He was inclined to forgive her for her betrayal of him and the subsequent beating, he mused, his hand leaving her hair to wander lightly over an exposed white shoulder. She must have been shocked and shamed by what had happened between them that night in the orchard, and disgusted with him. A very natural reaction, he saw now, to her first experience with lovemaking—especially under the circumstances. And he had not helped matters the next morning by shouting at her and forcing a kiss on her. She must have been convinced that he would be forever trying to get under her skirts. The thought made him grin. She had not been far wrong. He had wanted to make love to her again almost as soon as he had finished doing it the first time; her disgusted reaction had hurt as well as angered him. Then and there he had vowed to teach her a lesson, but the beating and his escape had robbed him of the opportunity. He had thought never to see her again; when she had come flying down the hill in front of him the night he had abducted her, riding like a Valkyrie with her long slim legs gleaming bare against the horse’s dark sides and her acres of hair, gilded by moonlight, flying behind her like a banner, it had been as if fate was giving him another chance. Despite the beating she had cost him, or perhaps even because of it, his sexual attraction for her had burned hotter than ever. Here, he had thought, was a chance to quench the flames, and incidentally to pay Miss Propriety back in the kind of coin she could understand. He had chased her down and caught her, carrying her off with him in what was, now that he thought about it, really a most romantic fashion. Wasn’t there some poem circulating through Dublin’s drawing rooms about a fellow called young Lochinvar who rode off with a maid across his saddle bow? And weren’t the ladies always swooning over it and carrying on about how romantic it was? Only Sarah, practical Sarah, had quite obviously not thought it at all romantic. Before she had discovered his identity, she had been frightened. Though she had tried not to let it show, he had known it, and at the time it had afforded him considerable satisfaction. Later, when she had recognized him, she had been first shocked, then furious. Dominic grinned, remembering the way she had stood up to him, a runaway convict, a desperado, sassing him as pertly as if she had been safe in her papa’s drawing room. That was his Sarah, all right, grit to the backbone. Yes, he decided, still grinning, he would forgive her for running to Papa with her tale. It didn’t matter anyway. Not now—now that he had captured that frightened, vengeful Sarah and made her willing . . . made her his. She was his. Dominic had known it for some time, but he had refused to recognize the feeling for what it was. But now she knew it too, had admitted it in deed if not in word. Sarah was not a promiscuous woman; she would give her body as she had given it today only to one man—the man she loved.
Love: the word was almost foreign to his vocabulary. He had loved only one other person in his life, and that love had caused him nothing but grief, and finally brought him, chained and half-dead, to this godforsaken excuse for a country. His train of thought halted abruptly, struck by something that had just run through his head. He backtracked, frowning, and found the nagging thought: he had loved only one other person. . . . Other than whom? he demanded of himself, knowing a faint flare of panic. Then the answer came, so swift and pat that he could not believe he had not realized it all along. Other than Sarah, of course.
He loved her. The realization was frightening, exhilarating, unreal. He had never thought to love a woman, had been on guard against it, in fact. Loving a woman, in his experience, brought heartache. But Miss Sarah, with her man-sized courage and shrewish tongue, her pulled-back hair and dowdy dresses and lion’s heart, had slipped under his guard. He had never expected to love her, had thought that merely wanting her was an aberration. He had felt safe in the knowledge that she was not his type. And so he had not noticed when those huge golden eyes had wormed their way into his heart.
Dominic shied from the knowledge, then returned reluctantly to face it. He loved Sarah. That much was fact. The question remained—what was he to do about it? When a man found a woman he loved, the usual next step was to marry her. . . . That idea he rejected violently. He had seen enough of marriage to make him hate the institution like the plague. But what else did one do with a lady like Sarah? Set her up as his concubine?
“Dominic?” Her sleepy voice roused him from his reverie. He blinked, then felt his heart jump with panic as he found her eyes fixed on his face. Had she read his thoughts? Sweet Jesus, he prayed she had not. He had to have a little time to get used to the notion of being in love, the idea of loving her. He needed time to decide what to do about it.
“What?” The word was terse. He knew it but could not help it. Her eyes clouded at his brusqueness. Dominic immediately felt like the swine that she had frequently called him before he had taught her less-decorous names.
“We should be going,” she said stiffly, levering herself off his chest and sitting up, her back to him.
He looked at the swirling mass of tawny hair that hid from his view the fragile shoulders, the slender back, and the curving buttocks, and felt as if a hard fist had been rammed into his stomach at the realization that his curt response had hurt her. Lord God, was this what love did? Made a man willing to throw himself at his loved one’s feet just to see her smile?
She was leaning forward, reaching for her shirt. He sat up, catching her by the shoulders, turning her around to face him. A single tear trembled in the corner of her eye; it stabbed him clear through to the heart.
“Sarah.” His voice was gruff with emotion. He had to fight an urge to clear it, but he thought that might be too revealing. “Let’s not go anywhere. Just for tonight.”
Her eyes rose to his. He thought he read both hope and trepidation in her eyes.
