"If we are both determined to go to Bokhara, there is probably a better chance of survival if we work together," Ross said, his voice harsh. "But we can't do that unless we stop trying to provoke each other. Ever since we met, we've been dueling, looking for changes and weaknesses."
"You're right." She sighed. "I'm not particularly proud of my behavior, and you haven't been at your best either. It's time to declare a truce."
But before that could happen, Ross must find an answer to the question that had tormented him for a dozen years. "Why did you leave me, Juliet?" he asked quietly. "Were you in love with another man?"
She looked away. "No," she said, her voice equally low. "There was no one else."
He waited for her to say more. When she didn't, he said reflectively, "Since we were together constantly, I suppose that you would scarcely have had time to fall in love with someone else. Very well, if you didn't run away to be with a lover, was it because you couldn't bear to confine yourself to one man and one bed forever and were too honest to stay and become an adulteress?" Given Juliet's passionate nature and subsequent activities, he had thought that was the likeliest explanation.
"I don't know whether to feel complimented by your opinion of my honesty or insulted by your appraisal of my morals," she said in a tight voice. "No, Ross, there are other reasons for ending a marriage besides sex. I did not leave you to follow the siren call of promiscuity."
"Then why did you leave?" Trying to sound detached, as if the subject had nothing to do with him, he continued, "I was happy, and you seemed to be also. We had only a few disagreements, and to me, at least, they did not seem serious. What did I do that was so unforgivable?"
Her eyes met his, stark and miserable. "You did nothing wrong, Ross. The problem was me. I should never have married, not you, not anyone." She pushed her chair away from the table and stood, drifting across the room away from the circle of lamplight. "That's what I was trying to explain in the letter I left. I must not have done a very good job, or you would not still be wondering why."
Unable to keep the bitterness from his voice, he said, "I gave you credit for trying to spare my feelings, but in spite of your explanation, it was hard not to take it personally when you left. In fact, impossible. Particularly since you were so quick to ask for a divorce. England is full of miserable marriages, but Parliament grants scarcely a divorce a year. It seemed like you could barely wait to get rid of me."
She turned toward him, her face unreadable in the shadows. "I'm sorry that you took it that way. I swear that there has never been anyone else that I cared for as I did you. I suggested that you seek a divorce so that you would be free to start again with someone else. A better woman, one who would make you happy."
But he had never wanted anyone else. Once more he asked, "Then if you didn't leave for love, or lust, or because you despised me, why did you go? Please give me a straight answer, Juliet. I need to know."
There was a long silence before she replied, a catch in her throat, "The simple, unvarnished truth was that I feared that if I stayed in England, I would lose whatever it is that makes me what I am. I don't think it's possible to explain more clearly than that."
Slowly Ross expelled the breath he had been holding. There was some truth in Juliet's words, though he doubted that it was either simple or unvarnished. But it was clear that she had said as much as she was going to.
While she had given him an answer of sorts, there was another issue that must be addressed before he could undertake a difficult, dangerous journey with her. Ross moved across the room until he was standing only an arm's length away from her, so close that he felt the warmth of Juliet's body radiating through the cool evening air.
She was a tall, graceful shape in the dim light, an image from a dream. From ten thousand dreams. He murmured, "There is one more thing I must know before declaring a truce."
Her shawl had slipped down, revealing the Celtic paleness of her skin. As the faint erotic scent of lavender twined around them, he placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her to him, his thumbs sliding under the intricate Turkoman necklace to caress the smooth bare hollows below her collarbones.
Juliet did not try to avoid the kiss. With a long, shuddering sigh, her mouth welcomed his. She was so tall that he had to incline his head only a little, and her supple body molded effortlessly to him as his arms went around her.
A dozen years dissolved in the space of a heartbeat, and what had been a tentative, questioning kiss became a whole universe of sensation. The taste and feel of Juliet were as familiar as his own body, more desirable than life eternal.
His hands glided over the well-remembered curves of her back and hips, and through the silk gown he felt the flex of her taut muscles as she pressed against him. She did more than accept the embrace passively. She responded with fierce longing, her hands and mouth reckless and demanding, as if this was the only moment they would ever have.
All too soon the moment was over. Abruptly she pulled away from him, body trembling and eyes dazed as she whispered, "No, Ross. Not this. Never again."
"Why not? Our marriage was not all bad." Ross lifted his hand to her cheek, his fingertips tracing the subtle planes and curves. "Don't you remember?"
"I remember," she said, her voice breaking. "I wish that I didn't."
His hand dropped away. For an instant Juliet stood statue-still. Then, freed of the spell that had briefly bound them together, she turned and lifted one of the lamps. Movements taut, she left the room without looking back.
For a moment Ross closed his eyes, telling himself that he would not die of sexual frustration, even if he might briefly wish to. And he had learned over the last dozen years that rejection wasn't lethal either.
