Sweet Savage Eden

by Heather Graham

  And to dream. But then, he had dreamed of her often, and always it had been the same. He had seen her lying as he had left her, disheveled and spent and curiously beautiful and also …

  Hurt.

  “Milord, the ship is in!” someone called as he raced by the palisade. But that was evident. The Sweet Eden had already pulled to the deepwater dock. Sir William had come down in his absence, to greet his wife.

  Racing pell-mell upon his mount, he felt his body heat and churn, and he gritted his teeth, swearing that he would behave the noble lord and husband and not wrench her into his arms to soothe his loneliness. He would not take her brusquely, or in anger.

  But neither could he forget in those moments that her passions could be reached, that though she denied him in her heart, she could not do so with her body, and his appetites that day were sorely whetted and keen. He had missed her and she was his wife.

  And perhaps she had missed him. Perhaps she would come down the dock and stare at him, and at long last there would be a radiant smile upon her face, and the spark in her eyes would blaze for him.

  The horse’s hooves thundered beneath him, but already the passengers were beginning to disembark. He saw her; he could not miss the golden glow of her hair. She was dressed in soft blue, with a darker velvet cloak thrown over her shoulders and encompassing the length of her. She had seen Sir William, but she had not yet seen the rider racing toward the dock.

  She looked over the hundred. He could see her pale, beautiful face, her sapphire eyes … her soft red lips.

  Aye, he could see her face.

  She stared upon the wooden palisade and the wood-and-thatch-and-daub houses with horror. Sir William spoke, and she tried to smile, but it was a lame effort.

  “Jamie!”

  It was Elizabeth, walking behind her, who called out with such joy. He reined in upon his horse and dismounted quickly. William saw him at last, and grinned.

  Then all the others seemed to drift away, or perhaps in that moment, they simply didn’t matter at all. His wife stood before him after the long months apart, and they stared at one another.

  She did not smile, and her eyes did not come alive. She was so pale that it worried him, and she was thin. Her flesh seemed nearly translucent, and she was even the more beautiful for it, ever more a crystal goddess. He ached to touch her. He ached to shake her and grab her down from the pedestal of her aloofness. He longed to strike her down to her knees and demand that she cease to hate him so.

  He locked his jaw tightly, for what he wanted truly was to take her into his arms and hear her cry with joy, and that was not going to happen, either. He had not realized that a hum had filled his whole being, that words and other sounds had escaped him, that he had been aware of nothing but her, until he heard her voice again. He walked down the dock, his strides long. He reached her, and the sweet scent of her washed over him as she cast back her head to stare up into his eyes.

  “Welcome to Carlyle Hundred, milady,” he said. He bent and would have kissed her, but she moved her face so that his lips brushed her cheek.

  “Jamie!” Elizabeth cried. His eyes remained coldly on Jassy as Elizabeth stepped forward, hugging and kissing him warmly. “Elizabeth …” he kissed her back, and then he ignored his wife. Robert came up, shaking his head industriously, and then Lenore met him, cheerfully railing against him for having missed her wedding.

  William spoke up, and Jamie introduced him around. By then Captain Hornby was on the dock, and Jamie applauded the time he made across the Atlantic.

  “Fortuitous winds,” the captain said, pleased.

  Then Jassy spoke softly but with an undercore of bitterness that startled him.

  “It was a very long and horrible trip.”

  Some agony touched her beautiful eyes, but then it was gone.

  “Come to the palisade and the house,” Jamie said. He reached for her hand, and she cringed. His temper snapped. “Come, Jassy, you will ride with me quickly to open your own door to your guests,” he said. “They will follow in the wagon.”

  “No—” she began, but he did not allow that rebuttal. His good intention fell from him with the chill river of her disdain, and he caught her hand firmly and dragged her along. She struggled, but his grip was so firm that none could see. Halfway down the dock he paused, spinning her about and lifting her into his arms. Holding her so, in a grim silence, he hurried toward his horse. He set her firmly upon it and leapt up behind her.

