Cherished

by Elizabeth Thornton

  “What are you thinking?” he asked softly. Yawning, stretching his cramped muscles, he made a show of coming to himself.

  Emily moistened her upper lip. “I have been thinking about the future.”

  “Have you?” he murmured.

  His tone was not very encouraging. She hesitated, then said in an earnest tone, “You once told me that you were ready to settle down, set up your own establishment, begin…that is…raise a family.”

  “I believe I did. Pray, continue.”

  He sat at his ease, his back propped against a corner of the coach, his eyes registering little interest in what she was saying. For all that, she sensed that he was as alert as a panther whose lair had been invaded by a hapless kitten.

  She breathed deeply and gazed at him with eyes as clear as crystal. “What’s done is done. There is no going back now, no point in repining for what might have been. I have come to accept that our marriage is indissoluble. I am willing to be a true wife to you, Leon.” Her voice faded as she gave one last lingering regret to the dreams and fancies of a young girl. She wasn’t thinking particularly of William Addison. She was thinking of that intense yearning for love and fulfillment which seemed to be bred into her very bones.

  She did not know that her eyes mirrored her every thought. Leon absorbed the wistful expression, the tremulous curve to her lips, and he swore in a soft undertone. In a voice like velvet, he said, “So…you’ve persuaded yourself to make the supreme sacrifice?”

  “No. I don’t think of it like that.”

  “Then how would you describe it?” When she was searching in her mind for the right words, he said with sudden violence, “Answer me!”

  Baldly, she stated, “I shall be a dutiful wife, I promise you. I won’t make things difficult for you. I won’t complain and make a fuss if you neglect me.” She was getting into difficulties and did not know how to extricate herself. “All I want is a home of my own and…and children,” she concluded helplessly.

  “What does that mean, precisely—you won’t make things difficult for me?”

  “You know.” Her eyes dropped to her clasped hands. “You explained it to me once before, don’t you remember?” Her mind drifted back in time to the interview she’d had with Leon prior to their marriage. “You said that the rules are different for men and women. You said that a wife should be forgiving of a husband’s follies.” Sensing that she might have given him the wrong impression, she hastened to add, “Oh, I’m not asking for the same liberties for myself. Did you think that I was?” She leaned forward slightly as though to add weight to her words. “No, no! Affairs and that sort of thing are repugnant to me.”

  The deadly quiet, that followed her reasonable assurances almost frightened her. She could not think what she had said to annoy him. But he was annoyed. Though his face was inscrutable, she was never in any doubt about that.

  A muscle clenched in his cheek. “Our marriage has been consummated,” he said carelessly. “For the present, my purposes have been served. I’m not in my dotage, Emily. I have years ahead of me in which to establish my dynasty. When that day arrives, you may be sure you will be the first to know.”

  Without meaning to, she had said something terribly wrong. She could not bring herself to say more, though she might have told him that she was only trying to do the generous thing. It’s what she had thought he wanted. Well, if he wanted none of her, she wanted none of him. Affecting an interest in the passing scenery, she left him to stew in silence.

  Some days were to pass before the axe fell. In that time, Sara went riding around the estate, sometimes in the company of her young cousins, sometimes with Peter. She would have preferred to be alone. Every tree, every dale, every nook and cranny in the place seemed to whisper to her of a time when she had not a care in the world and she was too young to know it. In those days the future had seemed full of promise. She was not yet one-and-twenty and she felt as old as Methuselah.

  Peter came upon her when she was lost in reverie, gazing blindly into the waters of the old mill pond. It was where she and Emily had learned to swim. There had been an incident here involving Leon. Sara could not quite recall all the details. But one thing she remembered. It was she who had walked off with Leon and Emily who had been left to her own devices.

  She jumped when her husband’s hand touched her shoulder. “Peter!” she gasped. “You startled me!”

  He brushed one warm finger across her cheek, removing a solitary teardrop. “Why so dismal?” he asked gently.

  The answer to that question was too involved for Sara to attempt. She said simply, “Emily and I used to come here as children. It’s where we learned to swim.”

  “You were very close?”

