Wordlessly, she nodded.
“I know I said I’d give you time—that is, I meant to say it, even if I never got around to putting it into so many words. But, Katy, you’re as aware of it as I am—this thing that’s between us.”
She nodded again, helpless to tear her gaze from his face.
“You know how much I like you. I respect you. I want you more than I’ve wanted any woman in a long, long time. Is that enough for now?”
If it was all he could offer her, then it would have to be enough, but in her deepest heart, hope still flickered like a candle in a draft. Katy was an optimist. She had come five thousand miles following a dream. Now that her dream led her in another direction, what could she do but go on following?
He led her to the side of the bed. Shyly, she allowed him to unbutton the brown shirtwaist she’d worn to hide the sheer lawn nightgown with the bosom-bearing neckline that someone had put in her valise.
Shyly, she stole a peek at the golden thicket of chest hair as he unbuttoned his own ruffled shirt. At the lean muscular loins and fascinating bulges delineated by his close-fitting black trousers.
Gently, he eased her arms from the blouse and tossed it aside. She lifted her face for his kiss, leaving her eyes open until the very last as if to convince herself that this was Galen. This was her husband. She wasn’t dreaming, it was truly happening to her.
The kiss started gently, almost tentatively. Then, like a spark to tinder, it flamed into something far more volatile.
Galen led, and Katy followed. With his lips and tongue, his hands and his body, he taught, and she learned, lured on by tastes and textures, intoxicated by wild feelings in parts of her body that weren’t even close to her mouth.
Shaken and breathless, they broke apart, and she watched as he quickly shed the last of his clothing. Any remaining embarrassment she might have felt gave way to awe and admiration. She’d seen boys before, naked, splashing in the shallows back at home. This was a man. Every inch a man. Every proud, lean muscle and sinew shouting, celebrating his manhood.
“Saints preserve us,” she whispered, and turning, she dived for cover.
Laughing, he followed her there. “Don’t count on it, precious, I’ve locked the door. No saints allowed. Now, come here and let me show you how beautiful you are.”
He demonstrated, touching each treasure first with his eyes, then with his fingertips, then with his lips. Outside, a gust of wind rattled shutters, heralding the first bank of rain. Neither of them noticed as they explored, discovering together a whole new universe that left them stunned, shaken, desperately hungry for more.
Her sweet, awkward touches, her unschooled responses, the kisses she spread more and more daringly over his body, were making a total wreck of him. He caressed her breasts, tugged at her nipples, kissed and then suckled her.
And then she returned the favor. Had his small, flat nipples always been so sensitive, or was it Katy?
He had a sinking feeling he might never be the same man. When his fingers brushed her nest, and then explored the moist thicket to find her trigger, she nearly came up off the bed.
He brought her to her peak of pleasure, savoring the way she panted and caught her breath in tight little gasps. Patiently, more for his sake than hers because he desperately needed time, he explained the similarities between that part of a woman that was tiny, concealed and incredibly sensitive, to the part of a man that was every bit as sensitive and blatantly exposed for all the world to see. Which could be embarrassing at times.
And then she set off exploring on her own. He had taught her well. Almost too well. But as it turned out, she taught him even more. No other woman, no matter how experienced, had ever affected him this way.
Katy had never dreamed such feelings existed. They hadn’t even done all that husbands and wives were supposed to do—the part that made babies, that was, and already she’d learned how to drive him wild with a touch, a kiss. Was this the drab, sensible Katy O’Sullivan she had known all her life?
She felt bold, powerful—almost beautiful.
“Here,” he rasped. Taking her hand, he moved it to the place where he ached to feel her touch. When her fingers tightened around the silken steel of his shaft, he gasped, threw back his head, and clenched his jaw.
Katy stared. For one brief moment, he was a stranger, Blue-white lightning played over his harshly etched features, sharpening angles, flattening planes. He was trembling.