  She was trying to dismount from the creature already.

  “Don’t!” He jerked her so that she sat still, and then his whisper fell against her neck. “I have done everything that I can think to do for you, madame. I have hired on your friends, I have given you clothing and jewels, and even here, in the wilderness, you will have servants aplenty. And still, madame, at every turn you attempt to humiliate me. May I warn you, madame, don’t ever, ever do it again!”

  “If you would do anything for me,” she cried, “free me!”

  “Free you?”

  Her head lowered. “I—I hate this place. I cannot be your wife here. I cannot.”

  He nudged the horse, swallowing down a bitter, bitter disappointment. His arms around her, he lifted the reins and guided the horse toward the palisade that meant so much to him.

  “Jasmine, you will be my wife here. Tonight. I promise you.”

  His heels touched the bay, and the lathered horse broke into another gallop, bringing them quickly onto the palisade, and their new home in the wilderness.

  XII

  The wind rushed over her face, the horse pounded its mighty legs beneath her, and Jassy could hear cheers all around her. But most of all she was aware of Jamie behind her—the hard, vibrant wall of his chest; the entrapment of his arms, warm and unyielding as they came around her to hold the reins. She felt absurdly giddy, as if she might pass out at any moment. She felt a rush of warmth within her, because he touched her. She didn’t want this … this gruesome place, and she didn’t want to sail again, not when infants died and were cast, tiny and pitiless, into the sea. Not when even sailors sickened and died, and weevils chewed into the food. Not when storms raged and buffeted a vessel until not even the screams of the passengers could challenge the moaning of the wind.

  From the moment they had boarded the Sweet Eden, things had gone badly. A scream had brought Jassy down to the hold where she discovered Joan Tannen, the wife of one of Jamie’s men, in the midst of a cruel labor. A day later, Joan had borne a dead, blue-faced baby, swearing her loyalty to her husband and Jamie even then.

  The wind howled; the rain slashed. Jassy divided her time among the sick children and Joan, trying not to leave her side for long. It did no good.

  Two weeks after the baby had been cast into the sea, Joan had followed. She had bled to death, begging Jassy to give her husband the very last of her love.

  She didn’t want to be a part of this place.…

  There was nothing here, just the log palisade and the looming cannons that warned of further death, and the little houses made of wood and wattle and daub. Beyond that, beyond the fields, there seemed to be nothing but the endless forests. By night it would black, as dark as any true pit of hell.

  She didn’t want to be with child. She didn’t want to bear a child, not here in the wilderness.

  But even as she longed to escape the voyage and the land, she again felt her husband’s touch, the sweet dizziness; the rush of warmth encompassed her, and she lowered her head, feeling her body grow warm, for she was stunned to realize how she had missed him, how she had wanted to feel him beside her again.…

  And how she had longed for the expertise of his intimate touch. Even if that touch had cast her into her present, frightening predicament, she longed for it. She had even lain awake at night aboard the wretched ship and thought that perhaps, had he been there, had she been able to turn to him and cry out her loss and her fear and her anguish, it might have been better. If he had been there to hold her and soothe
her, to take her into his arms.

  He had never taken her into his arms, not to be tender, or to gently soothe her, she reminded herself. And he probably never would, for she had seen the stark disappointment in his face when she had spoken on the dock, and even now she felt the harsh power of his anger.

  They rode through the palisade and followed a trail through thatched-roof houses and structures that brought them to the largest of the buildings. Jamie reined in, leapt down to his feet, and reached for her. His eyes were dark and cold and fathomless. His face was more bronzed than ever, and he loomed taller than she had remembered, and when she placed her hands upon his shoulders while his hands wrapped around her waist, she thought that he seemed more tightly muscled, more savagely and perfectly honed, than ever before.

  He set her down before him. “Milady?” He indicated the house. She held tight to her cloak and preceded him up a stone path. The door opened before she reached it. A plump, middle-aged lady bowed to her quickly, then offered her a cheerful smile, then nearly fell back upon herself with another courtly bow.

