A Season for Christmas (Desire and Discipline #3)

Chapter 4

4

Catherine

The afternoon was one shocking revelation after another. And the morning had been so calm. So sedate. She’d had no idea her entire world would be turned upside down mere hours later, but here she was.

“You do not mean that,” she retorted immediately, not believing Samuel would actually want her to flog him… though some small part of her quivered in hope. No. She pushed that away.

He was challenging her, taunting her. That was the only explanation.

Raising one eyebrow, he tilted his head.

“I never say what I do not mean.” The corner of his mouth curved upward. “If I am impertinent, perhaps you should flog me for it. That is what you like to do, yes?”

“I…” She cleared her throat. There was no point in denying it. He had seen her at the Society of Sin, after all. He knew what she did to men. What she liked to do to men. But she could not believe he was offering himself up to be one of those men. He had fled from that night, and she had not seen him again until today, and suddenly, he was trying to wrangle her into going on a trip with him and flog him, both at once?

It made no sense. No sense at all.

Squaring her shoulders, she gave him a look.

“That is what I like to do. That is not what you like to do.”

“I do not know if I’d like it or not; I’ve never tried it.” The slow grin spreading across his lips was sheer challenge. Straightening, he tugged on his jacket, pulling it back into place over the red waistcoat beneath.

Catherine got a sudden vision of pulling both things off him…

Stop it.

She was going to drive herself mad if she did not get a handle on her emotions and her fantasies.

“And what if you do not like it?” she asked, doing her best to keep the tremor out of her voice.

Samuel carelessly shrugged one shoulder.

“Then we will both know instead of making presumptions.” Though his tone was indifferent, his blazing eyes were anything but. He did not feel as sanguine about the prospect as he was pretending. “I will admit, I would prefer not to explore the options in front of a crowd or at a party. Coming with me would provide us with the privacy to experiment, and on top of that, you’d be doing a service for your country. Are you not curious about what happened to the dead dukes? Who might have done it?”

“You do not believe your friend had anything to do with his father’s death,” she retorted accusingly. He was dangling bait in front of her without truly believing it was a worthwhile catch .

A wry smile twisted his lips, though it did not quite reach his eyes.

“But I might be wrong. It’s also possible someone else in the household or on the estate might have reason to want to hasten the former Duke of Clarence’s demise, which is another avenue of investigation I’ll be pursuing during my visit.”

Which would be something the former duke’s mother might know about, but she would likely not speak freely to Samuel. She may not speak freely to Catherine, either, but as another woman, there was a higher likelihood of being able to establish some sort of bond. Catherine huffed.

Damn the man for making sense. Damn Priscilla and her friends for being so much more than they seemed.

Yet, the spark of excitement that had kindled in Catherine’s breast was no one’s fault but her own. She was the one who yearned for adventure. She was the one who was intrigued by the mystery.

She was the one who found the prospect of unraveling clues over Christmas to sound far more appealing than waiting out the holiday alone in London.

She was the one who was tempted by the idea of flogging Samuel… and so much more. Though many of her relationships with the men she punished had been chaste, there had been a few that included further intimacies. She could not help but wonder how far he would be willing to go and what it would be like.

Could not help but think about what it would feel like to be in bed with him, his hands on her, his tongue serving at her pleasure. He was a strong man, a powerful man in personality, and now he was offering to lay down that power for her.

At least, that was what it sounded like .

And that was the most tempting possibility being offered.

Did she not want to know?

Was she willing to take the chance?

Catherine pursed her lips. This was not a decision to be made in haste.

“I need to think about it,” she said finally. Think about it. Perhaps discuss it with Priscilla. Find out more from the other ladies about what information, exactly, they expected her to be able to gather. What kind of information they normally sought.

Think about how she was going to protect her heart. Because Samuel was showing no indication that he wanted anything more than to experiment. He had fled from the Society of Sin the night he’d seen her, but perhaps that had been because he’d been fleeing his own desires. She’d seen that happen with men who struggled against their innermost passions, thinking it made them less of a man. That was the entire reason for the Society of Sin, after all.

That was how she and Priscilla had become friends. Because Joseph had not initially felt like he could admit his true desires to his wife. He’d feared she would see him as less than before.

If Samuel was willing to face his desires now, it made sense that he would trust Catherine with the exploration. They had a past, and there was still a spark of attraction between them. Those two things combined made her an ideal partner for such an exploration.

But she could not let herself hope it was more than curiosity. For all she knew, it might even be payback for the way she’d rejected him in the past when she’d chosen to marry Lord Cross instead. Granted, she had done so under extreme pressure from her parents, but she had known Samuel would run away with her if she’d been willing.

