Again that scratching sound. By now her eyes had grown sufficiently used to the dimness that she could see the dog at the back of the cave, scratching at some hole through which the rabbit had disappeared. It must have been a small opening indeed, because his body hid it completely from her view.
"Give it up, you idiot," she called. "You'll never get that rabbit."
Evidently Gypsy had come to the same conclusion, because he backed away, turned, and looking sheepish, moved toward her. With the dog following, Elizabeth returned to her tethered mount. She led the mare to a small boulder, and using the rock as a mounting block, swung into the saddle. When she had ridden a hundred yards or so along the hill's crest, she saw that the path, turning left, led down over the gentle folds of green earth to the sea.
She followed it After a while she could see a little cove, with boats lying at its wharf. Farther along the cove's edge, a church spire rose above trees. It was not until she reached level ground that she saw that there were other buildings, about a dozen whitewashed thatched cottages, strung out along a single village street.
As she moved past the wharf, two men furling the sail of a boat doffed their hats to her. On the village street two little boys riding stick horses stopped their play at sight of her, stared solemnly, and then, when she smiled, shyly smiled back. A tall blond woman with a basket over her arm wished Elizabeth a good morning.
The old stone church was at the end of the street, and set at right angles to it In the churchyard, sunlight slanted through oaks and maples onto the granite headstones. Attracted by the quiet beauty of the place, Elizabeth slid to the ground and tethered Satin to the hitching post. "And you stay here too, Gypsy." Apparently the dog understood, because he lay down beside the mare and sank his head on his extended paws. Elizabeth went through the gate in the churchyard's white-railed fence.
Plainly only the humble rested here. There were no granite mausoleums or marble angels, only the modest headstones. Those near the fence were the oldest. Some bore dates of more than two hundred years before. Others, probably even older, were so worn that their lettering was indecipherable. As she moved back along the gravel path, she saw newer headstones, including one of granite so unweathered that it might have left the stonecutter's shed only weeks before. She paused beside it. The words engraved upon it struck her like a blow. "Anne Reardon. Died age seventeen and two months, twentieth day of November, 1778."
Footsteps sounded on the gravel. She turned, to see a plump woman, gowned and bonneted in black, with a bouquet of field daisies in one hand. At sight of Elizabeth, she stopped, as if surprised, and then came on, smiling. "A good morning to you, Lady Stanford."
"Good morning. Do I... I mean, have we met before?"
"No, milady. But everyone in these parts has heard a description of you by now." She paused. "I am Maude Reardon."
"Reardon! Are you...?" Elizabeth was unable to finish the sentence.
"No. I'm not the poor child's mother. She's dead long since. Anne was my niece, my brother Tim's child. Sir Patrick had to stay in London after... it happened, so I brought her back here in her coffin."
Stiffly she knelt and placed the flowers on the grave. When she started to rise, Elizabeth bent and put her hand under the woman's elbow. "Let me help you, Mrs. Reardon."
"Thank you, milady." She got to her feet. "Only, it is Miss Reardon. I never married."
"Yes, of course. You said you were Tim Reardon's sister." She looked down at the grave and then asked, almost against her will, "What was she like?"
"Anne? A usual sort of girl, milady, neither plain nor pretty, and perhaps a little quieter than most. Sensible, though. When Sir Patrick decided to arrange that fine marriage for her with an ironmonger's son, Anne never said a word to show how she felt, although I could see it fair broke her heart to leave Stanford Hall, she was that daft about him."
"Daft about... I am afraid I don't understand."
"About Sir Patrick, milady. She fair worshiped the ground he walked on."
A sudden thought held Elizabeth motionless. His rage and grief over the girl's death, his grim determination to have revenge. Could it have been because...?
Before she could stop herself, she asked, "And was Sir Patrick daft about her?"
"About Anne?" It was Maude Reardon's turn to sound puzzled. Then horror came into her face. "Oh, milady! No one ever thought that of Sir Patrick. Why, she was his ward."
Elizabeth felt color in her cheeks. "I see. It is just that I never knew Anne. And as a matter of fact, I haven't known Sir Patrick very long."
"No, you haven't, have you, milady? And I am not saying he is a saint. He is like other men. But everyone knows he was honor itself where Anne was concerned."
She looked down at the grave and sighed. "It was a sad business for him, what happened to her. And a sad business for you, having your own brother falsely accused like that."
"Yes." Elizabeth's voice was stilted. She went on, reluctant to ask the question, and yet needing to know the answer, "I suppose it was his acquittal that made you sure my brother had been falsely accused."
"Oh, no, milady. Many a scoundrel has 'scaped the hangman. It was Sir Patrick's marrying you that made me sure your brother wasn't guilty. Sir Patrick would never have asked you if there had been the slightest doubt about that point."
"I see." How reasonable Maude Reardon's assumption was, and how utterly mistaken. Swiftly Elizabeth changed the subject. "Anne's father was a fisherman?"
"From the time he was a young lad until his boat caught fire and sank, eight years ago."
"How is it that his daughter became Sir Patrick's ward?"
"Why, because Tim and Sir Patrick were friends, milady."
Strange, Elizabeth thought. In England, men of such disparate classes might feel mutual respect and goodwill, but they would not consider themselves friends. Well, evidently it was a case of other countries, other customs. She thought of Michael, the coachman, winking at Patrick the day they had landed, and clapping him on the shoulder.
Maude Reardon said, "I had best take myself home. A good day to you, milady, and please remember me to Sir Patrick."
"I will."
Elizabeth lingered beside the grave for several minutes, looking at the headstone with its brief, sad legend. Then she went out to the hitching post and untethered Satin. She stepped onto a mounting block worn hollow by generations of booted feet, and got into the saddle. With Gypsy following, she set out for Stanford Hall.
