Matilda felt a rush of grief, and she did not know what she mourned. She missed her sister. She found that she hated how she had left Margo. She worried that Margo had felt just as she, Matilda, felt now: alone and uncertain, wondering how she had gone from contentment to this cold unsettled loneliness in a moment.
She got up, wrapped herself in her dressing gown, and opened the door between their rooms. She wanted her cat.
Christian had sent word ahead with the mail coach that they would arrive by dinner. He’d sent instructions for Mrs. Perkins and told Bea to expect a painting tutor and something else—a surprise, he’d said.
The cat, cleaner but still shockingly ugly, sat in Matilda’s lap. Her hands were buried in its newly fluffed charcoal mane, and she’d barely taken her eyes off the thing the entire day’s ride.
She did not smile. Christian sneezed extravagantly and hated everything.
He was a cad. A blackguard. He had taken advantage of her. He wanted to do it again. He could not sit across from her without wanting to get down on his knees in front of her, push up her skirts, and lick her cunny until she came. He’d been too crazed last night for patience, but this time he would take it slowly, bring her to the edge of climax again and again, until she was mindless and begging, until he could tip her over the edge with nothing but his breath. He—
No. He wouldnotdo that. He would not touch her again, not if it killed him.
And it might.
Kill him.
He could barely breathe when he looked at her. His heart felt as though it was battering against his ribs, desperate to get out. He could not even say what he wanted—he wanted all of it, all of her, everything at once. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to hold her all bloody night. He wanted to make her smile. He wanted her in a consuming, possessive, unreasonable way, and hecould notwant her like that.
He had married before. Grace had been too young, just as Matilda was. He had not been able to make her happy, and then she had died, and—
No. He could not even think about marriage and Matilda together. It felt like staring into the sun. Every part of him shied away from it.
He had to leave her alone. He had to stop thinking about her and wanting her and feeling breathless and wild, hopeful and afraid at once. He knew too well that it was not safe to want this much. Not for him. Not for his family. He had hurt them before, and he would not do it again.
So when Matilda did not speak on the journey up to Bamburgh, he did not either.
Chapter 13
The sun was coming down when they arrived. Christian held out his arm to help her down, and Matilda paused for the briefest of moments before she took it.
She would have to pretend, that was all. She would have to pretend she did not want more than this: a long silent drive, and Christian’s forearm tense and forbidding beneath her hand.
She gathered up the cat in her arms and took in her surroundings. From the cold salt-washed air that chilled her nose, she knew they were close to the sea—but the great imposing mansion blocked her view. She could tell from the squat fortification at its center that the estate had begun as a medieval battlement. Bits and pieces had been added on in later centuries: a turreted tower, wings that were used for servants or guests. Nothing quite went together. It was all stone and hard edges, meant for wartime and conflict, not for welcoming guests in the nineteenth century.
The interior, she thought as they crossed the threshold, was no better—it was ruthlessly clean, but nearly as dark inside as out. The furniture was immense, looming morosely out of the shadows in every direction. Matilda suspected Christian had not turned his hand to decorating since they’d moved to Northumberland after his marchioness’s death.
Really, she suspected no one had turned a hand to decorating since the twelfth century, and even then it must have been furnished by gargoyles. Perhaps some extremely unhappy and drunken monks.
At the door to welcome them was a pale, thin woman, her black dress starched enough to stand up on its own and her arms behind her back. Her eyes—so light a blue as to be almost colorless—skipped briefly over Matilda and the cat in her arms before turning to Christian, her expression impassive.
“Your lordship,” she said, “welcome home.”
Christian nodded at the dour woman. “Mrs. Perkins.”
Matilda stared. This was Mrs. Perkins? From the way that Christian had described her—his tone almostwarm,for heaven’s sake, his mouth near tosmiling—she’d expected a sweet, grandmotherly figure, who would coo and cluck over the master’s return.
Instead the two stood apart, a pair of black-haired dour-faced grumps. Matilda was not quite sure what to make of it.
And then, from around the corner, she heard a flurry of footsteps, and then a tall coltish girl appeared, gave a cry of delight, and hurled herself into Christian’s arms.
“Christian!” the girl said into his shirtfront. “I missed you so much! I thought you would be back ages ago.” She pulled back and grinned up at him, and Matilda’s heart clenched to see them.
Bea, too, was tall—perhaps they grew them that way in Devonshire—and her hair was also dark, but there the resemblance between the siblings ended. Bea’s dress was rumpled, her hair flying out of its chignon in tangled curls. She was all angles, pointed elbows, sharp chin. She did not have the elegance of Christian’s economy of movement, but rather a suddenness to her, a brightness.
And she was smiling, wide and open, and Christian looked happy to have her there. He almost smiled back.
“Little bee,” he said, “it’s good to see you.”
