Clandestine (32 page)

She nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

“I didn't know,” she whispered. “I didn't know that it could be like that.”

Was there something guarded, almost frightened, in her tone? He didn't know. He was long past any kind of subtlety.

“Memorable?” he murmured. “Perfect. I love you, Sarah.”

Bright with triumph, defeated by love, he cradled her until they both fell asleep.

H
E
woke again, perhaps five or six hours later, just as the summer dawn began to stain the room with pink light. Blackbirds had begun their faint twittering outside.

In shades of red and orange and amber, Sarah's hair crinkled over her breasts and shoulders. Her lips were parted a little, showing a small glimpse of white teeth.

With a strange kind of reverence, Guy woke her with soft, fleeting kisses, his heart aching. She opened tawny, wildcat eyes and gazed up at him.

He did not want words. He wanted only to demonstrate once again how much he loved her, how desperately he desired her. So before she could speak, he kissed her soft, open mouth, then trailed his lips over the smooth, creamy softness of her arms and legs as if he traced the secrets of a maze.

His heart filled with wonder, he lingered in curves and crevices, worshiped the shapes of her flank and breasts. Each nipple was a pale, dusty pink, darkening and puckering as it contracted beneath his tender tongue.

The hair at the apex of her legs flamed as bright as the hair on her head. He parted the little tangle of copper with two fingers and let his mouth explore her slick folds. She gasped in surprise, but her breath came faster and faster as she lay back and allowed him to do it.

Guy pleasured her until her breathing shattered and she cried out, then, potent, exultant, he made love to her until the birds had called up the day.

A clatter had begun in the inn yard. Light streamed into the room. Yet, ignoring the sun, Guy fell asleep once again with Sarah still cradled in his arms.

H
E
opened his eyes on a gray room and rain pelting the windows.

Sarah was already sitting up in the bed, her knees drawn up to her chin, the covers wrapped about her legs. She was gazing at the wet glass, streaked with runnels of silver.

Her back curved, lovely. Dulled to amber in the dim light, her hair tumbled about her shoulders.

“It's raining,” she said.

Guy reached up to wrap a long tendril around one finger. He was an empty ocean bed, as vacant as the far reaches of space beyond the planets, yet joy danced and sang in his heart. As her hair coiled about his hand, a new erection began to demand his attention, filling him with the bright anticipation of more pleasure.

“So dawn made a false promise?” he said. “Never mind! I pledge to order the sun to shine on our wedding day, but right now even the rain seems blessed. I love you, sweetheart. Dear God, how I love you!”

She dropped her forehead onto her folded arms and said nothing.

He tugged gently at the long strand of hair, until she turned her head. Her expression was stark, her eyes bleak with—what? Guilt? Fear? All joy imploded, as if he had been gored.

“Sarah,” he said again, like a man who thought just the words could convince her.
“I love you.”

“No,” she said fiercely. “Don't say that!”

Numb with shock, Guy swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked naked to the washstand. He dashed cold water over his face and head, then rubbed his hair brutally with a towel. His incipient desire had died as if slain. He stepped behind the screen to use the piss pot, then wrapped the towel about his waist before he strode back to the bed.

Her eyes darkened as she looked up at him, but she turned away to gather her hair in one hand. Her fingers fumbled as she tried to braid it.

“Don't say what?” he asked. “The truth?”

“No! Let us always speak the truth!” Her voice was ragged. “I admit that what happened last night was what I thought I intended. However, I never meant that I would marry you.”

Anguish roared in his ears. “But you said
yes
!”

“I meant yes to wanting you…wanting your body. That's all! I'd be insane to marry you!”

His pain transformed into a kind of rage in the blood—though surely he wasn't truly angry? Just distressed and confused, his mind flooded with bitterness.

“Sarah, for God's sake! We must arrange a wedding right away. I took no extra care last night. You might be with child.”

She turned away, her half-made plait straggling over her spine, and shook her head.

“You cannot take that risk!” He tried to soften his voice, but he heard it grate, full of fury. “I love you. I want to marry you.”

“No.” She lifted her head. “There won't be any child.”

“You've started your courses?”

“No, not that.”

“Then what?”

