Silent Revenge (35 page)

J
essica twisted the key in the lock to her private room and then turned—and came face-to-face with her husband.

Simon slowly lifted his arm and opened his fist. “Give me the key, wife.”

Jessica tightened her fingers around the key in her hand and swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Why?” she asked, tucking the key into the folds of her gown.

“Because I will not have you lock yourself away in a room where I cannot reach you. What if you were in danger?”

She turned her face away from him and closed her eyes. She was so tired. She was so worried about what would happen to him, she was past finding the courage to stand up to him. Past finding the courage to care if he found out about her designs. What did she care if he opened the door? It was too late now.

She slowly raised her arm from her side and held out the key.

Simon put it in his pocket and then placed his hand around her waist and led her to the room they shared each night. When he’d closed the door behind them, he stepped close to her and cupped her cheeks in his hands. “What’s wrong, Jessica? Talk to me.”

Welcome heat spread from where he touched her skin and melted to a place low in her stomach. His touch always did that to her. She cursed her traitorous body for letting him have such an effect on her.

She tried to turn away from him, but he held her firmly in his grasp. “You will not turn away. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Every nerve in her body prickled in defense. She stepped away, stopping when her back pressed against the wall. “What would you like to know, Simon? What is it you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me why you’ve been acting this way. Why you’ve avoided me. Why you stiffen in my arms each time I hold you. You can start by enlightening me on those few mysteries.”

She looked down at the floor. “I’m tired. That’s all.”

Simon touched her beneath the chin and raised her face until she faced him squarely. “That’s not it. Please, Jess. Talk to me.”

The words of regret she’d kept unsaid since the night Simon had been shot formed in her mind, threatening to squeeze the breath from her body. She could not face him. She could not be this close to him, knowing what had happened was her fault. Knowing every second she’d spent as his wife put him in danger. Knowing their marriage was a sham.

A wave of dizziness washed over her. Jessica raised her arm and leaned against the wall to support herself. Dear God, she hurt.

She ignored the strong hands she felt around her shoulders and walked away from him, taking refuge in the room they’d shared since they married. “I would like to be alone, Simon.”

She turned and focused on where he stood.

“No.”

The room that had always seemed huge now closed in around her like a small, explosive tinderbox. Her precarious world, which for months she’d struggled to hold on to, crumbled around her, leaving her vulnerable and exposed.

She stared into the unyielding expression on his face. He left her no choice.

“Very well. Perhaps it’s best we get everything into the open before…”

She couldn’t face him. She didn’t want to see anything he had to say. She went to the window and kept her back to him.

“Believe me, Simon. If I could undo what I have done, I would. If I could relive the night I came to you, I would. What is happening is my fault, and it’s too late for me to change it.”

Strong hands clamped around her shoulders and turned her toward him. The shadowed look on his face startled her. “Nothing is your fault, Jesse.”

She shook herself free from his grasp and laughed. “I was a fool, Simon. From the very beginning I was so naive I didn’t even suspect. I thought I was giving you something special, making a noble sacrifice. I thought you would not mind taking a deaf woman for your wife if there was enough money. But it was never really the money. Was it? You only married me because I was Baron Tanhill’s stepsister. You intended to use me and the money to destroy my stepbrother. That was always your intention.”

He gaped at her, his eyes gleaming as she revealed every word he’d spoken. “Bloody hell! You were watching. You saw Collingsworth and Ira with me in the garden.”

Jessica laughed, knowing it came out as a demented cackle. “At least I like to think I’m not demented. You were spared that embarrassment.”

“Bloody hell, Jesse. I—”

Jessica raised her hand. “It’s just as well, Simon. I would have discovered it sooner or later.”

She walked to the window and then turned to face him. “How long did you intend to put up this public charade of our blissful marriage? How much longer did you intend to suffer presenting me to your peers as if you were proud to have me at your side? How much longer could you have pretended it was me you wanted instead of…”

She couldn’t finish her question. Jessica warded off the stabs of regret. “I didn’t know my stepbrother would try to kill you, Simon. If you can believe nothing else, believe that.”

