Lovely Lying Lips

by Valerie Sherwood

  Dev was feeling better. He stood on his feet and stretched his good arm and pronounced himself ready to ride. “And tonight we’ll sleep together again,” he told Constance with a grin. “I’ve a good arm will hold you even if I do have to be a bit tender with this shoulder.”

  She had been trembling with fear for him and now that fear gave way to anger.

  “I can’t live like this,” she cried. “Never knowing whether a bullet has found you or not! I want a home, children— a husband who will be there when I wake!”

  Dev stepped back. His face, transformed of a sudden, had lost its boyish wickedness and was very grave. “I would that I could give you those things, Constance,” he said. “For they are all things that you deserve. You deserve more—a fine home, servants, luxury. I would that my uncle had died instead of my father and then I would be the Earl of Roxford and able to offer you one of the finest country seats in England. But I am not. I have no trade—nor any hope of one. Naught but my pistol.”

  She stood there shaking with the terrible truth of it sinking in. Dev was not a highwayman by choice—and indeed, as Gibb said, he was “dreadful dainty of who he robbed.” Dev was one of the lost—like herself .

  “Oh, Dev.” She caught at his good shoulder, clung to it. “Couldn’t we start again? Go to America?”

  He looked down at her with a torment of emotions playing over his face. “All right,” he said huskily, stroking her hair. “America it is. But first—Gibb has a brother over at Bury St. Edmunds he’d like to visit while he still has gold in his pocket. And I can give you the last of your three wishes now.” He straightened up and his grin flashed at her. “We’re riding south, Constance—just the two of us. And”—his green eyes softened and deepened—“I’m going to put a wedding ring on your finger!”

  Part Four

  The Highwayman's Bride

  Beneath the light of a waning moon

  On thundering hooves he'll ride,

  For he's taken a purse of gold tonight

  And seeks a place to hide!

  Some day he knows in his reckless heart

  That the law and he must collide,

  But till that day comes he'll drink deep of life

  And toast his lovely bride!

  Hatfield Forest, Essex,

  Summer 1683

  14

  White moonlight shone down upon the massive hornbeams and oaks of Hatfield Forest. It glimmered down upon the lovers through the leafy branches of that most monumental oak of all—the Old Doodle Oak, whose giant girth had seen uncounted generations come and go, and of whom men said it was the very oak marked on the Conqueror’s Domesday Survey.

  They had said good-by to Gibb outside Norwich. Dev had been for riding daringly into London and being married swiftly in Fleet Street, but Constance—more cautious—had insisted on a village marriage, under assumed names. And so in a tiny village near the ancient forest of Hatfield, whose thousand acres with its wide green chases had been a royal hunting preserve six hundred years before, Dev and Constance had the banns cried in the village church.

  A much-changed pair they appeared, for Constance had gone back to wearing her faded lavender kirtle and homespun bodice; she wore her glorious hair bound up and stuffed demurely into a white linen cap—as became the chambermaid out of London she professed to be. And Dev was become overnight an impecunious scribe, whose pistols rested in his saddlebags, and who affected a pair of spectacles and a solemn demeanor. To the world they were a young pair planning to join relatives in Nottingham, who would give them shelter until the young man could find a patron. In the meantime, Dev ingenuously offered to write letters for a penny for any who felt the need—and found few takers.

  The innkeeper at the tiny, half-timbered, wattle-and-daub inn where they stayed took a fancy to them. He even employed Dev to write a letter to his sister who had six years earlier gone to America “and hadn’t been heard from since.” And on the day they were married he insisted that a penny-bridal be held at his inn.

  Constance, aware their safety lay in being inconspicuous, was wed in the same faded kirtle and bodice in which she had fled Claxton House. She didn’t want a penny-bridal but the landlord insisted.

  “I’ll foot the fee for the wedding dinner myself,” he told them gustily. “And make it all back in the trade in wine and ale that will come my way from it!”

