"Not at all. Come here a moment." He patted the mattress beside him.
Richelle gave him a wary look. His gruff manner had evaporated too easily. He was giving her a different gaze now. One she recognized as his prelude to lovemaking. He meant to manipulate her, and stood a good chance of succeeding. They both knew it.
Though they couldn't engage in full coitus, Morgan had taught her about many forms of sensual pleasure. Richelle knew some were not forbidden to them—had her husband not been recovering from a very serious injury. She had to keep that in mind, though it wasn't easy. Her body was heavy with their child; her blood was thick with womanly need. Her sexual desire had been strong throughout this pregnancy.
And Morgan looked altogether too handsome at that moment, with his bare torso resting against the headboard, his dark mane unbound around his shoulders, those misty eyes of his beckoning. His mustache curved into a wolfish grin. Damn him, he knew the nature of her thoughts.
Since Malcolm had installed the new stove, their bedchamber was much warmer than before. Morgan had reverted to his brothel habit of wearing nothing most of the time. He was naked beneath the bed sheet.
She shook her head. "Oh no, Lion! You're not going to kiss me and make me forget how stubborn and impossible you are. I know you feel a bit stronger, but you're going to do what the doctor prescribes. I'm not going to let you kiss me in hopes of getting me all flustered so you can win this argument."
"I don't want to kiss you."
"Then there's no incentive for me to waddle over there. I can hear you perfectly well from here."
"Christ," he growled. "All right, I do mean to kiss you! What's wrong with a man kissing his own damned wife? My lips still work! If you don't come here to me this instant, madam, I'll go there to you." He shoved at the bedclothes and pretended he was about to get up.
She crossed to sit on the edge of the bed. He reached an arm around her shoulder and drew her closer. She leaned to kiss him slowly, sighing as he explored the recesses of her mouth. The kiss deepened until he groaned and placed her fingers over the rumpled sheet. She could feel his stiffening member. "You're about to whelp and I've a smashed leg. Wonderful time for the devil to jump up. At least it proves the wagon didn't affect my most vital part."
She tried to pull her hand away. "You're supposed to be resting, not straining vital parts."
"But I've a painful ache in my lower body, sweet nurse. I'm sure you can relieve the pressure without making me exert myself." His grin became thoroughly wicked as his hand encouraged her fingers to stroke him intimately.
A knock at the door made Richelle jump up. Her face was a deep red as she cracked the door open and mumbled something before quickly closing it again.
"Your partner's come calling. You're not going to receive a visitor in the altogether," she scolded. She pulled a clean shirt from the closet and brought it to him. He thrust one arm through the sleeve and leaned forward so she could draw the shirt across his back. "Stop that," she giggled as his lips once again brushed hers.
"Tell Boyd to come back in half an hour," he suggested in a husky whisper.
Her eyes dropped to his groin. "I won't. And for God's sake, cover up or he'll know exactly what sort of attentions you've received from your nurse."
His pewter eyes sparkled. "I don't keep secrets from Boyd. He knows what a lusty beggar I am, and exactly the effect a certain Colonial has on me."
"Hush!" she chastised and opened the door. Boyd nodded in greeting as he came into the room and took a seat in the chair Richelle used during her vigils over her recuperating husband.
"Boyd, use a strong arm if you must, but keep Morgan quiet in that bed. He'll be allowed to move around once the doctor gets him a crutch. For now, he's to keep weight off the leg." She left the men to discuss business.
But by midday Boyd hadn't come back downstairs, and Richelle began to fret. Morgan was in no condition for extended visits. He'd overtax himself. It was only a few days since the accident, and he was weaker than he would admit. She took hold of the banister and started up the stairs, but had to pause after only four risers. She was winded all ready, sucking in a deep breath. Two more risers, then a third. She was almost at the top when Morgan's baritone reached her ears.
"Squire Martin recommends going in with this fellow, eh? Might be worth looking into. How much of an investment do they need from us?"
