Tender (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Time Travel Romance Book 1) Page 9

  He nodded. They strolled aimlessly, and she inhaled the distinctive aroma of the palace gardens, thinking of Camisha.

  “These are boxwoods, aren’t they?”

  He nodded. “They don’t have them where you’re from?”

  “No.”

  He chuckled softly, turning to stroll between the shrubs that grew higher than a man’s head. The quiet serenade of crickets soothed Rachel. “Nor where I’m from. It’s a unique aroma, but one I very much love. The aroma of Williamsburg.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Liverpool.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded and she followed him curiously. “What is this place?”

  “It’s a maze. Tonight, very much like Minotaur’s.”

  “Who?”

  “Confined to a labyrinth by Daedalus, and given innocent maidens to feast upon from time to time.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “My mother taught me.”

  “Oh? Is she in Liverpool?”

  The complacent pleasure left his face. “She died in my sixteenth year.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  They fell silent, both lost in the past. Hers, forgotten; his, unable to blot from memory.

  “Who raised you?” he asked suddenly.

  “A man named Max Sheppard.”

  “Then you must love him very much.”

  “I owe him a great deal and am grateful for him, but there’s only one person in this world I love very much.”

  Several seconds passed, then he asked, “Who is he?”

  “No, it’s my best friend. Her name is Camisha. She is as fond of Williamsburg as you are. Her family’s from nearby.”

  “Oh.” Then, he pressed, “But you don’t love … this Sheppard man.”

  After a moment, she said, “I think my parents were murdered. And he may have had something to do with covering it up.”

  He stopped, his face in shadow. “Covering it up?”

  “I have two sisters he never told me about. Camisha found out, and he threatened—”

  She choked on the bitter memory, and he again pulled her close. She felt his breath at her temple, and her uncertain fingers closed over the softness of his shirt. Vaguely, she heard what sounded like the boom of a cannon, and she flinched. “What was that?”

  He brushed her chin with his fingertips, lifting her face. “Look.”

  In the night sky overhead, a brilliant display of fireworks exploded. A starburst of orange-red showered over them, followed by blues and deep yellow. She stared, helpless as another memory went spiraling through her. This time, a woman’s voice.

  Rachel, my love, this is what history is all about. Freedom.

  And as quickly as she’d come, her mother was gone, lost in a forgotten Fourth of July celebration, leaving her with nothing but the knowledge that she would never know her—nor even the memories of her.

  She buried her face against his throat, clutching him.

  “Dear woman,” he whispered. “How I wish I could remove the bitter memories from your heart, and place there only sweet ones instead.”

  She raised her face. The wild flash of the fire in the sky illuminated the grim lines of his face, and his silver eyes nearly closed as he cupped her face. “Sweet savior of children, no more than a frightened child yourself—darling Rachel—”

  His lips brushed hers, hesitatingly, fleetingly. Then returning again, tasting more deeply, drawing back with indecision. At last settling with hungry need over hers, as his fingers stole over her cheek with restless wonder. His hand drifted to her throat, tilting her head back, and he gave a shuddering sigh as her mouth opened under his. Her hands slid into the soft, dark hair gathered at his neck, effortlessly pushing away the ribbon until his hair slid like gossamer through her fingers. Still he brought her closer, tasting freely of her mouth, his arm supporting her when she grew weak with arousal, his roughened fingertips exploring more than any gentleman dared and not half what he yearned to. She felt the muscled strength of him in the arm that held her, in the hard male body pressed against her, and in the restraint that she knew held his desire in check.

  He slowly raised his head, and she saw indecision in the bright emotion reflected in his eyes, now stormy gray.

  “I’ve a swift slap coming,” he murmured shakily.

  She smiled, her fingers sifting through his hair. “Your hair is softer than any man’s ought to be.”

  A muscle went tight at his jaw. “I want more than anything to unbound your hair, let it fall about your lovely shoulders. To feel it sliding against my skin.”

