If I Wait For You (26 page)

West breathed harshly behind her. “I
cannot help myself, Sara.”

He’d had no intention of ravishing her
when he’d waited for her. He’d thought only to discover if she
still wore the busk. It would have been a slight satisfaction to
know, to have solid proof, that she had not completely forgotten
him. But when she’d walked in the room, looking so lovely, so much
like the dreams that tortured him at night, he’d been unable to
stop himself. That simple touch of his hand upon her soft breast
had made his entire body tremble. He wanted her so badly, and not
just for a single night.

But he had lost. He’d let her go when
he should have demanded that she stay. Perhaps it was his curse to
live so painfully aware of that mistake.

West walked around her to the
still-open door, pausing to look back at her profile before he
left. “Sara.” He waited until she was looking at him. “I will leave
you alone.”

Sara stayed away from him, though it
took little effort. West was as good as his word, spending long
hours at the counting house reacquainting himself with its
operation. He dined long after Sara, Julia, and Gardner, when the
three of them had retired to the drawing room to read or sing or
play card games. In the two years Sara had been living with the
Mitchells, Gardner taught Sara how to play chess, and she was just
getting to the point where skill and not blind luck led to
strategic moves. She had yet to beat him, of course. A victory to
her was the pleasure of announcing “check.” She soon learned that
check was a far cry from check mate, however.

She sat, elbows resting on the table
and staring at her chess pieces, when West made a rare appearance.
His stride slowed slightly when he spied Sara and Gardner tucked in
the intimate corner where the chess board was placed, but he nodded
politely before making his way to a high-backed leather chair
situated in front of the room’s large fireplace. Julia sat on a
sofa, a book in her lap.

Gardner leaned forward and whispered
dramatically, “He comeths to join the riffraff.”

Sara stifled a guilty giggle, amused
more by Gardner’s expression than the slightly malicious tone of
his words. “Stop,” she whispered back. She darted a look to West
and thought she saw him cock an ear in their direction. She hadn’t
realized she’d been staring until Gardner reminded her impatiently
that it was her move. Silently chastising him with a pointed look,
she brought her attention back to the chess board.

Her brows slightly furrowed in
concentration, Sara was the picture of a young society girl engaged
in intellectual pursuit. She had a negligently elegant air that
marked her as a woman of confidence, and Gardner couldn’t keep his
eyes off her. Sara looked up to find him staring at her and blushed
until her ears turned red.

“
Stop,” she
said.

“
I want to kiss you,”
Gardner whispered.

Without realizing it, Sara darted
another look to West, but said, “Your mother will hear
you.”

“
She knows I want to kiss
you,” he said, not bothering at all to whisper.

“
Gardner!”

“
And she knows I want to
marry you,” he said, softening his voice. “Let’s, Sara. Let’s
announce it now. Right now.”

It was no longer a game. The
earnestness in his expression, in his voice, told her that. She’d
known all along he’d been serious about his proposals, but this one
seemed so much sincere. This one seemed real where the others were
not.

“
I know what you’re doing,”
she said with a forced smile. “I’m about to win for the first time
and you’re trying to distract me.” She smiled, hoping to divert
him, hoping he wouldn’t press her. How could she accept a proposal
when he didn’t even know who she truly was? Again, Sara found
herself forcefully stopping herself from looking at West, the only
person other than her brother to know the truth.

A look of disappointment filled
Gardner's eyes. “Someday, Sara, I’m going to stop
asking.”

Sara stared at the chess pieces that
suddenly blurred in front of her eyes. “I know,” she
whispered.

Gardner was silent for a long moment.
“It’s still your move.”

Sara dashed the tears away, praying no
one but Gardner had noticed them. “I don’t want to play anymore. I
think I’ll go up to bed.”

“
Fine.” There was anger in
that word.

“
Gardner. I’ll think about
it. Truly.” Swallowing down her misgivings, she said, “I’ll give
you my answer in the morning. I promise.” Gardner’s answering grin
only made her feel horrid, though she hid it with a smile of her
own. Oh, Gardner, she thought, when I tell you who I am, you’ll not
want me anymore in any case.

Sara bade West and Julia good night
and went up the staircase dejectedly. Tomorrow. She would give
Gardner her answer tomorrow. She would tell him and Julia the truth
about who she was. Something close to nausea struck her, made her
weak, so that she hardly made it to the hallway that led to the
bedrooms. She leaned against the wall, the rich, flowered silk wall
paper dampening beneath her hands gone clammy. Even in her misery
she realized she might mark the wall, and so removed her hands.
Tears flowed down her cheeks unchecked, dropping with audible plops
onto the thick carpeting beneath her feet. She heard a sound coming
from the servant’s staircase, and walked into the first room she
came to, closing the door silently behind her.

West’s room.

Leaning against the door,
she waited to hear more footsteps before moving into the room. A
lamp had been lit, its flame so low it was hardly discernable. Sara
moved across the room and turned the flame higher. She’d been in
his room before when she first arrived back home, hoping to find
something of West in this large and masculinely appointed room. It
was just furniture and bedding then, but now it was an occupied
room, a room that held his essence, his presence. Her eyes
carefully avoiding the bed, Sara walked to a bureau covered with
West’s carvings. She lifted a delicate carving of a dolphin,
smiling as her mind carried her back aboard the
Julia
.

Feeling only a bit guilty for
snooping, Sara was about to leave the room when she saw a leather
folder on the floor tucked partially behind the bureau. She
wouldn’t have looked at it but for the small bit of paper sticking
out of the folder—some sort of drawing. And hadn’t he been snooping
in her room? Certainly, West wouldn’t mind if she looked at his
drawings. He’d always shared his work with her in the past without
hesitation. But when she lifted the folder and began sifting
through the stack of drawings, she gasped. Each one, faithfully
drawn in startling detail, was of her.

