Stormswept

by Sabrina Jeffries

  Rhys probably thought Morgan should torment his former love for getting involved with another man.

  She shifted her gaze to the curtained window. It reminded her there was a world outside his house, outside his presence. ’Twas the only thing that kept her emotions even.

  “I have a question for you,” he said into the silence.

  “Yes?” She couldn’t look at him.

  “Did you . . . was there . . .” He paused, seeming to struggle for words. “Did we have a child, too?”

  The quiet yearning in his voice shocked her so much that she merely shook her head no.

  “You mustn’t lie about this,” he choked out. “If we had a child, I need to know.”

  Pain settled sickly in her belly. “I haven’t lied to you about anything. And I certainly wouldn’t lie about that. Did anyone mention children last night, when you were wresting me away from my family? Don’t you think they would have?”

  “Actually, I thought you might have sent the babe off to be raised elsewhere.” When she swung her gaze to his, anger boiling up in her, he added, “If you did, I won’t hold it against you. I just need to know the truth so I can regain my child.”

  “You don’t want truth. You only want more crimes to lay against me.” Her voice dropped to a ragged whisper. “Have you no good memories of our time together? Did the floggings beat them so completely from your mind that you could think I’d send away my own child to be raised by strangers?”

  He flinched. “You kept our marriage secret. I didn’t expect that. And to keep it a secret, you’d have to hide any child of our union.”

  She leapt from the bed, not caring that she wore only her shift. “If I’d had a child, I wouldn’t have kept our marriage a secret! I’d have shouted it from the rooftops.”

  “You didn’t need a child for that.” He balled his hands into fists. “You should have done it anyway, instead of pretending it never happened.”

  “If I’d wanted to pretend it never happened, I would have had it annulled.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t have the marriage certificate, and the bishop wouldn’t have let you, while he was alive.”

  She snorted. “Neither of those things would have stopped my father. Papa had the power to force your godfather into making the entire thing disappear.” She jabbed a finger at her own chest. “I kept him from it. I told them I’d spread the story of my elopement throughout the land if they attempted an annulment.”

  “You should have done that anyway.” His eyes were alight with outrage. “Instead, you hid it like some shameful secret.”

  “Aye, I did.” How different things would be now, if she hadn’t. “But Rhys, remember my youth. I’d been wedded and bedded for only a night, then told that my husband was lost to me for years, if not forever.” Her voice caught. “And I knew exactly what impressment entailed—that you could easily die at sea.”

  She turned toward the window, fearing the condemnation she’d find in his expression. “It was hard enough for me to stand up to them and say I wouldn’t allow an annulment. You weren’t there to give me strength and protect me from my family’s anger. So when Darcy suggested . . .”

  Oh Lord, she’d forgotten how much Darcy had shaped her behavior. He’d orchestrated it all so well, and in her grief and uncertainty, she’d fallen in with his plans easily. He’d wanted her to hide the marriage so there’d never be a question of her going back to it. And when she’d stubbornly held on to her hopes, Darcy had cut them off by paying an investigator to say Rhys was dead.

  Darcy had cold-bloodedly betrayed her, and she hadn’t even known it. Tightness built in her chest as she stared blindly at the heavy green brocade in front of her.

  “What did your damned brother suggest?” Rhys prodded.

  She swallowed back a sob and faced him. “He said there was no point to proclaiming my marriage when you might never return. He pointed out that I might never know if you survived the navy. If you died, who would tell me? Why should I ruin my life, he said, when ’twould be better to wait and see what happened?”

  “You mean, to wait and hope that I never returned.” Rhys’s face wore a look of betrayal so deep, she wondered if anything she said could ever erase it.

  Still, she had to say it all. “Perhaps Darcy hoped for that. I never did. But when the investigator Darcy hired for me said you were dead—”

  “A pat addition to your story,” he muttered. “Except for one thing. There was no evidence of any death for your supposed investigator to find.”

  “I realize that now. Darcy obviously paid the man to tell me you were dead.”

