The Scandalous Love of a Duke. Jane Lark

would leave by the side door, and walked into the aisle. Her hands were shaking. She clasped them together.

      She felt as though she’d played with fire and been burned. She was left charred and smouldering.

      The suddenness of their separation had left John feeling bereft. All his senses were smarting at her loss as his gaze followed her departure.

      The Reverend approached. John could see him through the ornate grid separating off the little chapel and his stomach clenched in a sharp spasm.

      The vicar no longer wore his robes. He had changed somewhere and come back for her.

      “Katherine!” The man’s voice echoed about the church.

       Not, Miss Spencer.

      John felt icy cold. The reverend was around the same age as himself. John’s grandfather had helped appoint him three years ago. John walked into the church as Katherine had done, a moment before she met the reverend in the aisle.

      “Richard, I’m here.”

      When John entered the square of four arches beneath the church tower, he felt like a cockerel in a pit, bitter hatred running into his blood. He wished to fight this man whose name she used. Had John walked in on a tryst they had planned?

      He forced a smile. “I enjoyed your sermon, Reverend. I was just offering to take Miss Spencer home.”

      She looked back, appearing to have not known he’d followed.

      She gave him an uncertain look. “Thank you, Your Grace, but Reverend Barker usually drives me home.”

      Ah, so she had not been hiding. She had been waiting for the vicar. She was embarrassed, blushing again, and John could feel the awareness running between Katherine and the reverend. But moments ago she had been kissing him.

      “Forgive me, I thought Your Grace had gone.” The vicar gave John a deferential bow but John could see the man was prickling. There was a stand-off here. Two men interested in one woman.

      The vicar sent Katherine a conciliatory and questioning smile. He obviously did not trust a duke near his prim Sunday-school teacher.

      John laughed internally but it was a bitter sound which rung in his head. He felt a desperate need to cling to Katherine, to keep her for himself. He felt so much better in her presence – human.

      He’d watched her during the service, moving about beyond the metal screen speaking with the children, sitting beside them and whispering to them.

      He’d forgotten Wareham, the account books and the tenants he’d yet to meet. He’d forgotten the two halves of his whole. He was one person in her presence, a man who could feel warmth. He was only John.

      Setting a false smile – all the old Duke’s grandson – John met the vicar’s gaze. “I saw Miss Spencer’s parents leave, I had not realised you had an arrangement.” His eyebrows lifted. Was the vicar her beau? Was Katherine inclined towards him?

      “If you’ll excuse us then, Your Grace?” The vicar dismissed John and looked at Katherine. “Are you ready?”

      She nodded.

      John seethed, nobody routed him. Katherine was his and he was going to damn well have her. This bloody nothing of a vicar would have to step aside.

      “Your Grace.” She turned to him and dropped a deep curtsy as though he was a stranger and they had not been kissing but moments ago.

      I want you.

      If she was playing games, well he’d learnt them from the she-wolves abroad, he knew how to play.

      “Katherine,” he stated, in a deep warm pitch, reminding her they were not strangers.

      She blushed intensely, but John had let her vicar know he was not the only one who had permission to call her by her given name. But then she had never actually given John permission, he had assumed the right based on their childhood friendship.

      He turned to the vicar. “Reverend Barker.”

      Then he left.

      ~

      It had been three days since John had felt Katherine’s kiss slip into complete abandon in the chancel chapel. Since then his mind had been full of her.

      Oh but that was a lie, his mind had been full of her since the funeral, only now it was becoming even more of an obsession.

      His whole body ached with need for her and at night she occupied his dreams.

      It irritated him immensely whenever he thought of her with her Godly priest.

      She had kissed John back in the church and admitted she had wanted him to kiss her in the road. She could not therefore wish for a pious bloody vicar. John strode on along Maidstone’s pavement and shoved his thoughts of Kate aside. He had a job to do. He’d scoured the accounts and found nothing unusual, so now he was resorting to asking Pembroke Place’s suppliers about Wareham’s business practices.

      He’d also visited tenants over the last two days and asked them if they’d had any problems with the management of their tenancies. No one had complained.

      As John walked, he received bows and curtsies in acknowledgement. He nodded at the people noting his presence, though his now habitual lack of patience was wearing thin. He knew why his grandfather had never walked anywhere. John set his jaw and kept going. But then his gaze alighted on one person he was pleased to see.

      Warmth and light suddenly swept into the cold, arid darkness inside him.

      Katherine! He shouted her name, though not aloud.

      She was on the far side of the street, standing outside a hat shop, looking in through the window. She held a pile of parcels.

      A primal hunger roared inside him.

      Her profile was perfect and dainty, with her round-tipped nose, and her rose-coloured lips were slightly parted. He imagined her in a black silhouette portrait, as they’d cut images in Naples. He crossed the cobbled street, now entirely ignoring other passers-by.

      “Katherine.” He took the last step and touched her elbow.

      She started and spun around, her eyes wide. “Y-your Grace.”

      “It seems I surprise you every time,” he whispered.

      She was blushing again.

      “I-I’m sorry.”

      He looked to where she had been looking and saw a pretty bonnet dressed with ornamental cherries and a cerise-pink ribbon. Mary thought the mode for fruit on a bonnet absurd. Katherine obviously did not.

      “Your Grace?” he queried. “If the vicar is Richard, Katherine, I think I might remain, John, privately? We have known each other years!” Her wide turquoise-blue eyes stared back, but she said nothing. “What is going on between the two of you anyway?” The question had been rattling about in John’s head for days.

      “N-nothing, I…” She did not continue.

      “Nothing? He drives you home every Sunday? Have you an agreement with him?”

      “An agreement?” Her eyes kept glancing beyond him, into the shop.

      “Are you promised to him?”

      She turned a deeper pink. “No.”

      He suddenly remembered she was holding parcels and took them from her.

      Where was her groom or maid? Phillip’s family were not high society but nor were they low. Her father was the local squire.

      “Who is with you?” The question probably sounded impertinent. He was still angry over the bloody vicar.

      “My mother is in the shop.” She looked embarrassed. She had not been embarrassed with her vicar. John wished she’d feel as comfortable