Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  Gaze traveling from that proffered bosom up to her smiling face, he still said nothing. After a moment she asked, striving for a light tone, "Are you still besotted with that wife of yours?"

  For a few disquieting moments that afternoon, Moira had wondered if Elizabeth was as cold and unresponsive to Patrick as she had always judged her to be. But other factors could have accounted for the Englishwoman's obvious agitation today. No woman, however cold, relishes the pity and ridicule that is the lot of an unfaithful husband's wife.

  Besides, it did not matter what Elizabeth thought or felt. Only Patrick mattered. And Moira knew that she attracted him as much as ever. The very air between them seemed charged with his physical awareness of her.

  He said, "I never told you details about my relationship with Elizabeth. Nor do I want to discuss her any more than I ever have."

  "Very well. But what of me? Do you find that I have so fallen off in looks that—"

  "You know you haven't," he said, almost harshly. He stood up. "But I am a fugitive now, and a relatively poor man, straining every nerve to build up a profitable enterprise. You are a distraction I cannot afford."

  Nor did he trust her. But she knew that There was no point in telling her so again.

  Smiling, she too rose. "Nevertheless, I shall stay here for a while. Thank you for responding to my message."

  ***

  Lying in the darkened bedroom, Elizabeth heard Patrick come down the hall and into the room. She had resolved to pretend to be asleep, but as she saw him, in the dim light filtering through the blinds, begin to take off his coat, she asked, "Did you see her?"

  "Yes."

  She had also resolved that for pride's sake she would not allow herself to appear jealous, and yet she heard herself burst out, "Did you make love to her?"

  "No." But he knew that he might, if not at their next meeting, then at the one after that.

  Moira Ashley was dangerous, perhaps to his neck, and certainly to much he had come to enjoy these past months. Although Ireland frequently was in his thoughts, he had achieved a certain amount of contentment here in his prospering enterprise, and in the companionship and warm physical response of the gray-eyed woman whom, no matter how reluctantly, he had married.

  Moira's presence threatened all that. And yet tonight he had felt as strongly attracted to her as he had that day nearly a decade ago when she had walked out onto the terrace where he stood talking with her elderly husband. Damn her! Damn that beautiful—and probably treacherous—Irishwoman to hell and back. Why hadn't she stayed where she belonged? If she had, he would have recalled less and less often, as time passed, that wanton, teasing laugh of hers, and that pliant body with its slender waist and flaring hips and bosom. But now she would be right here on this tropical island, where even the warm, flower-perfumed air held a disturbing sensuality. And those indigo eyes of hers always would be challenging him to reach out for her....

  He shrugged back into his coat. "Go to sleep, Elizabeth." His inner conflict made his voice harsher than he had intended it to be. "I am going to take a few turns in the garden."

  CHAPTER 32

  In the weeks that followed, Elizabeth and Patrick by unspoken agreement did not mention Moira's name to each other. And yet Elizabeth never lost her awareness of the woman's presence on the island.

  At least two and sometimes more evenings each week, Patrick would rise from the supper table with the announcement that he and Colin were riding up to the distillery to work on accounts and correspondence. Whether or not he saw Moira Ashley some of those evenings, Elizabeth didn't know. She rather thought not. Otherwise the women at the morning coffees she attended would have contrived to let her know about it.

  In mid-August she had become almost certain that even if Patrick had briefly resumed his relations with Moira, he had broken them off. The Lady Moira, Elizabeth learned from over-the-coffeecups gossip, had rented a secluded house about a mile from the Stanfords'. Victor Serraut, the handsome young lieutenant, was not only a frequent visitor. He also, it was rumored, helped support the establishment.

  Nearly every hostess in St.-Denis had been plunged into conflict by Moira's presence. On the one hand, they longed for a closer acquaintanceship with a woman who was a peeress, and therefore of more exalted rank than the Stanfords. On the other hand, they feared this beautiful and unabashedly seductive woman. In most cases, social ambition won out over fear. Moira attended none of the exclusively feminine gatherings, but soon she, escorted by Lieutenant Serraut, was the center of attention at many evening parties. Elizabeth saw that Patrick's gaze, like that of every man present, tended to follow the Irishwoman about the room.

