Love's Patient Fury (The Deverell Series Book 3)

by Susan Ward

  “Perhaps, but I will not manage the worry well if I don’t, Little One,” he said, touching her nose with a fingertip, a careless, playful gesture that had the strange power to hurt her. “Let me decide what I will and will not do. Give the babe to me. I don’t want her weight in your arms while you stand.”

  Varian lifted the toddler from her lap in sure and capable movements. He stood, holding the baby against his chest in one arm as he offered her a hand.

  Jane rushed over to Varian. “Please, Your Grace. Let me take Cecilia from you!”

  A softening teased at the edges of Varian’s lips. Jane’s eyes widened “Stop your distress over this,” he said, in an easy and amused way. “Cecilia is the second most enjoyable thing to have happen to me today. First was watching my lovely wife with her.”

  Jane flushed and wasn’t exactly sure what she should do next. It was Spencer who spoke calmly and roused her from her uncertainty. “Jane, take the babe from His Grace.”

  Not able to lift her eyes, Jane dropped a quick curtsy and said, “I’m sorry, Your Grace.”

  She moved to collect her daughter and gently eased her tiny form from the duke’s powerful arms. Her hand brushed his chest and she blushed fiercely.

  Varian pretended not to notice Jane’s ill-ease with him. He pretended not to notice Merry’s as well. She could hardly look at him, an indication of where her mood sat this night.

  “We should go, Merry. We’ve imposed upon the Colemans long enough.”

  Merry nodded, ignored the arm Varian offered her, and moved quickly past him out of the house.

  It was a quick walk from the under-coachman’s cottage to the main house. They walked in silence, at some point Varian had taken her hand, and Merry stared at his fingers holding hers. His touch whispered through her veins, reminding her she had not gone to him in many nights. He was strangely quiet, but she could feel tension beneath the surface of his flesh. She wondered what to make of that. He’d sought her out and now he said nothing.

  His thumb moved in a gentle glide on the top of her hand. The restlessness of her flesh grew. She closed her eyes. Damn him.

  At the house he stopped outside of the door. Something in how Varian looked at her made her unrest whirl faster. His voice, quiet and gentle, surprised her as much as his words. “Don’t go to your room. Come directly to mine.”

  There was a short silence while she looked at him. It seemed so long ago they had been happy together. Another lifetime. Slowly, his hand lifted so his thumb could glide her cheek, and the tenderness of his touch had the unpardonable power to hurt her.

  “There is much I have to say, Merry. And I am going to say it one way or another. You cannot hide from me forever.”

  Hide, indeed. He was the one who left at a whim and she was forced to suffer, living in a life that no longer felt her own. He could do as he pleased, which he did quite frequently, and she was trapped here.

  She proceed him up the stairs. The long corridors of the house were empty. Even Moffat had retired and only a few lamps were left burning. The Merricks kept country hours. Early they rose and early to bed.

  She looked at her bedroom door. “Goodnight, Varian.”

  He did not release her hand. His gaze fixed on her in a wandering hold and his voice was a husky whisper. “Each day you hold yourself from me is agony. Come to my bed this night, Merry.”

  The urgency in his voice made her tremble. The passion in his eyes burned her so. Her blood flamed in answer. She owed him only her scorn. Why did she let him repeatedly have her body? Why couldn’t she get the words from her mouth? Why could she not obey her own will and stay away from him?

  Her disobedient body moved with him down the hallway. She heard the lock of his bedroom door click behind her. She should not have followed him this night. It would do her no good to give in to the weakness of her flesh.

  Instead of going to the bed, she went to his writing table, struggling to focus on anything but him. It was cluttered with papers. She wondered at the oddity of Varian leaving so much lying about for anyone to see. He had always been so cautious on the Corinthian. Every document, every letter held behind lock and key, even from her.