“I need to get home. My family will be worried about me.” But the words were uncertain.
“Will they?”
She chewed her lower lip. “No, not really. My father, perhaps; and Liza, a little. But . . .”
“But not so worried that one day more or less will make that much difference,” he finished for her, catching her hands in his and bringing them one at a time to his lips. She was kneeling in front of him now, her long hair veiling her nakedness as it tumbled from her shoulders to her bent knees. Through its tangled thickness he caught tantalizing glimpses of rose-tipped breasts and glimmering, pale thighs. . . . “Let’s stay here tonight, Sarah. Make camp near the creek, sleep out under the stars.” His voice thickened on this last, telling her without words what else he wanted to do under the stars. Her lips parted; unconsciously, he thought, the small pink tip of her tongue flicked out to wet the lushness of her lower lip. Even that tiny movement sent a tightening through his groin. Dominic grinned a little, ruefully, as he contemplated what his body was giving every indication that it wished to do again. It had been years since he had felt the urge to make love three times in as many hours.
“If we’re going to stay, we may as well get busy,” she said, suddenly brisk as she pulled her hands from his and reached again for her shirt. “It’s getting dark, and the horses need to be unsaddled and watered, and a fire made. If you’ll see to the horses, I’ll build a fire. I noticed last night that you’re not particularly good at it.” She was shrugging into her shirt as she spoke, then broke off as she noticed his broadening grin.
“What’s so funny?” she asked suspiciously, eying him as he sprawled back on the blanket, his arms crossed beneath his head, unconcerned with his nakedness.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a very managing female?” he asked, still grinning. She flushed, looking suddenly very self-conscious—and very appealing. His groin tightened still more as he eyed her up and down. He was surprised that she seemed not to notice the rising evidence of his desire for her.
“Oh,” she said in a tiny voice. “I guess I am used to—uh—sort of directing things.”
“Giving orders,” he corrected, charmed by her crestfallen air. “Especially to me.”
She looked over at him swiftly. He frowned in mock displea
sure. She looked dismayed—and then her chin came up. “Yes,” she said steadily.
He couldn’t help it; he had to laugh. “Don’t worry about it, my own,” he advised, sitting up and reaching for his breeches and boots. “I find I’m getting used to being bossed around—by a particular managing female. Just be careful I don’t beat you one of these days.”
“You couldn’t,” she said, her nose in the air as she recognized his teasing for what it was. She was buttoning her shirt, then looking around for the rest of her clothes as he pulled on his breeches, stood up, and tugged on his boots.
“Why not?” he asked tranquilly, tossing her breeches and sandals to her as he found and pulled on his shirt. “I’m a deal bigger than you—and I owe you one.”
He had meant to make light of what she had done, but she immediately tensed.
“I didn’t tell Pa anything, Dominic. I give you my word.”
Silently cursing himself for bringing up the subject, he left off buttoning his shirt to reach out and pull her to her feet.
“It’s all right, Sarah,” he said, his hands sliding beneath her shirttail to close on her still-bare buttocks and bring her against him.
“You believe me?” She did not seem to mind his touch, which just hours ago would have made her blush with shame. Her eyes searched his earnestly. Dominic wondered for the first time if perhaps she was telling the truth. Perhaps someone else had seen, and told. . . . It didn’t matter, anyway. They were going to put that behind them, starting now.
“I believe you,” he said, his hands tightening on her rounded little behind. Desire stirred uncomfortably in him at the feel of her silky firmness beneath his hands. He made a mental note to adjust his breeches the next time she turned her back.
“Oh, Dominic!” She smiled happily at him, her hands flying up to encircle his neck as she rose on her toes to plant her first spontaneous kiss on his mouth. Then Dominic returned her kiss with interest, and it ended up being quite some time later before they got around to making camp.
XXII
“Just for tonight” turned out to be two days, then three, then a week. Sarah and Dominic laughed and talked and made love, living off the provisions Dominic had grabbed as they had made their hurried exit from that other camp and whatever game either of them could shoot. Dominic was a far better shot than Sarah, which surprised her—she was very good. But she conceded with good grace his superiority in that area. She was by far the better organizer—it was she who organized the camp and their respective chores until she became aware of what she was doing, and guiltily stopped. She would not be persuaded to resume—which meant that they went disastrously short of salt when Dominic used it all to season a hare he was roasting instead of dividing it into careful portions as Sarah would have done—until Dominic convinced her that her “bossiness” appealed to him enormously. And by the time he finished convincing her, that particular hare was burned to a crisp. They dined instead on strips of dried mutton, and didn’t care two pins. Much of the time they were scarcely aware of what they ate anyway. What interested them was the time they spent together in their bedroll, tucked up cozily under the stars, or brazenly uncovered beneath the blazing sun.
