Tender (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Time Travel Romance Book 1)

by Anne Meredith

  He poised motionless over her, watching her as the excruciating pleasure of it rolled over him. Tight and sleek, she convulsed around him as he relished each secret caress. Her eyes were closed, her eyebrows wrinkled faintly, lips, softly reddened from his kisses, were parted, exposing the tip of her tongue. And her thighs rose instinctively, her legs locking around him. Her name was wrenched from him as he helplessly moved within her, the feeling of her weaving a haze of blinding sensation throughout him.

  His lips lowered to her ear. “’Tis too much. I’ve imagined being inside you too often, and … still, the reality is far better.”

  He felt the release building within him, and he shifted her hips slightly, changing their position, the sound of her appreciative cry forcing him to slow. What heaven, to feel her pleasure once more, pulsing around him. He thrust again, riding the sweet folds of her sex. And he raised his head—he had to see her.

  Her eyes were open—shimmering gold, lazily watching him, moving over his chest, then meeting his in amazement, and her lips were parted, almost smiling. Her breasts were round and full and slick with his sweat, her nipples rosy from his vigorous laving.

  So this is what it’s like, to see a woman with love and desire in her eyes, examining you.

  Her teeth captured her lower hip as her pleasure rose. “I’ve imagined this,” she gasped.

  The knowledge was nearly his undoing, and she caught his face in her hands, pulling him down to settle his open mouth over hers. It was a hot, urgent kiss, and she turned her face aside, finding his ear with her mouth, dipping her tongue inside, whispering the sort of things he’d never dreamed of her saying—yet she did it with innocence and shyness, making it somehow even more potent.

  He would never know the rest of her thoughts, for his breath caught on a harsh gasp as his orgasm went through him. The pleasure became almost unbearable at the sudden, intense spasm of her around him. He muffled the sound of her name against her throat as he gave one last thrust.

  Rachel was numb with pleasure. Her hands glided over the slick sheen on his shoulders as she felt his heart’s beat within her, and he shifted to his side, drawing her with him. They lay in the warm aftermath of passion’s storm, finding contentment in their quiet shared heartbeat.

  Presently, her palms smoothed over his back, and she kissed his chest. He felt a sleepy contentment move over him, but he had no desire to sleep. He meant to make love to her until dawn.

  “Grey, will you tell me—please—where these scars came from?” She felt his hesitation, the slight withdrawal in his touch. She held him closer. “If you love me.”

  “The story will put you to sleep, my love.”

  “You don’t know how much I love you, then. Please?”

  A minute passed, as she began to accept that he would never trust her with the story.

  “I left Liverpool the day my mother was buried in a pauper’s grave,” he said at last. “On her deathbed, she made me promise to go to Williamsburg to find Thomas Trelawney. I found a ship in the harbor whose captain was willing to take on a raw lad, and I took to it readily enough. Truth to tell, ships had always held a fascination for me. The only thing my mother had ever told me about my father—until she knew she was dying—was that he had long ago sailed to the New World. From the time I was a boy, I dreamed of the day that I, too, would make such a splendid journey.”

  The thought of a boyish Grey, wistfully dreaming of the sea, moved Rachel.

  “It troubles me that Lawrence Washington’s brother so romanticizes the sea. All boys do, though, and I was no different. At any rate, in the year I was on that ship, it made only one American landing, in Charleston. I returned to Liverpool a year older and no closer to fulfilling my promise to my mother. I met a man named Percival Snouth, who told me of a ship he owned that was traveling from Liverpool to Africa to Norfolk. In a year, he told me, I would be in Williamsburg.

  “My mother educated me well, but she’d never told me of the things I would see on that voyage. She never told me about slavery. The ship’s captain was a crueler sort, and I had little respect for him. We purchased two hundred along the coast of Sierra Leone, and I managed to swallow my revulsion. It was all worth it, I told myself, if I could only get to Williamsburg.”

