She gasped at the implications.
“Fortunately fate stepped in and brought me home. It hurt to find you in servitude, Cat, but I was so certain of my own future that the logical solution never dawned on me. When I realized that your uncle had lied about your dowry, I decided to investigate, but not until he spirited you off to Braxton Manor did I begin to suspect a larger deceit. When I found your father’s will, I could have strangled the man. But there was no time if I was to save you from his plots. I did what was necessary to thwart him, but without giving any real thought to either your feelings or my own. I should at least have explained.”
“It is done, Damon,” she said on a long sigh. “It would have been better if I had known about it earlier, but we cannot go back.”
“But we can go forward,” he said, kneeling before her chair to look deeply into her eyes. “I never loved Hermione, and after the way she has treated you, I cannot even like her. She has publicly admitted her lies, by the way, and will not trouble you again.”
Catherine looked up in surprise. “How did that happen?”
“Lord James heard her talking with you at Lady Cunningham’s ball. They are betrothed now.”
“Wonderful!” Her radiant smile caught his breath, eliminating another worry. “He truly cares for her.”
“And she for him. They would have been betrothed last Christmas if I hadn’t interfered – another lapse in judgment to lay at my door. But enough of Lady Hermione. Your reputation is intact – too many people understand Sidney to lend credence to his words – so the next time you venture into London, you will find yourself the darling of the
ton.
Though just out of curiosity, what
were
you doing in the Dark Walk with Rathbone?”
“He rescued me from a lecherous drunk.” She explained.
“One more crime to set to my account.” He sighed. “Thank God he was on hand to help you. How will I ever atone for all my misdeeds?”
“I wish you would cease allowing a misplaced promise to rule your life, Damon. Peter is dead. Start thinking and acting for yourself.”
“I do, but you have much to forgive, Cat,” he insisted. “Even when I was trying to help you, my actions usually hurt you. It is true that Peter demanded that I look after you, claiming that his own peace of mind was threatened unless I agreed. It was the night before Vimeiro. Maybe he had some presentiment of the disaster that would befall, for he was frantic about your future. I only mentioned it to Jack because it was something he would understand, and I had not yet examined my own motives for marrying you. But that vow was a meaningless formality for me, Cat. I would have done it even if he had demanded otherwise.”
“Why?” Her heart was pounding so high in her throat that she could barely force the single word out.
His fingers lightly caressed her cheek. “I love you, Catherine Anne Braxton Fairbourne. I loved you even before I left for Portugal, though I did not admit it until recently. My feelings have not been brotherly for a very long time.”
She laughed. “Good, for mine are not even remotely sisterly. I love you, Damon.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, a deep kiss of love and tenderness and growing passion. There was nothing brotherly about the way his groin tightened with painful, urgent need. And there was nothing sisterly in the way she arched into his embrace or in the moans that started deep in her throat.
Catherine’s fear and anger floated away as his hands caressed her body. Every touch ignited heat and longing. This was a dream that had haunted her nights for years, she realized as his fingers untied the tapes of her gown and slipped it off one shoulder. His lips trailed downward until they reached her newly bared breast. She sighed and threaded her hands into his hair, pulling him closer.
This was hardly the ideal place to make love to his wife for the first time, Damon admitted dizzily as he slid her gown off and laid her gently on the carpet. But he could not stop. She loved him. Her words swept away remorse and anger. He felt her fingers sliding across his back and realized that she had pulled his shirt loose. Too bad the door was unlocked, he noted as he tossed his clothes aside. It was his last coherent thought for a very long time.
He was home at last, home where he had always belonged. And Catherine was with him, her fingers brushing away the lingering pain of war, her kisses banishing years of guilt, and her sighs cracking the shell that had protected him from feeling anything for so long. Happiness bubbled through those cracks – and love, excitement, heat, light, and more – in a growing eruption of emotion that finally burst into a cataclysm of sparks.
Catherine sighed with pleasure, surrendering to Damon’s touch. His hands erased the pain of his attentions to Hermione, confirming with each tender stroke that she was loved and cherished. His knowing lips created sensations she had never imagined, building heat and intimacy. He truly loved her. She could see it in his tawny gaze, feel it in his every touch, hear it in the words he murmured between breaths that grew shorter and more frenzied with her every caress. There would be time later to hear about the scars he bore on his back and thigh. For now the time for thinking was past. The feelings he inspired spiraled out of control in a way that would have terrified her if he had not been Damon. Higher and higher she soared before her spirit exploded into a million pieces and the world went black.
