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

by Susan Ward

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Merry lay back against the shore, the sound of water from the channel a pleasant melody in her ears. Baby Kat was relaxed across her stomach and wonderfully peaceful for her second hour. Both of them enjoyed the feel of the sun and the air brushing them freely.

  She felt that familiar burn of black eyes, that instant wakefulness in her flesh, and wondered how that insufferable man had found her. She had escaped the house without Mr. Pitt in tow and a lecture awaited her. Adjusting the baby back into her arms, a hopefully diverting smile on her face, she opened her eyes as she pulled to a sitting position.

  Merry froze. It was Indy. The first thought able to break free was that the boy looked well. Well and different. That long length of black wave fastened in its customary tight braid was gone, so was the diamond in his ear. He was dressed in the simple elegance of a gentlemen’s garments, nothing flashy or over-stated, his manner of dress much in Varian style. The clothes were a compliment to the boy.

  In a year’s time he had come into his full height, he was well above six feet and had more the hard knit muscle fullness of a man than the leaner, sleeker lines of a boy. He looked very handsome, the scar on his face giving an edge to his features that would have only been considered pretty because of the softer wash of youth he still possessed. Age not fully tempering them yet. There were tempered only by the scar, and he looked handsome and well.

  Merry would have gone to him to give a kiss in greeting, but she still felt it, the sensation of black eyes, the same power of emotion Varian possessed which brushed her flesh like a physical touch.

  Stunned and unable to move, she realized, the boy is in love with me. Why did I never see it? Why did he never tell me?

  They were cousins, it was not incestuous or illegal. The boy had been in love with her all along. It was why he had always been so protective of her on ship. Why there had been friction between him and Varian, and why he stayed away now. He had never told her. It had been there for a very long time and somehow she had never seen it.

  Merry dropped her gaze instantly, her heart suddenly in a frantic rhythm.

  “You were in love with my father from the moment your eyes touched him at Grave’s End,” Indy explained quietly, closing the space between them. He eased down on his well-muscled legs to be at eye level with her. “What was the point of trying to come between that? It’s why I didn’t release you at the beach, when I could have and wanted to. It was why I wasn’t afraid to take you to him. It was where you belonged.”

  Merry smiled. It was little wonder the boy could read her. He was becoming more like his father every day. Twelve months. The change in him was remarkable. How had it happened? Where had he been?

  Indy’s great dark eyes fixed on Kat and he smiled, small, but it was a pleasant smile right there on those lips where she had never seen one before. Its affect was dramatic. Merry felt the burn of tears in her eyes.

  “Why are you here, Indy?” Merry asked, placing a hand on his arm so he would know she welcomed him. “Does your father know you’re here? He wants to see you. This estrangement has been painful for him. More so since our daughter. He’s at the house. Let me take you to him. I will go with you to see him, if you need me there.”

  Indy sank down on the sand beside her, arching a brow and laughing. “Oh, Merry, I would love to hear you explain my presence to your relatives. Have you forgotten the world assumes I am dead? It’s apt to stir questions if I should suddenly pop up in the bosom of the Merrick household. Questions dangerous for us all.”

  His laughter faded away. Another new occurrence. Laughter. Its rich tone sounded so much like Varian’s. Merry’s smile grew.

  Merry said, “Yes, I can see your point and thank you for not calling me a fool as you use to do, much too often. I will go and get Varian and bring him here.”

  Indy stopped her with a hand. “No, Merry, I came only to see my sister. I am not ready to see him yet.”

  Merry’s wide doe eyes fixed on him sharply. “See him for me, Indy. He is ready if you are not. Do it for me, please. Settle this conflict between you so my husband may know unclouded happiness as he deserves.”

  Indy’s brushed a knuckle down Merry’s cheek.

  “Merry, I would do almost anything for you, but I can’t do that. Don’t expect me to,” Indy said in a firm voice. “I need time to be surer of who I am, now that I am finally away from him so I may decide who and what I wish to be.”

