Sarah visualized Nicholas holding this slip of paper, imagined the shock and the horror he must have experienced. She could almost feel what he felt, taste the grief and the anger. And his first thoughts would have included his mother. How would he tell her? How could she bear to lose her beloved Stephen?
With a heavy heart, she refolded the letters. “A mother should never have to lose her child. Never,” Leda had said fiercely. At no time had Sarah understood those words as clearly as she did at that moment. Leda had lost a daughter as an infant, and then a son in the prime of his life.
She stepped to the crib, straightened William’s blanket, caressed his downy soft hair and assured herself that her son was well and secure as she’d planned. No matter what else, she’d seen to his well-being.
He was still all that mattered. If not for him she would tell Nicholas and Leda the truth that very day. Neither of them deserved the betrayal she’d delivered into their home. She loved them too much for that.
But even though she was much improved, she was still unable to care for him alone—
Love them? Was that what she’d thought?
Love them?
Who couldn’t feel a deep affection for Leda? The devoted motherly woman held a place in the heart of all who knew her. Sarah barely remembered her own mother, and she’d come to respect the woman’s sweet-voiced suggestions and to depend on her encouraging presence.
As the two women shared tea that afternoon, Sarah tried her best to assure Leda of her affection. Whatever happened, she would regret bringing another loss to the woman.
“Leda?” she said softly.
“Yes, dear.”
“I want you to know that sharing William with you has been a blessing. You’ve made this difficult time not only bearable, but enjoyable.”
Leda smiled in shy surprise.
“You’ve told me many times how much we mean to you. I want you to know how much you mean to William and me, too. You’ve been here for me when I needed a friend.”
“It’s been my pleasure.”
“So you’ve often told me. That’s why I wanted to tell you. And to tell you that I love you. Whatever happens in the days and weeks to come, remember above all that I do sincerely care for you and appreciate all you’ve done for me.”
Leda took her hand. “I know that, dear.”
Yes, she loved her.
But Nicholas? He’d barely said half a dozen civil words to her in the time she’d been there. He was mistrusting and hard-headed, unapproachable and narrow-minded, uncommunicative— She caught herself. If he was all those things, why had she just been empathizing with his grief and his feelings of love and frustration for his brother?
Because he was all those things…and he was more. So much more. She’d thought him remote and supercilious, but she’d seen his interaction with the servants. Her father would have fired Gruver on the spot for his foolish antics and replaced him with someone he could pay less wages to.
She’d seen Nicholas’s puzzlement over his servants’ play and his sad remembrance that his brother had once had fun like that. If Nicholas never had the opportunity to have fun, or had forgotten how, was he to blame?
And Nicholas had his reasons for being hard-headed and narrow-minded and mistrusting. After all, she was deceiving him. He was absolutely right about her—well, not that she’d married his brother to get to his money, but that she’d come here to take advantage of their ability to provide a home and food.
He treated his mother with tender affection and respect, it was true. He held his employees’ safety in high regard. That side of him had been revealed, and it was commendable.
But love? But of course it must be the same familial fondness she felt for Leda. Devotion as toward a brother. She was playing the sister-in-law, after all.
Leda finished her tea and left, and Sarah’s thoughts continued to whir. Her mind raced to that kiss they’d shared, and the feelings it had aroused in her. That was not the kiss of a brother-in-law.
If she closed her eyes now she could see his, dark and full of fire and caution. She could see his hands, steady and strong. On any other man, mundane tasks like opening a wine bottle or stoking a fire were colorless tasks, but when Nicholas’s hands performed those tasks, the sight gave her an odd little stirring in her middle. Sometimes at night she dreamed of his hands, of his sensuous voice, a sound that sent a shiver across her flesh with its low, soul-piercing resonance.
Those were not impressions one had of a brother. She hadn’t even experienced those self-torturing and humiliating thoughts about Gaylen, and he’d convinced her to forfeit her virginity to him! She would have married him!
That thought brought her up short. Had she loved him?
Perhaps his flight had been the best thing. One day she would have awakened to a miserable existence and realized she had never loved her husband. The fact that she’d never been as hurt by his rejection as her father’s should have told her that long ago.
Sarah sighed, thinking of the letters she’d hidden in the bureau. She would have to return them in the morning before she went to the station to meet her fate at the hands of Mrs. Patrick.
Claire had been a lovely and generous person. She prayed that her mother was the same…and that Sarah would be able to help her deal with the news of her daughter’s death.
Sarah had always considered herself an honest, compassionate person. The fact that she was playing havoc with these people’s lives did not rest well with her. It was no surprise she spent another sleepless night.
Confident that she knew his daily habits, that she knew the servants’ schedule, and familiar with the routine, Sarah hurried to Nicholas’s room the following morning. The letters had provided a slim amount of information, and more details would have been appreciated.
This was the last time she would invade his quarters and his private possessions. Nicholas deserved her respect, yet she’d been nothing but dishonest and devious with him. Going through his room had been an added invasion, and she couldn’t deal with the shame.
