His own release brought a shattering moan and near convulsive shudders as his seed spilled inside her. He collapsed on top of her; she barely felt his weight on her although she could feel the dampness of his perspiration on his back and fur pelted chest. For the first time in four months, she felt whole. Tears welled in her eyes as he rolled off her and fell asleep next to her. Not knowing what else to do, she cuddled up against his side and drifted off herself, her hand on his chest.
ALONG ABOUT two a.m., Beatrice woke up and began to cry. The sound slowly roused Adele, but as she moved to respond, her partner opened his eyes and rolled out of bed. Still naked, he walked toward the crib. He leaned down into the crib and picked up the little girl, holding her to his bare chest.
"Don't cry now, sweeting, Daddy's here," he crooned, smoothing her curls.
The words brought Adele to immediate attention. In the dim light she saw him approach the bed again and sit. She took a good look at his eyes; they were cloudy and unfocused in a way she had never seen.
She took a deep breath and a big chance. "Brian?"
"I think she may be hungry." He held Beatrice out to her.
Adele held Bea to her naked breast. The baby rooted a moment and found the familiar tap and began to suck contentedly.
She took another look; her gaze was not met. Brian was looking in her direction but not really at her.
"Brian, I'm so glad you're back. I missed you."
He cocked his head slightly and grinned, "Green River's not so far away. Did Susannah enjoy her paintbox?"
"Brian, what date is it?"
"Silly girl," he said kissing her forehead. "It's December eighth, Susannah's birthday, unless it's after midnight already."
"What do you remember last?"
There was a pause. His brow furrowed. "Thunder was screaming, spooked at something. He must have kicked me; I don't remember getting home tonight."
Brian stroked Adele's hair. "I love it when you unplait your hair. It's like a satin curtain." He pressed her head against his shoulder; Bea wedged between them. "It's so right, the three of us together. I was right that first day. You are an angel."
He took the sated Beatrice back into his arms and rising, brought her back to her crib. Adele saw the outline of his magnificent body, still hard with muscle even if his hands were now smooth, as he moved back to the bed. She held out her arms, welcoming him back into that intimate space.
"Brian, I love you so much."
"Ten times your love wouldn't equal mine for you."
She sobbed. "Make love to me, please darling."
His old crooked grin appeared, seeming strange under the well-trimmed mustache. He pressed his lips to her shoulder and blew against her skin like a trumpet. Adele squealed as he moved his hands to her taut belly and began to tickle her mercilessly with the backs of his fingers. She laughed and tickled him back, teasing his ridged stomach as his hands drifted down to her sable thatch. His tickles turned to caresses as he manipulated her throbbing bud with his fingers.
For her part she found one of his flat copper nipples and began to lave it with tongue and teeth.
"You undo me," he groaned hoarsely.
Shifting in the bed, she responded, "I haven't even begun to undo you."
Rising to her hands and knees, she pushed Brian back in the bed. Using her own fingernails, she drifted lines of heat down his belly to his own protective nest. Gently she slid her hands under his scrotum and around his manroot. She lowered her head to its iron length and velvet tip. Brian gasped as she moved her tongue around the underside of the ridge where tip joined shaft. She bit slightly, not to cause pain, but to tease and arouse.
Brian's breath ragged, he reveled in sensation as she slid her fingers and tongue up and down his sex. He hardened beyond standing.
"If I'm not inside you in two seconds, I'm going to lose control completely," he groaned.
"Do your worst, sir," she challenged with a laugh.
He sat up, pushing her flat on her back in return. Straddling her, he parted her legs and plunged into her. He began to move slowly, taking his time, playing with her. Adele was already so aroused by having him back that his release signaled hers. In two years as lovers and spouses they had never come at the same time although before it had usually been one following closely on the other. Tonight they came together, crying their mutual release before drifting off into sated slumber.
MORNING FOUND Adele alone in bed, the sheets cold, but smelling of sex. She knew for certain she had made love to Blair that night, but had she dreamed about Brian, or had it happened?
