“I wasn’t seducing—”
“The hell you weren’t, your ladyship,” Wolfe said icily, cutting across her words. “Now listen to me and listen well. You forced this marriage. Until you agree to end it, you will act in public as a married woman. This isn’t Great Britain, nor are the Moran brothers members of British aristocracy. In this time and place, married women have no other man but their husband, and married men have no other woman but their wife. Do you understand me? There will be no lovers for you or for me while this farce of a marriage lasts.”
Before Jessica could answer or protest, Wolfe released her and walked toward the Moran brothers. The music stopped as though cut off by a knife.
“Gentlemen,” Wolfe said with deadly softness, “don’t be fooled by appearances. Lady Jessica forced our marriage by claiming that I had seduced her. I did not. She is as virginal tonight as she was on the instant of her birth. Yet we are married. The little nun prefers it that way, for she knows I won’t force her. She believes she can remain forever a spoiled child, playing at marriage, playing at keeping house, playing at being a woman.”
The silence that followed Wolfe’s words was so absolute that the wail of the wind outside was almost shocking in its volume. Wolfe looked from Rafe to Reno and resumed speaking in the same soft, savagely controlled voice.
“Enjoy Jessica’s smile, enjoy her laughter, enjoy her lively conversation, but don’t get your guts in a knot over a spoiled little tease who whimpers during storms and can’t even build a fire—in or out of bed. Wait for the right woman, one like Willow, a woman, not a girl, a woman strong enough to fight by your side if she must, passionate enough to set fire to your soul as well as your body, and generous enough to give you children despite the risk to her own life. Jessica is not that woman.”
Wolfe turned on his heel and stalked to the front door. The cry of the wind increased as the door opened. Without a word or a look at his wife, Tree That Stands Alone vanished into the windy night.
12
J ESSICA slept more badly than usual that night, for Wolfe’s icy summation of her failures as a Western woman kept echoing in her mind, sliding past all inner barriers, cutting her in ways she couldn’t name. All she could do was endure as she had endured in the past, putting pain and memories behind her, forcing them into parts of her mind she visited her, forcing them into parts of her mind she visited only in nightmares.
But tonight Jessica couldn’t fight as she had fought in the past. Tonight she felt her carefully constructed defenses crumbling like a sand castle beneath a rising tide.
When Wolfe came into the room, undressed silently, and slid beneath the blankets, Jessica was more awake than asleep. The scent of him settled over her, evergreens and fresh snow. His hair radiated the cold wind that writhed over the land.
Lying absolutely still, certain that he sensed her wakefulness, Jessica waited for Wolfe to speak to her. When he simply rolled onto his side with his back to her, she closed her eyes and told herself she was grateful not to hear any more cutting words from Tree That Stands Alone.
But she wasn’t grateful. She would rather have been berated than continue to lie in bed half-dazed with regret and loneliness, listening to the wind’s victorious wail. Shivering with a cold that not even the fur blanket could warm, she waited for sleep to release her. In time, something close to sleep came, but there was no release in it, simply greater vulnerability.
Outside the room, a northern storm descended, fulfilling the harsh promises of the wind. A vast, ice-toothed scythe of sleet sliced horizontally across the land. Pellets of ice hammered over the roof and clawed down windowpanes while the wind screamed in a woman’s voice, describing eternal damnation.
Her mother’s voice.
Terror that was colder than the storm froze Jessica. Neither asleep nor yet awake, she clenched her teeth against the cries locked within her throat. She would not let Wolfe hear her.
…a spoiled little tease who whimpers during storms.
With a soundless cry of despair, Jessica turned her face into the pillow, fighting memories, fighting nightmares, fighting herself. Sensing weakness, the wind howled around her. Its icy fingers pried beneath her control, screaming to her in her mother’s voice.
But it was Wolfe’s words Jessica heard, Wolfe’s words that stripped her to her naked soul.
Wait for the right woman, one like Willow, a woman not a girl…a woman passionate enough to set your soul on fire…generous enough to give you children despite the risk to her own life.