Her eyes gazed up into his with stark courage, and crimson spread over her cheeks.

“When I was first married, Mrs. Mansard thought it would be wiser if I delayed starting a family. Until things were more settled, she said. Perhaps she already guessed that John might not live very long, and wanted to prevent my being widowed with a tiny baby to raise alone. So she showed me how to use a little sponge with vinegar and—”

“You took
precautions
?”

“Yes, of course. I'm not entirely out of my mind.”

“So you planned all this ahead of time?”

As if to escape him, she climbed from the bed, dragging the cover with her and wrapping it about her body.

“Yes! Please see reason, Guy! Anything else would have been madness!”

“Not if we were about to be married—and what the hell else was I to assume? But if you had no intention of marrying me, why did you come to my bed?”

Draped in the bedcover, she plunked down onto a chair. Her freckles marched in dark array across her shockingly white cheeks. Her eyelids burned red, as if she were about to weep.

“I already said why: I wanted you. I wanted your body. That's all!”

He felt as if she had just poured arctic ice into his soul. He strode up to the bellpull and tugged it.

“By why
now
?”

“Perhaps I just wanted to know what Rachel knew.”

He spun about to face her. The towel slipped off his hips. Guy kicked it aside.

“You made love to me from
revenge
? You thought that since I'd used your cousin like a harlot, it would be interesting to know exactly what that feels like? But I love you. I want to marry you.”

“Do you think”—her voice was barely above a whisper, firm but quiet—“that you can browbeat me into marriage by shouting at me?”

His anger collapsed as if punctured. “A naked man who shouts at a woman is usually already married to her,” he said.

She was surprised into a half laugh. Fresh pink washed into her cheeks. “Not this time, though you're very beautiful naked.”

Embarrassed, he bent to retrieve the towel, though she was just Sarah, afraid and brave and lovely, and he loved her.

“And that was enough reason for you to come to my bed last night, though it's not enough to marry me?”

“Yes—no—you know perfectly well it was for no kind of revenge.”

He tore into his cases to find a clean shirt. “Then why did you suggest—”

A rap interrupted them. Guy stalked to the door and sent the inn boy off to fetch hot water for his ‘wife.' He could almost have laughed at the irony.

Sarah glanced away at the wet window. “I don't know. How can I answer you? The truth is that I came to your bed because I felt…I don't know…desperate, or lonely, or mad? I woke panicked in a dark room. I'd been dreaming that I was caught in quicksand, while Rachel was running away across a great beach into a dead-end cove while the tide was coming in. She was about to be trapped there and drowned, but she was too far off to hear my shouting, and I couldn't move. My skirts were wrapped about my legs.”

“I could not—” He took a deep breath. “However absurd it seems now, I didn't want to ring for Ellen, and I could not remove your dress or petticoats, Sarah.”

“No, of course not. I didn't blame you for that. I simply undressed and put on my nightgown, intending to go back to sleep. Then suddenly I couldn't bear to be alone. Rachel had a
baby
, Guy, and she was all alone among strangers when her little boy was born dead, like a drowned sailor.”

“So you came to me for comfort?”

“Perhaps. I don't know. Though obviously I wanted more than that and planned accordingly.” She stood up, draped like a statue of Aphrodite. “But would it have happened if I hadn't known about Rachel? Probably not.”

Not bothering to wait for hot water, Guy scrubbed himself all over, then rubbed his cold flesh with the towel as if he would punish his muscles and tendons just for existing.

“You don't think that all of this breaks my heart, too?” he said. “You don't think that I feel equally helpless in the face of all this chaos and tragedy? Yet I love you and I refuse to believe that you don't love me, too, at least a little.”

She walked toward the door into the other room, trailing the bedcover like a bridal train.

“Love you?” she said. “I've been
in love
with you ever since I first saw you.”

He pulled his shirt on over his head. “Then I don't see why we shouldn't marry.”

“Because it's not the same thing, at all.” She stopped with her hand on the latch, her neck bent, her back graceful enough to bruise his heart. “Rachel is still lost. We still don't know why she went to Cooper Street, or who's the father of her baby. All we know is that she was alone and afraid and desperate, and probably still is, and that you didn't hesitate to take advantage of that. Meanwhile, you and I have been caught together on this quest, and I, too, became caught in that heady infatuation. Perhaps that's natural enough. I don't know. But if we'd met in the normal way—at a local assembly, say—you'd never have given me a second glance.”

