Dark Torment

by Karen Robards

  “My girl Sarah,” he said into her hair, sounding as if he too was close to tears. “I know you’re a woman grown and capable of making your own decisions. But, daughter, take a word of advice from your father, who has lived a lot longer than you and has your best interests at heart. You admit you’re fond of the man: he’s attractive to women, I suppose, and I know you haven’t had too many beaus, though I would have thought John . . . well, never mind that now. You know my feelings about that. But, Sarah, you listen to me, girl: never forget who you are and what he is. Don’t get too fond of him. If you do, it will bring you nothing but heartache. There’s no future for you with a convict. And I tell you this out of love.”

  He stood up as abruptly as he had sat down, and before she could say anything he stamped noisily from the room. Like her, he was not used to showing emotion, and it embarrassed him. Sarah stared after him, not knowing whether to laugh or cry or curse, and ended up doing a little bit of both. He loved her—but there was still a long, long way for him to go before he would accept the idea that she was going to marry Dominic. In a way, she almost wished he knew, as she had thought he must, that Dominic had been her lover. He might still suspect, but she rather thought he preferred not even to speculate on such an intimate subject concerning his daughter. But he had left her with considerable food for thought. And think Sarah did, mulling over all he had told her until at last she fell asleep.

  It was the following afternoon before she felt well enough to leave her bed again. Yesterday’s little jaunt and subsequent emotional scenes, when she was still so weak, had taken more out of her than she had realized. Upon wakening from a long and surprisingly restful sleep, her every instinct urged her to go to Dominic at once. But her body just would not obey. It obstinately insisted on remaining in bed, sipping tea and broth prepared by Mrs. Abbott and brought up by Tess, and nibbling on triangles of toast while it slowly regained its strength. Besides Tess, no one ventured into her bedchamber, which piqued Sarah a trifle. She would have thought that Liza at least would have popped her head in to inquire how she was doing. Despite their differences, which Sarah knew were mainly Lydia’s doing, she was genuinely fond of her stepsister, and thought Liza was fond of her as well.

  The afternoon sun was shining in through the open windows when Sarah at last swung her legs out of bed and attempted to stand. Her knees were a little wobbly at first, but she made it to the window and stood looking out for a moment while she waited for either Mary or Tess to respond to her summons. The rain had brought the lush colors of the countryside to vivid life again. The lawn was newly green, and while the tall eucalyptus trees guarding the house were still bare-limbed, they looked somehow refreshed. The wattle bushes had burst into glorious bloom; their sweet fragrance floated up to her nostrils as she stood drinking in the soft, clean air. In the distance, the mountains were a deep blue haze rising to touch the brighter blue of the cloudless sky. Sarah smiled at the beauty of it. Then a light knock heralded Tess’s arrival, and Sarah turned back into the room.

  Tess shyly complimented her on the new beauty of her skin as she helped her dress—an assistance that Sarah normally scorned but felt in need of today. When at last her clothes were on and her hair was brushed and styled, Sarah dismissed the girl, then with a critical eye regarded her reflection in the cheval glass in one corner of the room. Despite the soft shine of her hair and the glow to her skin that Tess had praised, Sarah saw nothing new in the mirror. She was still the same tall, skinny, plain Sarah. But her father had said she resembled her lovely mother, and Dominic had called her beautiful. Sarah eyed her angular face—perhaps its too-prominent planes and resulting pronounced hollows could be softened by a new hair style, one that was less old-maidish than her prim bun. And her figure—dressed in feminine, fashionable apparel, would it acquire the illusion of womanly curves? Sarah remembered how fervently Dominic had insisted—and demonstrated—that he liked her body just as it was, and blushed. She saw how the rosy pink color flooding her cheeks emphasized the guinea gold of her eyes, warmed her face, making it look almost girlish, and even seemed to brighten the brown-gold of her hair; and for the first time she saw her own possibilities. With the right clothes and hair style . . . But Sarah thought glumly, she wouldn’t know where to begin. She imagined herself tricked out in the tiers of pastel ruffles deemed fashionable by Lydia and Liza, and felt a return of self-doubt. She would look ridiculous, she knew. Worse, she was very much afraid she would look, as Mrs. Grainger had once said about another old maid on the catch for a husband, like mutton trying to pretend it was lamb. Sarah sighed, turning away from the mirror. There was no point in wishing she were something she was not. She was a twenty-two-year-old spinster of uncertain looks at best, in love with a man ten years her senior who had undoubtedly made love to more women than he could count. And he was gorgeous, too. But he had said he loved her and wanted to marry her. Sarah clung to that.

