Seacliff (8 page)

Oliver expressed delight at her courage. Flint, however, merely lifted a wine glass, toasting her, and smiled.

Dinner passed as if in a dream. Oliver spoke at length about everything but the attack. Flint kept his comments to a minimum, brushing aside her thanks with a murmured “At your service, ma’am,” and changing the subject. Then she noted how restless her husband was, leaving his chair, pacing a few strides, returning to pour himself another tot of brandy. Perhaps, she thought, he felt awkward in the presence of his wife’s savior, but she wasn’t sure. After the meal, she was relieved when Flint suggested a stroll around the grounds, since the evening was so balmy. Oliver declined to join them; instead, he muttered something about attending to business and waved them on absently.

Caitlin frowned, but said nothing. She was feeling much too relaxed, and she didn’t want to spoil the sensation by pressing him too hard over something he obviously considered no concern of hers. A normal state of affairs, she thought as Flint took her arm and started around the house toward the pond. Too normal by half.

Then she chided herself for being so critical. Oliver was, after all, a busy man. With a wrench of her will, she allowed all her senses to reach out to the night—to the languid scents, the lazy sounds, the feel of the soft, cooling grass underfoot. And when they reached the pond, neither having said a word, they sat on the bench and watched the silver surface of the water undulating under the currying of the breeze.

“Do they have places like this in Wales, then?” he asked, his voice gentle, his nearness warm.

She smiled without looking at him. “They do, Mr.—”

“James, please. Under the circumstances…”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re right, and James it is.” She waited, but he said no more. “In the hills there are glens, waterfalls, a mist that covers everything until the snows come. And there are so many hills and glens that you never meet anyone unless you really want to. A perfect place to think a bit, to find some peace from the day.”

“And is that what you wish, Lady Morgan?”

She turned to him, grinning. “Caitlin. Under the circumstances…” She allowed herself a small laugh. “Besides, Lady Morgan makes me sound so much older than I am.”

He shifted to face her. “But surely you’re not ancient.”

“No, I’m not that. But sometimes I feel as if I were. Sometimes Oliver makes me feel ….” She stopped herself, annoyed at her laxity in front of a virtual stranger. But when he pulled away the hand she’d clamped over her mouth, she admitted he didn’t feel like a stranger at all. The way his eyes penetrated to the rim of her soul, the way his fingers brushed over her palm—it was as if they’d known each other for centuries, not hours.

“The pond,” she said without turning away. “It’s lovely.”

“Beautiful,” he said quietly.

She moistened her lips quickly, and swallowed, trying to ignore the hand moving up her arm. “My quiet place,” she said. “Oliver doesn’t like it here. Oliver thinks it’s a waste of time to sit and do nothing but think. He would rather be out, Oliver would.” She held her breath when she felt his hand reach her bare shoulder, but she did not shrug him away. “I often come here.”

His eyes. She hadn’t realized how intense was their gaze, how dark their color or how flecked with points of fire, as if reflecting some field of distant candles.

“I really can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done,” she said, barely getting the words out.

“An honor, my lady Caitlin. An honor indeed.”

All she’d been taught melted away under the pleasure she felt as his voice seemed to drift over her cheeks and circle her hair. And she did not stop him, because it was the first time in a long while that someone had liked her despite her connection to Oliver, instead of because of it. And she reveled in it. She didn’t care what cautions crept into her mind; she didn’t give a damn what her husband might think. She liked the way James Flint’s hand had worked its way under her flowing hair to the back of her head. She closed her eyes slowly, tilting her head back and rolling it to one side.

“You’re tense, Caitlin,” he said. “Still not thinking about—”

“No,” she said quickly. “No.” A sigh. “You handled yourself well.”

“I’ve known my share of men like that, my lady. Enough.”

His free hand caressed the other side of her neck. The wind gusted up suddenly, then settled down to rustle the bushes. The night birds in the distance trilled softly. She winced when his massaging hand accidentally pinched her, held her breath when he saw her pain and covered the hurt with a kiss.

“James,” she whispered.

