Sybill (10 page)

She tried to ignore Trevor's hands working so close to hers, but remained vigilant that they did not come into contact with hers. When all the papers were in a pile, she reached for them. He handed her the ones he had picked up. As she took them, it was unavoidable. Their hands touched.

Rapidly she rose to her feet, but he moved in tempo with her, so their eyes remained locked together. Hers continued to follow his as he rose to his full height. A craving urged her to reach out to him, to touch him, to feel his arms around her as too many had longed to do and she had never wanted. Until now.

She took a half step toward him, then turned toward the desk. Her feet moved at a normal pace, but both were aware of her panicked flight. Placing the pages on the desk, she said, in a constricted voice, “Trevor, the problems come from your accounts. I don't understand the terms you use.”

With a sigh, he followed. Drawing up a chair for her, he sat in his own. Although he wished to look into her warm eyes, he forced himself to think of the account ledgers. He answered her questions, allowing the flame within him to flicker to oblivion.

Sybill concentrated and wrote notes to herself on another sheet of paper. Suddenly, in the midst of an explanation, she stood. “Excuse me, Trevor. I—I must leave.”

“What?” He was on his feet immediately. “Is there a problem?” He searched his mind for what he might have said to bring this sorrow to her face. “Sybill, if I did something wrong—”

She shook her head, as she smiled weakly. “No, you did nothing wrong.” Her lip wobbled as her eyes filled with aqua tears. “Simply memories.”

“Did I say something?”

“No, it is nothing you did.” She owed him an explanation for her queer behavior. Her voice broke as she said, “It is simply that—that—that so many t-t-t-times Father and I—we worked on—on …” She hid her face in her hands.

Understanding immediately, he put his arm around her quivering shoulders and brought her against him. Her face pressed to his doublet as she sobbed out the sorrow which never lessened. Murmuring useless, trite phrases, he steered her to the windowseat. He sat next to her and drew her close again.

“Sybill, don't cry. It won't change anything.”

“Forgive me,” she whispered into his shoulder. “I cannot reconcile myself to Father being gone. He was always so full of life. He never gave me any sign there was anything wrong. It seems impossible he could be dead.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” she asked sharply. Her pain honed the edge of her voice. “You hate my father. You have made that clear. I don't care what you think about Alfred Hampton. He was a wonderful father.”

He smiled softly as he pushed a tear-dampened lock of hair from her cheek. “I can't hate a man who has a daughter like you, Sybill. I admit the tales of his lifestyle are hardly laudable.”

“Tales? What tales? You always allude to some dark, horrible secret, but you never explain. What do you know about Father that I, who lived in his house, do not know?”

In the first days, he would have thrown the words back into her face. He would have delighted in seeing her fine airs fade at the truth. That was before he discovered Sybill Hampton was not like her father. She was the one her father had longed to fulfill the emptiness in his heart. He could not find that woman, so he had raised his daughter to be her.

“Sybill, you never guessed what your father did?”

“I told you. He—”

He waved her to silence. “You can't believe that. Not with what happened after his death.”

“I don't know what to think. Father never told me of any problems, but I knew something had been bothering him since the beginning of the year.”

“Was it suicide?”

She looked at him quickly, then her eyes slid to gaze at her hands folded in her lap. There was no use denying the story which had spread out from the lovely house with the speed of a summer storm erupting over the hills. She could not refute the truth.

“Yes. His valet found him. Father hanged himself, and I still don't know why.”

“Was the lack of money what forced him to take his life? Or something totally different?”

“No!” she cried. “Don't you think I have asked myself the same questions a thousand times? That night he simply kissed me good night as he did every night and told me he loved me as he did every night. I have relived that night over and over seeking an answer. Nothing was different.”

He took her hands in his, not surprised how cold they were. “Until the next day.”

“Until the next day,” she repeated. “I don't know how everyone learned so quickly, but it was as if there was a sign posted. All those who populated our home disappeared.”

