Page 158 of Kathryn

Once he’d rinsed away the soap, he caught her hair up in his fist and squeezed most of the water from it.

Katie began to stand, but his hand curved around the back of her neck, stopping her. “Where do you think you are going?” he asked.

“I, er, thought you were done.”

The loud scritch of the stool answered her, and Gerrit appeared at her side. “The washcloth is dry, so you did not yet wash your body. I will clean you.”

“Oh. You don’t need to—”

“Hush.”

To Katie’s utter astonishment, she hushed. But only because I am so tired, she assured herself.

Dulverton dipped the cloth in the water and then worked up a lather. “Give me your arm.”

She lifted the arm closest to him, and he cleaned from her shoulder to the meaty part of her upper arm and then down to her forearms, massaging her as he went.

Katie groaned. “Why does that feel so good?”

“You do a great deal of work with this arm,” he answered gruffly, his strong fingers moving to her hand, which he proceeded to rub in lovely ways.

“Where did you learn to do this?” she asked, forcing her eyes open.

He raised one eyebrow.

The happy, lazy feeling that had filled her vaporized like a drop of water on a hot stove. “Oh. I see. From one of your m-mistresses,” she snarled, infuriated at herself for stammering.

One corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and he took her other arm, now stiff with anger, and began to wash it. “I am almost eight-and-thirty, Kathryn. Of course I have had other lovers.”

Lovers. The word scraped on her nerves like a razor. Katie hated how curious she was about his mistresses—even more so than about his first wife. After all, he had chosen his mistresses while his wife had been foisted upon him.

You are an idiot. Asking questions will only lead to pain.

She knew that. And yet she burned to know every detail about her reserved husband’s past.

The irony that she had been the one meeting a former lover tonight and yet she was the one boiling with jealousy did not escape her. Nor did it escape her that she had just as much control over her husband’s past lovers as she did over his future ones.

Her mother had told her, and her sisters, over and over again that all aristocratic men engaged mistresses. The countess had been adamant that a well-bred woman should pretend they knew nothing about such matters. Her eyes had glittered viciously whenever she’d spoken about the subject, her white-lipped fury telling her daughters far more than her words had done.

Five Seasons in London had taught Katie her mother’s warning was almost always true. The only exceptions she’d met were her sisters’ husbands.

But those marriages had all been love matches.

Unwanted, her mother’s voice pushed into her thoughts.

You will be grateful when your husband takes his base, vulgar needs elsewhere.

But Katie would not be grateful. Just thinking of Dulverton with another woman made her want to hit him with a brick. It also made her want to crawl on top of him and tear off his clothing and mark him as hers. And it made her want—

“What is going on inside your head, Kathryn?” Gerrit asked, pausing his ablutions to tuck an escaped curl behind her ear.

Katie shrugged and glared down at the water. The bubbles had mostly disappeared and the soap-clouded water did a poor job of concealing her body.

“Kathryn.”

She refused to look up.

Dulverton lifted her chin.