And perhaps then he would be free of her, too.
When he sat with this notion, he knew both profound relief and a terrible dark grief. But he didn’t suppose he would ever again be allowed to feel an unfettered emotion. He had felt too many things in one lifetime; there was not a single pain that didn’t touch the edge of a joy, and vice versa.
And so. He needed to tell her.
His chest felt nearly caved in with this realization. But like he’d told her, people should be able to do hard things. And he could do this, too.
She’d apologized to young Lord Holroyd for missing the dance, saying she’d been indisposed, and she’d promised him a dance at the next assembly. He had countered by inviting her on a ride inhis high-flyer. And truthfully, she’d always wanted to ride in a high-flyer.
He’d been so kind.You do look flushed, he’d said worriedlyAlmost feverish.He’d brought her a lemonade.
She thought the taste of lemonade would, for the rest of her life, remind her of the first time she held a man’s rhymes-with-clock in her fist.
She couldn’t believe she’d found her way back to the ballroom from Kirke’s arms, let alone danced even one more dance. She was amazed that no one seemed able to tell that she’d just silently screamed her first release into Lord Kirke’s coat, and that he had spilled on her fingers. That she—Catherine Keating—had made the cords of his neck go taut from enduring an almost annihilating sort of pleasure.
She had come to London for new experiences, and this was her reward. Confirmation of her sensual power. Racking, unimaginable bliss. A few uncomfortable answers.
She understoodveryclearly now how powerful a motivating force lust could be. And how it might have nothing at all to do with love.
She’d wondered, as she twirled and clapped in a reel, if she should think of herself as one of the initiated. If what she’d just experienced was what Lady Hackworth had meant when she’d said she’d heard Lord Kirke was “good.” She would not quibble with that. How many of his former lovers roamed the ballroom? He’d said there weren’t many. She had little reason to believe him, but she did.
She thought of the hidden worlds—of lovers and mistresses, of unhappy marriages and secret affairs—braided through the visible ones. Contrasted with thehappy ignorance of young men and young women participating in their first season.
Still, if she’d been able to choose only one moment to live again and again for the rest of her life, she thought she might choose this one: the smell of his coat, the sound of his voice murmuringsweetheart, his lips soft on her brow, his chest swaying against hers with their settling breathing. The moonlight pouring down on their sated bodies.
She hadn’t seen Lord Kirke for the rest of the evening.
But she’d heard him, later, when she was in bed.
It sounded as though he’d thrown something across his room.
It was tradition for the cream of London to stay in darkened rooms, cool cloths draped over their pounding heads, until well past noon the day after the Shillingford ball.
But Catherine awoke early and sober, after struggling to fall asleep. Her body was alive to too many realizations, both of the physical and existential sort. She drank several cups of healing coffee with sugar and devoured her morning scone.
And then she took a book—The Ghost in the Attic, because she wanted to see how it would end—out to visit the little garden in front of The Grand Palace on the Thames. She had settled onto the bench in the shelter of white blossoms when she heard the little click of the gate latch lifting.
She looked up swiftly.
It was Lord Kirke.
She stood at once. Heart in her throat. She had not expected to see him so soon, and she could feel the inevitable blush moving into her cheeks.
She examined his face.
From the looks of things, he hadn’t slept particularly well, either. Those shadows were back beneath his eyes.
“Good morning,” he said. “If I’m not intruding, Catherine, may I have a word?”
The way he said her name, with those lovely “r’s,” made the back of her neck buzz with sensual pleasure.
“Of course. Do you want to...” She gestured to the bench.
There was a bench opposite, but he sat alongside her, at as genteel of a distance as the length of the bench would allow.
“How are you this morning?” he asked after a moment.
The question didn’t sound like a formality—it sounded like the sort of thing one would ask in the aftermath of a serious event, a catastrophe—so she gave it some proper thought.