For a long moment, she said nothing else. Her eyes were fixed on the bottle, lost in her memories. The widow’s story confirmed his suspicion that this part of the coast was no stranger to trade in illicit goods, an excellent place to be rid of famous gems that would have proved difficult to fence in town—at least, without the necessary connections. His own eyes wandered over the items that made up the room’s scant remaining furniture: a battered washtub, a three-legged stool, and a cupboard with peeling green paint.
It seemed hard to imagine Sarah had succeeded.
If he could have looked at her life in Haverhythe and seen only emptiness—the separation from her family, the run-down cottage, the sparse contents of her trunk—he would have said simply that her plan had failed. But in truth, her life here was full. The Fishermen’s Relief Fund. The festival. The respect and concern of the people of the village, everyone from the baker to the vicar. The sturdy affection of a woman like Martha Potts, who had cause to trust no one.
And, of course, a happy, healthy child.
Perhaps Sarah had succeeded, after all. And perhaps her successes had nothing to do with a dark-haired rogue or a missing sapphire necklace, and everything to do with the true character of a woman he had sworn he could never love.
Wishing he had not already drained his glass, St. John scraped his chair across the floor and stood.
“And I don’t know why Mrs. Fairfax seen fit to up and leave you,” Mrs. Potts continued, roused by his movement. “All I know is that she—unlike John Potts, God rest his soul—was smart enough to cut loose of something that was pullin’ her under.”
He met Mrs. Potts’s steady gaze. He understood, finally, what the old woman meant to suggest with these cryptic phrases. She was implying that he bore the responsibility for Sarah’s decision to run away. If he could have brought himself to care for the woman his father had demanded he marry, “been satisfied with what he had in front o’ himself,” Sarah would have had no cause to “cut loose.”
The widow’s accusation meshed quite nicely with Sarah’s words on the quay about her determination to stay in Haverhythe, rather than going to Bristol and risk being forced to return to him.
And all of it fit with his growing doubt about what had really happened the night of the nuptial ball.
“I believe we understand one another,” he said.
“I hope so, young man.” The widow, too, rose to her feet and jerked her chin sharply in the direction of the kitchen door. “Follow the path up the hill and you’ll find her.”
St. John reached the door in two steps, but hesitated when his hand touched the latch. What did he mean to do with Sarah when he caught up with her?
As the widow retreated into her room beneath the stairs, cradling the brandy bottle along one arm, she looked back over her shoulder. “Like to be rough waters tonight. Take care, young man.”
He nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. I intend to.”
* * *
It was not difficult to see where Sarah had gone, despite the growing dusk.
The rain had stopped, but raindrops still clung to every branch and blade of grass—all but those that had been brushed by her skirts in passing. He found her at the crest of the hill, where the path ended at a ramshackle stone cottage. The door—wide, rough-hewn planks held together by rusted nails—stood open, and he could see into the single room, where Sarah stood at an unglazed window looking down on the sea, her fingers working the fringe of the shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
St. John stopped on the threshold. “Am I intruding?”
“There are no hiding places in Haverhythe,” she murmured, turning luminous eyes on him.
She motioned for him to enter, and he ducked through the low doorway, glancing about at the abandoned cottage. The room was surprisingly dry; the thatched roof might have been the last solid part of the place, however. Whatever furnishings there had once been were gone. All that remained was a low shelf built into the wall, which might have served the place of table, chair, or even bed, and the stone ring of a fire pit long cold. His eyes followed the smudge of smoke up the wall to the window opening that had been its only escape.
Sarah was watching him.
“What is this place?”
She shrugged. “No one seems to remember. A watch post of some sort, I suppose.” She gestured out to the sea. “Even on a gray day, the view is quite spectacular.”
He stepped beside her and looked down on the village, the quay, and the fishing boats drawing into the harbor, mere specks of light against the darkening water. The familiar peace of the spot called to something deep within him, something he believed had been destroyed long years ago.
“Whatever you think of me, I am not a monster, Sarah,” he said at last. “To suggest that I would endanger a child for my own selfish ends, would stand aside and do nothing, while—”
He stopped, unable even to utter such a flawed defense. After all, had he not been guilty of precisely that crime once before: failing to act while a child’s life hung in the balance?
“Forgive me.” She broke into his thoughts before he could give them voice. “I spoke in haste. I am . . . overwhelmed. Please do not think me anything but grateful to you for saving her life. I am glad you were here,” she insisted, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. “You even knew how to revive her.”
“I did not know for certain,” he admitted. “I had only seen it done. But what I saw was not something I was likely to forget . . .” He hesitated, pushing back against the memories that threatened to break free of the shackles in which he had long contained them. A wrinkle of curiosity sketched across her brow, but he shook his head. “It is not a story fit for a lady’s ears.”
Sarah’s eyes darted away. “You forget, perhaps, that I’m no lady.”
He tipped his head to the side, considering. He had once said as much to his father, certain Sarah could never be a proper wife for him. But Haverhythe had shown him that, lady or not, she was a strong woman, strong enough to hear what he suddenly found he needed to say.