Their lovemaking was like nothing Sarah had ever imagined. It was wild and wanton, slow and tender, infinitely varied, always wonderful. Sarah could not get enough of his hands on her skin, or he enough of her body. He taught her to return kiss for kiss, caress for caress; he explored every curve and secret recess of her body with his hands and mouth, and encouraged her to gain similar intimate knowledge of his own. Sarah spent her days in a haze of bliss, sparkling with happiness, unaware that Dominic’s lovemaking had brought a glow to her skin and hair and a softening to her features that made her for the first time in her life as truly beautiful as Dominic insisted she was. His eyes seldom left her; he made no effort to hide his need and desire for her. Sarah blossomed as night blended into day and day into night, taking care not to let thoughts of the future intrude on their idyll. For she knew, and she knew Dominic knew, that this could not go on forever. Decisions had to be made sometime, reality faced. But not yet. Not yet.
One night, while they lay in their bedroll, Sarah’s head nestled in the crook of his arm and his head resting on the saddle that served as a pillow, she ventured to ask him how he had come to commit the crimes for which he had been transported. His arm went heavy beneath her head, and for a long moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he turned his head to look at her, his eyes deeply blue even in the darkness under the cloud-covered night sky. She looked gravely back at him, loving the lean hard cheekbone that was faintly silvered in profile, the long straight nose, the firm chin.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said, lifting her hand to trace the outline of his mouth. Touching him was something she did often. When she thought about it, she could hardly believe that it was she, Sarah Markham, plain, skinny, old-maid Sarah, who had never had a serious suitor, who was on such intimate terms with this gorgeous man. He caught her hand, pressing a soft kiss to the caressing finger, and smiled at her. His white teeth gleamed briefly at her through the darkness.
“No, I know I don’t have to.” His voice was husky. “But I want you to know. So you don’t go thinking that you’ve got yourself mixed up with an inept thief.” He was silent a moment longer, while Sarah waited patiently for him to tell her what he would. She could tell that he was debating with himself, probably wondering how much of his life story to tell her. In the end, she didn’t think he kept anything back.
“For you to understand how I ended up here—not that there is anyplace that I’d rather be just at this moment—” This was said with another quick smile at her; Sarah smiled back, her body clad only in his too-big shirt as she nestled closer to his naked body beneath the blanket. “I have to go back a long way, thirty-some-odd years, to be exact. I was born on March eighth, 1804, to the only daughter of a wealthy Irish landowner. Her name was Maura Kathleen Gallagher, and though she was only eighteen at the time she had been married to the earl of Rule for nearly three years.” Sarah started to ask him to repeat himself, because if she had understood him correctly he was the son of an earl, which was mind-boggling, but he held up a hand for silence. Sarah obediently subsided, her eyes huge as she waited for him to continue. “There was a huge celebration when I, their first child and heir to the earldom, was born. A week later, with much pomp and circumstance, I was christened John Dominic Frame. The earl was John Christopher Frame, you see.” Again Sarah opened her mouth with a question, and again, with a gesture, he silenced her. “The earl was Irish only in domicile. His breeding, education, and inclination were English. I grew up in a castle overlooking the dark waters of Lough Der—the big black castle with the turrets and the battlements I told you about once; it is called Fonderleigh, and it has been the home of the earls of Rule since William the Conqueror. It’s a beautiful place. I loved it as a boy, and I love it still. I had all the privileges and advantages that you might expect the only son of an earl to have, including a tutor who strictly oversaw my education whenever he could persuade, bribe, or force me to sit still long enough, a dancing master”—this elicited a quick smile from her, which he returned—“a fencing master, a boxing master, a shooting master, a music master, and an untold number of other masters until I was in danger of being mastered to death. I saw as much of my mother as most boys in such circumstances—which is to say, not a lot; they spent a good part of each year in London—and considerably less of the earl himself. At that time he was proud of me, I believe; despite all that mastering I still managed to be something of a hellion, which appealed to him. But he was not an affectionate man, even to my mother, who, looking back, I can see he loved as much as his nature would permit him to love anyone. She was very beautiful, my mother, with coal-black hair and perfect features and eyes as blue as the Irish sea.” Like you, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say anything; he was looking away from her, up at the da
rk canopy of clouds. Sarah watched that chiseled profile intently. “I adored my mother with the blind adoration of a child. I was convinced that she was an angel, and the thought that she could do wrong never even occurred to me. Which was why what happened came as such a shock to me.
“Three days before my seventh birthday, my mother’s father died. My mother had been estranged from him for some time—since before my birth, in fact—but she cried copiously when told of his death. Then the letter came—a letter written on his deathbed by my staunchly Catholic grandfather to the earl of Rule. In brief, it said that the old man could not go to his reward peacefully if he kept his daughter’s sinful secret any longer: it seemed that when Maura had come to visit him on his estate in County Cork in the summer of 1803—the earl had been in London—she had had an affair with an Irish peasant boy whose family lived in one of the hovels on the estate. When Maura’s father found out, he immediately shipped the whole family off to the States, but it was too late: Maura had committed the unforgivable indiscretion and was with child. Me. I, John Dominic Frame, was not a Frame at all, but the son of that Irish peasant. After reading that, the earl sent for my mother, taxed her with it, and she collapsed in tears, admitting everything, and begging his forgiveness on her knees.
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