by Henke, Shirl
Josh looked down at the juicy rare slices of meat and felt the sweat beading on his forehead. He took a swallow of water. Then another. Somehow he had to get through this. Even poor Drucilla was managing to eat tiny bits from each course and hold them down. He cut a bite of venison and commenced to chew. All right. Another. He could do this. He would do this.
Josh smiled at Drucilla, and that was when he noticed her stash of crackers.
She returned his smile and passed him the bag around the corner of the table. He nodded his thanks and tried to extract a cracker without alerting Lady Eunice. But, dense as the mean-spirited little filly could be, she saw what they were doing and smirked. She was ready to make some snide comment when the ship took a sudden lurch and her wineglass filled with claret splashed onto the white linen tablecloth. Instantly she scooted her chair back to avoid soiling her fancy outfit. All the china and crystal slid gently across the table, tumbling several more of the glasses.
That's it. Josh's stomach went with them. He could feel it coming on and knew he had to do something immediately, but he was trapped opposite the stairway to the deck. To reach it, he'd have to climb over Eunice, the cook and a footman. He'd never make it in time.
Sabrina watched the tableau unfold with growing horror. Josh was green and perspiring awfully. Being below decks and surrounded by all the rich food smells must have triggered another bout of mal de mer. She started to slide back her chair and go to him, her napkin clutched determinedly in one hand; but before she could stand up, he reached over to Lady Eunice and yanked the wide-brimmed straw hat from her head. She let out a shriek and leaped up. Josh ignored her angry remonstrance as he leaned over, employing her hat in lieu of a bucket.
Sabrina thought it worked quite serviceably. A resourceful lot, Texans. Now, if he would only clap it back on Her Ladyship's head!
Chapter Eleven
The moon hung low and full like a pale golden ball hovering over the blackness of the ocean at night. The sound of the waves lapping onto the beach below kept Josh tossing and turning in bed until he threw back the covers and sat up, resting his head in his hands. What a damnable humiliation the day had been. He'd spent the duration of the trip hanging over the aft railing, doubled up, dry heaving. At least he'd walked off the accursed boat under his own power, refusing Sabrina's suspiciously solicitous offer of assistance.
Just thinking of what he was going to do when he confronted his uncle had been motivation enough for him to storm up the beach. When he reached the house, the old man sat on the veranda, placidly sipping a glass of port and chatting with Lady Chiffington. One look at Josh's grayish complexion and disheveled appearance led the earl to chuckle and nod in full understanding. The viscount had considered getting his Colt and turning the old buzzard into a sieve. If not for ladies present, he would have done it, too.
Hambleton had remained utterly nonchalant, but Sabrina must have seen the murderous look in his eyes, for she quickly placed herself between the earl and his bloodthirsty nephew until he reined in his Texas temper.
Sabrina. What an utterly unpredictable female she was proving to be. She, not the debacle on the boat, was the true reason he could not sleep. He cared nothing for Chiffington and his wretched elder daughter. And he'd made clear to the earl in no uncertain terms that any faint hope he might cherish of a marriage between the Lady Eunice and his nephew was dead as a steer in a slaughterhouse. Odd that the old man had taken the news with utter indifference.
Why the devil was his uncle not upset? He'd arranged this whole shebang. But then again, he'd known the marquess would insist on sailing and Josh would humiliate himself. It just didn't make sense. Josh stood up and paced across the softly creaking floorboards on bare feet, refusing even to look at the waves beating against the sand dunes. But that, too, bothered him. He'd never backed down from anything in his life.
“ Damned if I'll let that water scare me,” he muttered to himself and forced himself to open the French doors leading out onto the upper veranda. At once, the salt-laden wind ruffled his hair. As long as he was standing on dry land, it wasn't so bad, he thought.
Unable to sleep, he considered a walk along the beach. Maybe that was the first step in conquering his fear. Hell, he'd crossed rivers swollen to torrential tidal waves in spring storms back in Texas. He'd always been a strong swimmer. Maybe if he took a dip in the salt water, it might help him get a feel for the ocean.
