“Yes.”
“Then it seems quite clear to me. If you tell her the truth, surely she’ll hate you and forget you the more quickly. You will not have won your salvation, but you will at least have finished what you started. You may return to your punishment and she to her life, and all complications are ended. Isn’t that what you wish?”
Of course. It was perfectly clear. It was what had to be, and David’s wishes were of no consequence. Jesse had to be set free. Whether she forgave or repudiated him, she must break the bonds between them.
He would have to cajole or beg or trick her into abandoning her obsession with Gary; only that would keep her tied to the past, and she was in danger as long as she pursued it. He had to end that danger before he left her forever.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” he said, coming to attention. “I shall take your advice.”
Wellington rose. “Ah, but it wasn’t my advice. You’d already made the decision before I arrived. I am merely the reflection of your thoughts. It does help to see them from a fresh perspective.” He saluted. “Good luck, Captain. You died well. Perhaps you can learn to live with equal skill.”
David watched the erect figure turn and walk away, receding until he melted into the horizonless distance. But David no longer felt paralyzed by self-disgust. He had a plan of action, and it was like that final battle at Waterloo when he’d flung himself head-on into certain death—it didn’t matter what existed beyond the moment.
He didn’t think beyond the next hour. His spirit was strong now, and he knew a mere thought would have him back at Jesse’s side.
Enough time had passed on the earthly plane that Jesse was no longer at the resort. He should never have left her, but at least she hadn’t taken any rash action against Gary. He found her at home, working in the shop where she built her sturdy, simple furniture.
She looked up as he came in. Her eyes widened and she went very still, her fingers locked around the smooth wooden handle of a hammer. Slowly she set it down.
“You came back,” she said.
He couldn’t bear the relief and gratitude in her gaze, the fragile happiness that made her words tremble. He strode to her and bent to lift her into his arms. She came willingly, tucking her head beneath his chin.
“David,” she said. “If anything I said … I should never have—”
He silenced her with a finger across her lips. The gesture became a caress; he explored the seam of her lips until they parted, and then replaced his finger with his mouth.
There in her workshop, leaning on a sawdust-covered table, he kissed her. The previous time he’d felt an incredible urgency to respond to her innocent seduction, as if the opportunity might be stolen from him with the slightest hesitation. He’d wanted to bury himself in her body after decades of celibacy. He’d been thinking only of himself, no matter that he’d tried to pleasure her in the process.
This loving would be for Jesse. It was the last chance he had to communicate without words, without deception, while she could still look upon him with trust and love. He wanted her to remember him with something other than hatred when he was gone.
He wanted to be close to her in the truest way of all.
He lifted her to the tabletop, drew her against him and gave full tribute to her lips. Her fingers dipped into his hair and her eyes closed, pale brown lashes fanned over her flushed cheeks. Her tongue met his gentle feints, but he reined in his eagerness. He explored her mouth, outside and inside, with patience and tenderness.
But he couldn’t master his body’s yearning. Jesse’s legs had locked around his hips, and his sex strained his breeches in a manner she couldn’t mistake. She pushed into him, and he swallowed a groan.
No. There’d be no taking her quickly and thoughtlessly now. Not even if she thought she wanted it. He licked each corner of her mouth and mapped her face with his kisses: chin, cheeks, jaw, nose, eyelids, brow, temples, forehead. She made impatient little sounds as if she wished to return the favor, but he gently locked her hands at her sides and continued uninterrupted.
Her ear was a remarkably dainty shell. He took his time tracing its contours and suckled the delicate lobe. Jesse shivered and arched back her neck, giving him access to that slender column. He licked the length of her neck from the hollow at her throat to the pulse point tucked under her jaw, then kissed the juncture of neck and shoulder, using his teeth and tongue to increase the sensual pressure.
Jesse was gasping now, her arms tense under his hands. A part of her was still afraid of letting go, surrendering to him, receiving without giving in return.
He released her arms and kissed her lips again while his fingers found the top button of her shirt. Her hands grasped for his jacket, slid up to his shoulders. Her restless motions didn’t interfere with his deliberate progress.
The first button slipped free, and he bent to kiss the tanned vee just below her neck. The blood beat fast in the hollow of her throat. The second button came undone, and the paler upper swell of her breasts waited to be caressed. He took his time about it, and then unfastened the third button.
Her breasts were beautiful and very white, only the brown nipples a contrast to the smooth, erotic curves. He stroked them with his fingertips, unhurried sweeps that ended in the hardening tips.
If he’d followed his lust, he’d have those nipples in his mouth, firm under his tongue, and her trousers already down around her ankles. He ached to taste her fully. But he cupped and weighed the soft globes, kneaded them lightly, traced the circumference of her nipples until he had memorized every tiny contour.
“David,” she said hoarsely. “Please.”
Her plea was enough. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the swell of one breast above the nipple, kissed a circle that just avoided the brown center. Only when she laced her fingers in his hair and demanded more did he take her nipple into his mouth.
