The garden was lovely, filled with every manner of blossom and flowering shrub, but she soon reached the end of it. A path that began as cobblestones disintegrated into smaller and smaller pebbles until it turned to earth, a vague tracing through tall green grass. Cultivated roses quickly gave way to wild ones, tangled about the weathered white fence that tilted and finally disappeared into a wood. What had seemed a flat and protected space was a small valley, surrounded on all sides by hills.
She knew these hills. She loved them. They were green, bare along the tops but graced near the valleys with a skirt of trees. Often, when she couldn’t bear the boredom and commonness and restrictions of home, the dull and unimaginative company of her shabby-genteel parents, she roamed these rocky peaks. And he would come.…
He was waiting for her now.
“Jesse? If you can hear me, raise your finger.”
Her finger obeyed without any command from her mind. The voice went on with questions that made very little sense, asking her to remember. Asking how old she was, what she was seeing. And what she was seeing was … not right.
Not right. Why did she feel herself as two people? Yet it was true, and the half of her the voice spoke to was a stranger here.
No. Not a stranger. She touched herself, the pale long-sleeved walking dress and the white gloves and the bonnet on her brown hair. Familiar and yet unfamiliar. Frightening and ordinary. She stripped off a glove and looked at a hand that should be tanned from the sun rather than pale, strong and capable rather than soft and delicate.
“Jesse,” the voice called, sharp with warning. It wouldn’t leave her alone, unless …
She turned inward. Her other self was there, the one called Jesse, and she felt as though she might swoon with the overwhelming fear. She was divided as cruelly as a broken heart, and she didn’t like what she saw from the corner of her inner sight. Pain, and loss, and things she didn’t dare think about.
But only Jesse could make the voice leave them alone. Only Jesse could unshackle them to keep the rendezvous in the hills.
“I will show you,” she coaxed her silent partner. “I’ll take you, if you make him give us time.”
Jesse didn’t want to let go. Jesse was also afraid, and Jesse was searching for something that could not be found in this garden or among these hills. But at last the man’s voice grew quieter and quieter, and she knew Jesse had done as she asked.
Free. With the freedom came a kind of forgetfulness, and as she started for the nearest hill she remembered the division in herself and the tunnel and voice as no more than a dream.
She knew where to go. She knew he would be waiting. He had asked her to come to their special place, to say his goodbyes.
Her walking boots slipped on rocky ground, propelling her with desperate haste. He was the one person she could not sway with her games and stratagems. She had begged him not to go to the war, but it was all he could speak of since his father died. That he was now viscount in his own right could not influence him; his mother’s objections made no difference. No one’s opinion mattered when set against his will to do as he pleased.
If she could only convince him to wait. If she could only make him see how much she needed him, how she could not live without him. But such talk made him laugh, and the laughter always came before he walked away.
“David,” she said, breathless with her exertions. His name was a charm, but it was as fleeting as a fairy’s promise. She would give anything to bind him, keep him by her side forever.
Anything.
“Sophie. You’ve come.”
He was there, perched on a rock beside a tiny brook and twirling a fern between his fingers. He dropped the fern as she approached, and she saw how he’d stripped the frond nearly bare.
“David,” she repeated, and went into his arms. He was so handsome in his expensive coat and snug breeches and polished boots, the finest gentleman in the Lake District. His eyes were brilliant blue and his black hair fell over his eyes, resisting the taming touch of her fingers.
He made her feel so alive, so daring, so privileged. He let her dismiss her parents and their modest and mediocre ambitions. She wanted so much more. When she was with David, climbing the fells or racing in his phaeton, she escaped into another world of excitement and delight.
His mouth caught hers, firm and possessive. She submitted gladly. When he kissed her she was a fine lady, not just the squire’s daughter, and she knew in her heart he would marry her and give her the luxury and security and high estate she had dreamed of.
But his kiss now had another effect. It emptied her mind of the arguments she’d planned to use to make him stay, sent her blood rushing like a waterfall. He had so much power over her. In his arms she forgot everything but how much she loved him.
David’s nimble fingers made short work of the ribbons of her bonnet and sent it tumbling to the grass. “My lovely Sophie,” he murmured into her hair. “Do you know how much I want you?”
The words had some significance that eluded Sophie as he bent his head to kiss her neck above the collar of her walking dress. All she heard was “want,” and want meant that he valued her, that she was important. He was a warm and teasing wind that made her wish to lie down and loosen her clothing to let him nearer her heart.
He knew her thoughts. He found the fastenings of her gown and worked at them gently, never ceasing his kisses. Heat kindled within her. He had done this before, reached under her bodice to caress her skin, and his touches had given her delight.
But this time he didn’t stop at her bodice. This time she could feel the afternoon breeze on bare skin at her shoulders, then at her back, with only David’s skin as covering.
New sensations coursed through her body. She wanted … oh, she wanted to give herself to sensations and become lost in them. Abandon herself to pleasure. Papa said pleasure was a sin and David Ventris was a devil because he pursued it, that he was wild and useless and a bane to his family and his title. Always running from his duty, from all restraint.
