Trial by Desire (29 page)

“Take them off,” she suggested.

His fingers cut into her flesh through all five of her hated, useless petticoats. Then he lifted her a few inches into the air and deposited her atop the polished table behind her. It creaked as she settled onto it, but subsided into silence. “No,” he said. “It would take too long. I’ll get used to the jealousy.”

He pressed against her, his body hard and demanding. He parted her legs, his hands sliding up to her knees. She felt a momentary breeze against her thighs—and then he stepped into that space. His fingers slipped upward. She couldn’t see his hands to anticipate where they would fall. The touch on her thigh came as a tickling surprise. He leaned down and nuzzled her ear. Oh, yes, the ear; sensation blossomed and she let him possess her.

How long they stood there, his hand caressing her leg beneath her skirts, his lips nibbling the curve of her ear, she did not know. But when his hand slipped up her leg, he found the slickness of her desire. He slid across her sensitive flesh.
Yes. Touch me there.
Kate bit back a shaky moan; he let out a shuddering breath.

She reached up for a taste of him. Her skin ached to brush against his; her mouth found his in the dark. That long kiss transformed into a fumble, his hands against hers, racing to undo the buttons of his breeches. He leaned
over her, adjusting her legs—and then he filled her, thick and hot.

She stretched around him. This wasn’t self-possession; it wasn’t any sort of possession at all. Instead, it was an admission, a deep-seated requirement, as if the circling of his hips had become as necessary as breath.

He rocked into her, slowly, steadily. The table creaked under her weight and his thrusts. He kissed her throat, up to her chin. His kisses came in time with each thrust. His breath was on her lips, as if she were his air; his tongue met hers, as if she were the only taste he desired.

He was holding himself back from release; she could feel it in the tensing muscles of his shoulder through his coat, in the exquisite control as he took her. Beads of sweat slid down his face. She could feel what waited in the burn of her own body, in the delicious coiling of pleasure in her center. She lifted her hips to his, and pleasure enveloped her, starting in her slippered toes and thundering through her as relentlessly as an autumn squall.

His thrusts came harder, filling her with sweetness as she reached for ecstasy. Her world shuddered; a great crashing noise sounded in climax.

And then he grasped her hips. He didn’t cry out, didn’t so much as let a moan escape him. The only evidence of his passing pleasure was the clutch of his hands on her.

After what he’d done to her—in the drawing room, with the hallway wide open for anyone to see, she realized—his own release seemed curiously restrained. And she realized as he pulled away, adjusting his clothing, it
had
been restrained. Because for all Ned’s talk of self-possession,
he
had been the one to possess her. He’d been
the one to give her pleasure. And even in the throes of ecstasy, he’d maintained control.

Ah,
she thought dazedly,
I am the one who is jealous.
She wanted all of him, without reservation. But that greedy urge passed as the pounding of her blood faded. For a long while they stared at each other, breathing heavily. Then he took a step—an oddly crunching step—and swore.

“Damn,” he said quietly. “Whose brilliant idea was it to decorate these tables—these lovely tables, set at such a perfect height—with vases?”

Kate glanced down in confusion. It took her a moment to understand what those tiny shards were, glinting in the dim light. That final crashing noise she had heard as she reached ecstasy had not been a product of her fevered imagination.

She couldn’t help herself. Despite the unquiet misgivings inside her, she started laughing. She pulled Ned close and buried her face in his shirt. He was sweating; so was she. It was a warm autumn evening; she was still wearing those five hated petticoats, and his heart thumped in rapid time with her own, through every layer of their clothing. His hand patted the damp hair on her head.

“Next time,” she said, “remove the petticoats. Please.”

She could feel his cheek press into a smile next to hers.

It wasn’t possession. It was still some damnable form of inequity, where she let him have all of her, and he held himself back. She could cry about it. She could accuse him of poor sportsmanship.

But what good would that do? She’d take what she could get, and fight for the rest as best she could.

She let out a long breath, exhaling her fears away. “With glass strewn underfoot, I see we have only one option.”

“Oh?”

It hurt to smile, but she did it anyway. His arm snaked around her waist.