  “You will be whatever you are just as your father is what he is. He understands your need to make your own decisions. He won’t interfere in any way, Indy. He just wants to assure himself you are well and he has been forgiven for all the things you both suffered, together and apart.”

  That made Indy smile again, amused. “He can’t help but to interfere, Merry. You know that. You are married to the man. He has a force of will that can smother you whether he ever speaks a word of what he expects or wants or hopes. It’s a burden at times. I spent years being hurt by his hopes for me and his never-waning tolerance and patience of my failing him. I almost pity this little one here. Complete existence from birth with our father...”

  Merry slapped Indy hard against the cheek. “You will never speak of your father like that to me again,” she warned in a severe hiss. “Varian is a wonderful man, a gentle man, a loving man. He is completely unselfish in his love for me and our child and for you. You are an arrogant, cruel young man at times. You have never understood your father, if you could say those words. You speak that way to me again and I will never forgive you. You will not be welcome near me or my daughter or my husband.”

  Indy’s reaction was unexpected. The sinister face, her hand print on his cheek cut in two by his scar, suddenly softened in expression and he was laughing, laying back on the earth, laughing. The laughter died abruptly. Those black eyes shot open, shimmering, and his words stopped her.

  “Little One, I am not ready to forgive my father his wife,” he explained, one arm across his brow, not quite covering well enough that reluctantly revealed pain there. “I am not ready to be with him while he is happy with you. It’s better for me that I don’t have to witness it.”

  Merry shook her head in frustration. Why were the Deverell men so complicated? And so alike. It was clear the boy was hurting and wanted ease from a measure of his pain, and was being too damn complicated in all this by not simply going to his father. Pain that would not ease unless he did.

  Then Merry’s thoughts lost a measure of their harshness. She understood his difficulties, remembering how it had hurt long ago to desire Varian and know he had spent a night with Christina Wythford. Then her thoughts shamed her. The boy was in love with her, a cruel, pitiless, and uncontrollable emotion at times.

  Sighing and feeling baby Kat begin to squirm in hunger from being too long without feeding, Merry undid enough buttons on her simple gown and put the baby to her breast. There was nothing else she could do. The child would scream in mad force if her demands weren’t always instantly met and she didn’t want to leave Indy yet. The boy had seen more of her than most son’s ever had gotten to see of their father’s wives.

  Indy’s eyes opened and the way he looked at her made her blush. It surprised her because after a year in Varian’s bed nothing should have the power to make her blush. Perhaps it was just the overwhelming emotion between them at this moment. Indy was lying on his side, watching her feed his sister with his great black eyes that so looked like his father’s, awareness that he loved her in both of them.

  Merry had learned from Varian the saving power of normalcy, equanimity in a dreadful circumstance, and jumped on it to save her now. Watching Kat’s little hands flutter against her breast, she asked quietly, “Why are you dressed like this? Your braid is gone. It is an improvement, though I did like the braid, but you look very well and very handsome. Why are you in Cornwall?”

  “I have been traveling across England over a month now.” Arching a brow. “Getting a feel for land legs.
Somehow Rensdale just isn’t important to me. I am interested in finding answers. So I have been looking for answers, Merry. Looking for answers about me. About him. Tom took the ship out a month ago without me. He is returning and will meet me in Falmouth. Then I think I will go to America. Look for answers there for what I remember about my mother. Just like I found answers here, seeing you and seeing...” The boy laughed. Merry liked it that he could laugh frequently now. She wished Varian could hear it. It would do his heart so much good. “What the devil did you name my sister?”

  “Katherine,” Merry supplied and then grinning, “but no one calls her that. We all call her Kat. Not a very noble name for such a daughter of noble birth. My father hates it. You can see him wince whenever he says it. Can you guess whose force of will that was?”

  Indy smiled. “My sister is very beautiful. It does not matter what you call her. She looks like her mother, thank God. I can’t imagine what the Deverell looks would bear on a little a girl. She’d be terrifying the servants by the age of three.”

  He stood up then, brushing the dirt from his clothes and offered a hand to Merry, helping her with gentle care to her feet.

