The pup sat, casting a sheepish look up at him, as her tail swept the step.
‘It’s all right, sir. I don’t mind.’
He snorted. ‘You will when she’s bigger.’
The basket gave another indignant wail.
Polly stared at it. ‘Your supper, sir?’
‘What? Good God, no!’ He held the basket out to her. ‘It’s a cat, a kitten really. For you.’
Silence spread out around them as she took the basket.
‘You brought me a kitten.’ There was a queer note of disbelief in her voice.
A stray curl had tumbled over her brow and he had to exert his will against the urge to stroke it back for her. Everything in him clenched as he imagined her silky hair sliding through his fingers, the velvet softness of her cheek under his touch...
Ignoring the rising beat of his blood, he said, ‘I thought...it must be lonely by yourself. And the rat yesterday—well, that can’t be pleasant.’
‘No. Will you come in, sir?’
He shouldn’t. Not at this hour. Not after dark when she was living quite alone.
Who on earth is going to know? Apart from Mrs Judd and she seems to like Polly...
He would know and he ought not to do this, but his feet were already over the threshold and she was closing the door behind them. The warmth of the little room enclosed them. Dancing firelight and the fragrance of her supper, her counterpane tossed over the back of the settle with a book propped in the folds.
Don’t think of her wrapped in bedclothes!
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
Kneeling down to open the basket, she looked up as she lifted the kitten out. Her smile did odd things to him. ‘Yes. A woodcock from last night. It was lovely. Thank you again.’ She cuddled the kitten to her, murmuring to it as it batted her face with a tiny paw. It was a very small kitten, all black and gold patches laced with white.
‘You like cats, then?’ he got out. Lord! Her hands cradled the little creature so tenderly, touching a gentle fingertip to a ridiculous buff stripe on its nose... He shoved away the thought—the image, God help him!—of those hands touching him. He shouldn’t stay, but just being with her, here in the same room, was a joyous torment. Thank God she still had the lamp lit. The intimacy of firelight, with her bed there in the corner... His head spun.
‘Oh, yes. But cats made Mama sneeze, so we never had one. Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘Female,’ Alex got out. ‘Mrs Judd says tortoiseshell cats are always female.’
She rose and sat down on the settle beside him, the kitten in her lap. It was content there for a moment, but then, with a determined squeak, clambered down her skirts and began to explore the room.
‘Another independent female,’ he said.
There was a moment’s silence. Then, ‘Is that so very wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ he asked. In a cat? But, no, she was not speaking of the kitten. Something, someone, had upset her.
‘To want to be independent. Is it really so unnatural?’ Her voice was very quiet and full of an uncertainty he’d never heard in it before.
‘I can’t see that you had very much choice,’ he said. Who had hurt her? He was conscious of an aching need to reassure her, to pull her into his arms and just hold her. Perhaps rest his cheek on that tawny cloud and find out if it really was as silken as it looked. Just hold her. For comfort, of course. He groaned silently. Lord help him—he was even lying to himself now. His body, so well disciplined for so many years, was making up for lost time. Apparently he was not immune to the sins of the flesh after all.
‘My cousin Susan called.’
Ah. No doubt Miss Susan had expressed her mama’s opinion of Polly’s rebellion. ‘Is she well?’
‘Very well. We...we were talking about Christmas.’ She was bent down, detaching the kitten from where it was climbing her skirts, taking care with each tiny claw. Firelight glinted in the curls drifting around her temple, falling against her silken cheek so that his fingers ached to stroke them back, to tangle in them, tilt her face up to his and find out just how sweet her mouth was.
‘I can take the kitten to the rectory while you are with the Eliots,’ he forced out, closing his fingers to fists against the beat of temptation in his blood. What the deuce was wrong with him that he could scarcely get himself to act with disinterested chivalry?
She went very still. ‘Thank you, sir.’
There was something odd about her voice. As if she were close to tears. ‘Polly—Miss Woodrowe, is something wrong? Did Miss Eliot have bad news?’
Her chin lifted. ‘Bad news? Not at all. Quite the opposite. My cousin, Tom, is betrothed.’
That brittle voice splintered somewhere deep inside him and all that was left were the most useless, banal words in the language. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t pity me!’
The words exploded from her, and he bit back everything he would have liked to say. Pity? It was more like rage. Rage that there was nothing he could do to shield her from the pain she must be feeling. Rage that the Eliots, instead of protecting Polly, had cut her adrift. Rage that the world was like this at Christmas when such love was coming into the world that it could barely be contained.
‘It’s wonderful news,’ said Polly, still in that tight, controlled voice. ‘My aunt must be delighted. It’s Miss Creed, you know. A very eligible connection. She is an heiress.’
This time there really were no words. Instead, he reached out and took her small, cold, mittened hands, and just held them, contained them in the protection of his own. Sometimes words were inadequate things. Touch was better.
* * *
She thought if he had not done that, had not enveloped her cold hands in the warmth of his, she could have held herself together. As it was, the gentle strength shredded the threadbare cloak of pride, thawed the frozen place where she had interred all the pain, until her eyes burned and spilled over. She swallowed. Oh, damn! One powerful hand loosened and she wanted to cry out in protest, but his arm came around her and drew her close to rest against his shoulder.
Still he said nothing. No soothing words, no injunction not to cry. Just his solid strength to lean against for a moment, the sort of unspoken sympathy that made the wretched tears flow faster, and his arm about her. She knew he meant only to comfort, but her foolish, wanton body was dreaming of so much more than that. Dreaming of what it would be like if he truly took her in his arms, and not to comfort.
She must be a very wicked girl to entertain such thoughts. Wicked to feel this burn and dazzle in her blood at the gentle clasp of his hand. Wicked to wish that his arm might tighten, that his mouth... Well, it was a sheer miracle that a thunderbolt had not obliterated the schoolhouse with what she was thinking. But then it might have obliterated Alex
