Whispers of Heaven (43 page)

She tilted back her head to stare up at him, her hair sliding dark, long and seductive down her back. "Enough to let you take me," she said hoarsely, "here and now, if that's what you want."

"I suppose it's easy enough to offer," he said, somehow managing to keep his voice light and his hands hanging awkwardly at his sides, "when you know I would never take you up on it."

Her gaze locked with his, she reached down to clutch at fistfuls of the voluminous linen that fell about her. In one fluid motion, she drew the night rail up and off, then let the fine cloth drift in a white cloud to the rug at her feet. The light from the window lined her naked body, soft and so beautiful it made him ache, just to look at her. She was made smaller and rounder than Faine, and pale, so pale, for she had never lain naked in the sun-warmed grass. As he watched, her bare breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing, her eyes growing huge and dark in her solemn face.

He reached out, slowly, to brush the backs of his fingers against her cheek, then let his hand trail down her slim throat, across her upper chest. He cupped his palm, let it hover for a moment over her breast. Then he touched her there, boldly, deliberately, his hand closing over her. He thought she might shrink from him in revulsion, or fear. He expected her to shrink from him. Instead, her lips parted, her breath keening out in an exhalation of surprise and delight, and he knew, he knew, that she'd meant what she said, and that she not only loved him, but she desired him, as well.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, to stop touching her, to take a step back and stoop quickly to snatch up her nightdress from where it lay, a pool of chaste white against the darkness of the floor. He held it out to her, and after a moment she took it, clutching it to her. "You don't want me," she whispered, her eyes dark bruises, her voice like a painful tear.

He touched his fingertips to her full lips", felt them tremble. "I want you. Believe me, Philippa, I want you. But not like this. And not here, not now."

He gave her a slow smile, and after a moment, she returned it. Then he let his fingers slip through her hair to grip the back of her head and draw her to him for his kiss.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Harrison urged his chestnut gelding down the drive to the castle at a fast trot—a faster trot than perhaps was quite the thing, for he was finding it difficult to control his impatience. He'd been away from Jesmond for over a month now, after having already waited for her for more than two years, and he was feeling anxious and slightly ill-used. Soon, he reminded himself; soon, she would be his. It was a thought that quickened his breath and sent the blood thrumming through his veins in anticipation and a raw surge of lust that he found both repugnant and vaguely frightening.

And then he saw her, a tall, slim woman cutting through the trees of the park, her long legs reaching out in that rather mannish, assured stride of hers that he'd never quite liked. She must have been for a walk, but she was headed back toward the house now and had reached the drive. The day was cool, a gloomy late-spring day of low gray clouds and mist that swirled in phantom wisps through the reaching branches and heavy leaves of the oaks and birch, elms and pines. She wore a navy mantle with gold braiding against the chill, and a navy bonnet with a wide brim that lifted as she turned. Her face was pale, and thinner than he remembered it, and so beautiful it made him ache, just to look at her.

"Jesmond," he said, reining in the chestnut beside her and swinging out of the saddle. He didn't sweep her into his arms, for that sort of exuberant, demonstrative behavior wasn't proper, and even when in the grip of strong passion, Harrison was unfailingly proper. But he did take both her hands in his, and press them tightly as he brought them to his lips, her fine kid gloves smooth and cool beneath his touch, his gaze meeting hers.

"Harrison," she said, her hands caught fast in his. "Welcome home."

Her smile trembled slightly, and he thought he caught a glimpse of a faint sheen of tears in her eyes, which surprised him, for Jesmond seldom cried, even as a child. But when they turned toward the house together, her arm captured by his, he looked at her again and decided he must have been mistaken. She hadn't seen him for a month, and yet she seemed remote, as if her thoughts were far, far away. She never really seemed to miss him when he was away—at least, not any more than she missed, say, Philippa, or Warrick. And it came to him, as he looked into her pale face, that she had never needed him, either, not in the way he wanted her to need him. Sometimes it seemed to him that she needed her inappropriate and highly unfeminine pursuit of knowledge, her walks beside the ocean, her wild rides through the countryside, more than she needed him.