“You know why. I do not have to explain it to you.”

She whispered, “I know what you think. You think they did not want to have their names sullied along with mine and Father's. You accused me of being like my father. You told me to find a place for myself in a brothel.”

“Sybill, I'm sorry.” He stroked her trembling fingers. “I was prejudiced against you before I met you. I was unwise to speak before I knew the truth.”

“Because you thought I was like Father? Because you thought, like him, my bed could be shared if the reward was high enough? Oh, my!” she breathed as she realized what she was saying. Pulling her hands out of his, she turned to look out to where green had reclaimed the grass. Splashes of color marked the blossoming flowers. It all should be dead. As dead as her father. As dead as her childish illusions. She could not lie to herself any longer about what she always had known.

When she was very young, she was not allowed to come out of the third floor nursery without permission. Once she eluded her nursemaid in the middle of the night. A nightmare sent her running to her beloved father, who could always banish the monsters. Through the chambers of her memory, she could hear a woman's outraged scream and her father's soothing voice to both her and the one she could not see. The nursemaid vanished to be replaced by another who was more attentive to her charge.

The significance of what she must have interrupted had not intruded on her young mind. As the years passed, she blocked that and other similar events from her thoughts. Instead she acted as a charming hostess to her father's guests, performing small tasks until she was kissed by her father and sent to her room to sleep in innocence. It had not seemed strange that a maid always slept in her room and that the door was locked from the inside. The key spent the night around the neck of her companion. For the past three years, it had been Kate who guarded her.

“Sybill?”

Fresh tears burned in her eyes. “Don't say anything. You only force me to see what I have successfully denied for so long. My father acted as a lover for hire.”

He touched the obsidian glow of her hair. When she did not pull away, he caressed her softly. As gently he turned her to face him again. “It isn't such a crime.”

“How can you say that? You despise him and what he did.”

Honesty forced him to answer with the truth. “Yes, I despise what he did, but I must laud the reasons why he chose that way.”

She laughed harshly. “Don't try to spare my feelings at this late point, Trevor.”

“I would never do that.” Her bitter smile faded, as he continued. “You're a grown woman. You must accept the world as it is. Your father's lifestyle provided an excellent life for his child.”

“He was a good father.” A tear dribbled from the corner of her eye. She did not wipe it away from the salt-tightened skin of her cheek. “No matter what anyone says about him, he was the best father in the world.”

His finger caught the next tear. Lifting his hand, he stared at the crystal droplet. “He wouldn't want you to mourn him. He loved life. Surely he will be welcomed in death.”

“To whom? The devil?”

“You don't believe that, Sybill.”

“I know one thing I believe!” she snapped. “You thought I was the same as Father. You thought I was here only to seduce Owen and gain myself wealth and prestige!”

The angry reaction she expected was not forthcoming. “I thought that, I will admit. Yet was it worse than what you considered me?”

“You?” Her outrage disappeared as he quirked a raven eyebrow at her. “Oh, all right. I did think you were trying to keep me from discovering the extent of your authority at the Cloister.”

His hand slipped along her dark silk sleeve. He watched as her eyes followed his enticingly slow motion. In a husky tone thick with the longing he took no pains to hide, he said, “It would seem we were both wrong.”

“Yes,” she murmured, unsure if she could disagree with him about anything when he touched her like this.

A finger under her chin tilted her face. Leaning forward, he kissed her right cheek. Her eyes closed as he did the same on her left. Her fingers reached to frame his face as his mouth lowered to meet hers. All sensation disappeared but the caress of his mouth against hers. When his arms enclosed her in the sweet lairs of his desire, she surrendered.

Raising his head, he ran a finger along her parted lips, which arced upwards in a happy grin. “After your tales of those fools who tried to seduce you, I was unsure if you would allow me to taste the luscious flavor of your lips.”

