“This valley was here before the English came, Mr. Flint, and it will be here when they leave.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Surely you’re not referring to me?” She glared in response.
He clucked his tongue, his hand slipping even lower. He would have cradled her breast had she not stopped him with an angry gesture. A moment later, his left hand cupped her chin gently, lifted her face and turned it to study her profile. “Marvelous. Absolutely marvelous.”
“From anyone else, that would be a compliment.”
She thought she’d pushed him too far when a flash of anger crossed his brow, but it was gone when he replaced the frown with a smile that had no depth, held no emotion, was no more sincere than those she’d seen on the face of her late husband.
“An answer,” he insisted.
“You’ve had it for months.”
“Are you sure, Caitlin? Are you absolutely sure life would be so bad with me?” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “We did have a time, you know. One short, marvelous time back there in Eton. Did… did that repel you so?”
“It does now.”
“Ah,” he said quickly, “but it did not then, did it?” His hands dropped away, back to her shoulders. “And if it did not once, it may not again.”
“You beguile yourself, Mr. Flint.”
“I know myself, Lady Morgan.”
She turned without warning on the stool, forcing him back a step. “Mr. Flint, you have come to learn if I will marry you or not. I will not. You have heard my answer, you know I will not change my mind, and you know I understand full well what I am letting myself into. Now, if you would be so kind as to leave me…”
Flint stared for a moment she thought unbearably long, then took hold of her arms and pulled her to her feet. She held her head back, but he did not try to kiss her. Instead, he pulled her out of the room, through the vanity and into the reception room where a small window faced the valley. He dragged her to it, his strides so long she had to run to keep her balance. Then he virtually threw her against the sill and pointed.
“There!” he said. “What do you see there?”
She looked through the panes only briefly, not wanting to turn away from him. “Night,” she said, simply.
“Look again, Caitlin. There’s a sun out there of my own creation.”
She stiffened against his body, but did as she was bidden. At first she saw nothing but the vague contours of the village below. The moon was hidden in a bank of low clouds, and since a fine mist filled the air, the lantern-light from the village homes burned only faintly. Then, slowly, her gaze was drawn upward to a wavering glare on the opposite hillside. It was a fire, and a large one. Smoke billowed upward as flames writhed toward the low cloud ceiling; though the distance was great, she could just make out tiny figures racing about madly.
She did not need to hear him whispering in her ear. After a second’s thought, she knew she was watching the funeral pyre of Falconrest.
“You couldn’t have it,” she said throatily, “so you have destroyed it.”
“The fortunes of war, my dear, the fortunes of war,” he said, watching the fire hypnotically. “I will regret it in years to come, perhaps. But for now it gives me a great deal of satisfaction.”
She hardly knew what she was doing. One moment she could not take her horrified gaze from the conflagration lighting the hills like some foul demon’s torch, the next she had turned on Flint and had brought her fist across his cheek. It was a punch, not a slap, and it came as such a surprise that it rocked him into the wall. He put a hand to his aching jaw and glared at her.
Caitlin ran.
She knew it was fruitless—that there was no place to hide— but instinct had taken over, and she hoped to reach the bedroom before Flint could recover.
She almost made it.
Just as she slammed the door and was fumbling with the latch, he kicked at it and flung it wide open, the edge catching her shoulder and tumbling her to the floor. He stood over her, fists at his sides, breathing heavily and swallowing. Then he reached down and took a fistful of her robe. She tried to snare his wrist, but he was too fast. He pulled once, pulled again, and when her arm would not slip through the sleeve the material finally gave. She rolled over and out of the robe, staring around the room wildly in search of a weapon and only at the last moment spied her father’s bust. She leaped for it, but Flint was beside her in one stride, the back of his hand catching her chest and flinging her to the bed.
She crawled backwards frantically, wanting but not daring to pull the hem of her nightgown down over her legs. But before she reached the other side of the mattress he reached out again, caught the neckline of the gown and yanked. Her head snapped forward, and she felt a burning lash across the nape of her neck. He yanked again, and the center seam gave a few inches. The sound made him grin, made her gasp, then dig her nails into the back of his hand. He yelled and released her, and she spun off the mattress to her feet.
Her arms had turned to lead, and something had coated her mouth and throat so she couldn’t scream. Perspiration washed over her, and the gown’s material soaked it up. The damp fabric clung to her like a second skin and revealed to Flint far more than it concealed. She didn’t care. What mattered to her was that he not touch her again.
Slowly, silently, he inched sideways around to the footboard. Before he could move, she was on the mattress again, flinging aside the pillows and pressing herself against the headboard. Her hair covered one side of her face and veiled her exposed breasts. The only light in the room was from the fire in the grate, and it turned his face into a satanic crimson mask that made her dizzy when she watched him closely. He tilted his head and moved on; she sidled away, dropping to the floor when he reached the other side of the bed.
“I am quicker than you,” he said.
She would not speak. While one part of her mind was trying to anticipate his next move, the other was trying to locate a weapon close at hand. If she turned to the mantel he would be on her; if she headed for the door he would have her in two steps; and there was nothing at all near or on the bed that she could use.
