Yet it was another who claimed him next. Margaret Peyton, following Susan’s example, also bestowed on Ethan a congratulatory kiss, this one full on the mouth. In a reflexive motion, his hands caught the blond beauty’s waist. A few in the press of people turned sympathetic eyes on Jane, but she refused to show the pain that whipped clutching tentacles about her heart. Some of the people ducked their heads or shuffled away. At last, Ethan lifted his head, his eyes meeting her flashing ones. Sidestepping Margaret, he approached Jane and sheepishly made a leg. “Madam.”
“Sir, you have powder on your shirt,” she said with precisely articulated speech, and whirled away. She did not know where she was heading. Only far away from the embarrassing scene.
Ethan caught up with her along the thickly foliaged path that paralleled the bank of the James. His hands caught her shoulders and spun her to face him. She would not look at the dark eyes that beseeched her but rather turned her gaze on the tangled undergrowth on either side of the path. “Jane, the kiss was not of my doing.”
“You did not seem to repel it. It would seem that I cannot trust you.”
“And can I trust thee?”
Her gaze darted up to lock with his steady one. “I know not what you mean,” she stuttered. Just how much did he suspect about her covert activities?
A tirade, denunciation, disgust—any of those reactions she expected, except the mouth that ground down on hers in an angry kiss. Stunned, she stood passive for a moment beneath the lips that bruised hers and the tongue that demanded entry. But the hand that squeezed her breast possessively set off some primitive response in her. She leaned into him, making a soft little mewing moan when his finger and thumb extracted their punishing caress on the nipple that thrust against the soft lawn material.
Words were superfluous. He pressed her down upon the mossy black earth. Her fingers feverishly found his breeches’ buttons; his hands hastily hiked her skirts about her waist. Someone could chance upon them. She cared not, only desiring that he quench the yearning that boiled in her blood.
Without a word between them, she spread her legs to enfold his massive body and accepted the plunging thrust with an arching of her hips. His hands pinned her shoulders against the spongy ground. Time and again he slammed into her, as if to rid himself of his desire for her once and for all. Her legs entwined about his buttocks, seeking the leverage to meet and hold him within her.
All the while his eyes burned into hers. She would not turn from that scalding gaze, would not let him dominate her in that wild ride of passion. Yet at that last moment, when she was afraid he would halt the furious pounding, her lids closed and a great climactic shuddering claimed her body. At the same time he cried out in a hoarse rasp.
Silently they lay side by side, panting, neither wanting to acknowledge the devastating effect their lovemaking had on one another. With great dignity she sat up and smoothed down her skirts. She could only feel a fury at herself for giving herself so wantonly to him. It was done. She was satiated. She would no longer have that damnable aching need for him.
“Tell me about him.”
Her shoulders stiffened, but she did not turn around. “Who?”
“The man you are seeking—this Terence.”
“What do you want to know?” she hedged.
“What he means to you.”
“I don’t know if I can convey what he means to me,” she said in a dry, flat voice. “My first memory of him is the sight of him riding up to Wychwood like some knight on a white steed. He bowed to me and plucked a rose from our arbor, placing it behind my ear. ‘You shall grow into a beautiful young woman,’ he told me.”
She looked over her shoulder at Ethan, who lay now with his arms crossed behind his head. His instrument of pleasure was flaccid now, yet still enormous in size.
She dragged her gaze away, saying, “At that time I was ungainly, tall, thin . . . and very ugly. At least I felt so. But he saw beauty in me, Ethan. I think he was half in love with my mother. But he always took time with me. After she died, he became my companion, my friend . . . my very heart. He talked to me of things I hadn’t seen and didn’t know, he listened to my prattle—I was so desperate for attention then with my mother dead and my father off in London.”
She paused. Overhead the fireworks display was already beginning. “And?” Ethan prompted.
