Nightfall

by Anne Stuart

  It was fast, silent, and inexorable. She barely noticed her discomfort, as each succeeding thrust shoved her farther across the table. Dishes shattered on the floor, but neither of them paid any attention. She came first, unable to stop herself, and he followed, quickly, sinking his head on her breast in panting surrender.

  “It must be something about kitchens,” he said in a thoughtful voice after a few moments.

  She shoved at him, and he moved away from her, his jeans down around his thighs. He simply pulled them up and fastened them, then reached out a hand for her to help her off the table. “Mind the broken dishes,” he said casually.

  She looked up at him, at his outstretched hand, and wanted to scream or cry. She had given herself to him, willingly, but the reality of that was beginning to hit home as she lay spread-eagled on the kitchen table, still trembling with the after-math of her brief, powerful orgasm. She had no defenses left. And the thought terrified her as nothing had before.

  She ignored his hand, scrambling off the table with a fair amount of awkwardness, feeling like a fool. But Richard was having none of her avoidance. He reached out for her, and the awkwardness vanished, as it always did when he touched her. “You have a demoralizing effect on me,” he added wryly.

  She closed her eyes briefly, knowing that color was flaring in her face. Stupid to be embarrassed after all they’d done in the last twelve hours, stupid to be embarrassed with his semen dripping down her legs, but there it was. “As do you on me,” she said in a quiet voice.

  She didn’t expect his response. The tenderness of his mouth against hers. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she looked up at him, completely vulnerable. “Good morning,” he said softly.

  And finally the humor of the situation hit her, and she managed to smile in return. “We already went a little past that, didn’t we?” she said.

  “We can always go back,” he whispered, and kissed her again. And this time she put her arms around him and kissed him back, sweetly, with the doomed love that had taken possession of her heart.

  “We’re going down to see the children,” he said. “Sally’s expecting me, and I doubt she’ll be surprised when she sees you. She always was a perceptive woman.”

  Cassidy felt the sharp stab of jealousy with something akin to wonder. She’d never considered herself a jealous, possessive person. She found she was a great deal more elemental than she’d ever thought. “Were you in love with her?”

  “No. And she was perceptive enough to know that as well.”

  “But you had an affair with her. After you were married?” She was hoping he would deny it.

  But the time for lies was past. “Yes,” he said.

  “And what did your wife think of that?”

  “It made her insane.” The words were lightly, eerily spoken.

  “I don’t think I want to hear about this,” Cassidy said, moving away from him to pour herself a cup of coffee.

  “Then don’t ask,” he said calmly enough. “We’ll leave in half an hour. It’s several hours drive from here, and I want you to have time to get to know them.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Don’t you want to see them? You don’t have much time here before someone realizes you left the country. Don’t you want to spend as much time as you can with your children? Don’t you love them?”

  “I’m planning to die for them,” he said with icy simplicity. And he walked out of the room before she could take back her questions.

  It was a glorious spring day. By the time Cassie changed and met Richard by the Vauxhall she’d left in the driveway, she’d made up her mind. She looked at him warily, unable to read his expression as he tossed a picnic hamper in the backseat of her car.

  “What about a truce?” he said in his deep, slow voice.

  “I hadn’t realized we were still battling.”

  “We’re always battling. On one level or another. Just for today, don’t ask me any more questions. You aren’t ready for the truth, and I’m sick to death of lying. Why don’t we pretend we’re a normal American couple, going for a peaceful drive in the English countryside? No deaths, no lies, no secrets. Just for today?”

  She wasn’t sure if she’d ever gone to him of her own accord before. She crossed the drive and put her arms around him, leaning her head against his shoulder. His arms came around to hold her, lightly, possessively, and she could hear his heart beating beneath her ear. Just as her own heart was pounding, in silent counterpoint with his. “Yes,” she said.

  It was lambing season. As Richard drove her rental car down the narrow lanes, they passed field after field of sheep and their new offspring. The hedgerows were still more twigs than leaves, but the daffodils were everywhere.

  They drove in silence, listening to the BBC and the weather in Welsh. They drove in amiable conversation, speaking of childhood and loved books, of college years and favorite movies. Neither of them mentioned the past two years, neither of them mentioned family. Cassidy leaned back, watching as they sped down the narrow, twisty lanes, and wished it could go on forever and ever.

  They reached the tiny town of Neatsfoot by late morning. Sally and the children seemed cozily ensconced in a cottage at the edge of the village, and while Cassie wondered why they didn’t live in Richard’s house at Herring Cross, she didn’t ask. She was determined to keep her curiosity at bay for as long as she could. What she most needed to know she could discover simply by observing.

  When she fought her irrational jealousy, she could see that the affection between Richard and Sally was no more than that. At least on Richard’s side. He greeted his old friend easily enough, with a casual kiss that nevertheless felt like a knife in Cassie’s belly. She wanted his passion, his obsession. She wanted his casual, comfortable affection as well.

