She didn’t like acknowledging how worried she’d been, how much she was coming to care for him. As a friend. One friend for another. There would never be anything more between them than that.
He was in love with Frannie, and Catherine, well, Catherine had yet to meet anyone who could claim her heart. Although she couldn’t deny that something about Claybourne did stir her. His odd honesty. His willingness to defend her. The depth of love he held for another woman and the lengths he would go to in order to have her in his life.
Catherine couldn’t imagine having a man’s devotion to that extent. Having met Claybourne, she didn’t know if she could settle for less in her own husband—if she were ever to meet a man she thought she could be content to marry.
She felt the tension slowly easing out of Claybourne, was aware of him drifting off to sleep. She could probably leave now, and yet she had no desire to go. Against her better judgment she laid her head on his chest, listened to the steady pounding of his heart.
He’d been in intense agony and yet he’d still been considerate enough to send her a missive.
Considerate. She’d not expected that of him.
Kind. Honest. Courageous. Gentle. Caring.
She’d thought she’d be dealing with the devil. And he was very slowly, in her eyes at least, beginning to resemble an angel.
A dark angel, to be sure, but an angel nonetheless.
“Mummy!”
“Shh, darling, shh, we have to be quiet. We’re playing a game. We’re going to hide from Papa.”
“Scared.”
“Shh. Don’t be frightened, darling. Shh. Mummy will never let anything bad happen—”
Luke awoke with a start, a weight pressing down on his chest. The dream was bringing back the headache that he’d been fighting all day, ever since leaving Marcus Langdon’s. But it wasn’t Langdon he kept thinking about. It was being in the alley—the knives, the clubs, the viciousness of the attack. Luke kept seeing Catherine, as he had last night, out of the corner of his eye, defending him, raising her arm to take the blow meant for him.
He usually had his coachman take a circuitous route home, because on more than one occasion they’d been set upon. But ever since he’d begun his association with Catherine, he’d become reckless. He wanted to get her home as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary in the coach inhaling her sweet fragrance, carrying on conversations, coming to know her, to see her as more than the spoiled daughter of a duke.
He’d avoided the aristocracy because he didn’t want to see the similarities. He didn’t want to see them as people he could respect. Through Catherine, he was beginning to understand that they had fears, dreams, hopes, and burdens. They had troubles like everyone else and they faced them head on—like everyone else.
If he saw them as they truly were, the actions he’d taken to become one of them would shame him more than they already did. He’d been brought up to take what wasn’t rightfully his in order to survive. If he declared that he wasn’t the Earl of Claybourne, would they forgive him his sins? Or would he find himself dancing in the wind?
When he’d rather dance with Catherine.
He jerked out of the lethargic place where he’d been drifting. Why was he thinking of Catherine, dreaming of Catherine…why was her scent so strong?
Opening his eyes, he looked at the weight upon his chest.
Catherine. What is she doing—
Then he remembered: her arrival, rubbing his temples, and sending him into a deep slumber. Had he ever slept that soundly?
Until his dream. When he tried to recall it, his head began to pound unmercifully, so he let it go. The headaches weren’t nearly as frequent in London, but when he was at his country residence, they were an almost daily occurrence. Something in the air there was disagreeable to him. He was almost certain of it.
He turned his head slightly and saw Catherine’s bandaged hand, marred with blood, resting on his pillow where it had no doubt fallen after she’d succumbed to sleep. It had hurt her to rub his temples, and he should chastise her for it.
But it had felt so comforting not to be alone with his pain. He could think of a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t be here. The worst of which was that she tempted him as he’d not been tempted in a good long while.
It was because he’d been so long without a woman. He told himself that. He wanted to believe that—as much as the old gent had wanted to believe that Luke was truly his grandson, Luke wanted to believe that what he was beginning to feel for Catherine was just lust, was just his bodily needs, that she called to his desires of the flesh and nothing more.