untidy. Goodness knows what he had done with the comb. There was the night’s growth of stubble shadowing his chin and his eyes, despite his protestations of a good sleep, seemed heavy and brooding. Good cheekbones, she decided, and a very straight nose.
Katherine wanted to get up and go and rub his shoulders, wrap her arms around him and hug him until that bleak look vanished. But what power had a hug to banish the thought of the cell he was about to return to?
They packed the hamper again, stripped the bed and folded the sheets. Katherine risked teasing a little. ‘You are very domesticated.’
‘It comes from being in the army.’
‘Were you? Which regiment?’
‘A cavalry regiment,’ he said evasively.
‘But surely there are some of your fellow officers in England, in London! Tell me some names and I will go to Horse Guards. Oh, Nick, why did you not think of that before?’
‘Because I enlisted as a trooper, under a false name,’ he said with a finality that warned her not to pursue the reason why. ‘There, all packed.’
The clock began to chime. ‘Nick … ‘
‘Come here,’ he said roughly, pulling her towards him by the shoulders.
Katherine went without conscious thought, wrapping her arms around him and tipping her face up to his. His mouth on hers was not gentle, not tender, it made no allowance for her innocence or inexperience.
Clinging to Nick’s shoulders, swept along by his need, Katherine opened to him, instinctively parting her lips as he ravished them, meeting his thrusting tongue with hers. It was as though he needed to absorb her, press her to him until she left an imprint on his body.
He let her go as suddenly as he had taken her, staring down with eyes like dark flame. Katherine licked her lips, tasting him on them. Her hands went up to lock into the long hair at his nape and he put his own hands up to catch her wrists.
‘Katherine …’
The clock struck eight.
Chapter Five
Behind her the sound of the key in the lock tore across her nerves.
‘I will come back, I promise, Nick.’
‘No, not to this place.’ He took her shoulders again, so hard it hurt her. ‘Promise me. Not the last day. Promise me that at least.’
‘No. I will not promise and I will come back.’ The door swung open. ‘Goodbye, Nick.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his set lips swiftly, then turned to the door.
‘Good morning, Mr Rawlings. Good morning, John. John, everything is packed, I will just put on my bonnet.’
Nick stayed still as a statue by the door as John helped her into her pelisse and picked up the bags. She stopped at his side as she tied her bonnet strings. There did not seem to be any words so she reached up, touched his cheek and left.
John was a brooding presence at her side as they walked down the endless dark passages and out into the blessed sunlight and fresh air. He hailed a hackney carriage and bundled her inside before plumping down opposite her and demanding, with all the licence of an old family servant, ‘Are you all right, Miss Katherine?’
‘Mrs Lydgate,’ she said firmly. It was the first time she had said it; it sounded rather well. Her coachman regarded her with much the same air her father had adopted when she came up with some excuse to distract him from a misdemeanour.
‘John, Mr Lydgate behaved like a perfect gentleman and absolutely nothing happened. Now that is as much as I am prepared to discuss with you so you can stop looking like a cross bulldog.’
‘Humph. If you say so Miss … Mrs Lydgate.’
‘I was teasing you, John, please call me Miss Katherine. Now, has Philip taken the carriage out?’
‘No.’ He was still regarding her suspiciously as if he expected her to burst into tears at any moment. This was obviously not the reaction he had been anticipating.
‘Good, because I need the horses putting to and for you to pack your bags. We are going into Hertfordshire today.’
Jenny was inclined to be tearful at her return and then as baffled as John by their mistress’s brisk determination to leave London. ‘Pack, Miss Katherine? But for how many days?’
‘I am not sure. It cannot be more than three, I pray it will take no more. And Jenny, you know that old hat box we put up in the attic?’
‘Yes, Miss Katherine.’
‘Fetch it down, please.’
Jenny departed, shaking her head. Kate ran downstairs and into Philip’s study. Now, where was the atlas? Yes, here it was, a volume of road maps. She conned the one for the Aylesbury and Oxford road carefully as it unwound in a long ribbon over several pages. There was Hemel Hempstead and there was Box Moor. Now, where best to stay? Her heart told her the Lamb and Flag, but her head counselled caution. Hemel Hempstead was large enough to hold several respectable inns and, more importantly, magistrates.
She lifted the volume and started to leave, then turned back. She had better leave Philip a note to say they had gone away, although as he was not even here to meet her on her return, she felt a chilly hardening of her heart towards him. She pulled a sheet of notepaper towards her, dislodging several bills as she did so. Oh, Philip! Was it possible to stop loving your own brother? How many blows to the heart does it take before that feeling died?
Jenny was in the hall, portmanteaux and bandboxes at her feet and a battered hat box in her hands. ‘What do you want this dirty old thing for, Miss Katherine?’
‘I do not want it at all, I want what is in it.’ There was an ugly hat resting on a bed of crumpled tissue paper. Katherine tossed it aside and reached under the paper. Her fingers closed over something as fluid and sinuous as a snake and she drew it out.
‘Miss Katherine! Diamonds!’
It was a necklace, dull through neglect, but still sparking with the unmistakable watery fire of the true gems. ‘This is my last thing of any real value and I have been saving it for a rainy day, Jenny.’ She sighed. ‘It belonged to my grandmother and it will have to be sold to be broken up, I am afraid, the stones are an old-fashioned cut and setting.’
‘But, Miss Katherine, if you had this …’
‘No, Jenny, it is worth a few hundreds, not thousands; see, there are not many stones and they are quite small. But I need it now—this is not a rainy day, this is a hurricane.’
John was ready and they piled their baggage into the old coach. ‘Newman’s of Lombard Street, please, John, and then the road to Aylesbury and Oxford.’
* * *
Mr Newman was courteous to Mrs Lydgate. He did not know her, or recognise the name, and her dress was two
