by Susan Ward
If there had been a shred of doubt in Varian that he loved her, it would not have survived the vision she made. The pure colors of Merry, her spirit and flesh, were set free and dazzling in their unfurling. All hue around her was muted in comparison.
Varian sank down on the verdant bed next to her, on his side, his body close and turned toward her. She neither lifted her lids nor startled. There was quiet between them for a long time. She sipped the colors of nature and held them, more vivid now that they were her own. She sipped him and held him spellbound.
She turned onto her side toward him, her body curling over in a fluid glide, limbs turned to earth with the lazy, graceful motion of a drowsy, content kitten not ready to stir.
Merry didn’t open her eyes, but said on a breathy voice, important, “Do you have a handkerchief, Varian?”
The words could have so easily been misread as a part of Merry’s whimsy. It would have not suited the aura of her at this moment, so there was nothing whimsical about her, not even with such a peculiar phrase eased in airy earnest between them. For once, Varian could read her not at all. That fascinated him all the more. He was in even greater entrapment by her at this moment.
He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and her soft breath from her pink parted lips brushed his hand as she made a slow move to retrieve it. With dainty fingers she spread it wide on the grass between them and then spread it with the soil she’d been clutching.
It took her a moment to explain what she was doing, a careful search of words for her because this was serious to her. “I love my cousin Kate very much. She is a year older than I. We were always going to explore America together. She is a creature who understands through her senses. She needs to touch, to feel, to breathe of things as I do. I can describe America to her, its beauty and how it makes me feel, but she will never understand without this why I feel at peace here. The oneness I feel lying in this grass. I can’t take all of Virginia home to Kate. I will have to settle for a little bit of her earth. Do you think it will hold its scent, or will it fade with time?”
Merry’s eyes lifted to him then and they were brilliant pools of endless azure. Running a fingertip down the sloping curve of her cheeks, letting it trace only once around the silky line of her under lip, he whispered, “I don’t know if it will hold its scent, or if it will fade with time. How do you mean to explain to your cousin Kate with this, Little One?”
There was a dreamlike sweetness to her smile. Merry’s face moved into him, kitten soft cheek moving in a light rub on his chest, and then she took a deep inhale of breath. She pulled back and brought his own arm to him.
“Smell,” she instructed. When he did, her smile curled upward in happy sureness. “You are an English cool mist on fragrant grass whispering of wintergreen. Refined, calm and elegant. It floats all in the air around you, wherever you are. A hint, always subtle, but there and dominating the air. Fragrance of home. You are England. So is Kate.”
Every cell in his body was on fire for her. She was seducing him in this and was not even trying to; seducing him with the pure sharing of herself. She brought her own hand to the tip of her dainty nose and breathed in deeply. The pale flesh of her palms and fingers, dusted of earth, was turned upward beneath him. “Smell.”
Varian closed his hand around her fine bone wrist and held her palm close enough so the under skin of her forearm touched his lips. He inhaled deeply of her. Merry didn’t pull back her hand. Her spectacular blue-bell eyes sparkled as they opened wide.
“I am this dust. A strange myriad of sharply contrasting spices. They never blend into each other. They are set apart and defined. The essence of each is unleashed, sharp, varied and rightly so. Each ribbon is its own, and has to be so, so it can hold all it nuance as it’s supposed to. This dust is America to me. I am more like America. I have never once been England. Cool mist on fragrant grass. Hint of wintergreen. Refined, calm and elegant. I am unleashed and varied of scent. A sharp array of never blending or taming fragrances, and I only feel rightly when I am so.”
“Do know how much you bewitch me?”
Varian’s voice had a lush quality that stirred her. She took a deep breath, sorting through all the clutter heavy on her heart. Around them the meadow whispered from the grass, the scent of it mixing with the clover and thistle.
“I am dirt. You are grass,” she said presently. Biting her lower lip once, it was hard for her to put it between them, but she asked, “Why do you want me?”
Those worldly black eyes searched her, then grew gentle. “The grass breathes on the surface, above the dirt, a compliment of color, nothing more. Its roots, the heart of it, digs deep so it will live, deep in the dirt. Without the dirt, there is no grass. It is the dirt that feeds a man.”
Then, because it was impossible not to, Varian rolled her beneath him and they were kissing. At first touch it was hungry, deep and desperate for them both. His body covered her full length. Fear and yearning sparked down her flesh as Merry melted into him, meeting into the play of his lips and hands, until the pounding urge in her body was painful.
She reached up a shaking hand and placed it against his chest, using her arm to push Varian away from her, but only until his face was there above her eyes. “I want to share more than kissing with you,” she whispered. Merry’s voice was the languid tone of a woman raging in desire for a man. “There must be something in-between you kissing me, and me going to your bed. I want to know what comes in-between for the first time with you.”
Beneath him, her eyes were lush pools of hunger and arousal. Varian could bring her relief to her body without making love to her, but he knew if he went any further neither of them would stop. His body had gone unsated for months. Merry was raging hot passion and didn’t know how to control it.