  His images aroused her, and she stared up at him. “I suppose my reputation’s already ruined?”

  “Dismally.” Reluctantly, he released her and turned toward the entrance of the maze. “And I think Minotaur had the better end of the bargain.”

  “How so?”

  “I could live a contented life, were I confined here with only this innocent maiden to give me sustenance.” He took her hand in easy companionship, and he lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips against her palm. “Forgive me, Rachel. I had no right—no right even to use your name—”

  “Stop,” she said, her palm curving around his jaw. “And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For putting sweet memories in my heart.”

  They sat on the steps outside the palace, watching the fireworks, and he tied his hair at his neck once more. Just beyond the edge of the gardens lay a deep, high meadow covered with lush, green grass. Couples strolled there in the cool shadows, and lingered nearby, occasionally stealing a discreet embrace.

  “Grey,” she said, emboldened by the intimacy they shared, “is Thomas Trelawney your father?”

  Abruptly roused, he let a silence stretch between them as he leaned back on a step beside her. “What is it that makes a father?” he asked, surveying the kaleidoscope in the night sky. “And if he is, what then?”

  “Why don’t you want Emily to know him?”

  He gave a mirthless chuckle. “What’s to be gained from it?”

  “Gained? It isn’t as if it’s a profit-and-loss arrangement.”

  “My dear, life is a profit-and-loss arrangement.”

  “But if he’s her grandfather—”

  “He’s no more grandfather to Emily than he was father to me.”

  She didn’t know what had caused his bitterness, but it was in the past. “You’re a grown man,” she went on with stubborn certainty. “She’s just a child who wants to know her—”

  He rose to his full height. “I shall be indebted to you if you’ll confine your interest in my life to those things that concern you, Miss Sheppard.”

  Glancing now toward the doors, he held out a hand to her in cool disinterest, and she put her hand in his, rising.

  With the discussion quite ended, she had no other choice than to follow him inside the palace. While the gaiety of the celebration immediately enveloped them once more, she was left to muse on his sudden mood change. And by the time they returned to Rosalie that night, a plan had begun to form in her mind.

  Chapter Eleven

  Grey stared out a window in Hastings’ modest chambers, watching the housemaids stirring cauldrons outside the laundry. Dissatisfied, he poured a glass of sherry, wishing it were rum. But sherry was all Hastings stocked, so sherry it was.

  “The child is glad to see you home, my lord.”

  “Hastings—” he began with a sigh. They’d long ago struck a compromise that satisfied them both; Hastings could my-lord him all he liked in the presence of witnesses. In private, Grey had insisted, they would forget their differences.

  “I concede, sir.”

  “Thank you. And I’m glad to be home. Adrift for a year in a ship full of fetid tars and sick passengers, the memory of Emily grows all the sweeter.”

  But this afternoon, his interest lay elsewhere.

  “Who is she?” Resting his hips on a table, he scrutinized Hastings
. The man who ran his plantation wasn’t given to lies, so he wondered why he avoided his gaze.

  “I’ve told you, sir. A kinswoman of mine.”

  “Yes, yes, visiting and all that.” He stretched long, lean legs before him. “But what do you know of her?”

  He set his ledger aside, and Grey almost smiled. The poor man never had rest. When Grey was gone, his hands were full running the tobacco plantation. When Grey was home, his hands were busy untangling the knots Grey inevitably tied in his life.

  “Why, sir?”

  Only Hastings could turn such an innocent query into an accusation. He waved a hand distractedly. “Well, she’s splendid, of course!”

  “Might I remind you that you have a wife?”

  His gaze narrowed coldly. “Letitia is no more wife to me than she is mother to Emily. Nor has she been, for these past seven years.”

  Seven years it had been.

  Seven years since he’d first met Thomas Trelawney, the haughty, self-righteous planter who’d deserted Grey’s mother on their wedding night; seven years since he’d rejected Grey’s claim as his son. Seven years since finding his father and, in that dubious discovery, honoring his mother’s dying wish.