“I love you,” he repeated.

“Yet you can't deny the truth of what I just said, can you?” She wrenched open the door as he tugged on his trousers. “I don't doubt that you think that you love me, Guy, but—”

“—but you still can't believe me. Why? Because of Rachel, or Miracle? Yes, I've loved before, but not like this!
Never
like this!”

The tawny eyes held nothing but pain. “Don't, Guy! You're talking about passion, not love.”

He grabbed his cravat and draped it about the collar of his shirt. “How the devil can you refuse to acknowledge what I proved to you last night with my body?”

“I don't. You tore open my soul and destroyed all my preconceptions. I had no idea what a man like you…what would happen to a woman like me, if she opened her heart to a man like you. I didn't know quite how profound…I didn't know quite how profoundly you would make my heart ache. So if I came into this room last night out of curiosity, or loneliness, or even lust—or anything else that I might now deem trivial—I learned a very bitter lesson.”

“Trivial?”
He dropped the ends of his cravat, flung one arm wide, and pointed. “So you still can't accept the truth of what happened in that bed? Then I'm damned if I see how I can ever convince you!”

Color rushed back over her skin, staining her cheeks with crimson.

With a rattle of cans, the inn lad carried hot water into Sarah's room. Guy stared at her in incredulity as she wrenched open the door.

“No, because that's the way a man beds his mistress,” she said. “Not the way any gentleman ever makes love to his wife.”

S
ARAH WALKED INTO THE INN'S BREAKFAST PARLOR AND SAT
down opposite him. A web of narrow plaits was woven neatly around her head, as if to mock his memory of her red hair streaming in damp tangles over her naked breasts.

She was pale, but she faced him with admirable composure.

Guy ordered eggs and hot rolls and coffee, then watched the beauty of her mouth, the grace of her movements, in deliberate self-torment.

Soft color washed back into her cheeks as she drank her coffee, until a gentle pink stained the freckled cream over her cheekbones. Yet she toyed with her breakfast and ate almost nothing, until she pushed aside her plate and leaned back.

Her tawny gaze studied his face, as if she needed to make up her mind to something.

“I'm sorry, Guy,” she said at last. “I'm sorry for the way everything happened last night. I think we should agree to forget all about it.”

He attacked a roll with both hands, tearing open the soft core. “Since we can be certain that no child will result from our unwise coupling?”

The color in her cheeks deepened to crimson. “I don't know what else to do, Guy. I don't understand anything about the way I feel. I don't even understand why I can't regret what I did, and yet at the same time repent it with every fiber of my being. I don't expect you to understand.”

“It's more usual for a gentleman to beg a lady's grace when he oversteps the bounds of propriety,” he said.

She smiled, though her eyes were filled with desolation. “Nevertheless, I fear that I was more cruel than I intended. We can't go on together unless I admit that I was, indeed, in the wrong.”

“Not at all, ma'am.” He stirred a little cream into his coffee. “No blame attaches to you.”

“Then can't we simply be friends once again?”

He glanced at her over the rim of his cup. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Firstly, because you and I were never simply friends. This lion has been stalking us ever since I first saw you in the bookstore.”

She pushed a few crumbs about on her plate with her fork. “But we discussed all of that and agreed—”

“Secondly, whatever we agreed then is completely irrelevant now. Perhaps a woman can share that kind of passion and still see her lover as nothing but a friend. A man never can.”

She stared at the rain still streaming down the windows. “You did so with Miracle.”

“Yes, but that took the best part of ten years.”

Sarah glanced back at him. “You still desired her, even after your relationship ended?”

“I was only eighteen when we met and still eighteen when I left her. My emotions and understanding were those of a boy. It took a year after we parted for us not to fall into bed together upon occasion, then another two before I shed every element of that awareness, though neither of us wished any longer to act on it. I cannot do that with you.”

“Miracle is unique,” she said. “There's no one else like her in the world.”