That was when he saw her. Sabrina walked along the beach, a lone figure aglow in the golden moonlight. Her hair was down and blowing behind her as she faced into the wind, which molded her skirt and blouse against the curves of her body. Here was beauty without artifice. After Eunice's staged performance that morning, he found Sabrina's solitary walk far more appealing...and arousing.
Seizing a pair of jeans and a shirt, he began to dress quickly. In moments he was wading through the soft sand, closing the distance between them. Over the sounds of the ocean, she did not hear his approach until he called out to her.
Sabrina gasped, whirling around in utter surprise. “You're the last person on earth I ever thought I'd see here,” she said, gesturing to the breakers slapping against the sand.
Josh shrugged as he fell into step beside her. “A fellow's gotta face his fears.”
“Is that a Texas truism?” she asked with a smile. Somehow it felt natural to be strolling along together, even though she knew it was utterly improper for them to be alone this way.
“True anywhere, I reckon.” She was dressed in the same simple white skirt and blouse she'd worn that morning, softened by many washings. Recalling the fixed-up older clothes she'd worn at the ballet, he didn't imagine she had much in the way of fancy dresses. But a woman who looked like Sabrina didn't need a lot of fancy duds to catch a man's eye. “I thought a lady never went out with her hair down,” he teased.
“It was pinned up until the wind saw fit to undo my hasty work. Besides, I did not intend for anyone to see me,” she answered carefully.
“Why are you out here alone, after midnight?”
It was her turn to shrug. “I couldn't sleep.”
He grinned. “Me neither. Guess we'll just have to find something else to do.”
She looked up at him sharply. “I have already found it—walking.” She stressed the word.
“I was thinking more along the lines of talking,” he offered. “Lookee, there's a seat for us, carved by the hand of nature just so we can get out of the wind.”
Indeed, the sand dunes had been swept against a stand of tall brushy grasses, making a niche where two people could sit in seclusion, hidden from the house as well as protected from the brisk air. As if to induce her cooperation, the wind picked up, snapping her hair around her face and drawing goose bumps on her arms through the sheer fabric of her blouse.
When Josh took her hand and guided her to sit in the grassy enclave, she followed without protest. This is most unwise, an inner voice chided. Sabrina ignored it. The warmth and callused hardness of his large hand enveloping hers felt like magic. He took a seat on the soft sand and left a semi-decorous space between them as he urged her to sit beside him.
Once before, she'd gone out alone with a man on a moonlit night...with disastrous consequences. But somehow this seemed different. After all, she was older and wiser now. She had a career and would soon realize her life's dream—or at least what had become her life's dream after the girlish fancies of youth had passed her by.
She sat down.
As if reading her mind, he asked, “Why'd you never marry?”
“That is a highly personal and improper question for a gentleman to ask a lady,” she responded reflexively.
“You're no old maid, Sabrina. But you are past the age when most females fix on getting hitched. And I know it wasn't because you never had offers. You're beautiful in all the ways that count. Inside as well as outside. You're smart, you care about people, and you can laugh at yourself, just like you told Drucilla.”
Sabrina
felt her heart warm at his words, which she intuited were genuine. “You were wonderful with that child today. She's been made to feel inferior and unloved by her own family. It's unconscionable.”
“Tell me about your family,” he said, intrigued as he watched the way her eyes glowed in the moonlight. Her hair fell like a silky cloak around her shoulders, wind-tossed and begging for his hands to comb through it. But if he tried to do that, he knew she'd bolt like a skittish colt. Besides, he found he really did want to know more about her—everything about her. That had never been true of his feelings for any other woman.
Her face lit up as she began to speak. “My father and mother live just outside a small village in Sussex. He's a squire with a modest income, and Mama's father was vicar of the local parish. They grew up together and were married by him. They've had such a wonderful relationship, a true sharing of their lives and dreams. It's what every girl wants, I imagine.”