  “Amy Lawton, my dear,” Jamie said behind her, and she didn’t know if the wry tone of his voice was for her, or for their very respectful servant. “She will be in charge of the household, and, I’m sure, eagerly awaits whatever commands you might have.”

  “Oh, yes, milady.”

  Jassy took her hand. “Amy, I am glad to have you, and as I know nothing about living here at all, I will be grateful for your guidance.”

  Amy flushed with pleasure. Someone giggled behind her, and Jassy was introduced to the two young maids, Charity and Patience. A youth, bobbing and nervously twirling his flat cap in his hands, stepped forward next. He was Simm Tyler, the groom. Jassy gave him a smile and asked him if he would be especially good to her little horse Mary, for the mare had not liked the crossing one bit. The young man, with freckles and ears too big for his slender face, promised that he would see to the poor creature.

  The last of the servants was Jonathan Hayes. Jamie introduced him as their cook, and she looked at him with special interest, for she never forgot that she had been apprenticed to Master John for just such a position. He was a very skinny man for one who spent his time in the kitchen, but he had nice, warm eyes, sunk into the near cadaverous hollows of his face, and Jassy decided that she liked him very much. There were others about. Men arrived, bearing supplies from the ship.

  They smiled to her: they bobbed to her with respect. She liked them all very much.

  It was Virginia that she did not like. It was the wilderness, the savage threat of the forest beyond them.

  “My dear, you had best release Jonathan and the girls to their duties,” Jamie said, his hands upon her shoulders. “We’ve guests coming along shortly, as weary as you are yourself from the voyage, no doubt.”

  “Of course,” Jassy murmured.

  Jamie started to take her cloak. She pulled it back around her, wrapping it tight. She heard his teeth grate, and she whirled from him defensively. “Milord, I am still chilled.”

  “Then we shall stoke the fire,” Jamie said. He left her, walking down the hallway to the huge brick hearth that burned halfway down the length of the room.

  “Ah, milady, I shall pour you some warm mead with a good shot of cinnamon in it. ’Tis warming, it is!” Amy Lawton assured her. She urged Jassy into a chair by the hearth while she sent Charity Hume to the kitchen for the mead. Seconds later a crude mug was in her hand, and Amy was telling her with pride that it had been crafted there, in the hundred, in their own kiln.

  She sipped the mead and gasped, for it was potent, but it was good, and after the trip she felt that she could drink many, many cups of Mrs. Lawton’s mead. She looked up and saw Jamie where he stood by the mantel, one elbow resting upon it, his eyes pensive but giving away nothing in his thoughts. Even as he looked at her they heard a commotion in the front and knew that the others had arrived in the wagon. Amy Lawton smoothed her skirts and hurried to the door. In seconds they were all filing into the house, Robert and Lenore and Elizabeth, and behind them, Tamsyn and Molly and Kathryn, and then Captain Hornby and Sir William Tybalt. “Oh, how quaint, how crude!” Lenore proclaimed.

  Jamie smiled indulgently at her, and Jassy wondered what his response would have been had she uttered the statement.

  “We’re very proud of this house,” Jamie told her.

  “Oh, dear, you mean it goes downhill from here?”

  “I’m afraid we have a one-room hovel,” Robert said ruefully, “and for that, my love, we must be grateful.”

  “You’ve no hovel. Robert. I’m afraid that the two of you are guests in this house for now. I was not sure that I could convince you to come, and so your house is not yet built. But we shall get our carpenters working upon it immediately, and it will not take long. Now, drinks all about, I think. Amy, Patience, if you will. Whiskey for the gentlemen, I think, and more mead for the ladies.”

  “Me, too, milord, I’m hoping!” Molly piped in, and Jamie laughed, in good humor again. “You, too, Molly. And Kathryn. And Tamsyn. Be assured, today you’ve no duties but to acquaint yourselves with your new home.”

