Was she really ready to limit the destination of her life?
She had already limited her life, the past few years, living with Father again, working in the shop. Devoting herself to family duty.
Her throat began to grow tight. The air seemed too thin. Well, she was forty-four years old, surely the possibilities were beginning to be limited for her in any case.
If we become lovers, pledged to each other, I shall be your life. And you shall be mine.
Could she devote herself to just one man? One man for the remainder of her life?
The notion made her heart go all fluttery and her knees weak. A sort of perverse excitement, much like when she had been a girl and spun wild visions of running away to France, shearing the locks from her head and becoming a nun.
All right, so the idea of someone else imposing chastity upon her was oddly intriguing. Arousing even.
But her life belonged to Father and her family now. She had had a good long, wild run as a young woman. Now that was all behind her. Her throat went tighter and the air seemed thinner than ever. Her neck began to ache. The pillow was like a rock. She tried to bunch it up but it remained hopelessly flat. She sighed.
Stephen groaned in his sleep and stirred.
Reluctant to disturb his sleep further, she arose from the bed and pulled on her chemise. The cloth on the little table glowed brilliant white in the moonlight. She parted the curtains, opened the window, put her palms on the sill and leant her face into the cooling breeze. Gooseflesh rose on her shoulders and her nipples grew tight. But the blast of cooler air was delicious, refreshing her mind.
A rustling sound drew her attention to the floor. The leather-bound book that Stephen had been scribbling in at times during their journey lay on the floor, open, with the pages ruffling. Loose pages were beginning to scatter on the floor.
She closed the window and hurried to retrieve the pages.
She laid her hand on one page and caught her breath.
A detailed sketch of herself.
No, quite a bit more comely, an idealized image of herself, but it could be no one else.
He had drawn this?
Her heart began to pound, hard.
Was this how he saw her?
So inhumanly beautiful. Perfect.
She glanced up at his sleeping form. What did he expect from her?
Sudden panic welled up inside her. She ran to the bed, flung herself down beside him and shook his shoulder. “Stephen?”
He stirred. “Hmm?”
“Stephen, you must wake up.”
He laughed, the sound deep and husky, his voice more hoarse sounding with sleep. “Is the inn afire?”
“Please don’t laugh. I have to tell you something.”
He caressed her arm and his face wrinkled with concern. “What is it, sweeting?”
Nausea swept through her guts and she was breathing too quickly. She made an effort to take slower breaths.
His frown deepened. “You’re so pale. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, I cannot have you think… You don’t understand about Donald and me.”
He seemed to shake himself, as though he would shake off his sleepiness, and he pulled himself up and drew her into his arms. “Tell me, then.”
“Donald had never struck me before.” She took a shuddering breath, feeling the cowardice of one who does not want to admit a hard truth. “It was all my fault.”
He frowned again. “How could it be your fault?”
“Just…wickedness.”
“Wickedness? You could never be wicked.”
“That’s what you do not understand. Of course I can be. I was horribly wicked. The worst kind of wife.”
“You are shaking.” His voice rang with concern. He took her hand. “And your hands are clammy. What could ever be so terrible?”
“As I told you, Donald was…well, I suppose it was me, I wasn’t the wife he had expected me to be. I tried, oh Stephen, I tried so hard.”
“Of course you did.” His lips brushed the top of her head.
Just like that, warmth settled over her. That was how he would love a woman, she could see that clearly. With protectiveness, with strength, yes, but also with gentleness and compassion. She wished so desperately that she could be worthy of a love like that.
“I couldn’t be the right kind of wife. He turned from me.”
“You mean sexually.”
“Yes.” The word was torn from her, full of anguish.
“It wasn’t your fault. It was a flaw within him.”
She shook her head. “I tried to be understanding. To accept that I just couldn’t be what he needed. But sometimes…oh sometimes…”
“Sometimes it was hard to be married yet chaste in your bed?”
“Yes.” The admission was a bare whisper.
He was stroking her hair. “It’s all over now.”
“Yes, but you see, you don’t understand. That night—the n-night he-he—”
“What happened that night?”
“I couldn’t bear it. I lay next to my husband, in the cold and dark, near but not touching and I couldn’t bear it any longer. I asked him—no, no, I cannot lie, I begged, I pleaded, I pressured, I cajoled him.” She cringed inside at the memory but she must continue. “I tried to seduce… Oh, God, what stupid, foolish girl I was. He became so vexed with me. So outraged. I shamed us both.” She drew a shuddering breath. “He was in his rights to punish me.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Stephen said this so firmly, she almost believed him.
“A wife should never shame a husband in their marriage bed.”
“A husband should never neglect his wife in their marriage bed.” He lay back and pulled her along with him.
She settled against his chest, right in the crook of his arm, as though she really belonged there. “A woman should be able to be chaste if her husband needs her to be chaste.”
“That’s complete hogwash, Rebecca. Surely, you know that’s hogwash.”
“I am not perfect.”