  Elizabeth continued to keep busy with books, and letters to her mother, and helping Jeanne keep the small house clean and sparkling. But she felt little of the contentment, the joy in the island's beauty, that she had known for several weeks before Moira's shadow fell across her there on the sun-flooded side terrace.

  At night in Patrick's arms she sometimes, in spite of herself, was swept up to the heights. Other times—when she had caught a glimpse of Moira in the town square that day, or seen Patrick's eyes following the woman at an evening party—she remained cold, inert.

  On one such night he spent several minutes trying to woo her, holding the length of her body close to him, so that she could feel the hard warmth of his arousal, stroking her hips, kissing her mouth and closed eyelids and then her throat and breasts. She lay passive in his arms, silently enduring his caresses.

  At last he moved away from her. Staring into the darkness, he asked, "What is the matter with you?"

  She burst out, "Moira Ashley is the matter!"

  "What has she to do with us? She has that Lieutenant What's-his-name now. Victor Serraut."

  "But you still find her desirable!"

  He answered, after a moment. "Any man would. She's an extremely attractive woman."

  She cried, "And Victor Serraut is an attractive man! So is Colin. So are half a dozen men on this island that I could name. But I don't go panting after them in my imagination."

  Enough light came through the blinds that she could see him shrug. "All that proves is that men are different." She wanted to say: That's not true! You would not be different, as you phrase it, if you loved me. But she knew that if she said that, he might reply, calmly and truthfully: I have never told you that I loved you.

  The autumn rains came, heavier than those of the previous spring, rattling like gunfire of the stiff palm fronds, drumming on roofs, and stilling for several weeks that other drumming in the hills. Parties in the houses near town, and the larger ones in the hills, became more numerous and livelier. The inhabitants of St.-Denis had much to celebrate. A French fleet of twenty-five vessels, assembling at Haiti in early August, had sailed across the Atlantic to Chesapeake Bay and there defeated nineteen English ships of the line. Then, in mid-October, England's General Cornwallis had surrendered his sword to the colonists' General Washington at Yorktown. Although English troops still held out in New York, it was obvious that they had lost the war.

  Seeing the exultant faces at those parties, hearing the triumphant toasts, Elizabeth felt mixed emotions, relief that the war soon would be over, and yet sorrow at her homeland's humiliation. And she felt something else— fear. The grim exultation in Patrick's face convinced her that in his heart he had never surrendered the cause for whose sake he had been forced into exile. Even now, she was sure, he was speculating as to how England's defeat might be translated into Ireland's freedom.

  The wet season, with rain clouds boiling up almost every day to drench the island, gave way to clear skies and balmy trade winds, almost as steady and gentle as the wash of waves on the island's pink beaches. Then, one January afternoon, something happened that for a time drove the war and even Moira Ashley from her thoughts.

  She came out of the mercer's shop onto the square's sidewalk that day, a package containing fifteen yards of yellow muslin in her arms. She placed the bulky
package in the gig. About to climb into the driver's seat, she glanced to her left. A slender young man was coming toward her along the sidewalk, a portmanteau in his hand, shoulder-length ringlets pale and shining in the sunlight

  After a stunned moment she felt a rush of gladness, and then terrified dismay. It couldn't be Christopher, not here on St-Denis.

  He stopped short, and then broke into a run. "Liza! Darling Liza!"

  Stiff with shock, she allowed him to draw her into his arms and rain kisses on her face. "Oh, Liza! I was just about to start asking people where to find you."

  She regained her power of speech. "In God's name, Christopher, why have you come here? If Patrick finds out—"

  "Is that your gig?" he rushed on, as if she hadn't spoken. "Oh, Liza, do take me home with you, so that we can talk."

  She said, very pale, "Perhaps there is some ship sailing today..."

