Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1

‘No, of course not! Whatever are you thinking of—naturally we must have the marriage annulled.’

‘Despite the way you feel about him?’

Katherine met Jenny’s shrewd eyes and struggled to keep the truth out of her own. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded. ‘Naturally I admire Mr Lydgate’s courage and his sense of honour in helping me. And naturally I cannot impose upon his good will a moment longer than is necessary.’

‘I mean you are in love with him,’ Jenny retorted, presuming ruthlessly on years of intimacy. She watched Katherine struggle wordlessly for a crushing phrase to contradict her. ‘I knew it, the way you look at him—or half the time don’t look. What does he feel about it?’

‘Nothing at all! Really, Jenny, you quite mistake the matter. Mr Lydgate’s feelings are simply those of a chivalrous gentleman attempting to help a lady in a difficult situation. Now, please, stop trying to put me to the blush.’ So Jenny had already seen something, seen it before she herself had acknowledged how she felt about Nicholas. She could only trust that no one else was so perceptive.

They made good time, despite the rain that afternoon. The next night, as Nick helped her down from the carriage, his news released both a sigh of relief from her lips and a cold sinking in her stomach at the thought of the confrontation to come.

‘We have only a short drive tomorrow—an hour at most. I thought you would prefer to arrive rested and in daylight.’

He appeared to have taken her strictures about the extravagance of the York inn to heart, for since then their stopping places had been humble, although clean and well kept. This last was no exception; it sat sturdy and ancient in a fold of the hill beyond the small town of Marlowe Beck. They had pressed on past the fine Duke’s Arms in the main square and, despite her earlier protestations about money, Katherine had watched it go with some regret. Although too well bred to utter the words, her anatomy was suffering as much as Jenny’s was from the long hours sitting, and the thought of a fine goose feather bed and a hot bath was deeply tempting.

But thoughts of the smart inn vanished as John helped her down from the coach. The evening sun was setting behind the hills, sending long shadows over the rolling green of the fields and making dark mysteries of the endless stone walls and the occasional copse of twisted trees.

Nick had vanished into the inn and emerged again with the landlord, who had a beaming smile on his face. Katherine caught a snatch of the man’s words, but, what with the breeze blowing them away and his unfamiliar accent, she could not catch the whole sentence.

‘… back parlour, Mr Nick, and no fear … anyone will … big house. It’s a great day, that’s for sure.’

Nick ushered them all firmly through into the room the innkeeper indicated and opened a door in the panelling at the rear. Katherine glimpsed the foot of a narrow flight of stairs. ‘Up there are the rooms, choose whichever you wish for yourself and Jenny.’

‘You sound as though you know this place,’ she observed, only to interrupted by a hearty chuckle from the inn keeper.

‘That he does, hinny, that he … I mean to say, ma’am, we remember Mr Nick from years back. When he was just a lad,’ he added hastily with a glance at Nick. ‘I’ll just take your bags up, I expect you ladies would prefer the back room, it being quieter, like.’

‘Hinny?’

‘You are lucky he didn’t call you hen or flower.’ Nick smiled, suddenly looking five years younger. ‘It’s good to hear the accent again.’

The old inn was like a haven before a storm, Katherine thought two hours later as she curled into the corner of the settle in front of the fire after dinner.

Nick and John were playing cards with an ancient pack Nick had somehow known to find on the mantelshelf and Jenny was leaning over John’s shoulder, egging him on to wild bets with the broken pieces of spill they were using for gaming counters.

From the public taproom across the hall came the sound of a fiddle and an instrument the like of which Katherine had never heard.

The windows were snug behind curtains apparently made from a cast-off chintz gown and the fire flickered and glowed, casting hot light over the flagged floor and gleaming off the old polished oak of settles and tables.

Candles cast more intimate pools of light on the hands of the card players and made strange masks of their faces. Under-lit, John’s double chin was exaggerated, Jenny’s brown hair gave off red glints and Nick’s face was unguarded as he fanned the cards in his hand, his head slightly cocked, his underlip just caught by sharp white teeth as he considered his bet.

