I hurried after him, afraid, upset. He didn’t slow down, didn’t say a word when I finally caught up with him, didn’t even acknowledge my presence there at his side. Panic welled up within me as people streamed past us in noisy swarms, as music blared and raucous laughter rose. I tripped and almost fell and he stopped and grabbed my arm and looked down at me with dark brown eyes full of anger and bitterness and pain. His fingers squeezed my arm with bruising force, but he wasn’t even aware of it. He looked into my eyes with frightening intensity, and a long moment passed before he frowned and relaxed and released my arm.
“Go away, Angie,” he said, and his voice was stern. “I’m no good for you. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
“You—you heard what that man—”
“I heard. Take your doll. Go home. Find a good, respectable man and marry him and have a good, respectable life.”
“I—I don’t want that. I don’t want the doll, either.”
My voice trembled. A merry young girl in a sprigged yellow dress moved past on the arm of a husky lad with flaxen hair and roguish blue eyes, and I turned and gave the doll to her. Her eyes widened in surprise, then filled with delight when I told her I didn’t want the doll, it was hers. She stammered effusive thanks and then she and the lad moved on and I looked at Hugh Bradford. He stood there, silent, frowning again, the frown digging a deep groove above the bridge of his nose. The air between us was charged with an entirely new kind of tension.
“I—I told you earlier,” I said. “I’m much too big for dolls.”
His mouth curled at one corner. He looked at me for a long time before answering. Those brown eyes studied me, darkening almost black, and I knew what he was seeing, knew what he was thinking. It frightened me just a little, but I didn’t lower my own eyes.
“Yes,” he said at last, “it seems you’re all grown up now. Go home, Angie.”
“I love you. I think I’ve loved you for years.”
“You shouldn’t,” he warned.
I didn’t reply. My silence, my level gaze said more than words, and he finally shook his head and the frown disappeared and his face was expressionless again. In his tall black knee boots, his snug black breeches and loose white shirt with full, flowing sleeves gathered at the wrist, he looked like a pirate, I thought, that raven wave spilling over his brow like a slanted V, that lean, sharp face so deep a tan. The decision was mine, I knew that, and I knew that I should leave, now, while there was time, while there was still a choice. I knew that I should let him get on with his life and get on with my own, without him, but I couldn’t do that. There really wasn’t any choice. I looked at him. He knew.
“Shall we go?” he said.
I nodded, and he curled his arm around my shoulders again and we continued on past the tents and stalls, past the vendors, past the dance floor. I was nervous now, trembling inside, the old Angie longing to be safe at home, longing not to know the meaning of these new emotions that held me in thrall, but my step didn’t falter as I moved toward my destiny, for that was what it was … my destiny. I was destined to love this man, and I knew it would be futile to try to resist. I shouldn’t love him. He had told me so himself, but that didn’t matter. Common sense told me this was dangerous folly, but what I felt for him was too strong, too compelling, and I refused to listen.
We left the fairgrounds and started across a field, walking slowly, and I didn’t ask where we were going. I really didn’t care. I was with him, and the trembling ceased and the magic began anew, light and lovely inside me, a wonderful effervescent feeling as though I had imbibed the finest, the lightest champagne. I felt joyous and jubilant and might have been walking on air instead of over a vacant field brushed a soft silver by starlight. There was a light summer breeze, and my skirts billowed, as did the sleeves of his thin white cambric shirt. It was very warm. I could smell the faint perspiration on his skin, a musky male scent, could smell his thick hair and the scent of woodsmoke and leather.
The lights of the fair were far behind us now, a mere blur of colors on the horizon, the music so faint it was barely audible. The summer sky above us was a misty purple-gray shimmering with pale-silver stars, the earth silver-gray streaked with velvety-black shadows. A bell tinkled somewhere nearby. A cow lowed. There was a scent of hay and damp soil. Hugh still hadn’t said a word, and that was fine with me. I was content to walk beside him and feel his warmth and strength, his body lean and long, moving slowly in long, lazy strides. I rested my head against the arm curling across the back of my neck, reveling in the beauty of the night and the beauty inside. We came to a low gray stone wall and he stopped and caught me around the waist and lifted me up and over, and a moment later we started across another empty field. I could see haystacks in the distance and, on the horizon, the silhouette of a farmhouse.
