A Season Beyond a Kiss (2 page)

Perhaps it was just another dreamy fantasy she was having about the man who had whisked her out of the path of a swiftly approaching four-in-hand shortly after they had collided quite by accident on a boardwalk in Charleston, but Raelynn thought he looked especially virile this early morning hour. No doubt his abbreviated garb lay at the root of such a premise, for the man had been gifted with a most excellent physique. His shoulders were remarkably wide, his arms admirably wrought with lithe muscles, his darkly furred chest broad to just below his male breasts, from there tapering downward nicely along firmly fleshed ribs. She knew well enough that beneath those crisply tailored trousers, his hips were narrow enough to be envied by a woman. He was an active horseman and, on a regular basis, sparred with several of his close friends merely for the sport of it. As a result, his muscles were well honed to a vibrant hardness.

Though his hair was as black as ink, he was not a man who was naturally swarthy or excessively hairy. His chest and loins bore the heaviest matting, his forearms and long, lissome legs only a light layer, his back and shoulders none at all.

His features were noble: his jaw crisply chiseled beneath warmly burnished skin, his nose lean with a subtle aquiline curve, his chin slightly cleft. Whenever he smiled or thoughtfully pursed his lips, twin indentations appeared in his tautly fleshed cheeks as a vague form of dimples that, along with the beauty of his darkly translucent green eyes, never failed to capture the attention of young ladies everywhere. His lop-sided way of grinning could be termed lethal in regards to stripping away a woman’s resolve. Raelynn had found herself no less susceptible and, many a time, had been forced to fortify her wits lest she, too, fall prey. In all aspects, her husband was an exceptional specimen of the male gender.

If she had been a wife in actuality, Raelynn would have yielded to a strengthening desire to sweep a hand over that firm expanse of sinew, muscle and crisply curling hair that constituted his chest, much as she had done on their wedding night when she had first viewed him without hindrance of clothes and had been awestruck by his manly grace and beauty. But then, it would hardly have surprised her to discover that since that time she had become more than a little besotted with and perhaps even a bit prejudiced about a certain Southern gentleman named Jeffrey Lawrence Birmingham.

“Jeffrey, you startled me,” she scolded with a nervous little laugh. It didn’t help her composure one whit knowing that behind that charming mask of refined masculinity there could be lurking a disreputable rake bereft of any concern for how carelessly he used smitten young maids for his own ease and pleasure. Even after witnessing the altercation between Jeff and Nell, Raelynn realized she had cause to fear that she, too, was becoming just as susceptible, for it seemed lately that she could think of nothing else but those brief moments she had spent in his arms.

His white teeth flashed briefly in a wayward grin. “Did I now?”

The way his eyes flicked over her in a sweeping glance left Raelynn feeling as if she had just been stripped from head to toe. It was enough to bring a brighter glow to her cheeks and leave her voice less than steady. What was worse, it aroused within her a yearning for his husbandly attention and fervently wishing she could forever banish the memory of Nell to the four winds. “You’re usually gone by this hour of the morning, aren’t you, Jeffrey?”

“Aye, but my bookkeeper wanted me to look over the accounts for my shipping company, and I just finished them this morning. It’s always tedious work, and I decided to spend a few leisured moments relaxing before making the trip into Charleston.” He canted his dark head at a contemplative angle. “And what of you, my pet? Are you normally up this early?”

Raelynn blushed, knowing that in contrast to his early morning risings, she probably seemed like a sleepyhead. The French doors of her bedroom were usually left open all night to allow the cooler air to enter its confines. Though no sound had disturbed her, she had roused from sleep enough times to have become cognizant of the fact that it wasn’t at all unusual for her husband to roam the gallery just before or shortly after daybreak, leaving her no other choice but to assume that he was well acquainted with her habit of sleeping fairly late. “The hammering woke me.”