Richelle strained her ears, but couldn't make out Boyd's reply. Then Morgan spoke up again.
"You know I'll have substantial capital available soon. Look forward to repaying you at long last. Then I'll see how much I can invest in this new venture."
Richelle knocked sharply and entered before she got a response. Boyd said his farewell and left the house. Richelle watched his departure down the street from the bedroom windows, twisting the fabric of her dress between agitated fingers. "You're getting too far ahead of yourself, Morgan. You've enough to handle now, and a child on the way. Boyd should know better than to pressure you."
"Worrywart, he's not pressuring me. He's handling things quite effectively. He wanted to discuss a few matters, that's all. There are decisions to be made. I'm not tired, Colonial. Honestly. Stop fussing over me."
"You look it," she argued. She emptied the chamberpot and bent to pick up a dirty towel from the floor.
"Madam, I don't pay Lorella so my pregnant wife can exhaust herself doing household chores."
Richelle kept her face averted. "I heard you mention Squire Martin and some new venture requiring a sizable investment. Don't patronize me about how you're recovering so quickly. You were fortunate not to lose that leg. You're not investing in anything just now, Morgan. Not until—well, you're just not!"
"What the devil is going on here?" he demanded. "My partner doesn't make my business decisions for me, and neither do you. Since when is it your place to speak for me concerning my trade or business interests? You've never presumed to order me about like this before. You're nagging at me, fussing over me as though I were a helpless invalid... Jesus, Mary and Joseph!"
He stared in horror at the heavy wooden splints. "The doctor told you something you haven't yet admitted, didn't he? That's why you're so adamant that I not get out of bed. You're taking over my life...what am I, Richelle? A bloody cripple?"
She'd been struck speechless, unable to respond to his appalling conclusion.
"Is this what I'm reduced to, then? Lying here bedridden, while my wife conducts my business affairs? Or can I at least look forward to eventually hobbling about my office once or twice a week? Perhaps then I wouldn't have the entire village pitying me behind my back! Whispering how my partner has to carry me, how I've become naught but a pathetic, useless burden."
"Morgan, you—"
"Damn that Rowe to hell!" he snarled in fury. "'The leg will mend,' he said! Couldn't look me in the eye and swear I'd walk normally, though. That's what you're withholding this time, isn't it? There's always something you keep from me, positive in your superior wisdom that I'm unable to cope with the unvarnished truth. I've news for you, Richelle! I may rant and I may rave, but I can bloody well cope with whatever misery God dishes up for me. Been doing it all my life! So go ahead, summon whatever's left of that pioneer courage of yours, and admit you haven't the stomach for life married to a lame wretch!"
"What have I ever done to make you believe me so heartless and cruel?" she demanded. Sometimes I think I should leave you, Morgan! You expect it with seasonal regularity! You offered me an annulment after I denied wanting one any longer. I proposed to you and took vows a second time, but you were so positive I'd written to say I was never coming back, you didn't even bother to read my letter!"
She paced in abject fury. "While I was ill and concealing our child to save your unyielding English ass, you came home to drink and brood and let everything crumble around you! I was crushed when you didn't answer my letter. Distraught to find you'd hidden our marriage from everyone. But I still paid off your debts and tried to make
a life here with you. Why? Because you mean so little to me?" She was in tears now.
His voice was cold. "You deserve better than a drunkard followed by a cripple, and we both know it."
"Oh, that's the spirit, Morgan!" she shot back with sarcasm. "Wallow in self pity. You can't abide staying in bed? I can't abide listening to you go on like this. You can't help when I go into labor, and I can't nursemaid you any longer." She opened a dresser drawer and separated the feminine garments, tossing them onto the armchair.
"Richelle, stop it. You're not seriously leaving. You've nowhere to go."