Jessica is not that woman.
The wind screamed triumphantly as memory, nightmare, and storm combined, telling Jessica that she was alone and the wind was everywhere.
The sounds she refused to make shuddered through her tense body. Though she managed to stem her own cries, she could not stem the black tide of memories drowning her, a childhood recalled by her mother’s voice screaming with the wind, incidents she had spent a lifetime hiding from except in nightmares, and those she refused to remember upon awakening.
But Jessica finally was awake now. She was remembering her mother’s screams and her father’s curses, two figures interlocked on the hallway floor in brutal sexual combat.
I won’t remember!
Yet Jessica could not stop remembering.
Abruptly, she knew she could control her cries no longer. There was only one place where she would be free. Outside, in the center of the wind’s violence, where nothing living could hear her scream.
Just as Jessica’s legs slid over the edge of the bed, a powerful arm snaked around her waist and hauled her backward. The contact was unexpected, an extension of her nightmare where her father’s thick arm hooked around her fleeing mother, draging her down to the mating she had fought with every bit of strength in her small body.
Wolfe sensed the wild tension in Jessica the instant before she exploded. He put his free hand over her mouth, shutting off her scream as he bore her down beneath him on the bed. After a flurry of struggle, he overwhelmed her attempts to be free of him. Soon she was helpless, her arms stretched above her head, her wrists locked together in one of Wolfe’s hands, his other hand clamped over her mouth, and his big body pinning her so completely she could barely breathe. Screaming was impossible. So was escape.
“If you think I’m going to let you tiptoe off to have your feelings soothed by one of those fine Moran brothers, you’re crazy,” Wolfe said in a low, savage voice.
At first the words didn’t register through Jessica’s panic. Finally, the simple fact that she was helpless but not being hurt penetrated her fear. It was Wolfe imprisoning her. It was Wolfe speaking to her. Wolfe, whom she had trusted from the first moment she saw him. Wolfe, who would never hurt her as her mother had been hurt. Wolfe, who had been her talisman against nightmare and waking terror. Wolfe, who might hate her, but would never rape her.
With a convulsive shudder, Jessica stopped fighting.
“That’s better, your ladyship. I know my touch repulses you, but that’s too damned bad. You’re the one who wanted to be married, not me.”
Jessica’s eyes widened. She turned her head from side to side, trying to evade Wolfe’s hand over her mouth. After a moment, he lifted his palm. She licked her lips and tried to speak. On the third attempt, words came.
“Being touched by you doesn’t repulse me,” she whispered. “Truly, Wolfe.”
“You lie very sweetly, Sister Jessica, but your body tells me the truth,” Wolfe said sardonically. “You would have screamed and clawed my eyes out if I had let you. Hardly the act of a girl pleased by a man’s touch.”
“You don’t understand. I was remembering and then you grabbed me, and I didn’t know what was memory or nightmare and what was real.”
“Save your lies for the Moran brothers. They believe you’re half the woman you look to be. I know better.”
Wolfe released Jessica and rolled aside as though repelled by the very feel of her skin.
“Wolfe,”
she whispered raggedly, reaching out to him. “Wolfe, you’re the only one I’ve ever trusted. Please don’t abandon me to the wind. It will steal my mind as surely as it stole hers.”
The cold trembling of Jessica’s hand on his arm shocked Wolfe almost as much as her words.
“It’s just a storm,” he said roughly.
“No,” Jessica whispered. “It stole her soul. Can’t you hear her screaming? Listen. It’s the cry of a woman newly damned.”
A chill moved down Wolfe’s spine. The slow shudders that took Jessica’s body were transmitted to him by the cold fingers clinging to his arm. Despite his anger, he could no more turn away from her naked pleas than he could walk out of his own skin. He put his hand over hers, trying to warm her fingers.
“Jessi…it’s just the wind, no more.”