The door opened a crack. Susannah peeked in. Seeing Adele alone, she came in. She was clad in her chemise and pantalets and Stephen's dressing gown. Her gown, petticoats and corset were folded over her arm. Susannah entered briefly and came over to the bed. She held out her left hand to her older sister. On her ring finger was a small gold and turquoise ring, her birth stone. She mouthed the word "June" and disappeared again.
BREAKFAST DOWN in the kitchen alcove was a chorus of odd notes. Susannah came down from the third floor humming snatches of the incidental music Mendelssohn wrote for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which she'd heard played the night before. "Good morning, Bertha. Isn't it a glorious day to be alive?"
Adele came down. She was serious looking, but to Susannah's eyes, her mouth showed definite signs of having been thoroughly kissed the night before.
"Good morning, Sissy," Susannah sang out, planting a kiss on Adele's cheek. "Did everything turn out as you planned?"
"More or less," she sighed, "I'll tell you about it privately tonight if you remind me."
"Okay, got to run. Sissy, will you have time to make me a dress for that date in June I told you about or should I go to a dressmaker?"
"I should be able to pull something together for you... I'm really very happy for you."
"Gosh, I'm happy, too. I don't think I've been this happy in my life--even drawing."
Stephen came down next. He was dressed in the suit she recognized as the one he wore to court. It was his most sober suit, but the satisfied grin on his face was at odds with his costume.
"Good morning, Adele, Bertha. I need a cup of coffee and some raw eggs. I've got to eat some defense attorney's cojones for breakfast but I'm in too good a mood to be bloodthirsty. Oh, Bertha, you might as well scramble those eggs. I could never eat them raw. I'll just have to chew on the carriage reins to get good and deadly this morning."
"Well, Lord above, Mr. Stephen, what's got into you?" asked Bertha.
Stephen grabbed the plump old cook and spun her around, then pulled Adele into his grasp and danced around the kitchen.
"Bertha, my love, I'm getting married. I'm in love and getting married as soon as possible. I'm going to have the most beautiful wife and the most beautiful sister-in-law and the most beautiful niece in the world."
He continued to dance with Adele, singing the wedding march he'd heard the night before.
"I feel like playing hooky today and spending the day in the park with the woman I love...."
"Well, I feel it would be a better idea if you went to Superior Court and won Carroll Enterprises v. Bosworth Lines instead."
At Blair's sour voice, Stephen stopped swinging Adele around. His smile faded and he looked from his brother to his sister-in-law and back. Adele shrugged her shoulders and went back to the table where she swallowed her lukewarm tea and picked up a tray containing cooked cereal for the children.
Bertha served Stephen his eggs and he bolted them down, followed with a swallow of scalding hot coffee. Casting a sidelong glance at Blair, Stephen declared, "Now I'm feeling aggressive. Better, big brother?" With that he stormed out of the kitchen.
"What happened," asked Adele, "wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Or was it just the wrong bed?" she added in a harsh whisper as she headed upstairs to the nursery.
Adele was feeding cereal to Beatrice when Blair opened the nursery door. "My office, ten minutes," he snapped
and shut the door. The door immediately opened again and Blair took a long look at Beatrice and shut the door again without saying a word.
Josh's eyes widened. "What's wrong, Miss Adele? Is Daddy angry with you?"
"I don't know, sweetheart. I guess I'll find out in ten minutes."
"Did you have a fight last night after I fell asleep?"
"No, sweetheart, anything but."
Joshua ran over to Adele and hugged her. "You're not going to leave me, are you?"
"I'm not planning to leave, but if I do, I promise I will tell you before I go. Is that a deal?"
"I love you, Miss Adele."
"I love you, too, Josh, almost as if you were my own little boy."
"I hate him."
"Don't say that. Your Daddy is a very sad man who can't always remember how many people really love him. I'll bet if you continue to love him like you love Uncle Stephen and Beatrice and me you'll help him to love you back. It's like someone cast a spell on him so he would be mean and stern. We'll have to love him an awful lot to break the spell. Can you do that?"