“Then when Terence went off to serve in India, my whole world seemed to—”
Ethan’s eyes flared. “You said India?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing, Jane. Only tell me what it is that binds you to him still.”
“There is some bond between us I can’t explain. A bond as tenuous and yet as strong as a cobweb. When we would sit in the garden or read to each other from my father’s books, I often found him watching me. And I caught a glimpse in his eyes of a wretchedness that was— it would catch my breath, it was so powerful, as if some tormented secret writhed in his soul. Whatever the bond, Terence MacKenzie has beguiled me.”
“But I have bought thee—and I have married thee. I shall not relinquish thee.”
He said the words with such a calm assurance that no power on earth could alter the fact; but then, she thought sadly, he did not know Terence, who was as obstinate and determined as he was. She knew the day would come when Terence would find her and take her away with him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ethan Gordon was irresistible to the ladies, and it surprised Jane that he was unconscious of his raw masculine appeal, that he was innocent of all conceit or self-importance.
She sat beside him in Williamsburg’s theater, the first theater in English America, but gave little heed to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, invariably the opening play for the Assembly’s session.
During intermission, while French horns and trumpets played, she could see the flirtatious glances cast from behind the swaying fans of ladies seated both on the pewlike benches below and in the boxes opposite her. Yet she behaved like some silly ninny, shyly looking at her husband when he spoke, blushing when he gently teased her before the others. What had happened to her? And how ridiculous was her assumption that that one act of passion the day of the Tidewater Race would quench for all time her desire for her husband.
God help her, was she falling in love with him?
She moved through the days of Assembly performing the proper tasks—running the rented Paradise house with consummate skill, gracing the dinners they attended with intrinsic polish and charm. But at night—at night in Ethan’s arms all dignity and decorum were abandoned. His tenderness, his total attention to her intimate responses, awoke a wild strain in her she had not suspected.
When the play resumed, the theater darkened but for the candles at the foot of the stage. The third act began, yet still she was aware only of her husband, who sat mere inches away. She heard the rustle of his program as he leaned toward her, then felt his hand cup her thigh, exerting gentle pressure on the inside, despite the welter of skirts. Recalling the kiss a la cannible that he had planted high inside her thigh only that afternoon, she felt the treacherous desire welling in her again.
Her innate shyness collapsed beneath the excitement he stirred in her. In the darkness her fingers reached out to rest lightly on that coiled bulge at the fork of his powerful thighs. She was rewarded by his husky intake of breath, and her fingers gathered courage to initiate a gentle manipulation.
His hand captured hers. “Madam,” he whispered at her ear, “does thee realize the havoc thy lovely fingers are inflicting?”
“I can’t help myself,” she murmured wickedly. “You make me lose all sense of restraint.”
“Please . . . don’t restrain yourself now.”
She gratified his request by cupping the heavy orbs and gently rolling them in her palm. His smothered groan and the recapture of her hand ended her foreplay. “Later tonight, madam, I shall teach you the various acts of pleasure which the tongue is capable of bestowing.”
; A quiver of anticipation raced up her spine as the theater’s candles flickered to life. Whatever strict ideas Ethan Gordon entertained about religion, he certainly did not let them inhibit his sexual prowess.
Afterward a dinner party was to be held at the home of George Wythe, in whose office Thomas Jefferson first practiced law. Ethan was detained near the foyer by Governor Henry, who spoke of the first invasion of the Southern colonies, in Charleston. “Britain’s Sir Peter Parker was defeated, but it was a close scare, my friend.”
Jane wandered off on her own. She would rather have returned to the sensual sanctuary of the Paradise house— especially when she spotted the Widow Grundy. What information would the old woman ask of her this time?
“There you are, dear,” cried the wall-eyed Lucy Knowles, laying a plump, beringed hand on Jane’s gloved arm. Jane never knew which eye to watch. “Do come with me. I’ve someone I want you to meet, a gentleman who seems to know you. I believe he said you two were neighbors in the same shire in England.”
