by Danice Allen
Zach remained motionless, striving to keep any reaction to her words from showing in his expression, but he was profoundly stirred. An answering conviction rose in his own breast, and a voice within him shouted, I love you, too, Tessy. More than you’ll ever know. But he suppressed the urge to tell her because he was still determined to whisk away, like a delicate spiderweb, this intricate tangle of emotions that had so neatly ensnared them both.
When he did not respond, she lowered her eyes to the purse that lay on the table between them. She reached out to touch the soft tanned leather with a forefinger, running fingertip and nail along a seam to the puckered closure, which was secured tightly with a cord. Then, as if she’d found the texture displeasing, she pulled back her hand abruptly. She looked up at Zach, her mouth curved in a bittersweet smile. “Funny how all we’ve shared and all we’ve been to each other can somehow be consigned in value to a pouch full of golden sovereigns. So businesslike, so impersonal. So very cold.” She shivered and folded her arms across her chest.
That shiver, that protective self-hug, shredded through Zach’s determined reserve like a farmer’s scythe through a field of grain. Love swelled in him and overpowered all other considerations. He rocked forward and stood up, nearly oversetting the table in his eagerness to reach across to Tessy, to touch her, to hold her against him. Somehow he managed to maneuver his way around the table, pull her up from the chair, and take her in his arms before surprise had even registered on her face.
“Tessy, Tessy!” he groaned as he buried his face in the thick waves of hair that fell around her neck and shoulders. “I don’t want to leave you. Truly I don’t! But I’m afraid …”
Tessy pulled back and cupped his jaw in her small fingers, her thumbs pressing into the laugh lines on either side of his mouth. Her eyes glistened with compassion and renewed hope. “What are you afraid of, Zach? Surely whatever it is can be worked out between the two of us. You know I’d do anything for you. Anything!”
“Ah, Tessy,” he whispered, her loving words melting him, her soft, pliant nearness exciting him. He had to have her. He needed her. He wanted to make her sigh and gasp and shudder.
Rationalization wrapped him in its soothing embrace. Maybe he’d been overly concerned about his strong affection for Tessy. Some men kept the same mistress for years and carried on their public and family lives with nary a problem. Perhaps he’d overreacted. Perhaps they could continue as they were.
He bent his head and kissed her, her mouth open and yielding. He took possession of her lips and plundered the warm, moist recesses beyond with overt greediness. He rejoiced in the pleasure of her, made especially sweet and intoxicating by having so nearly lost her because of his own cowardliness.
He was impatient. Now was not the time for conversation or wooing foreplay. He wanted her. And judging by Tessy’s own rasping breaths and seeking, caressing hands, she wanted him equally as much. He ran his hands down her back, across the swell of her buttocks and around to the sides of her gown, grabbing a wad of fabric in each fist. Then he lifted her skirt, the muslin heaping at his elbows till her bare legs pressed against his. His control tilted, slipped away completely. He was mad for her.
Tessy wedged her hands between them and pressed her palms against Zach’s chest. “Zach, wait. I need to tell you something. I—”
“No talking now, Tessy. Later, love. Later,” he crooned, as he worked at the buttons on his trousers with one hand and held her fast against him with the other.
“But I must—”
When he had freed himself from the tight confines of his trousers, he took hold of her hips, piles of fabric billowing about his chest, wisping under his chin, framing Tessy’s face in a wreath of cream-colored muslin. He positioned himself to enter her.
“Zach—”
Then he knew. When they were hip to hip, belly to belly, he knew. Tessy’s stomach was swollen and hard. Zach’s mind reeled in disbelief. She had seemed plumper the last time he’d been with her, but he had attributed that to the fact that she was eating regularly and was happy. But she was breeding. Good God in heaven, she was carrying his child!
The revelation was like a blast of winter, withering his passion, numbing him, sheeting him with a thin veneer of ice. His hands dropped from Tessy’s waist. Her gown drifted down like a veil of secrecy, like the curtain of concealment she’d used it for, with its full, flowing lines. The shawl and the apron, too, had been meant to disguise her pregnancy.
