in the army?’ she asked, greatly daring.
‘Yes.’ He seemed to think better of his abruptness and added, ‘Yes, I was a trooper. You get all sorts to ride. On a battlefield you can pick up some good beasts whose owners have no further use for them.’
Katherine shivered. ‘And you rode at Waterloo?’
‘Yes.’ This time he showed no inclination to expand on that curt response.
‘Your father will be very proud when he learns you fought there,’ Katherine ventured.
‘We have not discussed it. I mentioned it in passing, that is all.’ Nick’s voice was quite dispassionate, but his body betrayed him. The black tossed its head and broke into a trot for a few strides before its rider could rein back. Obediently the roan started to trot too. Katherine grabbed for the pommel, the mane, her reins, missed them all and found herself tumbling over the horse’s shoulder. It seemed a very long way down, and the ground, when she met it, much harder than she could have imagined.
‘Ough!’ she gasped inelegantly.
‘Well done!’ Nick had swung down and was kneeling beside her, helping her to sit up.
Katherine took a painful whoop of breath. ‘Well done?’
‘You are still holding the reins. That is very important.’
‘It is?’
‘Of course. You don’t want to fall off miles from home and see your horse vanishing into the next county. Now, just wriggle everything, make sure nothing is strained—’
He broke off. Katherine found herself supported against his knee. Nick had one arm around her shoulders, the other was resting on her ankle. She was cradled in such a way that their faces were very close, close enough for her to see the gold flecks in his eyes, the sweep of his lashes, the scar over his eye, the way his pupils contracted seconds before his mouth covered hers.
The kiss was leisurely, exploratory, quite undemanding. Katherine was well aware that she only had to move away and to push against his chest for him to stop. But she did not want this to stop. She summoned all her small experience and kissed him back, fighting to keep herself from betraying everything she felt for him with the pressure of her mouth, the way her fingers moved restlessly through his hair. With a sigh she closed her fists on the linen of his shirt and surrendered to the heat that his knowing mouth was evoking.
How long that sensuous caress would have gone on she had no idea. She had not the slightest idea how long it had already lasted when a wet, warm, soft muzzle pushed firmly against her ear.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Ahh!’ Katherine struggled to sit up from what had become a shockingly prone position on the grass and met the reproachful eye of her mount.
Nick rocked back on his heels and began to laugh. ‘I have never,’ he managed between gasps of mirth, ‘never, been chaperoned by a horse before. I have, however, seen uglier chaperons.’
Katherine found herself giving way to giggles. ‘He looks so shocked,’ she managed to gasp, hugging her sides. Lightning gave her a disgusted look and began to crop the grass, apparently resigned to the stupidity of humans. She looked around her, finding that they were close to the lake and that tall red chimneys were rising over a small copse ahead of them.
‘Is that the Dower House?’
‘Yes. Kat, you wanted to talk, this is probably as private as we can be.’
‘What I really want to do,’ she said warmly, ‘is box your ears for deceiving me so! How could you not tell me you were a marquis, that your father was a duke?’
‘In Newgate? Would you have believed me?’ Nick sat up and clasped his arms round his knees. ‘This view—I would dream of it sometimes, when I actually managed to sleep.’
‘Of course I would not have believed you then.’
‘I did tell you my real name, you could have looked it up.’
‘Naturally, that should have occurred to me,’ Katherine said with sarcasm. ‘I meet a highwayman and should immediately assume it would be sensible to check on his parentage and titles.’ She picked a daisy, slit its stem with her fingernail and plucked another to thread through it. ‘You should have told me afterwards, when you were free.’
‘Would you have believed me?’ He was watching her, not the view.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And what would you have done?’
‘Refused to come with you, naturally.’
‘You make my point for me.’ Nick unclasped his arms and fell back on the grass with a deep sigh. ‘Bliss. The last time I lay on my back in a field I had just had my second horse shot from under me and I was lying in a pool of mud.’
‘Waterloo? Was it dreadful? I’m sorry, that is a stupid question, of course it was.’
‘It was perfectly bloody. Literally bloody. It is not easy to speak about. Kat, you’re the only person I have ever talked about it with.’ He fell silent.
‘Any time you want to tell me more, I will listen,’ she promised. They remained without speaking for a while. Katherine threaded more daisies and, finally satisfied with the length of her chain, linked it into a circle and leaned over to drop it on Nick’s dark head.
‘What?’ He opened his eyes and reached up to feel what she had done. ‘Baggage. I suppose if I had not realised, you would have let me put my hat on top and ridden off.’
‘Possibly. Nick, how did you know how I would react when I discovered the truth about you? I might have had hysterics on the spot.’
‘No, not you. I knew you would be angry with me—you had every reason, even though I did it for the best. You would never have left London with me if you had known. I expected you to give my head a washing the moment we were alone, but I had every confidence that you would deal with a duke with every bit of the courage and aplomb you showed in dealing with a highwayman.’
‘I was too tired, too overawed to do more than accept what was happening, I suppose.’ She tucked his praise away into some secret part of her mind to take out and look at later. ‘And between you, you and your father made sure I spent much more time with Robert than with you. It is too late now to shout at you and throw the china.’ She began a second daisy chain. ‘I like you brother very much.’
‘Father remarked that when you are no longer married to me you could marry Robert.’
‘What!’ The fragile links of flowers tore in her hands. ‘Marry Robert?’
‘I believe he was trying to pique my jealousy.’
‘Oh.’ Katherine subsided, too shaken by the very thought to absorb the implications of what Nick had said. To think of marrying anyone, anyone at all, after Nick was impossible. How could she when she loved him so much and always would?
