Halfway Home, page 20
Jericho flexed his fingers once or twice. Somehow, he had the feeling his wife had just been insulted. Sara was his problem; he would deal with her in his own time and in his own way.
“I knew a man from Fayetteville once who had his marriage annulled after two years. Did you ever? He said she refused to do her duty, and the judge set him free.” She smiled expectantly, as if waiting for him to thank her for opening a door.
“I’m obliged for the coffee, Miss Moyer. Tell your brother for me I’d like to see him in my study first thing tomorrow morning. Now, if that’s all?”
Her smile faltered. “Well, actually, I was wanting to be sure I didn’t leave anything behind. In Sara’s room, that is. I borrowed it on account of how the smoke leaks into the bedroom I was using, but Renegar said—”
Jericho’s face took on a look that Sara would have recognized right off, having seen it often enough. “If I run across anything that don’t belong there, I’ll set it outside,” he said grimly.
He had stood by and watched while she’d hauled out all her gear, including a silver-backed brush and mirror set and a bottle of scent that reminded him of Sara. He had more on his mind than a few women’s fripperies.
Such as what he was going to do with a lying, conniving virgin bride.
Chapter Sixteen
Missing Maulsie more than ever before, Sara lay still as long as she dared. She was used to rising early Being bedridden didn’t suit her at all, not with so many matters to be sorted out and settled. Ivadelle was still here. Hester didn’t like her, but lacked the authority to turn her out.
As for Jericho . . .
Well. That was another matter. He’s good and angry with me, Sara thought, although she hadn’t the least notion why. Unless he had taken one look at Ivadelle in her fancy blue sateen and decided that as long as he was marrying, he could do better than to settle for a plain brown wren of a wife who had no more fashion sense than a turnip. Which was sad, but true. She never had. Likely, she never would.
Stung by pride, she sat up too quickly, swung her limbs over the side of the bed and caught her breath as the world suddenly tilted on its side. A lump on her head was bad enough, but the draft she had taken so willingly to dull the pain evidently had a few lingering aftereffects. No wonder Jericho had refused to take it.
Moving cautiously, she eased off the bed until her toes touched the Brussels carpet. She stood, and then nearly collapsed again as pain shot through her left foot.
“Merciful saints, what now?” she grumbled. Lifting the tail of her plain cotton night shift, she examined her foot. It was somewhat bruised on one side, but that was all. If it had been broken, the doctor would have bound it up.
Thus reassured, she limped across to the washstand, supporting herself on first one piece of furniture, then another. It occurred to her that she had swapped bedrooms with Ivadelle shortly before she had ridden north with Rafe, yet here she was again in her original room.
Or perhaps she had only imagined moving her few belongings out so that the overseer’s sister could move in. The way her mind was working lately, it was a wonder she could remember her own name. To think she once considered herself so sensible.
There was a large oval cheval glass beside the washstand. Carefully, she averted her gaze. She would wash first and arrange her hair, and then change out of her night shift and into one of her prettiest gowns. Perhaps then she would confront herself in the mirror. Hester had done her best, but short of putting a sack over her head, there wasn’t much anyone could do to disguise the lump on her forehead and the scrape on her cheek.
She fingered the shaggy braid that hung over one shoulder. Someone had mentioned cutting it off, and she could see why. With her head pounding like a flock of woodpeckers, brushing it would be agony.
The water was cold. She shivered, telling herself that if cold cloths were good for the headache, then a cold bath might ease the aches she felt all over. So she washed, instinctively following the same pattern she had followed for years. Down as far as possible, starting with her ears, and then up as far as possible, starting with her feet. That was the way Maulsie had taught her to bathe herself when she’d grown too independent to let anyone do it for her. She had been all of five years old at the time. That had been the year she had insisted on braiding her own hair, too. Crooked parts, lumpy plaits, tangles and all.
By the time she finished bathing, her cotton lawn gown was thoroughly damp, but at least she no longer fancied she smelled like a swamp.