“Caitlin, Caitlin, how foolish you are.”
As she backed toward the edge of the bed platform her foot caught on the hem of her gown. She almost fell flat on her face and in that paralyzing moment of helplessness he rounded the comer and, with one hand gripping the bedpost, snared her again. This time she did not move. She stood there, immobile, as he tore the cloth from her body. Then he sat on the edge of the mattress holding the crumpled gown in his hands.
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Yes.”
She made no attempt to cover herself. Instead, she stepped to the floor and backed away until she reached the hearth. The firelight rippled across the swells of her breasts, the firm plane of her stomach, and added a golden sheen to the perspiration on her flesh. At grave risk to herself—slowly, without taking her eyes from his— she knelt beside the hearth and lowered her head submissively.
“Caitlin, what is it?” Flint said, rising and tossing the shreds of the gown to one side.
“If you want me, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”
He knelt in front of her and stroked the satin slope of her shoulder, touched her breasts, her abdomen, put his hands firmly on her flanks and turned his face to kiss her. She did not respond. She remained as a statue, neither accepting nor resisting, and though her heart recoiled at the fondling of her breasts, at the callous probing between her thighs, she did nothing but stare at him.
It did not take long for frustration to overtake him. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “I thought you said I could have you!” he shouted. “What in hell are you playing at now?”
“You can have me,” she said without raising her voice, “but nothing more. Nothing more, Mr. Flint.”
He slapped her, but her head was rigid and did not recoil. “Nothing more.”
He slapped her again, three and four times before clubbing
her with a fist and jumping to his feet. “You’re not human,” he hissed. “None of you Welsh are.” He raised his arm to strike her again.
She stared. “Nothing more.”
And it was easier than she’d hoped; for the most part all she had to do was remember the ashes of Falconrest, and not even his blows could pierce her armor.
“You will die!” he vowed as he stalked from the room. “Damn you, woman, you will not live out the week!”
The door slammed, the mirrors trembled, and Caitlin remained on the hearth, not moving until dawn a few hours later. And when first light slanted into the room she rose, took another robe from the closet and asked the guard at the door to fetch Gwen Thomas. There was a message to be delivered, and she wanted her breakfast.
27
The rain had begun the afternoon before as a gray blanket that descended over the valley from the reaches of Cardigan Bay. Mist crowned the treetops, gathered in the mouths of burrows, filled the land’s depressions until the outlines of objects blurred and appeared otherworldly. Tendrils of white fog snaked across the surface of the streams, swirling, shredding, rejoining in a rush to bury the shallows under a deceptively thick cover. Then the air chilled as the invisible sun dropped below the horizon, and the mist became a drizzle, and the drizzle a light rain, that softened the ruts in lanes, slickened the crushed stone of the main roads, and dripped from leaves and eaves into empty, fat rain barrels.
It was a spring rain, a nourishing rain, and Caitlin stood at the balcony door and watched it render the bay invisible. She hugged herself for warmth despite the blazing hearth; she looked hopelessly at the cloud cover and wished she could locate some sign of lightning, some indication of turbulence beyond the gentle rainfall. It had been two days since Gwen had told her that she’d passed Caitlin’s message on to Orin; two days of praying for the heavens to stop their taunting and give her what she demanded.
And during those two days, Gwen had told her, Flint had begun behaving like a man who had lost all his senses. He prowled the corridors cursing and muttering to himself, barking incomprehensible orders at Nate Birwyn. Once he took his chestnut gelding for a ride that lasted nearly the entire day, returning only for supper, drenched and sneezing and forcing even Birwyn to keep a safe distance.
He’s working up to it, Caitlin decided. In his own dark way he probably really did love her, and unless he carried out his threat to see her dead, he would be granting her a power over him no person had ever exercised before. He could never live that way, and she knew it. How long it would take before he convinced himself to kill her, she could only guess.
Two men walked across the back lawn. With their heads covered by floppy-brimmed hats and their cloaks darkly sodden, they looked like gnomes just out of their burrows. She could see no weapons, but she sensed they were there just the same. Pistols or muskets, tucked just out of reach of the rain. The men passed from view, and she bit her lower lip lightly, frowned, and returned to her secretary, staring at, without seeing, the blank page of her journal. The temptation to put down everything that crossed her mind was immense, but she had restrained herself in case of prying eyes: Mary, whenever she flitted into the room with her feather duster and inane chatter; Bradford, when he brought her one of her meals; and Flint himself, whose curiosity would not be thwarted by a simple lock and a thin strap of burnished leather.
She pushed aside the inkwell and quill. She had no intention of signing her own death warrant.
Another day passed. The rain subsided, and there were small breaks in the clouds. She almost wept when she saw the streams of sunlight funneled down from them. The evening before, long after she had finished eating, she had heard Flint stalking the gallery and screaming imprecations at the walls. At first she’d decided Gwen had been right, that the man had gone mad; later, however, when the house had quieted down, she understood in a flash that his madness was only a pretense. He was a man too much in control of himself to allow her rejection to drive him insane. Was he trying to break her resistance by gnawing at her fears? What better way to convince her to marry him than by pretending he was losing his mind at the thought of having to kill her?
