Nothing had ever felt as good as those callused palms on her breasts. She arched against him. He brushed the tips and she moaned.
A knock sounded at the door.
She sucked in her breath and jerked away, scrambling to pull up her bodice.
"Who is it?" Cain barked out impatiently.
The door flew back on its hinges.
Sophronia stood on the other side, two pale smudges of alarm over her cheekbones. "What are you doing in her room?"
Cain's eyebrow slashed upward. "That's between Kit and me."
Sophronia's amber eyes took in Kit's disheveled state, and her hands knotted into fists in the skirt of her dress. She bit into her bottom lip as if she were trying to hold back all the words she didn't dare say in front of him. "Mr. Parsell is downstairs," she finally managed. The fabric of her skirt crumpled in her fists. "He has a book to lend you. I put him in the sitting room with Mrs. Gamble."
Kit's own fingers were stiff from the tight grip she had on her bodice. Slowly she relaxed them and nodded to Sophronia. Then she addressed Cain with as much composure as she could muster. "Would you invite Mr. Parsell to join us for dinner? Sophronia can help me finish dressing. I'll be downstairs in a few minutes."
Their eyes locked, stormy violet clashing with the gray of winter sleet. Who was the winner and who the loser in the battle that had just been fought between them? Neither of them knew. There was no resolution, no healing catharsis. Instead, their antagonism crackled even more powerfully than it had before.
Cain left without a word, but his expression clearly indicated it wasn't over between them.
"Don't say a word!" Kit began peeling off her dress, tearing a seam in her clumsiness. How could she have let him touch her like that? Why hadn't she pushed him away? "I need the gown in the back of my wardrobe. It's covered in muslin."
Sophronia didn't move, so Kit pulled it from the wardrobe herself and tossed it on the bed.
"What's happened to you?" Sophronia hissed. "The Kit Weston I used to know wouldn't lock herself in a bedroom with a man who's not her husband."
Kit turned on her. "I didn't invite him!"
"I'll bet you didn't tell him to leave, either."
"You're wrong. He was angry with me because he wanted me to have dinner downstairs with Mrs. Gamble, and I refused."
Sophronia jabbed her finger toward the gown on the bed. "Then why do you want that?"
"Brandon's here, so I've changed my mind."
"Is that why you're getting dressed up? For Mr. Parsell?"
Sophronia's question took her aback. Whom was she getting dressed up for? "Of course it's for Brandon And for Mrs. Gamble. I don't want to look like a country bumpkin in front of her."
Sophronia stiff features softened almost imperceptibly. "You can lie to me, Kit Weston, but just don't lie to yourself. You'd better make certain you're not doing this for the major."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Leave him to Mrs. Gamble, honey." Sophronia walked over to the bed and pulled the muslin off the gown. At the same time, she repeated the words Magnus had said to her only a few weeks earlier. "He's a hard man with women. There's something as cold as ice inside him. Any woman who tries to get past that ice will only end up with a bad case of frostbite." She settled the gown over Kit's head.
"You don't need to tell me all this."
"When the major looks at a beautiful woman, all he sees is a body to bring him pleasure. If a woman understands that about him, like I expect Mrs. Gamble does, she can enjoy herself and there won't be any hard feelings afterward. But any woman who's fool enough to fall in love with him is only going to end up with a broken heart."
"This has nothing to do with me."
"Doesn't it?" Sophronia did up the fastenings. "The reason the two of you fight so much is because you're just alike."
"I'm not anything like him! You know better than anyone how much I hate him. He's standing in the way of everything I want from life. Risen Glory's mine. It's where I belong. I'll die before I let him keep it. I'm going to marry Brandon Parsell, Sophronia. And as soon as I can, I'm buying this plantation back."
Sophronia took a brush to her tangles. "And what makes you think the major will sell it to you?"
"Oh, he'll sell, all right. It's just a matter of time."
Sophronia began to draw her hair into a neat knot, but Kit shook her head. She'd wear it free tonight, with only the silver combs. Everything about her must be as different from Veronica Gamble as possible.
"You got no way of knowing he'll sell," Sophronia said.
Kit wasn't about to confess her late-night forages through the plantation's calf-bound ledgers, adding and subtracting her way through pages of boldly entered figures. It hadn't taken her long to discover that Cain had overextended himself. He was hanging onto Risen Glory and his spinning mill by the most fragile of threads. The smallest disaster could send him under.
Kit didn't know much about spinning mills, but she did know about cotton. She knew about unexpected hailstorms, about hurricanes and droughts, about insects that fed off the tender bolls until nothing was left. Where cotton was concerned, disaster was bound to strike sooner or later, and when it did, she'd be ready. She'd buy the plantation right out from under him. And she'd buy it at her own price.
Sophronia was staring at her and shaking her head.
"What's wrong?"
"Are you really wearing that dress downstairs for dinner?"
"Isn't it wonderful?"
"It's made for a ball, not for dinner at home."
Kit smiled. "I know."
The gown had been so outrageously expensive that Elsbeth had protested. She'd argued that Kit could put her clothing allowance to better use buying several more modest gowns. Besides, it was too conspicuous, she'd said, so extravagantly beautiful that, even on the most demure female-which Kit certainly was not-it would draw more attention than, perhaps, a well-brought-up young lady should wish to attract.
Such subtleties were lost on Kit. She only knew that it was glorious and she had to have it.
The overskirt of the dress was a billowing cloud of silver organdy caught up over gleaming white satin shot with silver thread. Crystal bugle beads covered the tight-fitting bodice, sparkling like night snow under a starry winter sky. More beads spangled the skirt all the way to the hem.
The neckline was low, falling well off her shoulders. She glanced down and saw that the tops of her exposed breasts were still faintly rosy from Cain's hands. She quickly looked away and put on the necklace that went with the gown, a choker of crystal bugle beads drizzling onto her skin like melting ice chips.
The very air around her seemed to crackle as she moved. She slipped on satin slippers with spool-shaped heels, the ones she'd worn at the Templeton ball. They were eggshell instead of the stark white of the gown, but she didn't care.
"Don't worry, Sophronia. Everything's going to be fine." She gave Sophronia a quick peck on the cheek and made her way downstairs, the gown shimmering around her in a crystalline cloud of ice and snow.
Veronica Gamble's smooth forehead betrayed nothing of her thoughts as Kit swept into the sitting room.
So the little kitten had decided to fight. She wasn't surprised.
The gown was outrageously inappropriate for the occasion and quite wonderful. Its remote ice-maiden perfection served as a perfect foil for the girl's vivid beauty. Mr. Parsell, who'd so blatantly wrangled a dinner invitation, seemed stunned by her appearance. Baron looked like a thundercloud.
The poor man. He would have done better to have left her in that dirty dress.
Veronica wondered what had happened between the two of them in the room upstairs. Kit's face was flushed, and Veronica's observant eyes caught a small red mark on her neck. They hadn't made love, that was certain. Cain was still as tightly coiled as a jungle beast about to spring.