"Yes, Miss Adele."
WHEN ADELE entered the office, Blair was standing at the large window, looking out. She couldn't remember seeing the drapes drawn in the room so the brightness was surprising. She quietly walked over and sat in one of the wing chairs.
"I'm afraid I did you a disservice last night," Blair began.
"In what way?"
"I've had more than my share of women in my time, but I've never seduced a married woman before. I feel damned wretched about it."
"Don't. You didn't exactly take me against my will."
"That concerns me, too," he added sternly, still looking out the window.
"Sit down, Blair," Adele demanded carefully. "I can't talk to your back like this."
He sat down in the chair opposite her. "How much are you aware of my history?"
"Well, I don't know where you were born, but I have a pretty good idea about the rest. By the way, where were you born?"
"That's not important now...Baltimore as it happens."
"Really? Me, too. That's peculiar."
Blair ignored her response. "What do you know about the last two or three years of my life?"
Adele stiffened. "What do you want me to know?"
"There are two years missing from my life. Traveling home from Wisconsin, I left the train I was on and was riding to a small town to pick up a spur line. On my way there I was assaulted by bandits and remember nothing else until I showed up on my own doorstep this past December, two years after I left Milwaukee. Everything else about that time is gone. The only clues I have are the clothes I was wearing, a horseshoe nail ring and changes in my physique. Before then, I was built along Stephen's lines. I don't even have the train ticket to know if or where I picked up the train."
"Do you have dreams you can't explain?"
Blair started. "Why would you ask that?" he asked suspiciously.
"Well, um, I've heard that people who've lost their memory sometimes have dreams where they see clues about the time they've forgotten. Do you have those kinds of dreams?"
"Yes, I keep seeing a woman I call my dark angel. Usually we're either outdoors or in a roughly built cabin. But last night I had the strangest dream yet."
"Tell me."
"Usually the dark angel is either reaching toward me or is weeping. Last night in my dream I made love to her. She had a baby--I knew it was our baby--the angel's and mine. I held it in my arms and it knew me. It seemed so right. But it was like it wasn't me, it was someone else."
"Could you see any faces or recognize where you were?"
"No, I never can see any faces, but yesterday the place seemed more familiar, more civilized somehow. And the angel spoke to me. I couldn't understand what she said, but her voice was soft and her skin was so white...." He buried his face in his hands.
Adele dropped to her knees before him. Softly she said, "If you think it's not right to have made love to me and you don't want to do it again, I'll understand. But I don't regret having done it. I wanted it every bit as much as you did, maybe more--and I'd welcome you to my bed again anytime you want...Blair, your family has become very dear to me...You've become very dear to me in spite of yourself."
"You don't understand. I think the angel in my dreams is a woman I married during the time I can't remember. I think that's what this ring means. I've never worn a ring on my left hand before. The signet is from necessity now...but the other...Somehow I believe it's a wedding ring. I'm married and have a child other than Joshua somewhere. If I can't remember who my dark angel is I can never go back to her, nor will I ever be free to be with anyone else. I'm married to a stranger who cannot let me go."
Adele reached up and brushed his hair with her hand. "I do understand. Remember, I'm married to a man who disappeared on me and when I located him again he didn't know who I was. I may never be free either. Please, Blair, let yourself love. Someone very special gave me that advice once and it changed my life. If not me--or your angel--then love your son. He's more adrift than either of us because he's completely helpless. If he grows up without love he'll grow hard and mean--and that would break my heart."
"You mean, don't let him grow up like me."
"Blair, the sins of the fathers don't have to be visited on the sons. You're not Oscar and Joshua isn't you. He can overcome his bastard birth and his mother dying if he has an anchor. You're his father; you can't afford to leave it to anyone else to do for you. You're capable of raising your son--look at the job you did with Stephen--how fine a man he's turned out to be. If he hasn't told you yet, your brother is getting married in June. He'll be raising his own family. Joshua's anchor has to be your love."
