Catherine slipped into her family’s carriage quickly, before anyone could notice that her mother was not there. Mr. Waters slid in beside her, and the conveyance rolled off into the night.
So she found herself alone, with a man, in the dark, in a closed carriage. The wheels turned quite slowly, as their conveyance had not joined traffic that was passing by. Catherine wondered if she should simply slide out of the door and make her own way home. As scandalous as the thought was, she was not certain she could trust herself to stay. The heady scent of Alexander Waters’s skin was almost overwhelming.
Before she could talk herself into leaping to safety for her virtue’s sake, Alex’s hot-honey voice reached out and surrounded her. “Come here, Catherine.”
“No,” she said automatically.
“I have not apologized to your properly for my earlier behavior. Come here.”
“No, thank you,” she answered primly. “You might apologize to me while I am sitting just here.”
He laughed, and the low sound seemed to travel all across her nerves, down her spine, and into her belly, where it rested, heating her body as if stoking a furnace. She swallowed hard, and found her mouth still dry.
He did not speak again but moved over to her side of the carriage, blocking her in with his body so that she was trapped between him and the door. She knew she should ask him to move back. If she pressed the issue, she was certain that he would obey her. But the heat of his body was like Mary Elizabeth’s magic elixir. It seemed to rob her of her good judgment and her better reasoning. It left her instead with a hunger for something like chocolate cake.
She had missed dessert altogether. Perhaps what Alexander Waters offered her now was something altogether sweeter.
He kissed her then, and she let him. He did not ask permission, but leaned close, plundering her lips like the ravaging, pillaging Northman that he was. She did not push him away, as she knew very well she should. Instead, with the last bit of reason left to her, she took off her cotton gloves and threaded her hands into his long, dark hair.
He did not hesitate, but seemed to take her fingertips massaging his scalp for surrender.
His mouth opened over hers, and his tongue slipped past her defenses, not that she had many left to spare. She leaned against him, and felt the delicious pressure of his chest against her breasts, the heat of his breath on her skin as he pulled back a little, only to trail his lips down her temple, to her cheek, to her throat. He stopped at the top of her bodice, and she pressed against him harder, willing him to touch her beneath it.
She did not consider what a shocking thing such an idea was. She was in a carriage in the dark of night, abandoned to bliss. She would sort out all concerns for the rest later. Tomorrow. Tomorrow seemed soon enough. For now, she would feast.
Except that she could not, for Alex took his delectable lips away from her altogether.
“I thought you were apologizing,” she said.
His voice was harsh with his lost breath. He clutched her close, his hands hard on her arm and on her waist. His black leather gloves clenched her gown just above her hip, and the fine silk would be terribly wrinkled. Not that she cared.
“I was apologizing,” he said, sounding like someone else altogether. “I am apologizing.”
Catherine felt his weakness as he leaned against her. It seemed he was fighting himself. No doubt he wanted to kiss her again, as much as she wished him to, if not more. For the first time in her life, she felt a heady sense of power. She was not the only one brought low by her obsession with him. It seemed that her hulking Highlander was just as obsessed with her.
“Then why do you stop?”
“I am reminding myself that I am a gentleman.”
Catherine opened her mouth to argue with him, but save for kissing her twice, he had behaved like a gentleman in all their dealings. He had always been kind, always proper, except for occasionally teasing her. What on earth were they doing together in a closed carriage in the dead of night if he was going to invoke honor in the dark?
She found herself disgruntled. It was an inconvenient time for a surge of conscience. Though as she sat there, she felt her own scruples rising up to taunt her. Her grandmother had not raised her to behave in such a manner.
She sighed and, at last, pushed Alexander Waters away.
“You are right, of course. You cannot kiss me, and I cannot let you. It is unseemly, and beneath both of us.”
He smiled a little, and did not let her go far. His arms were still around her, though now she had more room to breathe.
“I do not agree.”
She opened her mouth to protest, and he kissed her quickly, as if to stifle all argument. She knew she should be angry, but her thoughts were addled by the taste of him lingering on her lips.
He continued as if she had not tried to speak. “Our kisses are a beautiful thing, filled with magic.”
She almost spoke again, but he kissed her swiftly, and all she could think of was how happy she was that he was touching her.
Once he had regained her silence, he went on. “You are a lovely girl, and untutored in the ways of the world, as all girls should be, so you must trust me when I tell you—kisses like ours are gifts from the gods, gifts to be savored.”
“I have no truck with the gods as you put it, or any other pagan nonsense,” she said. Her voice was not as stern as she meant it to be. In her own ears, she sounded a bit breathless. She was surprised he had let her speak at all. She’d expected him to kiss her again, but this time, he did not.