  Absently, she thumbed through his stack of correspondence. Letters from his solicitor. His man of business. A note here and there from a friend. Such commonplace pieces of life for a man who was anything but commonplace. She felt a moment’s relief when she reached the bottom of the stack and found nothing from Lady Wythford. Though, Merry suspected, he would hardly leave a love letter from his mistress, former or otherwise, for her to find.

  Her back was to him, and she could hear him moving about the suite. She lifted up a piece of parchment. It was a strange document. It looked almost like a genealogy, except this was no family tree. Important men—many names she recognized from that discussion she’d overheard long ago on the Corinthian—Lord Branneth, Lord Crandall, Lord Montrose, and on and on it went, with notations of their various roles in the British Government.

  Odd that he should have left this on the desk for anyone to see. In her memory flashed his voice: have you really shared my life for nearly a year and never realized everything I do has purpose to it? The parchment held the feel of newness to her, as if this document had only been recently constructed. He had put a piece of the plot against Rensdale he carried in the vault of his mind on parchment. He wanted someone to find it. But who?

  Merry turned to him, paper in hand. Her breath caught. Varian was lying on the bed, clad only in a banyan, watching her. It fell in a loose parting across his iron check, and she could see how his muscles slowly rose and fell with each breath. He was stretched on his side, his head resting in palm, the long elegant muscles of his body relaxed in an inviting posture.

  The drowsy intentness of his eyes told her he had watched her rummage through his documents. For some reason he had not stopped her, a sharp departure from the secrecy that had always stood between them aboard ship.

  Twice her eyes strayed down the line of his body and lifted to his face. She asked, “What is this?”

  An arched brow. “What do you think it is?”

  Varian and his drama. Why couldn’t he simply answer her directly once?

  She frowned. “It looks like some manner of plot against the British Government.” Her eyes rounded with alarm. “Dear God, Varian, is that what you’re about?”

  He looked amused. “Is that what you think, that I harbor ill will against the British Government? That I am capable of treason?”

  “Aren’t you? Isn’t piracy a crime against the crown? Why did you let me see this?” she asked, moving toward the bed.

  Those black eyes locked on her intently. “You are my wife.”

  The stress he put on the word wife was not lost to her. She felt a flush rise on her cheeks. “We may be married, but I am not your wife. Not in any way, sir. And I have no intention of ever being so.”

  His eyes widened in response. In a tone that was husky, he whispered, “You are my wife in all ways and always will be, whether you are willing to accept it or not. I thought we’d decided long ago you are stuck with me.”

  He allowed a hint of a smile to soften his lips and there was just enough warmth tucked within the slumberous tone of his voice to cause her heart to race again. He moved invitingly closer, and she tried to focus her thoughts, but her senses were scattering again.

  “Tell me what this is?” she asked again.

  Varian signed heavily, as if mildly irritated by her questions. And then he lifted her onto the bed and eased her against his chest. His arms came around her, pointing here and there on the document. “Those are all the men who are in league with Rensdale’s villainy. The various offices they hold, their power and how they’ve used it. The notations beneath their names are the crimes they’ve committed. Each document in my sea chest is a map of their crimes. They’ve exploited England’s wars for their own profit for nearly a decade. The common link between them all is the sinking of the Carolin
a, their first crime for profit, and Rensdale.”

  Varian paused so she could absorb all he had told her and what she was seeing. Slowly her eyes rounded with shock and fear. The men on the chart were powerful men. Merry’s quick brain did not fail to note one element of the danger she was holding in her hand.

  Merry shifted her gaze back to him. “Why are you telling me this now?” she asked, her voice hollow and webbed with suspicion.

  He brushed his thumb gently down the delicate slope of her cheek. His heavy lids opened wide and he met her gaze directly. “As horrible as the things you have already heard spoken about me, they are going to get worse, Merry. Lord Montrose. He has the power to arrest me for the sinking of the Carolina. They have constructed quite a thorough case against me. Many believe it is true. As their plot is exposed, they will grow into dangerous men. I want you to know the truth about me from me. So you will never doubt me in this. I did not murder Ann.”