He poured more coffee. “There's no one else like you either,” he said. “I never offered marriage to Miracle, and I'm no longer a boy.”

She set down the fork. “But I'll be gone from your life within a few weeks. Now we know the real nature of her trouble and that she's definitely still hiding in Devon, we're bound to find Rachel soon.”

“And in the meantime?”

“We go on,” she said, “as if last night never happened.”

Rage and despair fought like tigers in his gut, but he would never again deny her the truth, however stark.

“You're not such a fool, Sarah, as to truly think that possible. I can't look at you without recalling every sensation, every pleasure, and with a ferocity that takes my breath away. If those feelings were mine alone, as a gentleman I should be forced to curb my desire and treat you with nothing but a proper courtesy. As it is—Hold up your hand!”

Her brows drew together. “What?”

“Like this.” He propped one elbow on the table and held up his right hand with the palm facing her.

Her pupils expanded, like a cat's in the dark. She drew back and shook her head.

“You don't need to touch me,” he said. “Just hold your hand up, with the palm facing mine.”

“No!”

“You cannot, because if you do we'll strike sparks. The lion will break from his cage right here at this table, and we'll scandalize the other guests and frighten the horses.”

She clenched her hands together in her lap. “Though I can barely begin to comprehend what happened between us, I can't deny that it was important and wonderful. Yes, of course there's part of me that craves the chance to do it again, but—”

“But you still don't think that a passion like this is any basis for marriage?”

“Not if it's forcing me to fall in love with you against my better judgment, Guy! What basis for marriage is that?”

“None, obviously,” he said. “Because true love is evidently only the gentle, respectful admiration that you shared with John Callaway.”

Sarah pushed up from the table to stare down at him. Tiny tremors shook her fingers. A fast pulse vibrated in her speckled throat.

“Yes, if you like. Yes!”

“As you wish!” He stood up to escort her from the room. “Yet you still insist that we continue our quest together?”

“We must,” she said. “We can't give up now.”

“Nevertheless, I shall ride alone today to Grail Hall to find out exactly who was staying there nine months before Rachel's baby was born. One of those guests must have been her lover.”

“But she'd been living there barely more than a month,” Sarah said. “I can't understand how she could have done it.”

They had reached the privacy of the corridor. Without touching, Guy cupped the side of her jaw, holding his palm an inch away from her skin. His fingertips began to tingle.

“Yes, you can,” he said.

Sarah wavered for a moment, but she closed her eyes and leaned her face against his palm, her soft cheek filling his hand. A small moan escaped her lips.

“Don't!” she said softly. “Please, don't!”

His heart began to race. He lifted his hand as if she burned him.

“Shall I kiss you?” he asked. “If I did, would you deny me?”

Her eyelids lifted heavily, as if she were drugged. Yet she looked up at him with the gaze of a tigress.

“No,” she said. “No. You know I would not. In spite of everything, I cannot deny you.”

Guy stepped back, forcing himself not to touch her again. “Then what the devil do we do about this, Sarah?”

She braced her shoulders against the wall, almost as if she could no longer stand without support.

“I don't know,” she said, then with that splendid, deep-seated bravery, she met his gaze again and laughed. “I would think that the normal thing in the circumstances would be for you to make me your mistress.”

S
ARAH
walked almost to the edge of the port, where the paved streets gave way to dirt lanes. Rustic cottages nestled here and there in a network of kitchen gardens and orchards.

Guy had called for a fast horse and ridden away, though the heavy rain had soaked his cloak and streamed off his mount's coat like water over slate. Sarah had watched his lithe figure from the inn window—watched him manage the powerful horse as it pranced, eager to be off—and known a pain like a burn.

She felt stunned by her own naïveté, stunned that she had not consciously understood that no woman could ever give herself to a man like him and not become instantly enslaved. She had already been desperately, hopelessly in love, but last night—in a moment of weakness, or stark need, or madness—she had gifted him with possession of her soul.

And so he had felt obliged to offer marriage.

She didn't doubt that he meant it, or that he had felt equally in love with her
at that moment
. Yet he had felt the same way—he must have felt the same way—with every woman he had ever taken to his bed, even Rachel. And each time the woman must inevitably have felt even more.