  He paused, and his hand stilled on her hair. “One man—one man had been taken from a wife and five children. That was a matter of course. But…the man he was chained to died, and the corpse remained chained to him for a day before it was finally removed.”

  She heard the disgust in his voice as he spoke. “The man went slowly mad on the voyage, and attacked the first mate. As a lad in Liverpool, I thought I’d witnessed every atrocity known to man. But none compared to what I saw on that voyage.

  “The captain ordered the bondsman flogged for the attack, and I interfered once it began. For my insubordination, I was to receive fifty lashes.” He gave a humorless laugh. “I believe I lasted thirty.”

  Dull horror pervaded her at his matter-of-fact description.

  “I was not allowed to leave the ship when we reached Norfolk. Once more in Liverpool, I decided to again try a merchant ship. Unfortunately, the Royal Navy interfered in my plans, and I was press-ganged into service.”

  “Press-ganged?”

  “Impressment. The Navy’s method for finding new enlistees,” he muttered. “Any able-bodied man can be abducted in an alleyway and taken aboard ship. Once there and out to sea, leaving the ship in another port amounts to desertion.

  “I spent the next five years drifting from port to port—none of them near Virginia—which gave me plenty of time to repent of my compassion for the man I couldn’t save. My protest had made no difference to his fate. He died despite my intervention. Now the promise to my mother was almost beside the point; Virginia had become a prize I was focused single-mindedly on winning. I once more met Percival Snouth, in port in London. Snouth’s a powerful man, and he had fatherly feelings for me. He mentioned one of his slavers was en route to Norfolk, and that the captain of the ship was a more charitable man. And indeed, the ship arrived in Norfolk a little less than a year later.

  “By the time I found my father, I’d seen far worse than what I saw on that first voyage. But I simply no longer cared. I was dead to the abomination of it. Once one accepts a wrong against humanity, it’s devilish easy to find arguments to justify it, and devilish hard to turn away from it. At any rate, I met Thomas Trelawney, and he—”

  He stopped, shaking his head, and a grim smile quirked his mouth. “Well, at least I learned a trade for my trouble. A small price to pay, I suppose—eight years.”

  The fathomless depth of his determination, his love for the father he’d never known, finally penetrated her. She searched his eyes. “It’s all in the past, Grey.”

  “Is it?”

  The dimness of the candle reflected the utter sadness in his eyes at the topic.

  “Grey—”

  He drew her close once more. “I was a pathetic wretch of a man until you came to me, my darling. You revived my scarred and lifeless heart and breathed love into it. And—” He cradled her head in his hand. “Know this as a solemn vow. If I would spend eight years sailing the seas for a man who dismissed me when I found him, I would move heaven and earth to ever have you by my side. The joy I know, holding you thus, is such that men dream of knowing. You blot out the blackest parts of me, and find worthiness in me where there is none.”

  She stroked his hand, and the words that stirred within her were words she’d never spoken to another. “I love you, Grey.”

  His arms tightened around her, and his lips burned a kiss on her shoulder. “As our hearts beat now, so they’ll ever beat. Nothing shall ever stand between us. No man. No woman. No law of heaven or earth. I will never let anyone take you from me, nor will anyone ever hurt you, so long as I live. That I swear as a solemn oath to God and to you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Grey was awake to see the first gray streaks of dawn filter
over Rosalie. Unable to sleep, troubled by the choices he’d made and those yet to be made, he’d spent most of the night watching Rachel sleep. As he watched her, he pondered what he’d done—exactly what he’d yearned to do since the night he first saw her—and found a curious creature abiding in the bed between them: his conscience.

  God in heaven, what could be done?

  Put away his wife? An unsavory prospect to his pride, to be sure. Divorce was reserved for connubial nightmares even a bishop despaired of, yet he had both cause and desire. And he cared little for the opinions of others—nothing for his wife—but he had never dishonored a promise before.

  Or—keep a woman whose taste for cruelty was demonic? Was honor so sterling a trait as to make innocents suffer for it? One fear kept him awake through the night—that of dishonoring the woman who cuddled against him, trusting in his vow.