  Afraid to protest too loudly lest they seem strange—for penny-bridals were all the custom here—Constance agreed. She who had worn so many names since she had taken to the road with Dev had spoken her vows as “Mistress Penelope Goode” and been joined in-marriage to “John Watts,” as Dev now called himself. And had immediately repaired to the common room of the inn, where a motley collection of roisterers were assembled to drink her health in ale they paid for out of their own pockets.

  “We’ll get away as soon as we decently can,” Dev muttered into her ear and Constance flashed him a grateful glance. But after dinner the fiddler called out like a town crier and she found herself plumped down at the upper end of a table while, according to custom, a white sheet was thrown over Dev’s shoulders as he stood by. One by one, the wedding guests—by now for the most part drunk—staggered up to toss coins upon the table before her. Constance felt like a beggar—and a fraudulent beggar at that—as the pile of coins, mostly pennies, mounted before her. Her cheeks were already red with embarrassment when the most beribboned pair of gloves she had ever seen was ostentatiously laid upon the table and auctioned off.

  “Don’t bid, they won’t like it,” she whispered anxiously to Dev, laying a quick hand upon his arm, for his shoulders had given a slight lurch as the smirking auctioneer reminded his audience that the prize was not only the gloves, but a kiss from the blushing bride.

  The bidding waxed hot but in the end it was the burly landlord, drunk on his own wine, who won the gloves and seized Constance with delight, swooping her entirely from her chair and planting a moist kiss—for she had dodged his lips—on her hot cheek.

  He laughed as he set her down. Then Dev shrugged off the white sheet and they had a dance together, while everyone stood about and applauded. And then they made their escape.

  “Oh, Dev, let’s not spend our wedding night here,” Constance said anxiously. “People will be singing and caterwauling all night, and banging on our door!”

  Dev gave her a smiling look. “The horses are saddled,” he told her. “I explained to the landlord we were leaving tonight.”

  And he had brought her here by moonlight to the wide green chases of Hatfield. Once as they rode through the night a red deer—one of the descendants of the red deer that William the Conqueror and his sons had hunted here—burst out of the brush and darted across their path. And once a badger, broad and furry night hunter that he was, caused their horses to rear up and Constance nearly lost her saddle. And then they saw before them the mightiest tree of the forest—the Old Doodle Oak that had seen kings and conquerors come and go.

  And it was upon the soft grasses beneath that oak that Dev had spread his cloak. And Constance, the banns and the vows and the penny-bridal behind her, had shed her clothes and lain down on that cloak in the soft warmth of the summer night and watched Dev undress.

  A tall proud figure he cut in the half light that filtered down through the branches. Changed, she thought, from the boy she had first known. A man now, with a man’s desires.

  And a man’s finesse as he took her lightly in his arms.

  “I’m a bride at last,” she murmured.

  “You were a bride before—at Fountains,” he pointed out, his voice reaching her through her tangled hair as he nuzzled her ear.

  “A make-believe bride,” she said.

  “Bride enough for me.”

  She stirred in his arms. “But not for me. I wanted to be your bride not just in our sight, but in the world’s sight.”

  Dev lifted his russet head and brushed back her hair and smiled down into her eyes. His face against the branches
and the moon was in shadow but she could see the gleam of his eyes and his white teeth as he smiled. “You’re my world, Constance.”

  That he should state it so calmly took her breath away.

  “Oh, Dev!” She flung herself into his arms, eager to consummate this longed-for marriage as she would have done had she been a duke’s daughter and a virgin and he an earl’s son to whom she had just been wed. “For us this will be—a first time.”

  He laughed softly, but he caught her wistful yearning mood and his arms were gentle as he drew her close. Ardent lovers they were, but tonight they knew a lingering tenderness that was new to them. A kind of heavenly peace had descended upon their restless lovemaking, a blessed harmony of the spirit, a repose. It made Constance realize suddenly what it would be like to spend her life with him, to grow old with him, to be not only the first but the last woman he would ever hold in his arms.