Restraint was what she hated, all the things she couldn’t have. She and David could run away together.…
“Lie with me, Sophie,” he whispered. “Let me love you.”
Somehow they were in the grass, side by side, David’s coat her pillow. His hand had found its way to the tender, naked skin of her breast.
“Yes,” he said. His mouth replaced his hand, a more daring kiss than she could have imagined. She gasped and arched into him. The hot place inside her was ready to burst with a need she couldn’t name.
Yet in the midst of the urgency and the heat was something that kept itself apart, that could still question. And that something—that someone—pushed David’s hands and mouth away and waited until his gaze lifted to her face.
“You’ll leave me,” she said. “I don’t want you to go.”
He cupped her face in his hands, kissed both her eyelids and smiled sweetly enough to woo the angels from heaven. “You know I’ll be back. If you give me everything, Boney’s best can’t touch me. Your love will make me invulnerable.” His eyes, his words were rich with emotion and sincerity. “Let me, Sophie. Let me inside you.”
It had never been possible to refuse him whatever he asked. Surely this would bind him to her as nothing else could. She loved him, and her heart and body became his willing accomplices. Love was the center of existence, and as he touched her and caressed her and covered her with his body, they become one being.
Perfect. Endless. Never to be separated for all eternity.
Sophie crested on a wave that lifted her above the hills, so high that she pierced the very sky itself. And though the tunnel waited for her there, summoning her, she was too lost in ecstasy to be afraid.
Not even as she rushed into the dark entrance and the voice returned.
“Jesse?”
She opened her eyes slowly. At first the name meant nothing to her except as an abstract concept, unimportant to the being she was. She saw a ceiling rathe
r than sky, but that, too, meant little in the dreamworld of happiness that wreathed her mind like a soft mist.
Her body hummed with pleasure; her lips were tender with his kisses. She touched her mouth in wonder.
Real. It had been real. Even as she felt the recliner under her back and breathed in the old-book scent of Al’s study, she sensed that other place around her, that other self waiting. She clung to the joy, untroubled by implications that might have shattered her bliss.
Al asked her if she was all right, and she gave some vague answer. His face was unreadable, but with her heightened awareness she knew his concern as a grayness in a warm golden light.
“I couldn’t reach you,” he said. “Jesse, you weren’t answering my questions. It wasn’t your childhood, was it?”
She closed her eyes. “I need to be alone for a few minutes,” she said. “I need …”
But Al didn’t wait for her to complete her request. He got up and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The floating silence lasted no more than a minute before it was filled by a new presence. Jesse felt it come to her on that golden light, take shape and form that she recognized with a sense beyond the five she had always relied on.
“David,” she murmured, and opened her eyes.
He stood beside the recliner, and his face was so dearly familiar that she thought she’d slipped back into the dream.
“You called me,” he said. But he didn’t hold out his arms, and his blue eyes, so vivid in the dream, were almost wary.
Jesse rose from the recliner, her hands awkward at her sides, her breath coming fast. He was different from the dream—older, with deeper lines around his mouth and eyes, and the worn uniform that imparted an even greater strength to his lithe body. Less laughter in his face, more experience. But Jesse was caught in the grip of desire she’d never encountered except in that vision of otherness.
Desire. A wanting so undeniable that she thought he must hear her mind begging him to lie down with her on the floor as they’d lain in the grass. Feel him moving inside her, his hard muscle against her thighs and belly and breast.
The veil of doubt lifted from his gaze. “Jesse,” he said, his voice rough with hunger. He came for her at last, pulled her into his arms. She lifted her face, and his mouth, fierce and hot-blooded, met hers.
CHAPTER SIX
She was pliant and supple in David’s arms, firm muscle and tension and prickly pride yielding to passion. The unspoken passion that invited him to take what only last night she had so patently denied.
There was no denying this. He kissed her, but not as he’d kissed Sophie. Not gently as he’d done before they were so unprosperously wed, or under a cloud of fear or anger or guilt as on those rare times when they came together after Elizabeth’s death.
For she was not Sophie, this woman who held him with a fervency that matched his own. Matched, equaled, met openly, with lips and tongue and body and heart.
He had no sense in this moment. Only sensation. He lifted her higher, the stirring of his manhood pressed to her belly.
“Jesse,” he sighed into her open mouth. God, it would be so easy to lay her down on the chaise longue behind her. She’d give herself willingly, thanks to whatever strange miracle had put the desire and welcome in her eyes.
In all the days of the war he’d never resorted to taking a woman by force. There’d been willing women enough, camp followers in plenty. He hadn’t even considered celibacy those long years away from Sophie.
He’d been celibate now for nearly two centuries—two hundred years of emptiness.
Simple desire he could have ignored. Any other woman he might have resisted. But he wanted to plant himself in Jesse’s body, as deep as he could go, as soldiers did on the eve of battle or in the aftermath of destruction.
The way he wanted Jesse now was stronger than any lust he could remember, in life or death.
It was lust for life. He told himself that even as he deepened the kiss, felt Jesse blossom under him like a flower in the sun. Jesse was life. That was all she was to him.
