LITMIR.BIZ

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a bed with him every night as his wife, and her heart squeezed so hard she couldn’t breathe. No limpstaff, he.

      “Katherine, don’t be a fool!” Phil cried, following. “If not him, then who? Good God, you are thinking of Lord Deal.”

      She could not belong to James and still belong to herself, and one captivity in a lifetime was enough. Lord Deal was someone she could control. “The union makes sense.”

      “For a woman of mature years who isn’t already in love with another man! You cannot possibly believe this will make you happy. For heaven’s sake, Katherine—” Something in the street caught her attention. “Someone’s coming to the door.” A figure in a gray woolen cloak was painstakingly making its way up the walk below. “Katherine, I think it’s Millicent!”

      Katherine recognized her the moment the words left Phil’s mouth. She spun away and strode out of the dressing room with Phil in her wake. For Millie to have returned here after the way she left meant something must have gone very badly. A dozen possibilities hurtled through her mind as she hurried down the main staircase as quickly as damnable fashion would allow, leaving the topic of her folly with James behind. They had reached the main landing when Dodd led Millicent into the foyer, where she pushed her hood onto her shoulders and clutched Dodd’s arm, nearly collapsing against him.

      “Millicent!” Katherine called out. She ran forward, already seeing the dark bruises covering Millicent’s face. One side of her face was puffy, giving her a grotesquely asymmetrical appearance. “Who did this?” A deep fury rose up, making her words come out like barks.

      “Gavin,” Millicent breathed through a lip that was swollen and cracked.

      Gavin, her brother. The physician. If he were here, she would put Gavin beyond any physician’s help. “Get two footmen to carry her upstairs,” Katherine ordered. “Quickly. Call for a doctor and ring for Mrs. Hibbard. Have her bring soup and a compress.”

      “Right away, your ladyship.” Dodd hurried away, and within moments two young men from the mews rushed into the foyer. Upstairs, Katherine directed them to the room Millicent had occupied before she’d left, and by the time they laid her across it she had lost consciousness.

      Immediately Katherine began pulling at Millicent’s clothes. “I will kill him.”

      “We’ll do it together,” Phil said, moving in to help. There were more bruises on Millie’s arms and chest, and Katherine heard Phil breathe a prayer.

      “I should have stopped her,” Katherine said.

      Phil tugged at a sleeve, freeing Millie’s arm. “You know better than to think you could have, stubborn as she is.”

      “I could have ordered her to stay.”

      “And she would have defied you. We’re not on the ship anymore.”

      And Millicent would scarce have listened to her even if they had been. But the bruises and cuts were horrible, and the blood— “Perhaps she would have been better off in Malta,” Katherine said in despair.

      “Now you’re being ridiculous. Even if she was admitted to that school in disguise, it would take nothing more than a man determined to avail himself of what he thought was some fresh, male flesh to discover the truth, and then she would be out. She would have fallen into prostitution within the week.” Phil peeled away one stocking, then the other, revealing more bruises on Millie’s legs. “The bastard ought to be skinned alive and hung on a pole.”

      Mrs. Hibbard whisked into the room followed by a maid who set down a tray with a teapot, soup tureen, cups and bowls. The maid left, and Mrs. Hibbard bustled to the bed. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing, this. I’ve got compresses, but little good they’ll do for all this. Lord above.” Her soft, round face was pinched and angry. “Whoever done this ought to have twice as much done to him.” She laid a compress across Millie’s black eye and another across a nasty bruise on her shoulder, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Millicent would need a compress for her entire body. “I’ll go make up some more,” Mrs. Hibbard said, shaking her head. “Let’s hope the doctor gets here right quick.”

      A hole opened up in Katherine’s chest as she stared at Millicent’s battered body. “I’ll never let her out of my sight again.”

      “She’ll be delighted to hear that, I’m sure. She’s a grown woman, Katherine.”

      “She’s not yet twenty.” And her time aboard the Possession may have sturdied up her muscles, but she was still short, and slightly built, and more delicate than a country physician’s daughter should be.

      “Which is plenty old enough to be acquainted with the ways of the world,” Phil pointed out. “She’s not as delicate as she looks, Katherine. You know that. She’s got the spirit of ten sailors.”

      “Which didn’t save her from this.”

      “But it will.” Phil reached for Katherine’s hand. “She’ll survive this. I know she will.”

       CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

      HE’D FORGOTTEN THE preservative.

      At home in his bedchamber, James stood with his waistcoat in one hand and the preservative—pristine and unused—in the other. What utter stupidity to have thought he could touch Katherine and maintain enough coherence to take precautions. She’d been pure intoxication from the moment he’d set eyes on her.

      Hell and damnation! At this very moment, his child might be growing in her womb. Enraged, he flung the preservative across the chamber. It hit the wall with a soft thwack and fell to the floor.

      And even his own stupidity didn’t keep him from growing hard—again—at the memory of being inside her.

      His “solution” had been entirely, completely illusory. Rather than slaking his thirst and clearing his head, making love to her in that coach only made him want her more. He had buried himself inside her, possessed her as completely as was physically possible, and still he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted her naked. Here. On his bed, without stays and hoops and yards of fabric.

      Instead, within the hour he would see her at this bloody rout Lady Effy was giving, where he would smile politely and make conversation with the very devils who dreamed of foraging inside her skirts exactly as he had. It was not to be tolerated.

      He paced the length of the chamber, restless and unsated. There was a chance she hadn’t conceived. His thoughts strayed into the queasy territory of a woman’s monthly flow, and he sat on the edge of the bed. Even if she had, within weeks she would be married to Deal. He leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.

      Marry me, Katherine. The whisper of his own words taunted him.

      Good God—what had he been thinking? The answer, of course, was that he hadn’t been. Thinking. He’d been rutting like a stallion in heat. Katherine was everything he didn’t want in a wife. She was combative where he wanted peaceful, commanding where he wanted submissive, fiery where he wanted mild.

      He got up and snatched the preservative off the floor and tossed it into the drawer in his dressing table. He should be thanking every bloody star in the sky that she’d rejected his reckless proposal.

      In the looking glass, the man who had so blithely anticipated resolution before mocked him now. You’ll have a high time lying awake nights while Lord Deal tries to sink his half-wilted cock into that tight, wet heat. He slammed the drawer shut and glared at himself. The staff in his breeches wasn’t the only idiot in this bedchamber.

      Was that it, then? A hasty farewell as he buttoned his breeches and stepped out of her coach two streets away to avoid being seen? Sod it all, he’d made a bloody mess of things. He needed to talk to her.

      About what? his reflection sneered. Arranging another tryst before she becomes Lady Deal?

      About...them.

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