Never Call It Love (21 page)

He
pictured her moving about in there, a smug, triumphant little smile on her
lips.

Suddenly
he swore, got up from the bed, and lunged at the doorknob.

Elizabeth
had been about to put on her nightshirt when she heard the door burst open. She
whirled around, clutching the thin garment to her. "What are you doing in
here? Get out of my room!"

"Your
room, madam?" He moved toward her.
"Your
room! Every room in
this house, including this one, is my room."

"Don't
you come even one step nearer, you brandy-soaked brute!"

He
took the step. Clutching her garment closer with her left hand and arm, she
reached out with her right hand, fingers curved to rake her nails down his
face. His hand shot out and imprisoned her wrist.

For
a moment or so they glared at each other silently, like two
combatants-to-the-death in a Roman arena. Then his gaze broke with hers. His
eyes went over the shawl of bright hair around her bare shoulders, down the
thin garment her left forearm clutched to her body.

"So
the cat wants to scratch, does she?" He was smiling now. "Well, there
is a way to deal with scratching cats."

He
seized her left wrist, and despite her resistance, easily brought it together
with her right. The nightshirt collapsed onto the carpet. With both of her
wrists imprisoned in the long fingers of one hand, he drew her—
twisting and
struggling and trying to kick at his legs—across the room to the window beside
the bed. Careful to keep clear of the kicks from those bare feet, he used his
free hand to rip loose a narrow length of brocade that tied the window
draperies back into place. Still grasping her wrists, he impelled her backward
onto the bed. With her body thrashing beneath his weight, he looped the length
of brocade around her wrists, and then, so swiftly that she had no chance to
pull a hand free, drew the loop tight.

"You
see," he said, tying the ends of the brocade around one of the headboard's
slender columns, "I have no intention of allowing you to put my eyes
out."

He
got to his feet. She looked up at him. Furious and yet thoroughly frightened
now, warning herself not to provoke him to even greater violence, she lay
motionless except for the quickened rise and fall of her pink-nippled breasts.
Then, as he unknotted the belt of his dressing gown, she turned her face away
and closed her eyes.

He
was beside her now, thumb and forefinger pressing into her cheeks as he turned
her face toward him. His mouth came down on hers, roughly at first. Then, to
her surprise, his kiss became gentle. Eyes still closed, she felt his lips
brush along her cheek to her temple, felt his hands reaching through her hair
to cup itself around one side of her head. With his breath warm against her ear
he said, "Elizabeth," in a harsh, almost painful-sounding voice.

She
was aware that he had raised himself to one elbow.

For
several seconds she felt his gaze moving over her body. Then his hand closed
gently over her right breast. She stiffened.

One
of his fingers had begun to brush back and forth across the nipple now. He lay
down beside her, and she felt his lips close around the nipple of her other
breast, felt his tongue moving against it, just as his finger brushed
her other
nipple. For perhaps a minute she stayed rigid, resisting the odd little thrills
that seemed to travel from her breasts to somewhere deep within her body. Then
all the stiffness went out of her, and she lay limp.

Something
was happening to her, something she had never experienced before, a sense of a
warm, liquid swelling within her. His hand left her breast, moved down to insert
itself between thighs that parted at his touch. Then his finger returned to its
gentle teasing of her breast. That swelling and tightening within her had
become an almost unbearable tension, clamoring for release.

Dimly
she was aware that her hips were moving, as if her body had some will of its
own. He raised his head. She opened her eyes—drowned-looking eyes now—and
looked for a moment into his dark, intent face. Then her eyes closed. She felt
the naked weight of his long body, felt his legs moving her legs farther apart.

The
first thrust of him inside her was not painful now. Instead, deep within her,
it brought her a pleasure she had not dreamed existed, a pleasure so great that
suddenly her body seemed boneless, melting. Eagerly she awaited that thrusting,
awaited it again and again and again. His body seemed to be carrying her own
higher and higher, toward some unknown and yet desperately longed-for climax.

Gradually
that pleasure deep within her was becoming so intense that it was a kind of
torment, a desperate need for a release that only his thrusting body could
bring her. Out of her growing urgency she arched herself, so that she fitted
more closely against him. The still-deeper thrusting only intensified that
exquisite torment, that almost unbreathable delight, that desperate longing for
release. Then, just when she felt she could not endure that pleasurable torment
one instant longer, release came, as if something within her had opened up,
like the petals of a suddenly unfolding flower.

She
cried out, and then felt the long, delicious, shuddering fall.

As
she lay there, spent, she felt his kiss upon her mouth. Then he was beside her,
untying her imprisoned wrists. She brought her hands down, lay for a moment
more weighted by an odd languor, and then began to rub her wrists.

Gradually
that strange spell he had cast upon her lifted.

What
a barbarian he was! Breaking their tacit agreement. Tying her up in that
humiliating fashion. And, worst of all, somehow making her behave as she had
behaved....

"Elizabeth,
open your eyes."

She
opened them. They were no longer drowned-looking, but clear and cool.

She
said, "It was only my body."

He
knew what she meant. Only her body had surrendered, not her spirit. It looked
out at him from those gray eyes, as proud and remote as ever.

Well,
what had he expected? A few minutes' lovemaking could not erase everything that
had happened before. No, not for either of them, he thought, feeling a stir of
returning anger. Just as she would never forget a certain night in that house
north of London, he would never forget a woman lying under oath on the witness
stand, or a carriage rolling away down an alley behind Old Bailey.

His
eyes left that cool face and traveled over the rest of her. The small, high
breasts, the slightly rounded belly, the glossy brown triangle, the long,
straight legs ending in high-arched feet.