Sarah crossed the space, slid open the desk drawer and lowered the envelopes.
“Exactly what is it—”
A startled shriek escaped her.
“You think—” at her scream, he too jumped “—you’re doing?”
Sarah placed her palm over her racing heart. She stared at Nicholas, drawing a blank.
Dressed in only a pair of black trousers, he strode to where she stood frozen. Unaccountably, her gaze fell to the thick black hair that curled on his broad muscled chest and arrowed into his waistband. The tawny, smooth expanse of his shoulders invited her gaze, and when he placed both hands on his hips, the movement accentuated the muscles of his upper arms and the corded strength in his forearms and wrists.
He leaned forward and her heart stopped.
Nicholas lowered his hand and grasped her wrist. Raising it, he brought the stack of letters firmly held in her paralyzed grasp to an inch below her nose. “What are you doing in here, and what are you doing in my things?”
The musky scent of his skin, combined with the spicy smell of shaving soap, teased her senses. Her shame and embarrassment at being caught blended with the sight and the smell of him to blur all other impressions and emotions.
His tobacco-dark gaze bored into hers, ire flaring in its depths. His grip on her wrist was just short of painful.
“There’s nothing of any value in my writing desk, Claire. Except a mother-of-pearl-inlaid letter opener, but it’s initialed. You might have trouble selling it around here.”
Those words provoked her own anger and freed her tongue. “I’m not a thief,” she objected firmly.
“Oh, really? Why else does one sneak about another’s chamber when they believe the occupant is gone?”
“I was not stealing anything,” she said, knowing she was in the wrong and swiftly losing courage. “I was replacing something.”
“Replacing?” He frowned and pointedly slid a glan
ce to the stack of letters in the hand he held prisoner. He knew immediately what she held, and his gaze came back to interrogate hers.
The pulse in Sarah’s wrist throbbed beneath Nicholas’s fingers. Her blue-eyed expression held a staggering amount of fear. What did she think he would do to her?
She moistened her full lower lip nervously with the tip of her tongue, leaving the pink flesh glistening. A faint trembling in her body registered at the point where he held her securely.
Stephen’s letters? She’d taken Stephen’s letters and was replacing them? Why? “What had you hoped to find?” he asked.
She shook her head uncertainly.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
Again she shook her head. Her gaze fell uncomfortably to his chest and skittered away to a point over his shoulder. Nicholas found it difficult to believe she was embarrassed by his state of partial undress, but the color in her cheeks proved it.
Her perfect peaches-and-cream skin amazed him still, as it had from the first time he’d studied her in the carriage on the way home. The clean, devastating scent of her hair reached his nostrils and drew his gaze to the riot of soft corkscrew curls framing her face and lying against her neck.
Everything about her was soft and feminine, from her upswept pale hair and the gray-tinged shade of blue in her eyes, to the way her clothing draped her lush body. The ever-present black of mourning lent her skin and hair a pale vulnerability that drew him like a fat bee to a particularly succulent clover.
He imagined her in something white or pastel, in delicate fabrics and loose-fitting styles.
She would fold against and wrap around a man like a billowy piece of heaven. The erotic thought quickened his traitorous body.
Almost as though she knew what he was thinking, her pulse tripped faster beneath his grasp. Her eyes widened and her lips parted.
“Why did you come in here?” he asked gruffly.
She blinked. “To return the letters.”
“Why did you take them?”
“I wanted to read them.”
“And how did you know where to find them?”
“It—it was only logical,” she stammered.
Had she come in search of letters or had she been rifling his room? Was she afraid Stephen had written about something she didn’t want revealed? “And what did you hope to find in them?” he asked.
“I didn’t know.” Her voice had dropped to a near whisper.
“What did you find?”
“His enthusiasm,” she replied, her voice unsteady. “His lack of regard for anything except his plays and his travel.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Until he met you, of course.”
She carefully dropped her gaze to the desktop. “Of course.”
In his preoccupation, had Stephen excluded Claire as well? Nicholas wondered. He found that difficult to believe. Their marriage had been the subject of his brother’s last two letters, taking precedence even above his beloved plays.
Was it possible that Claire had learned Stephen’s carefree nature the hard way? Once again Nicholas wondered if Stephen had been bringing her home because he was ready to settle down. Had this been a convenient layover until the baby came, or had he planned to leave her in Nicholas’s care indefinitely?
The susceptible flesh of her slender neck drew him forward. A delicate pulse throbbed beneath the fragile surface. She’d been married to his brother but a few weeks, had slept with him before that. Stephen had found her alluringly beautiful and seductively desirable, just as Nicholas himself did.
But Stephen had never committed wholeheartedly to anything or anyone, and as much as Stephen might have desired her, might have loved her, he could never have given her the commitment and stability that Nicholas would have if—
If she were his…
The tiny lines at the corner of her too accessible mouth had him imagining a smile on those lips. Had Stephen made her smile?
He relaxed his hold on her wrist, and the letters scattered across the top of the desk. She didn’t lift her gaze, nor did she step away.
