“But—but you’re Tom Partington. You’re a hero.”
He snorted again, and rolled his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake!”
“Why would you care for me?”
“Because you’re everything I ever wanted in a woman and had begun to believe didn’t exist! Because you’re bright and talented and practical and can do things! Because you don’t sit on your butt and expect the world to cater to you! Because you’re lovely and sweet and—and you grow flowers! Because you take care of this huge house and the garden and plan meals and entertainments and decorate for Christmas and don’t simper and whine and expect the world to kowtow to you!” He realized he’d begun to holler and took a deep breath. “Damn it all, Claire, I care about you because you’re you!”
Claire blinked at him several times and Tom held his breath. He hadn’t meant to get mad.
She dropped her head again and seemed to stare at her fingers, which were once again tormenting his handkerchief. With a small frown, she said, “I thought for sure you’d fall in love with Dianthe.”
“Dianthe?” Tom cried incredulously.
“She’s so lovely. She’s beautiful and tiny and she floats here and there and she writes poetry and . . .” Her voice trailed off.
When she lifted her head, Tom realized she truly didn’t understand his choice. He said, slowly and distinctly, because he didn’t want her to misunderstand, “I think you are to be admired for your loyalty to your friend, Claire. And I know Jedediah Silver thinks the world of Miss St. Sauvre. Personally, however, I think she’s got mice in her attic.”
“Wh-what?”
“Her ace, queen, and king are missing. Her front door doesn’t close properly. The squirrels have eaten all her acorns.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, God.” Tom ran his fingers through his hair again and flung himself back down on the chair across from Claire. He swept her hands up in his. “Listen to me, Claire. I think it’s wonderful that you set such a great store by your friends. Loyalty is another of the attributes I find extremely attractive in you. God knows, without the loyalty of my friends and mine for them, we’d none of us have survived when we scouted for the railroad. But Dianthe St. Sauvre is—is a pale imitation of the woman you are.”
“She is?”
“She’s nothing compared to you.” He stood up again, his agitation propelling him. “What would a man want with a damned sonnet when he can have comfort, peace, and joy in his home? Why should a fellow want to watch some poet prancing around and chanting about spotted horses when he can have a woman who can offer sound suggestions to create a whole new business in breeding Appaloosas?”
Claire whispered, “Oh!” as if Tom’s words were a revelation to her.
He scowled at her. “Yes, ‘oh!’ What do you think a man like me would ever find enticing about a female who sits around all day and writes stupid poems?”
“You think her poems are stupid?”
“Well . . .” Tom waved a hand in the air. “Sort of. They’re sort of—well—fluffy. If you know what I mean.”
“You really think her poetry is fluffy?”
Her voice was very soft. Tom was afraid he’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, Claire. I know how much you value your friends. And it’s not that I don’t admire Miss St. Sauvre. I’m sure she’s a good friend to you. And I have to admit she is pretty. And I’m sorry I can’t share your feelings about her poetry. I guess I haven’t had much to do with poetry and stuff like that over the years.”
“No, please don’t apologize, Mr. Partington.” She cleared her throat. “Do—do you really think her poetry lacks substance? Do you honestly think it’s silly?”
“Well . . .” Tom tried to gauge Claire’s emotional state, but couldn’t. He’d lived his life around rugged men. Female sensibilities—except those of ridiculous females like his mother—were as foreign to him as Gordon Partington’s brandy had been his first night here. He decided to tell the truth. “Yes.”
Time seemed to stand still for a moment as he looked at Claire and she looked at him. Then, in what seemed to Tom an explosion of blue sateen, Claire shot from her chair and into his arms like a bullet.
“Oh, Mr. Partington! Tom! How I do love you! How I’ve always loved you!”
Tom didn’t have time to brace himself. When Claire plowed into him, his arms closed around her and he staggered backwards. He smiled when he fell onto the sofa, though. He smiled and laughed and his heart was near to bursting with satisfaction. When he kissed her this time, he had her full cooperation.
