Page 55 of A Daring Desire

She looked baffled by his reaction, by the sudden flash of anger. “Darling, it’s not like it’s a secret. I’ve heard stories enough of your exploits over the years, most often from the mouths of the people involved. You’ve no idea how many women have delighted in telling me they’d been intimate with you in outrageous circumstances. You can’t think I am ignorant of the things you did?”

“Oh, Christ!” he exclaimed, putting his head in his hands.

“Ciarán?” she said in confusion, moving towards him.

“Don’t! Don’t touch me,” he ordered her, holding out a hand. His heart and mind were in turmoil, his body aching to touch her and yet repulsed by the history he carried with him.

She watched, obviously bewildered by his reaction. When she spoke her voice was gentle, as though she feared he would run from her again. As if he could. “I know who you are, Ciarán. I’ve never been blind to the things you’ve done, and yes, there are some things I imagine you do feel shame for, but not because of me. I’m not judging you. I never have and I won’t start now. You had your reasons for the things you did, right or wrong, and you made some mistakes. I don’t care about the past, though. I just care about you.”

“Very pretty, love,” he snarled, wanting to be angry even though the words had slid under his skin, disarming him. “But you want me to bed you, to make love to you and I feel like I’m corrupting you every time I put my hands on you.”

“Well, that’s just silly,” she told him with her usual candour. “You can’t do anything of the sort. Not if your intention is to please me and yourself.”

He laughed at that, his tone bitter. “Silly? Good God. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life before, but not that. Depraved, dissolute, immoral, and wicked to the core, but never silly.”

“Well, perhaps you’ve never acted so missishly before,” she replied, her tone warm and gently teasing.

“Missish?” He turned to stare at her in outrage.

“Yes, like a maiden aunt, horrified if a gentleman gets a glimpse of your ankles. My lord, you are the worst example of a poacher turned gamekeeper. Honestly, you worry about corrupting me when I can’t even get you to kiss me, and here I was thinking I’d have my skirts around my waist by now.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, not taken in by the guileless look in her eyes. He knew her better than that by now.

“If you are thinking of goading me into behaving badly, forget it. I’m not so easily manipulated.”

She sighed, quite unrepentant. “Well, it was worth a try.”

Kilbane stared at her and shook his head, and then he laughed, a genuine laugh this time. “What am I to do with you?” he said, truly not knowing the answer.

She closed the distance between them, moving into his arms and this time he let her. “Love me, that’s all.”

He stroked a hand over her hair, the sleek platinum locks restrained in an elegant chignon at the back of her neck. The urge to take out the pins and watch it cascade over her shoulders made him suddenly breathless. “It sounds easy when you say it like that,” he observed, wondering if he would ever find it so.

“It is, if you let it be.”

“How?” he asked her as she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek, turning her face into it, before kissing his palm and making him shiver with desire. “How do I let go of the past, how do I forget all that I have been, the things I have done? I want you, Catherine, I want this, but I am afraid it will always come between us.”

“It won’t,” she promised him. “Not if you don’t let it.”

“And what of other people?” he demanded. “What will you feel now when an old lover whispers spiteful words in your ear, or I am accused of something reprehensible, and you discover it is nothing but the truth?”

She lifted her hands to his face and stroked his cheeks, her gaze intent. “If everything they say, if all the things you have done, happened before this moment. I shall not regard them. They will not have the power to change my feelings for you. We will learn to be together on our own terms, and no one else gets to have a say in that. You must know I am hardly going to be the perfect wife,” she added with a smile. “I’m spoiled – as you know – and bossy and opinionated and dreadfully stubborn, but you will learn to manage me I have no doubt.”

He stared at her, wanting to believe everything she said, but finding it hard to accept and terrified of the possibility he would ruin it as he did everything he touched. He had no intention of betraying her or of causing her pain, but life had a way of dropping you in the shit at the worst possible moment and he did not underestimate the power of fate or the problems lurking in the dark mire of his past. As for managing her… he had to smile at the idea that anyone could.

“I want to go home,” he said, aware of the strangeness of the word and the sentiment upon his lips, but needing to take her back to the house, to their home. There was no way in hell he was ever going to be worthy of his wife, but she was his wife, now and forever… unless he seriously messed up and she divorced him. That he would not do, he vowed.

“We can’t go yet,” she said with a regretful sigh. “Indeed, if you are determined to refuse to debauch me, even a little bit, we had best return, for people are bound to be whispering about us already.”

His lips quirked, and he pulled her closer, entranced by the feel of her in his arms. “You can’t have just a little bit of debauchery, that is an all-or-nothing sort of arrangement.”

“I’ll have all of it then, please, but I suppose I must wait until we get home, as your principles have become remarkably inconvenient.”

“Haven’t they, though?” he said with a sigh of regret.

With one last press of his mouth against hers, he led her from the room, quite as unsullied as when she had entered it.

Despite her disappointment in her husband’s refusal to show her the smallest glimpse of the reason for his dreadful reputation, Cat enjoyed a wonderful night. They danced together twice more, and Ciarán was attentive and actively protective of her, glaring at anyone who regarded her with anything less than admiration and approval. They were certainly the focus of much curiosity, and that Perry remained in their company was a source of much speculation. The new reason for this did not occur to Cat until her husband’s expression had reached forbidding proportions and the arrival of Perry’s older brother, Lord Marlowe, put things in perspective.