She heard the sound of clicking toenails coming down the hallway. “Brig,” she murmured, half tempted to let the creature into her room just for a bit of uncritical company. He might not lick her fingers, but at least he wouldn’t cal! her madam. She was actually turning toward the door when she caught sight of her image in the mirror.
“Dear God in heaven,” she gasped. She didn’t even recognize herself!
All thought of canine companionship forgotten, Sara ruthlessly scrutinized her ruined face. Purple, blue and red. Not to mention raw and swollen. With dustings of some grayish white powder. About the only recognizable features left were her eyes, and now even they were beginning to turn red.
At least she could no longer be called plain, she thought with bleak amusement.
Tears spilled over her lashes as she stared at the hideous apparition before her. Adding insult to injury, the salt tears stung her scraped cheek, making her weep all the harder.
Standing forlornly before the mirror, she stared at her ruined face and wept until her throat ached, never even noticing when the door opened.
And then another image joined hers in the cheval glass.
Jericho.
“Why d-didn’t you tell me I looked such a fright?” she wailed, never taking her eyes off the ugly, splotched face of the stranger in the mirror.
“You’ll heal,” Jericho said gruffly. He cupped his hands over her shoulders, as if to lend her some of his own strength, and she thought of how many times she’d been tempted to lean on him for just that same reason. “You’ll be as good as ever before you know it.”
She laughed, but it came out all broken, more of a sob. “As good as ever. Oh, that’ll be a treat.”
He began to stroke her arms, and weakly, Sara let him, leaning back against his chest. She was probably getting him all wet, and she didn’t even care. At least he hadn’t yet called her madam in that nasty tone of voice.
“Shhhh, don’t carry on so much, you’ll get the headache.”
“I already have the headache,” she said with a watery smile.
“There’s medicine on the bedside table.”
“No, thank you. I’d sooner put up with a little pain than muddle what’s left of my wits with laudanum.”
He broke off rubbing her arms and lifted his hands to her temples, and Sara let her head fall back against his chest. Closing her eyes, she sighed as his fingertips began to massage her scalp.
“I could brush your hair, if it wouldn’t hurt too much.”
“Mmmm. Just chop it off, it’d be easier . . .”
His face brushed against her hair, and he murmured, “Roses?”
“Roses? Oh. My soap. Roses and lemongrass. Maulsie makes it up for me. At least she used to . . .”
Jericho recognized the scent. He’d smelled it most recently on the Moyer woman. Wondering what else that sticky-fingered wench had removed from the room, he vowed to have Hester go through her things before she left. Which would be just as soon as he could manage it without offending his overseer.
He only hoped the man managed a farm better than he did his own family. There were tenant houses to repair, field hands to secure, as well as house servants. He didn’t want Sara trying to do too much too soon, regardless of how things stood between them.
As to that, he hadn’t yet settled on a course. He’d consider it after he’d set the ditches to being cleared and arranged to buy more stock. According to Hester, they were down to one old milk cow, a few layers, a team of mules, and two horses, including Bones.
Feeling the heavy weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders, anchoring him to the land whether he willed it or not, Jericho sighed.
“Did you want something?” Sara asked, her voice commendably steady considering the shape she was in. In the mirror he studied the tear tracks on her face. She was a mess, she surely was. She was also right up there at the top of his list of responsibilities. He shuddered to think of just how close he had come to losing her.
Not that he wanted her. How could a man want a woman he couldn’t even trust?
A perverse voice whispered that she could have broken her neck. At this very moment he could be digging another grave on the hill. Instead, thank God, she was alive and warm, her soft, yielding body secure in his arms while he struggled to remember all the reasons why it would never serve. This marriage between them.
Meeting her gaze in the mirror, Jericho couldn’t help but notice how small and fair she looked against his dark, somber reflection. When he had first come through the doorway after hearing her move around, the sight of her plump, pink buttocks gleaming through the thin stuff of her gown had just about done him in.
