Dark Torment

by Karen Robards

  Sarah could lie abed no longer. Agitated by her thoughts, and by the realization that she—she, spinster Sarah!—would in a few months be the mother of a child, she had to be up and doing. For now, she decided as she dressed, she would keep her secret to herself. She would not even tell Dominic until she had decided what was best to be done. Undoubtedly he would be as appalled as herself; just as undoubtedly he would try to take charge of the situation, and Sarah was not yet settled enough in her own mind to allow herself to be taken charge of.

  The dress she chose was of amber muslin, a fine, floaty material that moved easily about her legs as she descended the stairs. It was trimmed with satin ribbons in a dull gold color that brightened her hair and brought out the color of her eyes. Beneath it she wore her plain underthings right down to her practical cotton stockings. She still could not feel at ease wearing filmy, feminine frivolities where no one could see. Then Dominic’s darkly handsome face appeared in her mind’s eye. Perhaps she would have to give feminine underwear a chance, too, when her body had returned to its normal shape after the baby was born.

  As Sarah busied herself about the house, directing the maids on a cleaning spree of the sort that usually occurred only once a year, she thought of little but the changes that were in store for her body—and her life. Unbelievable to think that in just a few months she would be a wife and mother. How her life had changed—would change! And all because of a devilishly handsome Irish convict who had come into her life by merest chance and stayed to utterly consume it. Sarah shook her head, marveling at the vagaries of fate. The miraculous had occurred: she had fallen in love, and was expecting her lover’s baby.

  “Miss Sarah, it’s almost dinnertime.” Mary’s voice brought Sarah out of her rapt contemplation. She looked at the maids, both of whom were drooping with weariness, then out the window of the front parlor which had just been thoroughly cleaned. Through the sparkling glass she saw that the sun was low, sending long feelers of bright pink and orange shooting across the darkening sky. It was indeed almost time for dinner. The men would soon be returning to the house, and Mrs. Abbott would have ready Dominic’s tray, which Sarah would carry up to him and remain to share.

  “You girls go on and wash up. I’ll just finish here.” Sarah sent the maids on their way with a smile and a wave of the feather duster she held. When they were gone, she continued to wield the duster over the collection of glass ornaments on the mantel. Looking down at the grate, black and cold now, she was reminded that it would soon be winter. By the time the first snow fell, she would be Mrs. Dominic Gallagher, and her stomach would be big with child.

  “Miss Sarah!” The resonant male voice made her jump. Turning with a faint frown on her face at having been jolted from her thoughts, she saw that Percival had entered the room and stood, dusty hat in hand, smiling at her. If he was home, then her father must be, too.

  “Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Percival,” Sarah replied vaguely, as she set down the feather duster and reached up to untie the scarf that had protected her hair. This was not the first time she had seen Percival since learning of what he had nearly succeeded in doing to Dominic. But, for her father’s sake, she had swallowed her animosity and been, if not cordial, at least civil. She had to force herself not to remember the healing weals on Dominic’s back. . . . Percival watched her movements with deepening interest, though Sarah was barely conscious of the expression in his eyes. “Please excuse me. I must wash my hands and face before dinner. I’m afraid I forgot the time.” She moved toward him as she spoke, intending to go straight up to her bedroom.

  “Sarah, wait.” He stopped her with his hand on her arm. Sarah stared down at that stubby hand with some surprise as it rested on her bare skin, and tried to shake it off. He released her at once, but still stood in front of her, blocking her path.

  Sarah’s eyes moved to his ruddy face. She gave him a darkening frown. “What is it you want of me, Mr. Percival? I’ve already told you that I’m late.” Her tone was cool.

  “Sarah . . .” Her face tightened at the familiar address, which she had often forbidden to him, but she decided for the sake of family harmony not to make an issue out of it. He continued, his voice thickening, “I haven’t told you—you’re looking very good lately. Very pretty.”

  “Why, thank you.” Sarah smiled, relaxing a little. Compliments were still so new to her that she considered every one a delightful present. Percival smiled back at her, which did not improve his coarse features. His eyes were a darker hazel than usual as they ran over her. Sarah shifted impatiently, eager to be on her way. Dominic would be growing hungry. . . .

