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Odette, who’d wanted only to look in quickly, looked suddenly very comfortable as she was brought into discussion by Lady Fenton. Jack, alone for a moment, was just contemplating the fact that good manners require that he join Lord Derry and George by the sideboard on the far end of the room when, to his right, he noticed the door slowly open.
His heartbeat accelerated as he thought perhaps Katherine had heard he was in the house and had come to look in, but instead of seeing Katherine’s lively face emerge at shoulder level, a pert, bright-eyed miniature emerged at thigh level.
The little girl cast a furtive look around the room before she widened her eyes at Jack, then smiled, putting her finger to her lips.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered. “I’m supposed to be in bed.”
“Of course you are,” Jack whispered back. “Little girls are supposed to be in bed long before midnight.”
“I’m not a little girl,” she countered. “I’m six. I’m Oh, drat! Aunt Antoinette’s seen me!”
“Diana! Naughty child, you should be fast asleep!” said Aunt Antoinette fondly, leaving her husband’s side and coming across to Jack, putting out her hand to take her niece’s.
No one else in the room seemed to have noticed them. “Come along now. And Jack, I’m sorry Katherine wasn’t here to see you. She’ll be disappointed. I know she was hoping you’d call on her, but she understands how busy you’ve been. She just feels rather dreary having to languish in widow’s weeds when everyone else is having fun.”
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p; Lady Quamby’s words didn’t conjure up an image of Katherine actively pining for her late husband, and Jack felt a frisson of satisfaction at the knowledge.
“I’m sorry I missed her, too,” he said. “I only saw her for two minutes at Lady Garwood’s ball the other night.”
Antoinette clicked her tongue. “Katherine’s as naughty as her daughter. I told her she ought not to have gone. It’s done nothing for her reputation, which was completely ruined by that dreadful husband of hers. I know I’m not one to talk, but I’m also a great deal older and in very different circumstances. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take Diana back to bed.” She hesitated, half through the door, and then added as she noticed Jack’s aloneness, “Perhaps you’d be interested to see the painting Lord Marples commissioned of Katherine just before his untimely death. It’s a very good likeness and it’s hanging in the library just up the corridor. Take the candle on the sideboard there and follow me.”
Jack, who had no desire to join George and Lord Derry, was more than happy to slip out of the room in Antoinette’s wake bearing the single candlestick.
Obediently, he followed the older woman and the child until Lady Quamby pointed to a door on her right. “It’s through there,” she said. “I’d be interested in your opinion. I think the painting is too regal, but Lord Marples thought it depicted her as just the wife he wanted her to be. Modest and obedient.”
Not the way Jack thought of Katherine. He entered the dark room, closed the door behind him and took a few steps into the centre to contemplate the painting. It was enormous, located above the mantelpiece and, indeed, regal. He thought Katherine’s expression was wistful, and was suddenly brought to mind of the times he’d find her contemplating some outlandish plan. The moment she’d turn at the sound of his footsteps her natural liveliness would flood her countenance, and she’d grip his hands and describe some fiendish activity in which to embroil George, or else a wonderful adventure into which she’d roped Cook who would have prepared a basket of cakes and pies so they could be out all day.
Raising his candle higher as a great wave of wistfulness enveloped him, he was suddenly conscious of movement. Then the partly opened window rattled in the breeze, and his light went out.
He stood still a few moments, enjoying the darkness and the silence while his thoughts continued in the direction they’d happily been dwelling upon—Katherine.
Returning to London and seeing her so changed had been confusing. He wished he’d had the opportunity to quiz her on the speed with which she’d eloped with Marwick. Surely she knew it would be wounding to Jack, regardless of the fact they both had released any hold one had over the other.
Jack wouldn’t have pledged himself so quickly to another, and he was surprised Katherine had.
Still, there was no accounting for the way in which the heart worked; he knew that well enough. The passion he felt for Katherine was dangerous; destined to end in disaster—her impetuosity and his pride would make poor bedfellows. How often had he tried to convince himself of this over the past seven years?
But Odette’s pliant nature and willingness to please was everything a husband could wish for.
Wasn’t it?
A gentle breeze was blowing papers from a writing desk. He could hear but not see, and took a step towards the window, colliding with a solid bulk that suddenly materialised in the very centre of the room.
It was a person—a woman he ascertained from her gasp and the slight shoulders he gripped to steady both of them.
But as he breathed in the scent of peonies, and his hands contoured the familiar collarbone and then, without realising what he was doing, the swanlike neck, he knew exactly who she was.
He did not drop his hands. Rather, he tightened his grip. Tightened it as, unthinkingly, he drew her against him; then, just as unthinkingly, dipped his head. In the darkness, robbed of vision, he had no idea what he was doing or what to expect, but when his mouth encountered a pair of soft, pliant, delicate lips flowering beneath his own, it was only natural to take matters in the same direction they’d been going before his travels seven years before.
She melted against him, and gently he contoured the silken softness of her hair before he cupped the back of her head and deepened the kiss.
Her arms twined behind his neck as she pressed her delicate, beautifully formed body against his then softly breathed out—a sound of contentment, which made every nerve and fibre of his being tense with anticipation.
This was what love was. The heady intoxication that made a man so ready to become, without thought or reason, a slave to his desires. For seven years, Jack had been a slave to duty, honour, and toil, but in this moment, he’d have sacrificed everything to extend the dreamlike, mystical wonder of rediscovering what it was like to be utterly in thrall to a being so much more precious than life itself.
Jack drew Katherine more firmly against him as the flame within him exploded, and his mind was alive only to the sensations evoked by touching her face, her hair, her exquisite, achingly familiar body.