‘I will meet you and raise you ten.’

Suddenly she saw the young man of six years ago, straightforward, untried, proud and hot at hand. He must have sat here on many an evening with friends, perhaps with the sons of local farmers and squires, learning to keep their faces straight whether they held good hands or bad, flirting with the barmaids, boasting of their horses. Her mouth curved in an unconscious smile.

John folded with a groan, tossing his hand on the table. ‘You’re bringing me no luck at all,’ he chided Jenny. ‘Go and jinx the master’s hand, why don’t you?’

Nick laughed and reached out long fingers to gather up the pile of spills. His eyes met Katherine’s and suddenly he was still. The smile faded from his lips and his shadowed eyes seemed to speak straight to hers. The room went quiet, so quiet that the crackle and spit of the fire and the tic-toc of the battered mantel clock sounded louder than the music from across the way.

‘You can’t afford to lose any more, John,’ Jenny said brightly. ‘I want to hear the music—they might be dancing.’

‘They will be,’ Nick told her, scooping up the cards and tapping them back into one pack. ‘Why don’t you go on and tell me what you think of the Northumberland pipes?’

Jenny needed no further urging. She tugged John grumbling out of his chair and out of the room. The volume of the music swelled, diminished and swelled again, marking their progress through the doors into the tap.

Katherine swallowed. She knew perfectly well what Jenny was up to, wretched chit. She had some romantic idea of throwing her mistress together with ‘the master’ and confounding all talk of annulment.

Nick got up lazily and wandered over to replace the cards where he had found them and toss the handful of spill fragments on to the fire. He stood gazing into the firelight, one foot up on the high fender seat, his forearm resting on his bent knee.

Katherine was so jumpy she felt sure she could feel the nerves crawling under her skin. If only he would say something. She had a careful store of unexceptional subjects for conversation: how much later the season was up here, how much smaller the lambs were than in the south, how surprised she was not to find great mountains, how far were they from the sea?

Nick straightened up and came to sit beside her on the settle, propping his feet up on the fender and falling into a relaxed slump that somehow managed to look elegant. Still he did not speak. Katherine clamped her teeth firmly together to prevent herself beginning to babble of nothings.

‘You look very comfortable.’ His remark was so sudden she almost jumped.

‘Doubtless you are about to make a cat-comparison,’ she grumbled, attempting to inject a note of humour.

‘Well, you are not quite purring, Kat. What would it take to make you purr, I wonder?’

You could listen only to the teasing, she realised, or you could listen to the sensual undercurrent in his voice. ‘Oh, cream and a feather cushion and a mouse to catch. This is a very comfortable room.’

‘It is, is it not?’ He seemed pleased with her appreciation. ‘I have always thought so. What do you like about it, Kat?’

She considered, head on one side in thought. ‘I like the entire inn. I like its size—it is so snug and homely. I love the way it sits here in the shelter of the hill, half-hidden, its back protected from the wind. I like the faded old fabrics and the deep glow on the furniture.’ She thought some more, letting the comfort and security of the old house sink into her bones. ‘Yes, homely. Perhaps I can find somewhere like this to live.’

‘Ah.’ Nick seemed momentarily disconcerted and Katherine had a qualm that she had been tactless. What if his home was like the bleak foursquare farmhouses and manors they had passed so frequently? ‘You would not prefer something just a little larger?’

‘Well, perhaps just a little.’ Somehow his arm had crept around her shoulders and she was curled more against his side than the settle cushions. How had that happened?

‘Kat.’

‘Hmm?’ She looked up, having to tilt her head back against his shoulder to do so, and his mouth found hers.

This was not the desperate last kiss of a condemned man, nor was it the first sensuous celebration of a reprieved one. This was an assured, deliberate claiming, a determined attempt at seduction by a man who appeared to have no doubt he would succeed.

He held her, not brutally but firmly, so that she could not escape without fighting; that, somehow, did not seem to be an option. He held her with those long, strong fingers while his mouth systematically removed every trace of resistance.

