He still could. If he spoke to her now, reassured her, stroked her silken limbs and kissed her, he could still have her.
But he wouldn’t. He was too ashamed of himself. Merely pumping his seed into her for the sake of proving that he could was not the conquest he’d imagined it would be.
He’d proved nothing.
Except that he was incorrigible.
And that she was vulnerable.
And that he wanted her like nothing he’d ever known or needed in his life.
He deserved to lie awake all night. He deserved the sick, gut-punched feeling that gripped him where it hurt, and twisted.
Whether that was Stephen’s baby over there or not, this was Stephen’s wife, and he was a no-good son of a bitch for seducing her. Wanting her was bad enough. Following through was worse.
Mixed with his desire for her came the overpowering sense of abasement. No matter what her purpose, he still had his honor.
He calmed her with gentle strokes along her hip and her bare arm. He gently threaded her hair from her face and kissed her temple, all the while holding her, relishing the hard crush of her breasts and the delicate wisp of her breath against his neck.
He became aware of her hand against his shirtfront, urging him back. He loosened his hold, and she pulled away, hurrying to turn her back and pull on the white cotton chemise she found crumpled on the floor.
Her great skein of multitoned tresses bunched beneath the fabric, and when he reached to assist her, she pushed off his hands and stepped away, grabbing for her discarded black dress.
“Claire…?” he questioned softly.
Her chin came up at that, and she looked him in the eye. Tears glistened on her golden lashes. Shame shone clearly on her delicate features. “Please don’t say anything,” she pleaded, her blue eyes more eloquent than her words. “Just let me go to my room.”
He didn’t know what he would have said. That he was sorry? He wasn’t. Oh, he shouldn’t have planned to seduce her, certainly, but would he take back what had happened? Did he wish he didn’t know how her skin felt or how her mouth tasted or the smothered sounds of desire she made when he touched her?
Humiliation burned in the depths of her hurt gaze. He was not sorry he’d aroused her and pleasured her. He was only sorry she’d belonged to Stephen first, and that he had no right to be lusting after her now.
In obedient silence, he took a step back, watched her gather her corset and petticoats and her sleeping son and flee from his study as though demons pursued her.
Nicholas stared at the scattering of hairpins around the foot of the cradle. He picked them up and closed his fingers over them. No, he wasn’t sorry for what had happened.
He only regretted he’d ever heard of Claire Patrick Halliday in the first place.
Chapter Thirteen
Sarah had begun to wonder what it would be like to fall asleep without fears or worries or regrets plaguing her long into the night. It had been a year since she’d slept the peaceful sleep of a young woman without taxing concerns.
And all because of her rebellious nature, and her dubious character. It wouldn’t have killed her to marry one of those promising young men her father had paraded before her. Perhaps accepting secret invitations from Gaylen had simply been a means to strike back at a demanding father who never had time for her, but imperiously ordered her life about.
It was all well and good to look back now and say she’d been rash and foolish, but perhaps the truth was that she’d chosen Gaylen because he wouldn’t really care for her, just as her father had never cared for her, and just as Nicholas Halliday didn’t care for her. What was it about her that sought the affections of men who could not respond in kind—men who didn’t even like her? Whatever dark need inside, whatever warped characteristic, it sickened her.
She hadn’t been able to place William in his bed. She’d kept him beside her where she could see his slight form in the low-burning firelight, smell his baby-sweet fragrance and touch him each time the hurt washed over her anew.
She had William. William. He was hers and hers alone. No one could take him from her or come between them. No matter what else befell her in this lifetime, she had her son.
Tears trickled across her temple and into her hair, and an ache like the ponderous encumbrance of a boulder sat upon her chest. She was not the best mother a son could have had. She had to admit that. But she loved him fiercely, and she would do her best for him. She’d made another big mistake tonight. She’d endangered William’s welfare.
If Nicholas had not stopped short of fulfilling the act they’d begun, she could have found herself expecting a second child! Did she never learn? She hadn’t been able to provide for one child, let alone two!
She had no illusions about Nicholas Halliday. He might desire her as Gaylen had desired her, but he was every bit as eager to rid himself of her. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be to leave. There could never be anything between them. Her deceit had seen to that.
The muted sound of glass shattering in the hallway drew her upright. She dried her eyes with the bedsheet and tiptoed to the door. Moonlight flooding through a floor-to-ceiling window on the landing revealed a hunched form sitting at the top of the stairs. Sarah hurried forward.
Pain pierced the bottom of her foot. She stifled a cry and limped the rest of the way to where Celia sat on the top step. “What are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”
The woman bobbed her mane of wild hair and swiveled toward her, and Sarah regretted her words. She’d learned Celia had no sense of time. When she woke, she drank. When she was drunk enough, she slept.
“I was hungry.” Her thick voice betrayed the effects of the liquor, but she appeared coherent.
Sarah crouched down beside her. “One minute I have to threaten you to eat, the next you think you’re starving.”