Deliberately he focused on the scrapes and bruises he had suffered earlier, knowing that physical pain would be an improvement over what he was feeling now. Yet though every muscle, bone, and tendon hurt, he still looked on the encounter with the Turkomans as pure pleasure compared to dining with his long-lost wife. It seemed impossible that only a few hours had passed since he had met her again, for he felt as if he had aged half a century in half a day.
With immense effort he began the process of detachment that would enable him to function again. He was very skilled at mentally separating himself from his emotions, and soon he had distanced himself far enough to feel a wry admiration for Juliet's thoroughness. In a mere handful of words she had not only rejected him in the present but also denied the past they had shared. An efficient woman, Juliet.
Mechanically he extinguished all but one of the lamps, then took the last light and left the study. It took time to find the way back. As he made his way through the long blank corridors of the old palace, the scholarly, organized part of his mind busily analyzed what had happened.
While his passion for distant places was quite genuine, Ross had always known that one reason for his restless traveling was a vague hope that someday, somewhere, he would find Juliet again. Not precisely for love, and certainly not for hate, but because of the aching sense of incompleteness that she had left behind.
Today, by pure chance, he had found her, and as a result, the door to the past had irrevocably closed. On some dim level he had thought that Juliet might have run away on a rash impulse, then not known how to come home again. And if they met once more, there might be a chance to start over.
Now that faint, never admitted possibility had died. By the time he reached his room, Ross was wrestling with an agonizing suspicion that he would like to deny but couldn't: that he lacked the ability to inspire or hold a woman's romantic love. He could love and be loved by family and friends, but whatever it took to build and preserve a deep man-woman relationship was beyond him.
Given his birth and fortune, it would not have been hard for Ross to find and keep a wife who was a boring social sparrow, but he had wanted more than that. He had wanted a wife who was his equal, a companion in all things. His parents had had such a partnership, and he had
considered that usual until he began to see more of the world and realized how many kinds of marriage there were. Most of them did not appeal to him.
There were only two women he had ever been able to imagine marrying. One was his cousin Sara. When they were young, she had seemed like the other half of himself, yet she had never seen him as anything other than a brother. At the time, he had thought that was because they had grown up together, and he had accepted that she would never have romantic feelings for him.
At first Juliet had been different from Sara. Believing that she loved him, she had given herself with absolute, unquestioning trust. For Ross, their closeness had been intoxicating and deeply rewarding, exactly what he had hoped for. But after several months, everything changed. Her naturally joyous nature had dimmed and she began watching him with bleak, tragic eyes.
He had known something was wrong, but did not recognize that her love for him was dying. Or perhaps Juliet had never truly loved him: once he had been certain that she did, but after she left, he had never been wholly certain of anything again.
They had begun to have arguments, usually over the journey to the Mideast they were planning. Juliet had been anxious to leave, but Ross had delayed because his much-loved godfather was ill. She had made sharp- tongued comments about the postponement, perhaps fearing that they would never go. Then he had made the mistake of going away to visit his godfather, leaving Juliet behind because she claimed to feel unwell. When he returned, she was gone.
From the vantage of his present advanced years, it was easy to see that Juliet's youth and inexperience had led her to confuse her discovery of passion with love. He had rushed her into marriage before she had time for doubts, but it had not taken her long to realize her mistake.
Any other woman would have been content to stay with him for the sake of wealth and propriety, but not Juliet. Though tonight, with quixotic gallantry, she had denied that the failure of their marriage was his fault, he knew better. As true as a blade, and with the same ruthless honesty, she had left her husband rather than live a lie.
Over the years since, there had occasionally been women, when Ross was so hungry for physical intimacy that he could no longer deny the need. But none of the pleasant, easygoing females he had visited had ever fallen in love with him. Though he had been grateful at the time, now that fact was confirmation that there was a fundamental flaw in his nature.
He became aware that he had arrived back in his room and was now standing motionless in the middle. Setting down the lamp, he stripped off his clothes, tossing them heedlessly on the divan, then doused the light. In a curious state of numbness, he lay down on the thick cotton- filled mattress and pulled the covers over him.
It had been... interesting to discover that the desire Juliet inspired was as powerful as he remembered. More powerful, in fact. Time had blurred the line between memory and dream, until tonight's embrace had resurrected his memories with jarring vividness.
Even more interesting was the undeniable fact that she had also felt desire, though not enough to overcome her objections to him. The sentence that Juliet had written in her journal, wishing that she had never met him, had not been a momentary aberration.
Yes, it would have been better for both of them if they had never met. In spite of passion, in spite of the laughter and talk and understanding that they had briefly shared so many years before, at heart they had always been strangers—and now they always would be.
* * *
A bottle of claret divided between two people would not have been excessive in England, but as Juliet untwisted the sheets from her damp body, she realized that here it had been a disastrous mistake. Not that either of them had been drunk, but, living deep in Islam, she virtually never drank, and Ross, always a light drinker, had probably not touched alcohol during his months of travel. As a result, two glasses had been enough to loosen constraints to the point where he had wanted to kiss her—and she had been fool enough to let him.
