by Cheryl Bolen
Stacks climbed up on the bed.
Roberts cleared his throat. "If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion, my lord."
Stacks looked at his man servant out of bleary eyes and cocked a brow.
"I beg that you talk to Miss Freddie tomorrow. One last time you need to let her know how you feel about her."
"She knows," Stacks murmured.
"Tell her again, please."
Stacks shook his head as it drifted into the downy pillows.
Chapter 29
When he lifted his head from his pillow the following morning, it felt as if it had been smashed by a brick. He eased himself back down and from the corner of his eye saw Roberts smiling at him.
"I have taken the liberty of bringing a balm of sickle-wort which Miss Freddie assures will relieve the headache if anointed on the temples and forehead."
"Do I have to get up?"
"No, my lord," Roberts said, dabbing the potion on his master's brow.
Despite that he teased Roberts for his overbearingness, Stacks knew how fortunate he was to have him. "If you'd thought to force breakfast down me, think again."
Roberts's face grew pensive. "It would do you good to eat."
"Perhaps later. I fancy a romp on Lucifer first thing this morning. Have Jacob bring him around."
After Roberts helped his master into riding clothes, Stacks left through the quadrangle, met his groom at the back of the abbey, and mounted Lucifer. He rode to the moors. It always had done him good to go riding early in the day when wet dew still hung over the landscape. And always the lonely moors matched his melancholy mood.
***
Freddie had stayed cooped up indoors far too long. The low hanging sun was doing its best to harden the earth after over a week of relentless rains.
After breakfast--solitary in the dining room again--she returned to her chamber, draped her new shawl over her shoulders and scooped up Marmalade. "Come, Mr. Marmalade. We shall enjoy the outdoors today." Though she knew she could not really enjoy anything ever again.
She went through the vestibule to the front of the abbey and circled it, coming to the park. She let Marmalade down, and he promptly skittered after a flying insect Freddie could barely see, much less identify. She smiled at him and began to crunch along the gravel path that crossed the park, then along the path that circled it. The crocus leaves were still wet with dew, and a chorus of birds sang. The sun felt good. She must have circled the park a half dozen time when she heard a clopping noise from beyond the thicket at the rear edge of the park. She looked up to see her guardian on Lucifer. Her heart pounded, and she turned back to see where Marmalade was. "Come here, fluff muffin," she crooned. Anything to take her mind from what was obviously going to be a meeting with Lord Stacks.
He rode into the park and came to a stop when he saw her. She looked up just then, and their eyes met. And froze. A powerful intensity fired his gaze. She couldn't seem to remove her eyes from his. Nor could she summon her voice.
He broke eye contact when he dismounted. Holding the reins, he strode toward her. She watched his long, muscled legs moving closer. Her insides quivered and shook as an earthquake surging its fury within her.
"Good morning, Miss Lambeth," he said when he came to stand in front of her. Once more he reminded her of a dark knight, so brooding and tall and powerful.
"Hello, my lord."
"Will you sit with me at the bench?" He threw his glance at a wooden garden bench not twenty feet away.
She nodded solemnly, and bent to pick up Marmalade. It was as if the tiny cat would shield her from a stormy confrontation.
They sat down. Now they were tense and antagonistic, so different than it had been before when their thoughts had meshed together in unspoken harmony.
His voice was low when he spoke. "Why are you marrying Edgekirth when you told me you never would?"
"It is something which causes me to feel extreme guilt, but I had nowhere else to go. I could not live here after you marry Roxanne."
"After I what?" he shouted, anger flashing in his eyes.
"After you marry Roxanne," she said meekly, meeting his searing gaze.
"Who in the hell told you I was marrying that wretched female?"
"She did."
"And you didn't ask me?"
"I. ..I was too hurt, too humiliated after seeing you kiss her in the heron's nesting area."
He closed his eyes, a pained look on his face. "I did not kiss her. She kissed me, and it was repugnant."