But it was a disturbing thought, and so he pushed it away.

That night, alone in her room, Jessie went to her clothes press and took out the white satin dress, brocaded with white rosebuds, which was to be her wedding gown. She'd had it made up before she left London, as per her mother's instructions, in what seemed like a different lifetime.

She spread the dress across her bed, her hand skimming over the fine satin and lace trim. Once, she had taken a childlike pleasure in the selection and fitting of this, the dress she would wear for her wedding. That joy was gone now, its place filled by a deep, abiding sorrow sharply edged with guilt. It was wrong, what Beatrice was doing—what
Jessie
was doing—to Harrison.

He hadn't changed, Harrison. He was still honorable and funny and slightly stuffy, all at the same time. He hadn't changed, but Jessie had. Or perhaps she'd simply learned to know herself a little bit better.

Sweeping the dress up into her arms, she pressed her face into the silken folds. But when she wept, it wasn't for Harrison, but for a fierce-eyed Irish convict, locked fast behind the thick limestone walls of Blackhaven Gaol.

"I wish you could have told me," Jessie said as she walked beside Genevieve along the wave-battered beach of Shipwreck Cove, the crash of the surf loud in their ears, the wet sand hard beneath their feet. Overhead, gulls wheeled, screeching, against a gray sky. The rain had stopped, but the air was still cool, the waves swollen and white-flecked. The weather and the sea matched her mood, Jessie thought: dark and somber and angry.

"I made your mother a promise," Genevieve said, one hand coming up to catch the wisps of white hair blowing about her face. "Do you blame me for it?"

Jessie smiled. "No. I understand. But I'm glad I know now."

It was the first time she had visited the cove in the weeks since she'd learned the truth about Genevieve from Beatrice. So much had happened since then, so much she wished she could talk to Genevieve about, but couldn't. It was bad enough that she'd involved Old Tom and Charlie in what she was doing; she couldn't drag Genevieve into it, too.

"I hear Harrison is home," Genevieve said suddenly.

"Yes."

"People in town seem to think you're still marrying him."

"I am."

Genevieve stopped and put out her hand to touch Jessie's arm, turning her. "Why, Jessie? I thought you had decided against going through with it."

Jessie sucked in a deep breath that shuddered in her chest, her head falling back as she stared up at the restless gulls. "Lucas is being sent back to the government."

"Oh, Jessie... Have you been found out?"

Jessie shook her head and swung away to hide her lying face. "Do you think Mother would let him live, if she knew?" She stared out at the surging, foam-flecked waves, the endless ache in her chest burning, burning. "Genevieve," she said, her gaze still on the thundering surf, "I want you with me at the vicarage before the wedding. I want you to help me into my dress."

"Gladly. You know that. But surely your mother—"

"Mother won't be there. Not with the wedding being held at St. Anthony's."

"I thought arrangements had been made for the ceremony to be held inland."

"They had. I changed them."

"I'm surprised Beatrice allowed it."

Jessie looked around, her lips twisting into a fierce smile. "I insisted." Beatrice hadn't liked it, of course, but in the end she had given way. The important thing to her was that Jessie marry Harrison, and quickly.

"And Harrison?" Genevieve asked quietly. "Does he know what you're asking me to do?"

"Not yet. But even if he refuses to have you at the actual wedding, I want you there with me, before."

Genevieve's eyes were narrowed, intent, as she studied Jessie's face. "There's something you're not telling me."

Jessie reached out to grasp her friend's hand—her
aunt s
hand—and held it tightly. "Oh, Genevieve. Don't ask. Please, don't ask. Just help me get through this."

Genevieve stood very still, her features drawn, troubled. "All right. I will. If that's what you want."

"It's what I want."

Two days later, Jessie drove into Blackhaven Bay with Old Tom and Charlie. While Charlie roamed the outside of the gaol in a deceptively idle study of the sandstone walls and surrounding area, Jesmond bullied and bluffed her way into having her brother's former servant, Lucas Gallagher, brought to her in the turnkey's room.