Now it was her breasts. He told himself it was only because her gown was wet that her nipples stood out like plump brown raisins. Not because she was aroused. She was in no shape to be bedded, even if he was of a mind to bed her.
Oh, he was of a mind, all right. Even knowing she couldn’t be trusted, he was fit to bust right out of his breeches. No matter how many times he reminded himself that she was a lying, conniving little witch, he couldn’t seem to forget that she was also his wife.
He wanted her, and that was the plain truth with no bark on it. He’d wanted her ever since he had first laid eyes on her, and he hadn’t the least notion why. She wasn’t the prettiest woman he had ever seen. Far from it. Right now, she looked a pure fright, yet without even willing it, he watched his own hands slip from her temples down her slender throat and linger there, looking dark and alien against her soft, pale skin.
Her pulse throbbed under his fingertips, echoing his own.
“Sara,” he whispered hoarsely as his hands strayed farther south, easing under the neck of her gown to the rise of her breasts.
He heard the sharp catch of her breath. She stiffened and then seemed to sag in his arms. “Please,” she said so low he could hardly make out the word.
His staff leapt eagerly against the warm softness of her buttocks. Damn. How the devil had he ever been able to command a ship when he couldn’t even command his own body? Swallowing hard, he searched for one last shred of common sense and came up empty-handed.
“Sara, this is not what I came here for.”
“I know,” she said with a sad little smile that lent her the look of a painted clown. “You came to call me madam.”
“I came to what?” He went to turn her in his arms, and her foot gave way under her slight weight. She gasped and fell against him, clinging to his shoulders for support.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Sara.” He would never deliberately hurt her.
Standing on one foot, she gazed up at him with her ruined face and her big golden brown eyes. One of the few unscathed areas of her face was her mouth. Her sweet, tempting mouth. Jericho stared hungrily down at her until her bottom lip began to tremble.
Whatever else she was, he told himself, she was more than enough to tempt a saint, and Jericho had never come even close to being that. Heaving a sigh of resignation, he surrendered to the inevitable.
He had kissed her before. Sara loved his kisses—she admitted it freely, despairingly. But this time, it was different. Oh, the same desire was there, if this heart-pounding, sweating, breathless excitement could be called desire. But this time there was something more.
With his hands at the side of her head, he held her in place as he lowered his own face. One of his fingers accidentally raked over her cheek, and she caught her breath with a gasp just as his mouth covered hers. Then she forgot everything but the immediacy of his kiss. His taste. His tongue.
His tongue. Oh, my . . .
And he was angry with her. She didn’t know why, but she could feel it in the way he ravished her mouth, as if he wanted to devour her, only she wanted to devour him right back. They swayed in place, his arms crushing her to him, his mouth punishing hers even as his hands moved over her body, creating glimmering, glittering shards of promise wherever he touched her.
His palms cupped her buttocks, holding her tightly against that part of him that was so essentially male. When his fingertips curled into the crease between her plump cheeks, she wriggled, startled at the sensation. He groaned into her mouth and moved against her in a way that made her trembling limbs want to part.
She felt weak, and it had nothing at all to do with her accident. “My bones have all melted,” she whispered breathlessly when his mouth left hers to move down her throat.
The harsh sound of his laughter reverberated on the nerves at the pit of her belly. “I’ve bone enough for the both of us,” he said, and she didn’t know quite what he meant, but then again, perhaps she did . . .
“Oh, my,” she panted as his teeth closed gently over the tip of her breast. “Oh, my merciful saints in heaven!”
“Don’t,” he said, lifting his lips for an instant. “Don’t say anything.” And then he began to suckle her right through her thin lawn shift, and she couldn’t have spoken if the earth caught fire beneath her very feet.
As it very nearly did. Jericho swept her up in his arms, and she hid her face against his shoulder. It hurt her cheek, the coarse weave of his shirt, but the hurt was small beside the overwhelming feelings racing through her body like a swarm of butterflies gone mad.