"But she told me--"
"How could you possibly think I would ask her to marry me when I loved you?"
She gazed at him through happy eyes, tears flowing as if from a bucket. "I. . .I've never, ever cried," she sniffed. "In my whole life. Now in the past month I've cried enough to fill the River Tyne."
He lifted her chin gently, his black eyes seeming to see into her soul. "Understand this. I never asked Roxanne to marry me. I detest her. Her words were wicked lies."
She sniffed and smiled. "Oh, Thomas, I do believe you. I'm sorry I ever lost faith in you."
"And I'm sorry I lost faith in you," he said softly, brushing away her tears with his handkerchief. "Must I write it down before you'll believe I am in love with you?"
"Oh, Thomas!" she said joyfully, throwing her arms around him.
He nuzzled his mouth into her soft neck, working his way around front until he kissed a trail of feathery kisses to her mouth, then claimed her lips for a hungry, probing kiss. A deep warmth spread from her lips to encompass all of her.
There was the crunch of gravel, and she broke away, turning to gaze at Edgekirth.
He stopped dead in his stride and stared at them, a wounded look on his tanned face.
She whispered to Stacks. "Please, I need to talk to him privately."
Stacks left silently, walking across the grass to avoid walking past Edgekirth.
Edgekirth came and sat beside Freddie on the garden bench, taking her hand in his. "I was afraid this would happen."
Freddie nodded. "Lord Stacks never asked Roxanne to marry him. For some reason I will never understand, she lied to me about it."
"I suppose that means he's still in love with you."
"I believe so," Freddie whispered. "And, of course, I never stopped loving him."
"Of course."
"So I suppose I won't be able to marry you after all."
"I suppose not."
Grabbing Marmalade, Freddie rose. "Come, I'll walk you to your horse." She felt feather light, her heart exploding with the joy of Thomas's love. Yet there was an aching, too, for the hurt she was heaping on Malcolm.
He walked along the crunching path with her. "You know I'll always be there if you need me."
"You don't still think Lord Stacks will inflict pain on me, do you?"
"Not physically."
She understood what he meant. He must know about Thomas's resolve to never wed. The thought opened a sensitive wound. She sighed and tried to speak cheerily. "It's a great comfort to know you will always be there," she said solemnly. "But for your own sake, I hope that is not the case. You need to marry and forget I ever existed."
"Removing my limbs would be easier," he said bitterly.
She looked ahead through moist eyes and saw an ostler walking with Edgekirth's roan gelding. "I suppose this is good-bye."
He nodded and left her.
She watched him take the reins and mount his horse, and she stood on the front steps of the abbey and watched him ride down the rocky drive until he disappeared from sight.
Without being told, she knew Thomas would be in the library, the room where they had first declared their love. She nearly flew to him, her heart light and singing.
He sat on the sofa in his library. The heavy red velvet draperies had been opened, and the room was bright with sunlight. She was glad he was not behind his huge wooden desk. She closed the door behind her and slowly crossed the room to him, never removing her eyes from his ste
ady, loving gaze. She lowered herself onto the sofa, and he took her hand, enclosing it with both of his long-fingered, bronzed ones.
He began to rub the back of her hand with his thumb. "May I hope you are free of Edgekirth?"
"He has released me from the engagement."
"I know how painful that must have been for you," he said softly. "You never like to see any creature in pain."
"No, I don't," she said, her lashes low, like her voice.
He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed kisses into the sensitive hollow of her palm. "I shall endeavor to make it up to you."
She looked up at him with smiling eyes. "I have some very good news for you, my love. Elizabeth's brother--"
"Timmy Binghampton."
"Yes, of course you knew he had called yesterday. He's a very sweet man. A man of fairness and integrity. He has been greatly disturbed over the terrible rumors about you killing Elizabeth."
