When she awoke, she realized she had been jolted awake by a lack of motion. The carriage had stopped and she knew. From the scent in the air, the exact pitch of the dark, she knew. She knew that she was home.
Chapter Seventeen
After Catherine hadfallen asleep in his arms, John had been torn between two torturous visions. The first was Catherine, as she had just been, glorious, almost making him lose control in the back of a carriage. His blood still hummed from the exquisite experience of pleasuring her—and his erection still strained against his breeches.
The second was a recurring image, in total discordance with the first, of his sister lying dead at Edington Hall. He imagined himself arriving at his home only to be told his sister was already dead. He saw himself standing over her bed, where she lay pale and still and gone forever. The pain of this image had him choking back tears whenever it appeared.
Due to the strain of these competing visions, it had been, for the first time in a long time, a relief to reach Edington Hall.
When they came through the gates, he saw Mrs. Morrison standing in the drive. Barely waiting for the carriage to stop, he jumped down. When Mrs. Morrison told him Henrietta was still alive and was expected to recover, he nearly kissed the ground.
He asked Mrs. Morrison to wake Catherine, who was still sleeping in the carriage, and take her up to her bedchamber. Then he went to see Henrietta.
In her great stone chamber, she was lying motionless in her canopy bed, which was so large it threatened to swallow her up. He looked at her pale face, her feverish brow, her light brown hair matted with sweat. Careful not to wake her, he got down on his knees and put his hands together.Please don’t die,he prayed. He repeated it, again and again.Just please don’t die.
Afterwards, he went to his own bedchamber, regretting its empty largeness and the cold expanse of his bedding, but feeling like he had no right to interrupt Catherine’s sleep, given how exhausted she had been in the carriage. He thought he had no chance of sleep when he put his head to his pillow. He stared up at the familiar ceiling, riven with worry about Henrietta and yet still very much wanting Catherine in his bed.
John jerked awake. Rays of light hit his face and he heard the unique, buzzing quiet of the country. It was morning. Somehow, he had slept. He rubbed his face, remembering Henrietta’s illness and the heaviness of his anxiety. He knew he should rise and check on his sister to see if she had woken from her delirium, but his worry pinned him to the bed. He put his hands to his face and lay back.
And then again he couldn’t keep his thoughts from Catherine, how she had taken her pleasure yesterday in the carriage. He worshiped the flush of her cheeks and the feel of her on his fingers. He always worried that she didn’t want him the way he wanted her, that their encounter in the inn left her content with their strange kind of friendship, but yesterday she had certainly seemed to enjoy his touch.
He felt himself harden. He longed for her here with him, in his bed. Instead, she was down one of the long Edington hallways, wherever Mrs. Morrison had seen fit to place her. Hating himself, he grabbed his length, which was now fully engorged due to his replay of yesterday’s scene.
He began rubbing himself, thinking of Catherine in his bed, with her blue-black eyes and her silver-blond hair and her legs reaching around to take him—
Then, a frantic knock sounded on his bedchamber door and, swearing an oath, he unleashed himself.
“Your Grace, your sister has awoken.”
“One moment, Mrs. Morrison,” he said, the hope leaping in his heart helping his erection subside. He pulled on his buckskin breeches and one of the clean shirts from his trunk. He quickly washed his face and hands in the basin that one of the footmen had thankfully had the sense to lay out the night before.
Once he appeared half-decent in the full-length glass opposite his bed, he turned and opened the door.
“Mrs. Morrison.” His hands were still shaking from the contradictory emotions coursing through him. “Please, take me to her.”
As they walked to Henrietta’s chamber, the good-natured old woman, who had been with the household since he was a boy, brought John up to speed on Henrietta’s condition.
“Very good news, Your Grace. Her fever has broken. I think she is over the worst of it. She should be right as rain in a few days.”
His heart gladdened at this commentary, but he wouldn’t feel safe until he spoke to Henrietta himself and saw that she was truly recovering.
They walked the wide corridors of Edington Hall. Mrs. Morrison continued to chatter and required little response from him. Her verbal self-sufficiency allowed him to study the proportions of the massive dwelling where he had grown up and that now, so strangely, belonged to him and him alone. As much as he had deplored the place over the years, he appreciated now the striking way the light fell through the wide windows. It still seemed singularly odd to him that his father no longer lived here—he no longer lived anywhere at all, of course—and that he wouldn’t round a corner and run into the older man strolling slowly around the great hall.
In recent years, his father had walked the halls constantly. His gait had suggested he was ruminating on a heavy theme. Whatever it was, he had never shared it with John.
“That’s very good to hear, Mrs. Morrison,” he said, as they reached his sister’s bedchamber.
“One more thing, Your Grace. I put the lady you brought, Miss Aster, in your mother’s old chamber. I am very sorry, but with little warning, we didn’t have any of the guest chambers turned out.”
Christ,he thought. He had imagined her down the guest wing somewhere, but she was but four doors down from his own room.
“Very well,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “No use placing Miss Aster all by herself in the guest wing. We wouldn’t want her to feel marooned.”
“She is a very nice young lady, Your Grace,” Mrs. Morrison said, with a look that he found a trifle too knowing.
“Yes,” he said, making sure his manner revealed nothing. “She will be an excellent tutor for Henrietta.”
“Indeed, Your Grace.” She gave a prim curtsey and he thought he may have imagined the intimation.