“No one is perfect.”
“I wasn’t even an adequate wife.” Or daughter, she might have added.
Only with Jon had she been adequate.
Because he asked so little from you.
A burning lump swelled in her throat at the self-betraying thought. No, no, that hadn’t been how it was at all. They had been friends, lovers. They had understood each other when no one else had. They had provided something to each other that no one else ever could have.
You shared perversity with Jon and in the end, it wasn’t enough for him. He found someone else for his real, deeper needs. Someone fresh, pure, innocent and, most of all, young.
Stephen caressed her back, startling her out of her thoughts.
He was staring at her with tenderness. Acceptance.
Oh God.
She gaped at him, stupidly. Had he heard nothing she had told him?
“You need sleep,” he said. “We’ll talk on this further but now you need sleep.”
Soon his breathing became regular and deep.
But Rebecca couldn’t sleep.
Jon had wanted someone younger. Stephen would too. Eventually. All men did.
But what had Stephen said tonight?
Ruel was an adjunct to your life.
She began breathing harder.
I shall be your life. And you shall be mine.
Craving like she had never known welled up inside her. God, she’d love to believe Stephen. To really believe him.
Yet, except for the first few, miserable years of her marriage, she’d had never been completely exclusive to one man. What if she couldn’t be? What if she failed Stephen and he was disgusted by her? What if he would look at her with disdain and hate?
An image of Father loomed in her mind, his disapproving visage dominating her thoughts until she couldn’t lay still any longer.
She arose and began to pace, her thoughts spinning and spinning, until one settled on her wi
th disquieting clarity.
Her heart leapt into her throat. And without further thought she jolted to her feet and dashed back to the bed. She gave Stephen’s shoulder a violent shake. “Wake up!”
His eyes popped open and he stared at her, dazed. “What?”
“How did you know about…t-the matter with the crop and the whip?”
“What?”
“How did you know about my carnal proclivities?” she snap, too alarmed for shame now.
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that.”
“Lady Scott told me.”
Her heart seemed to falter and nausea twisted inside her guts. “Lady Scott told you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“At Eastwood Place, the night after you left.”
Her heart began to beat more normally. But her nausea increased as comprehension dawned. “You were with her, that next night?”
She couldn’t keep the disgust out of her tone when referring to Lady Scott.
“It was just once.”
“You lay with that-that…” She took a deep breath struggling for a word horrid enough and couldn’t find it. “You-you…how could you?”
He gaped her with heavy-lidded eyes.
The lack of real response from him made her explode again. “How could you?!”
“Rebecca,” he said, calmly. “You left with Lord Ruel.”
Anger pulsed through her. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot rapidly, trying to dissipate some of her ire. “Lady Scott?”
“You not only left Eastwood Place, you left England and went to America with him.”
Illogically, his calm response made her all the more vexed. Yes, she’d heard the outraged jealousy in her voice. She knew how ridiculous it was. She couldn’t help it. “I just cannot believe you would bed down with that woman, of all the women you could have had. Why her?”
“She was a quite a comely little vixen in those days.”
Revulsion seethed into Rebecca’s bones. She shuddered with it. “Lady Scott.” She said the name as though it were the most dreaded of all diseases.
“Lord Ruel had her.”
“So he did. That was bad enough.”
“It never seemed to matter to you. That’s what everyone says.”
She felt her mouth drop open. “You have certainly queried enough people on the matter of my carnal proclivities!”
He returned her glare mildly. “How else was I to learn about them?”
“It was my private affair. It was not her place to go telling.” She shook her head. “I still cannot fathom how you could lay with someone like her.”
“You let Ruel have his highborn playmates. You were happy to let him have them.”
“It was different.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Because Jon never claimed to hold you special over all other women.
It struck her with sudden clarity just how much she wanted to believe that Stephen held her special above all other women. And just how much that desire to be so special, so adored, had factored into her decisions in the past hours.
That need was the most disquieting thing yet.
It wasn’t safe to need any man’s regard so badly. She knew how easily a man’s attention could be drawn away.
And she would be left all alone.
“How was it different, Rebecca?”
“It just was.”
She and Stephen stared at each other for a long, uncomfortably tense time.
“I wrote to you.”
She frowned. “What?”
“When you left with Howland, and went to Ruel’s regiment, I wrote to you.”
She froze, paralysed by his sudden accusation. She felt trapped. Pinned to the wall.
“You ignored my letters,” he said, his voice becoming hoarser.
She stared at him, crossing her arms more tightly across her chest, self-protectively this time. But she couldn’t keep the pain from creeping in. “I did what I believed was best at the time.”
“Because I was a mere boy?”
“Yes.” She drew a ragged breath. “And because I was a such a bad, wicked wife.”
He turned a shade paler. “I am sorry, Rebecca. I didn’t mean to recall that topic.” He sat up and reached out his arms. “Come here.”
“No, I should leave you be. I am restless, I shall never sleep.”
“Come here even so.”