  “Very.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either. They were sisters. In Sara’s mind, all the complexities of their relationship were summed up in those few words.

  “Take heart. You may see Emily sooner than you think.”

  “Oh?” she said, allowing him to direct her steps to where their mounts were tethered.

  He assisted her into the saddle, then quickly mounted. His horse was restive. It reared up, and Sara watched interestedly as her husband imposed his will on the big bay.

  Behind her stare she was thinking that appearances could be deceptive. Her husband had a drowsy-eyed look about him. He was good-natured, and inclined to give way to those of a more forceful temperament. That hadn’t happened with the bay. The horse had quieted, as though conceding that the man on his back could not be moved by ill-tempered tricks or maneuvers.

  Sara’s brows drew together. She was thinking about the income from her fortune. She was remembering her wedding night and her initiation into the intimacies of the marriage bed. Her startled glance flew to her husband’s face.

  In the sunlight, his fair hair was touched with gold. One lock fell across his forehead, giving him a boyish appearance. His eyes were soft as they rested on her. Gradually, her unease melted away.

  “I have decided,” he said in his pleasantly modulated accents, “that you shall accompany me to Canada. I shall be on the move for much of the time, but you won’t be alone. I have persuaded Hester to come with us. She’ll be good company for you, Sara, and she knows how to run a house. And Leon has promised to consider sending Emily to us for an extended visit. Fort York isn’t so very far away from New York, you know.” His voice dwindled. “Sara? What is it? What have I said?”

  She was gaping at him in openmouthed horror. Fort York was at the end of the world, or near enough to make no difference. As for his sister, Lady Hester Benson was something of a dragon. She was a paragon of propriety and very much in demand as a chaperone when young girls made their come-out. In short, Lady Hester was a killjoy who stood for no nonsense.

  When he began to repeat himself, more slowly this time, as if she were a half-witted child, she interrupted angrily. “I heard what you said the first time, and the answer is no! Nothing will prevail upon me to leave England.”

  She would have dug in her heels if he had not reached for the reins and held her hands steady. The sleepy look was gone from his eyes, but there was a pleading note in his voice. “Sara, you are my wife. A wife’s place is with her husband. It may be years before I return to England. That is no way for us to begin married life.”

  An odd mixture of fear and fury made her words more brutal than she meant them to be. “It was never in my mind to marry you. You know that! I made a mistake. I’ve paid for it. What you are suggesting is…is…a punishment, yes, that’s what it is. It’s a punishment. I don’t deserve to be sent away from everything that is dear to me. I refuse to leave my family. I won’t go, and you can’t make me.”

  She squinted up at him as he straightened in the saddle. Before her eyes, the boyish good looks hardened into something quite different. Though his face and voice were expressionless, his words seemed to hammer into her brain.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. If it were up to me, I woul
d leave you here. My wishes, however, don’t come into it. I gave a solemn promise to your uncle that you would accompany me to Canada.”

  The words were torn from her. “But why would Uncle Rolfe wish to send me away?”

  He hesitated, as if debating with himself, then said bluntly, “You know why, Sara. My dear, you have gone your length. England is too small for you. Your uncle has decided, and I concur with him, that you are due for a change of scene.”

  The attack came on the other side of the New Forest, near Wimborne. The decoy coach was set upon by three armed highwaymen. They got more than they bargained for. Two of them were wounded. The third got clean away.

  Leon heard out the groom in silence before putting a few terse questions to him. “Were there any distinguishing marks on any of them, some way of recognizing them if you were ever to encounter them again?”

  The groom, Ben Sharpe, was Rolfe’s man and not unused to such escapades. He had a trained ear and eye. “They were young gents,” he said, “no more than fifteen or sixteen, I should say. This was a lark. They were shocked senseless when we opened fire on ’em.”

  Leon digested the groom’s words, then said, “What makes you think it was a lark?”

  Surprise crossed Ben’s face. “Them being young’uns hardly out o’ swaddlin’ clothes. That’s why. The young quality don’t care who gets hurt so long as they has their bit o’ sport.”

