“I’ll fetch a couple of heavy cloaks,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the back hall in five minutes.”
“I really think we should—”
“No arguments,” he said with mock sternness. “I’m a gentle man, true, ordinarily the soul of politeness, but I can be quite ugly when I’m crossed. Argue with me and I’m likely to punch you in the mouth.”
I smiled, unable to resist it. He smiled, too, and when I met him downstairs I felt a marvelous elation, as though I had just consumed several glasses of the finest champagne. He had already swathed himself in a heavy cloak of navy blue broadcloth, and he helped me into one of royal blue linen lined with watered blue silk. It completely enveloped me, and I savored the faint smell of perspiration and leather. Jeffrey picked up the basket, took my arm and led me outside.
There was a clap of thunder. The sky was an even darker gray. He held my arm firmly, as though he feared I might try to break away.
“I still think this is a foolish idea,” I protested. “We should put it off until—”
“The weather’ll enhance the atmosphere of the ruins,” he said. “Besides, there’s plenty of shelter.”
“You—you seem to be in an unusually good mood.”
“I’m looking foward to seeing the ruins again, and I happen to be with the most beautiful woman in all of Cornwall.”
“You mustn’t say such things.”
“Why not? It’s true, Honora.”
“I—”
“Do you realize you’ve never called me by name? Is it so difficult to pronounce the word ‘Jeffrey’?”
“You—you’re my employer. I—”
“Honora,” he said; “don’t you know we’re already beyond that? I knew the minute I saw you that ours was not going to be an employer-employee relationship.”
“We’d better go back,” I said. My voice was shaky.
“Afraid?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. I’m your son’s governess. I—”
I couldn’t continue. I didn’t want to. I fell silent, and Jeffrey was silent, too, leading me across the moors as the grass stirred in the wind and the clouds overhead grew heavier, casting dark shadows over the ground. The land began to slope upward, and we were soon climbing the hill that gradually rose. Mowrey House was far behind us now, and reality seemed to be behind us as well. This wasn’t real. It was all a dream: the wind, the darkening sky, the man beside me, the strong fingers that still held my arm in so tight a grip. I was dreaming, and I was afraid, yet the elation was so powerful I was dizzy from it. My blue muslin skirt billowed, lifting, blowing against my legs, and skeins of auburn hair blew across my eyes. Both our cloaks rose behind us like wildly flapping wings.
I was exhausted when we finally reached the top of the hill. It was covered with ancient graystone ruins, fallen pillars, stone-lined pits, part of a building still standing with roof partially intact. The stones were pitted and worn from the elements, streaked with rust, green with moss, and there were thin vines covered with strangely shaped purple wildflowers I couldn’t identify. I saw part of the famous Roman wall, several feet high, at least three yards wide on top, and I could imagine Roman legionnaires patrolling it with bronze shields in front of them, spears in hand, their helmet plumes waving as they looked out for the savage blue-painted warriors bent on their destruction.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Jeffrey asked, setting down the basket.
“It—it’s lovely.”
“I’ve always had a fondness for ruins. These aren’t nearly as spectacular as some of those in Northumberland, but I love them just the same. Want to walk along the wall?”
“Is it safe?”
“If you’re careful.”
He led me over to the wall, climbed up with nimble, athletic ease and then reached down to help me, encircling my wrists with those strong hands, pulling as I got a foothold on the crumbling stone. He was so very strong, I thought as I stood shakily beside him. He encircled my waist, steadying me, and I felt his warmth, felt those taut muscles. Sensitive he might be, thoughtful and polite and soft-spoken, but he was in superb physical condition.
“You all right?” he inquired.
“Just—just a little dizzy. It’s so—so high.”
The wall stretched for perhaps a quarter of a mile before crumbling into a pile of stones, and standing on it one could look out over the whole countryside. The moors stretched below us, brown and tan and gray, tinged with purple, and one could see the sea, too, a deep blue-gray merging into a misty purple horizon. I gazed, still a bit dizzy. I could see the village far, far in the distance, and Mowrey House was like a tiny dolls’ house surrounded by minuscule gardens. The sky was very dark. The wind stopped abruptly, and there was a sullen stillness, as though the earth were holding its breath.