“No one’s home,” he said.
“This is one of your tenant farms?”
“The Rawlins’. They’ve gone to spend a week with his brother in Surrey. I feed their livestock every day.”
“Father says you’ve done a wonderful job with the tenant farms. Do you like your work?”
“Someone has to do it.”
“I—that was tactless of me.”
“I’m sorry. I was terse. I shouldn’t take my bitterness out on you. I can be a real sod sometimes.”
“I know. I remember.”
“I remember, too. I remember a lively and saucy child with huge violet-gray eyes and dirt on her face and the vocabulary of a stevedore. I remember a moody, awkward adolescent ill at ease with herself and bewildered by the emotions inside her.”
“I—I must have been awful.”
“I thought of you often,” he said.
“Did you?” I asked quietly.
“I couldn’t get you out of my mind,” he told me. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “One day I saw you in the village with your father. You were coming out of the bookstore. It was market day, I remember, and I was supervising the sale of some of our produce. I saw you and I stared and I said to myself you had grown into a very fetching young woman.”
“But not as fetching as Solonge,” I said.
“Solonge?”
“Surely you remember Solonge.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“And how often did you think of her?” I asked. I couldn’t resist it.
“Not once,” he said. “That’s why you slapped me that time, isn’t it? You knew.”
“Not until you mentioned the turquoise dress.”
“She—”
“You needn’t explain,” I told him.
He didn’t. We sauntered on until we reached the haystacks, and then he stopped and uncurled his arm from around my shoulders and stepped back, resting his hands on his thighs. He looked thoughtful there in the starlight, a small frown furrowing his brow, his mouth spread wide, indecisive. His face was bathed in soft silver, lightly shadowed, and I could see the doubt, the hesitation in his eyes. I reached up and touched his cheek, resting my fingertips against it, and then I ran my forefinger along the curve of his lower lip, smiling a quiet smile, loving him so, longing to love him even more. He scowled. I loved his scowl.
“You’re not Solonge,” he said gruffly.
“I know.”
“I should take you home immediately.”
“But you won’t,” I said.
He folded his arms across his chest, scowling still, and he was silent for a long while. In the distance a cow lowed. The light summer breeze caressed my bare arms and cheeks like warm, invisible fingers, and a tendril of hair blew across my temple. He was brooding. He might have been alone. His face was harsh. The beauty of the night and the beauty inside me was so poignant I was near tears, but I didn’t cry. I smiled instead. The future had been a vast void before, an emptiness yawning before me, but now it beckoned, full of marvelous promise.
“There’s something I want you to know,” he told me. His voice was grim. “I’m not a bastard, Angie. My father married
my mother in Italy. I know it. One day I’m going to prove it. There was a nurse—her name was Maggie Clemson, I remember her well, although Lady Meredith discharged her when she came to Greystoné Hall. ‘It isn’t true, lamb,’ Maggie told me. ‘Your mother was a lovely lady and she married your father in the church, and this—this is a scandalous outrage. That woman has bewitched your father. A grave injustice is being done. A grave injustice.’ I was little more than an infant at the time, but those words were burned into my memory. ‘A grave injustice.’ Maggie left and I never saw her again, but—”
He cut himself short, staring angrily across the silvered field. Several moments passed before he spoke again.
“Greystone Hall should be mine, not Clinton’s. My own father has cheated me out of my inheritance. Better he should—better he should have given me to the gypsies than keep me on the estate so I could nourish my bitterness and hatred. How many times have I longed to kill him, kill her? There’s murder in my heart still.”
“Hugh—”
“One day, when I have the means, I intend to prove the truth, and then I will be worthy of you.”
“Worthy? You are worthy, Hugh. I don’t care about your birth, that isn’t import—”
“It’s important to me!”