She arched up. He filled his mouth with her, sliding up and down, ending each pull with a deeper draw on her nipple. He wrapped his tongue around it, flicked it, suckled it, teased it while her breath came in short, hot pants. He pressed her breasts together and thrust his tongue into the valley he created, thumbing her nipples in rhythm.
Her eyes were glazed with passion when she looked up, but she was far from insensible from the pleasure. She’d found the buttons to his breeches and was already trying to work them free.
He pushed her hands away. “No, Jesse,” he said. “It’s not over yet.”
He opened her shirt fully and slid it halfway from her shoulders, baring her belly. He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it on the table. She didn’t protest when he eased her onto her back, leaving only her legs below the knees bent over the edge.
The fastening of her trousers was simple enough to manipulate once he saw how it worked. He unlocked the tiny metal teeth from her waist to the juncture of her thighs and tugged the trousers below her hips. She arched her back to help him. The trousers fell to the floor, and he pushed them aside with his boot.
She wore only a thin, narrow slip of silky cloth to pass as an undergarment. The sight of the sheer material, barely hiding what lay beneath, had the effect of hardening David more than he believed possible. He closed his eyes and began to trace the rim of banding that hugged the lower edge of her hips.
The white slickness of the cloth couldn’t disguise Jesse’s response to his caresses. He stroked down, over the mound of her sex, feeling the lush brown curls and the unmistakable wetness that had begun to dampen the delicate material.
He lingered there, pressing into the indentation where she was most sensitive. She shuddered as he ran his finger up and down the hidden cleft. Her scent was like a heady perfume. He bent and touched his tongue to the moistened cloth, inhaling her and taking his first taste.
Jesse moaned and opened her legs in invitation. David withdrew just long enough to dispose of the flimsy drawers and then returned to his explorations.
Now there was nothing between his mouth
and her sex. She lay before him without embarrassment or coy modesty, and the victory was almost as sweet as the nectar of her body. Her curls were no impediment. The soft pink flesh was swollen and wet, slick to his touch, a delicacy he badly wanted to sample.
The tip of his tongue touched the top of her cleft, stroked down into the moist valley. Jesse cried out. He licked her, drank from her, laved her again and again. When he found the swollen bud hidden beneath, he drew it into his mouth and suckled.
He felt her rising excitement in the sounds she made, the little contractions of her muscles, the convulsive clenching and unclenching of her hands in his hair. He gave her joy, but he was himself lost in the wonder of her body, in the pleasure he took in pleasing her.
He didn’t stop wanting to be inside her. But that wasn’t necessary for her fulfillment. He continued his caresses until he sensed a new tension in her body. Her fingers tightened in his hair. With no warning she shattered against him, and he rode with her through the storm until she relaxed and tugged him down beside her.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I …”
“Don’t speak, Jesse,” he said. “Words will come later.”
Such words as would destroy what they had in this moment. But he savored the present, the lingering taste of Jesse on his lips, her hands stroking him, her flushed and peaceful happiness.
“All right,” she said. “No words.” She sat up, unabashedly naked, and began to push off his jacket. The determination in her eyes was indisputable. She wanted him naked as she was; she wanted to see him. He couldn’t deny her.
He helped her with the buttons of his shirt and with his belt. She laughed a bit nervously when she tried to find a fastening for his trousers similar to her own and discovered only more buttons. But then his clothing joined hers on the wooden floor, and he pulled off his boots and paused, oddly vulnerable and almost afraid.
This was nothing to what he must face when he bared his soul to her. But he waited, watching her take in his countless scars and the ugly gash on his thigh that had healed improperly after the battle of Badajoz.
She opened her mouth as if to speak, then remembered their agreement. Instead, she gave him her verdict with her touch. She ran her hands the length of his arms, cupped his shoulders and then his chest, slipping her fingers through the hair and following its downward path to his belly.
He was afraid if she touched his aching sex he would shame himself. He was afraid she wouldn’t touch him at all. But her hands closed gently but firmly around him, and he gave himself up to her ministrations.
For a woman with little experience she knew exactly what to do. He hadn’t wanted her to be the one giving in this exchange, but he didn’t have the will to resist her. She made him helpless. She stroked him, tormented him as he’d done her, first with her fingers and then, astoundingly, with her mouth.
Somehow he kept command of his body. She drove him to the peak of pleasure and at the last moment, when he was losing the battle, she pulled away. Her fingers laced through his and she led him from the workshop and to her bed.
There she drew him down. They were two beings, and then one—joined, flawless, whole. For David it was more than physical gratification. As he moved within her he caught a glimpse of something that had always eluded him, which once he’d sought but given up on long, long ago.
He reached out to grasp it, but then sensation took him: the rocking, the rhythm, the all-consuming fire of ecstasy. He spent himself in Jesse and felt her reach her culmination a second time. They came down together, locked in each other’s arms.
Jesse floated in a dream world, anchored by the length of David’s hard-muscled body beside her on the bed. Even as her nerves hummed with the aftereffects of his lovemaking, another part of her was in a place where happiness was the only reality.