  “Tell my father that for a man of such caution he is being extremely reckless right now. He should leave with you both, very soon. I have had a man following me. I am not sure who or why. I only just managed to lose him two days ago. They are getting closer, Merry, if they have found me. It is not safe for him here. You must make him leave England. It is foolish beyond measure he has stayed in your family’s house so long.”

  Merry nodded. Varian was making arrangements today for them to leave. The decision was finally reached a week ago, since she was well enough to travel and Kat was a little older, which was better for a journey at sea.

  Merry tilted her head, her bright doe eyes sparkling at him. “Perhaps you will be able to reconcile with your father in Virginia. America is the land of new beginnings and new lives. I have had a whim to live there since I was little older than Kat so that is where our next adventure begins.”

  Indy had both her shoulders in his hands and his face was a breath away from hers. “Kiss me goodbye, Merry. I am not going to visit again. I wanted to see my sister and see for myself that you are well. Kiss me once, so I will have the answer to the last of my questions about you.”

  And before Merry could reply, the boy was kissing her. Not like a cousin, not like her husband’s son, but with a sweet and gentle skill that shocked her with its seductive tenderness. There was a feather light stroking of his thumbs just beneath her eyes, a softly erotic play of mouth capturing just her lower lip, a caress and then gone.

  She was too breathless to be angry when he released her. Her face a wash of color, because as chaste as the kiss had been, it was packed with explicitness.

  Indy traced a fingertip down one burning slope of a cheek. “That is an expression I will remember for a century. It’s little wonder I consider at times what could have been. Thank you for not slapping me. I won’t do it ever again. But some things you can only find answers to if you do them. I have my answer and we are all as we should be. As wonderful as you feel against my lips, I feel him there between us, just as I always did from the beginning.”

  Merry didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. Indy brushed the tiny ebony curls on his sister’s head and then placed a light kiss there. “Goodbye to you too, Little One.” The way he said that made Merry tremble. Indy brought her hand to his lips. “Be well, Merry. If you are happy, then both the Deverell men will be happy as well.”

  She watched Indy leave, waiting for him to disappear before climbing the path to the house. Balancing Kat in one arm, she struggled with a single hand to refasten the buttons she hadn’t closed yet from having nursed. She would have gone directly to the house, but Uncle Andrew standing on the path stopped her. He had been there long enough to have formed some unpleasant speculations about whatever he’d witness between her and Indy.

  He confirmed them with his words, when he offered her his hand to help her manage the incline of the hill. “Who was that man, Merry? Why were you meeting a young man here? And why were you kissing him?”

  Merry did a quick and cautious study of Uncle Andrew’s face, trying to assess his thoughts. Unsure, she decided to laugh. “What are you imagining? I didn’t meet anyone. He was there. He was handsome. I kissed him.”

  “Damn it, Merry, the last thing you want is to infuriate a man like Varian Deverell. Do you know so little about your husband, you would risk such a dangerous thing where he might see it?”

  Uncle Andrew’s fear over Varian’s reaction was real, and it told her she did not have to worry. He didn’t suspect who the boy was. Hopefully that meant it wasn’t one of Warton’s men following Indy.

  Merry lifted a brow and met her Uncle’s gaze directly. “I am in love with my husband, Uncle Andrew, he is the center of myself. I could kiss a man in front of him and his speculation would not be as unkind as yours. Would you like to tell Varian of this, Uncle Andrew, or shall I? I have no secrets from my husband. Not a one. He has no secrets from me.”