Besides, she didn’t want him to see her. Not the way she looked now. “I wish it were night,” she whispered as he lowered her onto the bed.
If he heard her, he didn’t let on. He was tugging at the buttons on his shirt, his hands shaking as if he had the ague. His eyes glittered feverishly. His cheeks were flushed, and she could have sworn the planes of his face had grown sharper.
When he flung his shirt to the floor and began tugging on his belt, she realized for the first time what was about to happen. Turning her face away, she fumbled to smooth her gown down over her limbs, wishing it were of far finer quality. Wishing she were beautiful. Wishing her head didn’t ache quite so much so that she could concentrate on all these other lovely feelings inside her.
“Sara,” he said hoarsely just as a familiar voice called through the door.
“Miss Sara? Is you in dere?”
*
Jericho paced the study, his mood every bit as dark as the walnut paneling that had been grown, sawed, and planed right here on Wilde Oaks more than seventy years ago. It wasn’t his nature to drink of a morning, but dinner wasn’t on the table yet and already he had lowered the tide in the brandy decanter by more than a few inches.
He still hadn’t made up his mind whether the gods had played a monstrous joke on him or spared him from an unwanted entanglement. She was his wife, after all. Whether or not he wanted her, he had her.
Correction. He had nearly had her.
He swore at the unassuaged lust that still inflamed his loins, then swore some more, thinking of the comical figure he must have cut, snatching up his clothes and scampering, naked as a plucked chicken, through the door to his own room, just as the big black woman in the shiny black silk gown came in through the other door.
Raking a hand through his hair, he lifted his glass, scowled, and then set it down again.
She would have to go, that was all there was to it. The Moyer woman, not Sara’s Maulsie. She had been down there at the bottom of the stairs—dusting—when he had come downstairs.
“Is Sara still feeling puny? It’s a good thing she’s got that old woman to help look after her, isn’t it? I sent her up the minute she got here, thinking you might need her to spell you.”
Jericho knew very well what she had been thinking of, and it wasn’t his own convenience. “Obliged,” he said shortly.
Ivadelle simpered, her dust cloth forgotten. “It was the least I could do, since Sara doesn’t seem to like me overmuch. But then, sickly women often resent those of us who are hale and hearty.”
“Sara’s not sickly. She suffered an accident that could happen to anyone.” Jericho felt obliged to defend his wife.
“Oh, I know she’s not really sickly. I expect she just wants to stay out of your way until you’ve gotten over your disappointment.”
“Disappointment?” If she had any notion of what his disappointment was all about, she wouldn’t have stood there preening, poking out her small bosom and showing off her small white teeth.
“I mean about the baby and all. I must say, I don’t know exactly what went on between you two, but I’m sure Sara never meant to deceive you. Why, marriages have been annulled for less.”
Too furious to reply, Jericho had turned and stalked off. Just before he reached the study, she called after him. “Oh, by the way—when Mr. Turbyfill brought the old woman over, he brought along some crippled old man who don’t look like he’ll be worth his keep. Said they belonged to Sara. Looks to me like you took on more than you bargained for. The woman might be useful, but if I was you, I’d ask Hiram to get rid of the old man the best way he can. Unless you’re real strict with your rations, they’ll eat you out of house and home.”
Natter, natter, natter. No wonder the overseer had thrown her out. The woman was enough to drive a brass monkey to drink.
“I thank you for your advice, but that old man’s my new butler,” he said, enjoying the way her jaw fell.
“Your new what?”
But Jericho had already left. Stalking down the hallway, the sound of his boot heels muffled on the newly cleaned and spread runner, he wondered how his household could have grown so big and unmanageable in such a short time. He had hired one man, and now the place was overrun. It was a good thing Brig was a male dog and not a bitch, else he’d likely find himself wading through a litter of mongrel pups.
