Cherished

by Elizabeth Thornton

  “Certainly not!” said Sara, adopting a scandalized air. “In my marriage, my husband makes the decisions.”

  “That will be the day,” retorted Emily, and laughing together, they hugged each other one last time.

  Emily waited until she and Leon were in the privacy of their own room before she asked him what he and Peter had found to talk about while she and Sara were saying goodbye.

  “You seemed so serious,” she said.

  Eventually, he responded. “I was thanking Peter for scotching the report of my involvement with La Compagnie. In the letter, he is going to make it appear as though Addison invented the whole thing to discredit me.”

  “I’m glad,” said Emily. She knew how sensitive her husband was about La Compagnie.

  He shook his head. “I can hardly believe that Peter and Hester come from the same family. He is as straight as a die and she was completely warped.”

  “That’s how I feel about William. There was a time when I thought we had so much in common. To be perfectly honest, it used to chafe me a bit that he was so straitlaced. How could I have made such a mistake?” After a moment, she went on. “Leon, you read Hester’s diary. How could this have happened? They were both so proud. I know that they were truly scandalized by some of the things my family did in the past. Hester, in particular, had such high standards. Sara and I could never live up to them.”

  He gave her such an intent look that she felt as though he were trying to read her soul. “What they wanted,” he said, “was the appearance of things. They were never like you and Sara. Integrity played no part in their scheme of things. They were proud. You are right in that. They wanted people to admire them, to look up to them. It was all a sham, only they could not see it.”

  “I shall never understand it.”

  “No. You wouldn’t.”

  He removed his neckcloth, then his coat, and tossed them over the back of a chair. He was shaking his head, laughing softly to himself.

  Emily’s lips curved in an involuntary response until he spoke to her in that softly fluid tone that never failed to either melt her bones or make the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  “You have some explaining to do,” he said. “You love me. You said so in front of a roomful of witnesses not an hour ago. You love me. And don’t try to wriggle out of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The silence was absolute. Emily was a girl who prized honesty if no one was hurt by it. But there was such a thing as a woman’s pride. He was laughing at her and that got her dander up.

  Marching across the room, she flung open the door to the wardrobe. “We must get an early start tomorrow,” she told the inside of the wardrobe. “We should pack our bags.”

  He was grinning. “Your eyes sizzle when you are in a temper, do you know? They are glowing like amethysts.”

  She ground her teeth together. Time seemed to slip away, and she was a girl again, and Leon Devereux was the horrid boy who was the bane of her existence. “I haven’t the time for this,” she mumbled. “I’m going to pack.”

  “My love, we have nothing to pack. You are forgetting, we arrived with little more than the clothes on our backs.”

  She rounded on him furiously. “I see nothing to laugh at.”

  “Ah, but that is because you are not standing in my shoes. Revenge is sweet, they say, and they are so right,” and he collapsed against the bedpost, hooting with laughter.

  She made up her mind then, that if she were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, she still would not confess her love for him. Love? What love? No woman could love a man who amused himself at her expense.

  Drawing on her rapidly depleting reservoir of dignity, she said, “I have had enough of your jests. I am going to bed.”

  He pounced on her so fast that her head swam. “I am not finished with you yet.” He wasn’t laughing at her now. His dark eyes were smoldering. “We should have had this out a long time ago.”

  His fingers were digging into her shoulders. She wriggled and he released her at once, retreating a step, giving her room to breathe.

  There was faint mockery in his voice. “Hester’s diary made interesting reading in other respects,” he said.

  “Oh?” Once again, the awful pit had opened up at her feet. She skirted it gingerly. “Hester and I were not particular friends. I never told her anything about…anything.”

  He folded his arms and propped one shoulder against the bedpost. “Perhaps not, but Addison did. He quoted you quite freely.”

  She was afraid of that, and stared at him mutely with great, wary eyes.

  “Correct me if I am wrong. You told him that I was,” and he counted each item off on the fingers of one hand, “…a womanizer, a gamester, and a veritable hellion.”

  She tried laughing the accusation off. “I may have exaggerated a little. On the other hand, you always had a reputation for wildness, Leon. And on my sixteenth birthday you did your best to live up to it.”

  He smiled wryly. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? The night you surprised me with Judith Riddley?”

  Her heart contracted as the memory came back to her, but she wasn’t lying when she said, “I scarcely ever give it a thought.”

  He gave the oddest smile, then suddenly asked her, “Why do you think I married you, Emily?”

  She looked at him blankly and groped for a bit before responding. “You know why. We were forced to wed after we were found together in the little turret room.”

  “That’s not why. Try again.”

  Her eyebrows rushed together. “I’m not in the mood for playing games, Leon.” He was leading her into a trap. She could sense it, just as she had always sensed it when they were children. She would fall on her face, and he would walk away laughing.

  “Indulge me,” he said. The tone he employed set her teeth on edge.

  She forced a smile. “You married me for my fortune.”

  “If it was a fortune I had wanted, I would have married Sara.”