"Even when I thought you'd changed your mind about our marriage, I was willing to forgive you." She stuffed her clothing into a satchel she'd found at the base of the closet. "But you've doubted me from the very first. Doubted my intellect, my clerical abilities, my loyalty, and now—although it should be blatantly obvious—even my love for you. How would labor be any different for me this time, Morgan? I'm as alone as I've ever been in my life! I can't have faith in you. You have none in me."
He fumbled with the covers and slid his legs over the side of the mattress. His splints hit the floor with a thump. "Stay in that bed, damn you!" she screeched. "Lorella can look after you. I'll stay with Boyd and Chrissandra, or have Thomas put me up at the inn."
"Like hell! You'll do no such thing. You're not leaving this house. Not you, and not my unborn son." His voice was bitter. "If I have to break my other leg trying, I swear I'll stop you, Richelle." He rose unsteadily and dragged himself to block the doorway.
She sighed and shook her head. "You were crippled before you ever got into that wagon, in your mind and in your heart. You can't accept my love, Morgan, no matter how much you claim to want it."
"That's not true, Richelle. Christ, I was trying to win you when I didn't even know who you were!"
"It is true!" she insisted. "This is no different than using Somersdale as an excuse to fire me. You didn't marry a name, you told me once. Well, I didn't marry a leg, I married a man! One who sits in silence and drinks and disappears somewhere dark and lonely inside himself where I can't reach him. I'll never understand why, but somehow you want it this way, Morgan."
He seized her wrist in a painful grip. "Richelle, I don't! You can't go. I can't even walk! You can't leave me like this. I'm not letting you out of here."
"Let me go, Tremayne," she ground out, jerking her arm back.
He instantly released her. "That's what she said." His voice was hoarse. "Bloody exact same words. My mother's last words." A single tear trickled down his cheek and became lost in the dark mustache.
Richelle stepped back, rubbing her wrist. "It must have been very painful hearing your mother's dying words to your father, but—"
"She didn't die, Richelle. She left him! It was a night like any other, but they had cross words. She told my father she'd always hated this niggardly village and every single human being in it. Then she packed a valise and left. When she didn't come back, he made up a tale that she'd visited sick relations, caught smallpox and died somewhere in Cornwall."
Richelle let her bag drop. "Oh Morgan, she didn't mean you and Annaliese! She couldn't have meant her own children."
"She swore she'd send for us. But I never saw her again. Except at night. I still see her at night. In those damned dreams, with that bag in her hand. And those words on her lips. Same as on yours now."
There was a long silence as the horrible truth sunk in.
Richelle never understood what he'd meant by saying she frightened him, why he'd judged her so harshly. Why he'd been so quick to believe she'd abandon him or disliked the cottage so intensely. All that talk of ghosts and despair.
She'd asked what she'd done that he could believe her so heartless, but it was nothing she'd done. It was what his mother had done.
His rasping whisper nudged her from her reverie. "Richelle, if you don't come here and catch me, I'm going to fall flat on my face." He was reaching for her, pleading with his eyes. Pewter eyes awash in anguish and sorrow.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tightly, not speaking, knowing he needed her to listen. "That's why I can't sleep without my arm around you or yours over me. I have to be sure you're still there when my eyes are closed. Can't watch you while I'm sleeping."
"I'm always there," she replied softly, tears spilling down her own cheeks. "Right there beside you, Morgan. Every night. I ran away before because of the maelstrom around me, not because of you. It wasn't anything you'd said or done. And that was Rachel, not your true wife. Not Richelle."
"Every day I try to push away the dark thoughts. Pray it won't end today. I detest when you debate with me, because it starts with a disagreement. Any disagreement might be our last. Any moment I might find I've become Andrew Tremayne all over again. No better, very likely worse. Anna couldn't face me. She believed me worse than he was."
"No, Morgan, you're not," she soothed. "You're the most wonderful man I've ever known."
The words spilled out now in a torrent between his harsh gasps. "I tried not to let any wench matter. Never wanted to care so deeply about anyone, but I couldn't help myself. I'm the son of Andrew Tremayne. Andrew Tremayne would never beg. Swore he'd never show weakness to a female, and he never did. Watched her go without a word. Maybe it is weakness, Richelle—" came his choking sob, "but I'm not as strong as he was! I need you! Please don't leave me, Richelle. Please!"