Just then yellow light flickered across the walls, sending their shadows into deep relief across the wallpaper. Nicholas climbed the stairs in only a pair of trousers, carrying a lamp that reflected a dark puddle on the polished wood floor near the wall and shards of glass scattered to the middle of the wide hallway. He stood towering over them. “Who’s hurt?”
His immediate question caught Sarah by surprise until she saw the blood on the carpet runner. “Your carpet!” she said with dismay.
“The hell with the carpet,” he said with a churlish growl. “Which one of you is bleeding?”
Sarah cringed. “I’m afraid it’s me.”
“Show me,” he demanded.
She sat beside Celia and, holding her nightdress primly around her calf, raised her foot for his inspection.
Shirtless, his dark hair mussed, Nicholas lowered the lamp to the floor and raised Sarah’s foot. Celia’s glittery-eyed gaze traveled from Nicholas’s broad, golden shoulders to Sarah’s pale foot and up to her face. A hint of acknowledgment flitted across her florid features.
Sarah swallowed hard and tried not to stare at the dark swirls of hair curling across his chest. She closed her eyes and tried not to remember seeing him stark naked in his bath or feeling the sensation of his aroused body pressed intimately against hers or the effect his hands and mouth had on her.
“Ouch!” she cried, her thoughts immediately jolted elsewhere.
“There’s a piece of glass in there,” he said. “Just a small one.”
Celia cast her an apologetic glance.
“Celia’s hungry,” Sarah explained. “She was going down to find something to eat.”
The woman nodded. “I didn’t have any dinner.”
“Penelope brought your dinner. You just slept through it and she cleared it away,” Sarah said calmly.
“I didn’t want the whole blamed house up,” she said, unsteadily getting to her feet. “I just wanted somethin’ to eat!”
Nicholas stood, grabbed an embroidered linen scarf from a decorative table nearby and knelt again.
“Don’t—” Sarah objected too late. He’d al
ready wrapped it around her foot. “It will be ruined.”
“Sit there,” he said, ignoring her concern and scowling at them both. “Don’t either of you move until I get back. Understood?”
They nodded in unison.
He descended the stairs into the darkness below on silent bare feet.
“You two got somethin’ goin’ on?” Celia asked when he was out of earshot. The old bird wasn’t too snockered to observe their stilted interaction.
“No,” Sarah said firmly. “How stupid do you think I am?”
The woman cocked a brow and gave her a sidelong glance. “I don’t think that would be stupid at all. I think if you played your cards right, you’d have yourself a dandy little setup here.”
“Well, I don’t want a ’dandy little setup,’” Sarah denied. “And I certainly can’t afford to stay here any longer than necessary.”
“You could do worse,” Celia said, and rested her head against the oak banister. “Never had servants wait on me before.”
“And what?” she asked, unable to hold the irritation from her tone. “You play my mother for the rest of our lives?”
Celia’s head came up, and she fixed Sarah with a glassy stare. “You’re the one pretendin’, darlin’. I am Claire’s mother.”
Sarah clamped her lips shut and turned to peruse their two long shadows on the wall. After several minutes, she whispered, “You’re right, you know. I’ve brought this all on myself, and I have no right getting angry with you. In fact I owe you an apology. I’m sorry.”
Celia’s brows shot up. “For what?”
“Shh. For playing this part. For getting you entangled in it.”
Celia stared at her lap for a few minutes. “Don’t see as how I’d have done any different if I’d been in your place. Claire probably would have, too.”
That thought took Sarah by surprise. “Well, we got off to a bad start, you and I. I don’t know how I can fix it now, because I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I just want you to know how sorry I am about Claire. When I find her body, I’ll see that she’s buried here by Stephen. You’ll be able to visit her grave then.”
“I got plenty of things I’m not proud of, too,” the woman said, keeping her voice low.
Sarah took that as an acceptance of her apology, and felt a measure of relief.
The shadows dipped and swayed, and she turned to see Nicholas approaching with the lantern and a tray. “Don’t move. Which room are you in?”
He’d asked Celia, but Sarah answered for her. “The lavender room. On the left there.”
Skirting the glass, he disappeared with the tray and returned for Celia. “Come on. I was having a midnight snack myself, so I knew there was chicken and a turnover left.”
His glare indicated Sarah was to wait, and he returned for her. “Pick up the lamp and hold it steady,” he ordered. She did so, and he lifted her into his arms. “That foot’s on your bad leg, isn’t it?”
The heat of his chest scorcned right through the flimsy fabric of her nightgown. One arm banded tightly about her back, the other behind her knees, just as he’d carried her many times before. “Yes.”
“You favor that leg, so I think it prevented you from placing all your weight down and embedding the glass too deeply.”
They’d reached Celia’s room, and Nicholas deposited Sarah on the chaise, turned up the lamp and lit another.
Like a queen, Celia sat upon a tufted brocade chair, picking apart her chicken and licking her fingers as contentedly as a cat with a fresh flounder.
Nicholas carried the supplies he’d gathered and urged Sarah to place her foot at an angle where he could see it. At his touch on her bare ankle, she fought her automatic response and the embarrassment it created each time.