Whether Guy Devoran wished it or not, he could never take a mistress without forging unbreakable chains of passion that tied that lady to him forever. As soon as they made love, Rachel, too, must have been robbed of her soul and her liberty, and she and Guy had lived together in that Hampstead house with the chimneys for over two months. So what could possibly have happened to make Rachel leave him?

Impossible to sit and do nothing, fretting over the idea of Guy riding hell-for-leather for Grail Hall, or burning with images of his sharing his bed with Rachel or Miracle, so Sarah had donned her thickest cloak and also plunged out into the downpour.

Now, two hours later, the rain had stopped. Ellen trailed a few steps behind her, carrying a folded umbrella. Thin, watery sunlight soaked into the shabby thatch on the cottage roof as Sarah walked up to the front door, swallowed hard, and pounded on the knocker.

It was, without question, the right place. The description had been accurate in every detail. As promised, a plump, comely woman opened the door.

“Mrs. Siskin?” Sarah asked.

“Why, yes, ma'am!” Bright hazel eyes assessed Sarah's face. “Can I help you?”

“I fear distressing you, ma'am, but I understand that your sister was Bess Medway, who was buried in St. Michael's churchyard last spring?”

Consternation darkened the hazel eyes for a moment. “Why, whoever told you that, ma'am?”

“Mrs. Lane in Cooper Street, just this morning,” Sarah said. “Your sister delivered my cousin's baby there, and I wondered—Might we talk?”

Mrs. Siskin clucked like a mother hen. “Come right through into the parlor, dear! I don't get too many visitors these days.” She peeked over Sarah's shoulder at Ellen, who was shaking drops from the umbrella. “And your maid can take a cup of tea in the kitchen with my Ursula, if she'd be so inclined.”

Sarah followed the midwife's sister into a cozy little room. Leaded windows stood open onto the garden. Outbuildings and trees steamed gently, filling the air with damp scents.

“So what was it you wished to know?” Mrs. Siskin asked as soon as they had exchanged preliminary courtesies over a hot teapot. “Bess died right here in this house, bless her soul, but she brought many babes into this world in her time and probably forgot most of them.”

“Yes, but I hoped perhaps in this case…Rachel—my cousin—is very beautiful. Everyone always remembers her. Her hair's a true gold and her eyes are the deepest blue, like the best velvet. Your sister would have been called to assist her a year ago last March. Did she ever mention such a lady to you?”

Mrs. Siskin's eyes became wary. “Well, I don't know,” she said, looking down at her pretty china. “I don't know what to say. What was the name again?”

“My cousin was calling herself Mrs. Grail, but she wasn't married. Did your sister ever say whether Rachel told her anything about the baby's father?”

Her teacup rattled as Mrs. Siskin set it down hard in the saucer. Her eyes filled and her chin wobbled, as if she were about to weep.

“It was all so long ago,” she said. “Perhaps I did wrong trying to set things right!”

Sarah leaned forward, her heart thumping. “What things, Mrs. Siskin? No one could have known ahead of time that it would be a stillbirth, and if the baby had lived, he and Rachel might have become wards of the parish. So I wondered whether—”

Mrs. Siskin rose abruptly and walked to the window. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

“No,” she said. “No, I know nothing about the father. It's not that.”

“But something happened? Something important?”

Mrs. Siskin crushed the handkerchief in one fist. “Yes, but Bess was dying, poor thing, before it all spilled out. It had weighed on her conscience something dreadful, and she was desperate to make her peace before she was taken. She feared she'd burn for all eternity, and she wanted it made right.”

“Though it seems terrible, it would have been her duty to demand the name of the father while Rachel was in labor,” Sarah said gently. “No loving God could condemn her for doing only what the parish required.”

“No, no!” Mrs. Siskin collapsed onto a chair by the window. “You've got the wrong end of the stick entirely! Bess sinned very terribly, though she'd never have done it if Mr. Medway hadn't put her up to it.”

“Mr. Medway? Her husband?”

“Ronnie Medway was from Devon, a Stonebridge man,” Mrs. Siskin said, as if that explained everything.

Sarah's heart contracted as if a ghost had laid a hand on her arm. “From the village of Stonebridge, near the south coast?”