  “Can you show me this investigator?”

  She scowled. “What do you think? Since my brother’s persisting in his lies, he’s certainly not going to allow someone he hired to refute them in my defense.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  She flinched. “Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Because you never told your precious betrothed about your marriage, even when you supposedly believed yourself a widow. You did exactly as Darcy predicted—you hid your marriage so you could make a more advantageous one later.”

  “I didn’t hide it for that reason! ”

  “Any reason was a betrayal of what we’d shared.”

  Guilt overwhelmed her. He was right. In a sense, she had betrayed him by listening to Darcy. “True. But I couldn’t bear to face the scandal of an elopement when I had no husband to show for it. And Darcy played on that. He pointed out that I was neither widow nor wife, and that I’d be in that limbo forever unless I kept the marriage secret.”

  Rhys glanced away, but his jaw began to twitch.

  “I was weak, Rhys. Not as weak as you’ve believed me to be, but weak nonetheless.” She weighed her next words, knowing they would make her even more vulnerable to him. But she had to make him see her side. “In truth, I prayed I’d find myself with child, for then I’d have had part of you with me. Then they’d have been forced to let me announce the marriage.”

  His gaze swung to her, sympathy sparking in it.

  “I wanted your child so badly. When my courses came, I wept for two days.”

  She paused. The silence drew them in together, into a mourning for what might have been, what never was.

  He let out a long-drawn breath. “So there was no child.”

  She shook her head, clamping down on the tears that waited to engulf her. The sorrow on his face tore at her. “That’s when I began keeping the secret. I made them promise to let me await you at Llynwydd, and I moved there under the pretext of caring for my estate. But it was really to avoid their pressure on me to annul the marriage.”

  He gaped at her. “You awaited me at Llynwydd? For how long?”

  She blinked. “I thought you knew. You seemed to know so much else. I’ve been living at Llynwydd all this time.”

  “I haven’t been there since I reached Wales two weeks ago. I didn’t want to go until everything was settled, so I could arrive as owner. I also didn’t want anyone recognizing me and warning the family of my arrival. When I asked around, I was told it was closed up.”

  She nodded. “I closed it up a month ago, when I came to town to plan my engagement party. Until then, I’d been living there.”

  “As what? Obviously not as my wife.”

  “Nay, as the owner. ’Tis my property, you know.”

  His eyes blazed at her. “So you were happy to live in my estate, yet not to acknowledge our marriage.”

  It sounded so callous when he said it that she got defensive. “I would have been happy to acknowledge our marriage if I’d had any word from you saying you were alive. Or if the investigator hadn’t proclaimed you dead.”

  “The letters.” His face paled. “They went to Northcliffe Hall. And you were at Llynwydd.”

  Her heart began to pound. He understood. He did. “Aye. And Darcy obviously never gave them to me.”

  He pondered that for a moment. Then his face har
dened. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t change anything. You set out to keep this marriage a secret from the moment I was impressed, long before you would have expected to hear anything from me, all because you hoped to marry someone else later.”

  “Can’t you understand what it was like for me? You said yesterday that you could forgive me for having second thoughts. So why can’t you forgive me for being weak when I believed you were gone forever? I couldn’t do anything but wait . . . without word, without hope for the future. So when the investigator told me you were dead, I felt free to let Stephen court me. And to accept his offer.”

  At the mention of Stephen, he stiffened. “Yes, and while you were preparing to turn over the fruits of my estate to another man, the damned English Navy was draining my lifeblood from me.”

  “I know. But you escaped, didn’t you? And look at you now. You’re obviously successful and wealthy.” Bitterness swelled in her. “You spent three years in America. If you’d come back then, instead of waiting—”

  “I couldn’t. I had no money and no desire to feel the hangman’s noose about my neck. And I assure you, those three years in America weren’t blissful and carefree.” He stared her down. “I repaid the Americans for saving me by risking my life daily. I did it because I wanted to return and needed money to do so, and the most money was paid for the riskiest tasks.”

