“And leave Ned and the others?” He gave her a startled look.
“Oh, bring them too! Quick, before it is too late!”
“Pam, I can’t in honor do that.” He said it gravely and she felt the rebuke in his voice.
“Then take me with you into the battle, for I would die too!” She flung herself against him and began to cry.
“I’m not going to die,” he told her, pushing her away a bit and smiling down into her tearstained face. “And who knows, we may win!”
“Constance doesn’t think so,” she whispered.
His face stilled at that. “And what does Constance say?” he asked carefully.
“That even the local militias are rising against the Duke, that the revolt is dead except here in the West Country. Oh, Tom—”
“Hush, hush,” he murmured, bearing her to the bed and setting her down upon it. “All is not lost. We’ve a great force here.”
“Farmers against seasoned troops,” she said bitterly.
“But right is on our side,” he corrected her in a stern voice. He was thinking how ravishing she looked in her scarlet riding habit.
“Right?” she scoffed. “ ’Tis might not right that wins battles!”
How silky her fair hair was! He found his fingers touching it, almost against his will, and then easing down to stroke her white neck—and tangle his fingers in the white froth of lace she wore like a cravat. She shivered at his touch—and stripped off her riding gloves.
“Tom.” Her voice was pleading. “I know I have gone about everything all wrong. I should not even have come here—” Even as she spoke her hands had stolen around his neck and she was bringing his face down to hers. “And yet now that I am here, now that we both know how we feel, now that you’re going to send me back tomorrow, now that you may be killed”—her voice broke—“oh, Tom, couldn’t we at least spend the night together?”
Something caught in his throat, making it difficult for him to speak. Tom Thornton—whom people had murmured was well named, for was he not a prowling tomcat where the ladies were concerned?—felt an enormous tenderness steal over him. Little Pamela, whom he had always meant to take to his bed—eventually—had actually spoken for him.
“Pam,” he said huskily. “I can’t let you. Suppose I’m killed?”
“Then I’d have something to remember you by,” she said simply and her crystal blue gaze was the most honest he had ever known.
“Your father would never forgive me for taking advantage of you,” he sighed. “He trusts me.”
“And I will never forgive you if you don’t!” she said shakily. She snuggled against him, every slight movement robbing him of his resolve. “I trust you too!” And when still he hesitated, “If you don’t,” she flared, “I promise you I’ll ride home alone tonight—no matter how dark it is or how many cutthroats line the road!”
A chuckle gurgled in Tom’s throat. His lovely girl was threatening him if he did not take her to bed at once!
He groaned for there was that about her that stirred his blood. The very touch of her silky flesh was liquid fire in his veins, and he knew that tonight he was about to break faith with an old friend—by seducing his daughter. A dishonorable thing. Yet he could not stop himself. He caught her by the shoulders in a grip that was both fierce and tender. There was a roaring in his ears as he warred with himself. He wanted this dainty golden girl as he had never wanted anyone before, and he knew instinctively he would never want anyone so much again.
“God help me, Pam,” he muttered as his hands left her shoulders and his suddenly stumbling fingers loosened her bodice. “I swear to you I’ll have the banns cried as soon as I get back.”
But he might never come back—and they both knew it.
“Oh, bother the banns,” murmured Pamela, feeling her own blood race at every touch of his fingers on her slender torso. “Just stay the night with me, Tom!” And tomorrow somehow I’ll persuade you to go home with me! she promised herself.
She untied her big fashionably detachable sleeves and flung them from her, like scarlet flowers, to the floor. A moment later her tight bodice came free and Tom’s hands slid up under it—for it was, like so many handsome garments, made separately from the full skirt—and eased it away from her body, leaving her standing in her scarlet riding skirt and delicate white chemise before him. The material of that chemise was so sheer that her pink nipples could be seen through it.
Delicately, reverently, as if he must not mar or sully this exquisite creature before him, Tom lifted her chin with one finger and lightly kissed her lips. “You’re sure about this?” he said huskily. “For once done, there’s no going back.”