She lifted her gaze, but Simon no longer stood behind her. He’d walked to the fireplace and stood with his head lowered between his outstretched arms.

The ache inside her breast hurt more. Dear Lord, she’d come to love him.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I thought if I took your name, it would solve everything. You would have the money to save your inheritance. I would have your protection. My stepbrother could never bother us again. I didn’t know what I was asking you to give up. I didn’t know about Rosalind.”

“No!”

Simon spun to face her, knocking an oriental hand-painted vase from the mantel to the floor. It shattered at his feet. “Leave Rosalind out of this!” he said, the hostile glare in his eyes frightening. “Rosalind will not come between you and me.”

“She already has, Simon. She loves you.”

“Rosalind loves no one. She only wants what she cannot have.”

“And she wants you. I saw it the first time she looked at you.”

“She could have had me once, but she chose my father instead. Rosalind and I were engaged to be married until the memorable afternoon I caught her in bed with my father and the two of them were forced to do what was honorable and marry.”

Jessica clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Don’t look so shocked, Jesse. All of society has known about it since it happened. All but finding them in bed. Except for Collingsworth, I was thankfully spared an audience for that little scene. Society is content to think Rosalind simply preferred my father. That she didn’t want to wait to inherit the money and title. They prefer to think of me as the scorned lover.”

“And now Rosalind has chosen my stepbrother.”

Jessica knew her words would cause a response. She was not prepared for the magnitude of Simon’s reaction.

“Bloody hell, Jesse. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about Rosalind.” He paced the room, stopping only to glare at her and open his mouth as if to speak, then close it and pace some more. “But no matter what I say, you will not believe me, will you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe. Your heart is so filled with hatred for my stepbrother, there’s no room for any other emotion to grow. You told me as much before we were married, but I thought perhaps in time…”

Every nerve and emotion in Jessica’s body was numb. She no longer felt anything other than the empty void left by Simon’s confession. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she sat on the edge of the bed with her hands clenched in her lap.

“I would like to know why you hate Tanhill so, Simon. What he did to you that caused you to sacrifice everything to destroy him. Did you know him here in London?”

Simon shook his head. “No. I barely knew your stepbrother before I left. I certainly didn’t know he had a stepsister.”

“Not many did,” she admitted.

“After Rosalind married my father, I struggled to keep everything afloat, but father and his new wife spent money faster than I could bring it in. The day came when I could take no more, so I bought a commission in Her Majesty’s Army and went to India.”

“Is that where you met him?”

Simon nodded. “I arrived in India the year before the uprising. I’d met Tanhill a few times informally, but didn’t have too much association with him.”

Simon raked his fingers through his hair, then paced the floor in front of her. He stopped to continue. “I was stationed at the outpost in Cawnpore. That’s where I met Sanjay. He and his mother and three sisters took care of the house the army provided for me. About a year after I arrived, all hell broke loose. The Indian uprising started in Meerut, and by June it had reached Cawnpore. The fighting was fierce and the atrocities horrendous on both sides. But none was worse than the innocent slaughter of women and children.”

Jessica watched Simon’s face pale and knew he had tried to bury all this with his past.

“For Tanhill, the massacre was an excuse to rid the world of as many of the heathen Indians as he could, and to satisfy his thirst to kill. Men, women, young, old, children…babies, he didn’t care.”

Jessica’s stomach recoiled in horror. Simon stood with his arm braced against the tall poster at the foot of the bed. The anguish on his face tore at her heart, and she wanted to put her arms around him to comfort him. She didn’t.

Instead, he faced her with a black determination she found staggering.

