Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(25)

“No,” he said softly. “What happened to your father?”

“I’d rather not discuss that.”

“After all I’ve confided in you?” He gave her a chiding glance. “Be fair, Marks. It can’t be any more difficult for you than it was for me.”

“All right.” Catherine took a deep breath. “When my mother fell ill, my father felt it as a great burden. He paid a woman to look after her until the end, and sent me away to live with my aunt and grandmother, and I never heard from him again. He may be dead, for all I know.”

“I’m sorry,” Leo said. And he was. Genuinely sorry, wishing he could somehow have gone back in time to comfort a small girl in spectacles, who had been abandoned by the man who should have protected her. “Not all men are like that,” he felt the need to point out.

“I know. It would hardly be fair of me to blame the entire male population for my father’s sins.”

Leo became uncomfortably aware that his own behavior hadn’t been any better than her father’s, that he had indulged in his own bitter grief to the point of abandoning his sisters. “No wonder you’ve always hated me,” he said. “I must remind you of him. I deserted my sisters when they needed me.”

Catherine gave him a clear-eyed stare, not pitying, not censorious, just … appraising. “No,” she said sincerely. “You’re not at all like him. You came back to your family. You’ve worked for them, cared for them. And I’ve never hated you.”

Leo stared at her closely, more than a little surprised by the revelation. “You haven’t?”

“No. In fact—” She broke off abruptly.

“In fact?” Leo prompted. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

“You were. Something along the lines of liking me against your will.”

“Certainly not,” Catherine said primly, but Leo saw the twitch of a smile at her lips.

“Irresistibly attracted by my dashing good looks?” he suggested. “My fascinating conversation?”

“No, and no.”

“Seduced by my brooding glances?” He accompanied this with a waggish swerving of his brows that finally reduced her to laughter.

“Yes, it must have been those.”

Settling back against the pillows, Leo regarded her with satisfaction.

What a wonderful laugh she had, light and throaty, as if she had been drinking champagne.

And what a problem this could become, this madly inappropriate desire for her. She was becoming real to him, dimensional, vulnerable in ways he had never imagined.

As Catherine read aloud, the ferret emerged from beneath the dresser and climbed onto her lap. He fell asleep in an upside-down circle, his mouth open. Leo didn’t blame Dodger in the slightest. Catherine’s lap looked like a lovely place to rest one’s head.

Leo feigned interest in the complex and detailed narrative, while his mind occupied itself with the question of what she would look like naked. It seemed tragic that he would never see her so. But even by Leo’s dilapidated code of ethics, a man did not take a virgin unless he had serious intentions. He had tried it once, letting himself fall madly in love, nearly losing everything as a result.

And there were some risks a man couldn’t take twice.

Chapter Ten

It was past midnight. Catherine woke to the sound of a baby’s whimpering. Little Rye was teething, and the usually sweet-natured cherub had been fretful of late.

Catherine stared sightlessly in the darkness, kicked the bed linens away from her legs, and tried to find a more comfortable position in which to sleep. Her side. Her stomach. Nothing felt right.

After a few minutes, the baby’s crying stopped. No doubt he was being soothed by his attentive mother.

But Catherine was left awake. Lonely, aching. The worst kind of awake.

She tried to occupy herself with old Celtic sheep-counting words, still used by rural farmers in place of modern numbers … yan, tan, tethera, pethera … One could hear the echo of centuries in the ancient syllables. Sethera, methera, hovera, covera …

Her mind summoned an image of singular blue eyes, striated light and dark, like strips of sky and ocean. Leo had watched her while she had read to him, and while she had done the mending. And underneath their banter, and his relaxed façade, she had known that he wanted her. Yan, tan, tethera …

Perhaps Leo was awake at this very moment. His fever had dissipated earlier in the evening, but it might have rekindled. He might need water. A cool cloth.

Catherine left the bed and snatched up her dressing robe before she could think twice. Finding her spectacles on the dressing table, she placed them precisely on her nose.

Her bare feet crossed the wood floors of the hallway as she went on her charitable mission.

The door to his room was partially open. She slipped in without a sound, like a thief, tiptoeing to the bed just as she had the previous night. The darkness of the room was penetrated by a few runnels of light from the open window, as if the shadows were a sieve. She could hear the soft and steady flow of Leo’s breathing.

Making her way to his side, Catherine reached out tentatively, her heartbeat thickening as she laid her fingers on his forehead. No fever. Only smooth, healthy warmth.

Leo’s breathing fractured as he awakened. “Cat?” His voice was sleep-thickened. “What are you doing?”