to add your lumps.”
Their fingertips could not help but brush as she accepted the cup of tea from him. “You—”
His eyes were searching hers.
“You still remember that I like my tea sweet?”
Something flashed across his face too quickly to name; a moment more and she would have been tempted to call it yearning. It was whisked away by a self-deprecating laugh. “Oh, I—wouldn’t that be odd if I did, after all this time?” He turned to reach for the sugar bowl, then proffered it to her. “But most people take sugar, don’t they?”
“I suppose so.” How silly of her to be disappointed by his explanation, or to fancy she’d glimpsed something significant in his expression. She took up the tongs and dropped in more lumps than was wise.
After returning the bowl to the tea tray, he sat down again. Then, grimacing, he fished beneath himself for the forgotten book.
She disguised her smile by taking a sip of tea, which was still surprisingly hot. “What were you reading?”
He turned the book this way and that in the firelight, as if searching for the answer to her question, before giving up and balancing the volume on one knee. His well-worn buckskin breeches revealed legs just as tautly muscled as she remembered. Evidently, he was still a horseman. “It’s a travelogue about Sicily. I was imagining the children playing in front of a cozy cottage, surrounded by blue: the perpetually sunny skies, the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean.” Again, the ghost of a wry smile turned up the corners of his mouth; his gaze was far away. “For all his failings, Edmund would’ve been the sort of father children adore, don’t you think?” The smile flattened, then gradually curved downward as he went on. “It’s a small sort of blessing, I suppose, that they’re so young. In time, the memories will fade.... They’ll forget their mother’s smile, Edmund’s laugh. They’ll forget the home they had to give up to come”—he glanced despairingly, disparagingly around the room before settling his pained gaze on her—“here.”
“Ferncliffe is magnificent,” she tried to reassure him.
He tossed the book onto the table beside the previously discarded spectacles. “It’s a mausoleum.”
Would Ferncliffe’s somber grandeur feel oppressive to two small children? Perhaps, she thought, looking about her again. Still, she was certain Kit had not been worrying himself over the appearance of the house. Rather, the seriousness of the charge of serving as a surrogate father to his niece and nephew had shaken his confidence. In all the years she had known him, he had never once shirked his responsibilities. But, of course, that did not mean he had always been eager or felt ready to bear them.
And then Kit said, “It’s my fault he’s gone.”
Words caught in her throat, and it was a moment before she managed to stutter out, “H-how can you say such a thing?”
“I drove him away. I had all I could do to support Mama as her health declined, and he’d been flitting from one thing to another for years, always with his hand out. The church was his first choice, he claimed, though I think we both knew it was incompatible with his character. And then he was sure he’d prefer the law, like his brother. Soon enough, he came to tell me that the law didn’t really suit him either, all that time locked away with dusty old books, and couldn’t I help him to something that let him see the sun from time to time? So I—” Kit’s fingers had been nestled together before him, his elbows resting on his knees. She watched his grip tighten, his knuckles whiten. “I agreed to purchase a commission for him—but that would be it, I vowed. I told him he was a grown man, and I washed my hands of responsibility for him.”
Tabetha’s indrawn breath was sharp but silent. England had been at war for what seemed like forever now. A young man might be drawn to the imagined heroism of life as an army officer, but Kit at least would have understood the risks.
“I had in mind a militia regiment in the north,” Kit went on. “Something to instill a little discipline. But he insisted on the regulars and was soon sent to India. He was stricken by some tropical fever before he even arrived. It’s a wonder he made it home again. The disorder settled into his lungs. The physicians insisted he needed a drier, warmer climate if he were to have any chance of recovering.”
“Ah.” She glanced toward the discarded travelogue. “Sicily.”
“I offered to arrange his passage, of course, but even as weak as he was, he refused my help. That was the last I saw of him. Almost the last I heard from him, for almost ten years. I—I didn’t know how he got on—knew nothing of his life there, his wife, their children—until he was gone.... And I cannot help but doubt whether this”—with effort, he pried free one of his hands to gesture around the room before circling back to lay his fist against his breastbone, as if pressing against a pain there—“was what he wanted for them.”
“Edmund’s children will see a bit of their papa in their uncle Kit’s face,” she said, hoping against hope that those words would reassure him. No one could deny he and his brother shared a resemblance. Kit nodded heavily. “And when they do, they will understand they are safe here. You are providing a welcoming haven for them in the nursery. And in time, I’m sure the rest of the house can be—”
“Yes, yes,” he spoke across her, his voice artificially hearty. “Past time to make the place my own, just as you said earlier—but it needs a woman’s touch. So, Mrs. Goode, what would you recommend for this room, as a start?”
Taken aback at least as much by his tone and choice of address as by the question, she could not immediately focus her attention on the room. When she did, she found it much the same as the other rooms she’d seen—which was to say, needlessly formal and fine, as if some previous Earl of Stalbridge had required perpetual reminders of his wealth and grandeur.