They could have eloped.

He did not seem to hold it against her now, but she also did not know him the way she had before. He might have changed.

In fact, that he was willing to even consider being dominated by her already demonstrated he was not the man she’d once known.

Then again, she was not the woman he had known, either.

Samuel

Dinner at Camden House was boisterous. Now that Catherine had been let in on the secret of who Oliver was, conversation revolved around how the ladies had become involved in various investigations. They’d also all given Samuel permission to use their Christian names, which, considering they were all related, made things a good deal easier. The men had done the same with Catherine.

The feeling of closeness and camaraderie drew her in as much as the conversation, he could tell. Catherine had always been a bit of a loner. Though she’d been well versed in making conversation and had always had people around her, she’d often been alone in the crowd, never quite coming out of her shell. Except with him.

Now, he got to see her coming out of it with others, and he was both glad of it and protective.

Seated beside her at dinner, he enjoyed watching her reactions—and joining her in them at some points. Though he’d known of Evie’s occasional involvement in her uncle’s business, he had not known how involved her friends had become in the recent hunt for a traitor who had attempted to assassinate the Duke of York. Thankfully, that attempt had been unsuccessful, and the Duke of York still lived, and the traitor behind the plot had been caught. The Russian delegation he’d been working for had been sent back home as well.

Samuel had known some of this already, but he was still shocked by the details.

Like Evie’s connection to the Tramp, who was well known but only in certain circles that young ladies of the ton should certainly not be acquainted with. And the fact that Josie had visited the Tramp’s gambling hell while disguised as a boy. There was the revelation that the Earl of Talbot had only become an earl because the traitor had murdered his brother. The Countess of Talbot had been crucial in that investigation.

And the Marchioness of Hartford, who he’d always thought of as demure and retiring, was anything but when she was with her friends. Though he’d assumed there must be some hidden depths to her, once she’d married Hartford and he was clearly being led around by his nose (or possibly his cock), he was becoming acquainted with an entirely different side of her now.

He would never make the mistake of overlooking her in a crowd again. She was full of wicked observations and gossip that she’d picked up when those around her did not notice her presence. Though, of course, as Hartford’s wife, she was less able to blend into the background now than when she’d been as a wallflower debutante, but she still managed it well enough to tell a hilarious story about the Earl of Spencer and his wife planning an amorous encounter right in front of her .

“Perhaps you should stop sitting in alcoves at balls,” Josie told her, obviously amused by the story. “Remember when the Marchioness of Dunbury nearly ended up on top of you?”

“Last year, at the Windhams’ ball,” Mary said with a sigh, leaning over to make sure Catherine was aware of the gossip. “They sneak off nearly every ball, and one time, I had to sneak out of the room they went into, but that was the first time anyone has almost ended up on top of me.”

“My goodness,” Catherine laughed. “I would expect such behavior at the Society of Sin, but it’s harder to imagine at a duchess’ ball.”

“Watch them this Season,” Evie advised with a smirk. “Every event they attend, at some point, they both disappear for a quarter to half an hour and reappear slightly mussed.”

“Or more than slightly,” her husband joked.

“They are hardly the only ones guilty of sneaking off, but they are certainly more consistent about it,” Elijah said, leaning over to wink at Josie. “We could take a lesson from them.”

His wife snorted indelicately. Though she was stunningly beautiful and had been declared a Diamond of the First Water during her Season, Samuel was beginning to realize she rivaled Evie for being the wildest of the foursome.

“This is why I do not go to balls,” Oliver grumbled, causing Diana to laugh.

“You do not want to sneak off with me?” she asked with a seductive tone, causing much consternation among the rest of the table. Elijah looked horrified at the idea, Evie’s pale complexion turned green, and Joseph groaned. Lily, Josie, and Mary all paled at the thought, though they did not change color quite as dramatically as Oliver’s niece. Only Nathan and Anthony seemed unperturbed.

And Catherine, of course, but she was not related to Oliver in any way. She was clearly amused by the varied reactions.

Leaning over, Samuel took the opportunity to whisper in her ear.

“I would sneak away with you if you wanted.”

Immediately, Catherine flushed bright pink, her gaze dropping to her plate. No one else seemed to notice their little byplay, which was good.

“I should flog you,” she muttered, making him grin.

Whether or not she’d said the words out loud, she was going to go with him. He could tell. She was taking the time to think about it, but the answer was going to be yes.

And then he was going to find out what it would be like to be flogged.