Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Chapter 33
Present Day
Henry waited for my answer. The rooks were quiet. I could smell the hint of rain in the night air. Misery consumed me. I couldn’t answer him. I could not reveal the secrets of that night to him, no matter what the cost. I shook my head. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
He leaned down, looking into my face, his grey eyes tight with some strong emotion I couldn’t name. “I need to know.”
I bit my lip and tried to banish the smell of peonies from my mind. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He moved away from me suddenly and walked across the tower, pausing at the opposite wall before turning around. “Even if it means losing out on your trip to India?”
My refusal to answer might cost me my trip to India. But more importantly—more importantly? Yes, I really did just think that—it might cost me what I now had with Henry—this closeness, this transparency, this companionship.
I nodded, swallowing hard. “If it comes to that, yes. Even if it means that, I will not answer that question.”
He walked back to me, more slowly this time, and said, “That is the only thing I want to know. Please.” His voice was rough. “Please don’t fly away to some godforsaken country and leave me wondering for the rest of my life.”
I looked away and felt very, very small when I said, “I am sorry, Henry.”
We stood there in silence for a long moment, until finally Henry sighed and said, “What are we going to do now?”
“We could ... renegotiate, I suppose.” I had no hope—I deserved no leniency. But I tried anyway. “I could give you something in return for your last proposal. Something you want just as much as that secret.”
He looked into my eyes. The light shifted, his gaze dropped, and he was suddenly looking at my mouth. “A kiss,” he said in a low voice.
A shiver rippled over my skin. Everywhere. “You are not serious.”
“Am I not?” His voice held a note of teasing but something else as well. A husky, tantalizing note that sent shivers through me again.
The wind blew harder, sending another chill through me, and then suddenly, without warning, cold rain fell from the sky. It came all at once, in a sheet of icy needles that made me gasp with surprise.
Henry grabbed my hand, and we ran together across the tower. I took hold of the lantern but dropped it in my haste, extinguishing the flame. The tower was plunged in darkness, and we were suddenly blind. Henry stopped running, and I collided with him. He caught me and pulled me close to him and said in my ear, over the sound of the pounding rain, “Stay close. Let me lead the way. I don’t want you falling through the trapdoor.”
“All right,” I finally breathed.
“Wait a minute while my eyes adjust,” he murmured. His arm was strong around my waist, his hand pressed against the small of my back, and I leaned into him while the rain drenched us and my heart pounded and my mind screamed at me to do something—to find a way to fix what was broken between us so that I would never have to leave him. But there was no fixing this. I knew that. So I closed my eyes and breathed in the dusky smell of rain on heather and let my heart break a little more.
All too soon he moved away from me. His hand trailed down my arm until it encircled my wrist. I moved my hand to grasp his, and let him pull me forward until we stood at the edge of the trapdoor. The steps were slick with rain and we moved slowly down the steep, winding staircase.
We paused in the tunnel for a moment, catching our breaths, and I pushed back strands of dripping wet hair. Henry said, “You’ll catch cold if we don’t hurry. Come on.” He kept my hand in his and I followed him through the dark tunnel that led under the moors. And I realized that I would follow him anywhere, if it were possible.
I shivered, my teeth chattering, as the cold increased and my wet clothes clung to me. We exited the secret passageway carefully, with Henry looking to see if anyone was in the bird room or out in the hall before leading me out. He picked up the candle he had left burning and we hurried up the stairs to the west wing, dripping cold rain the whole way. And finally we were in the hall leading to my bedroom. Henry pulled me to a stop outside my bedroom door, his hand warm around mine. He set the candle on the windowsill where we had talked my first night there. He turned to me, his wet hair reminding me of the day he had rescued me from the river. His eyes were as dark as the storm clouds outside, and I could see his chest rise and fall with his breathing, his wet shirt clinging to his shoulders and chest and arms.
I swallowed and stepped away from him, nervousness racing through me, spreading fire through my veins. We were not finished with our bargain. Henry must have had the same thought, because his mouth lifted in something halfway between a smirk and a smile and he said, “About that kiss ...”
I stepped back until my back was against the wall next to my bedroom. “You were not serious,” I said, only half-believing my words. But Henry kept coming, until he stood right in front of me. He rested his hand on the wall above my head. I licked my lips, my heart racing with nervousness. I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding low and husky and not at all the mood I intended.
I could not deny how close we stood—how the water from his hair dripped onto my cheek. But I was terrified. We had never crossed this line. And then his other hand touched my waist. It burned there, through the fabric of my gown. I pressed my palms against the wall at my back, trying to slow my breathing. It was unnaturally fast. So was my pulse. And I worried that Henry would hear it and know that he did this to me. I pressed my hands harder against the wall, fighting the urge to grab him.
“I was very serious,” he whispered. His hand tightened on my waist. My hands left the wall and found the lapels of his coat. I did not mean to grab him—not like that—but my hands did not consult me. They bunched the fabric of his coat and dragged him closer. And the time for thinking was gone. We had balanced on this precipice for far too long. And now we were going to fall. I knew it, with a breathless certainty I could not deny.
His hand slid from the wall and curved around my neck, softly, surely, as if he had imagined this a thousand times, and—
A sudden light pierced the darkness of the hall. I started with surprise, and so did Henry. I pushed him away and looked toward the source of the light. Someone was carrying a candle and walking toward us from the other end of the hall. I peered harder at the figure. The flickering candlelight illuminated Maria’s face. I swore under my breath.
My position suddenly became shockingly clear to me. I was standing outside my bedchamber in the middle of the night with a man, both of us dripping wet, and I had almost just kissed him. The fact that it was Henry only made it worse. I could have been Eleanor, and this could have been Brighton all over again.