“But you didn't?” Somehow he doubted that that had always been true, given the dreamy expression on her face when she talked about her parents' marriage. Then a look of profound sadness flashed into her eyes. She quickly masked it, looking out to the shoreline.
“Oh, I did when I was seventeen.”
“What happened?”
“He went to Africa. Dexter Goodbine was an admirer of Sir Cecil Rhodes and wanted to make his mark on the world, not settle for the life of a simple country squire. He'd always talked about it when we were growing up, but I never realized how much it meant to him. Especially after he asked me to marry him. I thought he'd given up on such fancies, but then an old school friend of his made a fortune in the diamond trade, and off Dex went. It was three days before we were to be wed.”
“I'd say he oughta be roped and dragged behind a mule over a mile of sharp rocks, but he really did you a favor. Fellow like that would never have made you happy like your pa did your ma.”
She looked back at him. “You're very perceptive. After recovering from the shock and embarrassment, I realized it was true.”
“Just because he was a no-account doesn't mean there weren't other men,” he said softly. Sabrina laughed but it sounded sad.
“I had other offers, but once a woman becomes older and wiser...well, let us just say none of them interested me. Sussex isn't exactly overrun with witty, charming young gentlemen who want their wives as outspoken as the Edgewater females tend to be. I became bored with them.”
I never wanted another man...until I met you.
Her mind shut down, knowing the painful impossibility of that dream. Rather than dwell on it or on past betrayals, she continued with forced brightness, “As I had three younger sisters for whom my parents had to provide dowries, in addition to three brothers to be educated, it seemed best that I make my own way in the world. And there was Edmund to consider also.”
“Edmund?” he echoed, feeling as if he were betraying her by prying into her relationship with his uncle's suspicious clerk.
“My young cousin, Edmund Whistledown. His parents were killed when he was seven. My parents took him in and raised him as if he were our own. I rather adopted him, since he was the youngest and I the second eldest in our large family. Poor Edmund was always being picked on by the older boys, my brothers and others at school. He was recently employed by your uncle. You may have run into him.”
She went on describing Whistledown, and Josh admitted he'd seen him a time or two. It was obvious that she loved the fellow dearly and indulged him far beyond what was good for a man of nearly twenty. By that age Josh had survived two trail drives to the Dakotas and was saving money to buy his first beeves. But he was certain Sabrina had no idea that her darling Eddy might be involved in treason.
Wishing to change the subject, he asked, “Are your sisters married off now?”
“Not the youngest, Edna, whose health is frail. I fear she'll be with my parents and then my eldest brother for the rest of her life.”
“You come from quite a brood. How many brothers?”
“Gerard, he's the eldest, will inherit our father's small estate, and Donald is in the military. Jeffrey followed Grandfather into the priesthood. He now tends the same flock.”
“I never knew my family,” Josh found himself admitting, something he rarely talked about. There was a quality about Sabrina that invited confidences, at least when they were alone together and she let down her very proper guard.
“Are all the stories in the newspapers true?” she found herself asking.
Josh heard no censure or prurient curiosity in her tone, only quiet concern. “My pa was killed in a card game in west Texas and left my ma alone with a newborn. Seeing as how they were foreigners and all, the only one who'd take her in was Gert.”
“The lady who ran the...”
“Bordello,” he supplied. “No one ever accused Garter Gertie Greer of being a lady before,” he added with a grin. “Gert was good as pure gold, though. My ma was sick even before Pa died. Consumption. Didn't matter to Gertie and her girls. They took care of her, and after she died, they raised me. I was a handful, but I never could put one over on Gert. She was the only ma I ever knew, except Rosie and Dolly. They were kinda like aunts, I reckon.” He stopped short of mentioning Verla, Suzie and Lupe, younger recruits to the Golden Garter whose interest in a strapping fifteen-year-old had not been exactly maternal.
“What an extraordinary life you've led. Only in your United States could a self-educated man without connections go from poverty to such riches as you've earned.”
