He grabbed her sleeve. “Not so quickly.”
Katherine faced him with vast reluctance.
“Come here,” Leicester said, “I wish to seal our bargain with a kiss.”
A noise awoke him.
It was a scratching noise. At first, as he stiffened upon his pallet on the floor, Liam thought it was a rat. He prepared to kick the beast should it come near. Kick it and kill it.
But the scratching sound faded. Now he heard a distinct clicking sound. Liam jerked into a sitting position. The door to his cell was being unlocked.
There was no light in his cell. It was always dark, but he was brought gruel and water twice a day, and these meals aided him in keeping track of the time. He knew it was well past suppertime, perhaps as late as midnight. He rose to his feet, fully alert, ready to receive a friend—or an assassin.
The door was pushed open wide. Blinding light spilled into the cell. Liam raised his arm, blocking the torchlight, blinking madly. But he had glimpsed a jailer, and the cloaked, hooded figure of an unknown visitor standing behind him.
There was the rustle of stiff fabric, a sound only a woman could make. Liam froze, dropping his arm, afraid that he was dreaming. Or that he had gone mad.
Katherine moved into the cell.
She carried a lantern, saw him, and became as rigid as he. They stared at each other. Neither one of them saw the jailer leer, nor did they see him close the cell door smartly behind Katherine.
“Liam,” Katherine said huskily. “Oh, God, Liam—are you all right?”
She was a vision of ethereal loveliness. At once a heavenly angel and an earthbound temptress. Liam did not move, did not breathe. Her presence caused a stabbing anguish. He reminded himself that she had been using him to aid her father. That she was treacherous, a deceitful bitch. That she could never love the son of Shane O’Neill. She had told him so herself.
“What do you want?” he said, his tone ringing harshly in the small stone cell. Trying to ignore her beauty, and worse, the open concern he saw in her eyes. That and something more, something that could not be.
Her whisper was raw. “I wanted to see you.”
“Why?” he demanded.
She ducked her head away. But he glimpsed the sparkle of tears in her eyes.
“Why?” he demanded again. “Are you not pleased, Katherine, that I shall soon meet a pirate’s fate?”
She looked up, blinking back tears.
He raised one fist. “Are you not pleased, wife, that yourhusband—Shane O’Neill’s son—will soon die? Leaving you free to entrap the noble and saintly John Hawke? If you have not already done so?”
She bit her lip, staring at him sadly, a tear trailing down her cheek. “I am sorry.”
He froze.
She turned her back on him, raised her fist, about to bang on the door, for the guard.
“Don’t!” he cried, leaping forward. Catching her wrist before she could knock. She did not move.
“Katherine,” he whispered, agonized. He no longer cared about her treachery. Not now. He only cared that she was there, a flesh and blood Katherine, not the figment of his imagination, not an unearthly apparition—and that she had said she was sorry. He was a romantic fool after all, for his breast filled with hope. “Katherine—why did you come?”
She turned slowly, facing him. Only a blade of grass could have fit between them. Her tone was low and barely audible. “I came to tell you…I don’t want you to die.”
The hope overwhelmed him. “You care.”
She sucked in her breath, trembling. “Liam…yes.”
He reached out and cupped her face—her extraordinary face. A face that had haunted him for years—ever since he had first glimpsed her that day long ago at the convent. He was foul and dirty, but he could no more stop himself from kissing her than he could have stopped himself from thinking about her in all the days and hours and minutes since that day at the Abbé Saint Pierre-Eglise, so many years ago. He touched her lips with his. Aware now, of the hot, powerful force of his love, a love he had refused to believe in, a love he had never wanted, a love that had enslaved him then and still did now, a love that had motivated his most significant actions, that had precipitated this game, and had brought them both to this point in time, together and aching in the dungeons of the Tower of London.
Katherine’s lips trembled beneath his.
