She looked up the length of his body to his beautiful face, stretched up to kiss his belly, then looked at his face again. “Not long ago I would have been alarmed that I was causing you distress. But not now.” She lowered her head, kissed the scar again, her touch so light he wanted to cry. “How did it happen?”
“What? Oh, the cut on my leg. James managed to get under my guard, poked his wooden sword into my belly, and I toppled backward over a log. A small and unfortunately very sharp branch was sticking up, and it tore right through my britches and got me.”
“Were you old enough to be mortified when your mother wanted to take care of you?”
“Oh yes, but my father saved me, bless him for all time, cleaned me up himself.” And he said her name again. “Hallie.”
She traced the thin scar over his right hipbone, the result of being thrown off his pony when he was six years old, he told her. Jason believed it was all over for him when she licked that scar, her fingers curling around him now, and he, quite simply, wanted to drum his heels against the mattress, and die. Thank God he wasn’t eighteen and still had a modicum of control over himself. Hallie, however, was orderly. She wasn’t to be hurried. After an eternity, she reached his chest. She was on her knees leaning over him, her hair loose, veiling her face, her fingers moving to the scar high on his shoulder. She lightly traced it. “This is the bullet wound.”
“Yes.”
“From five years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, Jason. Tell me what happened. I think it’s time, don’t you?”
When he remained silent, she leaned down and kissed the puckered scar. “The pain you must have endured. I am so very sorry.”
He felt a catch in his throat, felt a shot of pain so black, so very real, for a moment he couldn’t breathe. So long ago that pain, but he still felt it, felt the utter helplessness, and he knew it was payment owed for his appalling judgment. She must have seen that pain in his eyes because she kissed him, kept touching him, nibbling here and there until the pain receded. He wondered how she could ease him so quickly, so absolutely. He said, “She was going to kill my father. I couldn’t allow her to do that.”
“No,” she said, kissing him again and again, his throat, his chin, his mouth, “of course you couldn’t, no more than I could allow someone to kill my father, not if I could stop it.”
“She aimed at his heart. My father is about an inch taller than I am. He would have died instantly. That blessed inch saved my life.”
Her eyes closed though she could still see him throwing himself in front of his father, the bullet tearing into his flesh. She felt such intense, vicious hatred for this long-dead woman, that for an instant she knew what it was like to wish death upon another. It was a pity this woman was already dead and beyond her.
“I don’t understand. Why did she want to kill your father?”
He reached up his hand and pulled her hair back. He saw fury in her eyes, making them nearly black, and wondered at it. How could she feel so deeply over something that had happened so long ago, long before she’d known him? It was right and just that he remember, that he burrow into the leaching pain as he would a familiar old shirt. Perhaps he shouldn’t remember it with such stark clarity, but he did. “Her name was Judith and I was her cat’s paw. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her beauty that reeled me in, it was her wit, her ability to surprise me, to make me laugh and shake my head at the same time. I wanted to marry her. I never saw her treachery until it was too late. I was a bloody fool.”
“Tell me,” she said, and sat back on her haunches, white and naked, her hair long and loose, falling over her shoulders to veil her breasts, her hands open on her thighs. “Tell me,” she said again.
Jason didn’t want to call up the memory that was still so hot and stone-hard inside him. He didn’t want her to know the damnable details of what he’d done, he didn’t want her to realize what a fool he’d been, to see the pathetic young man who’d very nearly destroyed his own family, but words came out of his mouth even as he shook his head. “It was all about the greed of three evil people, three people with absolutely no conscience. My father was caught in this storm’s eye.” He told her about Annabelle Trelawny, a woman who had fooled them all, including Hollis, about how James had nearly died as well. “He managed to kill Judith’s brother, Louis, but it was so close, Hallie.” He rubbed his shoulder, feeling again the instant the bullet had struck him, hurling him back against his father. “Corrie killed both women,” he said. “Saying it now, it doesn’t seem possible, but she did it, she first shot Judith, then Annabelle Trelawny, to save Hollis. I can remember the sounds of the bullets, and I thought how very loud they were, and I knew one of them had struck me, and I thought it very odd since I felt numb. Apart from it, really. I remember my father pressing his palm against the wound in my shoulder, remember him yelling at me, and I was so relieved he was all right. Then I remember thinking that with my luck the bullet could so easily have torn through me and still killed him, but that didn’t happen. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry for all the devastation I’d caused, but I couldn’t, the words wouldn’t come, and then, well, then I couldn’t do anything.”