  The sudden memory gave him pause. On her deathbed, knowing the life that awaited her son, she’d at last whispered a secret she’d guarded for sixteen years. She had been born Lucy Huntington, the daughter of the earl of Windmere. When she fell in love with a young Welshman who’d come to London seeking adventure, her father forbade their marriage. She’d eloped with the young man, who wasn’t much older than her own fourteen years. The morning after their hasty wedding, Lucy woke up in their rented room to find a stack of bills, as if she were a harlot, and a note on the nightstand.

  I regret any pain I’ve caused you, Thomas had written. Your priest can likely annul the marriage. There’s enough for passage back to London.

  She’d been robbed on her way to meet the coach, and all that was left was fare to Liverpool, where she wrote her mother in desperation. Even had Lucy been the Catholic that Thomas was, there was little chance of an annulment, for Lucy soon learned she was pregnant.

  Her father, disgraced by her elopement, ignored her mother’s pleading and refused to accept his prodigal daughter, instead disinheriting her. Lucy was left to raise her son alone.

  She found a meager sustenance in Liverpool as a seamstress, and she’d never told Grey any of it until the day she died, forcing his promise to find his father. It took him eight years and countless unexpected twists of fate before he’d kept it.

  His beginnings had been humble, but his mother had risen to the fate she’d chosen with a courage uncharacteristic of the gentry he’d known. In retrospection, his admiration of her had deepened and melded with humility. The young, pampered girl, rejected by her wealthy family and deserted by her husband, had found happiness and purpose in her son. The sacrifices she’d made for him were myriad and a matter of course. When she came home weary at night, she taught him everything she knew in their small room by the light of a single tallow candle. She died when she was his age now, and her remarkable, stubborn love for him came to be revealed as the years passed.

  As a boy, he could never have understood the feat she’d accomplished. As a man, he slowly and painfully came to appreciate it. In the years that had taken him from boyhood to manhood—and an ultimately bitter journey to find the man she’d spoken of so glowingly—he had learned the things of sailing, had been press-ganged into service with the Royal Navy, and had learned the trade of slavery. At last he’d arrived in Williamsburg to fulfill his mother’s wish. Instead of finding the father he’d hoped to be reconciled to, he’d found only rejection.

  Enraged and embittered, he had returned to the only home he’d really known as an adult: the sea. He found solace in the grim rhythm of the triangle trade. Liverpool, West Africa, America, Liverpool, West Africa … And he found irony in the realization, when he was ready to build a home, that of all the places he’d visited, he liked Virginia the best.

  So he returned to Williamsburg richer than he’d ever desired. Part of his wealth was the vast acreage he had been deeded along the James River for a tobacco plantation.

  On a stop in Norfolk, he’d met Godfrey Hastings, who’d accepted his offer to manage the tobacco plantation he planned to establish. By then, his bitterness over Thomas’s rejection had been replaced by a more pleasing goal: that of ultimately making Thomas Trelawney suffer as bitterly as his mother had.

  He knew well enough by now that one foolish ambition drove his father: acceptance as an equal by his betters. In everything he did, his pompous self-righteousness and arrogance rang true. He liked to think himself one of the gentry. It was an ironic twist of fate that the son he’d rejected would soon have the distinction Thomas had craved his entire life.

  And once while in London, he’d impulsively decided to visit his grandmother. Lord Windmere, it seemed, had died five years before, leaving his widow vast holdings along with the title of countess of Windmere. Philippa Huntington then began the search for her daughter and grandson, which ended in the unhappy news that Lucy had died many years before, and the boy had gone to sea.

  When her grandson walked in as if by magic one day, she vetted him for several hours, listening to his stories of his upbringing, his mother’s recollections of her childhood, and weeping much of the time as she heard her daughter’s and grandson’s dismal life.

  At the end of their interview, she offered him his full inheritance, with the title that followed him as the only surviving heir, with one requirement. Marrying Peyton Randolph’s distant cousin was a price he little minded paying, for at last he would fulfill the bitter dream that had driven him since his mother’s death.