  She made her way along the hall to the blue bedroom. Before she reached it, she heard voices and laughter through the door, which was ajar. Sarah frowned, distinctly recognizing Dominic’s lilt. She would know that voice in a dark cave in China. He sounded amused. Sarah’s eyes widened as she thought she recognized the feminine voice talking to him. Surely it couldn’t be . . .

  She walked to the door and opened it, standing for a moment in the aperture as her eyes took in the scene. Dominic, clad in one of her father’s old nightshirts, was sitting propped up in bed, freshly shaved, his hair black as midnight against the white pillows, his eyes, still with a grin lurking in their depths as he looked up to see her standing there, as blue as the lapis-lazuli brooch she owned that had once belonged to her mother. One of his hands was clasped between both of Liza’s, as she perched on the side of his bed.

  XXV

  “Sarah!” Liza looked around, too, following Dominic’s eyes. As soon as she saw her sister scowling at her from the doorway, she dropped Dominic’s hand as if it had suddenly turned red hot and jumped to her feet. Her cream-colored dimity with its feminine flounces around the neck and hem fluttered around her as she moved. Sarah’s scowl deepened. She knew that, next to Liza’s soft prettiness, she must look severe, unattractive—in a word, old-maidish.

  “What are you doing in here, Liza?” Knowing that it would be all too easy to snap at her young stepsister, Sarah carefully kept her voice even.

  “I came to see Dominic.” Liza’s reply was truculent. Her lower lip thrust forward in a charming little pout, and her brown spaniel eyes as they met her sister’s were challenging.

  “Dominic?” Sarah echoed the name with raised brows, questioning Liza’s use of it. On the surface, her objection was that it was not done to call a convict by his given name. Underneath, however, she knew that her objections were very different—and far more personal. Dominic himself said not a word. A slight frown darkened his handsome face as he sat, with arms crossed, listening to the girls’ exchange.

  “Why shouldn’t I call him Dominic? You do.” Liza was throwing down the gauntlet with a vengeance.

  Sarah’s eyes widened and went swiftly, involuntarily to Dominic, who returned her look blandly. Surely he could not have told Liza about their relationship. . . .

  “You know that it’s not proper for you to be in this room,” Sarah said quietly, choosing not to reply directly to Liza’s attack. She would be treading on very thin ice.

  Liza snorted. “You’re a fine one to be preaching propriety, sister. All these years you’ve set yourself up as such a lady—Mother told me differently, but I didn’t believe her! But I’m no longer as ignorant as I used to be—you like handsome men every bit as well as I do! Your only problem is, unless they’re convicts like Dominic here and have to, they won’t pay any attention to you!”

  “Liza!” Sarah was shocked.

  “That’s enough out of you, young lady!” The growl was Dominic’s. He had abandoned his lazy posture against the pillows to sit bolt upright in the bed, fixing Liza with a fierce gleam in his
blue eyes.

  Liza looked at him, and her chin quivered. “How dare you talk to me like that, convict! Just because I flirted with you a little doesn’t mean you can go beyond the line with me! I’m not like my sister here. She’s an old maid, so it’s not surprising that you can kiss her once and she’ll let you be as familiar as you please! I’m a lady, and don’t you forget it!”

  “Would this tantrum have anything to do with the fact that I was just gently refusing to kiss you?” Dominic asked, very polite.

  Liza glared at him, crimsoning.

  “Stay out of this, Dominic,” Sarah intervened hastily, before Liza could go into screaming hysterics, as she gave every indication she was about to do. “Liza, suppose you explain yourself.”

