The Pretenders (27 page)

He looked at me in silence, then he leaned forward and, in a grave and oddly formal gesture, as if he was sealing a pact, kissed me on the forehead.

“All right, Deb,” he said. ”Just the two of us.”

I managed to give him a shaky smile of gratitude.

He took the soup from Mama and gently sent her away. When Susan came with the hot bricks, he put them in the bed, and, after I had finished the soup, he made me get under the covers. Then, when I still could not stop shivering, he took off his boots, got in next to me himself, and held me.

And then, at last, when the shivering had finally stopped, and I was lying quietly in his arms, he asked me the question I most dreaded having to answer.

“Deb, why in the name of God did you go out in that storm?”

“It’s a long story,” I said in a very small voice.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied a little grimly.

And so, of course, I had to tell him.

I PULLED BACK FROM REEVE’S ARMS BEFORE I TOLD
him about what I had learned John Woodly had done to Mama. I didn’t deserve to be there until he knew the whole truth about me.

He was horrified, of course. “Do you mean that monster actually
raped
your mother?”

“Yes.” I rubbed my eyes. ”That is why she acted so strangely that time we met him in Brighton.”

Reeve said in a hard, angry voice, “It’s also why he thought he could get away with cheating her out of what your father would have wanted her to have. He knew that she would never voluntarily have anything to do with him. He could rob her with impunity.”

Your father.

Wait until Reeve heard the rest of the story.

“Yes,” I agreed in a very small voice.

“Christ,” said Reeve. “What a quandary for poor Bernard. If he does truly love your mother, and it certainly sounds as if he does, then he is a victim of John Woodly as well.”

“I suppose so,” I said.

We were sitting side by side in the bed, pillows propped behind us. Reeve was still wearing his shirt and breeches, and I was wearing only the blue-velvet robe that had been part of my bridal clothes. I was not cold any longer; I was only very, very weary.

Reeve said in bewilderment, “But Deb, I still don’t understand why you felt it necessary to take a horse out in that storm. Tomkins said he told you it was dangerous but that you wouldn’t listen.” I could feel him looking at me. “You also knew that you were in danger from Robert if you went out alone. It isn’t like you to behave recklessly like that.”

“No, that’s your style, isn’t it?” I shot back.

He didn’t reply.

I sneaked a glance at his rigid face and bit my lip. “I’m sorry, Reeve. That was mean of me.”

He said with uncharacteristic patience, “Did something else happen that you’re not telling me about?”

I had to tell him the whole truth. He deserved to know. And more than that, I needed him to know. This was a burden I could not carry alone, and he was the only person alive with whom I could share it.

So I told him what Bernard had asked Mama and what she had replied.

“She told him she didn’t know which brother was my father, Reeve,” I said wretchedly. I was staring intently at the landscape of the Downs that hung over the fireplace so that I did not have to look at Reeve’s face. ”She married my fa—Lord Lynly, that is—so soon after John did that horrible thing to her that she never knew for sure which man was my real father.”

“Oh my God,” Reeve breathed.

“It… upset… me to hear that,” I went on wretchedly. ”That is why I went out in the storm. I felt I had to get away from the house, away from Mama. I knew I couldn’t face her and behave normally. I was just running away, I suppose. I never even thought of Robert.”

A little silence fell in the room, just a few seconds of dead quiet, but it was long enough for me to begin to feel sick to my stomach at what Reeve might be thinking.

Then, “Come here to me,” he commanded. I dragged my eyes away from the landscape and turned to look at him. He was holding out his arms. I flung myself into them and pressed myself against his strong, solid body. He held me close, his lips buried in my horrible, salt-stiff hair. “Listen to me,” he said. “What happened in your mother’s past has nothing to do with you.
Nothing
. Do you hear me? You are who you are. That is all that is important to me, and it is all that should be important to you as well.”

How did he know exactly what words I needed to hear? I didn’t know if I believed them, but I was immensely grateful to him for saying them.

“That horrible, horrible man,” I wept into his shoulder. ”Oh God, Reeve, how can I bear it if I carry his blood?”

“You carry his blood any way you look at it,” he said in an ordinary, pragmatic voice. ”If he is not your father, then he is your uncle.”

I closed my eyes and listened to the steady beat of his heart. It was an immensely comforting sound. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Nothing can make you feel good about this, Deb. On the other hand, think of Richard. He is a fine person, and you share the same blood with him.”

“Richard!” I cried, drawing back and staring up into.

Reeve’s face. “Oh God, he may not be my brother after all.”

I had never thought that I would be dismayed by such a thought.

“If he’s not your brother, then he is your cousin. He’s your family. Family is like that, Deb. You have to take the good as well as the bad. Look at poor Bernard. He’s stuck with Robert.”

I nodded slowly, thinking of Robert. He was certainly as bad as, if not worse, than John Woodly.

“There’s nothing wrong with Harry or Sally,” I said tentatively.

“Nor with Bernard, either. And my Aunt Maria was a very nice woman,” Reeve said. ”Robert’s evil is confined to his own wretched, violent, greedy person. As is John Woodly’s.”

What Reeve was saying made sense.

“What do you think makes men do things like that?” I asked him in bewilderment.

“God knows, Deb,” he said wearily. He smoothed his thumbs along my cheekbones. ”I certainly don’t.”

I gazed up into his wonderful dark eyes and said slowly, “Do you know what I am thinking, Reeve?”

He shook his head. A strand of hair fell across his brow.

