Shemaine gritted her teeth and forced herself through the deepening stream until Gage reached out and pulled her to him. Drawing her arms around his neck, he smiled and folded his own about her.
“You’re warm,” Shemaine murmured in admiration.
“Aye, just looking at you does that to me,” Gage admitted, lightly caressing her parted lips with his own. Her nipples were cold and hard and seemed to bore twin holes in his chest as he clasped her close against him.
“I like the way you look at me,” Shemaine whispered beneath his kisses. “And I like what I see when I look at you. I enjoy watching you dress, too. I’ve never seen a man clothe himself before today.”
“You’ll grow tired of looking when I’m old and feeble.”
“Doubtful,” she sighed with a smile.
“At least you’re no longer afraid of looking at me.”
“I never was.” Shemaine waited for his response and laughed softly when he drew back with a skeptical brow elevated. “I was only fearful of you catching me at it.”
Enlightenment dawned, wrenching a grin from Gage. “You may look at me to your heart’s content, madam. I’m yours, to have and to hold.”
“To have and to hold,” she repeated softly, slipping her hands upward over his hard chest and then around behind him to his firm buttocks. “Such a delectable thought, to know that you’re mine and I can freely touch you whenever I want. You have such gratifying places to caress and fondle.”
“No less than you, madam,” Gage muttered against her throat as he reciprocated in kind.
Shemaine turned her face toward his cheek and brushed the tanned skin with her lips. “Do what you promised before you went out to gather the eggs,” she breathed. “Teach me something new.”
Lifting her against him, he slipped a hand between them to make them one, drawing a trembling sigh from her.
“Do you like that?” he rasped, resettling his hands beneath her buttocks as she twined her limbs about him to secure their bond.
“Oh, yes!” She was breathless with bliss. “I like everything you do to me.”
“Disgusting!”
The word shattered their passion instantly, breaking them apart in acute surprise. Almost in unison they looked around to find Roxanne standing in rigid disdain at the edge of the glade. Mortified that another had intruded into their intimacy, Shemaine folded her arms over her bosom and collapsed against Gage as he drew her back to him.
“What in the hell are you doing here, Roxanne?” he barked. The realization struck him that she looked as wild and savage as a fair-haired witch. She had not taken time to comb her hair, and with the breezes, the snarled strands seemed to fly about her face and shoulders as if charged by her own fury.
Roxanne glared at them, conveying the venom that roiled within her. With a defiant toss of her head, she sneered at Gage. “I heard this morning that you had married your bitch of a bondswoman! But I had to come see the truth for myself, because I had difficulty believing you could be so foolish.”
“Why? Because I didn’t marry you?” Gage asked caustically.
“No!” the woman shot back. “Because you were foolish enough to take another wife after you were almost hanged for killing your first one!”
Shemaine’s startled gasp wrenched a chuckling smirk from Roxanne, but Gage’s roar of denial came swiftly to negate her claim.
“That’s a bloody lie, Roxanne, and you know it!”
The blonde bestowed her pitying gaze upon Shemaine. “He’ll kill you, too, just like he killed Victoria. . . . When your husband grows vexed with you, that’s when he’ll do it.”
“I will tolerate no more of your vindictive accusations!” Gage bellowed. “You know better than anybody that I didn’t kill Victoria, but you came out here to deliberately frighten Shemaine with your malicious lies!”
Shemaine’s mind whirled in sudden confusion, and she shivered against her husband, wondering if the woman’s allegations had any merit. But then, why would Roxanne be so eager to have Gage for her own if she thought him capable of murder? If the woman truly believed what she said, wouldn’t she be afraid to come near him? After all, if he had killed before, he could do so again. What would prevent him from flying into a rage and snuffing out another life, just as he had Victoria’s? Yet Roxanne had been thoroughly committed to winning him for herself.
Bracing up her chin, Shemaine glared back at Roxanne, refusing to give their adversary the satisfaction of seeing her draw away from Gage. “I don’t believe you, Roxanne. My husband wouldn’t kill anyone!”