She was smiling at him. Confidently. “I care not where I go, Tom—so long as it’s with you,” she said softly—and for answer gave a sudden tug to the white satin riband that held up her sheer chemise and let the fragile white lawn material float softly down about her hips, a white cloud drifting over her scarlet riding skirt.
That smooth pale torso, so suddenly bared to his view, was so lovely he drew in his breath sharply. She was as beautiful in the dusk as she had been by moonlight—radiant.
With a soft sound in his throat, Tom swept her up and carried her to the bed, laid her gently upon the coverlet. Nothing would stop him now!
It was early still. Through the small window, half obscured by the black ragged pattern of the tree branches, a narrow slice of melon moon, of a brilliant whitish green, blazed against a lavender sky. Observed by neither of the lovers, who were intent on matters of the flesh, that sky shaded to mauve and then to gray gold as it neared the earth and ended in a flush of soft orange scarlet.
Tom had tugged off Pamela’s boots—for her spurs were catching in the coverlet. He had let his hands glide up sensuously along her smooth firm thighs as he himself removed her stockings and her garters. And then he had risen and tugged off his own boots, divested himself of his outer clothing while Pamela watched, her eyes large and dark and glowing now, from the bed.
Those last minutes of the fading light flickered by with their pulsebeats, with the lavender deepening to dark gray blue and the orange scarlet to rose madder and then to a thin crimson line as the dying sun retreated over the western horizon. They had plighted their troth, unspoken, on the worn coverlet of that upstairs room at the George, with a military conclave going on downstairs—plighted it forever, heart to heart.
Outside, the marshes and meadows of Sedgemoor had now changed their character as the creatures of the night replaced the creatures of the day. Ferrets roamed the marshes and big-eyed owls stalked meadow mice. From somewhere came the wild cry of a nightjar.
But the lovers were oblivious to it all. Battles might rage, thrones might topple, worlds collide and they would not know it. Their dreams were as old as time—and as fresh as tomorrow. Spellbinding. This night was theirs—theirs to take, theirs to hold, theirs to cherish forever.
The hum of men’s voices below was loud enough to carry to all parts of the inn, for there was much dissension, much loud wrangling over what to do—but it is doubtful if Tom or Pamela, lost in their dream of love, ever heard it.
They were more intent upon the easing down of a riding skirt over rounded hips, in the silky rustle of a chemise as it was urged down a slim body, past dainty white legs, in the soft urgency of a man’s lips upon a pink female nipple. Tom, experienced lover that he was, brought to this night all the best that was in him, teasing, caressing, gently exciting her passions, building her up to that heated moment when she would change from girl to woman. Pamela, enraptured, thrilled to his touch, her eyes wide and dark with desire, her lips slightly parted, her breath gasping in her throat.
And now at last was the moment—and she met it bravely, holding back with clenched teeth the cry that threatened to break from her lips as her maidenhead was pierced. For a moment she sagged against him and he, considerate of her pain, held her comfortingly close and murmured endearments.
And then the turmoil that had eng
ulfed them both was driving him again and he thrust once more with determination—and Pamela’s soft ragged sigh told him, as her trembling body did, that he had won through. Their bodies closed, locked, threshed together upon the inn’s hard mattress, and the bed that was to have known Lord Grey’s more sober form this night was merrily cavorted in by two strong young lovers who for these wondrous moments had thrown away all thought of the future or what might lay in store for them.
Masterful, sure of himself, Tom led his trusting lady into lands of wild delight. His every touch was a goad to her senses. He swept her up and up, each breathless moment filled with new sensations and lovelier than the last. She felt she was floating along tall precipices, teetering on the brink of mighty chasms, a flower blown upward by the wind, fluttering toward the stars amid vast heavenly explosions that tossed her this way and that and filled a dark world with light.
She clutched him tightly, lest she lose her road and all this beautiful new world collapse about her.