“When a woman comes to a man’s room, she’s looking for something more than a few letters.” Impulsively, he leaned into the beckoning hollow in the curve of her neck, placed his lips and nose against her skin and inhaled.
Sensation zigzagged through his body, tightening his loins, loosening his grasp on coherent thought. Lord, she smelled wonderful: fresh and slightly flowery, and something more. Something elemental and powerful and wholesome.
He parted his lips and felt a shiver run through her body. He touched his tongue to her warm sleek skin, and a sigh escaped her lips, the heat puffing against his shoulder. His body tensed, nipples drawing tight, and the next instant her palm flattened against his chest. He’d never felt anything quite as wonderful or as exhilarating as her cautious touch.
She tasted as incredible as she smelled, faintly salty, faintly musky, but unique and feminine. Beneath his lips and tongue her blood pounded, evidence of her intense reaction to his nearness and the liberties he took.
A fierce possessiveness gripped Nicholas unexpectedly. He opened his mouth wide on her neck and suckled, flicking his tongue over the cords and tendons beneath the surface. She made a shuddering sound low in her throat and melted against him.
He wrapped both arms around her, one at her waist, the other across her back, and crushed her lush pliant body to his bare chest, relishing the press of her lavish breasts.
Pinning her shoulders with his elbows, he brought both hands up to her hair and plunged them into the mass of curls, bringing her head back and her face to his.
Their gazes met for the barest of moments, hers a wide-eyed look of surprise and anticipation.
He kissed her then, without an inch of space between their bodies, without a care as to her hair or her dress or the consequences. He kissed her with all the appallingly unrestrained need she made him feel.
The kiss was accusatory and inflammatory and as out of control as Nicholas had felt since he’d learned of her existence. It held all the frustration and carnal desire and allabsorbing passion he’d held back since he’d first seen her.
Body trembling, fingers curled into the hair on his chest, she kissed him back.
He touched her lips with his tongue, and hesitantly, she parted them so he could deepen the kiss.
Oh, her mouth was sweet. Her body set him on fire, and the plaintive sounds she made when he tilted his head and fitted their bodies closer, were sweet and erotic and enough to make a man lose control.
The thought of losing control registered briefly. Gently, he eased his mouth from hers, cupped her face and studied her through a haze of dauntless desire. Her lips were pink and gently swollen, her soul-reaching eyes filled with gemlike wonder.
Her palm still lay pressed against his chest. His heart skipped half a dozen much-needed beats she had to feel.
Her other hand rose between them and with one finger she tentatively touched his lower lip.
That seemingly innocent, yet sensual touch ignited more than desire within him. He raised her face, and this time when their lips touched it was with the utmost tenderness and sense-riveting awe.
He’d never kissed a woman like this before.
He’d known passion and fire and even eagerness.
But never a burning tenderness and breathless soulsqueezing hunger that disturbed and quenched, rent and restored all at the same time.
This woman confused and angered him and turned him inside out. And she did it all effortlessly, guilelessly, without plan or remorse.
And she probably did it every bit as well as she had with Stephen.
He wanted his brother’s wife.
With bittersweet regret Nicholas ended the kiss. She steadied herself by grabbing his bare shoulder, the warmth a lingering reminder of her heat and vibrancy.
He wanted his brother’s conniving wife.
Outrage at his helplessness and the futility of the s
ituation rose to the surface.
Claire stared at him with uncertainty and doubt clouding her expression. What did she want from him? What did he have to give her?
The answer came swiftly. A home. The means to live comfortably and raise her child in style.
And she already had all that. Her position had never been in question—except perhaps to her. Maybe she thought securing Nicholas’s affections would ensure her place.
“Next time you want something, come to me and ask for it,” he said. “Don’t snoop about like a thief.”
Embarrassment, or perhaps guilt, darkened her already shadowed eyes. He couldn’t hold her gaze and deliberately looked away.
It took every bit of fortitude he possessed to stem his anger and claim responsibility for what had just happened here. He would not blame her for his lack of control.
Though she hadn’t seemed the least bit reluctant, it would not have happened if he hadn’t allowed it.
No matter what he believed Stephen’s faults were, Nicholas had no business entering into a liaison with his wife. But it galled the hell out of him that the first woman to stir him in a good many years had to be his brother’s widow. And hardly the type of woman he would choose to bring home to his mother.
Claire was nothing at all like the kind of female he approved of or took a second look at. But in some relentless carnal manner, she was everything he desired.
The combination ate at his sanity. And worsened his temperament Why she even shared his kisses he’d never understand. Unless she feared not to. Or unless it was a part of her plan.
The air grew tense. Nicholas drew in a renovating breath and stepped back.
Where would they go from here?
Chapter Nine
Sarah didn’t know which fear was greater, her fear of Nicholas himself, or her fear of her feelings for him. Both had the power to destroy her.
Trembling, she backed away, the feel of his hands still in her hair, the scorching heat of his lips lingering on hers, her heart all but bursting from her chest in its tumultuous thumping.
Cheryl St. John Page 12