Splendor

by Catherine Hart

  “I vow, if that man were to wander into the swamp and be swallowed whole in a bog of quicksand, ’twould be the happiest day of my life,” Eden claimed irritably. “He is like a pesky mosquito. The moment you think he’s gone to bother someone else, he appears again to buzz about your ears!”

  As if her complaints of him had conjured him up, she answered a knock on the door to find Dudley on her step, a small spray of flowers in one hand and a box of sweets in the other.

  Squelching the urge to slam the door in his face, she gave him a weak smile—the best she could summon— and said, “Mr. Finster, what a surprise. I suppose you’ve come to wish my mother well, now that she is recovering so nicely?”

  For a moment she held some small hope that this might be his mission. Until he said, “While I do, indeed, wish her well, that is not the purpose of my visit. I have come courting, Miss Winters, in the proper manner you prescribed not long ago.”

  Eden stifled a groan. Blast the man! Did he have to take her words so literally, when anyone else would have recognized them as a means of declining his attentions? Knowing she couldn’t just leave him standing on the doorstep, as much as she might wish to do so, Eden relented enough to invite him inside, prompted solely by propriety even as every bone in her body urged her to get rid of him.

  When Eden led him into the sitting room, Jane surreptitiously rolled her eyes in silent commiseration. “What brings you our way, Mr. Finster?” she asked. “We haven’t seen you in some time.” And hoped it would be even longer, she added to herself, shooting a quick look toward the chair where Devlin reclined in invisible silence.

  “He’s come courting, Mama,” Eden explained flatly, her tone clearly lacking enthusiasm.

  “Oh? Well, this certainly is unexpected,” Jane remarked. “I really hadn’t counted on having suitors just yet, though there is one fellow I’ve had my eye on of late.” Though she was being deliberately obtuse, her dry humor caught all of them off guard. While Eden stared in mute stupefaction, from the corner chair arose a hoarse cough, covered only by Finster’s blustering attempt to correct her misconception.

  “Madam, uh, with all due respect, you have misconstrued my intentions. ’Tis Miss Eden I have come calling upon.” He twisted his hat nervously in his hands, aware that he had yet to be invited to sit down.

  “Really? But why? She already has a suitor.”

  By now Devlin was beginning to enjoy the way Jane was slowly and thoroughly raking poor Finster over the coals. A wide grin split his face, and he sent Eden a broad wink.

  “If you are referring to Captain Kane,” Finster went on, “surely you wish better than that brigand for your daughter, ma’am. He is a pirate, after all.”

  Devlin’s smile melted into a scowl as he mentally drew and quartered the mealymouthed limp-wrist who was defaming him.

  “So he is,” Jane concurred, as if it bothered her not at all. “He is also our business partner, and doing a fine job of it, too.”

  “He’ll rob you blind. Mark my words.”

  Jane shrugged and arched a delicate brow at him. “I don’t suppose he’d be the first to try such a thing, would he?” Finally relenting a bit, she waved him toward a seat. “Do sit down, Mr. Finster. Not that you are quite as tall as most men, but I do hate to crick my neck so, simply to carry on a conversation.”

  Spying Eden’s sewing at one end of the divan, Finster promptly availed himself of the cushion next to hers. Whereupon Eden chose the only remaining single chair in the room, merely to spite him.

  Devlin’s grin returned, full-blown. With a devilish twinkle turning his eyes to polished ebony, he pushed himself from his chair and eased himself onto the arm of the divan, at Finster’s elbow. Though she said nothing, Eden’s brows rose questioningly, which Finster mistook as directed toward him. Immediately, he recalled his mission and thrust the bouquet toward her. “I suppose you should put these in water before they wilt,” he suggested with a weasel-like smile.

  Before Eden could reach for them, the flowers seemed to fly from Finster’s hands and scatter about the floor. To the man’s amazement, the blossoms appeared to crumble before his startled gaze, as if crunched beneath an unseen foot.

  Jane caught her lip between her teeth, her eyes watering with the effort not to laugh. After taking a moment to compose herself, she exclaimed, “Why, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen flowers die so quickly. Have you, Eden?”

