Her eyes hardened. There was no other expression on her face. “Kate Buchanan,” she said. “The lady you named no longer exists.”
He could not think of a mortal thing to say to her. After five years of living for this moment, he was mute, his mind a blank.
“I believe,” he finally said, “you are trespassing.”
Her mind had not even begun to cope with the situation. She could note only trivialities. He was taller than she remembered, broader shouldered. But perhaps it was his greatcoat that gave both impressions. He was still one of the handsomest men she had met. His hair was thick and dark, somewhat disheveled by his hat, his features sharply chiseled. His eyes were even bluer than she remembered—their blueness had always fascinated her. Dark eyes would have suited him better. Dark eyes in a brooding, austere face. But they were blue.
She would not have expected him to have a playful dog. Something sleek and fierce would have been more fitting. The collie was doing dancing steps in front of her and yipping and then jumping up against her master, eager to be moving again. She expected that at any moment he would cuff the dog and send it sprawling. Instead he reached down and tickled the dog beneath the chin—absently, it seemed. He did not remove his eyes from her.
That stillness in him, that brooding quality, that lack of humor had always unnerved her, even during the early days of that Season, when he had danced with her at every ball and occasionally sent her nosegays the mornings after and sometimes had taken her driving in the park during the fashionable hour. Ernest and Algernon, the two of her brothers who had been in town at the time, had started to tease her about him and told her that he was wooing her. Even then, though she had been attracted and flattered, she had been uneasy in his company. She had never been sure she could like him.
What had he said now? She was trespassing? Oh, yes, it was exactly what she would expect him to say. Exactly! And she was trespassing. She was horribly in the wrong. But, dear God, what was he doing here?
Reality was beginning to intrude. He was the gentleman who had leased Ty Mawr? But why? Had he known she was here? He must have. It would be just too incredible a coincidence otherwise.
And she was aware suddenly that she was alone with him in the woods. Alone and in the wrong. These woods belonged to him for as long as he had leased the property. And she remembered what had happened on another occasion when she had been alone with him and in the wrong. She had kept the five-year-old memory long suppressed, but it came back now with startling vividness.
She remembered the shock of his kiss, of the fact that his lips had been parted and his tongue had played with her lips until she parted them and opened her mouth. And then the shock of his tongue deep inside her mouth, exploring, stroking, sliding in and out while her temperature soared with his and her half sleep had converted into something else that made her just as helpless.
She remembered the weight and heat of his body, clothed only in shirt and pantaloons, when he had come beneath the bedclothes with her, the feel of his hands, smoothing, searching, pinching, and unclothing both her and himself. And then the full weight of his body, his strongly muscled legs pushing hers wide, his hands coming beneath her.
And the feel of him coming inside her, bringing sharp pain for a moment, and then a growing ache, a building madness as he withdrew and thrust repeatedly until everything shattered into a feeling she had never experienced before or since.
She remembered it all now in one vivid, flashing moment, the fact that she and this man had shared that, the ultimate intimacy. And the fact that he had said nothing afterward. She had woken later to find him sleeping on the floor in front of the door again. And the next day, the last of their journey back to London, he had been silent and severe, just as if it had never happened. He had mentioned it again only the following day, when he was making her his offer—before Papa had joined them. She must marry him, he had urged. He had had her virginity. She might be with child.
She had taken the chance that she was not. She was in Wales with her aunts before finding out for sure that she was not, although she had lived through the hell of being four days late.
And now she was alone with him again. She turned sharply away in the direction of the stile. But his hand closed on her upper arm before she could take more than a step or two.
“You do not have to leave,” he said.
She jerked her arm from his grasp, alarmed by the sensation created by his touch. “It will not happen again,” she said. “I will not trespass again. I beg your pardon.”
“Katherine.”
His voice was harsh and stayed her again. She turned back to look at him. He was standing with his hands clasped behind him. His dog was sitting beside him, an alert look on her face, ready to resume the walk at the first promising sign.
“Katherine, how are you?” he asked. His eyes were roaming her face. Seeing all her loss of beauty. She was acutely aware of the plainness of the way she dressed her hair and of the equal plainness of her clothes. They must be woefully unfashionable. She had known almost nothing of fashion for five years.
“This is no accident, is it?” she said. “You knew I was here. You came to Ty Mawr deliberately because I was here. Why? To ask me how I am?”
He did not answer for a while. He had always been a disconcertingly silent man. One whose expression gave away nothing. “Yes,” he said at last.
She almost laughed, except that there was nothing funny about his answer. She had refused him—all of five years ago. She had released him from all obligation for what she had done and for what he had then done. It was ancient history. If she had thought of him during the past five years—and she supposed she must have done so even if she had kept him from her conscious mind—she had imagined that by now he would be married to someone who was worthy of his consequence and that his carefully chosen bride would have dutifully presented him with his heir and another son as insurance. He was the sort of man who would be that tidy about his life. Or so she had thought.
Of course it was possible that he was married, that he did have an heir and maybe other children too.
“I am well,” she said. “So you do not have to stay any longer. Did you expect to find me broken in spirit, my health gone? Did you expect to find me miserable and perhaps even suicidal? I have lost my looks, which is only to be expected of a woman who is now three-and-twenty, and doubtless if I were in London even my lowliest maid would not deign to wear the unfashionable clothes I now wear. But I am not any of the things you expected.”
“You have not lost your looks,” he said quietly, startling her.
“Well, then,” she said, “you may go back home reassured. I am well. Was it conscience that brought you here? After all this time? Is your sense of duty so powerful?”
“I thought,” he said, “that perhaps by now you would have come to realize that it is preferable to be married to me than to have to spend the rest of your life here.”
Her eyes widened in shock. He had come to offer her marriage—again? But why? Why?
“Your obligation to me ended five years ago,” she told him, “when I said no.”