“Tanhill and his drunken band of miscreants went from house to house, raping and torturing and murdering in their quest to purge the world of the enemy. I came home just after they’d broken into my home. Sanjay had protected his family the best he could, hiding his mother and two of his sisters in a small chest. With nothing but a hoe from the garden, he held off the three men intent on raping his oldest sister. When I arrived, it was not difficult to take care of the men downstairs. They were already drunk and easy to handle.”

An unreadable darkness filled Simon’s eyes, masking his face with a hard set.

“Sanjay’s youngest sister was upstairs when they broke in, and she didn’t get to safety quickly enough. Tanhill found her. He raped her and beat her and…”

Simon jabbed his hand through his hair and slammed his fist against the post of the bed. “I can still hear her screams. I ran down the long hallway like a man possessed. All I could think of was to get him away from her. I didn’t see the weapon he had at his side. Before I could protect myself, he raised his sword and swung.”

Jessica couldn’t breathe. She looked at his chest to the scar that would not go away. “And Sanjay’s sister?”

“Her name was Sarai. She was only fourteen years old. Just a child.” Simon stared at nothing for a long time, then slowly turned his gaze to Jessica. The look in his eyes was filled with torment. “Tanhill killed her. I lay helpless on the floor, and Tanhill laughed in my face. Then he put his sword to her throat and killed her.”

Jessica clamped her hands over her mouth.
Dear God
. It was Sarai.

“When I found out you were Tanhill’s sister, I knew what I had to do. You were my answer, the pawn I needed to destroy my enemy.”

Simon touched his hand to Jessica’s cheek and rubbed his thumb over her lips. “I just didn’t think you would ever become so important to me. Don’t you see? I had to marry you so Tanhill would never get the money. Marrying you was the only way I could protect you from him. It’s no different than the reason you came to me.”

The truth hurt. Simon was right. She’d gone to him to blackmail him into marrying her without telling him the real reason. Without considering that her stepbrother would kill the man she’d married to get the money.

What she had done to Simon was no worse than what he had done to her.

“We’ve made a bargain between us. You cannot back away from it,” Simon said, touching her face.

“I have kept my part of the bargain. I have—”

“No. You have not. You are my wife. How much longer do you intend to keep yourself from me?”

Every muscle in her body went rigid. “I’m not sure I can share you. I know you want—”

“No! I only want you! I am what I am because you have made me so. You looked beyond my hatred and vengeance and gave me your heart for safekeeping. I want nothing but to spend the rest of my life loving you.”

He held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I want no one but you,” he repeated, then brought his mouth down on hers.

He held her with a desperation that startled her, his lips pressing firmly against hers, warm and insistent, fiery and possessive.

His mouth opened atop hers, urging her compliance, demanding her acceptance. How could she deny him? She’d waited a lifetime to find the man holding her in his arms, and she could not give enough of herself to him. She followed his lead, and when he tipped her head to gain easier access, she moved with him, waiting for his invasion.

His tongue skimmed her lips, teasing, tormenting until she moaned in frustration. Every nerve anticipated the silky feel of his tongue touching hers, the never-ending battle for dominance and control.

She couldn’t wait any longer. She wanted him so badly she pressed herself against him, urging him to share his passion with her. She wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and let the feel of his soft woolen jacket rub through the thin material of her gown. She wanted him now with a desperation that was unequaled. She needed him more today than ever. She would die if he would not take her.

Jessica said the words out loud, pleading for him to want her, begging for him to kiss her. When his tongue entered her warm, waiting cavern, she moaned a low, keening sound that vibrated in her head.

He deepened his kiss, then pulled away, then kissed her again until she was weak with desire.

Her hands clutched the fabric of his jacket, holding on to it for support, pulling at it to touch the hardened muscles she knew rippled beneath it. She needed to touch him, know the feel of his flesh touching hers, of his warmth radiating through her.

He kissed her again. Then again. And again until their breathing seemed to be one. Until her harsh, ragged gasps matched the violence of his own breathing. She could not take a breath unless he allowed it.