Claire wasn’t entirely sure she believed Tom’s assertion that he cared for her. Nevertheless, he’d said such sweet things, had declared his fondness for her with such passion, and said exactly what Claire had always wanted to hear about herself and never believed she would—particularly from Tom Partington—that she couldn’t seem to help herself. He even considered Dianthe’s poetry fluffy! She kissed him back with all the gusto she’d kept suppressed for the ten years since she’d left her father. In fact, she hadn’t realized she was capable of such boldness.
When he let her go briefly, she experienced a momentary fear that he found her enthusiasm repugnant. She looked up and discovered, however, that he was merely removing his evening gloves. When he renewed his embrace, fire danced on her naked skin where his bare flesh touched hers.
“My God, Claire,” he panted, and she feared yet again that she’d somehow done something wrong. Her worries faded when he continued with, “You feel so damned good.”
She whispered fiercely, “So do you, Tom. You feel good, too,” and he growled like a wild beast, startling her. Then he seemed to lose control entirely and began to ravish her with his mouth and hands. Claire had never felt anything so exciting in her life.
He was like a man possessed. He nibbled her chin and her cheeks and her ears, nipping her earlobes and outlining her ears with his tongue. Claire, who’d never even dreamed kisses could be carried to such extremes of passion or be felt in such far-flung regions of the human anatomy, whimpered with delight.
His hands were those of a madman, stroking every inch of flesh they could find. When they ran out of bare skin, they started to uncover more, an activity that momentarily shocked the innocent Claire.
Tom said, “Please, Claire. Please. I want you so much. I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I want you. I need to feel you.” She relented.
A gentleman had never spoken to her thus. If anybody had asked her a mere hour earlier whether she believed she could inspire such ardor in a masculine breast, she’d have replied with an emphatic negative. She might even have laughed, albeit with regret. Yet here and now Tom Partington, the her of her very life, was showing her in no uncertain terms how much he desired her. Claire was thrilled.
“I’ve dreamed of this, Claire,” Tom said raggedly. “I’ve dreamed of holding you and feeling you and—and seeing you.”
When he got to the “seeing you” part, the last button on Claire’s bodice gave way and it fell to her waist, her ribbon-tied spectacles hitting the floor with a clunk.
Claire gasped, “Oh!” when she found herself suddenly bared to Tom Partington’s eager gaze. Well, perhaps she wasn’t exactly bare, as she still wore her chemise and corset, but she was barer than she’d ever been in front of a gentleman, ever. Tom was close enough for her to discern his avid expression. Suddenly her father’s unkind remark about men’s brains being in their britches came to mind. She tried to cover herself with her arms, but Tom caught her wrists.
“Don’t,” he rasped. “You’re beautiful, Claire. You’re so damned beautiful.”
“Oh!” she said again, and wished she could speak words as easily as she could write them. She was sure Miss Abigail Faithgood would have been able to say something besides “Oh!” in such a circumstance. On the other hand, Miss Abigail Faithgood might have screamed. Claire definitely did not feel like screaming.
She saw Tom swallow convulsively several times. Then he l
ifted his gaze from the swell of her nearly naked bosom and looked into her eyes.
“You’re so damned beautiful, Claire. I want to make love to you, but I don’t want to frighten you.”
“Oh.”
“I want to—to take you to my bed, Claire. I want you to say right here and now that you’ll share my life and never leave me. If you ever left me, I don’t know what I’d do or how I’d ever carry on. We belong together, Claire, you and I. Certainly you must be able to see that.”
“W-we do?” she stuttered, which she didn’t consider much of an improvement over “Oh”.
He nodded fervently. “We do. I’ve never met a woman like you before. I didn’t think you existed for me, Claire. I thought I’d live and die alone. Being with a woman on a long-term basis never entered my head until I met you.”
“It didn’t?” Claire frowned. Surely she could do better than this!
“No. Please say you’ll let me make love to you, Claire.”