“Careful,” Jeffrey said. “It’s very uneven here on top of the wall, rough and pitted.”
He unwound his arm from my waist and took my hand, holding it tightly as we walked slowly along the wall. Both of us were silent, lost in thought. I wondered if he felt the same delicious strain, the same suspense and feeling of anticipation that gripped me. Nervous though I was, I felt a strange inner calmness as well, a peculiar sense of acceptance. What would happen would happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. All my training, all the words of wisdom and warning were as nothing in the face of these sensations Jeffrey Mowrey aroused. The prim, demure girl had vanished forever, supplanted by a woman who knew instinctively all those secrets denied the girl. Love had indeed transformed me, and I was ready for that final step that would banish the girl forever. Silently, I acknowledged this, silently accepted.
The clouds had almost obscured the sky. The air was still, not a breath of wind blowing, and there was a curious light—pale opal, translucent. It was going to rain soon. We strolled along the wall for several more minutes, silent, and then Jeffrey climbed down and reached up to assist me. He swung me toward him and held me close for a moment before setting me on my feet. He seemed suddenly shy, bothered. He knew as well as I what was going to happen, and he was disturbed by it. Jeffrey Mowrey was no callous seducer of virgins, no amoral rake whose delight it was to despoil. He felt very deeply about me, and he knew those feelings were much stronger than the qualms that plagued him.
It had grown very warm. He removed his cloak, removed mine, looked into my eyes as though to determine whether or not I felt the same way. I reached up to touch his cheek, stroking it gently, and it was perfectly natural, right. I ran the ball of my thumb along the smooth, full curve of his lower lip, looking all the while into those grave, tormented blue eyes. Curiously enough, it seemed I was the more experienced one, the new maturity inside giving me knowledge he had yet to acquire.
“I love you, Honora,” he said.
“I know that.”
“I think I loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
“I know.”
“You—” He hesitated. frowning.
“I felt the same way, Jeffrey.”
“It—I never thought I’d love again. I never thought it would be possible to feel this way again. It—it just happened.”
“It happened,” I said.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to cause you pain.”
I touched his cheek, stroked his temple.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “So beautiful. So good. So pure.”
“Jeffrey—”
“We should go back. We should go back now.”
“We should,” I agreed.
“Honora—”
He pulled me to him then and held me tightly, so tightly, and I clung to him, molding my body against his, holding to that strength. There was a distant rumble of thunder. It grew louder, nearer. Lightning flashed, raking at the sky with skeletal silver fingers, illuminating the earth with a blinding silver blue. Jeffrey held me, crushing me to him as the rain began to fall in huge, heavy drops that splattered violently all around us. He released me and grabbed the
cloaks and grabbed the basket, leading the way quickly to shelter, the corner of a building still partially covered by a roof.
Jeffrey set the basket down and spread the cloaks over the ground while I shook my skirts and wiped damp auburn tendrils from my cheeks. His blond hair was wet, plastered to his skull, a darker blond wet, and his thin white shirt clung damply to his skin. The rain came down furiously, pounding noisily on the small section of roof, sheets of it swirling only a few feet away from us, blowing wildly in the wind. Jeffrey shook his head and wiped rivulets of water from his cheeks and then looked at me. I smiled and sat down on the cloaks, immediately surprised at how soft the ground was, and then I realized there were several inches of dried moss beneath the cloaks.
A fine spray of mist blew in on us. Jeffrey kneeled down beside me, and I could see that he was extremely nervous. He frowned, his blue eyes so serious, filled with apprehension. He wanted me desperately, and he was afraid, shy now, awkward despite all his experience. I understood the reasons why. I reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, erasing that deep frown. Gently, hesitantly, he took my hand and kissed my palm and then leaned down to kiss my cheek, my temple, the curve of my throat. I placed my hands on his arms and ran my palms up and around his shoulders, pulling him nearer.