“It happened early one morning shortly after I had arrived in Antigua.” The words rushed past his lips, eager to taste freedom at last. “I was walking near the docks on my way to my rooms when I heard an uproar and turned to see what was happening. A slave woman was climbing onto the deck railing of a slaver bound for Barbados.”
She faced him again, eyes wide with disbelief. “Climbing onto a slave ship? Why on earth would she do such a thing?”
“Her child was aboard the ship,” he answered quietly, another part of him loath to share this nightmare with someone else, knowing the stain it would leave on Sarah’s memory would not clear his own soul. “I learned later that her master, the child’s father, was selling the boy away—at his wife’s insistence. While a crowd gathered to watch, the woman managed to get on board the vessel, find the child, and—and cast him into the harbor.”
Sarah’s arm slackened in his grasp.
“There are countless ways for an idle young man to waste time in the islands, and most of the crew of that ship had spent the night in the pub, as I had. They were caught off guard. The men scrambled to get into the water—”
“To rescue the child?” she asked hopefully.
He debated whether to allow her cherish such an illusion. “Yes,” he admitted at last. “Just as they might have attempted to retrieve any other bit of valuable cargo that had happened to fall overboard.”
Although she tried to suppress it, he could feel the shiver that passed through her frame.
“And then, before my eyes, the woman jumped in herself. To no one’s surprise, she made no further effort to swim, to save herself or the child. But the crew managed to fish them out and attempted to revive them.”
“And?” Sarah prompted when he paused. He knew she was thinking of Clarissa.
“They were . . . unsuccessful. The crowd broke up and went their separate ways, almost as if nothing had happened.”
“I went back to the pub and—and tried to wash away the memory,” he concluded with a shake of his head.
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was an unfeeling monster. And perhaps that ugly truth was not to be regretted—after all, feeling caused nothing but trouble and pain.
“And did you succeed?” she asked.
“No.” The word passed his lips reluctantly. “Try as I might, I never could.” He dropped his hand and turned away, unwilling to hold Sarah’s steady gaze.
“It would be worse if you had,” she insisted.
“But I might have done something.”
“You did.” She brushed his sleeve with her fingertips and then pulled back again. “You let that woman choose her fate. And then you saved Clarissa with what you learned that day. Let those things wipe away a bit of your guilt.”
“Can guilt ever really be expunged?”
God knew, he had tried. That very day, he had sought out the young Scottish physician with whom he had crossed the Atlantic. Shortly after St. John had boarded the ship bound for Antigua, Murray had offered to stitch up the gash on his face, never asking any questions, and the two men had become friends of a sort. When St. John told him what he had witnessed in the harbor, Murray had introduced him to his employer, Edward Cary, a sugar planter’s agent with an unusual reputation for compassion in a cruel place. Under Cary’s watchful eye, St. John had served for more than two years, laboring, learning, longing to repay a debt he had never intended to incur.
Her lips quirked in a wry smile. “Once a thief, always a thief?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded in agreement. “Something like that.”
“Yes, I believe guilt can be wiped away.” Her gaze traveled toward the window and the dark water beyond. “If you are truly penitent.”
After a long moment, she spoke again. “I saw one once, you know.” She darted a glance toward him, but she did not quite meet his eyes. “A slave ship. In the docks near Papa’s office. It was dreadful.”
He wondered how much she knew about her father’s business endeavors. When seemingly every ship in Antigua’s harbors had had some Bristol connection, St. John had been forced to confront the likely source of his wife’s dowry—the sale, if not of human flesh, then certainly of the goods slave labor produced.
Three years in Antigua had forced him to consider how much of his own life—and the lives of almost everyone he knew—had been made possible by the inhuman toil and suffering of others. It had been a most uncomfortable reckoning.
“Papa denied having any hand in the trade himself,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “I suppose I was naïve to have believed him.”
“Not naïve,” he said. “Innocent.”
Somewhere beyond, a branch snapped, underscoring his words like the crack of a judge’s gavel. Sarah’s outward flinch echoed his own inner reaction.
Sarah . . . innocent? What a preposterous thing to have said!
Wasn’t it?
He had come to Devonshire seeking proof of her guilt, intending to force his father to see the error of his ways, hoping for a chance to reclaim his freedom, his life. But what if he never found that proof? What if he were beginning to suspect it had never existed?
Worse, what if he were no longer certain he wanted to find it, even if it had?
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Night air was creeping along the ground and up the cottage’s stone walls. “It’s getting late. I should see you home.” He pushed away from the window and stepped to the center of the small room, inches away from where she stood, but not quite touching her. Although his eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom, soon it would be too dark to see, too dark to look into the depths of Sarah’s eyes and read what was written there.
Perhaps that would be for the best. He did not know whether he could bear to see her suspicion or her disdain. And given their history, it seemed unlikely to be anything more welcoming.
Still, he could not keep from speaking. “Before we go back, though, there’s one piece of business we left unfinished.”