“You nearly died,” Hallie said. She was stroking her fingers over his shoulder, lightly touching the scar.
“But I didn’t. My family was there, they were always there, and when I finally opened my eyes, they were so happy and relieved, told me over and over that I would be all right, that I would live. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. All those forgiving, beloved faces, the worry and love for me etched deep, the fear that I would die.”
“You couldn’t bear it because the blame was yours.”
“Yes, it was mine, no one else’s.”
“Tell me again how it was all your fault.”
“If I hadn’t been such a fool, so blind and full of my own conceit and invincibility, Judith wouldn’t have been able to draw me in, to make me her dupe. She wouldn’t have won.”
“You say she won? How could she have won, Jason? She’s dead. You’re not dead, your father’s not dead, James isn’t dead.”
“No thanks to me. They wanted our deaths, Hallie. They wanted the actual doing of it. Worst of all, they wanted the benefit from it. They were monstrous evil. Judith’s brother had knocked James out and tied him up. Thank God James is so strong and so smart, but still, it was too close. He could have died so easily.”
“He didn’t. He saved himself just as you saved your father.”
Before he could speak again, she leaned down and kissed his mouth lightly, her palm over his heart. The beat was solid, steady, not fast now with need. “Your father,” she said thoughtfully, her brow furrowed, “he must have hated that you, his son, saved him.”
“Yes, he did. He told me he was the father, it was he who should protect his son. He was angry that I leaped in front of him.”
“That surprises you?”
“No. He’s my father. He tried to excuse what I’d allowed Judith to do to me, said if I wanted to apportion blame so badly, then give them all their share.” Jason fell silent, aware of her palm now covering the bullet scar, but beneath her palm the damnable pain was still there, pulsing strong and hot. “He said what I would say had I been the father.”
“Of course. He was also right.”
“You weren’t there, Hallie. You don’t know what really went on.”
“Has your father ever lied to you?”
“Of course not, but this is much different. He wouldn’t see this as a lie, he’d see it—”
“As what?”
“As something he’d fight to believe since I was his son and he loved me.”
“Do you love your father, Jason?”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to an inch from his face. “Why would you ask something so stupid as that?”
She kissed his mouth lightly, then pulled back a little. “Because you obviously didn’t believe him when he told you that you weren’t t
o blame. How can you love someone when you believe they’re lying to you?”
“It wasn’t like that. He tried to justify it, tried to excuse what I did—”
“This is quite remarkable.”
“What is, damn you?”
“You’ve wallowed in guilt for nearly five long years. You’ve managed to keep that wound raw and bleeding, always there at the edge of your mind so you won’t forget to hate yourself. You’ve nourished this constant companion of yours, kept it strong and in control for so very long. That is great dedication on your part, Jason. I imagine you would probably feel incomplete without it there, poking you, reminding you what an abominable excuse of a man you are.
“Your father must feel that he’s failed you. Actually, I suppose he did fail you. Like I said, it’s obvious you didn’t believe him, did you? Didn’t believe his word that you weren’t to blame? Hmm, all this flailing about over long-ago evil and endless bloody guilt, it’s made me quite thirsty. Would you like some warm milk? I understand it’s Mother’s antidote for depressed spirits. My father always rolls his eyes and says brandy is the only drink to realign the humors. Or would you prefer your spirits to remain depressed?”