He
said, smiling, "Only your body. Even so, madam, I should be reasonably
content with my lot." He leaned over her and kissed her mouth.

The
days lengthened. The leaves of maple trees, only a short time before almost as
pale as lettuce, took on the rich, dark green of full summer. In the flowerbed
cultivated
by
Joseph beyond the courtyard's south wall, late iris withered and early roses
bloomed. In the meadows, wild daisies gave way to yarrow and Queen Anne's lace.

By
day, Elizabeth and Patrick moved in separate worlds. She was busy drawing up
lists of draperies and carpets to be replaced, conferring with Mrs. Corcoran
and Gertrude, the cook, and in general administering the household. He was away
for hours at a time, whether visiting his tenant farmer or on other errands,
Elizabeth had no idea. When they did meet during the daylight hours, they
treated each other with careful correctness, like two guests at a house party
who do not know each other very well.

But
he continued to visit her room several nights a week. Often at dinner, as they
made polite conversation about the weather or the ripening wheat fields or the
news in the latest paper sent from Dublin, she would wonder if in two hours or
so she would find herself moaning with helpless pleasure in his arms.

Increasingly
there were just the two of them at supper. Sometimes she wondered if, despite
their formal behavior to each other, Colin had somehow sensed that at night in
her room she and Patrick were not only lovers, but wildly
abandoned ones.
Perhaps that awareness had made him feel like an intruder. In any event, he was
often absent from Stanford Hall overnight.

On
the first night that Colin did not appear at the supper table, Elizabeth asked
about him. "He often goes to Edgewood to see his mother," Patrick
said, "and to find out how matters are going at his estate there."

"Does
his mother help manage Edgewood for him?"

"No,
he has a very capable steward, a Mr. Slattery. Still, Colin needs to confer
with him from time to time. And of course he also goes into the village to
visit Catherine Ryan, a woman he has there."

"What
is she like?"

"Pleasant
enough. Tall and yellow-haired, and about thirty-five or a little older."

Elizabeth
remembered the tall woman she had seen walking down the village street, a
basket over her arm. She made no mention of the woman, though. Since that wild
night when Patrick returned from Dublin, neither of them had spoken of her
visit to the village, or of Anne Reardon, or of Christopher, or of any of the
sources of bitterness between them.

She
had received news of Christopher, though. Her mother had written:

Your
brother was here yesterday. He made that long trip from Paris just to spend one
day with me! Mr. Yves Cordot could not spare him from the emporium for more
than a short time.

The
poor boy seemed eager for details of your wedding—who had been there, what food
was served at the party here afterward, and so on. Then he asked wistfully if I
thought it would be all right for him to visit you in Ireland. He said,
"Surely Sir Patrick no longer has any idea that I was responsible
for that poor
girl's death. Surely Liza has gotten any such notion out of his head by
now."

I
told him I still thought it would be best to wait for a while. Besides, I doubt
that Mr. Cordot would allow it. I gather that by now Mr. Cordot finds him
almost indispensable.

Folding
the letter, Elizabeth had reflected grimly that her mother's advice to
Christopher was sound. It would be best indeed for him to stay away from
Patrick Stanford for a while longer—a good while longer, such as forever.

There
were no letters from Donald, of course. And Mrs. Montlow, perhaps reluctant to
cause her daughter useless pain, made no mention of him in her own letters. But
he often appeared in Elizabeth's dreams, smiling that gentle, humorous smile
she had always loved. And although she tried to avoid thinking of the past,
often the memory of him as she had last seen him there in the church—very pale,
with lips stretched into a parody of that familiar smile—brought her a stab of
almost physical pain.

Several
times during late spring and early summer she and Patrick went to neighborhood
parties, one of them at the great gray pile, Wetherly, that Lady Moira Ashley
had inherited from her late husband. Smiling, but with cool reserve in her dark
blue eyes, Lady Moira led Elizabeth through lofty rooms hung with tapestries
and lighted by hundreds of perfumed candles, and introduced her to other
guests. If Patrick thought that his wife's gray satin gown, the one she had
worn the night he first saw her, contrasted poorly with their hostess's
gold-colored velvet, he did not tell Elizabeth so.

But
in late June, at his insistence, she and Patrick went to Dublin, traveling in
the same carriage that had brought them from Waterford to Stanford Hall. Both
the inns at which they stopped were primitive, with no accommodations
for couples.
Elizabeth slept with other women travelers in a long sleeping room, and Patrick
in the far-more-crowded room provided for men. But in Dublin they obtained a
bedroom and sitting room in a comfortable inn, once a private mansion, on one
of the city's finest streets.

They
had arrived early in the afternoon, with sufficient time to visit Madame
Leclerc's establishment. The Frenchwoman, small and dark and businesslike,
greeted them pleasantly but with no trace of deference. Obviously she, the most
successful modiste in Dublin, knew her own worth. She took down from the
shelves the materials she had obtained for Elizabeth's wardrobe—fine lawns for
morning gowns, brocades and satins for ball gowns, dark green velvet for a new
riding habit. Finally the two women left Patrick at the window, staring out
into the street, and retired to a dressing room. Elizabeth stood in her shift
and corselet while the Frenchwoman plied a measuring tape.

"Did
the gown please Lady Stanford?"

Elizabeth
said, puzzled, "What gown?"

"Why,
the ruby-colored velvet Sir Patrick bought from me when he was last in
Dublin."

After
a moment Elizabeth said, "Oh, yes. It was very nice."

So
he had brought home a gown for her. What had he done with it? In his rage that
night, probably he had told one of the servants to put it away someplace. Then
he had forgotten about it.