  His children were all over him, dragging him into the cottage, chattering at a rapid-fire speed that left Cassie dazed and smiling. She stood by the car, watching as they disappeared, then turned to meet Sally Norton’s wary brown eyes.

  “You came back,” she said.

  “I did,” Cassie agreed.

  Sally watched her for a long, thoughtful moment. “Come with me,” she said abruptly. “I want to show you something.”

  No questions, Cassidy reminded herself, nodding her agreement. Not unless you can handle the answers.

  Sally led her through the house, past the living room where the chatter of excited voices danced with the lower, calmer registers of Richard’s deep voice. He was a good father, Cassidy realized with absent surprise. Calm, loving, totally involved. Though why she should have doubted that, when he was already willing and ready to die for them, was something she didn’t bother to consider.

  The garden was small, gray, with only the bright splash of yellow from the daffodils brightening the gloom. Cassidy took one last, longing glance at the house before she sat, waiting to hear what Sally had to say.

  “You’re not to betray him,” she said abruptly.

  “I never would.”

  “So you say. But he’s not an easy man, and things are never what they seem to be.”

  “I know that.”

  “You think you know him so well?” Sally said with just a trace of bitterness.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re in love with him, aren’t you? Poor, silly girl,” she said, the bitterness growing stronger.

  She didn’t deny it. “Tell me what I can do. How I can help.”

  Sally shook her head. “He’s got you well and truly trapped, hasn’t he? Just as he trapped me. He never pretended to love me, you know. That’s part of his danger. He doesn’t promise anything he’s not willing to give, so you can’t comfort yourself with the thought that you’d been misled. You have to accept the fact that you went into it, deliberately b
linding yourself to the truth.”

  “What is the truth?”

  “He’ll never love you. I don’t think he’s capable of it. Oh, he’s good in bed, as I’m sure you’re very well aware. But his heart is in the grave, with his bitch of a wife. He worshipped her, you know. Everyone did. Sweet, saintly Diana, the little princess. Everyone was devoted to her. Even her children thought she was some kind of magical creature, though they rarely saw her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was too emotionally frail to take on the burden of children. She had a live-in nanny, and Richard did the majority of the child care. Little Diana could simply bask in the glow of maternity without doing any of the work.”

  “What about you?”

  “I do the work, all right. I love these children, as much as if they were my own. I don’t want to give them up. I told Richard that my treatment could wait, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place,” she said bitterly.

  “Why did you tell him?”

  “Because if I hadn’t, he’d probably be a dead man already. He wasn’t fighting his death sentence, you know. He thought he had everything settled, between me and Mark Bellingham. It wasn’t until I got sick that he accepted the appeal, accepted the fact that there was still something worth fighting for.”

  “Why? Why hasn’t he told the truth, why is he letting them do this to him when you and I both know he didn’t kill his wife?”

  Sally Norton’s smile was twisted. “Don’t speak for me,” she said. “I know what happened that night. He told me. If you want the truth, ask him.”

  It was icy cold, the panic that swamped her. “He didn’t kill her,” she said again, hearing the uncertainty in her own voice.

  Sally ignored her. “You’re not to break your promise,” she said fiercely. “If I leave the children in your hands, you’re not to go back on your word. Richard will be beyond stopping you, but I won’t. If you do anything stupid that endangers those children, I will kill you. Do you believe me?”

  Cassidy had no doubts whatsoever. “I would never do anything to hurt them.”

  Sally stepped back, the fury vanishing from her, leaving her pale and sick-looking. “Good,” she said flatly. “I trust you. God knows, I have no choice.” She turned, starting back toward the cottage, when Cassie found words that surprised her.

  “Do you love him?”

  Sally stopped, but she didn’t turn around. Her back was narrow and very straight, and she looked both strong and fragile. “I did once. To the point of desperation. He’s good at that, you know. Getting a woman to love him.”

  Cassidy ignored the implications. “Do you still love him?”

  Sally turned to look at her, and there was death and darkness in her eyes. “Not since he told me what really happened that night.”

  IF RICHARD HAD any doubts about the very real danger Cassidy Roarke posed for him, that day would have wiped them out. He couldn’t stop thinking of her. Remembering the taste of her skin, the scent of her neck, the texture of her nipples. He was like a randy teenager with a perpetual erection, and it had taken all his considerable willpower not to pull over by the side of the road and haul her onto his lap during the trip down to Neatsfoot.

  He’d deliberately left her alone with the children, watching from a distance as they tested her, as only a five-and a seven-year-old can test. His children were nothing at all like their mother, thank God. They were resilient, fierce, openly demanding. Seth had already taken a fancy to her, climbing into her lap and chattering away amiably, and he suspected that Sally wasn’t too pleased with how easily they were adapting. He couldn’t let himself think about that.

