His foot brushed against hers under the light spread, and a jolt of electricity shot through him. He sucked in his breath.
Why not just take her, dammit? Spread her and bed her and be done with it!
“We could wait,” she suggested hesitantly. “There’s no law that says we have to do it at all if you don’t want to.”
“We could argue all night, too, but we’re not going to.”
Turning suddenly, he took her by the shoulders and pulled her around so that she was facing him. His fingers bit into her flesh, but when her eyes widened with something that looked almost like fear, he eased his grip, clumsily smoothing her skin as if to take away the pain.
He’d never intended to hurt her, dammit, but he’d been half erect all day, just thinking about what he was going to do tonight. If he didn’t get on with it now he would lose his nerve.
Or lose his priming.
So he kissed her. He’d done that much before, and enjoyed it a bit too much, but it was a beginning.
It was more than a beginning; it was enough to scatter his wits to the four winds. The scent of her skin clouded his senses, its flowery essence mingled now with something spicy, exotic.
Driven to taste her, he twisted his mouth on hers, parting her lips. Guided more by instinct than experience, he began to explore. He used his teeth gently, his tongue seductively echoing the throbbing of his groin.
Sometime during the kiss he lowered her onto the mattress and followed her down, still without breaking contact. Her gown was twisted beneath her body, and he fumbled to lift it, then gave up, broke off the kiss, and said, “This won’t do.”
He should have doused the lamp. Seeing her like this, her lips wet and swollen from his kisses, her darkened eyes staring up at him, he had to remind himself of his original plan: to take her and then to tell her he’d had the marriage annulled.
With unsteady hands, he sat her up, tugged the thin cotton gown from beneath her hips and dragged it over her head.
“Don’t do that,” he said when she crossed her arms over her chest and drew her knees up protectively. “I want to see you. You took your own sweet time looking me over,” he reminded her.
If she heard him, she gave no indication. Gently, he clasped her wrists and brought her arms down to her sides. Her breasts were small, the nipples dark and erect, as if begging for attention.
Painfully aroused, he shifted onto his knees and eased himself between her updrawn thighs, all his fine plans of retribution forgotten. He touched her breast first with his lips, then with his tongue. His nostrils flared to the scent of her woman’s sex, spicy, musky, unbelievably intoxicating, and he began to suckle her.
She whimpered. He lifted his mouth from her nipple to her lips and kissed her again, cradling her fragile breasts in the palms of his hands. Still on his knees, knowing he was on the verge of losing control, he deliberately moved away and took several deep breaths. In a voice that was hoarse, but totally without inflection, he said, “Please spread your legs, Rose. I’ll be as quick as I can, and then I’ll leave you alone.”
He gave her time to prepare herself, warning himself not to jump on her like a rutting stallion. Even Jericho had enough manners to do a bit of sniffing and nuzzling before he got down to business.
Reaching out, he turned the lamp down until there was only a flicker of yellow light. He should have doused it completely. When he came about, she was lying there with both arms held stiffly at her sides. Her eyes were shut tightly—too tightly. He could see, or thought he could see, the shadow of a quiver on her flat stomach.
What the devil was he going to do if she started crying? No woman had ever cried when he’d made love to her.
When he’d bedded her, not made love. Love had never been involved, he had simply paid his money, taken his pleasure, and left until the next time he made port.
Not love, he reminded himself as he came down over her. “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, and wondered why he bothered. Wondered where the thought had even come from. It wasn’t as if she were a virgin.
Primed to go off at a single touch, he reminded himself once more that if she’d been a whore, he’d have been in and out, his money on the dresser, and gone by now.
The trouble was, this was Rose. The woman he had married. The woman who had brought a hundred dead weeds down from the ridge and tenderly planted them around his house. The woman who sang to Annie, and washed her diapers, and laughed at the same old jokes over and over from Peg and Crank.
Closing his mind to all that, he slipped his hand down between their bodies, opening her so that he could get on with what he’d come here to do.
She was damp. She was wet, and hot and swollen and slick, and he nearly lost it before he could get into position. With his heart pounding so hard he could hear it, his body trembling until he could scarcely support his own weight, he took his sex in one hand and moved the head of it slowly back and forth over her nest to prepare her for his invasion.
He heard her catch her breath. She gasped, shuddered, and when her hips thrust upward to meet him, the last remnant of sanity fled. He found her entrance, pushed himself inside her, drove into her again and again, oblivious to all but the earth-shattering sensations that ripped his world asunder….
Sometime during the night he awoke, his shoulder aching, his groin tight and needy. And then it all came back in one heady, intoxicating rush. Half in disbelief, he went over the incredible experience all over again in his mind. At his body’s eager prompting, he considered waking her and taking her again.
He’d do better to wait until he could think more clearly. The fact that he was still here in her bed, with her head on his shoulder and her fist curled trustingly on his chest was more than enough to put him on guard. He’d planned to return to his own bed as soon as the deed was done.
He slipped away just before daybreak, got halfway to his own room before he remembered his clothes, then tiptoed back to collect them from the floor where he’d dropped them. Physically, he was spent, but he knew better than to try to sleep. Instead, he dressed and quietly let himself outside.