Like an automaton, Zach buttoned his trousers, never looking at Tessy, though he could see her convulsive shivering at the periphery of his vision. Finally he lifted his eyes to her face. She was pressing her hands, one on top of the other, against her mouth, as if to hold back a sob or a cry. Her eyes were swallowed up by their enormous dark pupils, leaving only a pale circlet of blue around.
But Zach remained strangely unmoved. She had nearly caught him, caught him well and good in her silken web.
“Why?” he asked her. “You knew I didn’t want any little bastards. How did this happen?”
Tessy stumbled backwards to sit on the bed. She stretched one hand behind her to support herself, the other hand still clapped tightly over her mouth. Finally she removed her hand and whispered brokenly, “I never meant it to happen. I … I used the creams Granny Harker sold me, but sometimes they don’t work.”
“Apparently,” said Zach, careful, cool detachment in his voice. But he was angry, so damned angry he could have screamed.
“Zach, I’m sorry. So very sorry. But I truly didn’t mean this to happen.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Or were you waiting for a time such as this? It is a convenient thing to have to say to a man who’s on the point of leaving you: ‘Oh, by the by, Zach, I’m with child. I don’t suppose you’ll go now.’”
Tessy jerked as if Zach had struck her, then bowed her head, the golden drape of hair eclipsing her face. He stood there watching her. He knew she would speak eventually, and he was full of bitter patience, morbidly curious to hear what she had to say. She did not move. Every moment or so a single tear would drop down from behind the fall of gilded hair and onto the white apron.
Zach was at leisure to think. Black, turbid thoughts. A child. His and Tessy’s. He supposed he ought to feel something besides anger, something besides this humiliating conviction that he’d been duped into parenthood. He loved Tessy, but right now her love, her swelling belly, felt like the wooden restraints of a pillory. The shame of this new development would be as public as a pillory sentencing, because, though he’d somehow managed to keep Tessy’s existence secret from Beth so far, a by-blow would be additional fodder for the gossip mill. His only hope was that Beth would forgive him—once again.
There was nothing for it, it seemed, but to take care of the child as well as its mother. But he would not visit it once it slid and squalled its way into the world. Nor would he visit Tessy. The money would be delivered through a solicitor. He had finally learned his lesson. He would never again take his pleasure with a woman at the risk of losing his heart.
Still Tessy sat, and still he watched her. Somewhere beyond the anger, the shock, the resigned disappointment, Zach pitied her—loved her. But any movement or expression betokening sympathy or affection would be fatal to his irreversible determination to sever his ties with her, child or no. Life, he thought on a sudden dark inspiration, was as unfair as a fixed game at the wheel at Pigeon’s Hole, that infamous gaming hell at St. James’s Square. Nobody ever won.
Suddenly Tess brushed back that glorious thick hair of hers, and he saw the brooch. He wasn’t sure how the sight of it had escaped him before, except that he’d been consumed with myriad emotions from the moment he’d set foot inside the door, from regret to passion to anger and back to regret. But seeing Beth’s brooch affixed to Tessy’s gown was the last straw. It did not belong to her, and she had withheld her knowledge of it from him for these many weeks. This was yet more proof that things had gone too far with Tess
y.
“Tessy.”
She lifted her head fractionally.
“Why are you wearing that brooch? Have you had it all along?”
Tessy’s hand darted up guiltily to touch the brooch.
“Well? Are you going to tell me about it or not?”
“I found it that night after you left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me during my next visit that you’d found it?”
Tessy fondled the brooch, running her thumb along the filigreed edging. “It was so beautiful. I knew you’d bought it for Beth, but I felt a keen pleasure in wearing it.”
“I have bought you many pretty things, Tessy. I would have bought you a brooch had I thought you wanted one so desperately.”
She looked up. Her lashes were thick with tears. Her cheeks were pink and damp. “It was your engagement present to her.”
Zach waited for further explanation. He raised his brows. “So?”
