That night, when she made her diary entry, she wrote: Dear Diary, I refuse to believe that Jon is the cause of my loneliness because he simply does not fit into my plans. I cannot chance allowing a man into my life to betray me as every other man has done. The risk to my emotional well-being is too great, the consequence too devastating.
***
The following day, Sarah left the bedroom as soon as Ida announced the arrival of a buggy from the livery. She’d dressed in a cotton walking dress for her trip to town to inquire about a building to lease. With haste, she scurried down the stairs, not wanting to meet Lady Cromwell in the hallway. After the episode at the cottage, she'd avoided the older woman, even claiming to be overly tired at dinnertime and retiring to her room early. But she knew she could not hide indefinitely, that eventually she'd have to face Jon's mother again.
Deciding it would not be now, she dashed out the front door, hastily walked down the wide steps leading from the porch, and stopped abruptly. Instead of finding the phaeton she'd ordered from the livery, she saw a landaulet waiting in the circular drive. A footman opened the door, and to Sarah's annoyance, Jon was sitting inside. Her first impulse was to turn and rush for the house. But glancing back, she saw the small, shadowy figure of Lady Cromwell standing at the parlor window. Collecting her skirts, she climbed into the carriage and squeezed in beside Jon, who sat in the middle of the seat. "Why are you here?" she demanded.
"It's my rig."
"I ordered a phaeton."
"That's not what I was told."
Sarah fixed her eyes straight ahead. "You're supposed to be in your office right now."
"I was," Jon said, "but Esther told me you wanted a lift."
"Esther obviously misunderstood. I asked her to have the livery send a phaeton for me when she got to town," she said, trying to dismiss the vague feeling that Esther was throwing them together again. "I'd rather not be seen with you. You've caused me enough grief already, considering what happened on our ride to the cottage."
Jon leaned heavily against her, his breath brushing her temple as he said, "I agree, and I want to extend to you the olive branch of peace. I'm a blackguard and a lout, I behaved like a tomcat on the prowl, and even though we had a hellishly good time, the blame for the unfortunate outcome is entirely mine."
Sarah glanced at him and caught the flicker of wry amusement in his eyes. "I don't think you care one wit about the unfortunate outcome," she said. "It's not your reputation that's on the line."
"My reputation is always on the line," Jon said, "but I choose to ignore that, and you should do the same. Besides, since the damage is already done, we might as well make the best of it." He reached over and captured her hand with his.
"How?" Sarah demanded. "By venturing out together? I hardly think that will clear my name." She attempted to slip her hand from his but he held tight, and she didn’t try to be free. Nor did she care to analyze why she remained with Jon's hand covering hers.
Jon raised her hand to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers. "Perhaps you're right," he said. "I'll have the coachman drop me off at the legislature building then take you on to the land agent so you can inquire about buildings for let. That is what you want to do, isn't it?"
"Well, yes." Sarah eyed him dubiously. "Why are you being so accommodating?"
"Anything to further Mrs. Bloomer's cause," Jon said. "I admit, I'm devilishly attracted to at least some aspects of her preachings."
"You are? I find that surprising."
"Oh, I'm not exactly for Mrs. Bloomer's cause," Jon said, "only for her notion that women should expose their feet. Have you ever had a man nibble on your ankle or suckle your toes?"
"What!?"
"Your toes," Jon repeated, "each one carefully suckled while your foot and leg are being gently caressed. It's a very sensual experience."
Sarah stared, dumbfounded.
"You have admirable feet. Dainty toes and lovely ankles, and long, slender calves that demand a man's attention."
"Governor—"
"Jon."
Sarah pulled her hand from his and drew in a ragged breath to slow the erratic beating of her heart. "This conversation about my anatomy is totally inappropriate."
"You're absolutely right," Jon said. "Let's talk about our ride to the cottage instead." He reached for her hand again and curled his fingers around it, idly stroking her wrist with the pad of his thumb. "I cannot remember having a more enjoyable time than when we tumbled together in the woods."