CHAPTER 19
In the dining room that night, as she and Colin lingered over sweet sherry, Elizabeth asked, "What is your opinion of smugglers?"
He smiled. "They are reprehensible and highly necessary members of society. Why do you ask?"
"I wanted to make sure of your sentiments before I told you. You see, I think I discovered a smugglers' cache today." She told him of the cave and the stacked cases.
"Where was this?"
She described the spot as best she could. "Is that Stanford land?"
"I don't think so. I think it is Moira Ashley's. But smugglers play no favorites. They will use anyone's land." He paused. "Where else did you ride?"
"Down to that little fishing village on the cove." Reluctant to speak of that encounter in the churchyard, she said, "Well, I must go to my room. I want to write a letter to my mother tonight."
"I thought we might play chess."
"Perhaps tomorrow night." If, she amended silently, Patrick was not home by then. She had a feeling that he would resent those chess games and would try to see to it, by one means or another, that they were discontinued.
Up in her room, she took paper from the drawer of the pretty little desk and began to write. She was completing the last sentence of her letter when she heard a voice in that vast hall downstairs, speaking so loudly that it penetrated the thick walls of her room. After a moment she realized that the voice was Patrick's, and that he sounded angry. Angry over what? Had he returned to find that Colin or one of the s
ervants had disobeyed some instruction he had left? Whatever the trouble, it was no concern of hers. She signed and sealed her letter, and then glanced at the clock on the desk, with its gilt frame of cupids and lovers' knots. Only a little after nine. Nevertheless, she felt sleepy, perhaps because of that long morning ride.
She was moving toward her wardrobe when someone knocked. She crossed to the door and opened it. Mrs. Corcoran stood there. "Sir Patrick is home, milady. He wants to see you in the library."
The round face looked frightened. So the master of the house really was in an angry mood. "Very well. Tell him I will be down soon."
"Please, milady! He said to come right away."
Elizabeth said swiftly and soothingly, "Then tell him I will be down in a moment."
The housekeeper hurried off. Elizabeth moved to her dressing table and tucked a stray lock of chestnut hair into place. Then she went along the balcony, down the right-hand staircase, and through the open library doors. Just beyond the threshold, she halted.
Patrick leaned against the massive table, arms crossed over his chest, booted feet crossed at the ankles. His face was black with anger.
"Close the doors!"
She looked at the tray, holding a brandy bottle and an almost empty glass, which rested on the table near him. Then, with cool deliberation, she turned and pulled the doors closed.
She said, facing him, "What is it?"
"I shall tell you what it is, madam! Before coming home, I stopped to see Maude Reardon in the village. She told me of your conversation with her today. How you implied that I might have taken advantage of my ward.... What a mind you must have, madam!" He picked up the brandy glass and drained its contents.
Cheeks aflame, but trying to keep her gaze steady, Elizabeth watched him in silence.
"Is it not enough that the child died as she did? Must you defame the character that nobody questioned while she was alive? And what of me? Did you really think that I made that girl my mistress, and then tried to palm her off on a respectable London family?"
Her own anger had kindled now, speeding her heartbeats. "Did you expect me to regard you as the soul of honor and chivalry in your relations with women? Why, after your treatment of me, I think you should not be surprised if I think you capable of any outrage!"
The blood had rushed to his face. "But you gave me provocation! Anne Reardon did not. She was no liar, no perjurer, intent only upon saving a depraved monster from the gallows."
Elizabeth's voice shook. "Is that all you have to say to me?" She turned toward the door.
"No! I forbid you to go to the village ever again."
She whirled around. "Forbid? I am your legal wife, but not your prisoner. I shall go wherever I please. The only way you can stop me is to lock me up." She opened the doors and, head high, moved out into the hall.
"Perhaps I will lock you up!" he shouted after her. He stood motionless for a moment, and then splashed more brandy in his glass.
Damn the woman. And to think that in Dublin he had found himself eager to get back to her. Why, he had even bought her that dress....
He had seen it in Madame Leclerc's shop, fitted on some sort of wire contraption in the shape of a woman's body. It was of ruby-colored velvet, with long cuffs of white lace falling below elbow-length sleeves. Instantly he had thought of how that color would bring out the warm tints of Elizabeth's face, and contrast with her gray eyes. Too, it would look well with his mother's ruby necklace and earrings.
Yes, Madame Leclerc told him, the dress was for sale. A Dublin lady had ordered it, and then, when it was completed, had decided the color did not suit her. "But have you the certainty that it will fit Lady Stanford? The lady for whom it was made is of the slender figure."
"So is Lady Stanford. And if necessary, she can have it refitted, when we come to Dublin to order other gowns from you."
At his request, she had wrapped the dress in several layers of stout canvas. All the way from Dublin, he had carried it strapped behind the saddle. Then he had stopped in the village to see poor Maude and to give her the present—a pair of black lace mittens—he had bought for her in Dublin. By the time he had reached Stanford Hall, he was in such a rage that he had told Joseph to unstrap the canvas bundle and throw it in a storeroom somewhere.
He drained his glass, set it down, and started toward the doorway. Then he turned back, and inverted the glass over the bottle. Carrying the bottle by the neck, he went up to his room.
He undressed, put on a dressing gown of dark red brocade, and poured himself more brandy. Seated on the edge of his bed, he stared at the connecting door. He could hear her moving about in the room beyond.
Well, it was true he had grievously wronged her, but he had tried to right that wrong as best he could. And true, he had realized that he could expect little of a marriage such as theirs. But surely she'd had no right to ask those insinuating, slanderous questions of Maude. Surely she had no right to defy his order to stay away from the village. Perhaps he had not really meant the order, but even so, she had no right to throw it back in his teeth.
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.
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