Which meant, she prayed, there was still some faint hope he would not kill her as he had vowed.
She was strong, and she withstood the pressure, but she was not strong enough to face the next morning when the clouds scattered, the blue skies returned in force, and the temperature climbed to warn of coming summer.
She wept, and allowed the tears to flow unhindered.
And in weeping, she understood there was more than the weather’s betrayal working at her mind. After realizing that Flint was feigning madness, she’d formed a decision, quite without her realizing it: to die would be to abandon much more than her life. She would be leaving behind too many helpless people, too many memories, and too much history to the whims of James Patrick Flint and his ghostly band of men.
By permitting him to kill her she would commit a safe form of suicide, giving herself over to the consequences of foolish stubbornness and blinding pride.
And if she did that, she would receive and deserve all the approbation her people would heap upon her; and if she turned her back now on all she had come to believe she stood for, her consignment to hell would be the most lenient of punishments.
She turned away from the sun and the blue sky.
She stripped and bathed in cold water, not bothering to lace the bath with scent. Then she sat naked at the vanity, brushing her hair two hundred strokes, until its texture and color were almost spectral in their beauty. Choosing the simplest gown she owned—a highnecked brown dress without a single gracing of lace—she walked to the outer door and opened it. The guard, startled, wheeled around and stared.
“You will please inform Mr. Flint that I have reconsidered,” she said, after taking a deep, shuddering breath that did not stem the chill that coursed through her blood.
“M’lady?”
“Never mind trying to understand what I’m talking about,” she said quietly, but firmly. “Just deliver the message at once, please. And tell him I shall be waiting.”
The day passed without a response.
The following morning taunted her cruelly with billowing white clouds that lined the horizon, but reached Seacliff in a few trailing wisps.
On the morning of the third day Gwen burst into her chambers, her face crimson with outrage and her hands raking the air or pulling harshly at her hair as she searched for words.
“I’ve heard,” she finally said, practically shouting.
Caitlin was in the same plain dress, and sat in an armchair she had dragged before the open French doors. A vagrant breeze toyed with strands of her hair, and at times blew them in front of her eyes, making her push them back in annoyance. She did not turn around, so Gwen rounded the chair and stood in front of her, hands now at her hips and her chest pumping for breath.
“I’ve heard what you’re planning to do.”
Caitlin slowly lifted her gaze. “I have no choice,” she said flatly.
“What? You could die!”
She refused to be baited. “And what good would that do, Gwen? What earthly good would my dying do for anyone?” Gwen’s disgust bleached all beauty from her face. “The word’s already in the village, you know,” she said scornfully. “La, you should hear what they’re saying now.” She flicked out a hand toward Caitlin’s unmoving head. “Your ears surely must be burning all this while.” She stalked away and kicked at the bed dais. “You must sleep well, then.”
“I don’t sleep at all.”
Gwen froze, her spine rigid and her head held high. Then she looked over her shoulder. “God willing, you’ll never sleep another night in your life.”
“Gwen, please—”
“Gwen, please,” she mocked. “Gwen, please. You were dying, and I nursed you back. You were to run on your birthday, and I was going with you. That… that man put his hands on me, and I took it because I feared for your li
fe. And now… now you’re going to take him as a husband just because you don’t want to die?” She drew in a deep breath, and the room took on a frigid silence. “He’s taken it all from you, hasn’t he? You’ve nothing left, am I right?”
“You don’t understand, Gwen.”
Gwen’s shoulders sagged, and though she shed no tears, her voice was filled with the weeping she must have been doing since she’d gotten the news. “I do. I really do. I had just hoped you could be Cat awhile longer, just until—”
The sound of Gwen’s fleeing footsteps lingered on long after she had gone; Caitlin was alone again. Still waiting. Still seated in front of the balcony doors and watching the undulations of the sea. Mary brought all her meals. Bradford twice requested she prepare a wedding guest list—and twice Caitlin informed him she would have none of it, that Flint could invite King George for all she gave a damn. Nate Birwyn poked his one-eyed head in one morning and asked if she wouldn’t care to take a short ride in the cart. She shook her head without looking at him, and he left with a careless shrug.
He’s still playing his secret games, she thought when May slipped into June with the sun high overhead and the sea turned a deep shifting blue; now he’s waiting for me to send him a plea to end the suspense.
But she was still alive. And though she was still alone, she knew that he had finally made his third mistake: if the first had been in not taking Griffin, and the second in not killing her shortly afterward, then the third was in permitting her all this time to think.
And think she did.
And in thinking found something she didn’t dare yet call hope.
One afternoon she asked Bradford if he had any word from Gwen, anything at all. The old retainer, his face more deeply lined than ever and his few wisps of graying hair brittle and stiff, sniffed and informed her that the Thomas woman had thrown all her belongings into a sack and had taken a bed in the Daniels cottage. Mr. Flint did not seem to mind. He never mentioned her at all.
Caitlin did not permit herself to despair. Sooner or later, Gwen would forgive her.
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