Her own lips had no choice but to part under the pressure of his, her own tongue seemed to know just how to meet the challenge of his as it touched, flickered, tasted, then plunged and took quite ruthlessly.

She was bent back over one imprisoning arm, her breasts crushed achingly against his chest and suddenly he left her mouth and began to nibble the length of her throat, down the delicate, tender curves, down to where the pulse raged in the angle of her collarbone.

Katherine moaned, part in protest that he had abandoned her mouth, part in exquisite agony at the havoc he was wreaking now with his teeth and lips.

She was so hot, so … needing. She wanted him to touch her everywhere and did not know quite why. Her body arched against him, untutored, innocently demanding. He growled deep in his throat in response and his mouth was suddenly on the curve of her breast, impatiently pushing aside the modesty of the fichu she had tucked in around her shoulders. She moaned, whimpered.

‘Purr for me, my Kat.’ His voice was husky, muffled against the taut swell of her breast. And then he had swung her up into his arms. It was several confused, giddy moments before she realised he had one foot on the bottom step of the stairs to the bedrooms.

Where did the strength to resist come from? Or was it simply common sense reasserting itself the moment his drugging mouth left her hot skin?

‘No! Nick, put me down!’

He paused, still halfway through the doorway, then bent to find her mouth.

‘No!’ Katherine twisted her head away and instantly he set her on her feet. She found herself standing on the second step, high enough to meet him eye to eye. ‘Nick, what do you think you are doing?’

‘Making love to my wife.’ He was breathing hard, but somehow he kept his voice light.

‘But you cannot! We will never get an annulment if you do—what are you thinking of?’

He raised one hand and twisted an errant lock of her hair between his fingers. ‘Do you want an annulment so badly?’

‘Of course I do!’ Katherine stared at him as though he had lost his senses. ‘You cannot want to be tied to this sham of a marriage any more than I do.’

‘You were willing to be a true wife to me in Newgate.’ His voice was still light and in the gloom she could not read his face.

‘But we had a bargain and I could not break that, it would have been dishonest,’ Katherine protested. ‘And anyway, you were—’ She broke off, appalled at where that train of thought was leading her.

‘Going to be hanged, so that would have drawn a convenient line under the whole messy business?’ Now he sounded angry.

How dare he? she thought, I did not start this. ‘That is not what I meant and you know it. You promised me an annulment in a month’s time. What you were about to do would have made that impossible.’

‘I promised you that we would get an annulment if you wanted one. I thought perhaps that after tonight you might not want that.’

‘Oh! You arrogant …’ Katherine fought for words. ‘You thought you would seduce me, did you? I am sure you would succeed with many women—after all, you appear to be very good at it, doubtless as the result of much practice.’

‘And why would I want to seduce you?’ He shifted slightly so the light from the room struck his face. His voice was dangerously calm, but his eyes were hard with anger.

‘Other than simple carnal desire? Presumably you would feel humiliated by having to tell your family that your marriage was about to be dissolved.’

‘More humiliated than living with the thought that I had seduced an unwilling woman? I thought we understood each other, Kat. It appears I was quite out.’ He stepped back from the stairs and took the edge of the door in one hand. Kat found her eyes unable to leave the long finger where the mark of his signet ring still showed white against the tanned skin. On her own hand it seemed to burn with its own heat. ‘I suggest you go to bed before we start hurling the fire irons at each other like a real married couple.’

He reached out and picked up a chamber stick from the side table. ‘Here, madam wife, a candle to light you to bed. I wish you a goodnight. It will doubtless be better than the one I anticipate.’

Chapter Twelve

Katherine passed a night of restless wakefulness interspersed with dream-racked snatches of sleep. She kept trying to push away the memories of Nick’s caressing hands and demanding lips, but whenever she tried her strangely aching body recalled her to the recollection of every touch, every frisson. Their furious exchange of words at the end she simply refused to recall.

In an effort to distract herself, she attempted to rehearse how she should greet his father and brother the next morning. What should she wear? What would Mr Lydgate senior expect of his unexpected new daughter-in-law? And when would Nick reveal the true state of their marriage and the news that his sham wife had saddled him with a vast debt?