Sarah stiffened. "We were not tumbling. You held me against my will and I was trying to get away from you."
Jon's lips curved in amusement. "Might I remind you that you stretched out with me on a bed of moss, then rolled on top of me, forcefully pinning me to the ground. I consider that tumbling, unless you're referring to what you were doing while perched atop me."
Heat prickled Sarah's face as she considered exactly what she had been doing. It certainly had not been trying to get free. But realizing it would not do well for Jon to believe otherwise, she said, "The trouble is, through the ages men have so intimidated women that women often submit to unwarranted physical advances when, in fact, they really don't want them."
"Like my holding your hand against your will?"
"Well, that too."
"Would you like me to release it?"
"Well, no, that's really not the point I'm trying to make. As I was saying, times are changing, and soon we women shall no longer be slaves to men."
Jon eyed her with amusement. "But think about the ways women enslave men," he said, raising her hand to his lips and planting a kiss against her palm.
Sarah's face grew hot. "I can't imagine any man being enslaved by a woman," she said, looking askance at him, "unless he's a timid mouse of a man whom no woman would want."
Jon nibbled her little finger. "You're wrong," he said. "The more virile a man, the more he can be enslaved by a woman. Take me, for example, and the issue of your feet."
"Governor!"
"Wait, hear me out."
Heart fluttering in anticipation of what Jon might say, Sarah sat silently, allowing him to kiss the inside of her wrist while she stared straight ahead, afraid to look into his eyes and see the magnetism she knew would be there.
"You removed your silk stockings in my presence—"
"I did no such thing! Your back was turned."
"In the vicinity of my perusal," Jon corrected. "I need only to have glanced back to see you lift your skirts and petticoats and roll your silk stockings down your lovely, smooth, white legs. But being a gentleman, of course, I refrained."
Sarah's face grew hot as she considered the gist of their conversation, a subject of which no proper lady spoke. "You are no gentleman," she said, "and I don't see what any of this has to do with a man being a slave to a woman."
"It’s really very simple." Jon brushed the pad of his thumb over the inside of her wrist and placed a kiss there. "After you removed your stockings, you teased me further by revealing your lovely feet and very shapely ankles, and after I lifted you in my arms you offered me your sweet lips while pressing your womanly body against me. Have you any idea what that sort of unleashed behavior does to a man?"
"Unleashed behavior! You forced yourself on me. And I most definitely did not offer you... anything." Sarah attempted to compose herself while twittering inside at the image Jon so vividly painted in her mind.
"You offered me a promise," Jon said, sliding her cuff up. He pressed a kiss against the inside of her arm. "And although I took advantage of the situation, overwhelmed with passion as I was, being a gentleman I could not use force. So you see, I am now your slave."
"I repeat. You are no gentleman."
Jon inched closer. "Perhaps you're right. No gentleman would have the thoughts I'm having right now." His gaze roamed up to meet hers. "And you, my sweet little mooncalf, are driving me insane." He curved his hand behind her head and drew her mouth to his, pressing his lips to hers. Fo
r a few moments, her eyes remained open. "Little love," Jon whispered, moving his lips from hers just long enough to speak. "Close your eyes."
Sarah's eyelids glided dreamily shut, the darkness heightening the sultry feel of Jon's lips moving against hers, warm, sensual lips that seemed familiar. "Umm," she moaned, infused with the taste of him, savoring the sweetness. Filled with a yearning she couldn't quell, her hands crept up his back and slid around his shoulders, and her fingers curled in his hair. The kiss deepened, and her breathing became ragged, until she had to break the kiss to draw in a breath.
Jon gazed at her with hooded eyes. "It gets better and better, doesn't it, love."
Sarah ran her tongue over her lips, finding the taste of him lingering. "I suppose."
"And did you feel as if you'd been subjected to unwarranted physical advances?"
Sarah shrugged. "I suppose not."
"Then shall we try it again?"
Her only response was to raise her lips to meet his...