  “Why didn’t you? When we were children, you always favored Sara. You couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

  “That was because you made things so difficult for me. But we are getting off track. You haven’t hit on the right answer yet. Emily, don’t you know why I married you? No? I’ll give you a clue, shall I?”

  He held her head steady with both hands and his mouth brushed over her lips, again and again, then sank into them, taking his fill of her. Hunger. Heat. Longing. When he pulled back, she was shaking; her heart was pounding, but no more than his.

  “Well?” he got out hoarsely.

  Her eyes searched his, and her hands came up to clutch at his shoulders. “You want me,” she said. “Is that it, Leon? Is that why you married me?”

  He gave her the sort of look a schoolmaster might give a pupil who was eager to learn but as thick as a door. “You are getting warmer. I won’t deny that when we are in the same room, the air between us crackles, but it is so much more than that. Emily, don’t you know yet that I have…”

  He was giving her the victory. This time, he wasn’t going to be the one to walk away laughing. If she wanted to, she could have him groveling at her feet.

  It wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t what she had ever wanted. She didn’t want to humble him. She wanted him to…

  Before he could get out another word, she sealed his lips with her fingers. Behind her eyes, her mind exploded with impressions, images, fragments, and a comprehension that rocked her back on her heels. “We have loved each other since we were children,” she breathed out, and her mouth gaped open.

  He laughed shakily. “Yes. Though I was never a child. You were the child, and that’s what made it so damnable for me.”

  “And that’s why you were so horrid to me?”

  “It was a case of protecting myself. I had to make you hate me, but I wasn’t going to let it last forever.”

  “When? When did you know?”

  His look was
sheepish. “It would only shock you if I told you.”

  “I want to know.”

  He laid her gently on the bed and came down beside her. “Shall we say that I finally decided there was no good fighting it when I came upon you kissing that boy? I was crazy with jealousy.”

  “And you ducked me in the pond?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes went round. “Leon, I was no more than thirteen or fourteen.”

  “I told you it would shock you.”

  Laughing, she flung her arms wide. “I loved you even then. If you hadn’t made yourself so hateful, I would have known it.”

  “Yes. And think how impossible our situation would have become. I had no money to call my own. You were too young. Your uncle guessed how things stood, and…”

  “Uncle Rolfe knew?” she asked incredulously.

  “Who do you think suggested that I go to America? It was for the best. It gave me a chance to prove myself. Claire’s husband loaned me the capital I needed to get my start in the fur trade. I was determined that I wasn’t going to come back empty-handed. You were, after all, Lady Emily Brockford, and a great heiress. I knew I wasn’t fit to kiss the hem of your gown…”

  She punched him on the shoulder, but she wasn’t laughing. “Don’t say that! Don’t ever say that!”

  He gave a lopsided half-smile and went on as though she had not interrupted. “I wasn’t the poor relation, either. Far from it. When I felt I had something to offer, I came back for you.”

  “On my sixteenth birthday?” she said.

  He turned her into him and kissed her softly. “Yes. And I made a mull of everything. Emily, once and for all, we must exorcise the ghosts of the past.”

  Her eyes slid away from his, not because she was shy, but because she knew she could not conceal the pain the memory of that night evoked. “I remember that when you kissed me I was frightened.”

  “I’m not surprised. I was ravenous for the taste and feel of you. I was all reformed, you see. I had not had a woman in…I don’t know how long. I didn’t want any other woman. I wanted you. But Rolfe saw us together and after that he wouldn’t hear of it. He said that you were too young to marry, that I should give you time to stretch your wings, that in another year or two…”

  “You are going too fast for me!” She pulled herself up to her elbows. “You asked for my hand in marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And were refused?”

  “Yes.”

  She let out an infuriated yelp. “I think I shall throttle my uncle when next I see him.” She chewed on her bottom lip, then looked down at him consideringly. “And you started drinking, and you were horrid to me.”

  “You know why,” he answered moodily.

  “So, your hopes were disappointed and you turned to Judith Riddley for solace.”

  There was a pause. “Yes.” With one hand, he cupped her nape and drew her down till their eyes were on a level. “I’m not going to apologize for all the Judith Riddleys there were in my life while I was waiting for you to grow up, so don’t even think it.”

  She lowered her head till they were nose to nose. “I’m not asking you to. But make a note of this. I don’t share the man I love with any woman.”

  His lips turned up and he edged her closer, wrapping his arms around her. “There is a place in my heart with your name on it. No other woman can fill it. No woman ever could, not even when you were a child. Only you, Emily, only you.”

  He kissed her lingeringly, moving his lips from the curve of her throat to her eyelids. “I paid for that night a hundred times over. Before then, you were unaware of what was between us, but I knew I could have you whenever I wanted.” Her lips tightened, and he laughed, rubbing at them until they softened beneath his. “You know it, too. Afterward, I had to deal with your hatred, and I was never sure of you again, not until tonight when you declared your love for me in a roomful of people.”

  She looked deeply into his eyes. “When I was sixteen, I was hurt. My dreams were crushed. I wanted love, and ours was a forced marriage.”