She rose to leave.
"Adele, what happens to you?"
"I don't know. I have my daughter and my memories. I'll make do. I always have and I always will. It's the way I was brought up."
"Adele, who is Beatrice's father?" Blair asked suddenly.
Adele answered stiffly, "Brian Strange."
"She doesn't take after you, does she."
"No, she takes after her father, like Joshua takes after you. Before all this happened she was Daddy's girl, but then, he brought her into the world. Susannah drew a beautiful sketch last fall. I remember when she drew it. I was at the frame working on a quilt. Brian was lying on Susannah's bed in the main room of our house reading a dime novel. Beatrice was lying on his chest, sound asleep. Every so often she'd stir slightly and Brian would stroke her hair and then return to his reading. On that evening I realized that I had never felt so safe and secure before, that everything in my life was as it should be. When Brian disappeared, I felt like someone had torn my beating heart out of my chest and crushed it in front of me...Last night I felt safe and secure again for the first time since then."
Blair stood up and walked away. "What we did last night, Adele, it was wrong," he said stiffly. "It was unfair to the husband you know you have and unfair to the wife I think I have. You should hate me for it."
"Don't manipulate me into hating you, Blair Carroll, you won't be able to do it."
"Can you disregard your husband so cavalierly?"
"Are you making this my fault alone, Blair?" Adele retorted. "Both of us are adults. No is part of both of our vocabularies. I invited you into my bed because I wanted you there. You came because you wanted me. Had either of us not wanted it, last night would not have happened."
Blair folded his arms defiantly. "You're not the woman I thought you were."
Adele gritted her teeth. "Oh, no, Blair Carroll. I'm exactly the woman you thought I was. You always know what you're getting with me. If you don't want what I have to offer, then don't take it."
"I won't," Blair shouted petulantly.
"Fine," Adele snapped back. "But think twice before you make any decisions regarding me. If I leave this house, I won't come back."
She stormed to the office door and turned back to him. "What made
you so hard and mean, Blair? You couldn't have been born that way."
"You wouldn't understand."
"Maybe not, but maybe you ought to look into it yourself before you drive everyone who loves you away."
Blair watched her as she turned and walked out of his office, shutting the door hard behind her. He walked over to the sideboard to pour himself a drink, but realized it was not even nine in the morning.
Throwing himself into a chair, he began to think about what Adele had said as a parting shot. It had been a long time since he thought about the day that changed his life forever.
Unlike his father, Blair would never drop all his responsibilities on a son of his for a woman, any woman.
Maybe Adele was right. He could be a better father to Joshua than his father had been to him.
Adele. Like his father's mistress, she too had a husband somewhere. Blair could not let history repeat itself.
Chapter 16
THERE WERE NO repeats of dinner in the nursery after that. Blair left for the office earlier and returned later. If he did return early, it was usually to change into evening clothes and meet with business associates. Although he had never resumed smoking after coming back in December, he usually smelled of other men's tobacco and whisky. About the only thing he didn't smell of was perfume.
Having decided his dream of his dark angel and a baby meant he must have married during his lost years, he made the decision that he owed his unknown wife his fidelity. He might be falling in love with Adele Strange, but he could not have her again.
Falling in love? No, it couldn't be. Blair Carroll didn't fall in love--couldn't fall in love. He didn't even like most women--but he did like Adele Strange. He liked her enough to want to spend his life with her. He could see her sharing his home, sharing his bed, sharing his life.
But it could never be. She was married and he probably was, too. A man of honor would give her up, even if he loved her.
He did. No debate. He loved her as he had never thought he could love.
If he was going to have to give up the woman he loved because of a woman he did not even know, he determined to remain celibate rather than hurt either Adele or his anonymous wife. Having Joshua around, even though he didn't see his son often, also served to remind him of the perils of injudicious sexual relations.
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