  The bleak abyss in his eyes made her ache to comfort him. But how did one comfort a wounded beast who bit anyone who ventured near?

  “I won’t say what I did,” he went on. “You might tell your brothers and get me hanged despite my newly gained influence. But I can tell you this—there are wounds and scars on my body that your countrymen inflicted long after I left the navy.”

  He yanked back a handful of hair to reveal a long, jagged scar just above his right temple. “This was done by an English saber. I nearly died from it—I was completely unconscious for two weeks. But I survived the same way I survived everything else, by telling myself I had to live to regain what I’d lost: my wife, my home, my birthright. I had to live to repay you for your betrayal.”

  Stepping close to her, he lowered his voice. “You think to purge me of my anger with all your tales, but ’twas my anger that kept me alive—and I will honor its cry for vengeance.”

  It took all her strength to gaze into the harsh face that showed the ravages he spoke of. But she managed it by remembering how that face had once smiled at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement.

  Reaching up, she smoothed her fingers over his scar. “ ’Twasn’t anger that kept you alive. Nor even your thirst for vengeance. ’Twas love. Love for your home. And yes, love for me. ’Tis the love you can’t purge, and you hate that.”

  He froze as she trailed her fingers down his cheek, remembering when he’d welcomed her caresses. He reached to pull her hand away, but covered it instead. For a moment they remained locked that way, his rough hand engulfing her small one.

  Then he drew her hand from his face. “You think all your soft words and your touch will save you from me, don’t you?” His breath came hard and fast, but he still clasped her hand. “You think it’ll make me forget that I found you betrothed to another upon my return, that you hid our marriage from the world, that you toyed with my life without one thought for the consequences.”

  He lowered his face until it was inches from hers. “It won’t, I assure you. No matter what you say, I know you for what you are. And one day you’ll beg my forgiveness for what you did to me.”

  She wasn’t as cowed by him as before. She knew now what he would do, and what he wouldn’t. “I’ve told you why I behaved as I did, and you’ve seen for yourself how callous Darcy has become. If you still choose to think ill of me, I can’t change that.”

  She drew a deep breath. “But regardless of what you think I did to you, I’m your wife. And thanks to your stubbornness, I’ll be your wife forever. So don’t you think ’twould be better to find a way to live amiably together? Will gaining your ‘vengeance’ erase your wounds or ease your pain?”

  She waited breathlessly, holding his gaze.

  He thrust her from him with a curse. “You expect me to take up where we left off. To act as if you hadn’t betrayed me. To forget.”

  “Nay. But I think you’re a practical man. You’ve seen war, and you know peace is preferable.” She sought for words that would bridge the chasm between them, that would spark the good memories inside him.

  And words she’d read only a few weeks ago came to her. She said in Welsh, “You know how to ‘fashion peace, which is richer than gold.’ You know that ‘Mercy will never die or grow old.’ It’s time to fashion peace, don’t you think? Time to find mercy in your heart.”

  He looked stunned silent by her quotation from The Black Book of Carmarthen. In his quest for “vengeance,” he’d forgotten all the pleasant hours they’d spent discussing poetry and books, all the sweetness between them.

  So this was what she must do. Remind him of the sweetness. She must uncover the old Rhys.

  His face mirrored his torn emotions. “You’re wrong,” he murmured in Welsh. “I don’t know how to ‘fashion peace’ anymore. I don’t even know what peace is.”

  She held out her hand to him. “Then let me teach it to you. Let us learn peace together.”

  For a moment, he wavered with his gaze fixed on her outstretched hand. Then he turned away. “Get dressed. We leave in an hour.” And he was gone.

  She stared after him. Despite his commands, she now knew the truth. Inside, he ached for love.

  Hope for them sparked within her. She would feed that spark with the tinder of her own precious memories. And perhaps one day soon, the flame would melt the ice in Rhys’s heart.

  Wiping the sweat from his brow, Rhys shifted in the saddle and looked back as the coach lumbered into view, raising clouds of dust behind it. Juliana was in that coach, riding alone because he’d chosen to accompany the vehicle on horseback.

