“Why waste time with frivolous deception? Off to see young Johnnie. I’m sorry to interrupt your plans for a lover’s tryst.”
Her head jerked up. The color drained from her face.
“Bastard.”
The weeks of dreary labor, of her uncle’s commands, Sir Teakle’s vileness, Devon’s taunts, obedience, fear, had all taken its toll. She lunged and slapped him, raging with pent-up strains and tensions, she attacked him. She wanted to punch his chest, to hit him over and over again.
He grabbed her wrists as she threw herself at him. Claire struggled to break free−to strike out at him, but she was powerless beneath his solid grip. In fury and despair, she began to sob, her diatribe never ending, but becoming high-pitched, hysterical sputterings of all the wrongs incurred on her.
During her outburst, Claire’s vision blurred with her tears. She did not see Devon, his expression undergoing a myriad of changes. Although the softening of his features escaped her, she heard with surprise the quietness in his voice as he released her.
“Sit down and compose yourself. We need to talk.”
She collapsed on a chair, still sobbing, her head bowed, her body slumped.
He stood over her. “Tell me everything, Claire.”
Did he see the torment and sorrow that ravaged her heart?The isolation of the sacristy somehow made sharing confidences less condemning. This was her one chance to say everything that had been bottled up in her for so long. “A chance encounter in London brought me face to face with my uncle. I had not seen Sir Jarvis in years and never hoped to lay eyes on him again. He informed me I was under his control and peddled me in the marriage mart. Since I was a poor relation with no dowry, Jarvis demanded a huge settlement with the offers narrowed down to one. The Duke of Hawthorne provided an enormous sum quickly contracted by my uncle.”
She shivered then took a deep breath, sinking into the rhythm of her story. “The Duke of Hawthorne is a very old man, withered and wrinkled as a prune shriveled in the sun. I cringe even now from the remembrance. He touched me. Like a claw from a grave, cold and clammy, his fingernails like yellow corkscrews. An employee of the Duke’s, an old acquaintance of Cookie’s gave warnings of her employer. He had raped and beaten four of his earlier wives, all chosen because of their youth and unfortunate financial circumstances. Within two years of marriage every one of them died. After all, who would question a peer of the realm?”
His body tensed.
She shook her head. “I don’t know why I am telling you this.”
“Go on,” he encouraged, but his voice hardened. Then he spoke more temperately, and she shoved away the self-protective caution she hid behind. “You can confide in me, Claire.”
“With single-mindedness born of desperation, I set out to fend off disaster. I told you in the gaol how I called on an old friend, Sir Thomas Durham. I had shared every sordid detail, believing he would understand my dilemma. Then I did the unthinkable. I asked him to marry me. That was when he informed me he was to be married to a very wealthy heiress. All was not lost, he promised. He assured me once he was married and had control of his wife’s money he’d make me his mistress. Then he grabbed me. ‘Why wait?’ he said. I don’t remember much after that−except shoving him into a fountain. That’s when I sought you out after Cookie informed me of the Newgate alternative. After foiling my uncle by marrying you at Newgate, I thought I would be free. That was not the case. My uncle forced us to go to Jamaica.”
Her voice broke. His jaw clenched so hard, it ached. “My uncle beat me with his cane when I defied him by marrying you. He can force me to marry anyone he chooses even one as despicable as Sir Teakle. If I don’t, Jarvis will put Cookie and Lily out. I have to protect them.” Fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m as much a slave as you. It’s tearing me apart. My future a mere whim of men.” He offered her a cloth.
“Here now this won’t do. Dry your tears,” he said with the same gentleness he had shown his patients.
Claire raised her tear-stained face to peer at him, tentative, still unsure if she heard him right.He’d steal her soul even as he scorned her heart. She closed her eyes, her chest ached. It was so easy to listen to his soothing words. She came under control, but she felt drained from the release of tears and all the pent-up emotions of the last months.
He took the linen from her hands and wiped away the tears then made her blow her nose. “I have not been fair. Better now?” he asked, pulling her chin up to see her eyes.
Claire nodded a little sheepishly. She found his gesture at odds with his earlier aloofness, and answered with a quavering smile.
He extended his hands to her.
This was more than a simple plea for friendship, but something much much more. Something more lasting. Eternal. She looked at his long supple fingers, so strong and caring. She remembered his hand as it held hers in the gaol when they recited their vows, how it had closed around hers. An intimation of trust, fire and steel, capability, confidence−safe−could be read in those hands of his. Her heart wanted desperately to try, but some tiny voice of reason warned her that it was a mistake. Her mind screamed with skepticism, a reality that what he offered led to nowhere but the sweetness of pretending, just this once, to forfeit reality and live in a dream for a short time. She almost capitulated.
“This is wrong−” she whispered and shakily placed her hands in his.
“This is right,” he answered fiercely and pulled her to her feet. He leaned over, his lips covered hers, parting them with familiar, insistent skill.
Claire closed her eyes and commenced to dream. Lily’s warning reverberated in her mind, but his mouth tormented and enticed her, drawing from her meager experience, she answered in return. Claire shifted and moaned, with an accumulation of awakening pleasure, and slid her hands to the nape of his neck. She fingered the soft curls, reveling in the silkiness then stroked his neck, the warmth of his body beneath her fingers. His mouth became more demanding, his hands so near her aching breasts, but not touching, thumbs playing over her ribs. Feelings she could not identify shot through her body, tingling with strange, familiar stirrings. Truths so beautiful and painful, it made her ache. All she knew was that Devon’s presence affected her in ways she did not understand, and she grew frightened. She pushed away, breathing heavily.What did he do to her?
She didn’t understand how this man came to be in her life, but most of all, she didn’t understand why her body felt like it was about to rise up in flames. “I don’t think we should hazard this again,” was her strangled response.
Devon was struck by how this girl he had vowed to have nothing to do with, could get under his skin. She had kissed him, responding at first hesitantly, tentatively, sweetly to the touch of his lips, and then he felt her open up and give him something incredibly more−her trust. If he had been pleased with their initial intimacy, then it was the soul-drenching assertion relayed in her kiss that sent a profound message of belief in him. It slammed into him, sending him over the edge.
Given that, she sure as hell wasn’t going to want to risk her heart or her future on Devon Blackmon. The ramifications of getting involved with him were too overwhelming for her to contemplate. The likelihood of having a relationship with a slave lay forbidden and nonexistent.
She was no coward. Despite the harsh conditions of the hospital and severity of the smallpox epidemic, the backbreaking hours, smell…and death, she exhibited a cheerful disposition, her sense of humor and gentle laughter lit the dreary ward, endearing herself to all of her patients and to him.
She suffered his insulting attack on her, accusing her of the worst kind of decadent behavior. Jarvis, the worst kind of vile bastard, beat her with a cane and sold her to a monstrous lecher, then when that didn’t work out, he sold her to Teakle. Selfless, she withstood her uncle’s demands at peril to herself. Under Sir Teakle, she’d be treated abominably. He knew the man, had seen his kind many times before. And she did it all to protect her cousin and Cookie. How he’d like to string those poor excuses of humanity up by their entrails. Too think, out of fear, she kept secret her humiliation.
