Kasey Michaels - Regency Vows

“She’ll be delighted to hear that, I’m sure. She’s a grown woman, Katherine.”

“She’s not yet twenty.” And her time aboard the Possession may have sturdied up her muscles, but she was still short, and slightly built, and more delicate than a country physician’s daughter should be.

“Which is plenty old enough to be acquainted with the ways of the world,” Phil pointed out. “She’s not as delicate as she looks, Katherine. You know that. She’s got the spirit of ten sailors.”

“Which didn’t save her from this.”

“But it will.” Phil reached for Katherine’s hand. “She’ll survive this. I know she will.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

HE’D FORGOTTEN THE preservative.

At home in his bedchamber, James stood with his waistcoat in one hand and the preservative—pristine and unused—in the other. What utter stupidity to have thought he could touch Katherine and maintain enough coherence to take precautions. She’d been pure intoxication from the moment he’d set eyes on her.

Hell and damnation! At this very moment, his child might be growing in her womb. Enraged, he flung the preservative across the chamber. It hit the wall with a soft thwack and fell to the floor.

And even his own stupidity didn’t keep him from growing hard—again—at the memory of being inside her.

His “solution” had been entirely, completely illusory. Rather than slaking his thirst and clearing his head, making love to her in that coach only made him want her more. He had buried himself inside her, possessed her as completely as was physically possible, and still he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted her naked. Here. On his bed, without stays and hoops and yards of fabric.

Instead, within the hour he would see her at this bloody rout Lady Effy was giving, where he would smile politely and make conversation with the very devils who dreamed of foraging inside her skirts exactly as he had. It was not to be tolerated.

He paced the length of the chamber, restless and unsated. There was a chance she hadn’t conceived. His thoughts strayed into the queasy territory of a woman’s monthly flow, and he sat on the edge of the bed. Even if she had, within weeks she would be married to Deal. He leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.

Marry me, Katherine. The whisper of his own words taunted him.

Good God—what had he been thinking? The answer, of course, was that he hadn’t been. Thinking. He’d been rutting like a stallion in heat. Katherine was everything he didn’t want in a wife. She was combative where he wanted peaceful, commanding where he wanted submissive, fiery where he wanted mild.

He got up and snatched the preservative off the floor and tossed it into the drawer in his dressing table. He should be thanking every bloody star in the sky that she’d rejected his reckless proposal.

In the looking glass, the man who had so blithely anticipated resolution before mocked him now. You’ll have a high time lying awake nights while Lord Deal tries to sink his half-wilted cock into that tight, wet heat. He slammed the drawer shut and glared at himself. The staff in his breeches wasn’t the only idiot in this bedchamber.

Was that it, then? A hasty farewell as he buttoned his breeches and stepped out of her coach two streets away to avoid being seen? Sod it all, he’d made a bloody mess of things. He needed to talk to her.

About what? his reflection sneered. Arranging another tryst before she becomes Lady Deal?

About...them. Their relationship. The debt. Yes—the debt! He pushed away from the dressing table and turned, shoving his hands through his hair. That bloody, goddamned debt that he’d failed to repay. The one she said she’d forgiven him for. The one, in fact, she didn’t truly believe he owed—that much had been there in her eyes this morning when the truth behind his rescue had emerged.

There was a knock on his door—Bates’s knock—and he let his hands fall. “Come in.”

The door opened, and Bates handed him a small, sealed note. “This just arrived, your lordship.”

“Thank you.” He ripped open the seal and read Philomena’s words. Tossing the note aside, he rang for his valet.

* * *

AN HOUR AFTER sunset, Katherine sat by Millicent’s window in the fading light with Anne playing cat’s cradle on her lap with a length of yarn. Millicent lay with her black-and-blue face stark against the white pillows and a dark prognosis. The doctor had done what he could—which was bloody little—but speculated that she might have sustained internal injuries and that only time would tell. Phil had sent their regrets to Lady Effy, and all that was left was to wait.

William paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, while Miss Bunsby dabbed Millie’s forehead with a damp cloth and cast him frequent looks of disgust. That alone should have been reason enough to dismiss her—to actually dismiss her, this time.

“Doctors,” William muttered, jabbing at the fire with an iron. “Never have an answer about anything.”

Anne leaned back against Katherine with a sigh. “Maybe Millie will feel better if Mr. Bogles sleeps with her.”

Katherine stroked her hair and pulled on the yarn to help Anne thread it through her fingers. “He might walk on her, sweetling. That wouldn’t feel good at all.”

“You’re right, Mama.” Anne let her hands fall into her lap, and the yarn went limp. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of bitter herbs wafting from fresh compresses Mrs. Hibbard had brought up. “If I get a bruise, I don’t want any compress.”

Katherine touched her nose. “If you get a bruise, I’ll make sure Mrs. Hibbard makes you an extra big compress to make it go away that much faster.”

Anne made a face and a noise and wiggled on Katherine’s lap just as Dodd appeared in the doorway. “Lady Ramsey is downstairs, your ladyship.”

“Send her upstairs,” Katherine told him.

Moments later she and Phil met Honoria in the adjoining dressing room. She swept into the room wringing her hands. “Katherine, I had no idea— I didn’t mean to intrude! Is she going to be all right?” Upon hearing what the doctor had said, she gasped. “Poor, poor thing! I do hope she pulls through quickly. I never would have come if I’d known, except that I had to come, because Katherine—” she gripped Katherine’s arm “—you didn’t tell me we are to be sisters.”

Phil’s brows rose. “Sisters!”

“I was out shopping for ribbons when I saw Lady Ponsby, who said she had it on good authority from her husband after this morning’s hearing that it was so. I was already obliged to drink tea this evening with Lady Kirby and Lady West—the most excruciating thing imaginable—and I wasn’t able to confirm until now! Your house was closer than James’s, so I came here straightaway.”

Things had gone utterly out of control. “Imbeciles! Have the rumormongers nothing better to do than spread lies?”

“In London?” Phil laughed. “Ha! But I am sorry, dear,” she said, taking Honoria’s arm, “unfortunately, the rumor is false.”

“La, I was afraid of that! Forgive me for being indelicate with your friend in such grave danger, but when is my brother going to see reason and ask for Katherine’s hand?”

The sound of Dodd’s scolding carried in from the hallway. “Your lordship, I beg you, you absolutely must not—”

As if on cue, James stalked into the room—heedless, as always, of what he must or must not do. “How is she?” he demanded.

“Lord Croston, your ladyship,” Dodd announced disapprovingly from the doorway.

Yes, she could see that plain enough. “At death’s door,” she told him. In a single heartbeat everything they’d done in the carriage flowed over her like hot water in a bath. Her pulse pounded in her throat. “Apparently her elder brother wasn’t as keen to welcome her home as he might have been. We know nothing more. She arrived at the door barely able to stand— How she made it all the way here, I don’t know.”