“Of—of course it is,” I said quietly. “I—I didn’t mean—” I hesitated, groping for the right words. “It’s what you are that matters, not who you are or where you came from.”
“I’m taking you home, Angie.”
I shook my head. He was suffering. He was in pain. He had grown up as a pariah, an outcast, and he had never known love. I had love to give, sweet balm for those wounds, and I would not turn away from him now, even though he might try to drive me away. I took his hand. I held it tightly. He made no response. He might have been carved from stone. I wished I were experienced like Solonge, wished I knew what to do, what to say. I felt helpless, filled with longing, filled with love, not knowing how to express it. I stood there on the threshold, and I was frightened, trembling inside, but I knew I would take that final step, knew I must if I was not to lose him.
He took a deep breath and looked down at me and saw the love in my eyes. His face was like granite in the starlight, the V-shaped wave slanting across his brow. I let go of his hand and touched his cheek again. His chest rose as he took another deep breath, and his mouth tightened. His eyes were dark, full of indecision. I reached up and brushed the wave from his brow. It was heavy, silky to the touch, the hair spilling through my fingers and tumbling back into place immediately. He hesitated a moment longer, and then his eyes filled with tenderness and I knew he loved me, too, fight it though he might. He put an arm around my waist and pulled me to him and tilted his head. His lips parted, but he didn’t kiss me, not at first. He peered into my eyes, and in the soft starlight his own told me all those things he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud.
The arm around my waist tightened, drawing me closer still until my body was molded against his, and I curled my arms around him and ran my palms over his back, exploring the sculptured curves of muscle as they moved up to rest on his shoulders, feeling the warmth of skin beneath the thin white cloth of his shirt. My legs felt trembly, the back of my knees aching, and I clung to him as ivy might cling to oak, and the strength in that hard, lean body gave me strength and gave promise of pleasure I had never imagined. His dark eyes glowed. He touched my cheek with his fingertips and wrapped his long fingers around my chin and tilted my head back more and leaned forward, bending me at the waist. Lips still parted, he covered my mouth with his own, and the sensations inside were like tight buds that burst into blossom, filling me with splendor.
Often I had dreamed of such a kiss, but this, my first, made those insubstantial dreams seem the shadows they were, the reality of flesh on flesh causing a delirium of delight. Warm and moist, his lips tenderly caressed my own, pressing gently, probing, firm, growing more and more insistent, demanding the response I instinctively gave. He made a sound deep in his throat, a guttural moan, and then he slung his free arm around my back and held me tighter still, swinging me in his arms as his lips continued to caress and then crushed, his need aroused, tenderness turning to torment he must assuage. I seemed to soar into a void of violent pleasure, and the delirium mounted moment by moment until nothing existed but this man, this magic, this miraculous new world of sensation exploding within me.
An eternity passed, yet all too soon he withdrew his lips, and I caught my breath, gasping, and then he buried his lips in the soft curve of my throat and my fingers clutched the cloth of his shirt at the shoulders and my knees seemed to buckle beneath me and I would have fallen had he not held me tightly against him. I threw my head back, my hair spilling behind me in heavy waves, and the pale silver stars shimmered in the sky above and seemed to shimmer inside me as well. I ran my fingers through his hair and clutched it, tugging at the strong silky strands until he lifted his head and looked at me with burning black eyes and then slammed his mouth over mine once more, the second kiss a savage expression of need now bursting its bounds.
He leaned forward and curled an arm around the back of my knees and scooped me up into his arms and cradled me against his chest and I wound my arms around his neck and hid my face in the curve of his shoulder and he carried me over to the nearest haystack and set me down in the hay and then stepped back. The hay rustled noisily, so soft, smelling so sweet, welcoming my weight, and I sank into its softness and looked up at the man who stood before me with hands on hips, silhouetted against the misty purple-gray sky full of pale silver stars. I was limp, had no will, no strength, seemed to have melted, and I closed my eyes and still saw the stars etched against my eyelids as I reeled in darkness and cried silently for a surcease of these sensations that surely soon would tear me asunder. I caught my breath and opened my eyes and he was still there before me as tall as a tree, looming there, and my throat tightened and I was afraid, terribly afraid, fear eclipsing all those other emotions as he hooked his thumbs under the waistband of his breeches and tugged and the breeches slid down and his manhood sprang free, throbbing with a life of its own, it seemed, ready to rend and ravish.
