Free Married At Midnight by Katherine Woodwiss Page A

clear the air.
    "Talk might dig me deeper in the hole," Kate muttered, burningly aware of one possibility. That she might be Major Tennant's true and only wife and therefore have to save him from a life of chastity or sin. The thought was terrifying, but it carried a certain wanton appeal.
    In the weeks after the birth she'd thought herself drained of all desire. Time had healed, however, and now at moments her body longed for a man. She would have expected her desire to be for Dennis, who had been a satisfying lover on his good days. Instead, memories of lying in Captain Tennant's arms, of that long and stirring kiss, spun off into more erotic fantasies.
     
     
    It was really all most embarrassing.
    "Perhaps I should wait," she said, rising to fuss with the copper molds on the shelf. "Stephen's too young to be an easy traveler ..."
    "Stephen's six months old and able to do without you, now that you're no longer breast-feeding him. He's taking pap
    and goat's milk well."
    "I can hardly travel cross-country alone."
    "Take Jess."
    "I hate to leave you ..."
    "We coped before, and can again."
    Kate pushed back a lock of escaping hair. "You're determined on this, aren't you, Mama?"
    "It's right, my dear."
    Kate sighed. "Yes, it's right. And as with a trip to the toothpuller, it will be horrid, but I'll feel better when it's done."
    Her mother stood. "Good. I pray it will put an end to this moping around. But don't tell your father why you're traveling. It will only fret him. We'll just say you're going to visit an army friend."
    "Lies, Mama?" Kate teased.
    "Not exactly." But her mother's color was high. "You know how he frets."
    "Just as much as you do." Kate hugged her mother, who was a head shorter than she. "Is that what love is, all this protection?"
    Shrewd blue eyes looked up. "Love? Is that why you're trying to protect this Charles Tennant?"
    Kate could feel her color flare. "Love? I hardly know the man!"
    "I met your father at the Michaelmas fair." Kate's mother's eyes became unfocused as she looked into the past. "Of course, we had seen one another about. But that was the first time we really noticed, if you know what I mean. We spent most of the day together, and we both knew. Sometimes it's like that, Kate."
    Kate shivered with a kind of recognition.
    "But what if it's impossible?"
    Her mother patted her cheek. "Few things really are, dear. You go to this Strode Kingsley and talk to your young man."
    Aylesbury to Strode Kingsley was not a great distance as the crows fly, but by stagecoach it would require another journey into and out of London. So Kate used some of the remaining fifty guineas to hire a post chaise for herself and Jess to travel cross country.
    Jess was mightily impressed. "Very nice," she said, settling into one of the two red-upholstered seats.
     
     
    "I've never traveled post before."
    "Nor have I." As the coach pulled out of the inn yard into the road, Kate added, "You've always known about Major Tennant and me, haven't you?" Jess shrugged. "Rumors reached the camp before we left.
    Didn't surprise me. I'd seen
    the way he looked at you now and then." She clutched onto the strap. "Lordy, we're going fast."
    "The advantage of traveling in style. How do you mean, looked at me?"
    Jess turned to her. "All the men looked at you, and that's no lie, but the captain, he had that look in his eye. Not just admiration. Not just lust. More than that. Can't describe it if you don't know it. It's when you know a man's yours for
    the wink."
    "You must be mistaken! We scarcely ever spoke."
    "What's that got to do with it? He was hardly going to make a play for a fellow officer's woman now, was he?
    Especially when relations weren't too cordial between them at the best of times."
    Kate tried to make Jess's comments fit her memories. "They didn't like each other, did they?"
    "Never did, and less so when the lieutenant came back with you. But he was a good soldier, the lieutenant, and in a strange way the two of them