Veronica sat on Cain's right during dinner, with Kit at the foot of the table and Brandon next to her. The meal was delicious: fragrant jambalaya accompanied by oyster patties smothered in a cucumber-curry sauce, green peas flavored with mint, beaten biscuits, and, for dessert, rich slabs of cherry pie. Veronica was certain she was the only one who noticed the food.
She was excessively attentive to Baron throughout the meal. She leaned close to him and told him her most amusing stories. She laid her fingers lightly on his sleeve and occasionally squeezed his hard-muscled arm with deliberate intimacy.
He gave her his total attention. If she hadn't known better, she would have believed he didn't notice the subdued laughter coming from the other end of the table.
After dinner, Cain suggested the men take their brandy in the sitting room with the women instead of remaining at the dinner table. Brandon agreed with more eagerness than was polite. Throughout the meal.
Cain had barely been able to conceal his boredom with Brandon's stuffiness, while Brandon couldn't quite hide his contempt for Cain.
In the sitting room, Veronica deliberately took a place on the settee next to Kit, even though she knew the girl had taken a dislike to her. Yet Kit was courteous and thoroughly entertaining once they began to talk. She was exceptionally well read for a young woman, and when Veronica suggested that Kit borrow her copy of a scandalous new book by Gustave Flaubert that she'd just finished reading, Brandon sent her a thunderous look of disapproval.
"You don't approve of Kit reading Madame Bovary, Mr. Parsell? Then perhaps we'd better leave it on my shelf for the time being."
Cain regarded Brandon with amusement. "I'm sure Mr. Parsell isn't so stodgy as to object to an intelligent young woman improving her mind. Or are you, Parsell?"
"Of course he's not," Kit said too quickly. "Mr. Parsell is one of the most progressive men I know."
Veronica smiled. A most entertaining evening, indeed.
Cain crossed the hall and let himself into the library. Without bothering to light the lamp on his desk, he pulled off his coat and opened the window. The guests had left some time ago, and Kit had excused herself immediately afterward. Cain had to get up at dawn tomorrow, and he knew he should go to bed, but too many old memories had come back to nag at him tonight.
He gazed out into the darkness with unseeing eyes. Gradually the nighttime rasp of crickets and the soft, wheezy cry of a distant barn owl became less real than the bitter voices of the past.
His father, Nathaniel Cain, was the only son of a wealthy Philadelphia merchant. He lived in the same brownstone mansion in which he'd been born and was a competent, if unexceptional, businessman. He was nearly thirty-five when he married sixteen-year-old Rosemary Simpson. She was too young, but her parents had been anxious to rid themselves of their troublesome daughter, especially to such a well-heeled bachelor.
From the beginning, it was a marriage made in hell. She hated her pregnancy, had no interest in the son who was born exactly nine months after her wedding night, and grew to regard her adoring husband with contempt. Over the years she embarrassed him in public and cuckolded him in private, but he never stopped loving her.
He blamed himself for her restlessness. If only he hadn't forced a child on her so soon, she might have been more content. As time passed, however, he ceased blaming himself for her misdeeds and blamed only the child.
It took her nearly ten years to run through his fortune. She left him for a man who had been one of his employees.
Baron had observed it all, a bewildered, lonely child. In the months after his mother's departure, he stood by helplessly, watching his father being consumed by his unhealthy obsession for his faithless wife. Filthy, unshaven, drowning in alcohol, Nathaniel Cain sealed himself inside the lonely, decaying mansion and constructed elaborate fantasies of everything his wife had not been.
Only once had the boy rebelled. In a fit of anger, he'd spewed out all his resentment against the mother who'd abandoned them both. Nathaniel Cain had beaten him until his nose streamed with blood and his eyes had swollen shut. Afterward, he didn't seem to remember what had happened.
The lesson Cain had learned from his parents had been a hard one, and he'd never forgotten it. He'd learned that love was a weakness that twists and perverts.
Hard-earned lessons were the best-remembered. He gave away books when he finished them, traded horses before he could grow too fond of them, and stood by the window of the library at Risen Glory staring out at the hot, still night thinking about his father, his mother… and Kit Weston.
He found little comfort in the fact that so many of the emotions she aroused in him were angry ones. It bothered him that she made him feel anything at all. But since the afternoon she'd invaded his house, veiled, mysterious, and wildly beautiful, he hadn't been able to get her off his mind. And today, when he'd touched her breasts, he'd known there'd never been a woman he'd wanted more.
He glanced over at his desk. His papers didn't seem to have been disturbed tonight, so she hadn't slipped in when he'd gone out to the stable to check on the horses. He probably should have locked up the ledgers and bankbooks after he'd found evidence of her snooping, but he'd felt a perverse sense of satisfaction in witnessing her dishonesty.
Her month was almost up. If tonight was any indication, she'd be marrying that idiot Parsell soon. Before that happened, he had to find a way to free himself from the mysterious hold she had on him.
If only he knew how.
He heard a soft sound in the hallway. She was roaming again, and tonight he was in no mood for it. He stalked across the carpet and twisted the doorknob.
Kit spun around as the library door crashed open. Cain stood on the other side. He looked rough, elegant, and thoroughly untamed.
She wore only a thin nightdress. It covered her from neck to toe, but after what had passed between them in her bedroom earlier, she felt too exposed.
"Insomnia?" he drawled.
Her bare feet and unbound hair made her feel like a hoyden, especially after spending the evening with Veronica Gamble. She wished she'd at least put on her slippers before she'd come downstairs "I-I didn't eat much at dinner. I was hungry, and I wanted to see if there was any cherry pie left."
"I wouldn't mind a piece myself. We'll look together." Even though he spoke casually, she sensed something calculating in his expression, and she wished she could keep him from following her to the kitchen. She should have stayed in her room, but she'd barely eaten anything for dinner, and she'd hoped a late-night snack would fill her stomach enough so she could sleep.
Patsy, the cook, had left the pie under a towel on the table. Kit cut a small piece she no longer wanted for herself, then handed Cain the pie plate. He grabbed a fork and carried everything over to the kitchen door. As she sat at the table, he opened it to let in the night air, then leaned against the doorframe to eat.
After only a few bites, he set aside the pie. "Why are you wasting your time with Parsell, Kit? He's a stiff."
"I knew you'd say something unpleasant about him." She jabbed her fork at the crust. "You were barely civil all evening."
"While you, of course, were a model of courtesy to Mrs. Gamble."
Kit didn't want to talk about Veronica Gamble. The woman confused her. Kit disliked her, yet she was also drawn to her. Veronica had traveled everywhere, read everything, and met fascinating people. Kit could have talked to her for hours.
She felt the same kind of confusion when she was with Cain.
She toyed with one of the cherries. "I've known Mr. Parsell since I was a child. He's a fine man."
"Too fine for you. And I mean that as a compliment, so pull in your claws."
"Must be one of those Yankee compliments."
He moved away from the door, and the walls of the kitchen seemed as if they were closing in on her. "Do you really think that man would ever let you ride a horse in britches? Or trounce through the woods in your skirts? Do you think he'll let you curl up on the sofa with Sophronia's head in your lap, or show Samuel how to shoot marbles, or flirt with every man you see?"