  She lowered her gaze, no longer able to meet the burning intensity of his eyes. Even with her many grievances against him, it shamed her Varian thought it necessary to tell her that.

  “You did not have to defend yourself against that crime to me, Varian. You loved her. You carry her in your heart. That is one part of your history that has never been unclear to me.”

  The last words, hurt her so to speak them. Equally tormenting was the sudden thought that this obsession he continued on with for Ann might very well permanently take Varian from her. Her hands were trembling, the parchment slipped from her fingers and her eyes followed its float to the floor.

  Varian’s hands closed on her arms and eased her in a careful turn until she was on the pillows beneath him. “There is nothing in my heart but you, Merry. You fill it so completely I can see nothing on this earth but you. Everything I have done since my eyes first touched you, I have done for you.”

  He claimed her lips in a sudden kiss, his fingers in her hair, tilting her face so she could meet his eyes. The intense light in those dark depths only made the twisted bands around her heart tighten more cruelly. It was not possible to hurt more than she did. To want more. To need more. To feel more weak and fragile as each minute drifted away, taking Varian farther and farther from her. Fear whispered inside her, a white hot flame. There was no end, and there never would be, to this suffering inside of her that was Varian.

  Varian began to work at the fastenings of her dress. Once he bared her, he entered her quickly, kissing her deeply. The passion within him was raging beneath his flesh in a way she had not felt for a very long time. A furious outpouring of touching and kissing and deep pounding thrusts that were glorious. His heart beat wildly against her naked breast and she was swept away in the welling tide of his release. Against the curve of his throat in a soundless whisper Merry breathed the words she should not say. And shortly behind the words, came a tear.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the first faint morning light, Merry slipped carefully from Varian’s arms, tugged his shirt loosely in place around her, and grabbed her clothes. She paused for a moment to stare down at him while he slept. She reached out a hand and lightly touch his cheek. He did not stir.

  The way he looked made her heart turn over inside of her. She felt the soreness of her flesh, the memory of his possession of her. His features held a peaceful arrangement as he slumbered, but she could feel he was not peaceful. Much was raging beneath the surface of Varian’s flesh. She wondered what part, if any, she played in these strange currents that had run wildly through his flesh last night and were still rioting through him as he slept.

  She had not felt Varian’s passion that way since the night in Bermuda. Much had raged all through their coupling. The fierce hunger of his flesh had felt nearly impossible to sate. In his love words there had been an air of quiet desperation and an almost shaken plea. It had been so unlike him. Afterwards, pliant in his arms and all feeling stripped from her limbs, she had quickly drifted off into the first deep, untroubled slumber she had known in many weeks.

  Merry wanted climb back into bed with him and nestle against the comfort of Varian’s strong limbs. Just a little while longer. All she wanted was him. But for all his greedy consumption of her flesh and her repeated willingness to give it, she was on no surer ground than she had been when she had married him. There was too much about him he wouldn’t share. There were too many hurts inside her unrelenting. And for all the flashing passion encounters between them, Varian still had not once said he loved her. That made her unable to move in harmony with him again.

  She quietly hurried into the hallway. Dumping her clothing on a chair in her bedroom, she caught sight of herself in a mirror. Her cheeks were still passion flushed. Her hair was curling more than usual, the result of Varian’s ardent love play, and her lips were swollen from his kisses.

  Abruptly she turned. She suddenly felt the presence of someone else in the room. Someone watching her.

  Kate was sitting in the center of her bed in a nightgown. “Oh, Merry, what manner of danger have you gotten yourself into?” she asked abruptly in a fierce, worried voice.

  Merry schooled her expression into what she hoped were calm lines. To be caught by Kate was her least worrisome possibility. It was also the most unlikely.

  “Perhaps I should ask what you are doing sulking about in my bedroom,” Merry countered dismissively. Arching a brow, “Did you rummage through my things as well? Are your curiosities satisfied, Kate, enough that you will leave me so I may grab a moment’s sleep?”