  Percival cleared his throat. “Sarah,” he began in a low, intimate tone. “I just wanted to assure you that your infatuation with that convict makes no difference to things between us. I know he’s kissed you, maybe done even more, and I just wanted to tell you that I won’t hold it against you. I won’t be constantly throwing your indiscretion in your face when you’re my wife, I promise you.”

  “Why, that’s very generous of you, Mr. Percival.” Despite herself, Sarah had to laugh at the absurdity of it. “But, as I’ve told you before—many times before—I have not the slightest intention of becoming your wife. Ever.”

  Percival stiffened. His eyes narrowed, darkened still further. His hand came back up to grasp her arm. Sarah tried to shake him off again, but this time he refused to release her.

  “I know what it is, it’s that convict,” he gritted. “But there’s no future for you with him, no matter how much you might be enjoying his bed. I can marry you, give you children. You’ll be glad to settle for that in the end.”

  “I don’t have to settle for anything,” Sarah replied icily. Then she hesitated. But she had to break the news of her wedding plans soon—in fact, immediately, in light of recent developments—and who better to begin with than this man whom for years she had been longing to take down a peg or two? She smiled in anticipation, “You see, I’m going to have just exactly what I’ve always wanted. I’m going to marry Dominic.”

  Percival looked stunned. Shock momentarily silenced him. Then angry color began to mount in his face. Sarah was tugging at her arm, trying to wrench free of him, but his fingers tightened so fiercely that she gave an involuntary gasp.

  “You’d choose that convict—over me?” he sounded as if he would choke. The words were fierce, his voice guttural. “You’d marry him—a convict—over me? Oh no you won’t! I’ve been too gentle with you, you haughty little bitch, but I see my mistake now. That prissy air of yours was always an act, wasn’t it? The truth is, as that convict found out, you like men. Well, I’m more man than he is! As you’re going to find out!”

  “Let me go!” The words were shrill with outrage and growing alarm as Percival hauled her against him, his arms wrapping around her like thick vines, locking her to his body, which was muscular despite his stockiness.

  Sarah writhed frantically, trying to get free, but he only laughed low in his throat and caught her head with his hand in her hair, his fingers digging hurtfully into her scalp as he held her still for his kiss. The touch of those thick lips on hers, the greedy rape of his mouth, was nauseating. Sarah fought like a wild thing, her sharp, shrill cries escaping into his mouth as she kicked him and beat at his head with her fists. He only held her tighter, kissing her with a kind of insulting ferocity that filled her suddenly with fear. Dear God, did he mean to rape her? Even as she had the thought, one of his arms slid all the way around her body so that his hand could grapple clumsily for her breast. Sarah’s heart seemed to stop with horror. Then she kicked at him furiously, managing to tear her mouth away from his long enough to scream. . . .

  “What the bloody hell?” the angry growl was Dominic’s. Sarah had barely registered that before Percival was being torn away from her and sent crashing across the room by Dominic’s fist against his jaw.

  Percival crashed into a small table, overturning it so that the delicate china figurines on it were dashed to pieces on
the floor, and fell heavily atop the shards.

  “Are you all right? Did he hurt you, the bloody bastard?” Dominic’s voice was still thick with fury as he turned to Sarah. His handsome face was dark with rage, and a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “If he did, I’ll kill him.”

  Sarah saw with alarm that he meant it, and grabbed at his arm. “Dominic, no! I’m all right! He didn’t . . .”

  She never got to finish. A roar from behind her interrupted, causing her eyes to widen as she turned instinctively to seek the sound’s source. Dominic thrust her aside just as she realized that Percival was back on his feet and charging Dominic. . . .

  Dominic, an ugly snarl twisting his face, caught him with the same uppercut that had felled Minger all those weeks ago in the bush. It had the same effect on Percival. The burly overseer went hurtling backwards. . . .

  “What’s going on in here? Sarah! John! What’s happening?” This new voice was her father’s. Sarah turned to him with blatant relief. Surely, now that he was here, Percival would not press his attack any further.