He squeezed her hand. "It was a very considerate thing you did, Freddie, imparting his revelations to Mrs. Greenwood. I'm sure you knew that by telling one noted for her propensity to gossip that you would exonerate me."
"Then you've already heard?" she asked, her face open and happy before she broke out laughing. "I had not thought the news would spread that quickly. I suppose by today, half of Morton has heard the good news."
There was a troubled look on his face. "I would hardly call it good news. It distresses me to drag Elizabeth's memory through the mud."
Freddie's brows lowered, her voice laced with emotion. "Then you loved her that greatly?"
He set both arms on Freddie's shoulders. "Never as deeply as I love you, my little one. She offered only beauty. You, on the other hand, share my life, my every interest. I almost believe you finish my thoughts for me. Despite that we haven't been sexually intimate, I almost feel as if we share one body, one heart."
"I feel the same," she whispered. She reached up and stroked the fine planes of his dark face. She wanted that sexual intimacy. She felt tingling stirrings deep within her, low in her body. "You have suffered for too long, my love. I knew what I was doing when I told Mrs. Greenwood about Elizabeth. You have paid for too many years for what happened to a woman who is long dead. It's time for you."
He removed his arms from her shoulders and looked at the row of arched windows that allowed sunlight into the room. "Do you not understand? I did kill Elizabeth."
Chapter 30
The singing in her heart silenced. His words slashed into her happiness. Her poor tortured Thomas. "I need to know," she said, her voice trembling.
He took a deep breath and stood up, his muscled back to her as he paced the room. "The details of Elizabeth's death cannot be shared with you. Anything else I will gladly offer. But you're much too innocent to know about sexual cravings between a man and a woman."
"But I have sexual cravings whenever I am with you."
He whirled around and faced her.
She winced from the pain she saw in his face.
"I don't even know if I could make love to you if it were sanctioned by the church," he said.
"I care not whether it's sanctioned by the church. I don't care if I have your title. All I want is you. All of you."
God, but she looked like a woman. A woman raw with need. "You must know it is different with men."
"I know that men don't have to be in love to crave a sexual union with a woman. For them it is purely physical. Not like the way it is with me. How was it with Elizabeth?"
Freddie was entitled to an explanation. He walked to the window and was tall enough to look out at the tops of elms below. "I did not know of Elizabeth's propensity for self-destruction. She was a virgin on our wedding night. I went gently with her. After that first time, she craved more . . .she wanted me to make love over and over that night, but she didn't want me to be gentle. At first, she just wanted me to tie her hands to the bed while we made love."
The sound of Freddie sucking in her breath disturbed him, but he needed to go on. He couldn't turn to face her. "She asked me to bite her breasts," he said hesitantly. "I refused. She wanted me to . . .to do other things which would cause her pain, things I cannot tell you about."
Stacks slowly turned around to face Freddie. Her eyes were hollow, intense. "I could not do them. After that night, I couldn't bring myself to come to her bed. I began to treat her as a good friend, a visitor in the abbey.
He began to pace the room. "The first time she hurt herself badly was when we were walking along a small river which flows through my property. It was after a heavy rain, and the stream was swollen, the water quite rapid. We were some distance away when she went careening off the embankment, tumbling on rocks until she landed in the water. She was unable to swim. I rescued her and later called for Edgekirth to treat her wounds.
"That first time, I thought it was an accident. But the second time, I knew without a doubt she purposely wanted to hurt herself. We were riding my phaeton into Morton when she stood up and leaped from the moving vehicle. She broke several bones that time."
"And you still were not making love to her?" Freddie asked.
He shook his head. "By the time she mended, I was . . .this is the difficult part, my dear," he said, looking at Freddie with tenderness.
"You had gone without sex for a very long time by then. Your desire was acute."
He had always known Freddie reached into his very thoughts. He smiled at her. "How can one so inexperienced be so excessively wise?"
"Your constant observations on my youth grow tedious, Thomas." Then her eyes turned solemn. "Despite my inexperience and my youth, I have acute desire for you, Thomas."
