Free Untamed by Anna Cowan Page B

in the front hall – and far less lonely. The candle she carried shed a swaying, warm light in the narrow space.
    At the top of two flights of stairs was a hallway that gave on to what were once the maidservants’ quarters. The first of these doors led into Kit’s room – tiny, cluttered, hers . More than once in this long day she had reminded herself that at the end of it she could retreat to her own limited domain and close her door on the rest of the world.
    She opened the door and passed through it, and her room was already diminished – reduced to a stack of books, her old dresser and the badly crocheted blanket on her bed. She turned to tell him not to use the lock, but he was much closer behind her than she had thought, and she found herself face-to-face with him.
    ‘Excuse me,’ he said in that awful voice. She stepped quickly away. It was probably rude, but it was necessary. The backs of her knees hit the bed.
    How easily he had brought them to this moment. He had done away with every obstacle before they’d even left London.
    ‘You needn’t think you’re coming anywhere near me,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t part of our bargain.’
    He didn’t come any closer, but he smiled. It began very small. It made her think about what was bound so tight in that corset, what was hidden beneath the heavy, expensive fall of those skirts. ‘I had the impression you liked me well enough the first time we met,’ he said.
    Her better judgement urged her not to speak.
    ‘You should allow a person one false start,’ she said, ‘where you’re concerned. My family downstairs think themselves charmed, as I once did. Why are you here?’
    ‘Oh, excuse me, I thought that was obvious. I’m here for you, Miss Sutherland.’
    He watched closely for the impact of his words; there was nowhere left to retreat from him.
    ‘Why?’ It was ripped from her. ‘What possible reason could you have?’
    His brow creased into delicate confusion. ‘Did your brother-in-law not warn you of exactly the kind of man I am?’
    ‘You didn’t answer the question.’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose I didn’t.’
    She waited. She realised she could never out-wait him. ‘There are limits to what I’ll endure for my sister’s sake. You’ll not touch me.’
    ‘Hush. I ruined you the moment you let me through your bedroom door. There is no reason for me to seduce you in truth. You are . . . safe.’ His smile acknowledged that ‘safe’ was an inadequate word for whatever Kit was with the Duke of Darlington in her bedroom.
    If he was telling the truth – if he need ruin her in name only to satisfy his purpose – then perhaps her thudding, fearful heart had the wrong of it.
    She had not forgotten his uneasy relationship with truth.
    He turned away from her, his skirts swaying lazily after him, and she put the candle down on the small table by the door. He raised his arms and started to pluck hairpins from his wig as he bent to look at the books and magazines overflowing in piles along the wall.
    ‘You’ve a good sight too much luggage,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see if we can clean out another room for your clothes.’ Though where they were to get a wardrobe from, she had no idea. They’d broken up the last of their spare furniture for firewood two winters ago when things had been so very bad.
    He made no sign he’d heard her. Another pin came free, and another, and her room became strange around her. She couldn’t look away from his pale, industrious fingers. Another pin plucked free. She knew the black hair that would be exposed when he took off the wig. She imagined it would be messy – pressed in tufts against his skull.
    She fled, taking the stairs in the dark by memory and touch. Her mother called out as she passed her bedroom, but Kit ignored her. She spoke briefly to Liza then left by the kitchen garden into the thick, wet underbrush of the forest path. The sky tumbled endlessly out, and then the forest claimed