  “That damned convict attacked me!” Percival got his say in first from his half-sitting, half-prone position on the floor. The remains of a flower arrangement peeked incongruously from beneath the seat of his dusty brown breeches.

  “He did not! He . . . !” Sarah came hotly to Dominic’s defense. Dominic frowned at her, but since Sarah knew him well enough to know that he would say nothing in his own defense unless asked directly, she was determined to present to her father the truth of what had happened. “Percival . . . !”

  But Percival’s enraged bellow drowned out her voice. “Damn you to hell, Markham, I told you that convict was nothing but trouble! I told you that I was right to beat him for daring to touch Sa—Miss Sarah. But you wouldn’t listen, would you? And now you know what’s come of it? Have you heard her plans?” He laughed, the sound nasty. “She says she’s going to marry that damned convict!”

  Sarah saw Dominic stiffen, and stepped hastily to his side to place a restraining hand on his arm. It would be best if he stayed silent, let her handle her father. . . . Edward’s head swiveled around so that he was staring at her. His face was suddenly gray, his eyes bulging at her.

  “Is that so, daughter?” His voice was hoarse, his breathing labored. Groping behind him, he rested his hand on a polished tabletop as if he needed its support. Sarah felt sorry for him, but the moment could not be put off any longer.

  “Yes, Pa. I’m going to marry him.” Dominic’s eyes touched her face in a brief caress before shifting to fasten again on her father. Edward was staring at her, his lips pale.

  “I won’t permit it.”

  Sarah’s lips tightened and her chin came up. Dominic would have spoken, intervening between father and daughter to draw the onus on himself, but Sarah’s fingers tightening around his arm stayed him.

  “You can’t stop me, Pa.”

  He closed his eyes, visibly wincing. Then he opened them again to regard her with pain.

  “Sarah, Sarah, I am thinking only of your good. I won’t allow you to marry this—man. I’ll take whatever measures I have to, to prevent such a disgrace from befalling you.”

  “It won’t be a disgrace, Pa, but a blessing. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me, short of locking me away in chains.”

  “If I have to.” Edward sounded infinitely tired.

  Sarah shook her head. “If you do, Pa, you’ll only be letting me—and yourself—in for worse disgrace.” Sarah hesitated, swallowed, shooting a lightning glance from her father’s ashen face to Dominic’s watchful one. Then she plunged ahead. “Because I’m with child, Pa. Dominic’s child.”

  Three pairs of male eyes seemed to burn holes in her face.

  XXVII

  It should have been a happy occasion. Usually brides were married amid lace and flowers, smiles and kisses. But Sarah’s wedding more nearly resembled a wake.

  She wore a simple silk dress that had once been her mother’s. Jane Markham’s wedding dress was stored in the attic, wrapped carefully in clean sheets, but under the circumstances, Sarah had not wanted to wear it. She felt that it would have hurt her father too much. But Dominic had insisted that the color of her gown be white—after all, as he reminded her in one of their few exchanges since that dreadful scene in the front parlor, she had been a virgin when she first came to him, and that was what counted.

  Her father seemed to turn into an old man before her eyes as he watched her become Mrs. Dominic Gallagher. He was old, Sarah realized as she glanced at him over her shoulder as the priest spoke the words that would bind her to Dominic forever. Her father was nearing sixty. . . .

  Lydia was present, a spitefully amused light in her eyes as she witnessed what she regarded as her stepdaughter’s ultimate fall from grace. Liza stood beside her mother near the hearth in the front parlor, her eyes huge and a little fearful as she watched Sarah wed a convict. Both ladies were dressed in mauve—the color of light mourning, though Sarah was determined to think that it was not a deliberate choice, at least on Liza’s part.

  Dominic was dressed in a black frock coat and gray breeches. His cravat was snowy white, and he looked so handsome that his appearance was the one bright spot in Sarah’s day. The clothes had belonged to Sarah’s father, and Mrs. Abbott had labored prodigiously to alter them to fit. She did not witness the ceremony—Lydia and Liza had said pointedly that they would find business elsewhere if the woman stood in the front parlor with the family—but Sarah knew that she was in the kitchen even as the vows were being said, putting the final touches on a towering white cake that Sarah hadn’t the heart to tell her no one wanted.