  "There is not. Except for a French battle frigate, the Netherlands ship I came on is the only one in the harbor, and it will be here for a week. Oh, Liza! Don't look like that. Everything will be all right Now, let's go to your house."

  Still dazed, she let him help her into the gig. He got onto the seat beside her. As she drove along one side of the square, she said, "I suppose Mother told you where I was."

  "Yes, the letters Mama sent to me in Paris told me all about how you and Patrick had had to leave Ireland. Oh, my poor Liza! You must have had such dreadful times!"

  She said grimly, turning from the square onto the road, "Never mind about me." Now that he sat beside her, she saw that his face had changed. Although still strikingly handsome, it had a slightly puffed look, which made her think that perhaps her young brother had become overly fond of the bottle. "Why did you leave Paris?"

  "Oh, Liza! Cordot's Emporium failed. I lost my employment."

  The only failure had been Christopher's—a failure to manage his bookkeeping adroitly enough to cover up his small but frequent embezzlements. Informed by her manager that her accountant and bedmate had been stealing from her, Yvette Cordot had gone to the police. Fortunately for Christopher, the outraged manager first had told the culprit of his intention to inform Madame Cordot. Thus Christopher had been able to slip aboard an Amsterdam-bound vessel before the police could lay their hands on him. In Amsterdam he had waited, in the cheapest lodgings available, until he could board a ship for the West Indies.

  "Liza, I did not want to go back to England, not after... what had happened there. I tried to find other employment in Paris, but could not. And now I have no money."

  That last was true. For perhaps the hundredth time, he cursed himself for not having saved the money he took from the emporium. But each time the sum was small, and each time there had been something he wanted to spend it on—some pretty harlot, or a fling at the gaming tables, or wine of a quality that that tight-fisted Yvette would not buy for her own table. And so by the time he fled Paris he had scarcely enough money to get to Amsterdam, keep himself there for several weeks, and then buy passage to St.-Denis.

  Elizabeth said desperately, "We'll have to find a place where you can stay until you leave here. There is a small settlement on the other side of the island..."

  "Liza, Liza! Surely by now you have been able to convince Sir Patrick that I had nothing to do with his ward's death."

  "I have tried to convince him of nothing." And besides, she wanted to cry out to the youth sitting beside her, his hair gleaming palely as they traversed the stretch of jungle-walled road, you and those other degenerates did ravage that poor young girl and send her plunging to her death.

  But even in her frightened dismay over his arrival, and her loathing of what she was sure he had done, she still was conscious of the irresistible child he once had been. Whatever else he was, he was her young brother, and the adored son of that frail woman back in England.

  "But, Liza! Even if he still has doubts about me, surely he loves you enough that for your sake alone he would restrain himself. How could he help but love you, as beautiful and good as you are. And happy people are not bitter and vengeful. Surely he must be a happy man now, even if he has lost his Irish properties. He has you. And Mama wrote me that in your letters you said the distillery was doing very well." He paused. "It is doing well, isn't it?"

  She said distractedly, "Yes." Perhaps she could persuade Patrick to give her a sum of money, enough to pay Christopher's passage back to Paris. No, that was unlikely. Straining every nerve to make a success of his enterprise, Patrick would not pay for anyone's voyage of several thousand miles, especially Christopher Montlow's.

  "Liza, don't you see that if I had done... what he thought I had, this island would be the last place in the world I would come to? Can't you see that he will realize that?"

  She looked at him, her belief in his guilt momentarily shaken. Then she reflected that his coming here proved nothing. Perhaps he had counted upon them considering his arrival as evidence of his innocence.

  She said, unable to think of any other solution, "All right, Christopher. Even if you went to the other side of St.-Denis, or to another island—"

  "I can't!" he cried. "I told you! I don't have money for a half-dozen decent meals, let alone passage to—"

  "I was going to say, Christopher, that even if you went to another island, he would soon hear about you. You are not an inconspicuous person, you know. So I will plead your case with Patrick. Until then, stay out of his sight."