“I knew I’d never receive an engagement present from you. I think I valued it for that and not so much for its beauty.” She looked down at the brooch. “Though it is beautiful.”
“Give it to me.” Zach stretched forth his hand. It was wrong of her to have kept Beth’s brooch. He no longer cared whether he hurt her or not.
Tessy’s heart felt as cold and hollow as a stone crypt. She took off the brooch and handed it to Zach, taking care that their fingers did not touch. It felt rather good to give it to him. She’d always felt like a thief, though she’d intended all along to return it to him. She just had not been able to so far. Now she hadn’t the slightest idea how to respond to Zach’s accusations about the baby, for though she had not tried to conceive a child, she had hoped it would somehow bind him to her.
Zach, her lover and friend over the past months, the man whose mere being had justified her every breath and given shape and purpose to the fleeting shadows of each passing day, stood before her as a stranger, out of reach forever. She had made fatal, irredeemable mistakes. The finality of it crept over her like a mud slide, suffocating, impenetrable to the brightest beam of light. It was over.
Tessy lifted her head slowly and fixed her gaze on the knot of Zach’s cravat, which was wilted by the heat and mussed by their embrace. “I don’t expect you to continue our arrangement because of the child. I won’t lie. I did hope you’d want to see me and … her now and then.” Her lips twitched into what she knew must be an awkward, tragic smile. “Sort of like a second family for you.”
She met Zach’s cold, unyielding stare and recoiled from it, shifting her gaze to the floor and finding a warmer aspect in the lifeless planks beneath her feet.
“I’ll arrange to have my solicitor meet with you this week,” he said. “I’ll provide a comfortable living for you and the child. But I will not support offspring bred by other men.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry it must all end like this, Tessy. But I cannot have in my life such a complication as you’ve become. Good-bye.”
She heard his heel swivel on the floor, heard his even march toward the door. She heard the door open and close behind him. She lifted her stinging eyes to the window that faced the front of the house and waited. Through the filmy curtains she watched him ride past, a blur of dapple-gray stallion, blue coattails, and hair as bright as a new guinea. Then she was alone.
Tess ought to have been used to being alone. But this time the silence was deafening, and she was frightened. Her eyes darted about the room, settling here and there, observing each piece of furniture as if she’d never seen it before. These would be her only constant companions in the weeks and months ahead. A chair, a stool, a small sideboard cluttered with pretty blue and white crockery. And settled over it all, a quiet dust.
Tess stood up abruptly and began to pace the floor—quickly, restlessly, back and forth, back and forth—as terror gripped her. She could not bear it. She could not lose him like this and go on living as if nothing had happened. A sob collected in her throat. She bit her fist to keep it from spilling out in a cry of anguish. Tears—impotent, useless feminine tears—streamed down her face. Rage against her lot in life, rage against a society that denied her Zach’s love because she was not conceived into the proper sort of family, tore at her till she felt she might split in two.
Her gaze, darting desperately about the still room as if the answers to her anguished questions hid in the growing afternoon shadows, finally alighted on the purse of coins. Its bulging shape repulsed her. To Tess it personified every hateful, prideful human failing. She moved to the table, grabbed the purse, and flung it against the hearth. The cord that secured it broke, and coins flew in all directions, then descended to the floor in a shower of golden confetti.
Then, as Tess stood in the midst of this mess, breathing hard, a pain came that nearly doubled her over. She felt as though she were splitting in two or as if a giant hand had clutched her abdomen and squeezed. She gasped. Her knees buckled. She stumbled to the bed and sat down. God, what was happening to her?
The baby kicked hard. Tess realized that the pain must have something to do with the child, but it wasn’t time for the baby to come. She had two more months left. Tess laid her hands against her swollen belly. “There, there. Don’t fret, little one. Your mum’s just a little agitated,” she whispered, rotating her open palms over her stomach and striving to calm herself. The rest of the world could go to hades, Zach included, she thought. She had her babe to consider, and she would calm herself for that reason.
