Page 108 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
John was her first. She would never forget that night.
‘She was my first woman, yes. It happened in Paris, the summer I left England. She chased me for a week. It is her thing – to break young men in. She broke me. Is that what you wish to know? Or do you want explicit details?’ She ignored his vindictive taunt. ‘She was the first, but she was not the only one,’ he continued. ‘There were many. I had a colourful reputation abroad. I can list names if you wish?’
He was deliberately provoking her, she knew, because he did not really wish to speak of this.
‘It is what young gentlemen of noble birth do. We are sent abroad on the tour explicitly to sow our wild oats and plough as many furrows as we wish out of the sight of our mothers and the judgement of society. There are whores on every corner at the tourist destinations, even in the arches of the Colosseum. I am mortal, and I was young.’ His piercing gaze bored into her, challenging her to comment or to judge.
When she did neither, a deep sigh left his throat. ‘I thought I was in love with her, with Elizabeth Ponsonby, if you must know. Now I know it was only ever a youth’s infatuation. But when I found her with another man and realised I was nothing to her, I went on a rampage of carnal revenge, behaving just like her. I felt better for it for a long while. It took me years to realise that I was only hurting myself. And still more years to know I never loved her in the first place.’
His shoulders shrugged. ‘She has been chasing me again for a few weeks. It appears I am to her taste once more since I acquired my title. I have already told her once, before tonight, I am not interested. Yet for the sake of her vanity she cannot accept my refusal.’
Katherine looked out the window, not really seeing.
‘I was one among many, Katherine. Everyone behaved like that abroad.’
Does he think that makes it better?‘I learned that tonight,’ she answered, turning to face him.
His eyes flashed with anger. ‘Framlington. He is as bad as his sister. Keep away from him.’
‘The people you mix with are all false, John. I do not like them.’ Suddenly her courage of earlier ebbed. She realised she was crying.
John moved from the far seat of the carriage, sat beside her and his arm came about her. ‘Katherine, I cannot change my past.’
Her head fell against his shoulder and she nodded. She knew. But she could change his future.
His hand held hers in her lap. ‘I did not mean to upset you. I have not been with another woman for years, and I never felt for Elizabeth even a hundredth of what I feel for you. Knowing you has proven to me how shallow my feelings for her really were.’
A sob left her lips.
‘I was alone in Egypt, Katherine. I’m not that person any more. I will be faithful to you.’ His pitch urged her to believe him.
‘Katherine, I love you.’ She looked up into his pale eyes. They shone with sincerity. ‘Believe me…’ They were John’s eyes, and they bore the plea she had seen in the parlour at home when he had first asked her to marry him.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I am just tired. Everything has happened so fast…’
‘And you are reliant on a man who has let you down already. He did not come to your marriage bed and now he has introduced you to his former mistress. I am sorry, Katherine.’ He brushed a gentle kiss on her lips.
Her arms reached about his shoulders and she returned the kiss, cautious of his hurt lip. It was an intensely sweet kiss, because it was nothing like the lustful hungry kisses she had shared with him before.
When the carriage finally halted at the door of his, now their, town house, they were still kissing. He pulled away and smiled before a footman opened the door and another set down the step.
John climbed down and offered his hand to help her before his footman could, and when her foot touched the ground, he swept her off her feet. ‘Another thing I was remiss over yesterday, a bridegroom is supposed to carry his bride over the threshold, is he not?’
She smiled up at him, clinging to his shoulders as he carried her up the steps and into the grand hall. A clock struck twelve somewhere in the downstairs rooms and she looked over his shoulder just to check his coach had not turned into a pumpkin.
Mr Finch bowed deeply, but John did not set her down, and she was blushing intensely as he crossed the black-and-white chequered marble floor, saying over his shoulder, ‘Tell Smithson I will not need him, Finch.’
The heels of his dancing shoes rang on the marble as he walked, and then he was climbing the stairs with her still in his arms.
‘You may set me down,’ she whispered. ‘Your staff are watching.’
In point of fact, they were not; they were schooling their faces to a blank as they looked everywhere else but at the stairs.
‘They are paid well enough to see and hear nothing, Katherine, and if they dare to gossip they know they will be dismissed within hours.’
When they reached the state chambers John kicked the door open and shut it with his heel. He let her feet slip to the floor and then braced her nape and kissed her once more. His other hand held her waist.
Breaking the kiss after a while, he said, ‘You are mine, Katherine, I will be loyal, and I will not be cuckolded.’ His pale eyes glowed with the intensity that was all John.