Unfortunately the image she conjured up of her father-in-law closely resembled Nick in forty years’ time and in the throes of an icy rage. This was not comforting, and the knowledge that her in-laws would be utterly justified in being appalled and angry on discovering her existence did nothing to help.

Tossing and turning uncomfortably in an effort not to disturb Jenny’s untroubled slumbers, Katherine tried to plan for what she should do once she had obtained her annulment. Somehow she would have to earn her own living.

Gloomily she reviewed her talents. She was an adequate, but not exceptional, needlewoman. Setting up in a millinery or dressmaking business was not therefore to be thought of. She had an excellent grasp of languages, but no talent with any musical instrument so becoming a governess was beyond her reach. Her earlier confident assertion to Jenny that she could earn her living teaching French and Italian now seemed hopelessly over-confident. Housekeeper or companion appeared to be the only options for a living wage, however modest.

Neither was likely to pay so much that she could hope to discharge her debt. All she would be able to do was salve her conscience by sending what little she was able to save each year to the moneylenders under her own name, but concealing her whereabouts. Goodness knows what the effect of the interest would be upon the total. I am going to go to my grave in debt, she thought despairingly, struggling not to think harshly of Philip, heedlessly pursuing his own pleasures somewhere on the Continent.

When the clock downstairs struck three the treacherous voice of temptation began to whisper in her ear. Let him make love to you, it murmured insidiously. You love him, you want him. He knows what the consequences are, he will pay your debt and you will never have to worry again.

Katherine lay still, wrestling with herself until her conscience won. No, she could not do it, not and live with herself afterwards. And at last she dropped off to sleep.

The next morning they breakfasted in their rooms and Nick went down with John to pay their shot. The effusiveness of Paul Carson, the landlord, made him feel uncomfortable, as though he was back under false pretences, as indeed an inner voice told him he was. Banished, he had sworn never to come back; now he wrestled with the uncomfortable thought that he was using Kat as an excuse to do the right thing and return.

That was considerably less uncomfortable to his peace of mind than the memory of last night and the recollection of the vivid anger and betrayal on Kat’s face as they had stood, eye to eye, on the inn stairs. How had he misjudged her so badly? He was not inexperienced with women, he thought ruefully as he strolled out into the yard to see if John needed any help hitching up the team. With Kat it seemed that every instinct was awry.

Without a word spoken he took the head of the wheeler and backed it into the shafts while his mind raced. She had seemed yielding, aware of him. In his arms she had responded with an innocent passion that turned his bones to water even as it fired his blood. But she was having none of him, it seemed, however dire her circumstances.

With a shake of his head he cinched the girth and turned to see what else needed doing. But he was too near home now for physical effort to distract him from his circling thoughts.

And what would his father say to Kat? One word of disparagement and he would turn on his heel and leave, he resolved grimly. She might be determined to free herself from him, but his honour and his instincts would fight her every step of the way. Never mind that he had married her expecting to be dead days ago; now she was his first concern over family and all other duties.

‘That’s all right and tight,’ John said, twisting the reins around the brake. He regarded Nick with an uncomfortably intelligent eye. ‘And where do we go now? Sir.’ The last word was an afterthought, not a disrespectful one, but a clear indication that John had still not made up his mind about the man Jenny was happy to refer to as ‘the master'.

Nick leaned against the nearside shaft and began to explain the route that was as familiar to him as the back of his own hand. John’s eyes became round, then narrowed and then finally round again. He asked one question, which Nick answered with a curt nod. There was a moment’s silence, then John remarked laconically, ‘Miss Katherine will have something to say about that when she realises.’

‘Indeed.’ Nick thought she would have rather more than ‘something’ to say, but he preferred that it was not said in the inn courtyard. Not that she was likely to be saying anything at all to him after the way they had parted last night. On that thought Kat appeared, Jenny at her heels.

Nick conjured up all the sang-froid at his disposal and opened the carriage door. She was wearing what must be her best day dress, he realised. Her bonnet was smart whilst being restrained and her hair was rigorously constrained beneath it. All in all, the perfect new daughter-in-law. His heart ached at the effort she was making.