  “Not to me. Never to me. But it wasn’t the marriage I wanted for us, either. And so I went away. But I couldn’t stay away. And when I came back it was always the same story. You showed your contempt for me, and your uncle held me to my promise.”

  “Promise? What promise?”

  He frowned in concentration. “I must have been mad to accept his terms. No, I was desperate. I would have promised anything to have him agree to our marriage. After that debacle with Judith Riddley, I thought I had lost you. Marriage, under any circumstances, was preferable to nothing.”

  She drew herself up to a sitting position and hugged her knees. “Leon, you have lost me again. Did you have an understanding with my uncle? Is that what you are saying?”

  His head shifted on the pillow, and he gazed up at her with gleaming eyes. “I promised him that I would give you time to get over your fit of the sullens before I made our marriage a real one. Rolfe struck a hard bargain. He demanded up to five years if it was necessary, and like the overconfident fool that I was, I agreed to it. I knew I had to give you some time to come round, but even I could not have foreseen how tenacious you would be in your hatred. Five years is a very long time.”

  “Fit of the sullens? You and my uncle…!” Her bosom was quivering with outrage. “Devious! Unprincipled!”

  He made a grab for her before she could strike him. Laughing, rolling with her, he covered her body with his, subduing her struggles effortlessly. Between fierce kisses, he told her, “Time ran out for you when you reached your majority. No, don’t be angry sweetheart. You should pity me. Those five years while I waited to claim you were the longest of my life.”

  She stopped struggling and lay panting for breath, looking up at him with questioning eyes.

  “You once asked me why my sister Claire acted strangely with you. Do you remember?”

  She nodded. “And you said…”

  “It doesn’t matter what I said. The truth is, Claire knew that I was desperately in love with you. It was obvious to her that you cared nothing for me, else you would have come to me sooner. In short, I was miserable and Claire blamed you for it.”

  “I…I thought she might have heard that I was pressing for an annulment and that William Addison was my suitor?”

  He went very still, very quiet. Then all he said was, “No.”

  “Don’t brood about it,” she said softly, nuzzling his throat. “I never loved William. I was in love with the idea of love.”

  “How could I know that? You weren’t a child anymore, and you hated me with a virulence. That’s what gave me hope. If you had been indifferent to me, I might have been able to let you go. I don’t know.”

  She adjusted her head on the pillow so that she could see his face more clearly. “Why didn’t you tell me that you loved me? All this time…why didn’t you tell me?”

  He regarded her steadily with eyes that had turned several shades darker. “Would you have believed me? I don’t think so. Besides, you were my wife. Our marriage was a real one. I wasn’t unhappy with the way things had turned out.”

  She stared at him wordlessly, hardly able to believe that she had inspired so great a devotion. There was nothing special about her. She was just a very ordinary girl.

  “Why me?” she asked wonderingly. “That’s what I don’t understand. What made you love me?”

  He shifted to his side, relieving her of his weight, and he looped one arm around her waist. “You were…different, special. I saw in you all the things that had become lost to me during the Revolution. Honesty. Integrity. Virtue. You were like a bright new shining penny and I felt like something that had just crawled out of a sewer. Naturally, I was drawn to you, though I didn’t want to be. And later, when my admiration turned into something quite different, I was in the middle of it before I knew it had begun. As I told you, I fought against it the only way I knew. Much good it did me!”

  She pres
sed herself close to him. “I’m glad you don’t give up easily. If you had not come back for me, I might have married William, and God knows what the end of that would have been.”

  His hands ran over her back, soothing away her fears. “I should have called him out in London at Carlton House when I found you together. I wanted to, but I was afraid that if I killed him, you would hate me forever, and I would not take that chance. Had I done so, I might have saved us all a great deal of trouble.”

  They fell silent as their thoughts shifted to the events of the last few weeks. Emily shivered and burrowed closer to the warmth of her husband’s body. She didn’t want to dwell on the past. The future was all that mattered.

  She pulled back so that she could watch his expression when she told him. Smiling shyly, she said, “Our child will be born on American soil.” To add emphasis to her words, she curled her fingers around one of Leon’s hands and planted it firmly against her stomach.

  When comprehension dawned, he didn’t look overjoyed, he looked stricken. Emily threw her arms around his neck. “Darling, what’s wrong? Don’t you want to be a father? It won’t be so very bad, you’ll see.”

  He took her mouth in long, wet, deep kisses and his hands moved over her ceaselessly, as if to reassure himself that she was real and unharmed. Eventually, he said, “Oh, God, I only hope…”

  “What?”

  He was about to say something about his sense of unworthiness. He looked into eyes that were radiant with love and trust and everything a man could wish to see in the eyes of the woman he loved, and he checked himself. “I only hope you want this child as much as I do.”

  Her eyes filled with tears of relief and joy. “And I hope…”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope that we have a son who is in the image of his father, in every way.”

  His lovemaking had always thrilled her. This time, it was infinitely sweeter, infinitely more precious.

  He did not give her the words until he had brought himself fully into her body. “I love you. At last I can say it. I love you, Emily.”