She held out a hand. “We’ll shake.”
Henry took her hand and squeezed it. “Send word when you can get away to go to the village.”
“I’ll come by the dower house tomorrow around one. Will you be there?”
Where else did he have to go? “I’ll be waiting for you.”
She shook her head. “It must look as though I have come to visit your mother. You can interrupt my visit with the duchess.”
“Why the subterfuge?”
“I don’t want it to get back to my servants, and thus my father, that I went to visit you.”
“Of course. Good thinking.” Henry probably should have thought it silly for them to sneak about as though they were sixteen and plotting to steal a kiss behind the dairy shed. But for some reason, the secrecy made it all that much more exciting.
And when Katie led him through the dark country house and to the front door, Henry had to resist the urge to pull her close and kiss her again. Instead, he watched as she closed the door in his face. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to think about those soft lips all the way back to the dower house.
Chapter Nine
Katie leaned againstthe closed door and let out a shaky breath. She didn’t know how she had managed not to melt into a puddle before, but now she allowed herself to sink to the floor of the foyer and just lie on the cool marble.
She hadkissedthe Duke of Carlisle. She had touched her tongue to the enemy of her father.
And she’d liked it.
Shelikedhim.
Despite the fact that she didn’t want to like Henry Lewis for any number of reasons—her father hated him, he was an inveterate gambler, and he had sorely neglected his tenants—she liked him very much. It seemed difficultnotto like the man.
She’d known he would try to sneak into her room again, and she’d tied the latch shut and waited up until she heard it rattle. She’d had every intention of telling him to climb right back down again. But then he almost fell, and she’d seen real fear in his eyes.
She’d been scared as well. When she embraced him, it had been as much to calm her own nerves as comfort him.
But she hadn’t expected to enjoy the embrace. She hadn’t expected to like it when his arms went around her. She hadn’t anticipated how it would feel when she was pressed against him, and his muscles were thick and hard under her fingertips. Katie hadn’t ever imagined she would be that close to a man not arelative. She hadn’t thought it possible any man would look at her with the desire she’d seen in Carlisle’s gaze.
No man had looked at her like that before, but she instinctively knew desire when she saw it. Amazingly, Carlisle didn’t seem bothered by her birthmark. He’d as much as called her attractive.
Come to think of it, no one here at Carlisle Hall had seemed bothered by her birthmark. Initially, she could tell their gazes lingered on it, but now no one looked twice. Why had she believed, all of her life, that people would be so put off by her mark and think her ugly? Why had she allowed her father to convince her of that?
Still, Katie thought as she rose and made her way back to her chamber, there were those people who would judge her and snigger at her and even think she was marked by the devil. One would hope in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fourteen, people would be more intelligent than that, but Katie knew too many people to be that naïve.
Recent events did give her hope that her future might not be as bleak and lonely as she had always assumed. If a man like the Duke of Carlisle, who could surely have his pick of many beautiful women, wanted her, then perhaps another man might. Perhaps she might one day be a wife or have children or travel to Paris and paint by the Seine.
Well, maybe that dream was a bridge too far. But Henry Lewis had opened up a world of possibilities to her, not the least of which was that she very much enjoyed kissing. She wouldn’t mind kissing a man again. She wouldn’t mind kissing Carlisle again, though she’d better not.
Even if Carlisle was a gentleman tonight, she knew better than to allow a man too many liberties, especially when those liberties were ones she might enjoy so much that she didn’tobject. If her body’s reaction tonight was any indication, she needed to stay as far from Carlisle as possible.
Which would have been easy if she weren’t meeting him tomorrow.
Still, they’d not be alone. What could happen? Surely, there wouldn’t be another kiss.
*
Ellsworth showed Katieinto the Duchess of Carlisle’s drawing room. She’d only been here once before, and as then, she thought how feminine and bright the dower house seemed. It was so different from her family’s drawing room in London. Her father liked everything in his spaces paneled with dark wood and decorated with the heads of animals he’d shot. There was nary a dead animal nor a dark wood panel in sight at the Duchess of Carlisle’s home.
In this atmosphere, the duke stood out immediately. He was leaning against the mantel, lounging rather negligently, in fact. His mother was seated in a chair, embroidery in her hands, and her dark head bent over her work. She looked up. Katie noticed her eyes were a light color similar to her eldest son’s. “Lady Katherine, what a surprise.”
It was a good thing the duchess never had occasion to tread the boards, because she did not sound in the least surprised. Obviously, her son had told her their plan, and she’d been expecting Katie. Further proof of that lay in the tea tray on the table, which featured three teacups and three plates.