Gently, Nicholas cleaned the area and extracted a small sliver of glass. The alcohol he poured on a cloth and pressed against the cut stung so sharply, her eyes watered.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Their eyes met, and the words took on a whole new meaning. They stared at each other. With all her heart, Sarah wished she were someone else, someone with a clean conscience and an unscarred past. Someone who hadn’t already made too many mistakes and lied about them all.
Someone a man like Nicholas could love.
She blinked away the tears and the foolish thought.
“I’ll wrap it and it should heal in a day or two,” he said.
“I need to wash this down,” Celia said from across the room.
“I brought you a glass of milk, there,” Nicholas said, turning to address her.
“Can’t stand the stuff,” she said and huffed a little burp. She stood and found the bottle she’d left on the bedside table.
Nicholas looked to Sarah as if for advice. As if she knew what to do about the exasperating woman. Or for her. Sarah shrugged.
“I can’t have you breaking any more glasses, Mrs. Pa—”
“Don’t call her that,” Sarah advised softly. “Call her Celia.”
“Don’t need a glass then,” Celia said, sitting on the bed and tipping the bottle to her lips.
Muttering a low curse, he strode from the room, his feet soundless on the thick carpet.
“Nicholas has asked that you join us for dinner,” Sarah told her. “You’re going to need to pull yourself together for that.”
“What’s he want me at dinner for?”
“It’s customary for people to dine together, engage in conversation.”
“I don’t have anything to say that he’d want to hear.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe you’d be entertained hearing what he has to say. And Leda is delightful. It’s not healthy for you to stay shut away up here. I’ll come help you dress for dinner. Be prepared.” She hoped her last words were understood as “don’t be drunk.”
Nicholas returned with a silver stein.
“Pretty fancy,” Celia said, turning it to squint at his engraved initials in the lamplight.
He took the bottle from her and poured a healthy portion into the metal cup. “Stephen sent it from one of his journeys,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ll feel better knowing you’re not strewing broken glass up and down the halls. Speaking of which,” he said, slipping the bottle in his pocket and tossing all the rags and supplies on the tray, “I’d better get that cleaned up before someone else walks on it.”
“I can see to it,” Sarah said, rising.
“No, you won’t,” he argued with a raised palm. “Tell your mother good-night.”
She gave Celia a concerned glance. The woman had slumped over on the bed. A light snore parted her lips. “Sweet dreams, Mother.”
Nicholas raised Celia’s feet to the mattress and covered her with the thick counterpane before walking toward Sarah.
“I can walk,” she said quickly.
“Your foot hurts.” He plucked her into his arms as though she weighed no more than William.
Sarah balanced herself with a hand splayed against his chest. Her fingers met soft springy curls and the undeniable heat of his skin beneath. It had only been a few hours since she’d kissed him, touched him, wished for him to remove his clothing…
Swiftly he carried her to her dark room and strode to the bed.
“Careful,” she warned. “William is lying there.”
He identified the baby’s form in the darkness and placed her beside him.
“Thank you, Nicholas,” she said before he moved away.
His tall outline stood motionless.
“Thank you,” she repeated softly. “For taking care of my foot. I’m sorry about the glass…and the stain on the carpet.”
“See that you take care with it,” he said. “If it looks at all inflamed, send for the doctor.”
“I will.”
Still he didn’t make a move to leave.
She felt the need to apologize for Celia, too. She wasn’t really her mother, but he believed she was. And that made her feel responsible.
&n
bsp; “You know, Claire,” he said in that seductively low voice that always sounded as though it were meant for her ears alone, “that you are welcome for as long as you wish to live here. Forever if you desire. Your mother, too.”
Sarah stared at his shadowy form in surprise.
“I can’t fault you for her behavior. I’m sure you’ve done your share of covering up and making up for her in your lifetime. You don’t have to do that here. We’ll make arrangements and cope with her together.”
Together. Words failed her. Coherent thought failed her. This was far from anything she’d expected him to say. More than she’d hoped for. But she knew it could never be. She and Nicholas would not be doing anything “together.”
His kindness was far more difficult to accept than his derisiveness or his anger…because she didn’t deserve it. “But why?” she asked finally.
“She’s your mother,” he answered simply. “She’s William’s grandmother.”
Sarah closed her eyes and braced herself against the tidal wave of guilt that slammed into her. Just when she thought she had him figured out, just when she’d prepared all her defenses, he did or said something that proved what a small, selfish person she’d become.
She had no one to blame for her situation. She’d expended a great deal of energy on blaming her father, and Gaylen’s memory had been a sound whipping board for months, but the truth of the matter was she’d caused all the grief herself.
Resigned, she opened her eyes.
He was gone.
Bereft, she curled up on the mattress, touched William’s head for reassurance and ignored the dull throb in her foot and the hollow ache in her heart.
There was no choice. There never had been.
She had to leave soon.
Chapter Fourteen
The following morning Nicholas arrived at Claire’s door early and rapped softly. She called out for him to come in.
Her expression told him his presence had caught her off guard. She wore a white apron over a deep green day dress, the first time he’d seen her in anything other than black, and the dress surprised him.
Cheryl St. John Page 18