Gratefully Jane escaped the proximity of the Widow Grundy. “Here he is,” said Lucy, indicating a man whose crimson-clad back was to them. Even with the powdered wig concealing his hair, Jane sensed something familiar about the man—perhaps in his stance. “Dear, let me present Richard Carter, our new dancing master. Mr. Carter, Mrs. Ethan Gordon.”
The man turned, and Jane froze. She looked into the pale blue eyes that had obsessed her all her life. “Terence,” she breathed.
He bowed low, his lips lingering on her suddenly cold fingertips. Before she could withdraw her hand, he turned it over and planted a light kiss on her palm.
Lucy Knowles caught the romantic gesture, and sighed. If only she herself were so young, so slender. “Well, I’ll leave you two to renew your friendship.”
Jane thought her knees would buckle, but Terence’s hand was at her elbow, lending support as he led her to the French doors, open to the night’s coolness. Out on the terrace, she clutched the cool stone balustrade for support. Lanterns lit a symmetrical pleasure garden and a pleached arbor of hornbeam that afforded a secluded place for young lovers to wander. Yet she was as immobile as the tree-box topiary.
Terence’s fingers caught her arms and forced her to face him. “You did not wait for me.”
“You didn’t come for me,” she cried. Why? Why now, when it was too late?
His hand cupped her chin. His face drew near to hers. “Are you still loyal to England?”
“Yes . . . yes, of course,” she stuttered, distracted, confused.
“And to me?”
“Oh, Terence, what has happened to us?”
“Nothing. And nothing can keep you from me, Jane.” “But I’m married to another!” she cried piteously.
“And if you remember the old Hindu’s words, I wait for you at the end of the long road.”
“But how—”
His lips silenced hers. For a moment she forgot all else and clung to him with the desperate need for his love— the seed that he had planted in her childhood. When he at last released her, she was breathless. Her head spun as if she had consumed too much champagne. He pulled her head into the hollow beneath his jaw and stroked the delicate arch of her neck. She could smell the light scent of lilac water about him. She had forgotten how devilishly handsome he was.
“I have been staying at the Knowles’, instructing the children from nearby families in the art of dancing,” he said at her ear. “I fear I won’t be seeing you again before I leave.”
She lifted her head. “Before you leave?”
“I have a task to do, my Jane, before I can make you mine. But when it is carried out, no one shall keep us from one another.”
“I shall.”
Terence turned slowly, still holding Jane. Ethan stood in the doorway, the bright light of the candelabra silhouetting his enormous build. His smoky eyes bore into hers as he held out his hand. “Come, Jane.”
She stood between the two men, feeling the tearing of her soul into two parts. The clasp of Terence’s hand at her elbow thrilled her; yet some compunction of integrity prompted her to put her hand in Ethan’s.
Terence bowed low, his sun-darkened face mocking. “Keep Jane well, for I shall make my claim of her at the proper moment.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The hired phaeton’s team clipclopped along the hard-packed dirt avenue that marked the Palace Green and turned off onto the Duke of Gloucester. The tension within the coach was claustrophobic. Jane let the glass down to the hot wind. A harbinger of a Southern summer night’s thunderstorm, the wind tossed the live oak leaves wildly, while shreds of clouds scuttled across dawn’s waning moon.
Inside the carriage the silence grew deafening. How much of the reunion between her and Terence had Ethan witnessed? In the face of Ethan’s controlled calm, Jane tried to contain her growing anxiety.
When they arrived at the Paradise house, she hurried ahead of him to the door, wanting only to escape his silent anger. She glanced over her shoulder. He was making no effort to lengthen his stride, yet she sensed she was his quarry. Lifting her skirts, she scurried up the stairs. He overtook her just before she gained the landing and spun her around. The melting candle in the wall sconce cast a pale glow on her alabaster skin where his fingers dug into her bare shoulders.
“What do you want?” she asked with a haughty tone that did not hide her skittishness.