Katherine nodded in the general direction of Nick as she climbed into the coach. She found she could not meet his eye and neither could she find any word of greeting. It was as though a pane of glass had descended between them and all they could do was gesture at each other through it.

The glass shattered as he entered the carriage on Jenny’s heels. Katherine stared at him, aghast. She had not expected this, none of her defences were in place to deal with him.

‘Good morning,’ he said pleasantly, settling back opposite the two young women. ‘I hope you slept well.’ The query was directed straight at Jenny, who smiled unaffectedly and nodded.

‘Oh, yes, sir. Good feather beds they have here, sir.’

‘I passed an indifferent night,’ Katherine remarked and was surprised at the fire in the dark eyes as they focused on her.

‘Indeed? So did I. Perhaps our unrest had a similar cause.’

She had hoped to discommode him; now he had thrown the challenge straight back to her. ‘I have no doubt it did,’ Katherine agreed warmly, aware that her temper was showing in her eyes, but uncaring of the fact.

‘To what do you attribute it?’

Damn him. And damn him for making her use bad language, even in her thoughts. She smiled sweetly. ‘I am nervous of meeting my new family, and I am sure you feel some apprehension after all these years, Nicholas.’

Her husband made no attempt to reassure her about his family and her heart sank. This was going to be every bit as difficult as she feared. They both fell silent. To Katherine, completely at a loss as to how to pierce his armour, it seemed that Nick simply retreated into his own self-contained world. What he was facing could not be easy, yet he was not going to let her glimpse the slightest sign of inner turmoil.

Pride, she thought resentfully, then wondered. Was last night’s outburst of passion some glimpse into an inner turmoil?

She had hardly formulated the thought when Jenny remarked, ‘What a long wall.’

Katherine leaned forward to look out of the window. On the nearside of the carriage stretched a high freestone wall, neatly mortared, regularly buttressed and apparently endless. After ten minutes, when there was no break in it, she remarked, ‘The park of a great estate, one assumes.’

‘Yes, the Duke of Marlowe’s.’

‘A family with which you are acquainted?’ That might give her some clue as to his family’s local standing.

There was a pause, then Nick replied evenly, ‘I was close to the younger son at one time.’

They drove for perhaps another two miles in silence. Katherine found the monotony of the uniform wall cast an almost hypnotic spell over her and she could do little other than gaze at it. Then the carriage slowed. Glancing at him, she saw the sudden alertness in Nick, the way his eyes darkened. Expecting John to turn left, away from the wall, Katherine was taken by surprise as the carriage made a right turn and passed between high gateposts.

Off balance, she swayed against the movement of the carriage and was thrown forward. Nick caught her forearms and settled her back on the seat. The incident was over in a moment, but it was enough for her to miss whatever John called down to the gatekeeper as the great gates swung open and the carriage was all at once bowling through parkland.

A herd of fallow deer browsed under the spreading branches of a coppice of sweet chestnuts. They raised their heads to regard the passing carriage with great soft, incurious eyes and bent to the short grass again.

‘Miss Katherine—’ Jenny began, then stopped abruptly as Katherine’s hand closed tight on her wrist. She met her mistress’s wide eyes and read the unmistakable message of silence on them. As one the young women turned and stared at Nicholas Lydgate.

He was not watching them. Instead, his face unreadable, he was gazing out of the carriage window as the acres of parkland unrolled before them. His eyes were wide, dark and bright with unshed tears.

Katherine caught her breath, yearning to lean forward and touch him, terrified of disturbing his fragile control. This … this great estate must be home.

She found her mind was prey to theories and questions tumbling one after another. What were they doing apparently driving up to the mansion of the Duke of—what did Nick say? Marlowe? Was his father the steward to the Duke? Or perhaps as he was the greatest landowner Nick felt it incumbent on him to call upon the Duke first? No, surely not … The questions trembled on her tongue, but the look in Nick’s shadowed eyes warned her to keep silent. Inside the cold knot of apprehension grew and burgeoned.