“Wouldn’t he?” Roxanne simpered smugly as she strolled to the edge of the pool. The stream-fed pond was clear enough to allow her to see a vague blur of their pale bodies as they clung together. The sight cut her heart to the quick, deepening her hatred for them both. It was what she had feared the first time she had laid eyes upon Shemaine. What man could resist such beauty? Certainly not Gage, she mentally jeered. He had always had an eye for beauty! Victoria had once been proof of that. Now this hussy who had lured him into marriage with her liquid eyes and sultry ways verified the fact again that Gage Thornton would never have considered taking a plain-faced woman to wife. But she meant to have her revenge upon them both! Gage couldn’t toss her aside a second time and not feel the brunt of her rancor. “Everyone around here knows what a vicious temper Gage has, and Victoria fell prey to it.”
It was Gage’s turn to scoff harshly. “Do you think anyone will listen to your lies after you argued so vehemently that I was innocent of any wrongdoing? Besides, if you were really convinced of the readiness of the townspeople to believe your change of story, why didn’t you tell them differently after you came out here the last time? But as far as I know, you said nothing. I don’t think you expect anything to come of this! All you want to do is frighten Shemaine.”
“Do you honestly think I’m going to keep quiet for another season or two while you bed your filthy little convict?” the blonde countered sharply. “Do you expect me to wait around until you grow tired of her like you did Victoria?” Roxanne drew her lip up in a bitter sneer. “Never! In fact, the thing you really should be concerned about right now is what you’ll have to do to save your family once it gets out that you killed Victoria. I warned you that you wouldn’t be able to hide behind my skirts anymore, and now I’ll be telling everyone what really happened.”
“Aye! Do that!” Gage challenged sharply. “Tell them what part you played in my wife’s death, because you were there when she fell! I wasn’t!”
“Victoria was dead when I got here!” Roxanne protested.
Gage jeered. “I doubt that seriously!”
“Are you saying that I was able to lift your wife over the prow and throw her down? Am I so strong?” she derided. “And are you so desperate to lay the blame on another that you’re willing to toss all reason aside and claim that I could have actually overpowered Victoria? Don’t you think she would have fought me tooth and nail to keep me from throwing her off the prow?”
“Perhaps you were able to surprise her,” Gage suggested brusquely. “Perhaps you pushed her from behind.”
“Come now, Gage,” Roxanne chided. “Be logical. You know well enough that Victoria would have seen me coming up the building slip. In fact, she probably would have come down to meet me. We were friends! Or have you forgotten?”
“I don’t know how you could have managed such a feat, Roxanne,” Gage acknowledged. “All I know is that you were driven by an unreasonable jealousy from the first day I started courting Victoria. And now you’re being goaded by envy once again. Your unreasonable jealousy attests to the fact that you’re the only one who had a motive for killing Victoria.”
Roxanne jeered scathingly. “What vile rage took hold of you that day that made you murder the mother of your child, and Andrew barely weaned?”
Shemaine promptly decided she had had enough of the shrew’s assertions. Perhaps her own knowledge of love and jealousy were seriously limited, b
ut she could not believe any woman of rational temperament would continue to chase after a man whom she seriously suspected of murder. Roxanne, however, had made it obvious just how desperately she had wanted Gage and had been in such a turmoil after he had gone to the London Pride that she had been on the verge of losing control. Apparently she hadn’t been so terrified of him that she feared rousing the temper that she now claimed was so vicious.
Slipping a hand behind Gage’s neck, Shemaine pulled his head down and, ignoring his surprise, placed a loving kiss upon his lips.
“I’m cold, and I’m tired of listening to this woman’s inane prattle,” she announced loudly for Roxanne’s benefit. “I’m going back to the cabin to take a warm bath. If you’d care to join me, perhaps we’ll have some privacy there and can finish what we started before we were so rudely interrupted.”