By the time he returned from the beach with Jericho just as a fiery sun was breaking through the morning mist, he was no closer than ever to coming to terms with what had happened.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work out. His plan of retribution had been fair without being cruel. She had lied to him. He couldn’t allow her to get away with that. His intention had been to mete out a fair punishment, then tell her that he’d had their marriage annulled, and offer her a generous allowance to stay and look after Annie.
But the fact was that they’d both lied. One had been a lie of commission, the other a lie of omission. Did one offset the other?
Chapter Fifteen
Matt rinsed away the salt from his early-morning swim, changed into dry clothes, then went in search of breakfast. He ate what was put before him, accepted seconds and cleaned off his plate once more. Swimming always made him hungry.
After that he wrote a long, detailed letter of instructions to Peg, knowing full well that the old man would likely ignore it, then went and asked Crank for a list of needed supplies. “I’ll be riding south this morning. If you need anything from Cape Woods, I could ride on down there while I’m out.”
The old cook gave him a knowing look. “Rosie said something about taking the young’un up to the ridge after breakfast. Told her it’d be too hot, but you know how she is.”
He didn’t know how she was.
Hell, he didn’t even know how he was. He was half afraid to find out. All he knew was that he had taken a complicated situation and complicated it still further.
To make matters worse, before he could get away her two lovesick swains turned up, John riding that shaggy, half-trained mustang of his, and young Dixon in his father’s gaff-headed sail skiff.
Taking the supply list Crank handed him, he scanned it to be sure he could read the old man’s crabbed
handwriting, tucked it in his pocket, and turned to go just as Rose appeared in the kitchen door. For once, she avoided meeting his eyes, staring instead at a place just beyond his left shoulder. Her face was as composed as any marble saint’s, but there was nothing she could do about the deep color that stained her cheeks.
Feeling an unaccountable lift of spirits, Matt said, “Good morning, Rose.”
“Good morning, Matthew,” she replied evenly.
She went to edge past him. Some devil prompted him to block her passage, but he made it seem accidental. “Pardon me. Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” she said with the slightest catch in her voice.
She moved to pass on the other side. He shifted his weight and grinned at her, trying to keep from laughing out loud. He wanted to lift her off her feet and swing her around. He wanted to kiss that pinched, disapproving mouth until it was all soft and swollen, the way it had been last night.
“May I please pass?” Her voice was cool, her cheeks ablaze.
He was half tempted to bow, just to watch her reaction, but he stepped back and gestured for her to pass. When she edged by in a wave of lilac-scented warmth, he said quietly, “It really is a fine day, Rose. I’ll bring you something from the village.”
She turned, a stricken look on her face. “You don’t have to do that. Please, I-I’d rather you didn’t.”
Rose watched him all the way to the horse-pen. Had he really done all those things to her last night? Made her feel things she couldn’t even find words to describe? Was that how it was when a woman loved a man?
Other than a few vague longings that had eventually withered and gone away, she had never felt anything faintly like it before, and she’d loved Robert at first. At least, she’d convinced herself she had, until he’d made even the pretense impossible.
Matt had said he would bring her something. Was he courting her? How was a woman supposed to know? She knew about as much about courting as she did about—about horseback riding.
John was already here for her lesson, and she hadn’t even had her breakfast yet. Both he and Sandy were showing up earlier each day. She wasn’t sure if they were trying to beat the heat, or each other. He was sitting on top of his horse, one leg cocked up before him as if he were seated on a kitchen chair. He did that sort of thing, especially when Sandy was around. Showing off, like the trick with the rope.
He was a nice man, though. Old for his age in some ways, surprisingly young in others, but nice. She watched as Matt stopped to speak to him. The two men exchanged a few words and then John wheeled away and rode off. She thought about calling him back. If she wanted to learn to ride, Matt had no business interfering.
The trouble was, she didn’t. Not really. Some people had an affinity with horses, others didn’t. She was one of the others. Later, after Matt went back to his ship, she might try again. Or she might simply limit herself to Angel and the cart.
Matt saddled one of the mares and swung himself up in a move that was surprisingly graceful for so large a man. He stopped to watch as the sail skiff glided alongside the wharf, made his way down to the waterfront and spoke a few words to Sandy, then wheeled away and headed south.
Sailing. Another of her failures. Still, she had tried, which was more than the old Rose would have had the courage to do. In a dire emergency she could probably climb up on top of a horse and make it go. She could sit in a boat and hoist a sail, even venture a little way out into the sound on a calm day, but she’d as soon stay on dry land.
So much for her dreams of competency. She could barely manage adequacy. The best she could hope for was that Matt would come home now and then, perhaps even give her another child, a brother or sister for Annie. She was good at babies, if little else.
Oddly enough, Sandy sailed off without even coming in the house. Not until Matt was nearly out of sight did she go back inside. She’d intended to tell Crank she wasn’t hungry for breakfast when she realized, somewhat to her amazement, that she was starving. “I’ll be back in about five minutes. I left Annie finishing her bottle. Could I possibly have two boiled eggs this morning? And some bacon? Is that biscuits I smell? Oh, good!”