  He twisted the reins about his hand until the leather bit into his gloves. Two hours of hard riding had taken its toll on a head that throbbed from last night’s brandy and a stomach that churned as badly as when he’d eaten maggot-ridden hardtack.

  Yet he couldn’t make himself join her for the last half hour, not even to lie back on soft cushions and close his eyes. Joining her meant enduring her quiet, long-suffering presence, and that he couldn’t do.

  But this solitude wasn’t much better. No matter how hard he rode, he couldn’t push her words from his mind.

  You know how to fashion peace. This morning he’d expected her to fight, to snap and shout at him. When she did, it was easy to think of her as a light-headed, spoiled flirt who’d ruined his life on a whim. It was easy to remind himself of all she’d cost him.

  But when she met him with Welsh poetry, so perfectly spoken that it might have been a bard intoning the words about “peace” and “mercy,” all his convictions about her grew shaky.

  Then memories crept in. Like that night long ago when she’d sat on his lap and recited the whole of “Praise of a Girl,” the Welsh words flowing from her like rich music. Her face had glowed from the pleasures of poetry spoken aloud, and she’d taken delight in the kisses he’d given her after each stanza. There’d been no hesitation in her, no sign of dislike for his penniless state or his Welshness.

  Her explanations this morning simmered in Rhys’s brain. Her family’s pressure on her to have the marriage annulled . . . Darcy’s urging her to keep the marriage a secret . . . her reasons for her betrothal . . . All of it rang too much of truth.

  He no longer knew what to believe. And every time he thought of her defending that handsome marquess, it made his blood boil.

  But when she’d spoken of not having their child . . . The yearning shining in her eyes couldn’t have been false. Even now, it sparked a deep desire for something he’d never wanted before.

  His child. Their child. Would their children be pale as cream like thei
r mother, or dark like their father? Would their hair capture the sun like Juliana’s or reflect the black night like his own?

  Thoughts of children led him to thoughts of how children were made. Of how she’d looked in that thin shift that barely veiled the dusky rose of her nipples or the auburn curls below her belly. How her heady lavender scent still made him want to bury his face in her hair . . . in her neck . . . between her legs.

  “Cer i’r diawl! ” She drove him as mad with need as ever. And he was woefully tired of fighting it.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t. Because she was right about one thing: He didn’t want her to lie there like a whore and let him spend himself inside her. He wanted her moaning beneath him, lifting her mouth to his of her own accord to find her pleasure.

  Aye, he wanted her willing. He remembered so well how sweet it had been when she was willing. And he wouldn’t be giving up anything, to have her willing. It was what they both wanted.

  Her words came back to him. Fashion peace, eh? Let them fashion peace in the marriage bed. She was right: They had a lifetime together. And as long as he made it clear who would be master in their house, they could have pleasure together.

  Of course, he wouldn’t let those pleasures negate her duty to make amends. He wouldn’t trust her, but he could bed her as often as he wished, and if she drew enjoyment from it, that was even better.

  And why should he resist her anyway? He had a right to enjoy his wife’s body.

  Just then he topped the hill that looked down on Llynwydd, and his breath caught in his throat. Home. He’d finally come home.

  He was glad that he hadn’t come until he could enter the estate as owner, for it made the pleasure more intense. Llynwydd was his. Every garden, every field, every tenant farm. No one could deny that any longer.

  He halted to savor it—the massive wrought-iron gates, the expanse of outbuildings, and the thriving orchards of plum and peach. A lump grew in his throat. The yews his father had planted when Rhys was barely eight were so tall now.

  Then there was the squire hall itself—a block of aged brick flanked by the newer wings his grandfather had put in. Sunlight glinted off the white painted railings of the entrance steps, and the oak door looked as solid as ever. At last he could ride up to that very door and walk into the halls of his childhood home with impunity. He had his birthright back, and not even the treacherous St. Albans brothers could wrest it from him.