  “Never, Mama,” Eden croaked. The sight of Devlin looking all too pleased with himself proved too much, and she promptly burst out laughing.

  “You’ll have to excuse my daughter, Mr. Finster. She often has this compulsion to laugh at the oddest times,” Jane told Eden’s would-be beau.

  Perplexed, and more than a little perturbed, Finster calmed himself with visible effort. “Well, no real harm done, I suppose. And there are still the sweets for her pleasure.” With a flourish, he tore the top from the small box, revealing a dozen chocolate-covered cream candies, a truly rare and costly treat just recently invented. “I had them imported all the way from Switzerland,” he boasted.

  This time he held the candy package firmly in hand. To no avail. Even as he presented them for her perusal, the chocolate treats appeared to pop open like cracked eggshells. One by one, until each was smashed, the gooey centers oozing their filling.

  “Well, I’d say they suffered a little through the lengthy transport,” Jane commented wryly, as Eden turned away, her shoulders shaking suspiciously. Even with her back to him, Eden knew Devlin was merrily licking chocolate and sugar filling from his fingers.

  At length, Eden managed to control her laughter long enough to show a thoroughly bewildered Finster to the door. “I really don’t care for chocolate anyway,” she fibbed, wanting to discourage him from bringing more, though she was extraordinarily fond of it. “It gives me indigestion,” she blurted with a timely belch.

  “Then I shall endeavor to bring you something which you might like better, when next I come,” Finster replied smartly.

  “Oh, please don’t bother yourself. You see, Mr. Finster, as flattered as I am, I am well content with the beau I have.”

  “A lady can have more than one suitor at a time,” he was fast to point out.

  Drat the man! Couldn’t he simply take no for an answer and go his way? Did she have to batter him over the head with her refusal? “No, thank you. That isn’t acceptable to me.”

  Pulling himself up to his full height, which was still slight, he responded stubbornly, “I shan’t stop trying.”

  “I sincerely wish you would,” she answered bluntly, all traces of humor gone now.

  “That man will leave you high and dry,” he predicted. “You’ll awaken one day and curse yourself for a fool. You’d do much better to put away your giddy, girlish dreams and accept my attentions while they are still being so cordially tendered.”

  She offered him a false smile, her eyes snapping. “How graciously and romantically stated,” she replied mockingly. “Finster, has it ever occurred to you that I would rather slit my own throat with a dull knife than marry you?” With that, she did what she should have done at the first; she slammed the door in his face.

  As it happened, Jane had told Finster the truth, and the fellow she had her sights set on was none other than Nate Hancock. Even as Eden had seen their romance developing bit by bit, she still could not fathom the appeal Nate held for her mother. In fact, he was the last person on earth Eden would ever have suspected her mother to show a romantic inclination toward. While likable for the most part, Devlin’s quartermaster was rough-spoken, uneducated, and uncouth in more ways than one. Though he and Devlin were the best of friends, Nate was a good ten years older, which still made him three years younger than Jane.

  While he was not bad-looking, Eden considered him far from handsome in his baggy sailor’s clothes, his face lined and weathered from the sea and the sun. It also seemed to her that the man had little to offer her mother, aside from an adoring smile and an
immediate, obvious attraction, which Jane promptly reciprocated. From the first moment they set sight upon each other, stars danced in both their eyes.

  Eden was at a loss to understand it, or Jane to explain. Finally, after several failed attempts, Jane gave a helpless shrug and said, “I just don’t know, Eden. Maybe it’s that gold tooth of his. All I know is, when he smiles at me, it’s like the sun just popped out from behind the clouds, and the world is brand-new again. The grass is greener, the flowers more fragrant, the air sweeter than it’s been for a very long time. When I’m with him, I feel younger, so carefree that I find myself believing in rainbows and promises again.”

  “False promises and stolen rainbows, Mama. The man is a pirate!”

  “So was your grandfather, my own dear papa,” Jane told her daughter with a stern look. “Or have you conveniently forgotten?”

  “Nay. Nor have I forgotten that Grandfather’s lawless rovings nearly cost him his life upon the gallows, and broke Grandmother’s heart, driving her to an early grave.”