Stunned, Sara moved to a
chair and sat down, the folder on her lap. Page after page was of
her—and she was beautiful and laughing and happy. Each one brought
back a memory of her six months aboard the
Julia
. A grin split her face as she
looked at one drawing that showed her telling Mr. Mason a tale,
several seamen hovering nearby obviously listening to her yarn,
though trying heartily to look as if they weren’t. Sara thought all
those times that West had ignored her while she spun her tales, but
he had been watching her, taking in the scene and recreating it
with uncanny accuracy. He must have drawn nearly every night, she
thought, documenting her time on the ship. Part of her wondered
why, when he had been so forthcoming about his other art he had
kept these hidden from her.

Without warning, the door swung open
revealing West. He covered his surprise quickly, then shut the door
and gave her a bow. “What an unexpected pleasure, Miss Dawson,” he
said mockingly.

Sara stood, laying the portfolio
beside her, feeling wretched. “I was crying and heard a servant
approaching so I entered the first room I came to. I didn’t
think.”

“
And yet you stayed to
snoop around my room.” His eyes went to the drawings on the bed and
his expression hardened.

“
The drawings are lovely,”
she said. “I had no idea you were doing them.”

“
Why would you? I drew them
after you were gone.”

After he thought her dead.

“
My brother appears to be
quite besotted with you,” he said idly. “When do you suppose you
will be married?”

“
West.”

“
When. He certainly seems
to be in a hurry.”

Sara took a bracing breath. “He has
asked. Several times and I’ve put him off. But now, I suppose his
proposals have become more serious. We’ll marry before the end of
the year, no doubt,” she said, feeling no joy in those
words.

“
You are probably right.
You certainly are quite confident of the outcome,” West said, his
tone bored, but he didn’t look her in the eyes. “How
charming.”

“
I do love your brother,
Mr. Mitchell,” Sara said forcefully. His only reaction was a slow,
skeptical raising of one eyebrow. “But I didn’t give him an answer
right away for another reason other than the fact he thinks me to
be someone else.”

“
There is no other
reason.”

“
But there is. There is
something, a reason I…” She stumbled to a halt, unable to admit any
feelings toward him again, not when she’d been so hurt by his
silence before. She lifted her chin. “Is there a reason I should
not marry him?”

She held her breath, and in that
moment it seemed as if her heart stopped beating, as if everything
in her life depended on what he said next. And, of course, it
did.

West picked up a carving from his
collection and seemed to study it. It was a daffodil, Sara saw, the
trumpeted bloom on a softly curving stem. Finally, he looked at her
and her heart began a maddening pace.

“
No reason that I know
of.”

Sara forced a smile, forced herself to
ignore the awful and unforeseen pain that enveloped in her. She’d
braced herself against his answer, but was unprepared for the sheer
agony that ripped through her breast at his definitive
tone.

“
Well, then. Goodnight,”
she muttered, grasping the door and heaving it open, the need to
escape before she started sobbing sending her in a near-panic from
the room.

West stared at the closed door for a
long moment, stared at where Sara had stood practically begging him
to declare himself to her. She had all the evidence she needed that
he loved her in those damning drawings. She knew he loved her, she
had to know. And yet, he’d let her go, let her walk away for the
sake of his younger brother.

Noble, once again.

With one savage movement, he snapped
the carving in his hand, not even wincing when a sharp edge cut a
jagged gash in his palm.

What had seemed like the right thing
to do last evening with her emotions in tatters, now seemed a
horrible idea in the bright glow of mid-morning. How could she
expect Gardner to understand, to forgive? Not only was she planning
to tell him she was the most notorious woman in New Bedford, but
also that she’d shared a cabin with his brother pretending to be
his wife. No matter how many times she rehearsed her speech in her
head, she ended up sounding like someone demented. Someone
guilty.

Yes, I lied to you and your mother.
Yes, I pretended to be your brother’s wife, but it’s you I love.
Only you.

Oh, but even that was a lie, she
thought, gazing out the bank of windows that allowed in large
squares of sunlight. She did love Gardner, but she was becoming
sickeningly aware that she loved West, too. If she married Gardner,
it would be a good and sturdy union. But West would always be
there, like a ghost or a vivid memory, standing between them. What
would it be like to come home after years at sea with Gardner to
find West there, to realize her heart still pounded when he walked
into a room, to know that he’d once loved her. He must have loved
her once. Didn’t those drawings tell her that?

Suddenly, Sara thought of her mother.
How embittered she had been, clinging to her cherished memories of
a man she could never have. Would Sara become like her? Would she
come to hate Gardner simply because he was not West?

“
No,” she said
aloud.

“
Practicing your answer,
darling?” Gardner asked from the doorway. He strolled in looking
dapper in light tan trousers, pale blue waistcoat, and crisp white
shirt. Though he was smiling, he looked nervous and Sara’s heart
went out to him.

“
Of course not. I think you
know what my answer will be. But I’ve something to tell you and
your mother that might make you change your mind.” Sara’s throat
closed and she swallowed heavily. It would not do to start
blubbering before she’d even made her confession. She looked down
at her hands laying atop the rich burgundy velvet gown she wore,
painfully aware everything on her back was given to her by a woman
she’d betrayed again and again. They would hate her, she knew they
would. But in her heart, she felt they would also forgive her. They
would be angry, they would be hurt, but surely they would
understand the reasons behind her actions.

Julia bustled in, excitement clear in
her sparkling eyes. She sat across from Sara looking expectantly
from her son to her new daughter. “Well?”