It took him several ragged breaths as he lie still not touching her, until his body came back into a comfortable order. He brought his lips to hers in a gentle kiss as he folded her in his arms, and slowly he stood in the meadow with Merry cradled against his chest. The kisses never broke, not until they were at the house and he set her on her feet on the top front step.
Merry’s eyes were wide with confusion and frustration. “I don’t understand.”
Plucking a piece of clover from her hair, his expression was sorrowful and strained. “This is what comes in-between, Little One. I would have carried you to my bed,” he said, his whisper brushing across her cheeks. “Don’t wander too far, Merry, until you are sure where you are wandering.”
Merry stood there, trembling, watching until Varian disappeared.
~~~
Later that day she started her flux. Certain that this was some warning from God over her foolishness in the meadow, Merry promptly went to her bedroom and stayed there. She sat curled in a chair, rags tucked between her legs, absently picked at the dinner tray April had brought to her.
It was late in the night before there was a knock on her door. Varian entered without waiting for her to answer and moved to stand near the fireplace. His expression was inscrutable, but there was much to his eyes that instantly stirred her.
Into her silence, he said, “I return to sea soon. I am not bringing you back aboard ship with me.”
Merry looked up quickly. “You’ve already made that abundantly clear, you insufferable man. What is the point of saying the words?”
Her voice was sharper than she intended, and she regretted both the telltale edge and his reaction to it. His eyes turned back into emotionless shadows.
There was a pause, then he crossed the room to sink down on the carpet in front of her chair. He said, “There is much I have left to do, Little One. It is a delicate tangle I must work free of. But should it go awry, Merry, I do not want you with me aboard my ship.”
“Then we both will have at last what we wish for,” she countered.
He gave her a strange look and then his eyes grew gentler. He lifted her hand. “You do not understand, Little One. It is not my wish to leave you. I bro
ught you here to keep you safe. And before I leave, I would like to give you the protection of my name.”
Merry stared at him, not certain where he was going with this. It was too illogical to think that.
Varian placed a light kiss in her palm that went straight to her heart. “I have wanted you since the first moment I set eyes on you. Not in my bed for a single night, but with me always. When the perfect comes the partial will pass away. You are the perfect, Little One, which has made the partial of me pass away. Winderly is where I will end my journey and I want you here, with me, so that I may know true happiness.”
The floodtide of tears came in a flash and were impossible to contain. “Is this your gentlemanly way to ask me to remain here as your mistress?”
Varian had the good manners to lower his gaze from her at that. “I must be out of practice at this since I am not doing it well. You misunderstand me. I could never think to ask you to accept me in those terms. You deserve so much more than I could ever provide you, but I will give you all that I have if you will but have me. As unusual of manner as my conduct in this may seem to you, I have been courting you, not seducing you, from your first day aboard my ship. Little one, I am asking you to marry me before I return to sea. If I cannot be with you before I leave, I do not know how I will stay intact without you.”
It took a moment to absorb his words. Marry? Her foolish heart went one direction, logic another, and her mind yet a third. Staring at his face, afraid of where her heart might lead her in this, she asked with more ire than she intended, “And who would I be marrying, Varian? There are so many of you. Varian Deverell? Varian Devereaux? Morgan? What name are you honoring me with in the offering of this proposal?”
He seemed to tense, but Merry wasn’t sure. However, she did not miss the reluctance in his voice as he said, “Varian Devereaux.”
Was that who he was? Was she at last to learn the truth of this man? Suspicion rose its ugly head within her. She’d learn during her months with Varian, not to jump at first bite of bait. Her gaze narrowed. “And is that who you are?”
It was hard to tell for certain, but it almost looked like he flushed. “No, I am not Varian Devereaux.”
It was as she suspected. More games. More untruths. Humiliation shot through her from head to toe. “So you do me the honor of asking me to marry a man when I do not know who he is or even his name. To accept a lie that would be nothing more than another of your fictions. A fiction that would be no marriage at all, but a meaningless gesture to get me into your bed before you go back to sea.”
He stood up then and took a step back. His muscles tightened in that odd way they did when he struggled to control whatever was within him.
“It is the best of the names I can offer you, Merry,” Varian said with real feeling. “Who I am by choice, not birth. What could possibly be less of a fiction than that? My past matters not to me just as your past matters not to me. It is who we are today that is more the true measure of what we have to give each other. I have no wish to share with you anything beyond what I have in my heart and the life we can share together here. It is the best of the offers I can give you, as this offer comes with my heart. I am a faithful man and I want it a permanent union with you in all ways. I want you to be my wife in true. I want to be your husband. I can give you everything, every part of that situation, anything your whim desires, but I will never give you the truth of my past. That is a history better left behind for the both of us. It has no part in the future I hope to know with you here.”
Merry’s laughter was a harsh combination of hurt and tears. “How gentlemanly you are. I suppose I should be flattered. A fictitious marriage. A proposal in such unlikely circumstance, from such an unlikely man, after such an unlikely courtship.”
