“I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Would you marry me, North?”
He stared down at her, pale now and silent and very still.
“I’m probably very rich.”
r /> He still said nothing, merely looked at her, even more silent if that were possible.
“Do you find me so very unacceptable?”
He leaned down and kissed her. In an instant, she was against him, her arms around his back, holding herself tightly to him, on her tiptoes now, her mouth wild on his. “Don’t stop,” she said into his mouth, “please, North, don’t stop. It feels so very nice.”
“Nice?” he said, and kept kissing her. “Just nice?” He didn’t want to, but his hands were stroking down her back, lower and lower until he cupped her buttocks and lifted her tightly against him. She froze against him, then he felt her shock disappear and now she was interested, feeling things she’d never felt before in her young life, and wanting more. Good Lord, she was full of passion, but she was innocent and now here he was, seducing her in her own home, his hands wild on her bottom, and he knew he had to stop. He didn’t want to marry, even Caroline, even this girl he wanted more than he’d ever wanted a female. But that was lust, honest lust, and he could deal with that, but he couldn’t deal with marriage. Not yet, not ever, probably, at least he couldn’t deal with it the way his ancestors had done, beginning with his great-grandfather, and there were too many memories of his father’s rage and anger, so clear in his mind right this instant, for the rages had begun when he’d been just a small boy, becoming more bitter and uglier as North had grown older, fanned by his grandfather, who should have died years before he actually did because he was such a miserable old bastard. It had never stopped.
Then he felt her warm tongue touching his and thought he would spill his seed at that very moment.
He grabbed her arms and pulled them back. “No,” he said, gasping for breath. “No, dammit. This has got to stop, Caroline. I don’t want to marry you. I just want to bed you and that can’t be. You’re a lady, and when I manage to remember, I’m a gentleman. I’ll take care of my lust with someone else, but not you, never you. I’ll never shame you, Caroline, even though when I touch you I want to fling you to the floor and pull up your skirts and come down over you… Jesus, I’ve got to stop this. You’re so bloody innocent and you haven’t the faintest notion of what I’m even talking about.
“But dear God, I want to touch you and kiss you, every inch of you, in that soft crook behind your knees; I want to taste the soft flesh of your inner thighs. Ah, and to kiss your belly and lower, tasting you and feeling you quiver against my mouth, your thighs tightening, your hips lifting in my hands. Yes, I want all of that until you’re screaming with need, but you don’t even understand what I’m feeling, do you? Ah, the joys of innocence. You feel desire, but you don’t know, Caroline, you can’t know, what it’s like for a man to want a woman, what it’s like to know that you’re soft and willing and would let me come into you. No, you can’t begin to understand that. You don’t even know what a man looks like, do you, Caroline? No, of course you don’t. Well, we’re not beautiful and white and soft like you. We’re all hairy and hard and damned frightening when we want a woman because our sex… No, dammit, forget I said that, forget that’s even a part of it. And no, I won’t kiss you again, so close your damned mouth and keep your tongue behind your teeth. God, women, even ones as innocent as you are, know instinctively how to drive a man wild with lust. Just look at you, your lips apart, and I can see your tongue.
“Damnation, don’t look at me like that. Stay away from me. I’m close to the edge, very close.”
He gave her one last furious look, shook his head at himself, and strode out of the drawing room. Again, he slammed the door behind him.
“Well,” she’d said to the empty room, “he does appear to feel strongly about this. I don’t believe he’s ever spoken so many words together since I’ve known him. Yes, North is a passionate man. And that is a good thing, I think.”
She hadn’t slept well, for he was there, the taste of him distant yet still heady in her mouth, the heat from his body still warming her, all of her, and that warmth was still with her, and the things he’d said. She tried to imagine each action and knew it wouldn’t be as strange and embarrassing as it sounded, no, it would be magic with him. What had he meant when he’d said he’d frighten her, something about his sex? She sincerely hoped she’d find out.
She shook her head now, clicked Regina forward, and wondered if North would persist in this seemingly generational dislike of marriage. But his father had married, as had his grandfather and as had his great-grandfather. None of it made any sense.
Where was North’s mother? Had she died birthing him?
16
OH DEAR, SHE’D forgotten all about Dr. Treath coming to see her and her new charges. “You say that Miss Treath had tea with the ladies, Mrs. Trebaw?”
“Yes, Miss Caroline. She stayed on a bit after Dr. Treath gave each of them a look over. A very nice lady is Bess Treath. Never sharp or nasty or gossipy, if you know what I mean, no matter how lowborn or highborn the patient is. Take our girls here, she was just as nice as can be. No turning up her nose; just like her brother in that respect. Never married, but seems content enough taking care of her brother, particularly after his young wife died so many years ago.”
“I didn’t know Dr. Treath had been married before.”
“Oh yes, to a lovely young girl from St. Ives who died in childbed not a year after they were married. Ah well, there’s no promise our lives will go well or even continue, is there?”
“No,” Caroline said, “there isn’t.”
“One must act and not dither about. That’s what I always told Mr. Trebaw, the dear man who never did act, just dithered and talked about acting, until he just up and died some seven years ago.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Trebaw.”
“It’s been a long time now, Miss Caroline, a very long time. But don’t you forget now, don’t waste your days dithering. Life is more uncertain than a cup of milk that’s sat on the windowsill in the afternoon sun.”
“You’re right,” Caroline said. “Dear heavens, you’re absolutely right.”
“I told the same thing to your aunt Eleanor. I do believe soon after that she decided she was going to marry Dr. Treath. Poor dear lady.”
Caroline just stared at her. “But he never said anything about proposing to her.”
“I don’t suppose he had the chance, oh, but he wanted to marry her, it was plain as a pikestaff for all to see. No one had a doubt about it in the world. Your poor aunt was killed soon after. Poor lady, so very fun she was and full of high spirits, never caring if the day was dreary or rainy, no, she gave life everything she had. Poor lady.”