Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FAT FLAKES OF EARLY SNOW were falling around the stores on Bond Street, but once they hit the ground, they melted into the slushy pavement. Kate remembered the little shop all too well; she’d visited it once, in that hectic flurry that followed her wedding. The night rail she’d purchased there, filmy and gauzy and full of hope, now sat in a chest of drawers in her room. She had used it only the once, a mere handful of days ago. It hadn’t worked as she’d intended it. And now it seemed a token of the dreams she’d once possessed: translucent and insubstantial. It wouldn’t have survived even a good hard rain.

The shop had placed bolts of fabric in the narrow window to advertise its wares. Behind the spread of silks and satins, some cheaper goods were laid out for the less privileged customers—thick, serviceable cottons and warm wools in sober colors. But the front of the display was taken up with colorful bolts of watered silk, satin, creamy muslin and fine striped cambric. Ribbons and lace and a welter of buttons were laid out in an eye-catching formation.

Kate’s eye was not caught by any of them. She brushed off the snow that had collected on her shoulders. In this weather, looking at all that filmy fabric just made her feel cold.

Before Ned had come back to England, she’d believed the feelings she’d harbored about him would simply dissipate over time. Now she wished they could. It was the marriages that could blow away that she envied. As if the people mired in them might simply close their eyes and puff and, like a dandelion, their wishes would be carried on the wind.

This thinking was rather too maudlin for Kate. She’d intended to go shopping; she was a duke’s daughter, and a wealthy gentleman’s wife. Everyone who was anyone—who’d read the gossip columns that were even now being distributed by dirty-faced postboys—would be watching her now. She was shopping, after all. She and Louisa would be famous for that for years.

And while she might wish things were different with Ned… Well. There was no use sobbing over what could not be. And so shopping she would go. Anywhere, that is, but here. She had no need for any more night rails.

Kate had just tipped up her nose and was on the verge of stalking past, in search of a really, truly incredible bonnet, when she felt something pull at her. She looked in the window of the shop more closely, at one of the bolts that her eyes had passed over before.

The fabric was not silky. It was not sheer. It was not the sort of fabric that a lady would use for a night rail. It was the sort of thing that a servant might order. Serviceable. Practical. Warm.

It had been a mistake to overlook that one. Hope tugged at her still, faint but unmistakable.

It wasn’t time for boots or bonnets.

No, she needed to purchase a night rail, after all.

THAT EVENING NED LAY IN BED, the cold of the room swirling around him. The predicament before him was impossible. For the moment Louisa was safe, but her husband still had a legal right to her. There would come a time when Harcroft might stand in court and simply demand that his wife be returned to him. They might be able to refuse, on grounds of cruelty, but no court in England would let Louisa keep her child.

The unscalable wall that was the law was as good a distraction as any from the pain in his leg, and an even better distraction from his conversation with Kate that afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to tell her. But then, after all that they’d been through, she deserved to know who he truly was—and why he couldn’t let himself slip, not even one little bit. The cold of the room helped with that.

He would rather think about Louisa. As little as he relished the prospect, he might call Harcroft out—death would solve all of Louisa’s problems. Except he wasn’t a particularly good shot, and fencing on a broken leg was simply out of the question. Besides, Ned didn’t think he could murder the man in cold blood, no matter what the bastard had done.

As for his other plan… He’d planned to draw Harcroft out himself, but how was that possible now?

In the midst of these thoughts, the door that connected Ned’s room to Kate’s swung inward on silent hinges. He didn’t hear it; it was only the movement of air that alerted him to her presence. He clumsily lurched onto his elbows. A warm breath wafted to him from her room.

Or maybe the warmth came from Kate herself. She had donned a night rail that trailed thick fabric, covering her hands, curling up to her neck. Far more demure than the flimsy scrap of material she’d put on before, and yet the tableau still struck him straight through to his gut. He forgot everything—the persistent, throbbing ache in his leg, the cramping worry that had taken over his mind.

Lit by moonlight, she seemed like some ethereal creature, scarcely touching her feet to the floor.