  “Suppose you explain yourself, sister!” Liza retorted, whirling again to face Sarah, hands clenched at her sides, face crimsoning. “You just called him Dominic—is he your lover? Mother says he is!”

  “Liza!”

  “Be silent!”

  The exclamations came from Sarah and Dominic respectively, the first shocked, the second furious. Liza glared at them both impartially.

  “Why? You’ve kissed him at least. I know—I saw you.”

  Sarah fought to keep guilty color from creeping up her cheeks. Undoubtedly this was just another form of Liza’s usual temper fit.

  “If you speak to your sister again with such a lack of respect, I’ll paddle your backside until you can’t sit for a month.” The threat was Dominic’s, and even if Liza didn’t know him well enough to recognize her danger, Sarah did.

  “Don’t you dare, Dominic!” she warned, sparing him a chastening glance before focusing her attention on Liza again. “Liza, I think you’d better go to your room and calm down. I’ll send Mary to you with some fresh tea.”

  “Don’t you take that patronizing tone with me, Sarah Markham. I know better! I tell you I saw you kissing him in the stable the day before he ran away.”

  Sarah’s lips quivered with sudden memory. Of course, Dominic had kissed her in the stable the morning after he had first made love to her. A hard, brutal kiss it had been, too. . . . And Liza had seen. A sudden suspicion had Sarah’s eyes focusing on Liza, narrowing.

  “And who did you tell, Liza?” The words were soft, deadly.

  Liza met her eyes defiantly for a moment before her lids fell to cover them. She looked suddenly very guilty.

  “I—Mr. Percival,” she said, all the anger draining out of her. “I was coming back from the stable just as he was leaving the house with something he’d forgotten that morning. He could see I was—upset. He asked me what was the matter and I told him. He got really furious—said that he would have the filthy b—uh, convict whipped. I told him Pa didn’t permit such things, and he said that he didn’t mean to tell Pa, and I shouldn’t either, or he’d tell that I’d been—doing something I shouldn’t. It’s none of your business what.” Liza looked suddenly at Sarah, a trace of defiance in her eyes again. “There’s no need for you to look at me like that: No harm came of it. Dominic ran away before Mr. Percival could whip him. If he hadn’t, if Mr. Percival had really started in on him, I would have told Pa. Really I would have, Sarah.”

  Liza looked very young suddenly, and very earnest. Sarah sighed, shook her head, and felt her anger dissipate. No matter what havoc her actions had wrought, Liza hadn’t meant to do her or Dominic any harm.

  “I know you would have, love,” Sarah said, voice soft.

  Liza smiled at her, shakily, then suddenly burst into tears and ran from the room.

  “She really didn’t mean any harm,” Sarah said to Dominic, coming a couple of steps closer to where he sat propped against his pillows once more. He looked absolutely dumbfounded. “She’s very young.”

  “A spoiled brat, is what you mean,” Dominic muttered absently. He was silent for a moment, seeming intent on the pattern in the woven bedspread. Then he looked up.

  “Your father stopped in here for a moment last night. He was surprisingly cordial, under what I thought were the circumstances. I was wary at first, expecting at any moment for him to pull out a hidden pistol and shoot me through the heart for a damned blackguard. But he merely thanked me for looking out for you in the bush and bringing you home again when you were hurt. He even apologized for what happened then—said if he’d known the whole story he would never have been so harsh. I’ve been wondering about it ever since—and now I begin to see. He doesn’t know about us, does he?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I asked him outright if he had had you beaten, and he denied it. Whatever else he is, my father is not a liar.”

  “So it was your damned overseer, acting on his own. . . . Now that I come to think about it, I never actually saw your father. Percival just kept saying that he was acting on Mr. Markham’s orders.”

  “That’s what I’ve decided, too.”

  Dominic was silent again, his eyes straying back to the coverlet as if fascinated by it.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said suddenly, looking up to meet her eyes.

  “Yes, you do.” She hid a smile, looking severe as she pronounced the words with a waiting air.