“I—I—”
He didn’t give her a chance to finish, but wrapped her in his arms, squeezing her tightly against him. It was just as well. She had no idea what to say. His hands renewed their exploration, sending shock waves of feeling through her, as his words reverberated in her brain. He wanted to make love to her! Her!
His hands sought the twin swells above her corset, and Claire almost shrieked with the excitement of feeling his touch on her sensitive flesh. Her mind was of no use to her at all when he grabbed her corset hooks and began to unfasten them.
“Mercy,” she whispered.
“Make love to me, Claire. Make love to me and make me the happiest man on earth. Please say you’ll make love to me. If you do, I’ll take care of you always, Claire. You said you love me. You meant it, didn’t you?”
His head jerked up and he stared at her for a second, his expression suddenly wary, as if he suspected her of having been merely humoring him. Claire thought it was about the sweetest expression she’d ever seen.
“Of course, I love you,” she whispered.
“Thank God! Then will you make love with me?”
He went back to nuzzling her flesh. When the last of her corset hooks came free, Claire breathed deeply. Then her breath left her in a whoosh when she felt Tom’s hands cover her breasts.
She cried out softly at his touch, startled to her toes.
“Does that feel good, Claire? You feel good to me. You’re perfect, Claire. Perfect. Oh, Lord, you’re perfect.”
Claire, who knew her breasts to be round and firm, although small, was shocked yet perversely proud to have her feminine attributes praised by the man she loved. Somehow she managed to say, “Y-yes. Yes, it feels good,” and Tom growled again. She wondered if gentlemen growled frequently when in the throes of passion, or if it was a characteristic borne of Tom Partington’s life in the wilds of the American frontier. His growls gave her a goose-fleshy, excited-all-over feeling.
There was something about what Tom was doing with her breasts, Claire realized, that was extremely thrilling. The sensation was not confined to her breasts, either. She began to feel a tingling, physical anticipation in her body that made her want to squirm. She moaned softly, and her head fell back.
That seemed to excite Tom, who immediately accelerated his assault upon her bosom. When Claire felt his warm moist tongue lave her rigid nipple through the fine lawn of her chemise, she was grateful she no longer wore her corset or she’d surely have fainted for want of air.
“Let me make love to you, Claire. Say you’ll let me make love to you.”
Claire wondered what he was doing if he wasn’t making love to her. He seemed very insistent, and Claire, who had again lost track of the conversation, tried hard to pay attention to his words. To encourage him to explain himself, she whimpered, “Hmmmm?”
“I want to make love to you. Please let me, Claire.”
“Oh, Tom,” she murmured, delighted at having the matter cleared up.
“Is that a yes?”
“Hmmmm?” He cupped her breasts and buried his face against them. In a shockingly bold gesture, she ran her fingers through his beautiful golden hair and pressed his head closer.
“Love me, Claire,” came, muffled, from the region of her chest.
Love him. He wanted her to love him. He was asking her to fulfill her heart’s most fervent desire, and love him. Claire didn’t think she could be happier if she discovered she’d been kidnapped by gypsies in her infancy and sold to the man who called himself her father.
Tom wanted her to love him. In spite of her background. In spite of her father. In spite of her having grown up in a medicine show. In spite of her being merely a housekeeper. Well, Claire acknowledged with a faint spurt of pride, not merely a housekeeper. She was a wildly successful novelist, as well.
She sat up straight so abruptly that she sent Tom sliding from the sofa to land on the floor.
“Hey!” he cried
Claire’s hands, which so recently had caressed her lover’s thick hair, flew to her cheeks and pressed hard. She cried, “Oh, no!” and stared at Tom in honest terror.
He looked up from his seat on the floor, his expression registering alarm. “Claire?”
“Tom!”
“Claire?”
“Oh, no!”
“Claire, what is it?”
“Good Lord!”