Varian wondered how many years would have to pass before he could call up the memory of her face at this moment and not be sick at heart from it. Very gently, he explained, “Devereaux is the closest to an honest existence I have had in ten years. It is the best of the names I can offer you. And you deserve nothing short of marriage. I want you willing, wanting, and happy to be with me in every way a man and woman should be together. Pledged to each other before God. No fiction at all, but a union of respect, of affection, of permanence and with passion in intimacy. There is no need for you to be alarmed by this because I have been direct in letting you know my affections are very deeply claimed by you. It is your will what you will have of me and this passion we share in our bodies and hearts.”
The wind whispered beyond the windows, as lulling as the tender softening of the blackness of his eyes and the feather touch of his fingers gliding in comforting strokes on her arms. Every thread of logic told her this was only another of his games with her, but in her raging heart she knew he meant every word.
Holding her gaze, he said, “I have another offer for you, Merry. If you want me to return you to Falmouth rather than to find out what we may make of this, I will take you there as soon as I return from this next voyage. I only ask that you tell me who you are, so I will have the comfort of knowing what I am releasing you to. I won’t return you to a fate that I am uncertain of, a fate which may come to harm you as you could have been the night I found you. You expect too much of me if you think I can release you without knowing you’ll be safe and cared for. My affection for you will not permit me to let you go without reassurance of your future.”
Merry closed her eyes. An offer of marriage and an offer of her freedom, and her love of this man made it impossible to accept either. Love was cruel at times. Fate even crueler.
Her tension was held all through her, giving her the air of tragedy. Her words were the first she could string together. “I will never tell you who I am, and I will never accept an offer of marriage from you. And certainly not one that does not include the truth of who you are.”
She could no longer meet his stare. Anxiously brushing her tears, she lowered her gaze. Her love for him had never been more unkind than in this moment. She wanted him, but fate made that impossible and fear forced her to say the words she hoped would protect her.
“You want from me the only thing that is mine alone to give and you expect it in exchange for a lie. It would have been kinder to have returned me to Falmouth before I cared for you, Varian. You have made me want what I can never allow myself to have.”
The touch of Varian’s finger against her face penetrated all through her, in spite of its lightness. “I waited for you to want what you may have if you let yourself, Little One.”
Miserable, she whispered, “I want to go back to Falmouth.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. And the man you pretend not be will let me go, as I need to, whether I tell him the truth of who I am or not.”
Varian smile was tender and full of irony. “No, Little One, he is the man who compels me to keep you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
In the days that followed, it was almost as though Varian wasn’t at Winderly. How two people could exist in a single house and never see each other was a mystery to Merry. She passed most of her hours in her room because of her flux and in two days he was leaving.
It was better this way, she told herself. If she saw Varian, she wouldn’t have the strength to hold herself from him. He was in her flesh, a treacherous spirit, and it would take so little urging to crumble and behave a fool with him.
On the day before Varian would depart for the Corinthian, she woke to realize it was her twentieth birthday. Misery held back the announcement of that and pride kept her in her room another day.
It was not until evening that Varian appeared unexpectedly through the adjoining door of their bedchambers. He did not bother to knock. Merry remained as she was, frozen in her bed, tightly clutching the blanket about her.
Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she fought back the tears in her eyes as she noted he carried a package. He remembered it was her birthday. He stopped at the chair beside the bed but he did not sit down.
; “I could not leave without giving you this and wishing you blessing on this day,” he said abruptly. His voice was harsh and his eyes were the blackness of night. What was in them, she was not yet ready to see.
Varian set the package upon her lap.
“Thank you,” Merry whispered in a small, thin voice.
She stared at the package for a while and, as it was clear he would not leave until she opened it, she reluctantly tore back the paper. The smile came against her will, small, reluctant, but there. It was the picture book from the shop in Richmond, the one her brother had given to her at nine. Such a silly gesture, so unlike him, and dearer to her than any other present could be. Each thing of her Varian held in his mind and heart, were the things most dear to her.
Half-laughing, half-choking back tears, she whispered, “I can’t believe you brought me this. Thank you, sir. It is a present I will cherish.” Her trembling fingers touched the covering.
Unbending a tad, Varian gracefully lowered to sit beside her on the bed. His fingers were warm as they lifted her face to meet his eyes. His voice was strangely intense. “Everything you may ever wish to know of me if you have a wish to know it is contained in this book, Little One.”
Merry’s eyes widened at that, and slowly she opened the pages. There was nothing here but the same story she knew well. Then, on the inside of the cover, she realized something was written there. A formal document transferring the ownership of this land to her with the name and address of his solicitor.
Stunned, she said, “I don’t understand? Why would you give me your home?”
“I wanted to give you more, Merry. It is you who would not accept all that I wish to give. Still, I could not in good conscience leave you without being assured of your fate. Who you were in Falmouth is lost to you. You are young. You do not believe it yet, but it is true. This will not give back what you lost, but it will protect you in the future. This is now your home and you do not ever have to accept anything you do not wish to, whether it is me, the will of your father, or from the cruelness of necessity. This makes you a very wealthy woman, Merry. I do not know if this wealth will give you freedom. It can provide you your own life by choice, not birth.”