“It was you who brought all this up, Hallie, you who demanded to know what happened. My spirits aren’t depressed, dammit.”
“Well, you’ve certainly depressed mine.” She pulled away from him, rose, beautifully naked, only he didn’t notice, since his eyes were focused on her neck, how his hands would fit nicely around her neck, and squeeze. He felt the heavy burn of anger in his throat. “I told you part of me was dead, that I wasn’t whole, that trust had been burned out of me and that’s why I didn’t want to marry, that—”
“Oh yes, you did,” she said, as she pulled on her dressing gown. “It is all very sad. Just imagine—being part dead. Yes, that is indeed sad.” She sighed. “Look at the guilt I shall have to carry around now.”
“Guilt? You? You don’t have any guilt, you were a girl at the time this happened.”
“Oh yes, I do. Don’t you remember? I jumped on your poor dead innocent self. I was very ready to plunge my fingers down the front of your britches—my father was right about that. Attacking you like I did, I sealed your doom. Poor Jason. In addition to all that soul-shattering pain that haunts you, you were forced to take a wife, namely me, the very last thing you wanted. Having a wife must seem to you like the final instrument of torture—the iron maiden—sorry, just a little joke. Poor Jason, trapped now with both the memory of failure and blame—and a wife. Do you think that long-dead evil Judith is hanging about as a spirit, rubbing her hands together because she knows she still controls your life? That would please the damnable bitch, don’t you think? Hmm. I wonder if her spirit ever believes she won. Would you like some warm milk?”
He jumped out of bed, so angry he was nearly rabid with it, so angry he wanted that neck of hers between his big hands, now. He shook his fist at her, yelled at the top of his lungs, “Don’t you try to act all superior and smart with me, Hallie. Don’t you bring up Judith’s smarmy spirit to make me feel ridiculous. Damn you, don’t you dare try to jolly me out of this!”
She saw the pounding pulse in his throat, then stared at his groin. “No, of course not. Sometimes words pop out of my mouth, you know that. I know there’s no way I can make you face up to what happened five years ago. It would be like prying the shingles off a roof with your fingernails. Aren’t you chilly, Jason? Should you like me to give you your dressing gown? I believe it’s over here on the floor, where you threw it about fifteen minutes ago. Ah, but I enjoy looking at you so very much, perhaps—”
He picked up his own dressing gown and shrugged it on. “Damn you, stop staring at me.”
CHAPTER 38
“Why? You have incredible stretches of self that quite delight me. Whenever you have me out of my clothes, you’re either looking at my breasts or at my belly or my legs, or talking about kissing me behind my knees. It’s like you can’t make up your mind.
“Not that it’s any easier with you. Well, I always know where to begin, but then there’s your chest, I can’t forget about your chest, but then, your legs—goodness, I love your legs too. I guess the truth of the matter is every time I look at any part of you—even the dead parts—I feel all sorts of delicious little tingles. Would you like some warm milk now?”
“I don’t want any damned milk. I want a brandy.”
“Hmm. My father would be pleased. Perhaps I’d like a brandy too. Jason?”
“What, dammit?”
“You really don’t like the chair at the end of the bed? Perhaps with enough practice, our clothing would end up on the chair rather than on the floor.”
She was callous and not at all solicitous of him, despite all her bleating to the contrary. He kicked the chair, cursed because it felt like he’d broken one of his toes, and slammed out of the bedchamber. He wished at that moment that Angela was still here. He’d take her a snifter of brandy, pull up a chair beside her bed, and tell her about how he was going to strangle his wife. Then he’d go take care of Lord Grimsby, but Lord Grimsby was a distant second to his crass, unfeeling wife. But Angela had moved to the Dower House three days before, Hollis supervising the four foot-men. He and Hallie were alone in this big house. He’d never believed it was too big before, but he did now. If he strangled her, it would seem even bigger. The entire house would be his. He could do just as he pleased whenever he pleased. Damnation.