He kissed her again. “An apology,” he said, “for not arriving sooner.”

“You’re being silly.” Her hands squirmed in her lap, and when she felt her balance threatened she reached out, inadvertently placing them on his thighs. Then she lowered her gaze to the hollow of his throat and saw the pulse there. “I … I should return to the house,” she whispered, her mouth suddenly dry, the beat of her heart hard against her chest.

“Yes,” he said reluctantly, though his hands remained where they were.

“Oliver will be annoyed.” Her smile was sardonic. “Actually, no matter what you did, he’ll be furious.”

“I’ve seen him so on occasion.”

She reached up with every intention of pushing his hands away, and found herself tracing the line of his jaw instead.

“James, we really shouldn’t stay here much longer.”

He smiled. “But a little while, yes?”

Before she could answer he’d covered her lips with his, his left hand cupping the back of her neck to hold her until the contact was broken and his fingers were buried in the thicket of her hair, caressing it. Watching him carefully while he watched her, she recalled the nights Oliver came to her in a stupor, or did not come at all.

He kissed her again, and this time she allowed herself to respond; she needed the tenderness, even if it was only for one moment of one evening.

His right hand slipped from her shoulder and swept tenderly over her breasts. She shuddered, almost pulling away, then without thinking shifted so he could work free the laces as he gently eased her from the bench to the soft mattress of grass. It was time to stop this madness, she told herself suddenly. But as they faced each other in the moonlight, the laces finally slipped from their ivory eyelets, and her breasts fell softly into his palms. Pressing, gently kneading, he let his mouth break free of hers and slip to her throat, to the hollow between her breasts. She gasped and tilted back her head. Listening to the rustle of her skirts as they rode toward her hips, she could feel the grass against her legs. His hands, slightly rougher now, stroked her flesh, igniting sparks too long unkindled.

She had one last heartbeat of resistance as he eased her tenderly to her back; then all resistance was gone. A gold buckle glinted in the moonlight. His chest was bare and covered with a pelt of dark hair. She reached out to slip his breeches down over his thighs, her fingers trembling, and her lips quivering.

The wind gusted, and her flesh accepted its caress.

The water lapped softly at pond’s edge as she lifted herself to his face and pulled him to her. His grin faded to an expression of feral intensity when she closed her teeth over his lower lip and teased it. She moaned deep in her throat when finally he entered her and ignited the fire she craved. There was a clarity to the heavens overhead, a soughing to the wind that matched her own sighing.

And when he whispered her name in time to their rhythm, she opened her mouth and laughed through the tears that sprang to her eyes. Laughed when the tears blurred the stars into white comets. Laughed at the explosion of the sun in her loins.

6

A
week passed, and July loomed on the horizon. The temperature began climbing earlier in the day, and a heavy, ghostly mist clung to the trees long after dawn, to gather again quickly after sunset and cloy the night air. Though logs were stacked ceremoniously on the lion-faced andirons, the fires remained unlit; the house remained reasonably cool during the daylight hours, and neither would the night necessitate the striking of a match.

Yet despite the heat, Caitlin spent as little time as she could inside. Most often, between meals, she would wander about the estate, a parasol in her hand and her gaze fixed on nothing in particular. And more often than not she found herself at the pond, standing beneath the high boughs of a stately pine whose needles had carpeted the ground and whose shade was like the touch of a cool autumn breeze. She would stand and she would stare at the glass-smooth surface of the water, bleached of color as the sun grew white. And at the bench she knew would be almost too hot to touch until Davy roused himself and brought its canopy from storage. And finally she’d stare, after a great deal of stalling, at the patch of ground where James had made love to her.

For the first two days she had suffered an intense bout of guilt, refusing to meet Oliver’s eyes. Ignoring his drinking she prayed he would not notice the seemingly perpetual blush on her cheeks. But on the third morning she had caught sight of herself unexpectedly in a mirror and realized with a sardonic smile that no adulteress’s mark had been branded into her forehead, no devil’s horns had sprouted from her head. At that moment she had taken to the pond to think, to wonder if in fact she really felt guilty. She knew there was no question about Oliver’s conjugal disinterest—either over her physical or her emotional needs. And while she would not have given herself to just any man, James Flint had happened along at just the right time. His words, his manner, his carefully tender caresses had all struck complementary sparks within her, inflaming her senses.