It was some time before Sarah realized the carriage had rolled to a stop. Breaking from Jon's hold, she straightened her hat and smoothed the curls escaping the braids coiled at her nape. Glancing toward the legislature building, she was certain she saw someone move from the window and into the shadows. "You have an almost uncanny way of drawing attention to us when we least need it," she said. "Your timing is abominable."
"I apologize for my timing," Jon replied, "but not for the kiss. I've wanted to do that all morning."
"You take liberties," Sarah said, "but you forget, I have no intention of getting involved with anyone."
"My sweet, lovely Sarah," Jon replied in a low, quiet voice, "that thought never leaves my mind.” He pushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “But I suspect it does leave yours. Am I right?"
As Sarah peered into Jon's eyes, she knew he was right. She was allowing herself to become involved, a thought that had a decidedly sobering effect on her. "Whether you are right or not is irrelevant," she said, "because it will not alter the facts. I have no intention of becoming any man's property, I will see my mercantile business become a success, and I will maintain my earnings, my independence, and my integrity."
Jon traced the contour of her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, and as he did, Sarah licked her tingling lip, the tip of her tongue touching Jon's thumb. He raised his moist thumb to his tongue and tasted it. "It's true," he said, holding her gaze. "You are sweet... very, very sweet indeed. And I have a craving for sweets, a craving for you, one I have every intention of satisfying." He kissed her lightly and climbed down from the carriage.
As Sarah watched him stroll up the stairs to the legislature building, she touched her fingers to her lips. Why was he doing this to her? And why was she letting him? She was allowing him to toy with her affections and strain her sensibilities. She was also allowing him to quell the restless, unnamed loneliness that haunted her. But she refused to give in to him, to surrender her heart and her soul on the blind chance that love might be waiting for her, that it might even exist.
No matter how much she wanted to believe.
For now, there was only one path to take. And it most definitely did not lead into the arms of Governor Jonathan Cromwell. It led to the mercantile district, where she intended to find a building to let and set up her shop. Tapping rapidly on the driver's window, she motioned for the coachman to proceed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sarah peered out of the bedroom window, and through a veil of drizzle, watched the Mariah ease away from the wharf under tow by a longboat. For a few fleeting moments, when she'd seen it arriving from San Francisco two days before, she'd toyed with the idea of returning to San Francisco. But the notion quickly passed. She knew only too well what awaited her there.
Lies, lies, and more lies. Horrible, hateful lies.
How could Hollis and Tyler have set her up as they had? How could they have betrayed her so? Worse, how could her friends—people she'd known all her life—have believed the appalling gossip? She should have been suspicious when Hollis informed her that a broker wanted to meet with her to discuss setting up her business, and he'd send a coach around for her. She'd never met the man before climbing into the coach, and before she’d had a chance to introduce herself, the trap had sprung and she'd been caught like a dumb, trusting animal. The man, believing her to be a prostitute that Hollis had procured for him, hastily ripped her bodice and chemise from her while blocking her protests with a brutal kiss. The man's wife, alerted by an anonymous note, arrived to find her husband sprawled atop Sarah, and Sarah stripped to the waist.
The terrible gossip that followed had been intended to destroy Sarah's good character and show her as an unscrupulous, wanton woman in the eyes of the judge, Hollis's attempt to sway the case in his favor in his lawsuit to gain her money. The stage at that point was set: She was of low character, having an affair with a married man and being caught in a compromising way. Her mother was of low character, having a bastard daughter and living with a man who was not her husband. The money was not money either woman had earned, but money stolen from their father and sequestered away.
So there was no question of returning to San Francisco. Now, Sarah just wanted to put the nightmare behind and get on with her life. Yet everything in Victoria was still so uncertain.
She'd arrived just short of two weeks ago, and by now, she expected to have leased a shop and be living in the rooms above it, to be in the process of setting up sewing machines and garment tables, and to have arranged a display window showing her sample garments. And by the third week, she expected to have hired two women to operate the sewing machines for the manufacture of her garments, while she and Mandi would be taking orders and selling the bloomer costumes and shirtwaisters that filled the two large trunks she'd brought from San Francisco. How far removed those objectives seemed now.