Gage felt his jaw sagging in astonishment. Of all the reactions he had expected from his bride, he had never anticipated a fierce, unswerving loyalty in the face of Roxanne’s malicious allegations. He watched in awe as Shemaine turned and slowly waded out of the pool, making no effort to cover her nakedness as she emerged from the water. Climbing on the rock where she had left her robe, his wife picked it up, laid it with deliberate care over her arm, and then turned to face him in all the glory of her naked beauty. It was a bold, proud statement she made to the other woman as she smiled at him invitingly.
“Coming, my love?”
Gage felt his heart soar, and in a voice fraught with emotion, he answered, “Aye, love, as soon as our visitor leaves . . . unless you’d rather I come now. . . .”
“Nay, husband,” Shemaine replied emphatically. “I would not share even a glimpse of what is mine with another woman. Come when you can. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Though Gage could not resist admiring her nakedness as she strolled up the trail to the cabin, he cast a glance askance at Roxanne and felt jubilation rise up within him when he found her gaping in slack-jawed astonishment at his wife’s departing form.
“Would you mind leaving now?” he invited sharply, folding his hands deliberately over his manhood. He couldn’t be sure just what Roxanne was able to see through the water, but he’d be damned before allowing her even an obscure glimpse of what Shemaine had claimed as hers. “I’m cold, and my wife is waiting for me.”
Roxanne faced him with gnashing teeth. “You haven’t heard the last of this, Gage Thornton! You’ll be sorry you tossed me aside and married that bitch!”
“I don’t think so,” Gage said with a calm assurance that had settled over him only a few moments ago, after his wife had declared her trust in him. “In fact, the more I’m around Shemaine, the more I believe I’ve found an exceptional woman. Indeed, if I could accurately discern the feelings I have for her right now, I’d say that I have come to love her very much.”
“Aaarrrghh!” Roxanne’s snarl of rage seemed to fill every hollow and rill around them with deafening sound, startling shrieks and squawks from nesting birds and sending them flying chaotically into the air. Amid the confusion of their darting flights, Roxanne whirled and scrambled back toward the riverbank from whence she had come.
Gage waited until he heard the oars bump against her father’s boat before he waded to shore. After donning his breeches, he picked up his boots and meandered barefoot up the trail to the cabin and quietly made his entrance. Shemaine had garbed herself in a robe, which she clutched closed at her throat with one hand as she hastened toward the new bathing chamber with a bucket of hot water. She cast him a shivering smile of greeting.
“If y-you help me carry the w-water,” she said through chattering teeth, “we’ll be able t-to get w-warm sooner.”
“I’ll get the water,” Gage said, tossing aside his boots. “You’d better stand by the fire until I fill the tub for us.”
His wife halted and looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. “A-aren’t y-you c-cold, too?”
A smile curved his lips. “I’m used to it.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you’re not as cold, Shemaine, as you are upset.”
“Roxanne upset me, all right!” Shemaine affirmed testily. “The gall of that woman, thinking I’d believe her!” Her anger dwindled rapidly, replaced by a painful chagrin. Her face threatened to crumple as tears brightened her eyes. She made an earnest effort to bolster her mettle, but as her husband stepped near and took her in his arms, she began to weep in embarrassment against his chest. “I disgraced myself! And I disgraced you, Gage! I allowed that woman to provoke me until I dismissed everything I had been taught about common decency and propriety! The way I flaunted my nakedness before you both, I’m sure Roxanne has no doubts about me being a trollop now!”
“Whoa!” Gage chuckled. Pulling away from her, he searched her teary eyes. “What are you more upset about, Shemaine? The accusations Roxanne made against me? Or the fact that you pranced up here stark naked?”
New tears sprang forth at his candid question, and in renewed agony Shemaine muttered a question. “Did I embarrass you terribly?”