Gwen still knew nothing definite. There had been several questioning looks, a few almost comical hints, but Caitlin had had the sense not to broadcast the affair. Besides, she knew what her friend would say, that she’d known all along Oliver was making her miserable, and if that was the case why didn’t Caitlin lie herself back into Griff Radnor’s arms?

Caitlin smiled and leaned against the pine bole, encircling the tree with one arm as she lowered the parasol to the ground.

Dear, wonderful Gwen, she thought. Sometimes she was so marvelously predictable. And so maddeningly stubborn. As if Caitlin really wanted Griff anymore, as if there were anything to go back to even if she did. She suspected that Gwen’s eagerness was partly due to her father’s urgings, in spite of his disapproval of Griffin, and partly due to Gwen’s own growing feeling for Davy Daniels. Caitlin’s smile grew. No silly dreams of princes and kings for level-headed Gwen Thomas. No, she would content herself with a solid young man whose future was ensured and who loved her in turn. That much was obvious. Davy, whenever he was able, followed Gwen around like a puppy—as Caitlin herself had done when first smitten by Griff.

“Damn Griffin!” she said suddenly, an exorcism to drive the man from her mind. Lord, Gwen managed to have her thinking about him even when she wasn’t around.

She moved to the other side of the tree and watched as a pair of blinding white geese swept out of the pale blue sky and landed with barely a ripple on the water. They swam about for several minutes, tested the bottom with their beaks, and were gone in a diamond shower of sunlight and droplets. And in watching them depart— fading from white to black as they shrank to motes against the blue sky—she thought of her father. For a reason she’d never been able to fathom, geese were his favorite birds; probably, she thought wryly, because they were so cantankerous, like him.

Like him, she reminded herself, when he was younger and in good health.

She sighed, and gnawed absently at her lower lip. It had been several weeks since his last letter, and she was beginning to worry. When they’d left in early April he was still abed, coughing and aching, and insisting at the top of his baritone voice that he was perfectly all right, thank you very much, and would she please stop fussing over him as if he were a child? But he
was
a child now, or almost so. The coughing produced blood, though he hadn’t wanted her to know that; and his sleeplessness was extending further and further into the night. She made no attempt to deceive herself; she knew he was dying—by slow stages that sapped his strength and taxed his will. He was slipping away from her, and only his temper and Oliver’s importuning had persuaded her to leave Wales for another stay at Eton.

The lack of word from him bothered her.

Flint had left Eton before she’d arisen the day after their assignation—a messageless departure that was only now beginning to rankle. On top of that, she was concerned about her father, and slowly she grew determined to ask Oliver for permission to return to Seacliff soon, just to see for herself how her Welsh father was doing.

She closed the parasol and turned abruptly into the grove. As long as she was thinking about it, she might as well do it. Oliver had stayed close to home these past seven days, pacing through the house like a caged lion. It was possible he, too, was growing restless, and she might not have a better opportunity to talk him into leaving Eton, if only for a month. His activities seemed to have ground to a temporary halt, and better they—or she—be on the road before he started to wreak his ill humor on her.

She walked slowly, reluctant to leave the shadows, and so was able to see the rider before she stepped out into the open.

He was astride a large black horse whose sides she could tell even at this distance were lathered. Its head drooped, and its mouth kept opening as if gulping for air. An old mount, she thought, not used to hard traveling.

The horseman himself was of great height, she could tell, and even in the midday warmth was wearing a long brown cloak that nearly covered the black’s haunches. The rider’s hat was plain and wide-brimmed, and as he scanned the house with an air of clear disdain she squinted and caught a glimpse of his face—ruddy, scarred, with a ragged white patch set over his left eye. She shivered, instinctively moving farther back into the shadows behind a thick maple. She didn’t feel at all ashamed.