  He couldn’t worry about Sally’s well-being, or Cassidy’s, or his own. All that mattered was his children’s welfare. Cassidy had passed almost every test. He had one more for her, the most difficult of all. He wondered what he’d do if she failed.

  Things had gone too far to pull back. If she backed out, betrayed him, then he would have no choice whatsoever.

  At least then he would go to his death knowing he was getting no more than he deserved.

  Odd, how Sally’s clean, orderly kitchen left him unmoved. He leaned against the counter while she assembled sandwiches, surveying her neat movements, her trim figure.

  “What did you say to her?” he asked casually.

  Sally didn’t pretend to misunderstand, nor did she waste their time by lying. “I warned her about you.”

  “I thought you might have. You don’t like her, do you?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. As a matter of fact, I like her very much. Enough that I regret what you’re asking of her.”

  “You were willing to give the same.”

  “But I didn’t think I was in love you.”

  He said nothing, allowing her that fiction. He knew women, and he knew Sally. For all Sally’s insisting that their short affair had come to a mutual conclusion, he knew she still wanted him. Still wasted her emotions on an impossibility. It would have grieved him, if he had any emotion to spare.

  “You haven’t told her the truth yet, have you?” Sally asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “If I have no choice.” He pushed away from the counter, going to stand by the window. The weather had shifted, darkened, from a glorious spring day to the promise of an angry storm. “I think I have to get back to the States.”

  “So soon?”

  He’d learned to shut off his emotions two years ago. The presence of his children brought them forth again, combined with Cassidy Roarke’s wild passion. It was all he could do to hide them from Sally. “The sooner I get back, the sooner I can have Mark make the final arrangements. You need to begin treatment, we both know it, and you’ve already waited too long.”

  “She’ll just disappear? As I did?”

  “If I can persuade her. Her father is dying. Once he goes, which I imagine will be fairly soon, she’ll want to get away. By the time she realizes what she’s done, the ties she’s severed, it will be too late.”

  “Or so you hope.”

  “It will be too late,” he said, his voice icy to hide his fear.

  “Once I finish treatment, I can come back . . .“

  “No. They’ve been disrupted too much in the last few years. First the loss of their mother, then their father.”

  “Not to mention their grandparents.”

  He said nothing for a long moment. “They’ll stay with Cassidy. If I work things well enough, the authorities will simply assume she’s just another victim of mine.”

  “What are people going to say when I show up again? Don’t you think they’ll ask questions?”

  “I doubt anyone will notice. They’re more interested in rumors than facts. If anyone asks, just say you were in an ashram in India, and that you didn’t know I’d been accused of murder. Tell them you think I’m entirely capable of slaughtering my wife and children.”

  “Richard . . .”

  “Do it,” he said, his voice tight with tension. “It’s the one last thing you can do for me. My children are dead. As long as the world believes that, they’re safe.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “You’ve done this much for me already, Sally. Don’t let me down at the last minute.”

  She looked at him, her dark brown eyes filled with love and hopelessness. “I’ll do it,” she promised.

  His children wept when they left, early that evening. He lied to them, because he had to, telling them that Daddy had to go back and work, but that he’d be coming back by summer. It was small comfort. He’d be dead by summer. He would never see his children again.

  “May I come again?” Cassidy asked them, her voice slightly unsteady, her green eyes bright w
ith unshed tears. “If your father can’t make it, do you mind if I come alone?”

  The response was everything he could have hoped for, and it was enough to keep him from losing his tenuous grip. They would survive. They would thrive. He was leaving them in the best of hands.

  He didn’t say a word as they drove back north. He was driving too fast, and he knew it, and he didn’t give a damn. The mindless rage was simmering through his veins, and there was no way he could vent it, apart from driving much too fast in Cassidy’s car.

  She sat next to him, eyes closed, face shuttered. He could see the white streaks her tears had made on her pale cheeks, and the sight of that enraged him even further. He could feel the blackness closing in around him, and it frightened him. He’d been fighting it for so long. Now, when things were finally in place, he couldn’t allow the darkness to destroy everything. One final lie, and everything would be safe.

  If he could trust her. If he could trust his power over her, that power he’d worked on so painstakingly. It had been an assault, long and well-planned, and she’d succumbed, just as he’d expected her to. She was his, now and forever, completely, and if he’d made the fatal mistake of being caught in his own web, then there wasn’t that much time to suffer for it. If loving her made his eventual punishment that much harder, it was the least he deserved.

  She said nothing as he drove faster and faster, the demons pushing him toward the edge, dragging her along. The speedometer crept higher and higher, the rain lashed against the windshield, and the roads were slick and narrow. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to die, not this way, not with her beside him, even if some crazy part of him wanted it. Wanted her death, with his, tied together in a kind of mad eternity.

  He took a corner too fast, the wheels lost their purchase, and he felt the car begin to slide, slide toward the cliff, and he watched it go, calmly, wondering whether they’d tumble, end over end, down into the fierce and angry sea. He wasn’t sure he would fight it.