“Good heavens, woman! Banish the thought!” Gage urged with hearty laughter. “I nearly hooted with glee!” He clasped his wife to him again and rested his cheek against the top of her head. “Shemaine, do you not realize what pleasure it gave me when you declared your trust in me? It was like heaven opening up and shining down upon me. Truly, my love, I felt much like an emperor being restored to his kingdom after years in exile and prison. The joy I experienced was beyond measure. I could not have imagined that you would remain unaffected by Roxanne’s malevolent charges. The experience left me overwhelmed . . . and a bit amazed at your confidence in me.”
Shemaine was perplexed by his reaction to her shameless display, but after reaping the dire fruits of a thieftaker’s allegations and finding no one who had cared enough about compassion and human decency to consider that she might have been innocent, she could well understand another’s fervent desire to be believed and trusted. In some surprise she realized she was no longer shaking. Snuggling against her husband, she giggled.
“I was terribly wicked, wasn’t I?”
Gage chuckled and held her wonderfully close to his heart. “Absolutely depraved, my love.”
CHAPTER 17
The return of Andrew resettled the Thorntons into the comfortable niche of a genuine family, and although the boy found it strange that Shemaine was now ensconced in his father’s bedroom, he willingly accepted her as a replacement for the mother whom he barely remembered. Indistinct memories of a loving face and long, pale hair through which he had once twined his fingers as his mother rocked and sang to him occasionally flitted through his child’s mind. Another, more troubling, memory of his father leaving him sobbing in his bed and, after a terrifying space of time, returning to the cabin with the limp, battered form of that beautiful lady in his arms haunted his dreams. Even after so long a time a recurring vision of her lying on the larger bed with a trickle of blood running from the corner of her pale lips could wrench him awake and leave him sobbing and yearning to be reassured that all was well.
His new mother sang to him, too, and when he woke from a nightmare, she would hold and comfort him. She would even take him into bed with her. It was her shoulder upon which his head rested as she sang him a lullaby and his father’s arm under which the two of them snuggled until he drifted to sleep again. Then, some time later, he would rouse long enough to be aware that he was being carried back to his own bed by his father. There he would pass the remainder of the night in peaceful contentment.
In the ensuing days, Andrew’s room became officially separated from his parents’. A wall with a door was built into the large opening between the two rooms, and another door was added on the adjacent wall, allowing direct access from his bedroom to the parlor and the main living area. The division lessened the chances of Andrew being disturbed by the noises and murmuring voices that drifted from the master bedroom, while it allowed his father and new mother more privacy.
/> The new door did not totally negate the possibility of interruption. That fact was made evident when Andrew awoke during the night with an urgent need to go to the privy and, after swinging wide the door between, ran into the master bedroom. The boy did not understand his father’s mad scramble to roll to the far side of the bed away from Shemaine or their frantic snatching for bedcovers. He heard a muted groan as his father fell back upon his pillow, and he wondered if his stomach was hurting. Their sudden amusement was just as confusing. He only knew his need was great, and as he halted near the bed and peered through the moonlit shadows into Shemaine’s smiling face, he could hardly restrain himself.
From then on, a small chamber pot was placed in Andrew’s room each night before he went to bed. With its initial presence came his father’s encouragement to use it whenever he had a need during the night. A latch was soon affixed to the opposite side of the door which connected the two rooms, alleviating the likelihood of the couple being intruded upon without prior warning or the child being startled by seeing something he shouldn’t.
From Newportes Newes drifted rumors that Roxanne was carrying through with her threats, but as yet, none of the inhabitants had deigned to give the spinster an attentive ear, though she earnestly sought to convince everyone of Gage’s responsibility for Victoria’s death. The majority of the townspeople were of the opinion that after being rejected for a second time by a man whom she had adored for nigh on to ten years, Roxanne had been inflamed by spite rather than by any new discovery or revelation. Then, too, speculations as to the real reason for Victoria Thornton’s death had become rather hackneyed, especially after Mrs. Pettycomb had spent the better part of the last year voicing her own theories, trying to implicate Gage Thornton and blacken his name. But even the hawk-nosed matron did not dare repeat Roxanne’s recent assertions with her usual verve for fear of being reproached by those who had declared that no one in their right mind would believe the spinster.
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