  The depth of her faith pricked him anew. She’d trusted him with her blackest secrets—trusted him so completely that those secrets had been revealed only in his arms. He had thought he would persuade her to stay with him, to build their own haven that none could destroy. Now, he saw that haven only as a prison she would one day despise—and him along with it, for having trapped her there, rather than allowing her to find the love of a man who deserved her, who would honorably offer her his name.

  A soft hand moved over his chest, instantly liberating him from the melancholy of despair. He rested his hand over hers, arriving at a solution he liked little.

  “I’ve dreamed of waking up in your arms,” she said, her voice slurred with sleep.

  And I yours, my love. For the rest of my life.

  He tugged back the mosquito netting and threw his legs over the side of the bed. He put on a robe, walked to the window, and stared out. A thin fog had moved in from the river over the tobacco fields, where the bondservants were already at work.

  “Grey, what’s the matter?”

  He looked at her—a mistake. She sat on the bed, the sheet wrapped haphazardly about her. She looked ridiculously young sitting there, her amber eyes large and frightened, her lips soft from his passion—and hers. He remembered the soft warmth of her mouth on his skin, and he abruptly returned his attention to the fields.

  “I’m taking you and Emily to Thomas Trelawney’s home.”

  She watched him from the bed, disturbed by the distance he’d placed between them. “Why?”

  “Do you think he’ll not welcome you?”

  “Of course he will … but last night, I thought …”

  Wounded at the awkward dismay in her voice, he turned. “Do you love me, Rachel?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then I ask for your trust.”

  Trust me. Rachel, who before had found only Camisha worthy of her trust, didn’t hesitate to give it to the man she loved. “It’s yours.”

  She saw the emotion in his eyes, the grim set of his jaw, and she forced herself to ask the question. “Are you … are you going to stay married to her?”

  His gaze fell to the floor, and she went numb. At last, she began to dress, her fingers trembling on the hooks. By the faint light of dawn, their hastily discarded clothing, littering the floor, the chair, the nightstand, looked tawdry.

  “Rachel,” he said, touching her shoulders, “does my word mean nothing?”

  “Yes. I would expect you to try to make the marriage work.”

  “Make it work?” he said, dumbfounded. “The woman is a—a—she’s a succubus! I meant my word to you. But—what right did I have to ask your hand? I’ve no idea how long it shall take to dissolve the marriage. And that’s assuming I’m successful in my petition for divorce.”

  She struggled against him, but he held her close. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’ll love you always. I only ask for your patience. I don’t trust her, and I don’t want you or Emily hurt.”

  She saw the earnestness of his plea. She slowly raised her hand, tracing his eyebrows, sliding her fingers through the softness of his hair. “Then I’ll wait as long as you need me to.”

  She roused and dressed Emily, and they met Grey on the front walk, where he waited with the carriage.

  “Where are we going, Papa?”

  “We’re going to your grandfather’s, Emily. Perhaps you’ll stay a few days there.”

  Emily’s drowsiness evaporated. “With Grandfather?”

  He nodded. They reached Williamsburg at last, and Grey hesitated at the brick house on the palace green. She saw the somber fascination in his face as he helped them down. He knocked at the door, and presently Thomas answered, dressed in a black nightgown. Without a wig, he looked even more like Grey. He stood aside, welcoming them in.

  “Grey? Come in. What’s wrong?”

  As Thomas closed the door behind them, Grey spoke haltingly. “I … would ask a favor of you—”

  He stopped abruptly, as if biting back a word that wasn’t quite appropriate.

  “Then it’s yours.”

  Grey cast a quick glance at Emily, who gazed up the stairs.

  “May Emily and Rachel stay here—just for a few days?”

  “Of course. Would you stay as well?”

  His father’s unconventional blessing should have comforted him. Instead, he only wondered—was he no better than Thomas, to dishonor the vows he’d once made? Oh, they were different, so different, and yet now bound together. “No, sir.”

  She wondered what Grey was thinking as his gaze narrowed at the invitation. No matter what poor Thomas did, it vexed his son.