  Merry went ahead of him on the path and quickly disappeared into the house.

  ~~~

  Varian found Merry lying on the floor in the drawing room, baby Kat balanced on a pillow in front of her, wide awake and making a comical expression that reminded him of his beautiful young wife. Merry was dressed in a simple gown, grubby feet, grubby hands and slightly grubby daughter.

  Hearing Varian’s laughter, Merry turned her head to see those black eyes warmed with his humor.

  “What have I done to make you look at me that way?” Merry asked. There was a pleasant breathlessness to her voice that told him she liked it when he looked at her this way.

  “You try one’s notions of a duchess at times, Little One, but you are perfection for me. What the devil were you and Kat doing today?”

  Merry sat up, settling Kat to lay on her stomach on the blanket. She pulled her loose long curls back over her shoulder, tying them in a knot. She could feel Uncle Andrew watching them and then she made a decision how to deal with him.

  Merry smiled impishly. Loud enough so they all could hear, she said, “I went with Kat to get air and sun and listen to the channel. Your daughter loves the shores. She was quiet for nearly two hours, if you can imagine that. Your daughter made a new friend. A very handsome young nobleman, quite obviously of very good birth. He just appeared out of nowhere. Very charming, too. He laughed and he smiled and admired Kat. I did not think such a serious face could do any of that. But he did. I was quite taken away with him and I fear that I favored him with a kiss before he left. He asked to kiss me once and I allowed him to. I was taken away with that, as well. A gentle and tender kiss. As though he were raised by a gentle and tender man. Uncle Andrew was quite shocked by my brazen behavior, but the boy was very handsome and I have a weakness for handsome men. So I thought perhaps I should tell you this in front of Uncle Andrew so he will not worry about your reaction to your wife’s scandalous actions of the day. But that’s how I spent my afternoon. Playing with your daughter and kissing a young nobleman. How did you spend your day, you insufferable man.”

  Merry could tell Varian understood every word as she spoke them, though nothing altered on his smooth face. The only indication of any change in him was the gentle squeeze of his fingers holding her hand.

  Appearing merely amused, as though this was nothing more than Merry whimsy, he said, “You better not run away with a handsome young nobleman or I will be devastated.” Then the voice of drama, “Did you enjoy the kiss, my dear. Did the boy kiss you well? It must be a refreshing change for you. A young man.”

  Merry laughed and then sighed as though giving it thought. “It was full of all sorts of rich emotion one may not suspect such a young man to have. I am sure it must cause him pain and explains many things in his life.”

  An arched brow. “Ah. It’s difficult to often be certain what is in the hear
t of boy.”

  Merry put a hand on Varian cheek. “Not when you are kissed by one, you insufferable man. Such a meager exchange, a single kiss and yet so revealing.” She lifted her mouth to her husband and gave him a very thorough and loving kiss. “And sometimes not meager at all. Sometimes all revealing.” Merry smiled. “You have not told me of your day yet, Varian.”

  “My day was not quite as spectacular,” Varian said quietly. “But thank you for sharing with me yours, Little One.”

  “We have no secrets between us, Varian. We share everything. That is why we love so completely.”

  Merry sprang up from the ground with the smooth quickness of a cat. That thought made Varian smile as he followed her with loving eyes. He watched his wife scoop up their daughter and give her to Rhea.

  The Merricks watched them. They were too polite to say anything and well used to being shocked by the two of them, but they were clearly taken aback by this. Their confusion over it was genuine. Even Andrew’s. It was good that it was genuine. Less speculation about the boy. So Indy had been here, and he wanted to kiss his wife. But he did not want to see his father.

  “Will you see that Netta bathes Kat, Mama,” Merry asked. “Tell her I won’t be long.” She slipped her hand into Varian’s. “I wish to walk out of doors and watch the sun set with my husband.”

  Once they were outside, Merry curled against Varian’s chest while they walked. She touched a light kiss to his arm, running her cheek along it before she whispered, “I am sorry I put you through that in front of them but we were foolish enough to have been seen. Uncle Andrew had some rather vile thoughts about me and was remarkably concerned about your reaction. Indy is looking extremely well. He has been traveling England for a month now. But he is leaving for America with Tom when your ship returns to Falmouth. He is over his need for vengeance against Rensdale. It has freed him I think. He looked very handsome. Braid gone, dressed like a nobleman. He must be over six feet. I could not believe the change, all of it, inside and out. He was laughing and smiling, Varian. It was remarkable. I wish you could have seen him. It would have done your heart good to see Indy so well.”