  The worried knit of Kate’s brow vanished. Her soft green eyes began to flash. She sprang from the bed until her face was so close to Merry’s her cousin’s breath could be felt against her cheeks.

  “Don’t be flippant with me. I have waited in this bed all night for you. Do you think I don’t know what happens in this house? I am not as foolish as you all assume.”

  Merry tensed. All that from Kate. Direct and infuriatingly so. “How you do run on, Kate.” She made a face. “I am a married woman and you are ridiculous.”

  Kate shook her head and exclaimed, “Do you have even a notion of what is happening in this house?” Merry’s eyes widened and before she could respond, Kate charged onward anxiously. “If there is a reason you protect and do His Grace’s bidding, do you not think it past time to be honest with us? Are you afraid of His Grace? Is that why you remain silent throughout this brewing conflict between our relatives? Is that why you go to his bed? What manner of power does this man have over you that he could get you to jump to his bidding? Why will you not be honest with me so I may help you?”

  Merry grabbed Kate’s anxiously moving arms and stilled her. She had never seen her cousin so distraught. “He is my husband, Kate. I am not afraid of him and it is my choice the nights I go to him,” Merry admitted reluctantly.

  Kate’s reddened face twisted into an expression Merry could not even put a term to. “What do you mean your choice? Do not even try to put a pleasant wash on this for me, Merry. You expound your hatred of the man at every turn. You give him no notice at all. And yet each night when I come to your room you have gone to him. So if there is something you can tell me so I might understand I suggest you share, because right now, Merry, I do not understand what you are about. What is it you have not told me?”

  Kate made her sound ridiculous and accurately so. Merry sank down on the bed and gestured for her cousin to join her. “It is a complicated tangle,” she began, “but it is my tangle. There is no cause for worry, and you would do well to stay out of it, Kate.”

  Kate’s anger bubbled upward again. “I would gladly stay out of it, but I cannot. Who do you think shoos the serving girls away from the door of the Blue Suite each night so Uncle Lucien does not see them with their ears pressed against the door there? There is talk swirling through this house. It will not be long before Uncle Lucien hears the chatter. Have you ever once considered the danger to your husband of this charade you play with us all?”

  Merry’s eyes rounde
d. The level of Kate’s worry made no sense. Being caught sharing Varian’s bed should hardly add shock to their marriage now. She studied the distraught lines of Kate’s face, trying to make sense of her cousin’s distress. “What has you so nervous, Kate?” she asked.

  “Did you not notice my father departed for London on the heels of your arrival? He has gone there to investigate His Grace, and you had best pray my father finds nothing to add to Uncle Lucien’s fury over this marriage and his disdain of your husband.”

  Merry’s heart did an anxious turn. “How do you know this?”

  Kate lifted her dainty little chin. “Since your disappearance it has become necessary to eavesdrop.” There was a hint of shame in the confession, though anguish flashed in her eyes before she lowered her gaze to fix upon her knit fingers laying her lap. “You’re disappearance. They would share none of their knowledge with me. It was most distressing to know nothing of your fate, especially since I am to blame.”

  “You are not to blame, Kate! The foolishness of that night was my fault alone. It was not my intent to ever cause you worry.”

  Kate sniffed. “It may not be your intent, but I am very worried of late. If not for your mother, I do not doubt your husband would be in Newgate and your marriage well on its way to being annulled. Even with Aunt Rhea’s interference, your father continues in that course. As for Philip, if not for worry over you, he would have put a bullet into His Grace long ago. As to my father, I cannot even imagine the manner of danger to your husband from him. There is much secrecy and conflict in this house, and I so worry about how it will end.”

  Dazed by the weight of Kate’s revelations, Merry said weakly, “I do not wish my husband harmed, Kate. I don’t wish an annulment. I am in love with Varian. That is the only power he holds over me.”

  “Then tell your father that!”

  Merry sat back and met her cousin’s eyes directly. “I cannot.”