She was trembling, too. “You feel it, too, don’t you?” she whispered. “Do you think it could be electrical? I’ve heard electrical vapors can do all sorts of strange things. Could they cause a body to . . . tingle?”
“Electrical vapors? That might explain it.” Galen uttered a sound that was one part laughter, nine parts desperation. She was ready. He was barely hanging on by a thread. It had nearly killed him, but he’d taken things slowly, made it as easy as possible for her. He’d never before bedded a virgin, but like most men, he knew in theory what to expect.
He only hoped she did.
There would be pain the first time. Just how much, there was no way of knowing in advance. He had explored as far as he dared, had brought her gasping and shuddering to climax, which had nearly carried him over the edge, as well.
“Love, I can’t wait much longer.”
He could feel her bracing herself. “I’m ready.”
“If I hurt you—if the pain’s too much, just tell me and I’ll stop, I promise.”
“Galen, I’m not a child.”
No, indeed she wasn’t. But neither was she an experienced lover. Lifting himself above her, he parted her thighs. The hot spicy scent of arousal drifted up around them, heightening the sexual intoxication. He lowered himself until the tip of his rod was nestled at her entrance, and then he bent over and kissed her. “Katy, Katy . . .”
She waited, but he said no more. Instead, she felt herself begin to fill. It was the strangest feeling. Not painful, exactly, but . . . strange.
Then came a sharp pain, and then more of the stretching until she thought she might come apart. But before she could ask him to wait until she got used to the fullness, the brief memory of pain was replaced by something else.
She shifted her hips. He groaned and pressed down against her, and she began to throb like a drum being beat too fast, with a heavy stick.
He whispered her name. “Katy, Katy,” he said. She waited for more, but that was all he said. She wanted to hear the words, but more than that, she wanted desperately to reach out and capture this strange, throbbing sensation that was part pain, part pleasure—exquisite, unimaginable pleasure. Like a wild bird, it came close, then soared off again. Close, and then away . . .
She whimpered, wanting, needing—
He moved, riding her as he might ride a wild horse, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat gleaming on his hard body. Instinctively she rose to meet each thrust, raced to catch the beautiful bird, to capture the light, the pulsating rainbow that hovered just out of reach.
And then it was all around her. She cried out . . . something, she never knew what. Words.
He made a sound in his throat, said her name again, and then he collapsed, rolling onto his side and carrying her with him.
During the night another storm broke over them. Lightning filled the room with a cold brilliance. The wind blew a shutter loose, and it clattered until someone fastened it back.
Katy slept through it all. Galen waked, eased himself out of bed, and filled a basin with water that had cooled until it was barely tepid.
Tenderly, he bathed away the seeds of his pleasure, the evidence of her innocence.
He came back to bed and held her until morning, unable to sleep, knowing that for better or worse, his life had taken a different course.
Chapter Twenty-one
Once again they were strangers. Polite strangers. Katy stared at her new husband as he checked them out of the hotel, remembering in amazement the things he had done to her the night be
fore. The things she had done to him.
Could she really have done all that? Surely she must have dreamed it. The Katy she knew would never dare touch a naked body the way she had touched his, not even her own, and she had known herself for twenty-two years.
“Are you ready, my dear?”
His dear. Was she truly his dear? If this tall, well-dressed stranger even had a dear, she was sorely afraid she wasn’t it.
The image of a perfect oval of a face, with pale, perfect hair and a perfect, unfreckled nose swam to the surface of her mind. She pushed it away. Whoever the woman in the picture was, whatever they’d once meant to each other, it was Katy he had married. Katy who bore his name, and would one day bear his sons.
At this very moment she might be carrying his child. The thought made her catch her breath, and unconsciously, she brushed her hand over the front of her four-gore skirt.
The ferry was waiting at the end of the pier. Galen handed her aboard, passed down the bags, and turned to tip the bag boy. Pam the ferryman wouldn’t stop grinning. Katy wondered if he knew—
Well, of course he knew. The whole world probably knew. It had been their wedding night, after all. Did he suppose they had spent it playing dominoes?