“Honora,” he whispered.
“It’s all right, Jeffrey.”
“I don’t want to—”
“I want you,” I said.
“It’s—I wish I—”
“It’s all right.”
He fastened his mouth over mine, and I closed my eyes and sank back onto the cloaks and pulled him down with me. Moss rustled beneath me. The rain pounded. I was oblivious to everything but that mouth, this magic, this marvelous beauty that blossomed inside me as his kiss grew more frantic, frenzied. I writhed beneath him, shifting my position, lifting my skirts, crushed beneath the weight of his body, warmed by his warmth, moaning softly as he raised his head and looked into my eyes and then kissed me again, tenderly, tenderly, trying so hard to restrain the urgency that possessed him.
How did I, who had never loved, know so well how to respond, how to move to those age-old melodies in the blood? He entered me, and I gasped as that smooth, warm hardness penetrated, soft as velvet, strong as steel, and I lifted my hips to meet him, to help him. Flesh caressed flesh, a delicious ache swelling with agonizing intensity, spreading, growing as he stroked, plunging deeper and deeper. There was a moment of excruciating pain as flesh was torn asunder and something burst inside me, and I gripped his back, pulling him closer still as the pain melted and merged into an ecstatic sensation that seemed to wrack my soul, hurtling me into a paradise of unbelievable pleasure.
He gave one final thrust, groaning, rigid atop me, shuddering, then falling limp as fountains of feeling enveloped us both. I held him to me as the fires of love cooled to that gorgeous glow of aftermath. I knew now. Now I was complete, part of a whole, and tears welled in my eyes, spilling over my lashes. Jeffrey saw the tears and kissed them away as I stroked his still-damp hair, running my fingers through those heavy locks.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it. I—I’m so happy.”
“I love you, Honora. You must know that.”
“I love you.”
We held each other as the rain slackened, and we made love again and it was even better, beautiful, and the rain stopped and the sun gradually began to shine as we adjusted our clothing and ate the food Cook had prepared for us. We drank the wine and looked at each other and smiled, and he kissed me again and held me in his arms, stroking my hair, stroking my back, silently conveying his love for me. A sweet languor still possessed me, a marvelous ache lingering in my bones, and as I ran my palms up his back and rubbed his shoulders I trembled with happiness so blissful it was almost overwhelming.
The sky was clear as we walked slowly down the hillside and began to cross the moors. It had long since stopped raining, and the moors seemed to shimmer with late afternoon sunlight. Our clothes had dried. The grass was dry, too, rustling quietly in the faint breeze. Jeffrey held my hand, swinging the basket at his side. Neither of us spoke. There was no need for words. As we neared Mowrey House he let go of my hand and sighed, and I turned to look back at those ruins barely visible now in the distance. I said a silent good-bye to the girl who had existed before, and her ghost seemed to wave a similar good-bye to the woman I had become.
8
How can I describe the weeks that followed? Even now I marvel that such happiness could ever be possible for any woman. I seemed to move in another realm, and even the air I breathed seemed to take on a marvelous new quality, inebriating, exalting. I was in the middle of a shimmering, enchanting dream, yet I was wide awake and alive to every sensation. The reality I had known before seemed a vague, distant thing, not real at all. Before Jeffrey, I had been a poor creature, surviving, existing, but now I was suffused with that special magic that gives life meaning.
When I was with him, my bliss knew no bounds, and when I was alone, when I was in the nursery with Douglas or chatting with Mrs. Rawson, I was acutely aware of his presence nearby. I maintained a calm facade, cool and efficient with Douglas, light and jocular with Mrs. Rawson, but always, always my heart seemed to sing: Jeffrey is downstairs in the library, Jeffrey is in the study with his brother, Jeffrey is riding his stallion, now he will be passing through the village, now he will be nearing the factory, in two hours he will be home again.