Why not pleasure himself where and when he could? Why question Jesse’s inexplicable change of heart? Hadn’t he been punished enough?
His hand moved from Jesse’s waist to find her breast, and he walked her one step back, and then another, until her legs bumped the chaise and he could ease her down.…
Firm hands lodged against his chest, halting his advance. After a beat of incomprehension he focused on Jesse’s face.
Shock. Disbelief. Confusion. Jesse stared at him in panic, every trace of that impassioned invitation gone from her eyes.
“Let go of me,” she said.
His shock was scarcely less than her own. He compelled his arms to release her by sheer force of will. She scrambled across the chaise, putting its bulk between them.
“You touched me,” she said. “I told you—not to touch me.”
At least she didn’t claim he’d come back without permission. Unfulfilled desire pounded in David’s veins. Yes, by God, his veins and his flesh and his manhood, his very substantial body that knew a very material frustration.
He smiled to rein in his anger. “You didn’t want it, Jesse? That’s not what your eyes were telling me.”
Her hand moved to her face, as if she had to reassure herself that it hadn’t altered. “What are you talking about? I was … dreaming.…”
“Were you?”
Between one heartbeat and the next her dazed expression gained an edge, panic and confusion replaced by grim resolve. “How did you know what I was dreaming?” she demanded.
He hadn’t known. He’d heard her and returned and found her waiting. Wanting. “Was I in your dream, Jesse?”
“Yes. And you know it. Because—” She braced herself on the back of the chaise. “Because it wasn’t a dream. The connection you were talking about. The way I’ve been seeing you—” She shook her head. “Either you’ve taken over my thoughts, or somewhere—sometime—you and I were—”
Words failed her, and she leaned more heavily on the chaise, fingers pressed into the soft brown leather. “There’s nothing wrong with my mind. There must be an explanation.”
Her monologue was low and urgent, bent on convincing herself. The panic was still very close to the surface. And he was the cause.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Jesse,” he said. “However things may seem, I haven’t done anything to your mind. I don’t have that power. Help me understand what troubles you.”
She looked up. “You know,” she said. “You must know. Everything you did, what you’ve said since you came to me—” Her mouth hardened. “You said you’d forgotten your life. But you knew we had a connection.”
“And I said you felt it as well.” He took a step closer. “What happened just now is proof of that.”
“But you were lying to me, weren’t you?” The chaise creaked with the force of her grip. “About why I was the one you came to. You lied.”
David remembered the shock when the French musket ball had ended his life. Jesse’s accusation was like that ball, and with a sickening sense of foreboding he wondered if she had discovered it all.
What he’d done. What he was trying to do. How he was deceiving her.
But as he watched her, it came to him that she was bluffing. For once her expressive face was still, and her eyes observed him with the sharp concentration of a warrior facing his most cunning enemy, waiting for a fatal slip.
No, by Boney’s rotting corpse. Whatever she’d experienced, it hadn’t revealed the whole truth, or she couldn’t have kissed him so wantonly. That kiss had been genuine.
It was time to call her bluff.
“I’m not lying,” he said slowly, “when I tell you that once, long ago, we were lovers.” He sighed, all heartfelt regret and remorse. “Yes, I knew. But I judged that it would be too much to tell you at first.” He rested his hand on the chaise, inches from hers. “It was difficult to hide it. Difficult to
be near you, and not … act.”
Her cheeks surged with hot color under the tan. “Lovers,” she echoed. Accepting, however reluctantly—for how could she ignore what had just passed between them? “It was in England. In a place with hills.”
“You saw it, Jesse. How? What did you remember?”
“It was … so clear. You were younger than you are now. You hadn’t become a soldier yet. And I was different.” Her eyes narrowed. “But I’m telling you things you already know. Your memory—”
“—is a traitor. It gives me the barest glimpses and lets me be sure of only one thing.” He dared to cover her hand with his. “We meant something to each other once. You were dear to me in life. That’s why you have the power to save me.”
She was silent and looked away, but it was not the silence of rejection. The air itself was taut with unspoken feelings. Jesse’s feelings, which she wasn’t ready to share. Or trust.
What she remembered, what she felt might just be enough.
“I know that we were happy together,” he said. “Ah, Jesse. I can see those hills, where we used to walk. And the blue of the lakes below. I can see you in a white gown and bonnet, as fair as summer. Such fragments come back to me.”
“Such as my name?” She pulled her hand from beneath his. “It was Sophie. Oh God. Sophie.”
“I couldn’t be sure of the name,” he said quickly. “Not enough to trust what came to me when I saw you. But I should have trusted your good sense.” He bent his head, willing her to hear his sincerity. “Forgive me.”
She backed from the chaise. “No. You were right the first time. I’m not this Sophie. She isn’t me, no matter what happened in that other place. I’m Jesse Copeland. Don’t forget that, Captain Ventris.”
How hard she fought—him, the unexplained circumstances that had allowed her to recall some fragment of their past together, her own unnamed fears. David admired her for that.
Admiration had been no part of his shallow love for Sophie. Only pity. And anger. And shame.
Body and Soul Page 10