Let him. With a mirthless laugh she rolled over and buried her face in the pillows. She had not just acquiesced, she had all but pulled him down onto the Khorasan carpet. Half a glass of wine more and she would have done so. And, dear God, she wished that she had. In the morning she would be grateful that she had retained a particle of sense, but now desire raged through her.
All of her dormant memories of lovemaking—of taste and touch, sight and scent and sound—had come to anguished life in Ross's embrace. If she tried, she was sure that she could have counted and described every single time they had made love. And the tally would have been substantial. Though they had lived together only six months, they had been young and passionately in love.
One of her most vivid and sensual memories was of their wedding night. The wedding had not been a large one, for they had not wanted to wait while an elaborate ceremony was arranged. During the period of their betrothal, Juliet had once laughingly suggested that they follow the old Scottish marriage custom of leaping over a sword together so they would not have to wait any longer. But wait they did, less for morality than because of the difficulty of finding privacy to make love properly.
The ceremony had taken place in Scotland, at the village kirk on the estate of Juliet's uncle. Then the young couple had driven to a nearby hunting box owned by a friend of the Duke of Windermere. Finally they were alone, for the servants knew better than to intrude on a couple that had just wed.
After they had eaten a light supper, Ross had given Juliet time alone to wash and change and ready herself. To her intense embarrassment, she developed a last-minute case of nerves even though she had longed for this night for weeks.
When her new husband came into the bedroom, she was not waiting in the massive four-poster bed. Instead, she was huddled on the window seat, arms wrapped tightly around her drawn-up knees, shivering a little in her sheer white nightgown.
Ross had come to her side at the window. Looking out at the crescent moon floating in a black velvet sky, he had circled her shoulders with his arm and asked, "Cold?"
She shook her head.
He caressed the back of her neck, his warm hand loosening the tight muscles. "Nervous?"
She had swallowed hard and turned to look up at him. "Everyone said we were too young. Perhaps they were right."
"No," he had said simply.
Then he had bent and scooped her into his arms. Startled, she clutched at him for balance as he turned and settled down on the window seat, then arranged her across his lap.
Ross continued, "They—whoever they may be—are wrong. I love you, and you love me. Age has nothing to do with it." He thought a moment. "Except, perhaps, that the young are more willing to take risks."
In the face of his calm certainty, her own doubts had vanished. She might be young and volatile, but Ross was not. He was strong and steady and wise, everything she was not.
She had relaxed against him like a cat, her face pressed against his neck. He had just bathed and smelled fresh and clean, with a subtle masculine scent that belonged to him alone.
In his soft, low voice he talked idly of the things they would do together, the places they would go, the discoveries they would make. And all the time he caressed her, his touch light and tender and infinitely kind.
Though they had waited for this night with fierce impatience, there was no hurry now that it had finally arrived. She had felt like an instrument played by a virtuoso musician as Ross had explored her body and gently encouraged her to do the same with his. Starting shyly, she had slipped her hand inside his robe and discovered that his warm chest was covered by the delicious texture of hair. She felt his heart beat under her palm and was moved and awed as the rate increased at her touch.
By the time he carried her to the wide bed, all her nervousness had melted away. Her mother had told her that it would hurt the first time, and Juliet was braced for that, but when they finally joined, there was no pain. Instead, there was only a moment of discomfort and a fleeting sense of strangeness at the
new sensations, and that had been followed immediately by joy.
She would never have believed the power of intimacy without experiencing it. His warmth and scent and pulse had been indistinguishable from her own, and she had truly understood why the marriage service spoke of one spirit, one flesh.
It had been a magical night, and she had thought that nothing could ever be lovelier. But the nights that followed had been better yet, for as the months passed, they had become more and more attuned to each other's desires and responses. It had been like that right up until the time when she realized what was happening to her. Then her world had crumbled in terror.
She had no one to blame but herself. If she had been a stronger woman, she would have stayed in England. Instead, from fear, she had destroyed her own life. Far worse, she had hurt her husband horribly.
She had not realized just how much until tonight. Though she had known he would be upset at her leaving, Ross had a quality of calm, confident strength that had led her to believe he would put her from his mind and recover fairly quickly.
But he had not fully recovered, or he would never have said tonight that he had not the stamina or optimism to take another wife. When they had married, he had had the strength and optimism for anything. Perhaps instead of running away, she should have arranged a fatal accident. If she had died, Ross could have mourned her properly, then got on with his life.
Instead she had run, and almost immediately realized that she had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Terrified and more alone than she had ever been in her life, she would have gone with Ross gladly if he had come after her and been willing to take her back. But he did not come, and it wasn't long before she committed the ruinous mistake that destroyed any chance that he might ever forgive her.
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