  “She’d have had no other, Eden. Mother loved him dearly, as he loved her.”

  “Then why didn’t he give up pirating? For her sake, and for yours, when you were born?”

  “ ’Tis not for us to judge the way others decide to spend their lives. He did as he saw best, and eventually mended his ways.”

  “Too little, too late,” Eden said sadly. “Too late to spare you and Grandmother all that grief, or to save her poor heart. And now you want to make the same mistake with Nate?”

  Jane shook her head in pity at Eden’s lack of understanding, unable to find the means to convince her daughter of the right of things. “The human heart has a will of its own, dear, as you will someday learn for yourself. I loved your grandfather, just as he was. I loved your father, and our respectable life together. I wouldn’t have changed either of them. Nor would I change Nate, or the love we now share.”

  It was as simple, and as complex, as that. At least for Jane. For Eden it was another matter. She found herself struggling with profound feelings—wanting to be glad for her mother’s newfound joy, and at the same time fighting resentment and jealousy that another man had taken her father’s place in Jane’s life.

  Her turmoil was evident to one and all, though she did her best to be pleasant to Nate, for her mother’s sake. With all her worrying and lack of sleep, Eden soon became short-tempered and snappish, until finally Devlin could stand no more. Following her into her room one evening, he bolted the door behind them and promptly took her to task.

  “You are a snob, Eden. A nasty little narrow-minded shrew. What is it about Nate that grates against you so? Isn’t he rich enough? Landed enough? Literate enough to suit you? Well, I have a bit of news for you, sweetling. ’Tis not you he has to please, but your mother, and he’s doing that right well. Are you so mean, so contrary, that you can’t allow your own mother her happiness, and rejoice in it?”

  “Should I be thrilled that she has found love again with a man who will only leave her more desolate than he found her?” Eden countered angrily. “At least when my father died, she had the comfort of knowing he didn’t want to go, that he had no choice. What will she do when the Gai Mer sails, Devlin? How will she console herself then?”

  “That is something Nate and Jane must decide between themselves, Eden. ’Tis not for you to interfere.”

  “And who will be left to pick up the pieces when you and Nate are gone, if not me?” she asked. “Do you think I look forward to seeing the light dim in her eyes again, to having to coax every morsel of food down her throat, to seeing her wither away a little more each day?” She was shouting now, sobbing out her frustration and fear of what was to come.

  Devlin could stand against her temper, but not her tears. Tenderly he gathered her into his arms, disregarding her struggle not to be held. “Eden, have you spoken with your mother about this?”

  “She doesn’t seem to care what tomorrow brings, not when today holds such joy. I’ve tried to warn her, but she won’t hear me. Oh, Devlin, how can I shield her when she doesn’t want to be protected?”

  “Mayhap you could try accepting it instead of fighting the idea so hard,” he suggested. “You might trust your mother’s judgment a little more. She’s not a stupid woman. Nor does she strike me as being rash or irresponsible.”

  “No, she’s not.” Eden sniffled. “She’s very bright and loving. ’Tis just that she is so devoted, once she gives her affections. She doesn’t do so lightly.”

  “And you think Nate does? That he’s just amusing himself at her expense?” Devlin held her apart from him enough to turn her face up to his. “Eden, as long as I’ve known Nate, I’ve never known him to take such a tumble for any woman. Have you seen the way he looks at her? The way his gaze follows her every movement? The man is arse over applecart in love, plain as day. He’s as likely to be hurt as she is, mayhap more so.”

  Eden wiped away her tears, her eyes imploring him for the truth. “You really think so?”

  “I know it. And here is another thought for you to mull upon. ’Tis not fair to go on comparing Nate to your father. To do so can only cause more hurt and ill will for everyone concerned. Jane loved her husband, and she grieved mightily for him. For her to love Nate takes nothing away from the love she and your father shared, so put your jealousy to rest, Eden. Do not bind your mother to the past. Set her free to enjoy what she feels for Nate, without having to account to you or to feel guilt where none is justified.”

  Eden heaved a huge sigh, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her slender shoulder. “I’ll try, Devlin. I truly will try. ’Tis not that I don’t like Nate. ’Tis just that I’ve never seen my mother act this way before, not even with Papa. And it hurts. I feel as though she’s betrayed him somehow, and me as well. In my mind I know she hasn’t, but my heart doesn’t understand that yet.”