  “Well, then.” Thomas led them upstairs to the end of the hall. Inside the room, he lit another candle, illuminating a spacious, charming room. He looked from Grey to Rachel. “I’ll … see if Jennie is awake. She’ll be delighted you’re here.”

  Emily scampered after him, and Rachel watched them go. She touched Grey’s arm. “You’ve got to forgive him, Grey, for Emily’s sake and for your own—if for no other reason.”

  She turned away, swallowing unexpected emotion, and he touched her shoulders. When he drew her into his arms, she spoke softly.

  “I would gladly give all I own for the chance to see my father again. Just once. I had so little time with him. Now, I treasure a single memory of him. It’s too late for me to know my father. But it isn’t too late for you.”

  He looked down at her silently.

  “If you would remember anything of me,” she went on, “remember that I want you to be happy. The only way you’ll ever find peace is to know that those times are gone. What might have grown between you and your father twenty or thirty years ago—it’s gone. All you have is today. For yourself, I beg of you, stop letting yesterday ruin today. Let it go.”

  He held her close once more. “I wish I could restore your father to you, my darling. But your father and mine are two different men. And…” He stopped, kissing her forehead. “Forgive me, but I’ve a long, urgent journey to make today, and I should get started now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Richmond. I should be back in four or five days.”

  “Richmond? What for?”

  “’Tis nothing to concern yourself over. I’ll be back soon.”

  He descended the narrow stairway and left the house, and Rachel stared after him, wondering if it were possible to bridge so wide a river of bitterness.

  Jennie was a patient teacher. She bent over her charges with calm direction, instructing them in the turn of a needle, the selection of floss. Emily held her hand with practiced grace over her hoop, and her stitches were neat, even, and tiny on the cotton apron.

  Rachel, on the other hand, had just ripped out her last dismal effort at the gentle art of embroidery.

  “I give up.”

  Jennie smiled. “You’ll never make a proper colonial bride, Rachel.”

  Emily’s head swung around. “Are you betrothed?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I’m glad. I want you to stay with us forever.” She moved away to the wind
ow, where she could alternately gaze out over the sunny day and then add a stitch or two to her apron.

  Rachel smiled at the girl’s easy appreciation of life. She wondered what this child would do in her lifetime—and she knew Emily would be a remarkable woman.

  “Rachel, when can we go home? I miss Sukey and Camisha.”

  The reminder pierced her. Two weeks had passed since Grey had left, and the chasm that began with Camisha’s wedding widened each day. Rachel had written her, but her response had been that of an old college chum; friendly but distant. She wrote to Hastings, and he sent a pleasant note reassuring her.

  Lord Windmere left instructions that the Adamses are to be accorded the privilege and protection of house-guests at Rosalie. Mr. Adams declined the invitation, content for the time to remain with the bondservants. Have a care, Rachel. Yours is a precarious circumstance.

  “Rachel!”

  She glanced at Emily. “I’m sorry, darling. I miss her, too.”

  Jennie’s mouth fell open in feigned offense. “Am I not properly entertaining my guests? Well, perhaps it’s time we quit this stuffy house.” She smiled at Emily. “And you, my dearest child, are desperately in need of a new frock. A pink one, I think, to match that merry apron you’re stitching.”

  “Oh, yes!” Emily cried, hastily putting away her sewing.

  They set out for the milliner’s, which Rachel had learned was the colonial equivalent of a dressmaker. They spent the morning exploring town, and she observed William & Mary’s Wren building, whose halls her father would someday walk as a professor. She knew why this place had raised so many emotions in her, that first day. Her parents had brought her here when she was a child—yet she didn’t remember being so disturbingly aware, then, of the Trelawney home. There was a supernatural bond between her and Emily—the child whose ghost would lure her into the past … to find herself.

  When they returned home, Jennie was exhausted. “I think I’ll lie down a while.”

  Rachel helped her into the bed, knowing her time was very near. “Where’s Thomas?”