He could swear she was holding her breath. Did that kiss haunt her the way it haunted him?
He had kissed her before, of course. Surely he had. It was simply not possible that his lips had not touched hers at some point during their brief courtship or after their marriage. After all, they had made—
No. He scrupled to claim, even in the privacy of his thoughts, that they had made love. He had seen to it that their marriage was consummated, as duty required. If Sarah’s long legs and soft skin had tempted him to linger over the act, he had not given in to temptation. And when his father had made it amply clear to him that duty also required he beget an heir, he had gone to Sarah each night and planted his seed, as perfunctorily as possible, feeling almost as if his father had been standing beside the bed, arms folded, watching to see that the deed was done.
The intimacy, the tenderness, of a kiss had not been required.
The last of the daylight shimmered through her thick brown hair, which was knotted with uncharacteristic looseness at the nape of her neck. One tendril had pulled free of its pins entirely, and when she tipped her head in an unspoken question, the soft curl shone invitingly. He reached out and lifted it with his fingertips, his knuckles grazing the turn of her throat.
Days ago he had decided to play at wooing his wife.
When had he ceased acting?
“Oh,” she gasped, backing away toward the window, jerking the lock of hair from his grasp.
He dropped his hand to his side. “My apologies. I did not mean to startle you.”
“It’s all right. Foolishness, really.” Trembling fingers traveled absently along her collarbone, and she shivered. “It’s just that you reminded me of—of a dream I had.”
Nearby, a cricket chirped, and from somewhere farther beyond, he heard the trill of a nightingale. He hesitated. But there was no mistaking the look in her smoky, heavy-lidded eyes. Sensual awareness rippled through his chest and settled in his loins. “A dream.” He reached up to twist the wayward curl around his finger again. “About me?”
Her chin dipped ever so slightly, the movement almost lost against the twilit landscape framed by the window behind her. A whisper passed her lips as her eyelids fell.
“Yes.”
Chapter 12
The night air whisked the word away. Behind closed eyes, Sarah waited, wondering if he would accept her forward—and undoubtedly foolish—invitation.
She had built a life in Haverhythe. She had friends. She had her child. She had purpose. But none of those things entirely quieted the longing deep inside her, the longing for something she could not quite name.
“Dreams have their pleasures,” he murmured, leaning closer, his breath warm at her ear. “But none to rival flesh and blood.”
Then his mouth found hers, his lips firm and demanding, almost as if there were something of which he hoped to persuade her—or himself. Gone was any pretense of gentleness or uncertainty. He touched her nowhere other than her lips and that loose lock of hair, and when she tried to back away, to retain some measure of control over her actions, if not her heart, the curl he had wrapped around his finger grew taut, drawing her back to him. Her scalp prickled, not with pain, but with the awareness that she was bound to him.
And for the moment, at least, she wished to be nowhere else.
Was it wrong to want him?
Unwise, certainly.
But in this moment, he was a mistake she was willing to make.
He traced the curve of her upper lip with a string of kisses, then nibbled and nipped his way along the lower, drawing its plumpness into his mouth and suckling when she gave a soft gasp of surprise. As if it were the opening he had long awaited, he slipped his tongue between her parted lips, teasing and tickling the soft flesh before setting up a steady rhythm of thrusting, drawing his tongue along the roof of her mouth, evoking another, far more
intimate act of penetration.
In that moment Sarah realized that although she was a wife and mother, she was totally, utterly ignorant of what happened—of what could happen—between a man and a woman. The kiss they had shared in Primrose Cottage had been the comforting glow of a flickering candle. This was wildfire, licking through the undergrowth, devouring everything in its path.
And with a groan, she kissed him back, matching the slick strokes of his tongue, exploring the corner of his mobile mouth, the sharp edge of his white teeth—tentatively at first, and then with relish—parrying with thrusts of her own, and swallowing the answering groan of pleasure they elicited. St. John lifted his other hand to frame her face, stilling her to his kiss, as if determined to maintain a rein on their passion.
But Sarah, equally determined, slipped the tether, raising her own hands to slide beneath his coats and skate along his shirtfront, feeling the sharp angle of his ribs, the muscled wall of his chest, and the pounding rhythm of his heart.
“Sarah,” he whispered, dragging his mouth away from hers and across her cheek. The scrape of his beard was a pleasant burn, and the heat of his breath in her ear was full of promise. She felt the rise and fall of his chest as he inhaled deeply, the ticklish flutter through her hair as he exhaled.
“Your scent, Sarah—I have to know what it is. You’ve been driving me mad with it for nearly a week.”
She might have laughed if she could have spared the breath.
“Bluebells,” she answered. “Or rather, soap infused with bluebells. Mrs. Kittery makes it.”
She felt his shoulders stiffen, felt his fingers tighten along her scalp, as if her explanation were somehow displeasing. Surely he could not disapprove of such a small indulgence?
Then he drew in another hungry breath and nuzzled beneath her ear. “Then I shall have to give her my compliments.”
To Kiss a Thief Page 12