She didn’t hear Wolfe. She heard only the keening cry of her memories. Wide-eyed, motionless but for the trembling she couldn’t control, she lay and listened to the wind, knowing that soon her mother would drag herself from her father’s bed and walk the stone hallways, crying and wailing, her screams rising and falling in awful harmony with the wind.
“Jessi?”
There was no answer but her quick, shallow breaths. Slowly, Wolfe gathered Jessica against his body. Though she was so tense that she was all but rigid, she didn’t fight his embrace. She simply lay against him, quivering like a bowstring drawn to the breaking point. He had felt the same shivering in her once before, when he had held her amid a fragrant haystack while a wild storm hammered all around. She had been crying with fear then.
He found himself wishing that she would weep now.
She didn’t. She simply lay and shuddered at random, finally driven beyond her ability to endure. The knowledge that he had pushed Jessica to the point of breaking brought no triumph to Wolfe. Had he been able, he would have undone every hurtful word. He had never meant to bring her this low.
“It’s all right, elf,” Wolfe said gently. He stroked Jessica’s back, trying to draw some of the tension from her. “Nothing can harm you. I’ll keep you safe.”
“I thought so once,” she whispered. A shudder racked her body. “Nothing can hold back the wind.”
“The wind can’t hurt you.’ Wolfe’s hand smoothed slowly over Jessica’s soft hair. “You’re safe with me.”
The silence went on so long Wolfe became uneasy. He turned aside for a moment to light a candle, thinking that the warm dance of flame would comfort Jessica. When he turned back, she was watching the window with a fixed stare that made his skin cold.
“Jessi?” he whispered.
“Dinna ye hear her, laddie?” Jessica asked, her voice and accents that of the Scots child she once had been.
Ice slid down Wolfe’s spine. “Who do you hear?”
Jessica blinked and her voice changed, her accents becoming clipped, English. “The earl is at mum again. First the screaming and then the bleeding and then the burying.”
Wolfe looked down at Jessica. Her eyes were still wide, still focused on something only she could see, something that so horrified her that she was literally chilled by the sight.
“Tell me what you see,” Wolfe commanded gently.
She closed her eyes. “I will not remember.”
“You must. It’s eating you alive. Name your devil and it can’t own you. Name it, Jessi. Nothing is worse than what you now feel.”
Thunder broke in an avalanche of sound that shook the house. Jessica didn’t flinch, for she was caught in a far older, far more violent storm. Her eyes opened. They were sightless, fixed on a past only she could see.
“The earl wants a son,” she whispered. There was no English accent, no Scots burr, nothing but the rhythms and accents of the West.
Wolfe stroked Jessica’s hair, trying to reassure her.
“Go on,” he said softly.
“The earl wants a son.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Mother doesn’t want to breed. She never wanted to breed after the first time. It near killed her.”
Wolfe’s hand hesitated as he remembered Jessica’s certainty that women never wanted another child after bearing the first. Slowly, he continued the soothing downward motion of his hand over Jessica’s tangled hair.
“Is your father angry about your mother?”
“Always. He’s drunk. He’s walking down the hall to mother’s room. The door is locked. He hammers on it and hammers on it. I can’t hear a lot of what he yells because it’s storming and she is screaming again.”
Wolfe closed his eyes for an instant, hoping that the suspicions coiling coldly in his gut were wrong.
“Does your mother open the door?” he asked.
“No.”
With a silent sigh of relief, Wolfe asked, “What else do you see?”
“He takes an ax to the door. Thunder and chopping and screaming. She sounds just like the wind screaming.”
Wolfe closed his eyes for an instant. Very gently, he brushed his lips over Jessica’s forehead. Her skin was clammy.
“He drags her into the hall,” Jessica continued, “swearing he’ll have a son of her if it’s the last thing either one of them ever does. Some nights I thought it would be.”
Wolfe’s heart turned over as he sensed what was coming next. “Jessi…”
She didn’t hear. “Mother would fight and he would beat her until she was quiet so he could rut on her. When it was over she just lay there until I came and washed off the blood and took her back to bed.”
“Merciful God,” Wolfe breathed, horrified. “You were just a child!”