It seemed to be working. The pain was gone. Her stomach, which had pulled up and hardened like a muscle in spasm, had relaxed. She breathed a little easier, though the tears still fell and the pain of Zach’s callous departure still twisted in her chest like a knife.
Just as she was about to rise and bathe her face, the pain came again. This time it was even harder, almost debilitating. All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball till it passed, as she prayed it would do. It did pass, but with innate female wisdom, Tess knew it would come again. Regardless of when it was due, the baby was coming, too.
Tess was afraid. She’d planned to have a young village girl stay with her to help her about the cottage when her time grew near and she became too cumbersome to move about. More important, she wanted someone nearby to fetch Granny Harker when her lying-in began. Now there was no one to rely upon but herself. Zach was beyond shouting distance, and Dudley had left through the back entrance when Zach knocked at the front door.
Dudley! He would be the perfect person to help her. In fact, he’d offered to help her and told her to fetch him if ever she needed him. She needed him now, but she had no way to convey such a message. Before he left the cottage, he’d said he was going back to Pencarrow after he collected his horse from Mr. Smith’s stable where he’d boarded the animal for the day. He could not have progressed far in his journey; maybe she’d be able to catch up with him.
Another pain seized her. She waited it out, gritting her teeth for the duration. When it was over, she stood, removed the apron, and tied on a wide-brimmed bonnet. Before the pain could come again, she hurried outside to the stable. While she was saddling the slope-backed white mare, the pain came again. She crouched in the straw and squeezed her eyes shut as sweat trickled down her forehead and clung to her lashes. When the pain had passed, she finished saddling the horse and pulled herself atop it.
She rode through town, watching for Dudley’s tall figure and ginger-cropped head in the steady trickle of humanity that trod the walkways. She stopped at Mr. Smith’s stable and discovered that Dudley was only ten minutes ahead of her. She took the southern road to Pencarrow, praying that she would catch up with him quickly.
For a moment she considered going to Granny Harker instead. But she wanted Dudley. He’d been so kind to her, and she felt that if anyone could see her through this childbirth ordeal, it would be Dudley. She needed a friend, not just a midwife. And Granny Harker had failed her already. In the birthing of her daughter, Tessy wanted to feel secure for once in her life and i
n the hands of someone who truly cared. She hardly knew Dudley, but somehow she felt certain he was exactly the person she needed.
She doubled over with another pain. It was so intense she nearly fell off the horse. She felt close to passing out. When the pain subsided to the crampy achiness that hung on in between the hard stomach contractions, she pulled herself upright again and spurred her horse to a brisker trot. She stared down the road, hoping at each turn to see Dudley just ahead.
The sun glowered down on her unmercifully. Tess was sick and exhausted and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.
“Why, Zach?” she whispered. “Why must you leave me now?”
Chapter Fifteen
Beth dreamed of a beach with white sand as fine as salt, with rolling, gentle waves lapping at the shore. She and Alex swam naked in the shallow water, coming together to kiss and embrace, then separating to float and dip in the sea. It was paradise. But then she looked toward the shore, and her dream world dissolved. Zach was there. Zach was watching them, his face contorted with anger and hurt. “No!”
Beth sat up abruptly, consciousness returning with the subtlety of a horse kick between the eyes. Her confused gaze darted from one unfamiliar object to another. There was a cherry wood chiffonier with a man’s watch stand among the porcelain figurines and other items scattered atop it. A marble bust of Socrates. Red moreen curtains. A half-filled copper tub.
“Beth? Did you have a bad dream?”
Beth’s hammering heart slowed as relief came to her along with returning memory. Alex shifted beside her on the bed and slid a warm hand along her shoulder in a loving caress. She turned to look at him. His hair was a wild tumble of curls, a disarming style created when Beth tousled his damp hair with impassioned fingers, then further disarrayed by deep sleep. His black eyes held a concerned expression.
She reached up and placed her hand over his and released a long, cleansing breath. “Yes, I did have a bad dream, though it started out rather nicely.” She smiled. “You were wet. I was wet, too.”