She couldn’t resist his tender tone. She walked slowly to the bed but merely sat beside him. “I don’t want you to have the wrong idea about Donald. He only struck me the once. Never before, never after.”
“He never did it again because of Jonathon Lloyd?”
She nodded.
“And you gave yourself to Ruel because he made you feel safe?”
“Partly.” Her shoulders sagged. “In truth, Donald was relieved that I had found a lover. Everyone knew and they all pretended not to know. He could save face that way and yet all that pressure about the marriage bed was lifted from his back.”
“Howland wasn’t normal. His mind was not right.” Stephen gave her back a sweeping caress. “You need to sleep. Your nerves need rest and you’ll feel better for it.”
She lay beside him again, trying to be still so that he could sleep. But she found herself arising soon after he had drifted off. She removed her chemise then went to the abandoned bathtub and stepped into the water, trying to be as quiet as possible.
The cold bath was bracing. Refreshing. It reminded her of early mornings, sometimes in camp with the Dragoons, when she had slipped away to bathe in some stream or other. She could never think of that time without feeling a sense of anticipation, of life being open and full of possibility.
Ah, youth. It was so wasted on the young. She took a deep breath and then submerged her head.
Afterwards, shivering violently, she rubbed herself vigorously with the linen towels. She wrapped one of them about her head and then stared out the window at the moonlit night. Such a quiet time. A sense of extreme well being settled over her. But she did feel ever so much better. Clearer of mind. Her stomach growled and she put her hand over the aching.
Mercy, what she wouldn’t give for a large mug of steaming coffee with a generous dose of Scotch whisky and a huge bowl of porridge with milk and butter.
And dark, rich maple syrup, and not just any maple, but from Vermont, just as she had eaten in America.
But wait, Americans favoured those johnnycakes, with their toasty brown edges and soft chewy insides. She remembered that one tavern in Philadelphia. She knew it had cost a small fortune to stay there. But oh, heavens, what delicacies they had served in the mornings! Fluffy eggs scrambled with cream and chives. Hearty slabs of crisp, salty, melt-in-your-mouth bacon and boiled potatoes with just the right waxy cast and spicy pepper hash. Tart-sweet apple and cranberry preserves on toast points…
Her stomach growled, more fiercely this time. Damn, she’d been too full of carnal anticipation yesterday afternoon to eat much of their meal.
She glanced at Stephen sleeping peacefully in the bed.
No, she couldn’t leave to get some food and risk waking him. At least not for a few hours. She pulled her chemise over her head then noticed the papers still scattered about. She crawled on her knees and began to gather them up. Then she laid her hand on one sketch and caught her breath.
A very detailed sketch of the interior of Seymour House.
What the devil?
She took the stack of papers and grasped the little book. For a moment, she caressed the worn red leather.
Stephen carried this in his pocket, every day of his life. She tried to picture what his daily life must be like. What he must be like.
She drew a blank. Then she shook herself from the foolish little reverie. She snapped the book open and leafed through it. It was filled with nonsensical words.
Code.
A faint chill passed over her
scalp and settled at her nape, with the little hairs on the back of her neck on end.
What was Stephen’s business with this?
Thud, thud, thud! Her heart beat increased with a sudden sense of rising alarm.
Now it came to her! Stephen had known too much about the inner workings of Jon’s house. About his private life.
Stephen had not come to Kean’s house for an evening of carnal amusement and stumbled upon her. He had followed her there.
Her mouth went dry.
He had offered her help because he wanted…what?
He had seduced her to get her into a vulnerable situation? Yes, very likely!
Ruel was an adjunct to your life.
Adjunct?
Such complex words from a man who had never attended college. His vocabulary was peppered with them.
He’s not what he seems. There are so many questions. You do not know him.
She put her hand over her leaping heart. Oh no, she couldn’t cope with this.
She sat back on her heels and rubbed her palms on her chemise. No, she must deal with this. She just needed to keep a cool head. All those years, following the drum, she had kept her head. Yes, she’d grown soft, living in the luxury and safety that Jon’s support and later congé he’d provided her with. But that practical woman still resided within her.
Stephen had worked hard to convince her that her best possible choice for safety had been to go with him. To place herself within his keeping.
Her own attraction and long-starved lust along with Kean’s special punch and helped to provide her with the incentive to believe.
Now she could think more clearly.
Maria wanted her testimony. She had played strongly on Rebecca’s fears and now was likely just letting Rebecca think about her options.
She wasn’t going to call for Rebecca’s arrest.
Stephen was right about one thing, Maria was unlikely to be charged with Saxby’s death. The young man had been very ill.
A suspicious illness, a little too convenient for Maria’s benefit.
But an illness nonetheless. Verified by a doctor.
Jon deserved to know that Maria wanted to malign his public character, that she sought the means to see his political career discredited and even to possibly send him to the gallows.
Jon was her best advisor. The only man she could trust. She knew he could never wish her ill.
Perilous Risk Page 15