She opened her eyes and blinked. She had never dreamed that making love could be so earth-shattering. Damon smiled and pulled her closer. “I love you, Cat,” he whispered.
“A dream come true,” she murmured in reply. He raised a questioning brow. “I fell in love with you the summer I was fourteen.”
“The year we had to put Black Satin down. I never suspected. How I wish I had come home after the accident.”
“We cannot remake the past, love. We can only let it go.”
“Profound and true. But first, what was Henry babbling about? I know you were fibbing.” He chuckled. “Even by pushing poor Barney unmercifully, you could not have got here much before sunset last night.”
She laughed and scrambled to her feet, unembarrassed by her state of undress. A moment later she dropped her discovery into Damon’s equally naked lap.
He stared at the cache in wonder. “My God! This is every shilling he stole from you!”
“He always was a pinchpenny, which made it hard to believe he could have wasted so much. It is what I meant when I told Sidney that Henry was about to abandon them. He intended to use my inheritance to build a new life for himself. Siphoning it into a different identity was his insurance against my unlikely marriage. His only mistake was in keeping everything at the manor.” She joined him on the floor and unself-consciously snuggled into his embrace.
“The irony is that he could so easily have got away with it. If he had spent even a fraction of the cash on bringing you out, no one would have questioned him.”
“Exactly. I suppose that was his real mistake. He was too clutch-fisted to let even a farthing slide through his fingers. And so he forfeited everything.”
“I’m glad. I would have lost you if he had chosen otherwise.” He pulled her close for another heady embrace. The impropriety of place and time finally prompted him to set her gently aside. Wiggins would soon summon them to luncheon.
“There is another victim of your uncle’s greed,” he observed, exchanging her chemise for his socks.
“Who?”
“Sidney.”
She nearly exploded, but the look in his eyes stopped her. “He made his choice,” she reminded him. “Can you really feel sorry for him after he tried to kill you?”
“You know how easily he can be manipulated. His father played him like a harp. And desperation does funny things to people. I have been checking his finances. He is at least ten thousand pounds in debt, but much of it arose from ignorance rather than profligacy. His so-called friends lured him into several unwise investment schemes. His only goal was to augment a woefully inadequate allowance so he could stay in London. And he appears chastened after today’s revelations.”
“So you want to pay his debts,” she observed with a sigh, retrieving his cravat from the desktop.
“Yes, and I think we should give him enough to set Braxton Manor to rights. Then he is on his own.”
Catherine frowned, but finally nodded. “Doing so will keep all this from becoming public. But he won’t be grateful, Damon. And I doubt he will suddenly become an upstanding gentleman. He is easily led, and his friends are excellent leaders unburdened by noble impulses.”
“I know, but whatever pitfalls he encounters in the future will be entirely his own doing. And he is now Lord Braxton. Neither your father nor Peter would have liked to see the holder of the title fleeing England to escape his creditors.”
“All right. Living with his mother and sisters will be penance enough.”
“Such a sensible wife I have,” he murmured, nibbling on her ear while he reached for his shirt.
“Are you still determined to sell Ridgway?” she asked, stroking down his still-bare chest with one finger and watching in fascination as his manhood stirred to life.
“What would you prefer?”
“It might make a wonderful home for your heir once he marries – close enough to keep an eye on him, yet allowing him to manage an estate. But if you truly cannot stand the memories, I will understand.”
“They no longer bother me. I have made my peace with Peter. It was not he who was haunting me, but my own conscience.”
“Good. Then you must realize that you and Peter were not really opposites. Just as you embody the emotional nature that Peter never bothered to control, he inherited a good deal of sense. He just didn’t use it, preferring to abdicate responsibility for his actions to you.”
“What is the point?”
“If Peter was really the other half of your soul, he is not dead. He merely moved into his other body.”
“More likely he moved into yours.”
She raised a questioning brow.
“You offer the same stability and companionship I got from Peter – and so much more.” He grinned. “Either way, I am now complete.”
“Perfect, in fact.”
Her smile drove all thought of Wiggins from his mind. Tossing his shirt aside, Damon pulled his wife closer, proving that even perfection was capable of improvement.
Copyright © 1997 by Susan Ann Pace
Originally published by Signet Regency (0451191595)
Electronically published in 2006 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.