It was late when Matt left the village, the most important part of his mission yet undone. Having been told that Dick Dixon wanted to see him, he’d been frustrated at not finding the man at home. As things had turned out, he had a few questions of his own, questions about his marital status. He’d written to Bagby, but judging from past experience, it could be weeks, or even months, before he heard anything.
Dixon was no lawyer, but as magistrate, his business was enforcing, and even interpreting the law in a limited fashion. If he didn’t have the answers Matt sought, he might at least have a book that covered the subject. It was damned embarrassing. The last thing he needed was to give the gossips something else to gnaw on, but he needed to know where he stood. Belatedly, he had remembered Rose’s reputation as a young widow living alone with two men and a baby. When Bess had been there, it had been different, but now Bess was gone and he was back, and everything had changed.
So he’d given Crank’s supply list and his letter to Bagby to the captain of the freighter that brought supplies out once a week, then sought out the woman who was the nearest thing the village had to a dressmaker. A widow, Miss Sal, as she was called, supported herself by making sails, shrouds and occasionally sewing for those whose eyes and fingers were no longer up to the task.
He ordered a dress made for Rose. “Something yellow,” he suggested. “Not egg-yolk yellow, but paler, more like those flowers that grow near the shore.”
“Cost you fifty cents, you buy the cloth. I’ll need me some measurements.”
“I’ll pay you three dollars, you order the cloth and I’ll get you the measurements in a day or two. You’ve seen Mrs—” He cleared his throat. “You’ve seen her. She’s about this high, sort of thin, but not too thin—built like a regular woman.”
He was sweating like a horse. Miss Sal promised to send for the material, and Matt promised to bring her measurements, but he had one more request before he could escape.
If he’d been in Norfolk or Boston, or most any other port city in the world, he would have sought out a florist. Instead, he ended up borrowing a shovel and pail, handed over another dollar and dug up a rosebush from the dressmaker’s front yard.
And tried to ignore her gap-toothed grin as he rode off with the thing, his ears burning like fire.
“I just happened to see it and thought I might as well bring it home and see if you could do anything with it,” he told her when he got home. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He’d seen it blooming and wanted it for Rose. A rose for Rose. If he’d thought about having to tote the long-armed, thorny thing home on horseback, he might not have bothered.
Yeah…he would’ve.
Dropping the pail beside the porch, he clumped off, muttering under his breath, “Take it or leave it, you’ll probably kill the damned thing anyway.”
With both Peg and Luther gone, there was enough to do to keep him busy until dark. He fed up, gave Jericho a run on the shore, nailed up a nest box in the henhouse and set out a net. The wind was due for a change. Which meant he’d be up to his armpits in guts and scales come morning, but at least they’d have fresh fish, which would be a relief from the salt mullet Crank favored.
In a rundown boarding house in the waterfront town of Beaufort, Tressy Riddle tapped her front teeth with the crumpled envelope and thought about what she’d just read. No wonder Cat hadn’t answered any of her letters. She was dead, murdered by that no-account husband of hers.
Tressy, who was younger but a whole lot smarter, had warned her sister to wait. Told her if she’d just be patient a little while longer, something better would turn up. But Cat claimed she was tired of people looking down their snooty noses. “Just because we don’t have no money. Just because Papa drank himself to death and Mama run off owing half the people in town, they t
hink we’re dirt.”
So Cat had up and married some old man she met down at the docks. Tressy had warned her about hanging around there. “You’re not never going to meet the right kind of man if you don’t learn to talk right and dress right and go where they go.”
“Where do they go?”
“To the ’piscopal church, dummy.”
“I went there twice. It’s no fun.”
“No, well let me tell you something, what happens to girls that hang around the docks is no fun, either. Leastwise it is for a while, but once the ship leaves out, you’re stuck with a brat in your belly and no man and no money. That’s what happened to Louella.”
“I’m smarter than her.”
“You’re dumber than dirt, is what you are.”
Well, look who was right and look who was wrong, Tressy thought smugly as she replaced Mr. Dixon’s letter in the envelope.
Abner Murdoch, the man Cat had married, had had a house, at least. Tressy, finding herself in need of a roof over her head until her luck changed, had considered paying the Murdochs a visit. She’d written to Cat and not heard back, so she’d written again. A man named Dixon had answered her letter, telling her what had happened.
“Your sister left a child, who is at present in the custody of one Captain Matthew Powers of Powers Point.”
That had impressed her right off. People who had places named after them had money. The next line had confirmed it.
“Captain Powers is a man of some means, and well respected. You may be assured that even without a wife, he will care for your niece until other arrangements can be made.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Once again, Tressy tapped her front teeth with the corner of the envelope. A man of means, no less. With or without a wife.
Well, maybe she’d just spend her last few dollars on boat fare and see what else she could see. She wasn’t interested in any baby, but Cat and her old man had had a house, and maybe a few other things, like furniture that could be sold. Sailors usually brought back all kinds of knickknacks from foreign places just to prove they’d been there.
The Paper Marriage Page 18