Try though I might, I couldn’t completely conceal my happiness. Often I would pause in the middle of a lesson and gaze out the window and smile to myself. My eyes, I knew, would take on that glow I saw in the mirror when I was thinking of Jeffrey, and when this happened young Douglas would tilt his head to one side and examine me with great interest. Fortunately, these lapses were few, and Doug considered them merely another of the natural eccentricities common to all adults. Mrs. Rawson noticed the change in me, of course. She knew at once what had happened that day at the ruins, but for once she was tactful, giving me an occasional pleased smile and knowing look but maintaining a discreet silence.
Jeffrey continued to visit the nursery, but he did not come as often and he seldom stayed for more than a few minutes. Only rarely did he accompany us on our walks, and then he gave almost all his attention to Douglas, scuffling with him playfully, regaling him with preposterous tales, giving him an occasional stern lecture on the importance of our lessons and an admonishment to “Mind Miss James or you’ll wish you had!” I was his son’s governess, and his manner was polite and formal, no more. To placate his brother, he spent more and more time at the factory, displaying an interest he was far from feeling, and at least three evenings a week they held long conferences in Robert’s office. Jeffrey went over the books. He asked intelligent questions. He detested every minute of it, but it was necessary.
“I need time, Honora,” he told me. “I need to—to formulate some kind of plan. I don’t want to cause Robert any unnecessary pain. He’ll have to know eventually, of course, but—”
“I understand, Jeffrey.”
“He mustn’t suspect.”
“I understand,” I repeated. “It must be this way.”
“Not for long,” he said. “Not for long—I promise you.”
On several occasions he donned his best attire and drove to Greystone Manor to visit Lucinda Carrington. I suffered then. Although I knew his paying calls on her was merely part of the subterfuge, I suffered agonies of totally unreasonable jealousy. He didn’t care anything about Miss Carrington, didn’t even like her, in fact, but she was his kind. She was patrician and she was pretty, exactly the sort of girl people would expect him to pay court to and eventually marry. Jeffrey Mowrey could never marry his son’s governess. I was fully aware of that, and I put the knowledge away, refusing to dwell on it.
Lord Robert was not at all pleased with his brother’s visits to Greystone Manor and had several sarcastic comments to m
ake about “the empty-headed little fool” who entertained him there. Jeffrey defended Miss Carrington with considerable gallantry and enumerated her charms for his scowling brother. The visits were entirely for Robert’s benefit, I knew, and Lucinda was merely a red herring to throw him off the scent, but I suffered nevertheless.
Convinced I no longer presented any kind of threat, Lord Robert seemed to have forgotten my existence. On the rare occasions when I happened to encounter him, he gave me a stiff, severe nod and glanced at me as he might glance at a piece of furniture that just happened to be mobile. That unpleasant meeting in his office might never have occurred. His brother had kept me from being dismissed, true, but not because of any personal interest in me. Jeffrey Mowrey saw me simply as a governess, pretty, perhaps, rather dull but extremely competent, and his older brother had other things to worry about now: drawing Jeffrey into the family business, keeping him at Mowrey House and out of the clutches of Lucinda Carrington.
But Lord Robert didn’t know the truth.
He didn’t know about those secret trysts late at night after everyone else had gone to sleep. During the day Jeffrey’s manner toward me may have been formal and polite, but at night in that small bedroom in the unused east wing … at night he was wonderfully passionate and virile, loving me fiercely, straining every muscle to savor my body to the fullest, loving me gently, stroking my flesh, murmuring soft, sweet words, his eyes aglow with love in the flickering light of one single candle. He usually wore only a robe of heavy brown silk brocade, the folds falling loosely, his legs bare, and I wore a nightgown of fine white lawn. We met after midnight, each moving stealthily along separate corridors to the room, and once inside he always embraced me with bone-crushing strength, and I clung to him, trembling, both of us eager to savor the joy awaiting us. Later I returned to my room, he to his, and no one was the wiser. Night after night after night … and during the day a glorious anticipation that made it even more sublime.
Once More, Miranda Page 9