The rain had ended for now, but the sky was still overcast. That and the familiar smell of burning peat brought a painful surge of nostalgia. Galen had told her about the way lightning sometimes started fires in the nearby Dismal Swamp. Fires that could smoulder underground for years, with the ash and pungent smell carried for miles by the wind.
I want to go home, she thought, feeling as lost as if she’d been set adrift on an uncharted sea.
Pam dried off a section of white-painted bench, and she smiled and thanked him. Bracing herself for the journey to yet another new place where she would feel rootless, she took her seat.
You have a husband now. You’re a citizen. You belong.
But no amount of reason made her feel as if she belonged.
Low clouds sagged overhead. A flurry of raindrops struck her face, her shoulders. It wasn’t going to rain. She refused to allow it. Not on her honeymoon.
Galen cast off bow and stern, moving as surely as if he’d done it all his life. He probably had. This was his territory, not hers. Not yet.
Feeling the need to secure something—anything—she repinned her black straw more securely on top of her head. From across the small cockpit, Galen glanced at her face, her hat, and then back at her face again.
She knew very well he hated this hat. She hated it herself, even with the new ribbons, but of the two she now owned, she had deliberately chosen to wear her old one this morning, as if to remind herself of who she was. Her name might have changed, but she was still Katy O’Sullivan. Practical, sensible Kathleen O’Sullivan, a woman accustomed to duty and responsibility.
Her face must have reflected something of her grim determination. Galen touched her on the shoulder. “You’re not feeling squeamish, are you?”
“Not a bit of it.” She manufactured a smile in spite of the fact that she was increasingly aware of being stiff and sore in places she had never before been aware of at all.
He propped a booted foot up beside her on the bench, making her acutely aware of his virility, of all the things she’d never even noticed about a man before. “We’ll be coming in sight of The Landing in about half an hour. Oh, and by the way, if you notice anything unusual about Miss Drucy, try to ignore it, will you? She has a tendency to live in her own little world these days.”
Katy tucked her skirts closer and nodded. He had given her a brief description of the people she’d be meeting today, and she’d tried to keep them straight in her mind. She looked forward to seeing Brandon and Ana again. And the baby. They would be there, along with the elderly Merriweathers’ son, Tom, and his two sons. She’d thought at the time that the boys might provide company for Tara.
She looked forward to meeting Maureen, if only to hear the lilt of a familiar accent again. In a place as vast as America, anyone from Ireland was a neighbor.
“It’s her birthday. Miss Drucy’s. Not that she’ll remember, but it serves the purpose of a family reunion. Brand met the Merriweathers when he came south the first time. Our father had been dead only a few years, and then Liam . . . died. And Brand thought I’d been lost at sea—he’d just got back from months of searching. The Merriweathers took him in, no questions asked, when he was in desperate need of something to hang on to. It was here he met Ana.”
Katy nodded again. She’d heard part of the story before. She did know what it meant to need something to hold on to.
Galen moved away to talk to the ferryman. A little while later, on the far side of a swift-running inlet, they made a final tack into a narrow channel. Returning to her side, Galen pointed out the turreted structure known as Merriweather’s Castle on the narrow, windswept spit of land that was Pea Island.
Unconsciously bracing herself, Katy searched among the figures gathering on the shore for a glimpse of a familiar coppery head. Even now she found it hard to believe she’d been selfish enough to send Tara ahead to stay with strangers just so she could be alone with her new husband.
She stole a look at him, standing so tall beside her. A glimmer of pale sunlight glanced off his hatless head, highlighting the narrow streak of white hair that set him apart from all other men.
As if he needed anything to set him apart. Blindfolded, she could have picked him out among a shipload of men. Her heart would have guided her.