  And then her fanciful thoughts were swept away in the wild ardor of his lovemaking. Like the pealing of a great bell, her body joined with his. Rapt, breathless, their bodies locked together, they shuddered in harmonic unison to the symphony of their rising passions, until in a mighty carillon of bursting joy they reached the far unreal peaks of ecstasy and silvered down like the moonlight to the green sward below the spreading branches of the oak that had watched England change hands at the time of the Conquest.

  “Dev,”,she whispered in wonder, hushing her voice to the felt majesty of the night. “Will it always be like this for us?”

  “Always,” he murmured. And with a last long lingering kiss that began at her throat and wandered down her slender quivering form in a way that swept away questions and memory together, he rolled away from her and slept.

  But for Constance, whose violet velvet eyes were wide open upon the moonlit night, sleep was not yet. Now that the afterglow had faded to a lovely memory, she lay there in all her naked loveliness, sated with lovemaking, dreaming, and wondered what their lives would be like... in America. There they could go through another wedding ceremony—under their own names. She quailed at the thought of the long voyage, for the sea had never been to her liking. She was a daughter of the land, an iris meant to bloom in some sunlit garden—not a sea sprite meant for the sea’s wild winds and hard bright glitter. America... land of dreams.

  And on that thought she drifted off to sleep.

  She woke to warm sunlight to find her naked body being pelted with wild orchids, which Dev had found growing abundantly on the marshy ground nearby. Flowers were tickling her breasts, sliding between her thighs. She sat up laughing, fending off the barrage of flowers and tossing back her long tangled hair as she rose. She scooped up handfuls of the brightly colored orchids and tossed them back at him. As he ducked and dodged she leaped up and ran after him, chasing him to a deep pool hidden in the trees, where they stood knee deep in rushes and water plantain and bathed, smiling at each other.

  Afterward he carried her through the dappled sunlight, through wild thyme and primroses, back to their “home” beneath the Old Doodle Oak and laid her down on the grass and tickled and caressed her to laughing delight. She would pretend to try to escape him, rolling and tossing and turning and flailing her arms, and he would catch a flying ankle or a rolling thigh and ever turn her back to face him. Their lovemaking had a free lighthearted gaiety this morning very different from the sonorous elegance of the night before. Last night they had been Lovers Who Had Taken Steps—formal wedding vows. This morning they were again the lovers of Fountains Abbey, gamboling children bathed in the beauty of a newfound world.

  Constance dragged her fingers lovingly along his chest and felt his hard muscles ripple, she leant her head against that chest and heard the strong beating of his heart, she let her soft body be brought up fiercely against his own and felt his maleness enter her and knew that life would always be good and that they would always be together.

  Such is the golden summertime of love.

  They lingered in the beautiful forest of Hatfield through the golden days of summer, loath to leave this paradise to start their new life. Sometimes Dev would travel to one of the villages and buy food for them, such necessities as they could not get along without. He bought grain for the horses, to supplement the lush grazing beneath the hornbeams and oaks—and once a new chemise for Constance which, although she chided him for spending the money, knowing how slim his purse must be growing, she viewed with delight.

  “It is very elegant!” she declared, turning round and round so that the light skirt swirled out and showed her pretty legs.

  “Not fine enough for you,” he said sturdily. “You deserve the best.”

  “Ah, but I do not need the best, Dev.” She sank down beside him in the grass. “I do not need things at all. All I need is you.”

  “Do you, Constance?” She thought his voice sounded wistful and he toyed with her breasts idly, studying them as if he wanted to avoid her gaze. “Is that really enough?”

  “Of course!” she said lightly. “And now your shoulder’s so well mended that you can do hard work, and we’ll go to America and no one there will ever know you were on the road at all.”

  “Is that so important?” he asked gravely.