The hand she clutched to her throat trembled slightly, in part from an inexplicable excitement that his presence never failed to evoke within her, and, perhaps in similar degrees, from a troubling suspicion that she was weakening like some mindless twit to a libertine’s subtle wiles. If she had her wits about her, she wouldn’t wait around for him to rend her heart. She’d turn tail and run. It was pure folly to subject oneself to temptations that with each passing day were becoming more difficult to resist. Indeed, the only thing that had thus far kept her from avidly pursuing a consummated marriage was the niggling fear that Jeffrey Birmingham wasn’t nearly as honorable, noble or gentlemanly as he seemed on the surface.

More often of late, her heart seemed torn asunder by two choices, both of which at different times seemed rational. One was driven by a growing desire to become his wife in actuality; the other, based on fear and suspicion, to abscond with her virginity intact before she fell victim to his deceit. Yet when she mused on the latter option, a miserable emptiness settled within her vitals, leaving her feeling drained, and she’d find herself struggling against a volley of tears, both strong indications of his affect on her and her reluctance to leave him.

The tumult raging within her seriously jangled her nerves, and as much as she would have preferred otherwise, Raelynn feared that she was behaving like some bedazzled young miss infatuated with an older man. Jeffrey was indeed that, being a score, ten and three, and her senior by four and ten years, which made her even more wary of his appeal. What could a mere girl do to fortify herself against the persuasive charm of a man of experience?

Certainly a few moments in his presence could leave her hopelessly flustered in spite of the small collection of handsome, young aristocrats who had once vied for her attention in England, but in retrospect those eager gallants seemed hopelessly immature and foppish now that she had a more worthy subject with whom to compare them. It was indeed a rare man who could claim the equal to Jeffrey’s gentlemanly allure, notable physique, and stunning good looks. And she wondered
why
she was becoming so vulnerable? Surely by now, a simpleton could have figured out the reasons!

In spite of the precautions with which she had sought to fortify herself, it was a hard fact for her to face knowing that her fascination with the man had deepened in the short span of time that they had been married. Her attraction had obviously been bolstered by his manly charisma and striking physical appearance. Nevertheless she was wont to wonder at times if the situation she had created for herself had somehow strengthened his appeal. Basically, by the same restrictions she had decreed for him, she was allowed to look but forbidden to touch and handle. Such limitations were comparable to a delectable sweetmeat being teasingly dangled just beyond the reach of a young child. The more it remained out of range, the more fervently it was coveted.

Raelynn’s cheeks warmed once more beneath the heady intoxication of those smoldering emerald orbs as they glided leisurely over her meagerly clad form. It was a well-worn path upon which her own memories trod, back to that moment wherein Jeffrey Birmingham had braced himself above her to complete their marital union. Before that single night of frustrated pleasure, she had never even glimpsed a naked man, much less lain equally devoid of clothing within his arms. Yet if she had been called upon to describe that stirring vision of a princely groom clothed in nothing more than the natural raiment of a man, she would have painted a most winning, detailed likeness of a tall, young god in the prime of life and in the heat of passion. Her eyes had feasted upon his manly beauty, and even after Nell’s accusations, she had only to close her eyes to form a mental image of his face and form.

Jeff’s lips curved roguishly aslant, displaying the tantalizing depression in one of his cheeks as he paced forward with measured tread. Had he been stalking a wary doe, he could not have been more careful
or
deliberate. “Should I be whipped for a scoundrel for startling you, madam?”

“No, of course not, Jeffrey. How absurd.” Raelynn stared up into those luminous orbs, saying nothing more until she realized she was grinning back at him with a total lack of aplomb. The fact that she now felt completely alive and alert made her mindful of the potency of the strange elixir exuded by the man. “I mean, you make me feel . . .” She searched for a word or phrase that would adequately describe her disarray and yet leave no derogatory image of a love-struck chit. How could she, with trite comparisons, explain the blissful aura that at the moment seemed to encompass her?

She certainly had no wish to reveal the mental upheaval she was suffering because of their marital dilemma. By dint of will she had managed to withhold herself from his amorous attentions, yet it hadn’t been easy by any means. Having been taken to the very brink of consummation, she had then been unable to relegate those sensually stirring memories to the realm of oblivion. She had seen him as a bridegroom fully aroused, and thereafter, a battle had raged within her for possession of her mind. In spite of the difficulty she had in controlling her own growing curiosity and desires, the chasm between them had continued to widen, especially after he had begun distancing himself from her. Many times during his absence, feeling lonely even in the midst of so many servants, she had caught herself savoring recollections of those titillating adventures in his arms. Now she had no need to conjure images from the past. He was standing before her, barely a step or two away, close enough for her to feel the aura of his manly magnetism as keenly as if it were of tangible substance.

