rather the worse for wear.’
Kit silently blessed Rupert’s quick thinking. If they had found Johnson, he would not be here. And despite everything, he was glad to be here. In this room. With Hattie. He valued her friendship. He groaned, remembering the taste of her mouth. He wanted to taste it again, particularly now.
At her look he said, ‘I gave him the day off. It is his to use as he pleases.’
‘You are a generous employer.’
‘I can afford to be. Johnson’s ability with boot polish and the starching of neckcloths is second to none.’ He watched her, waiting for the slightest hint of what she was thinking, if she was aware of him as he was of her. ‘No doubt he will turn up early in the morning with a suit of clothes. Johnson takes his job very seriously.’
‘It is good to know. I will leave a note for Mrs Hampstead so she isn’t surprised.’
‘You still haven’t said. Why did you insist on bringing me here?’
‘You saved me from those drunken men and I’m determined you will be nursed with all care and attention.’ She dipped her head. ‘Too many people in my life have died who were not nursed properly. It was time to make sure it didn’t happen again.’
Her husband. It was painfully simple to guess who she wasn’t naming. Kit hated the twinge of jealousy he felt for Charles Wilkinson, the hero of Talavera. He had to be slipping. He prided himself on not caring about anyone’s past or who they had loved. It was only the present that interested him. Ever. Except Hattie’s past interfered with his present. She had the capacity for life.
He breathed in and his ribs ached.
‘Then I’m grateful,’ he said stiffly. ‘You mustn’t feel you should sit up with me. It will take more than a few knocks on my head to kill a reprobate like me.’
‘You always insist on painting yourself blacker than you are.’
‘I will not have you thinking I am better.’
‘It was my fault that you were involved in the fight. I do pay my debts, Sir Christopher, and I owe you a great one.’
Kit watched how her slender fingers moved in the candlelight. She no longer wore a wedding ring. ‘I enjoyed the fight for the most part. It suited my mood.’
‘You enjoyed it?’ She blinked rapidly. ‘How could you enjoy something like that?’
Kit closed his eyes. It had felt good to work off his excess anger. He wanted to show her that he could do something for her and he had. The bruises and cuts were superficial. ‘There’s a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing someone get what they thoroughly deserve. He should never have done that.’
‘But you are hurt. You didn’t have to.’
‘What would you have used—your elbows?’ It was far harder to remember how Hattie looked, than to think about the way his hands and face hurt.
Her jaw became set. ‘I can look after myself. I’ve been doing it for a long while now.’
‘And I’ve been worse.’ He forced his face into a ghost of a smile. ‘Nothing appears broken. I will mend.’
‘You will mend because I intend on making certain that you do.’
‘Well, I feel that my presence is an imposition. And you even have me dressed in one of your husband’s nightshirts.’ Kit hated that he sounded so ungrateful.
‘He never wore it.’ Shutters came down on her eyes, instantly hiding her soul from him. ‘Somehow, I never could get rid of the linen. I found it when I got out the sheet for the bed. It seemed the ideal opportunity to put it to practical use.’
It annoyed him that even after all this time, she still mourned her late husband. He was under no illusion that when he left a woman, within a few months she had forgotten him. Sometimes the bed they had shared was barely cold before another entered it.
He certainly made no effort to remember any of them. There might be tears for a little while, but ultimately they both went on their respective ways. It was the way it had to be. Remembering never did anyone any good.
Kit refused to think about the little boy he’d been, crying for a mother who never came. A mother who never came not because she was dead and living with the angels, but because she had left, unable to stand living with him. He had crouched down on the landing when his nurse thought he was in bed and had heard everything, seen everything. Silently he had willed his mother to glance up at him and stop. She kept walking with a handkerchief pressed to her face. She had been the most beautiful thing in his life and then she was gone, no more than a memory.
‘You must have been very close.’ He choked out the words, tearing his mind away from the unwelcome thought. He must have hit his head far harder than he’d considered. Normally he had no trouble in forgetting his mother. The illusion of her exquisiteness and delicacy had been well and truly shattered when he discovered a pile of old newspapers, complete with the criminal conversation trial of his mother, detailing her lovers. ‘That much is clear.’
‘Why would you say that?’ Hattie clenched her hands together so tightly he could see the white knuckles. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight.
Silently Kit prayed that there wouldn’t be tears. He hated tears. He’d lost count of the crocodile tears various women had shed in order to gain some trinket or another.
‘You always look away when you speak about him.’
‘We weren’t close.’ Her hesitant voice trembled with barely suppressed passion. ‘I found out after he died that I never really knew him at all.’
‘I’m sorry.’ To his surprise, he meant it. ‘A wife should know her husband. They should not have secrets.’
‘Don’t be,’ she snapped and then appeared to recollect where she was. She sat up straighter and smoothed her sprigged muslin. She continued in a self-deprecating tone. ‘I used to be very naïve and believed because a man told you that he worshipped the ground you walked on that he meant it.’
‘He didn’t?’ Kit put his hands behind his head. The news that Charles Wilkinson was not a paragon made things easier.
Hattie was silent for such a long while that he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then, when he was about to whisper her name, she slowly began to speak.
‘He had an adored mistress and a scattering of illegitimate children. Born before and after our marriage. I was the socially acceptable wife.’ Her hands shook and she clasped them together until her knuckles shone white as she choked out the words. With each trembling syllable, the words sped up until they became a raging torrent. ‘He feared if he married the woman he truly loved that his father would cut him off without a penny. It would not have been so bad if I had known how he felt, but I had no inkling. It came as a great shock.’
She finished on a half-laugh combined with a sob.
A coward. Powerful and primitive urges filled Kit. He longed to wring his neck for making a woman like Hattie suffer.
‘So it was an arranged marriage?’ he asked, trying to understand why someone