  He scowled, then grinned reluctantly as he gave in to her air of silent expectation. “All right, you shrew, I’m sorry. I should have believed you when you told me you didn’t go running to your father. And while I’m at it, I might as well apologize for the way I behaved yesterday, too. To tell the truth, I was damned glad to see you—and even gladder to get out of that hellhole.”

  Sarah frowned, as if considering. Then she smiled and took another step closer to the bed. “I shouldn’t, but I suppose I forgive you. If you forgive me, that is.”

  He looked at her questioningly. She took another step. She was standing beside the bed now, so close that her skirt brushed the mattress. Her hands were clasped nervously in front of her. Now that the time was at hand, she felt very awkward. What if he had changed his mind and no longer wanted to marry her? What if he had merely been carried away by the circumstances when he had proposed, and, after recovering from his snit, had actually been relieved when she had not accepted? Why should he want to marry her, after all? She was plain. . . .

  “For refusing to marry you,” she said, forcing the words out through dry lips. Every instinct cried out for her to stop there, to leave the rest to him if he would, but, having said so much, she was determined to plunge ahead regardless of propriety. “Dominic, is—is the offer still open?”

  “What offer?” He was starting to smile. That dimple that she had noticed before appeared suddenly to crease his right cheek, making him look so handsome that she clenched her fists. Impossible to believe that this beautiful man was really in love with her, really wanted to marry her. He had been flattering her, or temporarily mad. . . .

  “Never mind,” she muttered hastily, losing her nerve. She started to turn away, embarrassed at having so nearly made a fool of herself, not wanting to hear him try to be kind as he put her off.

  Suddenly he yelped, lunging forward and stopping her with a yank on her skirts. She yelped too as she felt herself tumbling backward to land in an undignified sprawl across the bed, in his arms. A ripping sound was clearly audible as she fell. Half-laughing, half-struggling as Dominic pinned her to the bed, Sarah glanced down to find her plain white petticoat clearly visible through a tear in her skirt that split it from the waist almost to the hem.

  “My dress—look what you’ve done!”

  He was looming over her, his eyes caressing. She could feel his hard thighs against her back as she lay across his lap. The white linen of her father’s nightshirt—he looked maddeningly attractive in the homely garment, she thought—made his skin and hair look very dark and his eyes very blue in contrast. Again she was conscious of a qualm—could he really love her?

  “To hell with your dress—it’s little better than a rag anyway. So are most of your clothes that I’ve seen. When you’re my wife, you’ll dress to show off your beauty, not hi
de it.”

  “Oh, Dominic,” Sarah said, half-laughing. “Are you sure that your eyes are working properly? I fear I’m rather plain.”

  “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.” He looked suddenly fierce. “I don’t even want you to think it. Your bitch of a stepmother and that spoiled little stepsister have turned your thinking, Sarah. Sure, you don’t look like they do. You shouldn’t want to! They’re pretty, Sarah, in a totally ordinary way. There are hundreds of women across the world just like them. But you—you’re unique. You’re beautiful, Sarah, if you weren’t so afraid to show it. From now on, every morning when you get up, I want you to look in your mirror and say, ‘Dominic says I’m beautiful.’ Do you hear me?”

  “I would think the whole house hears you.” Her eyes were smiling at him. He smiled back, bending to drop a quick kiss on her nose before reaching beneath her head to begin pulling pins from her hair.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Starting the transformation with your hair. You have beautiful hair, Sarah. It’s a crime to screw it back in this ugly bun. I won’t have it.”

  “I’m not answerable to you, sir,” she mocked him, smiling.

  “Are you not, now? You will be—when you marry me.” The words were smug.

  Sarah looked up into the handsome face bent so closely over her own, not quite daring to believe that this wonderful thing could be true, that he could love her and want to marry her and that she could actually be planning to go against every prejudice she’d ever been taught and marry him, the most handsome, charming, wonderful man she had ever known—but a convict, nonetheless. . . . Her father would hit the roof, Sarah knew. It was possible that they would have to leave Lowella for good. But Sarah knew that if she was forced to choose between Lowella and Dominic, there was no longer a contest. She would choose Dominic every time, without regret.