“I want my wife.”
She saw the brutal set of his face. “No. Not in anger.”
“Yes. Anytime. I ask only that which you would so willingly bestow on other men.”
She pulled from his grasp, but his hand streaked out to grab her hair, painfully halting her escape. Her pins tumbled loose, and the powder on her curls dusted the air as her hair tumbled about her shoulders. He pressed his lips into hers, and she sensed he did not care if he hurt her. Fear coiled inside her. She tried to push him away, but his hands pinioned her arms to her sides with ease while his tongue sabered every comer of her mouth. Tasting the brandy on his lips, her own tongue parried the thrust of his.
Her resistance, she knew, angered him. Better to submit. But some primitive force goaded her into provoking him further, even as his mouth continued to subjugate hers. When his hand slid inside the lace ruffle of her décolletage to cup the swell of one breast, she bit him.
“Damn you!” he said lowly. Gone was the mild Quaker. He thrust her from him, and she saw in the candlelight the blood that crimsoned his lower lip.
Her hand flew to her mouth, and she fled the rest of the way up the stairs and along the corridor to her room. Behind her she could hear him loping easily. Gaining her room, she slammed the door with a force that sputtered candles in their wall sconces. She leaned against one of the bedposts, her breasts heaving in breathless fright.
He kicked the door open. She tried to conceal her fear with the arrogant tilt of chin. “Take me then, Ethan, and get it over with.”
She saw the deep self-disgust that tightened his lips.
“ ’Tis all right, Jane, I shall not hurt thee.” He wiped the back of his hand across his brow and muttered almost to himself, “I must be out of my mind.”
“No . . . no, Ethan. I think I am.” She lowered her face so she did not have to see the tortured look in his eyes. “Oh, Ethan, I feel like—like I belong in Williamsburg’s Public Mental Hospital. I don’t know what I want. I don’t understand myself.”
“Jane, I’m staying at Raleigh Tavern tonight. Then I’m going back to Mood Hill.” He put his hand on the doorknob, adding, “Paradise house is at thy disposal until thee can sail for England.”
He was leaving her! Only her lacerated pride saved her from crying out foolishly. “And if I choose not to return to England?” she asked in a cool tone.
He shrugged. “ ’Tis thy choice.” Then the door closed behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Polly curtseyed. “Mistress? Yew have a visitor.”
Jane sighed. She was to get
no work done that morning. All morning Bruton Parish’s church bells had rung out, making concentration difficult, until at last she had gone out to see what all the hue and cry was about.
Every soul in town seemed to have turned out to read the proclamation on the courthouse door. She shouldered her way through the crowd’s outskirts and from her great height was able to read a portion of the proclamation.
. . . that these United Colonies are free and independent states and the connection between them and the State of Great Britain be dissolved.
The young man next to her said in an uneasy voice, “There’s no going back. The ties are severed irrevocably.”
At first Jane felt numb. The idea would take some getting used to. But then, if she stayed in the colonies, it might be exciting to be part of a new adventure, part of history in the making. The idea had distracted her from her work the rest of the morning. And now she had a visitor, who probably wanted to gloat about the event.
“Who is it Polly?”
“The Widow Grundy is ’ere to see ye, missus.”
Jane bit her lip in vexation. The widow would want to know what she learned about the mysterious Leper at Wythe’s party last night.
“Thank you, Polly,” she said with a small smile. She knew the young woman, drawn away from her Peter, was as miserable as she. Jane knew now she loved Ethan. Wildly. He was a man among men. But how to deny that loyalty she felt to Terence?
Putting aside her market list, she rose and went into the parlor. Seated on the couch, the widow was tapping her pipe impatiently against the palm of her hand. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Grundy.” Jane sat opposite her in the armless Queen Anne chair and arranged her farthingale.
“Are we alone, child?”
Nonplussed, Jane looked around her. “Well . . . yes.”
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