Her liquid laugh warmed the corners of the shadowed room. “You are the first man I thought I wanted to kiss me. That is very different.”

“Aye, very different. Now that you have sampled my kisses, do you feel the same?”

“No.”

“No?” He paused as he was about to kiss her once more.

“That's right. I don't feel the same.” Her chuckle was throaty unlike any she had ever heard from herself. “I don't think I want you to kiss me. I
know
I want you to kiss me.”

“You minx!”

He pressed her tight to him as he took her lips beneath his own. Her teasing and sensual laughter lit the powder of his yearning for far more than the gentle contours of her mouth. As he felt her fragrant breath waft into his mouth, his passion detonated to blind him in its brilliance.

Her fingers entwined in his hair as she felt the softness of his beard while his lips moved to enlighten her face with his kisses. A gasp exploded from her as he placed his mouth along the pulseline of her neck. She had not thought anything could be as enticing as the warmth of his mouth teasing her to relinquish herself to joy. When the tip of his tongue found the curve of her ear, she giggled.

“So funny?”

From the amusement in his voice, she could tell he was as awed by the power of their unleashed emotions as she was. In the same light tone, she murmured, “Yes, very funny.”

“I didn't think I'd bring peals of laughter when I held you in my arms.” Picking up a loosened lock of her hair, he twirled it around his fingers and drew her face near his again. Between quick, fiery kisses, he whispered, “I never know quite what to expect from you, Sybill. You are a mystery I would like to discover all the answers to.”

“That would be—” Her head snapped up as she heard the latch rattle. She stifled a moan as her motion tugged painfully on the hair he held.

Trevor saw her fear. This was not the time for a confrontation. Sybill's feelings about life at Foxbridge Cloister were tangled in a wild rhapsody of uncertainties. To allow Lord Foxbridge to know the truth would create only more problems. Without a word, he rose. He looked at her tremulous smile, but there was nothing he could say. They both understood the situation.

She watched as he walked to his desk. The door was moving, so she had no time to escape. Her hand reached up to grasp a book off the shelf. Opening it, she stared at the page without seeing the words. When she heard Owen greet his assistant, she closed her eyes in pain.

Today they had taken the first step along a path which would bring only heartbreak. Owen delighted in showing her how precious she was to him, but Trevor populated her dreams. She must decide what she would do. Owen wanted her for his Lady Foxbridge. Although he had yet to mention any such plans to her, she could see the truth etched into his face. His subtle comments about the years ahead warned her that he planned to spend them with her. What Trevor wanted was equally obvious. He wished to hold her close and enrapture her with more of what she had experienced too little of this afternoon. No promises could be made when they both knew how minuscule the chances were that they could be fulfilled.

For the first time in weeks, she wished she were back in London. She understood the intricacies of that society. She could not determine how to live this new life she had been flung into. She wished for sudden inspiration to solve her problems.

At first she had thought she was imagining Owen's interest in her as other than his ward. When she discussed the household accounts with him, he urged her to sit next to him. He took advantage of any chance to touch her. Although all his kisses continued to be fatherly pecks on her cheek, she could feel a strange emotion behind them.

She worked to ignore any hints he made her. When he spoke of her future, she would switch to some other topic. Owen enjoyed having things his own way, and he was glad his initial impression that she and Trevor would be friends had become the truth. What would he think if he knew how close they stood to slipping into madness and becoming far more than friends? She doubted if Owen had intended for her to feel the first stirrings of love for his estate manager. She was sure Owen did not intend her to stay at Foxbridge Cloister to enjoy Trevor's kisses.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the windowsill. She let the men's conversation wash over her as she fought to keep from thinking about the trouble looming ahead if they did not force their hearts to be sensible. Knowing she wanted to remain foolish and in his arms did not help.

“Good day, m'lord,” said Trevor as coolly as if nothing was amiss. He could not help smiling. Nothing was amiss. Everything was undeniably wonderful now that Sybill welcomed his kisses.