“There’s George Gill, the all-around man. He’s the giant on the end. And Brand—he’s the one waving. The one in the wheelchair is Mr. Merry.” One by one, Galen identified them all as Pam dropped the mains’le and they glided toward the wharf. All but the woman standing off to one side, an infant in her arms.
The woman in the photograph.
Long before she was close enough to see her face clearly, Katy knew. The picture had disappeared from Galen’s bedroom weeks ago, but she knew that face as well as she knew her own. A tiny flame that had been ignited inside her only hours before flickered out, leaving only cold ash in its place.
The woman was wearing gray, simply but beautifully styled. The shade could have indicated half mourning, or it could have been chosen because it matched the color of the wearer’s eyes.
A closer look was enough to tell her it had been chosen to match the color of a pair of large, sad eyes. The same eyes Katy had seen gazing up from the photograph.
Later she learned that it also indicated mourning. The woman’s name was Margaret Ruff, and she had lost her husband five months earlier. Ana, suffering from a sprained wrist, had invited her to travel south with them, to help look after the baby on the trip south.
And because Margaret had been traveling in the same direction on her way to Atlanta to visit her late husband’s parents, she had agreed to stay with her until the Merriweathers’ staff could take over.
Galen, once he recovered from his initial shock, wondered just what the devil was going on. In an aside to his brother, he asked whose idea it had been to invite Margaret along.
Grinning, Brand said, “Whose do you think? You know Ana, always trying to play matchmaker. I do believe you put a kink in her hawser, little brother.”
“You mean she was thinking—?”
Brand nodded. “Now that Margaret’s available again, why not? Only now, I reckon she’ll have to set her sights on Tom. Or maybe George Gill.”
Katy thought later it was a wonder her smile hadn’t cracked and fallen right off her face. She’d smiled and greeted her host and hostess and their staff. She’d smiled and greeted the other two McKnights and made over the baby, and then she’d smiled some more and allowed herself to be introduced to the woman her husband loved.
It was all there, plain as day. She had watched him closely when he’d greeted her down at the landing. He’d taken both her hands in his and she’d heard him say quite clearly, “Margaret.”
Just that. Margaret
.
The way he’d said “Katy,” the night before when she’d been aching to hear words of love.
Had Margaret wanted to hear those words, too? Had he ever spoken them to her? Some men had trouble putting their feelings into words.
Katy didn’t know what to think anymore. She knew only that she was confused, suffering from a lack of sleep, and aching in more than Just her heart.
*
Dinner was a festive affair, with family, friends, and staff all sitting down together. With the help of the maid, Simmy, and Tara, Maureen served a wonderful meal, then took off her apron and joined them at the table.
Mr. Merriweather asked blessings on them all, and especially his dear wife, and they all began to talk. Katy had little to say. Not that anyone seemed to notice, as her silence was effectively covered by laughter and the clink of cutlery. Toasts were made and Katy, along with the others, including Tara, lifted their glasses time and time again.
Later they adjourned to the living room, where a fire had been lit in spite of the warm evening. The conversation continued as small groups formed, moved on, and reformed. Galen and Margaret had settled onto a window seat and remained there, talking quietly. At the moment, Margaret seemed to be doing most of the talking, with Galen nodding from time to time.
Ana explained, “They haven’t seen each other in ages. I’m sure they have loads of catching up to do.” Katy was holding the baby, who was plump and pink and somewhat damp. “Margaret used to live next door to the McKnights’ stud farm near Litchfield, if you can call a few miles away next door. She’s a bit older, but they grew up together. They’ve always been close.”
Close. Just how close? Katy wondered. Margaret had married someone else, and now that she was free again, Galen was not. She smiled and nodded, just as if her heart weren’t breaking.
Tara left the card game she’d been playing with the Merriweathers’ two grandsons and wandered over to the table where Miss Drucy was cutting paper dolls from an old magazine. The two boys started arguing, and Tom spoke to them with quiet authority. The eldest one—Caleb or Billy, Katy couldn’t remember which was which—grinned and pointed at Tara.
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