“Have you seen how thin my slippers are?” she whispered in his ear. “With all this danger about, you’ll have to carry me to bed.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

B
Y THE NEXT AFTERNOON,
the glass had long been swept away. But as Kate left her house, she felt a chill prickle up her neck, as if danger itself were still present. She had one silk-slippered foot upon the carriage steps, one kid-gloved hand on her footman’s shoulder.

There was a man standing on the pavement, not three yards behind her. He was dressed in the blue uniform of a metropolitan police officer; the cuffs of his jacket were frayed at the edges. He watched her, and as she halted, he walked toward her.

“Are you Mrs. Carhart?” he asked. As he spoke, he shifted his truncheon from one hand to the other. He didn’t look as if he planned to use it. His gaze dropped down her form—not in sexual interest, but in wariness.

Kate turned from the carriage that awaited her. She drew herself up to her full height—which, compared to the man who approached her, seemed nowhere near full enough. Still, in her experience, officers and servants alike were more likely to speak with respect if they knew precisely with whom they were speaking. Short as she was, the yards of lace at the hem of her gown would make the man think twice. Lace was dear; more importantly, it was a symbol that she was the sort of woman who could purchase such a thing and wear it, even on something so
mundane as a morning call. Police officers did not often mix with ladies.

“Officer,” she said sternly, “I am more properly addressed as—”

“Yes or no will do, ma’am.”

Kate touched the pearls at her neck. “Yes, but I am La—”

He interrupted her again before she could finish.

“Well, then. I have a warrant sworn out for your arrest, and you’re to come with me.”

All those yards of lace stopped feeling like armor. Instead, she felt nakedly vulnerable. “My arrest?” No. She wasn’t going to flutter like a useless sparrow. She balled her fists. “See here, Officer.” She glanced at his jacket collar, where his designation was marked. “Officer 12-Q, what do you mean by ordering my arrest?”

Officer 12-Q took another step forward. “Didn’t,” he explained. “The warrant’s signed by Magistrate Fang. I don’t order anything—I just execute it. If you’ll excuse the witticism.”

She stared at him blankly.

“I just execute it,” he repeated. “
Execute.
See? Heh. Heh.” Despite that odd chuckle, Officer 12-Q had not even broached a smile yet.

Kate let her blank stare take on a chilly component.

“I suppose,” the officer allowed slowly, “it would be less amusing to you, what with your having to stand trial and all.”

“Stand trial! On what charges? And when?”

The man came forward, and Kate stepped backward. Beside her, her footman winced. No doubt he was trying
to figure out precisely how far his loyalty to his employer stretched.

“Oh, come,” 12-Q was saying. “Fine lady like you doesn’t want to resist the metropolitan police. As for when—right now. Why do you suppose I was sent to fetch you? Justice waits for no man. Or woman. Particularly not when justice is administered by Magistrate Fang. He doesn’t like staying after his time.”

“But I have an appointment to take tea.” Kate set one foot in the carriage, and her footman backed away from her slightly. Her voice was significantly steadier than her nerves. “Are you intimating that instead, I must undertake a tedious journey to—to—”

“The police court at Queen Square, ma’am.” He fingered his collar. “It’s what the Q stands for.”

“So I must travel to Queen Square, hear a set of trumped-up charges and stand trial? But I shall be quite late. I pride myself on my punctuality.”

Officer 12-Q shrugged and reached for her arm. “If you plead guilty first, there’s no need to stand for trial. Trial’s only if you wish to establish your innocence.” His hand closed around her elbow—firm, but not harsh.

Kate glared at him. “Thank you. That is most helpful.”

“Of course,” he continued, “six months in gaol will likely delay your arrival, as well.”

“Six months!” Kate was no longer even able to pretend at equanimity. “You must be joking. What on earth are they charging me with?”

A ghost of a smile played across 12-Q’s face. “Fang tends toward lenience with women, he does. Six months
is if he’s feeling kind—and given the lord who brought the charge, he’s unlike to do so.”

Of course it was Harcroft. She had guessed it from the first. But what would he claim she had done? It could have been anything from theft to murder. At the least, she had the luxury of knowing that whatever it was he claimed she did, she was innocent. Now all she had to do was prove it.