Perhaps he’d wake up Petrie, tell him about this bloody uncaring wife of his, listen to him add his own list of female failings to Jason’s list. How long would that last? Knowing Petrie, possibly a week. Besides, with his luck, Martha would overhear, rush in, and smack them both in the head.
“Yoo hoo, Jason! The house is very cold, don’t you think? Can one heat brandy?”
He turned to face his wife, all smiles, trotting toward him down the corridor. She grinned up at him, took his arm. “The house seems too empty without Angela. What do you think is happening at the Dower House?”
“Hopefully they’re sleeping,” he said in a prissy voice.
“Oh dear, this is all my own fault. If only I’d not asked you all those soul-wrenching questions that ended up with you walking out on me, why, right now I’d be lying in the middle of the bed, a silly grin on my face, with you sweating beside me, maybe singing a duet.”
“Be quiet, Hallie.”
She began whistling.
He wished he could whistle as well as she. “Whistle that ditty about the drunken sailors.”
She did. She grabbed his hand and began swinging her arm in march time. When she came to the end of the ditty, she said, “I don’t suppose you’ll want to make love to me on the kitchen table, will you? I could arrange myself, perhaps even lift the corner of my gown so as to focus your lovely eyes—”
“Shut your mouth. You have the feelings of a damned gnat.”
It was meaty, that insult. She went on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. He felt her hand low on his belly through the velvet of his dressing gown, pressing in, touching him. His breath hitched at the quick punch of lust. “Truly? A damned gnat?”
“Get your hand off me, Hallie. I am not in the mood.”
Her fingers stilled, but she didn’t move her hand. “It came to my attention during our ever-so-pleasant stay on the Isle of Wight that men were always in the mood. Ah, Jason?”
“What?”
“Why are you so angry with me?”
He realized they’d been standing at the top of the stairs for the last three minutes. It was dark, but there was a swatch of moonlight coming through the front windows. He opened his mouth, shut it, said, “You refuse to acknowledge the god-awful mess I made, you refuse to understand the devastating shadow I cast on so many lives.”
“It certainly appears to be a very long-lasting shadow.”
“Dammit, Hallie, because of me, my family nearly died! Stop mocking me, you’re not treating what happened with the
seriousness it deserves.”
“No, I suppose not. Had I been there, been your wife, it’s possible I would have coddled you and reassured you for a full six months. Then I would have gotten tired of your ridiculous guilty drivel. And I would wonder why you couldn’t see that you survived and those evil people didn’t. Yes, I would have reached the end of my tether of your attachment to a past that would be forgotten if not for your dreary vow to suffer for the rest of your life.
“Hmm. I’ve heard of sack cloth, it’s spoken of in the Bible. I wonder if one can still purchase sack cloth. Ashes, now, that would be no problem. Wouldn’t you look a treat in sack cloth, all dirtied up?”
He growled at her, actually growled he was so angry. He left her at the top of the stairs and headed down. He nearly tripped at the shock of the gloomy voice that came from the thick shadows near the drawing room. “Master Jason? Is that you, sir? Oh dear, what is wrong? I heard voices, arguing voices, mainly that of your new wife.
“Ah, I knew it was a mistake, you’re such a fair man and she took full advantage of you. You had to marry her and now she’s forcing you to argue.”
Another voice, this one much higher and louder, trumpeted from the shadows back near the kitchen. “You miserable fat-tongued dead-witted slug! Don’t you dare speak of my precious mistress like that. My mistress is the best thing that has ever happened to Master Jason. She makes him laugh and smile and, well—all have heard him groan.”
Petrie, in a dressing gown as black as a priest’s robes, puffed himself right up. “And what about her, Martha? I’ve heard her groan so loud I feared for the newly hung chandelier. It’s disgraceful that a supposed lady would enjoy, well—”