She clutched him fiercely to her as he released the tears he'd kept inside for so many years. She cried with him. Cried for the lost boy he'd been, the adolescent who'd broken his back trying to measure up, trying to prove himself worthy of love and respect.
Wiping at her eyes, she glimpsed the signet on her left hand. Her symbolic wedding ring. She'd been wrong about that, too. The cachet never represented the past and his family roots. His family had abandoned him. It was a symbol of honor, yes, because Morgan could swear a promise for the future and control whether that came true.
The signet wasn't revered because of his past. It represented the little he had left besides a hated cottage and a proud name. His desperate hopes for warmth and family. Prayers for a future happiness he was terrified would never be his.
She helped him back to bed and sat down beside him. "I wish you'd told me about your mother before. I understand things now that had confused me. I'm glad you finally divulged that bit of your past, because it's made me realize there are things you don't understand. I'd like to help you see what's in my heart."
"What?" he mumbled, embarrassed to look at her now that she'd seen him reduced to unmanly tears.
"When I first came to this village, I simply needed somewhere to hide. You wondered why a rich girl with a good education would come here and clerk for you. The truth is, it seemed an ideal place for an American widow to lose herself. I came knowing I'd be an outsider. I didn't expect the villagers to welcome me. I didn't want any of you to. I was determined to keep to myself and fade into insignificance. When your name and likeness appear on posters and in newspapers, it's startling how quickly you come to desire anonymity."
She knew he digested her words. Perhaps he was seeing her reasoning for the first time. "The peculiar thing is that I wasn't insignificant," she emphasized. "Here in Crowshaven, I wasn't Jeremiah Hardwick's daughter, Sheila's cousin, or anyone's wife. I wasn't even Richelle. Out of place in the midst of you English country folk. Yet in some strange way I came to belong. And I met the most incredible man I'll ever know in my life."
She took both of his hands in hers. "A man I couldn't help but fall in love with."
"When I first arrived, I asked Boyd and then Chrissandra what you were like. I wanted to develop a mental image of the man who owned this house. Their answers made absolutely no sense."
"What could either of them have said about me that would make no sense? They're my two dearest friends."
Her smile widened. "That you were a man who was very like his peers, but unique among them. That you joked an
d drank and chased women, yet lived and breathed trade and business. I couldn't understand how one person could be all those things: a driven yet playful scoundrel, a somber jester, a royal commoner, an understanding beast. But you see, I didn't know you then. You are all of those things."
He gave her a look of reproach. "What an absolute load of rubbish!" Then he seemed to reconsider. "Did live for trade, though. Before you, women never really mattered. I can't think straight for loving you, Richelle. I'm petrified I won't be a good father to our child. I always had visions of a wife and children some day, but they were like museum paintings one admires from a polite distance. I thought it would feel like that, be like that."
"I see. But it's not." He shook his head. "And it doesn't feel like that," she supplied. "How does it feel to you?"
"Like my intestines are knotted in your fist. Like being lost, muddled, half besotted all the time. Not Morgan—at least not just Morgan anymore."
She tilted her head thoughtfully. "I suppose there's some truth to that. Together we're more, or different than we were separately. But it's false, too. You're still Morgan. Capable, smart, handsome, and distinctly your own person. Different from everyone else in this wide world. Still strong and still proud."
So much of the wonders between a man and woman she had learned from him. This she could finally give back.
"You're on the same path, but you're no longer walking it alone. What you feel is my shadow. It's not stronger than you are, but it's constant. Whichever way you turn, whatever murky grove or bright clearing you pass through along your path, it's always there, just beside you." His pewter eyes burned with a strange intensity as he studied her face. "I'll never feel the way your mother did about this house or the village. Now I see why my father's money and the manor upset you so."
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