Free Untamed by Anna Cowan Page A

with Kit.’
    Understanding rushed at Kit, as though from a great distance.
    Her mother said, ‘I suppose you could share with her instead, though I’m not certain it’s right for the cousin of a duke to – that is, Kit’s bedroom is not exactly —’ She broke off into mortified silence.
    ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ said Tom, looking up at Kit. ‘I didn’t like Mother to climb all that way; her breathing has been worse since the flowers came out.’
    This was how he meant to trespass on BenRuin.
    ‘Then I absolutely insist,’ said the Duke, who had somehow come into possession of her mother’s hand, and was kissing it affectionately. ‘I shall share Miss Sutherland’s bed for the duration of my stay.’
    He knew. God, she could see in his face that he knew how the words were ripping up her insides in their need to be spoken. To deny that a man, a duke, could share her bed. This man, more than any other.
    He meant to seduce her.
    ‘Liza could—’ She stopped. Liza couldn’t.
    He opened his eyes at her, wide, innocent, and said, ‘I am sure on this at least you and I agree, Miss Sutherland. Your mother must have every comfort we can allow her. Now be a good girl and say you’ll let me share your bed. You will hurt my feelings if you don’t.’
    He was like a clockmaker, and he had laid all her inner workings bare. I would rather sleep out with the pigs , she almost said, but Tom was looking at her; he knew something was not right. She had thought she could pay the Duke’s price when she agreed to it in Hyde Park. Now that she understood the full extent of what he asked, she couldn’t even begin to think of how to extricate herself. If she gave him away now, he would be back in Lydia’s bed tomorrow.
    And he could tell all of London at his leisure where he had been. The Sutherlands of Millcross would be beyond ruined. All Tom’s ambition and hard work, undone. The last utterances of her mother’s good name. The reputation for forthrightness that she herself relied on for local credit.
    She’d had her own bed for one measly year. She had taken to sleeping sprawled across it like a giant starfish, simply because she could. She hadn’t ever thought it might become a battlefield.
    ‘You may share with me,’ Kit said, and her limbs that had been forced again and again to bend as circumstance demanded formed themselves into something very like a curtsey. ‘I’ll show you up.’
    As soon as they were out in the hall, she turned and raised her hand to him. They both looked at it, and she let it fall again in some confusion.
    ‘Something to say, Miss Sutherland?’
    ‘Those are people in there.’
    ‘Did I say I thought they were elephants?’
    ‘I have seen what you do when you forget that people are . . .’ She broke off, feeling an echo of the pain she’d felt watching him seduce Lady Marmotte, of losing something bright. If he tried to touch her like that she would stick him with a knife. And yet . . . she couldn’t afford to send him away.
    He had seemed so clear that night – not simple, but defined in his black clothing with his hair off his face.
    Now here he stood, in her house, the silk of his skirts brushing the walls, his travelling cases spilling out into the corridor. Every part of him was elaborate, down to his brilliant, speculative gaze. Every detail of his costume, every word he spoke, was a misdirection.
    She hadn’t the faintest clue, she realised, and it washed cold through her, what he was capable of.

Chapter Six
    He said nothing as he followed her up the stairs, which Kit thought quite an accomplishment for him. For her part, she would push him down the stairs before she would resuscitate their conversation. They were the back stairs, used once upon a time by servants, when the Manor had such things as bells and servants and upper rooms. The wood was rubbed smooth in the middle of each step. It was more practical to use these stairs than the grand marble staircase out