And when his own passion had crested and he had brought her with him back to earth, back to this tiny room at the George, back to the worn coverlet that supported their pulsing naked bodies, Tom, lying beside Pamela, had time to think. And to thank Whoever Arranges Things for these last hours spent with his golden girl before the battle. For he had been on reconnaissance earlier in the day, even as Ned was now, and the enemy had seemed to him more numerous than the great flights of wheeling seabirds that swooped over Bristol harbor. With all his heart he wished he could go home with Pamela, this lovely child-woman who nestled beside him smiling in the moonlight, but he was committed to this Cause, just as Ned and the others were committed. This was a West Country fight and he could not shirk it. His heart would be riding home through the summer countryside with Pamela on the morrow, but his body, lean and hard and ready for this, would be lunging through the shot and saber charges of Sedgemoor....
Driven by his hard thoughts, he turned to her again, caught her in his arms with all the urgency that surged through him on this, the eve of battle. And this time her response was less hesitant, more sure. She was learning the wild byways of love, and he was teaching her—just as he had once taught her to take high jumps zephyr-light atop a thunder-hooved hunter.
He was proud of her, this brave, lovely girl in his arms, who had dared the wild marauding countryside to find him and make things right between them. And his last thought, as he drifted off to sleep with Pamela cradled in the crook of his arm, was that he would survive this battle. He would let no cannon ball find him, he would outwit every saber thrust, he would win his way back to her. And love her—forever and ever....
Dawn found Tom shaking her awake. “Lord Grey will want his room back, and you must get you gone before we go into battle and it’s too late to get you out!”
“Oh, Tom.” She flung herself against him again and another precious half hour was added to their joyful memories of each other.
But then, tenderly, he pulled her from the bed where she seemed rooted for the day—for she was determined to keep him with her.
“You must be away, Pamela,” he told her, ruffling her rumpled fair hair as he spoke. And when her slim white arms would have pulled him back to bed, he resisted, shaking his head.
Annoyed that she could not keep him, she watched him dress and then flounced up herself and dressed while they talked. Tom had laid his great pistol on the windowsill, she noted, and his sword was hung over a chair. She wished wistfully that she could march him out of here at gunpoint and save him from the battle, that was shaping up.
They were arguing as she dressed.
“Constance says the revolt is finished elsewhere,” she was saying. “She says ‘preventive arrests’ have trapped the leaders all over England. I do not know how she knows, but she says it is true. She says the West Country stands alone, Tom!”
A shrug of broad shoulders was his only answer. He was standing near the door.
“Oh, why doesn’t the Duke give up now?” she cried. “Why wait until you’re all slaughtered? He must know it’s hopeless. If he ran for it now, he could get away to Holland, the troops could disband—they could seek amnesty, they could get away, back to their homes!”
“Pam,” he sighed. “What good is it to talk this way? Our course is set—what will be, will be.” He turned alertly as boots marched toward the door, thinking Lord Grey might be arriving to reclaim his room, relaxed as the footsteps hurried on by.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “I won’t let you go!” She stamped her boot and then picked up Tom’s pistol, held it up critically. “This gun needs cleaning, Tom.”
“I know,” he muttered, turning his head again as more footsteps hurried by.
“The Duke should have had the sense to stay in Holland, waiting until the country was prepared for him,” she burst out. Through the window she now eyed that same duke balefully, for he had come striding out of the inn and was now standing beside his horse, about to mount up. “But no, he had to come charging back before anyone was ready,” she flung over her shoulder. “And now he’s going to get you all killed!” Of a sudden the handsome duke below seemed to her a monster.
Below her, all were concentrating on the Duke. No one was looking up.
“I hate him!” she cried in a choked voice.
And brought up the pistol.
He was there below her in all his splendor. Handsome, commanding, acknowledged son of a king albeit on the wrong side of the blanket, claimant to the throne. About to fight the decisive battle of his career—the battle for England.
