Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

He shrugged, and in that instant she remembered what he’d said. Your feelings are yours. And what were his feelings in all of this?

“Does it matter why I went?” he asked. And he must have intended the question rhetorically, because before she could answer, he continued. “I can’t change the past. All I can do, Kate, is try to make up for it. And that means that if you still flinch from me—if the memory of the pain I’ve caused you is still too strong—I won’t get angry. You deserve my patience.”

“And where will you be?” Kate’s voice shook. “All this time, while you’re waiting in patience for me to trust you. Where will you be?”

“Where will I be?” She could feel his breath whispered against her. “I’ll be right where I should have been this whole time. When you think your castle walls will fall, I will shore them up. When you are afraid you cannot stand, I will hold you upright. I ought never have left. And when you understand that you need do nothing but lean…”

His hands clasped her waist, strong and gentle, holding her up without restraining her. She might have leaned back then.

She didn’t.

“When you lean,” he whispered into her ear, “this time, I will catch you.”

Oh, she was as dangerously vulnerable as ever, and as like to fall against him.

And that she believed him, that she believed he would be there to catch her, believed that this time he wouldn’t leave her…that, perhaps, was the greatest danger of all.

THAT, NED DECIDED after Kate left, had been idiotic.

It hadn’t been idiotic to look at her. It hadn’t been stupid to pledge himself to her. And the kiss had been every kind of clever, even if it had been her idea to begin with.

No, the foolishness had been when he’d forgotten himself so far as to let that admission slide off his tongue.

Your fear, my—

He’d cut himself off, not out of intelligence, but for want of an adequate word. He’d been saved by his lack of vocabulary, not any sense of propriety or self-preservation. Her fear, his… What was it, then, that dark thing that belonged to him? He thought of it more as that moment, sun striking metal, with him feeling bereft of every other option. He carried it with him even now. Not anything she needed to know about.

Foolishness might have done. Stupidity, as well. But neither of those words captured the height and breadth of the beast that Ned had tamed. And neither conveyed the sheer darkness that resided in him. It was foolish. It was stupid. But then, he’d learned that if he held the leash on his own reactions tightly, they could do him no harm. It was his own private madness, his own hidden dragon. Kate had single-handedly stymied the Earl of Harcroft. She would never trust Ned if she knew the extent of the beast he’d kept hidden from her. She had no idea how useless he had once been. But he would prove to every one of them that it didn’t matter any longer.

But so long as he remained in control, nobody else would ever need to learn about it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT WAS AN ODD little evening, Kate thought after her maid had undressed her and left her to her own bed.

With Lord and Lady Blakely departed, Berkswift seemed even emptier than it had when Kate had the manor to herself. Perhaps it was because Kate was the only lady in residence, and she had spent the remainder of the evening in isolation. Perhaps she felt alone because she knew that for one night longer, Harcroft was still in her home, and he had spent the last hours before retiring browbeating Ned with the details of his irrelevant search.

Perhaps it was because Kate could still feel her husband’s hands about her waist, his fingers hot against the base of her spine. Perhaps it was because, even through the soft wool of her dressing gown, she could feel the heat of his breath on her neck.

This time, he had said, I will catch you.

No mere gentlemanly politeness, that; she’d heard the ring of truth as he spoke, the hoarse acceptance in the timbre of his voice. It had been real, every last scrap of it.

Every scrap? No. There was one last scrap remaining, and it was jagged enough to slice through that nascent trust.

She had no notion what he would do if she told him the truth about Lady Harcroft. If Ned knew that Kate was the cause of his hours of search, would he still look at her with that same light in his eyes?

Maybe he would take her side. Support her. Congratulate her ingenuity.

Kate sighed. Be practical.

No. The practical answer was that he would shrink from her. That he would turn Louisa over to her husband. That he would shake his head at her, and the dragon-tamer would disappear. Because for all the apparent kindness of his words, his actions bespoke a rather different sort of trust.

It was night, and Kate was alone. Again. After all that heated talk this afternoon of trust, their marriage was still a mere token of what it could have been. Kisses—and no more. The absence left her hollow, as if she’d been burned to a shell by some dark fire.