She snuggled closer into the curve of his arm and ran her hand lazily over the flat ridges of his belly, her eyes heavy-lidded with contentment. David’s heart thumped under her ear, and his fingers curled around her arm in a satisfying gesture of possessiveness. She was aware of a purely female appreciation for the unencumbered beauty and power of his body, a certain awe that he was here with her now.
But the happiness was something more powerful. It was infinite. Fleetingly she could remember her initial despair when David had vanished—the yearning, the fear and then, finally, the acceptance. She’d come to realize that whatever he chose to do, her love would remain as unshakable as the Trinity Alps themselves.
The fact that he’d returned to make love to her eliminated the need for explanations, the words he couldn’t say. Words would drag her down from this lofty height of supreme joy, where no darkness could reach.
Her eyes drifted shut. So relaxed; the only other time she’d felt like this was under hypnosis, when all the lines between fact and fantasy, past and present, had blurred and disappeared.
It seemed as if she and her lover lay on a grassy hillside, with a canopy of blue sky above and the trickle of a tiny creek nearby. It felt as though her elation had transformed her into someone else, someone who believed implicitly in happy endings.
Yet it didn’t even matter who she was, or when, or where. She was with the man she loved.
She wanted to stay this way forever.
“Jesse.”
Her hand felt weighted with lead as she tried to lift it, to quiet him and make the timeless bliss last a little longer.
“Jesse, there is something … I must tell you.”
She ducked her head halfway under his arm like a child dodging a scolding. He shifted under her, levering her up.
“I’ve waited too long,” he went on stubbornly. “You must listen to me.”
She opened her eyes halfway and looked at him through the screen of her lashes. His handsome face was deadly serious. It seemed alien, almost frightening. She bent down to plant a kiss on the firm swell of his chest, then moved an inch lower and kissed him again.
“No.”
The word was all command, but she giggled and kept going. There was no room in her heart for such gravity. She felt possessed, as if another, giddier will guided her mouth and hands. Just as she reached the most potent part of him, his hand slapped down over hers.
“Damn it, Jesse.” He closed his eyes and let out a harsh breath. “The deception has to end.” He sat up and pulled her with him, setting her on her knees. She felt as limp and defenseless as a rag doll, but her mind was still floating, undisturbed by his vehemence.
“What is it, David?” she said. She thought she sounded drunk. Drunk on love. She giggled again.
He gripped her arms. “I came back to tell you the truth. The truth I’ve always known but pretended I’d forgotten.”
The truth. What was truth? Too profound a question. But a little piece of her consciousness anchored itself to his declaration, and she focused on his face.
“I deceived you from the beginning, Jesse,” he said. “When we first met, I told you I didn’t know why I was damned, or how I was to win my salvation. I said I knew only that you could help me.”
She smiled and touched his jaw, the slight roughness that didn’t change each time she saw him. “You helped me,” she said.
He seized her wrist. “I tricked you. I manipulated you. Because I knew all along that I could win salvation only if you were willing to give it to me. And that meant I’d eventually have to tell you—” He stopped, let go of her hand and looked away. “Oh, I was honest about some small facts. You and I were married in that other life. We had a child. While she was alive, our marriage … was as good as it could be.”
“You loved … me,” she said. She released her hold on her mind and turned inward, journeyed back. She could remember. “We had Elizabeth.”
“But Elizabeth died,” he said. “And when she died, so did any happiness we had together. You thought we comforted each other? Sophie—” He shook his head almost violently. “No. You. In your grief, you blamed me for Elizabeth’s death. I had nev
er wanted to give up my freedom. I had married you only because of the child, and now there was no reason to stay.”
Jesse heard him, and as he spoke she felt herself shift from one reality to another. The familiar room and bed wavered around her, was overlaid by a second just as familiar but far more ornate. Two vastly different worlds existed in the same time and space.
And David was in the center of both. He was the link that made it possible. Suspended between past and present, Jesse could only listen in numb silence to his confession.
“I knew you were suffering,” he said in a dull, flat monotone. “But I couldn’t think of anyone but myself. It was my duty to protect you, but I chose to abandon you to your pain. So I left you at the Hall in Avery’s care, and bought a new commission in the army. When you begged me to stay, I ignored you.”
As if she were viewing separate movies showing side by side, Jesse saw herself as two people: at her mother’s resort, feeling sympathy and sorrow as David related his loveless past of constant running—and in the chill foyer of a great sprawling mansion, her throat hoarse with weeping, half mad with grief and fear and anger.
She was Jesse—and Sophie. Two women who struggled for supremacy over the soul they shared.
“I expected Avery to handle your affairs as he ran the Hall,” David continued inexorably. “He had always done it well, and I wanted none of that responsibility. I hardly read the letters you sent me in the Peninsula, entreating me to return. When you began to write that you feared Avery, that he despised you, that he was watching you with evil intent, I discounted it as more of your female vapors. It was only when you convinced me that you were very ill that I took leave to come home.”
Jesse swayed and clutched at the headboard for support. Fear clawed at her chest—senseless, maddening terror. Sophie’s terror.
Avery.
“I found you ill only in your own mind,” David said. “I was enraged by your trick. I spoke with Avery, and he convinced me that you were imagining his dislike. I never thought to disbelieve him.
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