  “Give it time, minx,” he advised.

  She answered with a tentative smile, so at odds with the tears still staining her cheeks that Devlin’s heart turned over. Dear God, what was it about these Winters women that scrambled a man’s brains so? That made him yearn for things better left untouched? Was he, too, in jeopardy of losing his heart? To this woebegone waif with sea-sparkled eyes and spiked lashes? This sassy kitten with all the spirit of a tigress?

  “Ah, Eden,” he murmured, “have you any notion how lovely you are? How tempting?” Gently, he traced her damp cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs. Then, as if no longer able to deny himself, he bent and kissed her tearstained face, slowly, as if savoring the taste of her. His tongue flicked out to lick the salt from her cheeks, the delicate curve of her jaw—working his way lingeringly, inevitably, toward her lips.

  “You taste of spindrift,” he told her huskily. “Salt spray on the sea breeze. I can never get enough of it. Or of you, it seems.”

  Then his lips found hers, and words were lost to both of them. His tongue was much too busy communing with hers in a more intimate language. His teeth nibbled, his mouth suckled, his breath stole hers from her body, replacing it with his own. His long fingers tangled in her hair. Pins tumbled to the floor, unheeded.

  Somehow her own fingers became enmeshed in the laces of his shirt, loosening them. Then her hands were seeking new territory beneath the cloth, spreading over his broad, hair-sprinkled chest. Never had she felt anything so sensuous as that warm, downy nest of fur. It sprang up between her stroking fingers and tickled her palms like shaggy velvet. It was wondrously soft over a bed of taut, sun-baked flesh.

  As her fingernails lightly skimmed his flat male nipples, he drew in a sharp breath, his muscled chest pressing against her hands. To her surprise, his nipples peaked, as hers had once done at his touch. His every thundering heartbeat echoed into the center of her palms, his racing pulse speeding hers. His heat, his desire, seemed to transfer themselves to her at every point where their bodies touched.

  The kiss deepened, tongues stroking, mouths devouring, as the
y clung to each other in a passionate embrace. Once again Eden experienced that sizzling jolt as Devlin’s hand found her breast, molding his strong fingers around it, cupping, kneading. Through her dress, his thumb repeatedly grazed the crest, and a sweet ache coursed through her, building with every slight caress.

  By the time Devlin had found and loosened the small clasps at the back of her dress, Eden was nearly senseless with yearning. He pushed the top of her gown down, over her shoulders, letting it fall about her waist. Only when the cooler air of her bedroom met her flushed skin did she think to object. But by then it was too late, and she was caught up in the mad spell Devlin seemed to be casting over her. In any case, he gave her neither time nor breath to demur, for no sooner had he bared her breasts to his view than his mouth left hers to claim this newfound prize.

  The shock of his hot, moist mouth enclosing her bare breast so shocked her that Eden’s knees buckled beneath her. Only Devlin’s arms about her waist, anchoring her to him, kept her from falling to the floor. Her gasp became a strangled moan as he suckled her, sending streaks of fire from her breast to her abdomen. A strange, liquid heat pooled in that secret place between her legs. With tiny nibbles of his teeth, and the insistent flicking of his tongue, he laved her breasts. First one, and then its twin, while Eden melted and burned in the throes of a desire such as she had never envisioned.

  As she lay arched over his arm, her fingers digging into his shoulders for purchase, her head spinning dizzily, Devlin’s free hand found its way beneath her petticoats. With the first, unexpected contact of his hard fingers on the sensitive flesh at the back of her knee, Eden nearly leapt free of him, but he held her fast.

  “Easy, sweetling,” he murmured, his lips vibrating against her breast. “There’s nothing to fear. Only pleasure. Such glorious pleasure.”

  All the while, he continued to stroke her leg and tongue her breast, while she quivered in his arms. Then his fingers found her inner thigh, and for Eden it was as if he’d branded her flesh with his. Her heart was pounding so violently, she thought surely it would explode. Her breath came in short, harsh pants.