“Make you feel like what?” Jeff queried, his lips once again sliding upward at a corner.

Unable to contain her own grin, Raelynn cast a coy glance upward. For the life of her she couldn’t deny the way her senses seemed to soar to bracing heights in his presence. “Wonderful.”

“Wonderful?” The emerald eyes probed hers, searching for the precise import of her flirtation. Jeff was wary. He had lost himself in the fervent heat of those darkly lashed, blue-green orbs once before, and he had taken great delight in sweeping his young bride to their marriage bed, only to have been halted on the very threshold of fulfillment by the entrance of a rowdy band of brigands, who had whisked his bride away to the warehouse lair of Gustav Fridrich. In giving chase after a leaden ball had creased his scalp, which had led the miscreants to think that they had killed him, he had rallied his brother and a collection of friends, including Sheriff Rhys Townsend, who, along with his deputies, had met him in Charleston. The lot of them had stormed the building in which the German and his army of callow toughs were holding Raelynn captive, and though they had proven victorious over the ruffians who had outnumbered them, Jeff had later been frustrated by Rhys’s announcement that Fridrich couldn’t be arrested for the simple reason that Raelynn’s uncle, Cooper Frye, had tricked the man into believing he had bought her.

Only a few hours after his wife’s safe return to Oakley, Jeff had found himself encountering a different sort of aggression. Accusations from a former hireling had left his bride less than confident of his integrity and fearful of becoming intimate with him. Thus, what he had fervently hoped would be the beginning of a loving, passionate marriage with a woman who had seemingly made his dreams a reality, had become instead a titular relationship.

Through the next pair of weeks, the two of them had lived in polite but stilted congeniality, eating and conversing together but sleeping apart, she in her room and he next door in his. It was an arrangement that Jeff had tolerated, but only by the grit of his teeth. Indeed, there had been moments wherein he had found his gentlemanly forbearance sorely strained. His wife was far too beautiful and alluring for him to nonchalantly endure her nearness. In a quest to put some distance between them, he had spent long hours away from the house, directing his attention to his many business affairs: his shipping company, his lumber mill, his horse-breeding operations, or overseeing the earlier harvests with his foreman. To some degree, his attempts had helped to abate his concupiscence, but coming home to her had been tantamount to being hit with a sledgehammer in a most vulnerable area.

“Wonderful in what way, my sweet?”

Raelynn lifted her slender shoulders, not willing to divulge the full extent of the feelings he awoke within her. One moment she was fraught with anxiety over what she might suffer yielding to him; in the next she could not fathom continuing on in their marriage another moment longer without becoming his wife in truth. “Just wonderful.”

“Madam, in that regard, may I say how wonderful you look this early morning hour,” he murmured, his eyes carefully probing the delicate fabric that all but flaunted her womanly form.

Mindful of her husband’s proximity in a variety of different ways, not the least of which was his close attention and the scent of his cologne mingled with an underlying essence of soap, Raelynn suffered another attack of nervous jitters, which, beneath the flame burning in those dark, crystalline depths of emerald green, might have equaled those of a fox-cornered hen. As observant as Jeffrey was, she was sure that any smile from her lips would have been construed as an invitation, encouraging him to test her restraint, leaving her to face the quandary of whether to ignore Nell’s accusations or to accept his advances with open arms. Torn between that which she had hotly craved in the dead of night and the more arduous travail of keeping up a cool facade of offended wife, Raelynn could not at this point predict what her answer would be. A small, inner voice counseled aloofness and separation; certainly wisdom cautioned that she hold this man at bay until confident of his merit as a gentleman. Nevertheless her young body yearned for the thrilling excitement that she had experienced far too briefly. Brought up sharply by the conflict raging within her, leaving her mind roiling in indecision, Raelynn cried out in silent anguish,
What to do? What to do?