In a frenzy, she gathered her sateen bodice together and jumped up from the sofa. She cried, “I’m so sorry!” And, without even pausing to stick her hands through her little puffed sateen sleeves or draw her gown over her bosom, she snatched up her corset and ran from the room, her spectacles sailing out behind her on their blue satin ribbon like a banner. The ribbon got caught in the door when she slammed it, and she had to open it and yank her spectacles out. The door slammed again and she was gone.
Tom stared after her. “Claire?”
But Claire had fled and Tom found himself staring at the closed door, as uncommunicative an article of carpentry as he could imagine.
Then, with his heart breaking and his trousers about to burst, he dropped his head back onto a sofa seat and muttered, “Aw, hell.”
Chapter 16
He genuinely cared for her! Claire slammed the door to her room behind her, locked it, and threw her corset against the wall in a fit of pique. She collapsed onto her bed, her eyes open wide in wonder and she realized he’d told her he really, honestly cared for her. Could it be true?
Her body still singing from his magnificent caresses, Claire allowed her head to fall back as she sighed. What she wouldn’t give to be able to live the last several weeks of her life over again. She wasn’t exactly sure what she would have done differently, but she most assuredly would not have entangled herself in a snare of lies and deceit.
How could she get out of it now? How could she confess to being Clarence McTeague, the writer whose Tuscaloosa Tom Pardee books Tom claimed had made his life miserable for years?
He hadn’t seemed to think Claire was behaving like a strumpet, even though he’d still wanted to kiss her. That was some sort of—of progress, she guessed. In fact, he’d explained quite carefully that gentlemen often wanted to kiss ladies who were not loose, even though those women weren’t beautiful.
Thinking about it, Claire decided his explanation made sense. How else could one explain the world’s ever-increasing population? After all, very few women were truly beautiful, yet men still seemed to want to kiss them. In Tom’s case, his evident desire for her also indicated that he was both large-minded and benevolent. Her lack of beauty, though, however much she might regret it, hadn’t exposed Tom Partington to ridicule. Her books, according to him, had, and Claire didn’t expect he was making that up.
“What have I done?” she muttered, staring at her ceiling and seeing Tom’s beloved face looking back in disapproval.
# # #
Tom sat on the floor in a state of intense frustration and absolute befuddlement for several minutes. At last, deciding he
couldn’t remain there all night pondering the mysteries of women, he got to his feet.
“Hell,” he muttered, his unhappy gaze still focused on the closed door.
He didn’t understand Claire’s latest flight at all. Not one little bit. What in the name of God could possibly have spooked her this time? Things had seemed to be going so well there for a while. He should have known it wouldn’t last. It never lasted with Claire.
But why? He slammed his fist down hard on her desk.
“Ow!” He glared at the desk as if it had leapt up and attacked him rather than having been the recipient of his own assault. His eyes narrowed as he recalled an earlier meeting with Claire, one in which she’d also become rattled when he’d displayed his interest in her.
He walked slowly around her desk and sat in her chair. It made him feel not quite so removed from her to be sitting where he’d so often seen her sit.
She always looked perfect here, performing her duties in the businesslike and professional way she had about her. He admired those qualities. He’d seldom found them in men, much less in women, who seemed to be trained from the cradle in the art of silliness. Not Claire, though. There wasn’t a silly bone in her slim, luscious, elegant body. Tapping his chin thoughtfully, he cast his mind back to their first kiss.
She’d been upset then, too. Tom believed now, however, that some problem in her youth had been the culprit; perhaps something about which she felt a secret shame. Whatever it was, it must have happened a long time ago. Her reputation since her arrival at Partington Place was absolutely spotless, and she’d been here for ten years. He didn’t expect she was much older than twenty-six or twenty-seven.
So whatever it was must have happened when she was very young. His fists curled in frustration. Damn. Whatever it was that plagued her, he was sure that portly gentleman from three weeks ago had something to do with it. Tom hadn’t been able to find him again even though he’d gone to town to look. But the fellow had left Pyrite Springs, according to Bruce Bing, the day after he and Tom had sat up so late chatting.
Secret Hearts Page 23