  When they reached the house, Elizabeth drove back to the stable. Christopher helped her unhitch the pony and then followed her through the kitchen and along the hall to the parlor. He said, looking at the wicker furniture, the straw rug, the bouquet of scarlet hibiscus on a stand set against the white wall. "How charming you have made this room, Liza!" Obviously, he was thinking. Patrick Stanford must be plowing what profits he made back into his business. Certainly he had not spent much on this pokey little house.

  He said, "The walk up from the hill made me thirsty. Do you have wine, or perhaps a little brandy?"

  "I have both," his sister answered grimly, "but you will have none of it, not now. When you talk to Patrick, you will need all your wits about you."

  She was watching from the kitchen window when Patrick rode his roan gelding back to the stable. He emerged almost immediately, which meant he had left the horse saddled. Obviously he intended to return to the distillery after supper. She opened the door and hurried down the walk to meet him.

  He looked at her through the rapidly fading light. "What is it?"

  "It's... it's Christopher," she said past the fear tightening her throat. "He lost his situation in Paris. He had only enough money to pay his passage to St.-Denis, and so..."

  Terror made her stop speaking. Patrick's face had taken on the murderous look she had seen there one February afternoon when he had stared through Old Bailey's murky lamplight at Christopher standing in the dock.

  "You mean he's here?" His voice was thick. "In my house?"

  He moved past her. Whirling around, Elizabeth clutched his arm with both her hands. "Patrick! Don't you see? If he were guilty of that girl's death, do you think he would have come here?"

  "I think that is what he counted upon my thinking."

  She said desperately, "Don't harm him. For my sake, don't harm him."

  Enraged heartbeats gradually slowing, he looked down at her upturned face, pale as death in the gathering dark. Once she had relinquished a chance for vengeance. She could have remained at Stanford Hall, fairly confident that the English would treat her gently. She might even have been awarded some share of his confiscated lands. Instead, she had chosen to go with him into exile.

  He owed her a debt, and he always paid his debts. He would have to forgo what he had longed for these past two years—the feel of his two hands around Christopher Montlow's white neck, squeezing until he felt the windpipe collapse.

  Dizzy with relief, she sensed that at least momentarily he had checked his desire to kill. She said, "I know that
paying his way back to France is too much to ask. But if you could send him to another island—"

  "And have him turn up back here as soon as he runs out of money or has to flee the authorities? Better that he stay here, where I can keep an eye on him. All right" he added abruptly, "where is he?"

  When Patrick and Elizabeth entered the parlor, Christopher was standing in the middle of the room, shoulders drooping, face humble and defenseless. Even though Elizabeth's quick smile told him that he was in no immediate danger, it was only with an effort that he met Sir Patrick's gaze. What terrible eyes the Irishman had, cold eyes that seemed to look straight into your thoughts.

  Wisely, Christopher remained silent After a moment Patrick said, "Elizabeth has told me that you are without funds."

  "That is the case, Sir Patrick. But if you will allow me to remain here—"

  "Not under my roof, "Patrick said harshly. "You will stay at the inn."

  Christopher bowed his head. "Very well." As if he wanted to stay here! While his sister had watched for her husband from the kitchen window, he had made a soft-footed inspection of the house, including the small second bedroom. Surely he would be more comfortable at the inn, as well as freer.

  He went on, "As for my employment, sir, if you could recommend me to some merchant in the town..."

  "There is no merchant," Patrick said dryly, "whom I dislike to that extent. You will work at the distillery."

  Eyes widening, Christopher recoiled from a vision of himself in a cooking shed, standing in one hundred and twenty degrees' temperature over one of those huge vats he had heard about.

  Patrick gave a short laugh. "No, you won't get your hands dirty. You can help with the accounts. But keep in mind that my brother, who has a sharp eye indeed, will inspect all your figures."

  CHAPTER 33

  The matrons of St.-Denis found Christopher Montlow a welcome addition to local society. Now, while their husbands clustered around Lady Moira, they had a handsome young bachelor to dance with them, admire their gowns, and murmur compliments to even the plainest of them.