Not only was she still roosting on Jon's doorstep, but it seemed that no one would lease a building to her until she obtained her business license. The only good thing that happened since her arrival was that Mr. Pemberton agreed to lease the cottage to her, and by tomorrow, she and Mandi would be settled there, away from Lady Cromwell, and more importantly, away from Jon and the unsettling effect he had on her. But, for the moment, her gravest concern was to be out of Jon's house before the editorial appeared in the Colonist.
She looked across the rain-soaked lawn at the muddy road. Another miscalculation. She had not anticipated the weather turning on her, too. But it had, and now the road which would take her to the cottage looked almost impassable. With a despondent sigh, she turned from the window.
Mandi glanced up from her packing. "If we don't get out soon,” she said, “Ah 'spect there'll be a heap o' carryin' on around here, what with Lady Cromwell so gravitated about what happened with you and the guv'nor out at the cottage."
"Gravitated?"
"That's what Ida said. She heard Lady Cromwell fussin' at the guv'nor about what happened... said she sounded real gravitated."
"Well, if Lady Cromwell is aggravated now," Sarah said, gathering an array of fichus, scarves, and cravats, "I can only imagine what she'll be like after she reads the editorial. All I know is, we'd best pack faster and make sure we're out of here first thing in the morning."
"Ah suppose you's right." Mandi opened the top drawer of the bureau and began lifting out undergarments and placing them on the bed. She opened the drawer below, gathering nightcaps, and corsets, and chemises. Gradually, her movements grew unhurried, and her dark eyes brightened. She bundled a stack of corsets and chemises to her bosom, looked off with dreamy eyes, and said, "Yesterday, when Ah was in town helpin' Ida with the shoppin', Ah saw that same man again. Ida said his name is Wellington Brown. He sho' is a handsome fella, and he was smilin' at me like Ah was real special. He's not married, either—Ida told me that—so Ah 'spect he's lookin' for a wife... just like the guv'nor's lookin' for a wife." She gave Sarah a rueful smile.
"You can forget that last absu
rd fancy," Sarah said, wanting to dismiss such a ludicrous notion. "Even if the governor was considering marriage, he would not marry a woman who was starting a business. His idea of the exemplary wife is one who either stays home tatting and crocheting, or trails along on his arm as a decoration. Since there are any number of eligible women in the colony from whom he might choose, it's obvious he's not after a wife."
"Oh, he's lookin' all right," Mandi said. "Ida says he's been seein' lots of women, but none seem to fit what he wants. So he jes' keeps on flittin' from one to the next."
Sarah began layering basque waists between tissue paper and placing them in the trunk. "Just because he's seeing a few women doesn't mean he's looking for a wife." As she said the words, a feeling of melancholia settled over her. The thought of Jon holding another woman in his arms—kissing her the way she knew he kissed, and calling her his little love or his little mooncalf—made her chest feel tight.
"Ah 'spect you's right," Mandi said, wrapping a lace parasol in tissue paper. "Ida says the guv'nor will never find someone as right for him as Lady Caroline—that's how his wife was called since she was the daughter of an earl—"
"I know who Caroline Cromwell was," Sarah snapped. "And you and Ida should not be discussing the governor's wife. It isn't proper to talk about the dead."
"But Ida wasn't sayin' nothing bad. She never says nothing bad about Lady Caroline, only that she was pretty, and clever, and a special good mama. And that she could do just about anything with a needle. Least that's what Ida heard from the guv'nor's daughters. Ida didn't work for the guv'nor's family until they came here."
Sarah grabbed a stack of camisoles and shoved the bundle into the trunk. "There is nothing particularly extraordinary about being able to stitch!" She shoved another stack into the trunk, and another. "And I doubt if Caroline Cromwell could ride a horse, or shoot a pistol, or even play croquet, for that matter—"
"Miss Sarah?" Mandi looked at her, puzzled. "You sho' you want to pack like that? Those camisoles will get real mussed up."
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