Jessica kept talking as though Wolfe hadn’t spoken. She no longer wanted to stem the floodtide of memories. She wanted only to make Wolfe understand that she hadn’t withdrawn from him because he repulsed her.
“Sometimes she simply miscarried after weeks of sickness,” Jessica continued relentlessly. “Sometimes she grew big despite the endless vomiting and fainting. Then she slowly turned yellow and was brought screaming to a childbed, knowing the babe within was dead. No one from the village would tend her, for they believed her cursed. I stayed with her.”
“Jessi…” Wolfe’s voice broke.
“When it was finished, I washed and dressed the tiny corpse in a christening gown. They were like wax dolls, as still and pale as the marble headstone we placed on the grave. Six headstones all in a row.”
Jessica looked through Wolfe with wide, dilated eyes. “I did what I could to keep the wind from taking them and her. The wind took them anyway, and finally it took her. I heard their voices in every storm, yet I hear hers most of all. She’s calling to me, reminding me what horror awaits women in the marriage bed.”
Wolfe started to touch Jessica comfortingly, then stopped, not wanting to frighten her. He finally understood all too well how a man’s touch could horrify her.
A final, violent shudder went through Jessica’s body. When it passed, she focused on Wolfe for the first time since memories had claimed her. She could see little more of him than his outline against the golden glow of the candle. Hesitantly, she lifted her hands to his face, needing reassurance of his reality.
“You are so warm,” she breathed.
Slowly, she caressed Wolfe’s cheeks, enjoying the heat of life burning beneath his skin, warming herself as though he were a fire. The simple hunger for his warmth made Wolfe understand how cold she had felt. He tried to speak, but had no words to equal the mixture of emotions tangled within him.
“I didn’t mean to fight you,” Jessica whispered, struggling to keep her voice from breaking. “Not my own Wolfe.” Her arms went around Wolfe’s neck as she pressed her face against his chest. “Please don’t hate me. You’re the only one I’ve ever trusted.”
Wolfe felt the sudden heat of her tears against his neck and his own eyes burned. He made a low sound and touched her cheek with a hand that trembled.
“I don’t hate you, Jessi,” he said hoarsely. “Never that.”
&nb
sp; She turned to press a kiss against his palm.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t turn the knife,” he said, his voice fraying. “I should be the one asking you not to hate me. I thought you were just spoiled and stubborn. I didn’t know you were fighting for your life.”
Wolfe’s lips brushed repeatedly over Jessica’s eyelids and lashes, taking her tears. “Don’t cry, elf. Don’t cry. It tears out my heart. Please stop. I’ll never be cruel like that again.”
“I’m s-sorry. I know my tears d-disgust you, but I—”
Wolfe’s thumb pressed gently against Jessica’s lips, stilling her words. “Your tears don’t disgust me.”
“But you s-said—”
His thumb pressed against her lips once more. “Hush, little one. When I said that, I was furious because I thought my touch repulsed you.”
“Never,” Jessica said instantly, tightening her arms around Wolfe’s neck. “Never never never! You were my talisman against the wind. I carried you inside my heart, but then you started hating me and there was nothing left but the wind.”
Wolfe’s throat closed as an agonizing combination of sorrow and self-contempt claimed him. His arms tightened, holding Jessica close enough to feel her breath against his skin.
“Where were you going when I stopped you a few minutes ago?” he asked finally.
“To the wind.”
When Wolfe tried to speak, he couldn’t. Then words came in a whispered rush, her name repeated with every breath as he brushed kisses over her eyelids and cheeks. He wanted to tell her how much he regretted hurting her, yet all he could think of was how he had failed to understand her.
When I’m with you, I don’t hear the wind.
Then he had turned on her and driven her toward the very thing that most terrified her.
“I’m sorry, Jessi,” Wolfe whispered finally. “If I had known, I never would have been so harsh. Can you believe that?”
Jessica nodded, her face pressed tightly against Wolfe’s neck.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
Again she nodded, and held him even more tightly.
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