But Pamela from the window did not see the Duke as a leader of men, as a rightful king. She saw him as a good-looking fool in fine garments, deluded by his own ambition, leading everyone she loved to sure destruction.
Well, he would not live to do it!
Almost unconsciously, her finger tightened on the trigger. She did not consider the consequences, she did not think past this breathless moment when she viewed a would-be king down the shining barrel of a pistol.
For the flicker of an eyelash the fate of the West Country hung on the trigger finger of a reckless sixteen-year-old girl.
The George,
Norton St. Philip, Somerset,
July 5 1685
Chapter 34
Some violent undertone in her voice made Tom turn. She had always been an easy handler of firearms—she was today. He saw the pistol being leveled at something below in the innyard—and he had a terrible sinking feeling as to what that something might be.
“Pamela!” The name was ripped from him as he sprang for her.
He saw it all in a kind of terrible slow motion. He seemed to sail through the air even as the gun went off. He was crashing into Pamela, snatching the gun from her hand, seeing her white face, hearing the sob in her throat.
Below her there was pandemonium—but no bloodshed. Fate had not yet decreed that it was time to end the Duke of Monmouth’s ill-starred life. At the crucial moment, just as Pamela fired, he had bent quickly to examine what seemed to him an imperfection in the creamy lace of his boothose—and it had saved his life. The bullet had whistled safely by him to imbed itself in the hard-packed earth of the innyard.
But abovestairs, the force of Tom’s impact brought Pamela’s light body slamming up against the wall.
“I missed!” she whispered, stricken.
There were shouts from the courtyard now and cries, “Is His Grace all right?” by those who had forgotten for the moment that the Duke was now acknowledged by them a king. “Is King Monmouth all right?” roared someone.
Against the wall, a white-faced Pamela had now realized what her folly would cost her—Tom’s life and her own. For even though she protested his innocence, who would believe her when he stood there with a smoking gun in his hand? But she had endless courage.
“Reload!” she cried. “We’ll stand them off!”
But Tom was not listening. He was casting a quick look out the window. No one was looking
in his direction just now; they were all clustered around the Duke or running into the inn. He dropped the smoking pistol through the window and spun around to face her.
“Oh, Tom!” she cried in despair when she saw he no longer had the gun.
“Pam, forgive me,” he said rapidly. And before she knew what he was about, his fist cracked against her jaw. The blow had been timed with neat precision—and with just sufficient force for its purpose. He caught her sagging body as she fell, swept her slight weight up in his arms, and had reached the hallway before the first man—a major in the Duke’s army—charged up the stairs.
“The roof!” cried Tom. “I think the fellow’s up there! My betrothed here was saying good-by to me and we heard the shot and saw the pistol drop past our window! Is the Duke all right?”
“Aye!” The word was flung over a broad shoulder as the major charged up the attic stairs. “Surround the inn,” he bellowed.
Meanwhile Tom was pushing his way down a clogged stairway with Pamela in his arms. “She saw the pistol fall past our window and fainted,” he kept saying. “She needs air.” Like an onrushing flood, men parted to let him bear his limp scarlet burden past.
Down in the courtyard he moved boldly toward the group around Monmouth and glibly repeated his story.
“We’ll need ye here—ye’re witnesses,” said a harsh voice. He thought it was Grey’s.
“My betrothed has a weak heart,” protested Tom. “There’s a doctor down the road. I’m afraid this has been too much for her—”
“Bear your lady away to the doctor,” came the young Duke’s rich voice, overriding his subordinate. He shouldered a frowning Grey aside and stepped forward. “Faith, she’s a beauty!” He made a languorous gesture of dismissal. “Let them go, Grey. We do not need witnesses—we’ll have the fellow himself.”
The Stuarts, for all their faults—and they were many—were always capable of magnificent gestures.
Tom gazed for a fleeting moment into the Duke’s eyes. Did he see perchance a twinkle there? He thought so. A broad smile lit his own strong features.
Lovely Lying Lips Page 47