“It is a figure of speech. Trust me when I tell you that things between a woman and a man are rarely as they are between us.”
“I do not want to hear of your other conquests. I am not, nor will I ever be, one of them.” Catherine should have felt affronted that he mentioned other women only seconds after kissing her senseless, but his arms were still about her in the most delicious, warm way, and the sway of the carriage brought their bodies together in glancing blows. If only their journey to her home might last forever.
In that moment, the carriage stopped, and she sighed. It seemed her stolen moment was already over.
“You are not a conquest,” Alexander said, still holding her close in the dark, though Jim the footman was bound to come and open the carriage door at any moment. “You are unique in all the world. You must always remember that.”
“Unique sounds like another word for strange,” she said.
“Please believe me when I tell you it is not.”
He moved away from her, and she felt suddenly bereft, as if someone had come upon her in her warm bed in winter and ripped her down quilt away. Jim did open the door then, and Alexander climbed out ahead of her to help her down.
She did not speak as he escorted her into her house, his hand solicitously at her elbow. He kept a decorous distance between them. No one looking at them could have believed that only minutes before, she had been in his arms—save for his hair, which had fallen from its ribbon when she’d tugged on it. His long, dark hair now fell around his shoulders in a curtain of black. She knew that his hair was actually dark brown, but in the light of the candle in the hallway, it looked like a pirate’s locks falling around his face.
Jim was used to visits from Mr. Waters by this time, for he closed the front door behind them and left them alone. She needed to remind him to stay present until dismissed, but then Alex’s lips were on hers again, and she could think of nothing, not even of how to breathe.
“Have I apologized enough?” he asked.
She smiled up at him, sliding her fingers through the dark mass of his hair. “You might apologize one more time, I think. I am not certain I am completely mollified as of yet.”
He smiled back, and a delicious joy curled in her belly, as if their kissing was a game, a game that would never hurt her, a game both he and she might win. He pressed his lips to her one last time, and this time his mouth opened over hers, and she responded, letting him plunder her like a conqueror. She shivered against him, but before she could press herself too close and feel the bliss of his body tight against hers, he pulled away.
“I am a gentleman, and you are a lady, and you are going upstairs to bed.”
She wondered why he repeated the obvious. “Yes,” she said. “All true. I am not sure why you state it.”
“Trust me again when I tell you that to say the words out loud in this moment is necessary.”
“You should leave me alone,” Catherine said. “You have said you will not marry, and I must marry by summer. We are at odds, Mr. Waters, in everything but this.” She pressed against him once, and he caught his breath. She thought for a moment that he might drag her hard against him, but she stepped back before he could.
For the second time that day, his black-gloved hands reached for her, but closed on nothing but air.
“I must see you again,” he said.
She swallowed hard, the taste of him still sweet in her mouth. She straightened her shoulders, and told herself to stand firm—both for him, and for herself. “No doubt you will. But this sort of nonsense must cease as of this moment.”
“So you keep saying, Miss Middlebrook. And yet, when I touch you, your body tells another tale.”
She was shocked that he was so indelicate as to mention her body. Even so, his words brought a shiver along her spine. She wondered at herself, that it was a shiver of pleasure.
“That may be, Mr. Waters, but I stand firm. I am for marriage, and you are not, and there is an end on it.”
“Let me woo you.”
“To what end?”
“Let us discover that when we come to it.”
She scoffed, and opened the door for him. “Good night, Mr. Waters.”
“Please, Catherine. At least make this concession. Don’t decide on the Englishman until you have spoken again with me.”
“I think it best if we forget about each other altogether. You must leave me be, Mr. Waters. We must both get on with our lives.”
Though her heart twisted in her chest at her own words, she felt grown-up and sensible saying them. They were what her grandmother would counsel her to say, if she had been there.
Her heart rose in joy at his answer.
“I will do anything for you, Catherine, but not that.”
“Would you indeed?”
“Yes.”
The next words were out of her mouth before she thought. “Then discover for me who Mr. Pridemore is and what he wants with my mother.”
“You would have me spy for you?”
“Yes.”
They faced each other in the dark hallway, and for a moment she thought he might reach for her again. She tensed, though she was not sure if she would flee his arms or run to them. But she did not have the choice, for instead of touching her, he bowed low, his hair falling across his face, so that he had to toss it back over one shoulder as he stood again.
“So be it, Miss Middlebrook. I will do as you ask. But do not marry that Englishman. Not yet.”
“He has not yet asked,” she said.
Alex kissed her, swift and sure, his mouth like a memory of the pleasure she had found with him in her mother’s coach. Then he was gone, off into the London night. She stood staring after him like a fool, until she recalled her good sense long enough to shut the door behind him.