The room was cold and low-ceilinged, with one small window crisscrossed with iron slats and a sandstone flagged floor. Despite the open window and the room's position just off the narrow, arched stone entrance passageway, the air here was foul with the smells of prison—the heavy odors of effluvia and unwashed human bodies mingling with an overwhelming, soul-chilling crush of hopelessness and despair.

She stood in the center of the room, her hands clutched together, her breath coming short and fast as she listened to the opening of the heavy door from the courtyard, the scrape of rough boots over stone flagging. She hadn't come to see him before this, for fear that her mother might learn of her visit and take steps to prevent Jessie from seeing him again. But now, the
Agnes Anne
was ready to sail, and all was in place for Gallagher's escape. She had come to tell him of their plan.

And to say good-bye.

She stared at the open door to the passageway, her heart yearning for her first glimpse of him in so many weeks, emotion closing her throat at the knowledge that this would be the last time she would ever see him. Did he blame her, she wondered, for his being here? Did he regret that long chain of events that had brought him here? That had brought her here?

Having been raised in Tasmania, Jessie knew only too well what weeks in a colonial prison could do to a man. She'd been expecting his appearance to have altered, but it was still a shock when his lean, familiar form filled the doorway. He was so thin and pale, with several weeks' growth of beard shadowing his cheeks, his clothes unwashed and ragged, his beautiful green eyes hidden by carefully lowered lids.

"That will be all, thank you," she said, her voice cracking treacherously as she nodded to the constable. "My groom will call you when I have finished."

Gallagher's head snapped up, his body arrested as he stared at her.

"But ma'am—" The constable's eyes bulged, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed. "I can't leave—"

Jessie looked down her nose at him. "Don't be ridiculous.

This man is not in here for an offense; he is simply being returned to the government. There are certain details concerning the management of my brother's stables which require clarification, and I don't care to discuss them before an audience. You are dismissed."

The man's dirty cheeks suffused with color. "Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, and shuffled out past where Old Tom waited in the entrance passage, his back discreetly turned.

Jessie swung to Gallagher, her horrified gaze taking in the hollows that lay beneath his fine cheekbones, the gauntness of his frame. "My God," she whispered as the door to the courtyard clanged shut behind the constable. "What have they done to you?"

He caught her by the shoulders, holding her at arm's length when she would have thrown herself against him. "Easy lass. You'll not want to be touching me. I reek of prison."

But she twisted out of his hold and pressed her body against his anyway, her hands clenching in the coarse cloth of his coat. "How could I not touch you?" She stood on tiptoe to rub her cheek against his, over and over again, her eyes squeezing shut, her heart breaking in her chest. "How could I not, when I have ached to touch you every moment of every day these many weeks?"

"Ah, Jessie," he whispered burying his face in her hair, his hands sweeping roughly down her back. "I never thought I'd be seeing you again, let alone touching you." And then he was kissing her, his mouth taking hers in a kiss of savage despair. Of hello, and good-bye.

Reluctantly, she drew away from him. "The
Agnes Anne
will be ready to sail by Monday," she said quietly, her gaze flashing to the open door to the passage, where Tom waited. "We have a plan to get you out of here."

"Monday?" He stared at her, his gaze intent. "I hear you're marrying Harrison Tate, come Saturday."

She nodded, unable, suddenly, to speak.

He reached out to brush his knuckles against her cheek, his touch as soft as his voice. "Why, lass? Why did you decide to go ahead with the wedding?"

"I have my reasons."

She saw his jaw harden. "Tell me it's got nothing to do with me." He caught her chin between his thumb and fingers when she would have turned away, and lifted her face toward the light from the open window. "Look me in the eye and tell me it's got nothing to do with me. If you're carrying a babe—"

She jerked away from him, terrified he might see in her face the awful truth of what she was doing. "I'm not with child. Although, God help me, I wish I were. At least then I'd have a part of you to keep with me, always."

"Ah,
did,"
he said on a harsh expulsion of breath, coming up behind her. One hand brushed the nape of her neck in a light caress that was there, and then gone. "I hope you'll be happy with your Harrison, Jessie. More than anything, it's what I want—for you to be happy."