She turned to the footman, who gave her a pained shake of the head, one she translated as
I like my wages very well, but not enough to leap upon an officer of the police force. Please do not expect it.
She sighed.

“You need to fetch my husband,” she said. “He’s off at Chancery. Tell him I’ve been brought to Queen Square. And that I need him.
Now.
”

The officer yawned at this interplay and shrugged as the footman turned and dashed away. “Will you come now, or must I bind you and carry you down the street?”

Kate raised her chin and went.

N
ED CHARGED INTO THE STUFFY ROOM
where the police court was held.

He’d convinced himself, on the mad dash over to Queen Square, that the footman’s garbled tale held little relation to the truth. If Kate had been required to make her way into the somber, grubby office lodged in Westminster, surely it was because she had been set upon by some cutpurse. She was there to testify, and nothing more—

But no. As he entered, a sergeant of the police stretched his arm out and grabbed Ned’s wrist. He gave a little twist
as he did so—some police trick—and Ned stumbled, one knee stiking the ground, his arm wrenching.

The officer was one of only a few occupants—a red-faced drunkard lay snoring across one bench, a woman and her children, all clad in matching shades of brown, took up another. A handful of officers, all in uniform blue, waited. If Ned had wanted, he might have picked out individual scents: five different bouquets of unwashed-ness. He didn’t want, and so he held his breath and looked forward.

Kate stood at the front of the room, beautiful, her hair slightly disheveled. She held her head high. He couldn’t see her face; instead, she was looking at the magistrate. The man sat—if you could call that disreputable slouch “sitting”—in a rumpled coat and trousers, his sole nod to respectability being a white powdered wig that lay somewhat askew on his head.

Directly across from her, standing just before the bench, was the Earl of Harcroft.

Harcroft had engineered this, then. Ned had known he had some other plan. He just hadn’t expected to find his wife charged with some crime before a magistrate.

Kate tossed her head, and something about that ungraceful movement drew Ned’s eyes to her hands. Her wrists were bound.

“What have you to say to the charges?” the magistrate asked. By his tone of voice, he was bored with the proceedings already.

“I can have little to say, Your Worship, seeing as how I haven’t heard them.” Kate’s voice was strong—as always, she betrayed no weakness.

“Haven’t heard them?” The magistrate looked puzzled. “But how can that be?”

“You haven’t read them to me, Your Worship.”

The magistrate cast Kate a baleful look, as if it were somehow her fault that his court had to pause for such futile things as the reading of charges. In an elaborate gesture, the man swooped a pair of spectacles off the bench and balanced them on his nose. He held a piece of paper in front of him at arm’s length. “There,” he said. “Abduction.”

He ripped the glasses off and peered at Kate again. “
Now
what have you to say to the charges?”

“Abduction of whom, Your Worship?”

A longer pause, and the magistrate’s lips thinned. “I am accustomed,” he said in a commanding voice, “to people knowing with whom they have absconded.” He glared at Kate.

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

Slowly, he picked up his spectacles, and once again set them on the bridge of his nose. He read the paper more carefully. “Ah, yes. I recall now. Abduction of this fine lord’s wife.” Off came the glasses again. But instead of glaring at Kate, he glanced at Harcroft.

“How odd,” he said. “Abduction of a wife? By another woman? I have only ever seen the case brought against other men.” He glanced back at Kate.

“But there is nothing in the law preventing its application to a woman, is there?” Harcroft spoke for the first time, his voice soothing. “You heard the evidence for the warrant, Your Worship. Must I repeat it all now, or can we dispense with the formalities?”

“He claimed to have evidence that I forcibly abducted his wife?” Kate said. “He’s lying.”

“Abduction by persuasion, at a minimum.” Harcroft didn’t look at Kate as he spoke. “A wife, of course, has no power to consent to leave her husband without his permission.”

Ned looked down at the hand still restraining him, and then slowly, gingerly, he pulled his sleeve from the sergeant’s grasp. He’d never given it much thought, but what Harcroft said was likely true. And if that was the case…Harcroft might in fact have hit on a crime Kate had actually committed.