  Jassy watched him covertly. He was good with servants, she thought, with men—and with women. With servants he was gentle, with his peers he was knowledgeable and determined, and with women he was not gentle, but there was something about his dark good looks and very indifference that seemed to seduce them all. Molly was taken with him, as was Kathryn. Lenore had once admitted her fascination with him. And Jassy, herself, had learned the heady lesson that he had promised—she never forgot him, not ever. He entered into her dreams, he touched her by the coolness of dawn, and by the darkness of the night, ever in her imagination.

  “Jamie, I do love it!” Elizabeth cried with sudden enthusiasm. They all stared at her. She flushed, then came to sit beside Jassy. “Oh, did you see the colors in the trees! Fall is coming, and the forest is lush now in yellow and green, and I can imagine that in a number of weeks it will be radiant with red and orange … it is so raw, a beginning. Like a Garden of Eden!”

  “Serpents stalked the Garden of Eden,” Jassy reminded her.

  Captain Hornby laughed gruffly, then once again there was a certain amount of commotion, for their traveling trunks and the new four-poster bed that had been specially purchased in London had arrived, though in a number of pieces. Again Jassy was struck by not only the respect but also the affection with which these people viewed her husband, and how eagerly and cheerfully they served. The men who had come to lift and carry bobbed to her with real pleasure, and if they cast her a sly glance here and there and grinned to one another, they still did so with such good humor that it was difficult to be offended. She wondered if Jamie had seen the glances, and turning to look at him, she found his eyes upon her. He had. But the way that he stared at her disturbed her, for it was not with the lust she had expected but with some deeper emotion, and she realized that once again she had disappointed him heartily.

  She tossed her head. To the devil with him! She despised this place, and longed to go home. She did not want to have her child in this savage wilderness. Still, tears stung her eyes, and she wondered why, and then she knew that she wanted him to look at her with pride, and with respect, and with … tenderness.

  “When things are set, milady, we will see that our guests are comfortably settled, then we shall gather once again for supper,” Jamie said.

  Time passed with them all together, but for Jassy, things were set too quickly. Captain Hornby said he would return to his ship, and Sir William had business to attend to as well. The workers finished with the upstairs, and departed. Amy quickly showed Kathryn, Mary, and Tamsyn to their rooms in the servants’ wing, and Charity led Lenore and Robert and Elizabeth up the beautifully carved and polished stairway to their rooms at the left of the second floor, while Patience brought Jassy to the suite of rooms she would share with her husband.

  Alone, at last, she stared down at the
desk and then at the bookcases, and she saw that her husband had brought many of his fine leather-bound books to his new home. There were candles in copper holders upon the mantel, brick in these rooms too. There was a screen, and behind it she discovered a washstand and pitcher and bowl and the chamber pot. A huge armoire was in the corner of the room, and her traveling trunks were aligned at the foot of the bed, by the window, and near the door. There was also a beautiful dressing table beside the bed, and then there was the bed itself.

  It seemed very large, and was grander even than the one in Jamie’s room at the manor in England. Four simple, straight posts held up heavy draperies, secured by loops at every post. It was piled high with pillows and covered in a tapestry-woven blanket. She walked over to it, gingerly placed her hand upon the down mattress, and discovered that it was very soft. She knew Jamie had ordered it in England, that men had worked quickly to assemble it for her comfort.

  “It is much like the one that King James once sent to Powhatan, the gift of a king to a king. I hope you like it.”

  Jassy spun around. Jamie had silently entered the room and stood with his back to the door, leaning against it. His dark eyes fell broodingly upon her, and still she had little clue to his thoughts.

  “It’s—fine.”

  “Is it?” He walked on into the room, his arms crossed over his chest, circling her but not touching her. She felt him with every breath of her, and she wondered that he did not touch her, for they had been so long apart that they were nearly strangers, and yet it was as if the flesh and blood of her had lived in wait to know his touch again.

  “It is the finest of all the colony, madame. As is this house. I believe it is even grander than the house in which the Jamestown governor resides. Alas—it still is not grand enough for the scullery maid from the Crossroads.”