“I’m thinking that the both of us have had dreadful things happen in our past.”

He did not try to avert his gaze from mine.

I continued, the words coming from someplace deep inside me. “I’m thinking that we can either put them behind us and get on with our lives; or we can let them destroy us. Either way, the choice is ours.”

He nodded. His face was very grave. “
I
think you’re right.” he said in a low, somber voice.

I leaned forward into his arms once more.

“What happened out there on the island today?” he asked me, as he held me close.

I told him everything. I told him about being trapped by the tide and about my struggle with Robert.

“Christ!” he said when I had finished. ”Robert has lost total control of himself.”

I nodded. “Will we ever be safe from him, do you think?” I asked fearfully. “Is there anything we can do to stop him?”

He didn’t reply.

“He tried to kill me, Reeve.” I rubbed my cheek against his shoulder. ”I would go before a magistrate and testify to that if I had to.”

“That could be a little problematic,” Reeve said. “Bernard is the local magistrate.”

I said stubbornly, “Then I’ll talk to someone else.”

“Let me talk to Bernard,” Reeve said. “Obviously something will have to be done.”

After a few more minutes of lying clasped in each other’s arms, Reeve’s lips slid from my hair down to my temple. “Do you know how frightened I was when I learned that you were missing?” he asked huskily.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

His lips slid along my cheek. “No matter what may have happened in the past, Deb, we have each other now. And that’s what counts.”

I tipped my head back to look up at him. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes,” he said, and his lips moved to capture mine.

My whole body went up in flames at that blatantly sexual kiss. I had been so close to death and now here I was, safe in Reeve’s arms. Suddenly I wanted him with a single, mindless, burning desire that I had never felt before.

I ripped his shirt open and covered his throat and chest with kisses. Then my hands moved lower to tug at the waistband of his breeches.

“Hold on,” he grunted. “I’ll do it.”

He had them off in a moment, and I felt him pressed against me. He was hard as an iron rod.

My fingernails dug into his shoulders, my need was so intense.

“Reeve,” I panted. ”
Reeve
.”

He pushed me back on the bed, opened my robe, and swung himself over me.

I lifted my legs to receive him.

He drove into me violently, and the sensation was searingly powerful and intense. I closed my legs around his waist and tipped my hips upward, so that he came so deep inside me that he must have been touching my womb.

He pounded into me, driving me up the bed until my head was crammed against the headboard. I held on to him desperately, feeling the life in him, the oneness with him, the defiance of death we were performing together in this wild act of creation and love.

When it was all over, we lay clasped together, our bodies pressed so close that it was hard to tell where one left off and the other began. When I finally felt him move, I opened heavy eyes to see his face bending over mine.

“You need to sleep, Deb,” he said gently. ”You’re exhausted.”

It was true. I was suddenly incredibly tired. I managed a smile. “I love you.” I said.

“And I love you.” he replied. He bent to place a tender kiss on my mouth. ”Shall I send for Susan?”

“Later.” I managed to say. And men I fell into the welcome darkness of regenerating sleep.

I dreamed that I was trapped in the cave, in the pitchy darkness, with the tide coming relentlessly in. I woke in a sweat of terror and wondered if this was a nightmare that was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

I got out of bed painfully. I felt stiff and sore, and my knees and hands hurt from the cuts that had been inflicted by the rocks in the cave. I went over to the mantel to look at the clock and saw that it was eight o’clock. Outside my window, the summer twilight was moving in.

Moving like an old woman, I went into my dressing room and looked at myself in the pier glass. The sight was enough to make me shudder. My hair streamed around me like a witch’s mane, and there were scratches on my forehead and on my cheek.

My whole body itched with dried salt.

I rang the bell for Susan. I wanted a bath, and I wanted desperately to wash my hair.

It was nine-thirty by the time I had bathed and dressed. I had Susan plait my still-wet hair in a single thick braid, which I fastened on the top of my head so that it did not get my back wet.

Then I went downstairs to face the family. I was determined to confront Lord Bradford and insist that he do something about Robert He was simply too dangerous to be allowed to go free.

By the time I got downstairs, the men had finished with their port and the house party was gathered in the back drawing room. Mary Ann was playing the piano, and Harry was turning the pages for her. Sally and Edmund were sitting at a table in the corner, working on a jigsaw puzzle and talking together in low voices. The rest of the house party, including Reeve, were scattered around the room, ostensibly listening to Mary Ann. In truth, they all looked as if they were lost in their own thoughts.

Reeve was the first one to see me.

“Deb!” he said. He got to his feet and, coming to the door, took my arm. It was such a protective gesture that I looked at him in a little bewilderment.

Mary Ann stopped playing and swung around on her chair to look at me.

Mama said gently, “How are you feeling, darling?”

I looked at her and was almost surprised to discover that she didn’t look any different than she had before I had learned the dreadful truth about her past.

“I’m fine, Mama,” I said.

Then I noticed that Lord Bradford was missing.

“Reeve told us about how you got caught in Rupert’s Cave by the tide, Deborah,” Sally said. ”What a dreadful experience. You must have been terrified, all by yourself in the dark that way.”

She sounded very subdued, not at all her usual lively self. In the normal way of things, I should have thought Sally would have considered being trapped in Rupert’s Cave a great adventure.

As I looked around the room I saw that Sally’s solemn look was repeated on every face. Anxiously, I looked up at Reeve.

“We have had some bad news,” he said to me gently. ”Robert is dead.”