  And so it had been seven years since Grey had agreed to the marriage that his grandmother had lured him into, with the promise of her title. Seven years of hell with the knowledge that he was bound for all time to a monster masquerading as a beautiful woman. The marriage was almost beside the point, and it would be bitterly too late that he would learn the vicious truth about his bride.

  All for a title. Small wonder he forbade Hastings’ my-lording.

  Hastings jarred him from the bitter feast of memory.

  “Nevertheless you are bound, and thus unable to ply your affections to another lady.”

  A slow smile curved Grey’s mouth.

  “No.” Hastings recognized the predatory gleam in his master’s eye. “That you cannot do.”

  “Pray tell me why not.”

  “The matter is none of my concern and, begging your forgiveness, none of yours.”

  “’Tis a simple enough request. She abides at Rosalie—sharing my food, sharing my drink. I only ask why she should not share my bed as well.”

  Hastings’ thin lips pursed, and he exhaled slowly. “The young lady is … suffering.”

  “Suffering? Is she ill?”

  “Physically she is whole.” He hesitated, staring at his ledger. “Sir, have you not noticed her distress at times? The racetrack? The governor’s ball?”

  Indeed he had. It was the chief reason he’d sought Hastings’ counsel, else he’d be concentrating more on the seduction at hand. But he suspected it required a measure of delicacy. What demon lurked within her, flashing through her eyes from time to time? He had not missed the yearning in her—nor had he failed to notice its appearance when she looked into his eyes, like some lost waif.

  In truth, he’d felt an odd protectiveness toward her that first night he found her, and the memory pulsed through his body. A full-grown foundling, one arm raised over her face as if to ward off a blow; black hair tumbling over full, lovely breasts in careless abandon; one long, slim leg bent over the other. The sight of her, lying there naked as if it were her first day on this earth, had riveted him to the spot.

  Still he had no answer to that puzzle, but with no servants nearby, he’d risen ably to the task before him. As he’d lifted her in his arms, he tho
ught he’d never touched creamier skin—nor colder.

  That was the damned annoying part of it; he’d been so worried about her taking the ague that he could scarcely remember what otherwise would’ve been impossible to forget. And when she opened her eyes and looked at him—with those alluring eyes, not quite green and not quite brown—he had seen a childlike trust in her.

  His conscience had pricked him—then, as it did now. It had been years since he’d sought a mistress, but he preferred them to rouse his flesh rather than his dubious principles. A divine penance, her arrival? Perhaps. Despite the faint taste of guilt, a far stronger passion now claimed him. What he would give to have her in his arms again—and warm! Undoubtedly, the willowy, golden-eyed beauty roused his flesh.

  God, he must have her—no matter the cost.

  Even now, just the memory of her hand roving curiously over his chest, the faint, womanly aroma of her, surged through his senses; there was an uncanny sensuousness to her. And the likely answer to her suffering finally came to him.

  “So she pines for a lover.”

  “No.”

  “There’s something you’re not saying, Hastings.”

  The man rose agitatedly, thrusting knotty hands into his pockets as he grappled with a decision. Grey stared, fascinated; it was more emotion than he’d seen this man display in six years. At last, he exhaled in defeat. “She was mistreated.”

  “Mistreated?”

  “Abused, sir, as a young child.”

  His explanation disturbed Grey. It was beyond the cold-water disappointment over the ridiculous notion of not having her. The image of Emily came to him, weeping over an inconsequential injustice, not enough apple butter or somesuch—and then, a picture in his imagination of a slender child with riotous black curls and laughing eyes, suffering at the hands of a merciless man.

  Rage twisted at him.

  “In what way?” he asked, with deceptive calmness.

  “Sir?”

  “Was she beaten? Or—” He swallowed his disgust. “Or worse?”

  “I do not know, sir. But she is here to heal—not suffer further. You will not hurt her.”