  “It is important to your safety,” she said, frowning as she drew away and shrugging off his roving fingers from her breasts, for they threatened to silence her logic and melt away her reason. “You must know that.”

  “I know I love you,” he said simply. “And that I want to make you happy. But there isn’t enough money to take us both to America, Constance.”

  “You can have my dowry,” she told him, laughing. “For I’ve still got it.”

  “Not even then.” He shook his head wearily. “We’ve enough passage for one—no more.”

  “Oh, Dev! You wouldn’t go without me?” she asked fearfully.

  “ ’Tis a raw new country. We can’t land there penniless—at least you can’t. Better I go and feel out the land, better I make a place for you—and then send for you to come.”

  All her arguments would not shake him. They could not stay forever in this forest, he told her firmly. And three days later she found herself settled in a tiny farmlet with a comfortable couple who understood this young scribe’s passion to be off to America and promised to care for his bride until he sent for her.

  It had all happened so fast, Constance felt dizzy. It seemed that one moment she had ridden with Dev into Hatfield Forest, a bride, and the next moment she had ridden out and Dev was making plans to leave her.

  But his jaw was set and she knew he would brook no interference.

  “At least let me go with you to the ship,” she pleaded. “Let me wave good-by to you from the shore.” In case I never see you again.. .in case you die on that wild treacherous sea.

  “No, for it is always possible that I’ll be recognized and I’ve no mind to drag you down with me if that should happen.”

  She shivered. The price of life on the road....

  “You’ll write to me?” she whispered.

  A pattern of mixed emotions played across his young face. “I’ll write,” he finally conceded.

  Feeling her world had collapsed, Constance watched him go. He had almost disappeared from view down the country lane when he turned and brandished his pistol. Then—as if the sight of her down the road had made him waver in his purpose—he bent low over his horse’s neck and charged away at full gallop.

  A sob caught in Constance’s throat. And suddenly she remembered that far out behind the barn the road twisted back on itself and forded a little brook. Dev had not gone that way because it was treacherous for a horse’s hooves but—she could make it if she ran like the wind! She could catch up with him and tell him good-by all over again!

  With a sense of panic giving wings to her feet, Constance fled downhill over the uneven ground and plunged into the woods which concealed the little brook that he must ford.

  She was panting and disheveled and winded when she arrived at last a
t the little ford, her feet making no noise on the spongy ground. But she was too late—Dev had already forded the stream. Just as she was about to call out to him she saw that he was not alone.

  Riding beside him, with that unmistakable slouch that made his figure distinctive in the saddle, was Gibb.,

  And riding just ahead in a flaunting yellow dress with her orange head flung back, was Nan. Flashing bright as a lighted candle against the old green trees, and laughing as she called something to them over her shoulder.

  All at once, Constance’s bright world was ripped apart, and she fell back against a tree bole as if all the wind had been knocked out of her sails.

  There was no ship, no voyage to America, no new life beckoning. There was only the old life—the forays upon the highway, the wild rides through the night, the “safe” inns and taverns, the terrible expense of everything, the everpresent danger.

  Dev had left her where she would be safe—left her with a lie.

  And gone on the road with Nan! Nan, who suited a highwayman’s life-style! Dev—and Nan.

  At Starbuck’s Nan had thrown a knife through the crown of her hat. And now that knife had pierced her heart.

  Thoughts rang through her head discordantly, like clashing cymbals. She had been wrong about Dev, her own love for him had blinded her to reality. Dev had never intended to give up his reckless way of life. He had married her because she had wanted him to—but nothing had changed him. He had seen in her eyes that she was thinking of leaving and so he had placated her—with a lie.

  And gone back to Nan....

  For now she had no illusions at all about where he had learnt his finesse as a lover: in Nan’s arms.

  Constance made no attempt to follow, or to hail them. She turned blindly and crashed into a tree and then she began to weep in earnest. She wept for her own folly, and for the life she had thought she saw stretching before her, and for Dev’s unfaith.