  Since the scene that had occurred in the very room in which they were now being wed, Dominic had been unlike himself. He seldom smiled and never laughed. His eyes were very dark, almost brooding. Sarah had tried to get him to talk to her, to tell her what was wrong—she was afraid that he was unhappy about the baby—but he would not. He would merely look at her out of those hooded eyes and ignore her question. Sarah didn’t know whether to shake him, throw something at him, or burst into tears at his feet. In the end, she did nothing. After the ceremony there would be time enough to get to the bottom of what ailed him.

  “Do you, Sarah Jane Elizabeth Markham . . .” The priest was addressing her now, intoning the age-old words of the marriage service. Sarah’s hands were icy cold as she gripped the Bible that she held instead of flowers; when it came time to respond, her voice was equally cold and clear. The crystalline pureness of her words surprised her. Inside, she was a trembling mass of nerves.

  The priest turned to Dominic. Without so much as a glance at his bride, Dominic said the words that would make her his wife. Sarah stared at his profile as he did so, suddenly not sure that she knew this tall, black-haired, incredibly handsome stranger. With his hair neatly brushed, and his fashionable clothes, he looked impossibly remote, not at all like the man she had fought with, bedded, and loved. Until the priest pronounced them man and wife, that is, and he turned to look at her at last. Even after a thousand years had passed Sarah thought she could not mistake those Irish blue eyes.

  His lips as they touched hers in the obligatory kiss were as cool and remote as his manner. He smiled afterward when Edward, with the determined air of one who has made up his mind to make the best of a bad situation, offered a toast to the newlyweds’ health. Sarah smiled too, as mirthlessly as Dominic, as the priest added his congratulations. The cake was brought out and cut, another toast was drunk, and the wedding was over. And Sarah’s new husband had not spoken a word to her.

  Mrs. Abbott had returned to the kitchen after bringing in the cake, Liza and Lydia had drifted off to their rooms for the afternoon naps so necessary to their beauty, and the priest had taken himself off in Mrs. Abbott’s wake, lured by the promise of a hot meal. Left alone with his daughter and new son-in-law, Edward swallowed the wine left in his glass in a single g
ulp, set the glass down with a purposeful click on a polished sideboard, and crossed the room to where Dominic stood.

  “Gallagher, you know that I don’t like the idea of my daughter being married to you. I think it very possible that the silly puss has ruined her life.” During this speech, Dominic’s eyes rose from their contemplation of his wine-glass to regard his father-in-law with a darkening frown. Edward continued, “But, be that as it may, what’s done is done and you and Sarah are married now. And about to make me a grandfather, I guess. So . . .” He held up a hand as Dominic, his dark face hard, started to speak. Dominic obligingly held his tongue while the older man finished. “So I want you to know that as far as I am concerned we’re starting with a clean slate. As my daughter’s husband, you are welcome to remain with her on Lowella for as long as you will.”

  “Thank you, sir, but . . .” Dominic’s face had changed, become less shuttered as Edward completed his speech, but the negative attitude was clearly there in his look. Sarah, coming up to them with a package that Tess had just given her, heard the last part of her father’s words and the beginning of Dominic’s reply. He was going to refuse, she knew. But Edward waved him into silence.

  “I know there’s a lot still between us, but I think for the sake of my daughter and grandchild, your wife and child, we could work it out. All I ask is that you think about it. You would be a free man, of course. I’ve already had my man in Canberra petition our new governor, Sir George Gipps, for commutation of your sentence. I have every reason to believe that it will be speedily granted. And with Percival leaving as he did—no, I’m not blaming you for that, but there’s no denying that he left because you were marrying elsewhere—” This aside was addressed to Sarah, who had been looking guilty; she knew as well as anyone how much Edward had depended on Percival. Edward’s gaze shifted back to Dominic. “I need an overseer. If you want it, the job is yours.”