“I only wish I coulda done it sooner. By the time I sold my first herd and got back from the Dakotas, Gert was gone. But she's got the damn biggest marble tombstone in all of Fort Worth. I was able to provide for Rosie and Dolly,” he added, swallowing hard as he spoke.
Sabrina could detect the sheen of tears in his eyes for a moment before he blinked them away. Without realizing it, she reached over and placed her hand on his. It seemed so natural to touch him, to offer understanding for his highly unorthodox upbringing and the loyalty he felt for those women.
He turned to her, and their gazes met. When he silently cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her head back, she did not resist. His mouth slowly drew closer to hers. And still she did not resist.
This was madness. They were all alone out here. There would be no officious servants to interrupt and save her from herself. If she wanted to be saved. The instant his lips touched hers, Sabrina forgot about the past, the future, all the rules by which she'd fashioned her life. This was now, and she wanted him to kiss her...wanted so much more than that...what she'd been denied long ago and would never be able to have.
Josh leaned over her, gently tasting her lips, rimming them with his tongue until she opened for him. But instead of plunging in, he invited her tongue to play, teasing it with the tip of his until she dared to dart it into his mouth, once, then once more. By that second time, the kiss was becoming far more hungry. He could feel her hands clutching his shoulders as their tongues dueled, entwining, withdrawing, dancing the dance of love.
Sabrina was melting. Suddenly the cool night air was heavy, laden with a spiraling heat that owed nothing to the weather and everything to the man whose clever fingers moved over the ridges of her collarbone and down the delicate vertebrae of her spine as she arched into his embrace.
She was so soft, so pliant, her mouth so sweet that he nearly forgot his resolve to go slowly. A virgin lady such as Sabrina could not be tossed on the sand like the experienced women he'd known all his life. She required special care...the kind several of the young prostitutes at Gert’s had taught him. If he were not so desperate to have her, he would walk away. He should walk away. But he knew his need was all too quickly overriding his conscience.
The least he could do was go slow and make it good for her. He ran his fingers through her long, soft hair, murmuring, “Like silk,” as he inhaled the faint fragrance of wildflowers on the moist salt air. He pressed kisses to her eyelids and moved down to
her throat, where he could feel the furious beating of her pulse. His lips suckled the soft skin at her nape, and she gave a low whimper of pleasure, pressing her breasts against his chest and clinging to him, lost and eager.
He could not do this to an innocent! Gently he broke away and held her at arm's length, his breath coming in harsh pants as he whispered, “Sabrina, no matter how much I want you, I shouldn't take advantage of a lady like—”
She placed her fingers over his lips and shook her head, letting it fall forward. Her hair curtained her face so he could not read her expression, but her voice was a low, soft hum of desperation. “Please, Josh, don't think ill of me. I'm not what I seem.” She raised her head and met his gaze with a plea in her eyes. “Why do you think I became a teacher of deportment—a paragon of propriety?”
His smile was puzzled as he answered, “Because being a vicar's granddaughter, you just couldn't help it.”
“No.” Her voice was flat. “I'm a fraud, even to myself. I've buried the past for too long. What happened between my fiancé and me was as foolish as it was wrong. Dex assured me that consummating our marriage vows a few days before the wedding was perfectly acceptable. That we were already married in the sight of God. I agreed.
“He left the next day,” she whispered bitterly. “And do you know the saddest part of all?” she asked with tears thickening her voice. “It was degrading and painful, but at least, mercifully, it was over very quickly.
“So you see, I'm not the innocent, nor the fine lady you and the rest of the world imagine me to be.” She threw her head back, faintly defiant yet so painfully vulnerable that it tore at his heart.
Josh pulled her to him and held her in his arms, rocking her back and forth as he stroked her hair and murmured, “Sabrina, girl, you're plumb wrong. You are the finest lady in England and as innocent as a newborn lamb. That Dexter, whatever his name was—you're not to blame for what he did.”