"Yes," he answered, his black eyes twinkling at her. "My desire was acute." Then he turned serious. Gravely so.
"Apparently Elizabeth's desires were equally acute for she had been extremely seductive for some time. One afternoon--on a day very much like today--I succumbed. I brought her to my chamber, to my bed. And I ended up killing her."
Freddie crossed the room to him. She faced him for the briefest of seconds before melting her body into his, slipping her arms under his jacket and stroking him lovingly. "I know it's difficult for you to talk about it, but I need to know what happened in your room that day."
He held her close, his voice hoarse when he began to speak. "I removed her clothing, then mine. I could barely wait to . . "
"To bury your seed in her?"
He lifted Freddie's face and began to see heated desire in her eyes. He nodded slowly. "Elizabeth knew how badly I needed her. She removed a silken sash from her discarded dress. 'I want you to wrap this about my neck as you thrust into me,' she said. I told her it was too dangerous, but she assured me that it would only heighten her sexual intensity. It would not kill her. By that time I was ready to explode from my great need, and I agreed. When I entered her, she urged me to twist the sash. I did. And with each thrust, she begged for another twist. I kept twisting and twisting until she was dead. I was so damned bent on my own fleeting pleasure," he cried. "I didn't even know I had killed her. When I discovered that she was dead later, I put her clothes on and tried to make it appear that she hung herself with the bell chord."
Freddie wiped away his tears with a tender hand. "What a horrible, horrible thing to have gone through."
He brought both her hands to his lips and pressed them with gentle kisses.
"Don't you see, Thomas, you didn't initiate the deviant activity. It wasn't you who removed the sash from the dress. It wasn't you who asked for the twisting."
"But it was me who did the killing," he said harshly.
"It was not murder. At the most, it was an accident." Freddie's eyes widened. She looked away from him quickly. Was it now repugnant for her to face him? "Julia Taylor!" she said, her voice hissing.
"What does Julia Taylor have to do with this?"
It was as if Freddie had not heard him. "Did you leave Elizabeth after making love to her?"
"How did you kno
w? I thought she was fine. I went to my dressing room and dressed myself. When I came back, she was dead."
"Don't you see, you didn't kill her! She was alive when you left."
"What makes you so certain?"
"Julia Taylor told me you strangled Elizabeth with her own silk sash. Not a bell chord. Only the true murderer would know how she really died."
He felt stricken. "Then you think Julia Taylor entered the chamber while I was in the dressing room?"
"I do."
"But why would she want to kill her best friend?"
"It should be obvious to you that Julia Taylor hoped to snare you for herself."
His mind flitted back over the many instances in which Julia Taylor thrust herself on him. Especially after Elizabeth's funeral when she showed a great reluctance to leave Marshbanks Abbey. He had to be openly hostile with her in order to get her to leave. It all fit together like pieces in a puzzle.
As sun breaks through menacing clouds, he knew he had not killed Elizabeth. It had always bothered him that she was softly breathing when he left her to get dressed but that she was stone cold when he returned. Damn, damn Julia Taylor. He'd see her wicked soul in hell.
He grieved not only for the lovely Elizabeth but for all the years of agonizing torture he had put himself through. And all because of one evil woman.
Freddie drew toward him, her breasts pushing into his chest, her arms encircling him. "It's time for me to breathe my life into you and for you to fill me with your love."
Her words were seductive, as were her actions when her torso rubbed into his, her arms holding him firmly.
"I am afraid of being mentally incapable of completing the sexual act. That's another reason why I cannot offer marriage."
"There's only one way to find out," she groaned, lifting her face to his for a kiss.
Chapter 31
He couldn't string two thoughts together as long as her body kept doing what it was doing to his, yet he had to try. He needed to be certain this was what she wanted before he took the irrevocable step that would steal her innocence. She had given him her trust; he could not trample it.
