Julia London - Regency Vows - A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

“What you need—” somehow Phil managed to fly up the stairs twice as quickly as Katherine “—is to tell me whatever you’re not telling me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Rubbish.”

Pit her against a shipload of bloodthirsty corsairs, or a gale that pushed thirty-foot swells over her deck, and she had courage aplenty. But confess to Phil what she’d done in the carriage? That was another matter entirely. She strode toward her rooms as though they would provide some kind of safety.

“Are you all right?” Phil asked, all concern as, naturally, she followed Katherine into her dressing room. “Have you been crying?”

“Certainly not.” Blast it all, the looking glass on the dressing table was right there, letting Phil see her face. She turned, but there was nowhere to hide.

“Are you sure? Katherine, your hair! I can see from here that it’s—”

“Enough!” Katherine turned, finally facing Phil. Anger surged through her but fizzled into something weak and soft and suddenly she feared maybe she would cry.

Marry me, Katherine. Oh, God.

“I got caught in a gust of wind,” she explained, removing her hood. It sounded reasonable enough. “One of those powerful blasts that comes up between buildings.”

Phil raised a brow. “Powerful enough to fling a bit of debris against your neck and leave a mark?” She came forward until their skirts touched, searched Katherine’s face, and looked Katherine right in the eye. “You’ve taken a lover, Katherine, and if it was Lord Deal I shall run you through with your very own cutlass.”

“Devil take you.” Katherine turned away and wrenched open one button on her cloak, then another. “It’s you that ought to be run through.” The looking glass proved that sure enough, there was a tiny red mark where her neck curved into her shoulder. “I must have scratched myself.”

“Your lips are swollen.”

“Nerves. I’ve been chewing on them all morning.”

“Your cheeks are red and abraded.”

“Did I not just tell you I got caught in a gust?”

“Your dress is torn.”

“It isn’t!” Katherine frowned into the reflection. Good God, it was. Right there—right above her breasts, a bit of trim had torn away and hung limply down. Warily she met Phil’s knowing eyes in the looking glass.

“Captain Warre,” Phil guessed.

Oh, God. Phil’s softening expression brought the full weight of reality bearing mercilessly down. The urge to tell Phil everything—the lovemaking, the proposal—came up hard and fast. She swallowed it whole.

Phil came up behind her and brushed a fallen lock from Katherine’s shoulder. A line creased between her delicate brows. “He didn’t hurt you...”

Katherine shook her head and thought of Mejdan. He hadn’t hurt her, either. But that was where the similarity ended.

“Quite the opposite, I suspect,” Phil said with a little smile. “But tell me—the hearing ended not two hours ago. How can you have returned from his bed so quickly?”

Katherine’s face warmed.

Phil laughed, soft and comprehending. “Ah, the carriage. I should have known. My, but he’s clever. And impatient. But I suppose there will be plenty of time to explore the joys of a bed after the wedding.”

Katherine turned from her and went to the window. “You of all people cannot possibly believe that I would marry Captain Warre.” She imagined exploring the joys of a bed with him every night as his wife, and her heart squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. No limpstaff, he.

“Katherine, don’t be a fool!” Phil cried, following. “If not him, then who? Good God, you are thinking of Lord Deal.”

She could not belong to James and still belong to herself, and one captivity in a lifetime was enough. Lord Deal was someone she could control. “The union makes sense.”

“For a woman of mature years who isn’t already in love with another man! You cannot possibly believe this will make you happy. For heaven’s sake, Katherine—” Something in the street caught her attention. “Someone’s coming to the door.” A figure in a gray woolen cloak was painstakingly making its way up the walk below. “Katherine, I think it’s Millicent!”

Katherine recognized her the moment the words left Phil’s mouth. She spun away and strode out of the dressing room with Phil in her wake. For Millie to have returned here after the way she left meant something must have gone very badly. A dozen possibilities hurtled through her mind as she hurried down the main staircase as quickly as damnable fashion would allow, leaving the topic of her folly with James behind. They had reached the main landing when Dodd led Millicent into the foyer, where she pushed her hood onto her shoulders and clutched Dodd’s arm, nearly collapsing against him.

“Millicent!” Katherine called out. She ran forward, already seeing the dark bruises covering Millicent’s face. One side of her face was puffy, giving her a grotesquely asymmetrical appearance. “Who did this?” A deep fury rose up, making her words come out like barks.

“Gavin,” Millicent breathed through a lip that was swollen and cracked.

Gavin, her brother. The physician. If he were here, she would put Gavin beyond any physician’s help. “Get two footmen to carry her upstairs,” Katherine ordered. “Quickly. Call for a doctor and ring for Mrs. Hibbard. Have her bring soup and a compress.”

“Right away, your ladyship.” Dodd hurried away, and within moments two young men from the mews rushed into the foyer. Upstairs, Katherine directed them to the room Millicent had occupied before she’d left, and by the time they laid her across it she had lost consciousness.

Immediately Katherine began pulling at Millicent’s clothes. “I will kill him.”

“We’ll do it together,” Phil said, moving in to help. There were more bruises on Millie’s arms and chest, and Katherine heard Phil breathe a prayer.

“I should have stopped her,” Katherine said.

Phil tugged at a sleeve, freeing Millie’s arm. “You know better than to think you could have, stubborn as she is.”

“I could have ordered her to stay.”

“And she would have defied you. We’re not on the ship anymore.”

And Millicent would scarce have listened to her even if they had been. But the bruises and cuts were horrible, and the blood— “Perhaps she would have been better off in Malta,” Katherine said in despair.

“Now you’re being ridiculous. Even if she was admitted to that school in disguise, it would take nothing more than a man determined to avail himself of what he thought was some fresh, male flesh to discover the truth, and then she would be out. She would have fallen into prostitution within the week.” Phil peeled away one stocking, then the other, revealing more bruises on Millie’s legs. “The bastard ought to be skinned alive and hung on a pole.”

Mrs. Hibbard whisked into the room followed by a maid who set down a tray with a teapot, soup tureen, cups and bowls. The maid left, and Mrs. Hibbard bustled to the bed. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing, this. I’ve got compresses, but little good they’ll do for all this. Lord above.” Her soft, round face was pinched and angry. “Whoever done this ought to have twice as much done to him.” She laid a compress across Millie’s black eye and another across a nasty bruise on her shoulder, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Millicent would need a compress for her entire body. “I’ll go make up some more,” Mrs. Hibbard said, shaking her head. “Let’s hope the doctor gets here right quick.”

A hole opened up in Katherine’s chest as she stared at Millicent’s battered body. “I’ll never let her out of my sight again.”