No, no, no. I must run. I must flee. I mustn’t let it happen for it wasn’t a dream, not this time, no, it was real and he was real and I was trembling with fear. I loved him, yes, yes, and yes, I wanted him, but the fear took over and drove away the magic and the limpness left and I felt my body tightening and I grew stiff all over, my limbs like wood, and I felt cold, very cold, as though my blood had turned to ice. I wanted to cry out and tell him to stop, to leave, to let me be, but my throat was tight and constricted and it wasn’t possible to squeeze the words out. Icy, immobile, I looked at him and looked at that throbbing, swollen tool and somehow managed to shake my head and utter a cry that was a wordless whimper, barely audible.
He did not remove his clothes. He spread his legs wide and then he kneeled over me, a knee on either side of my thighs, and I was like wood, like ice, and he looked at me and saw my fear and frowned but it was too late now, he couldn’t draw back, not now, not with that urgent need, swollen and throbbing, demanding release as, before the fear, a like need had filled me. He leaned back on his knees, his face harsh, and then he touched my cheek and I cringed, hay rustling, and he was angry, determined. Cold tears brimmed over my lashes. He touched them with his fingertips and then he leaned over and kissed them away. His lips were moist, warm, gentle, moving over my face, brushing my brow, my lids, my cheeks, finally resting lightly over my own. He was there hovering over me, hard and brutal, and the tender kisses were but a ploy, a prelude to that horror that would inevitably follow. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Every vestige of warmth had ebbed away and there was nothing now but ice and wood and fear.
He kissed my throat and murmured soft words but the silent cries inside made them meaningless to me. I tried to sit up, tried to get away and he scowled and shoved me back into the hay and held me firmly by the shoulders and the
n continued to brush his lips over my throat as his hands tugged at the cloth of my bodice, pulling it down, tugged at the petticoat beneath, pulling it down, too, and my breasts were exposed and he touched them lightly with his fingertips, exploring their shape. Lightly, gently, and with the greatest of care, he squeezed my nipples and they began to throb and swell and tiny threads of warmth began to radiate from them, spreading, growing, melting the ice. He scooted down and began to kiss my breasts, his lips brushing, burning my skin, and of its own accord my hand lifted and touched the back of his head as the thaw continued and the fear began to recede, slowly, slowly, bit by bit.
He sat back up on his knees again and looked down at me and smiled and then shifted position again and removed my shoes and lifted my skirts as the hay made music beneath me, rustling softly, as the warm summer breeze caressed my breasts as he had caressed them moments ago. He took my left foot in his hand and began to massage it, flexing it, caressing the instep with his other hand, and then he made a circle with his hands and moved it up my calf, palms and fingers warm and leathery as they moved up, up, squeezing, encircling my knee now, then spreading and caressing my thigh, fingers pressing, fingertips digging into the soft flesh that began to glow and tingle, and the tingle spread throughout me, in my blood, in my bones, a delicious, delectable torture that grew and grew and grew until I could feel a warm fountain within, brimming, brimming, soon to brim over, I knew, soon to drown me in a flood of pleasure.
Fear was gone now, gone completely, and I made a soft moaning noise as his hands continued their sweet torture. I writhed on the hay and it made more music beneath me and there was music inside me too as his fingers fanned out, tenderly touching that secret area. I closed my eyes and listened to the music and drifted in a blissful void, reeling, it seemed, floating far, far away, and then I heard him move and felt his knees on either side of my thighs again and he was atop me then and I felt his weight pinioning me and there was another moment of panic and I struggled but he held me fast with his body, crushing me beneath him with brutal strength. He shifted again and forced me to spread my legs and then I felt his manhood as it touched the opening, entering carefully, slowly, slowly, becoming a part of me.
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