I reached for the door handle and dread fell through me. My bedroom door was wide open. “You should go,” I whispered. “Before she sees us.”
He hesitated, but I was already hurrying inside my bedroom. I collided with something soft not two paces inside the room.
I heard a muffled oof and then I was sprawled on the floor and Mama was whispering for me to get off her. Then Maria was standing there with her candle, looking down at us.
“What is going on?” she asked. She held her candle toward us, and her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you all wet, Kitty? And why are you on top of Mama?”
I struggled to get up but my wet skirts wrapped around my legs, tripping me and making me fall again. Mama shoved me off her and stood, grabbing the candle from Maria’s hand. She stepped over me and lit the other candles in the room, and by the time I was on my feet, there was plenty of light by which to see the happy look of triumph on Mama’s face.
“He must marry you. He must!” She cackled with delight and paced in front of me where I sat in acute misery on my bed, getting everything wet but not caring.
“No, he mustn’t. Nothing happened between us. He didn’t even kiss me.”
“It hardly matters, my dear, whether your lips touched or not. I saw you two.” She laughed again. My face burned with embarrassment. “You were caught sneaking around with him, alone, at night, and you were seen in an embrace.” She laughed again and clapped her hand like a little girl. “Oh, won’t his mother throw a fit! But, Kitty, this is wonderful news! Wonderful! Why, you will be better matched than Eleanor, and I can lord it over his mother that you will be mistress of this place.”
I groaned. “No, Mama. It will not be like that. He was just—he was just teasing me, saying that I owed him a kiss for the proposal, but nothing happened.”
She stopped pacing and looked at me sharply. “What proposal?”
I fell back on her bed and covered my eyes with both hands. “He is the one who proposed to me, Mama. He did it as a favor, so that I could go to India. But nothing inappropriate happened between us. I swear! He was a perfect gentleman every other time.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You mean to tell me that you have sneaked around with him alone at night more than once since you arrived?”
I shook my head, hating myself for what I had just revealed. “Yes,” I muttered miserably.
She grinned and clapped her hands and laughed with raucous triumph. “You are more cunning than Eleanor. I declare, I never expected this from you, Kitty. He will be forced to marry you.”
I sat up, panicked, and tears poured from me. “No, Mama. That cannot happen. I cannot force Henry to marry me. I cannot do this!”
She waved away my words with a dismissive motion. “A young lady has to use every advantage at her disposal to secure a good future for herself.”
“I won’t do it!” I yelled, getting off the bed. She jumped, startled. “I won’t entrap him, I won’t have him hate me for the rest of my life, I won’t watch his respect for me die, and I won’t turn my attention to other men! I won’t, Mama! I will not become like you and watch Henry become like Papa! I can’t stand the thought.” I sobbed and then yelled, “I would rather marry that disgusting Mr. Cooper than be forced to marry Henry Delafield!”
My voice rang in the sudden silence. Maria’s eyes had gone huge. She stared at something over my shoulder. I turned my head and saw Henry standing outside the open door of my bedroom.
He held my gaze for a long moment before turning and walking away.
“Oh, dear,” Maria said. “I think he heard you.”
I sat down heavily on the bed. It was done, then. It was finally done. We had fallen off a precipice, and there was no way to climb back up.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mama said, shutting the door firmly. “We will still force him to marry you.”
I shook my head. “It won’t work, Mama. He will lose Blackmoore if he marries me. Mrs. Delafield had it written in her father’s will. He will be penniless.”
She did not so much as pause at my announcement. “Nonsense. Wills can always be changed, and the grandfather is still alive. We’ll take care of everything tomorrow. You will go and speak to his grandfather and convince him to change the will.”
“No,” I whimpered, but the fight had left me when I saw the look on Henry’s face.
“Oh, I cannot wait to visit you here once you are mistress of Blackmoore! How she will hate it! To have me here, in her own childhood home, and able to do as I like. And she will not be able to do anything to stop me! Ha ha! I should like to see her try, once you are married. Will she be able to snub me then? No! No one will snub me once you are Mrs. Henry Delafield. Ha ha! This is the ultimate victory, Kitty! I cannot believe you have pulled this off!” She leaned toward me, grasped my face in her hand, and planted a kiss on my wet hair. “How I have misjudged you!”
I shook my head, over and over. “No, Mama. I will not do this. I will not.” I said it over and over until she finally stopped laughing and looked at me clearly.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, as if to erase the kiss she had bestowed. “You will not?”
Maria lay back on the pillow. “Don’t be a dolt, Kitty. Of course you must see it through. You have gone too far to turn back now.”
“No.” My voice was weak. “I can undo this. I can ...”
Mama grabbed my face again, but there was nothing gentle in her touch. She stared into my eyes, her own the color of that rusted trap I had found in the woods with the wounded rabbit caught in its teeth. “Answer me this, Kitty: did you fulfill your part of our bargain? Did you receive three proposals?”
I realized that Henry had not proposed tonight. The rain had kept us from finishing our bargain. “No,” I whispered.
“Then, according to the bargain we made, you have to do whatever I want. Do you remember that, my dear?”
I fell back on the bed and covered my streaming eyes with my hands. “I won’t. I won’t do it, Mama.”
“You made the bargain, Kitty. And now you must live with the consequences. Remember—remember what we agreed upon. Remember what you told me. You told me you never changed your mind.”
I did remember saying that. I had thought it was true at the time. But now I was convinced that I had never been as wrong about anything as I had been about myself.
“You will speak to his grandfather tomorrow.” She planted her fists on her hips and glared at me. She was powerful and manipulative, and I was trapped, trapped, trapped. “What do you think of that plan, Kitty?”
“Kate,” I whispered. “My name is Kate.”