Given its location near the bedchambers, it had evidently been intended as a private family parlor, though it was difficult to imagine feeling comfortable in such a space, laughing or playing games or reclining on the sofa for a nap. It reminded her a bit of Manwaring’s estate and how cold she’d felt in that house, cold from the day she’d arrived to the day she’d left.
“I’m not sure...” she began, trying to buy a little time to consider the matter.
Oliver would probably begin by ripping down those mud-brown curtains, perhaps with his own hands, and then ordering the removal of most of the gilt-edged mirrors and marble-topped tables. But she hadn’t the faintest notion of what would be best to replace them. Inwardly, she battled a smile, thinking of his ridiculous joke about the nursery guillotine. He was such a clever, creative soul, while she... Well, when it came to matters of hearth and home, she was little more than a fraud.
“Beth?” Kit had been watching her survey the room. Now, one of his brows cocked in a familiar arch. Had her hesitation alone been enough to make him suspect she hadn’t been telling the truth?
At that curious yet knowing look, she was sixteen again, trying and failing to concoct some story to save Edmund’s hide. As a boy, Kit had rarely troubled himself to argue with her. But on that particular occasion, the Kit who had returned from university with a self-satisfied gleam in his eye—mind sharpened by endless battles of wits among his peers, shoulders broadened by punting the Cam—was having none of it. The conversation had begun with them on opposite sides of the room. Every lie from her lips had brought him one dangerous step closer, and she...she’d gone right on lying to him, taunting him, wanting...wanting things she hadn’t fully understood.
Now, heart pounding and palms slick with sweat, she leaped to her feet. “No one’s called me Beth in years.” I’m not the girl I was. “Except my stepson, in his way—and never in his father’s hearing.”
“Beth.” Softer now and tinged with sorrow. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry...”
How like Kit to take responsibility for mistakes not of his making. Unable to face him, she turned as if to study the chair she’d so abruptly vacated. “More comfortable furniture would be an excellent place to start. Something with a bit more cushion. But sturdy upholstery, you know, because children—”
“Beth.” Chiding, this time. Almost reproachful. He stood too—and stepped between her and the door.
If she tried to slip past him, he wasn’t the sort of man who would lay a hand on her to stop her.
Even if she wanted to feel his fingers curled possessively around her arm again, as they had been in his study. Even if she wanted—
Helpless to do otherwise, she dragged her gaze from the seat of the chair to the unpolished toes of his boots. Over supple leather and snug buckskin and soft wool. When I get to his face and see his expression, that will put an end to this nonsense. The stern set of his jaw. The notch of a frown.
“Kit.” The sound of that familiar name on her lips was hardly worthy to be called a whisper.
Twenty years older. An earl.
And still, somehow, exactly who he’d always been.
Yes, the notch was there, between his brows—though it reflected more puzzlement than disapproval. “About this ‘Mrs. Goode’ business...” he began.
Drawing a sharp breath, she rose up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his—anything, anything to stop the question he’d been about to ask.
She’d neglected to consider that kissing him might raise new questions. For instance, had he always smelled so marvelous—of woodsmoke and leather and bergamot? Had his lips always been so soft, so hungry, so...skilled?
Forty-one years she’d lived without the pleasure of a toe-curling kiss. She squeezed her eyes shut, the better to imprint the moment on her memory. And the better to deny the reality of her present situation: it was her dear old friend Kit’s chest against which she was rubbing the aching tips of her breasts, and Kit’s callused hands that were cupping her face, and Kit’s scorching kiss that was causing little whimpering moans to form in her throat.
Oh, she needed to be careful, careful...and all she wanted to do was throw caution to the wind.
With his fingertips against the base of her skull, he tipped her head slightly and slanted his mouth over hers, kissing first her upper lip, and then the lower, stealing her breath, as if he could never get enough of her.
Behind them, the fire crackled and hissed. Kit’s hands slipped down to her shoulders, and the pad of one thumb swept over her throat, seeming to take the measure of her pounding pulse. The pressure of his mouth grew less insistent, a nibble here, a brush of lips there, as if he were trying to rein himself in. Reluctantly, she sank back onto her heels, breaking the kiss entirely.
When she looked up, she could see by his expression—the slightly glazed look in his lust-darkened eyes—that the kiss had done its work. He was no longer thinking about the décor of Ferncliffe’s family parlor. Or Mrs. Goode.
“That was...” His warm breath stirred the hair on the crown of her head and made her scalp tingle.
“Yes,” she said, though whatever word he had intended to choose would surely have been inadequate to the purpose. His kiss had very nearly turned her inside out.
“I should go,” she said, and he let her, as if he, too, recognized that to linger longer in this embrace would be unwise. But before she slipped entirely free from the circle of his arms, he tipped forward and pressed one last kiss to her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered down. Would it be so very wrong to stay?
Of course it would.
As the last half an hour had proven all too well, every private moment between her and Kit had the potential to turn dangerous. She’d been charged with keeping a secret, and she would do it.
But now she also understood she’d been keeping a secret from herself.