  There was very little more to go on. Leon quickly penned a letter to Rolfe, amplifying the groom’s report. Rolfe must take a very dim view of this latest development. Young boys of fifteen and sixteen were just the right age for enlisting in the cause. It seemed as though history was repeating itself. He wondered if he would ever be free of La Compagnie.

  When he stood at the deck rail with Emily, he was not sorry to see the English coastline receding into the distance. If he was sorry about anything, it was that he had acted prematurely in coming to England to fetch his wife. If indeed he was a target of La Compagnie, it would have been better to put as much distance as possible between them.

  He dismissed that thought almost as soon as it occurred to him. America wasn’t England. None of the attacks had occurred in America and he knew how to protect his own in his own domain.

  “God, I can’t wait to get home,” he said.

  At his side, Emily inhaled sharply and let out a long sigh.

  Chapter Twelve

  Emily could never forget that Leon had reproached her for an unbecoming reserve in her manner. She was too formal, he said, giving the appearance that she had a high opinion of herself. From the moment she set foot on American soil, Emily was determined to make a favorable impression. Everything about America was going to please her. She had made up her mind to it.

  Leon’s sister’s house was as grand as any to be found in London and was situated on Broadway, with extensive gardens in back which swept down toward the river. The citizens of New York, she noted, were not above keeping chickens or cows in the pasture behind their stables. Domestic animals, including pigs, freely roamed the streets. Emily observed it all but was careful not to make a comment that might be construed as derogatory. Leon was watching her like a hawk.

  It came as something of a shock when she divined that Leon’s sister did not like her, and this before she had opened her mouth to say more than a few polite words of greeting. Claire Dillon was faintly hostile, and Emily could not understand it.

  It was all the more perplexing and all the more obvious because the rest of Claire’s family welcomed Emily as if she had been the prodigal returning from a far country. Adam and Claire Dillon had five offspring, the eldest a daughter of fifteen summers, the youngest an infant daughter, and three boys somewhere in between.

  “We have been waiting for this day to arrive for a long time, Emily,” said Adam Dillon, embracing Emily warmly. She judged him to be a little older than her guardian and very distinguished looking with silver wings at his temples, a dramatic contrast to his raven black hair. She liked him on sight.

  “Yes, a very long time,” echoed Claire vaguely, then not so vaguely, “We were sure you would be here three years ago, when Leon went to England to fetch you.”

  Before Emily could respond, the awkwardness was smoothed over as Leon brought his nieces and nephews forward to be introduced in turn. Without exception, they were all the image of their father. Only Sarah, the eldest, had something of her mother’s look about her—eyes as blue as the Mediterranean. Though the girl was arresting in her own way, she did not hold a candle to her mother. Claire Dillon, with her flaming Titian locks and fine-boned features put all females in the shade, to Emily’s way of thinking. She had never seen a more beautiful woman in her life.

  Emily’s chamber was at the back of the house, overlooking the river. She was gazing out one of the long windows when Leon came through the connecting door.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  She wasn’t going to find fault with his sister. She could be as vague as the next person. “They seem like a devoted family,” she said, “and as for the house, it’s simply splendid.” Looking about her with interest, she observed, “I suppose your sister had these pieces imported from England?” She was referring to the several polished mahogany commodes and dressers of Heppelwhite design which graced the room.

  “Why should you think so? We are quite civilized here in America, Emily. We do have cabinet makers, you know, and masons and seamstresses and others of that ilk. What we don’t have is an aristocracy. Even so, you will find that the manners and modes prevailing in New York are not so very different from those in London.”

  The rebuke was faint, but for all that it was a rebuke. Emily chose to ignore it. “I’m sure I shall find everything quite…”

  “Yes, I know…charming,” he said dryly.

  She gave him one of her sunniest smiles, and in what she hoped was her most charming manner, indicated that he should seat himself on the striped satin sofa. “Well?” she said at length when he gazed at her wordlessly.

  Behind his blank stare he was thinking that he must be a candidate for either sainthood or an insane asylum. He had wanted this woman for more years than he cared to remember. He was no novice. He knew when a woman was ripe for plucking. She was highly susceptible to him. More to the point, she had indicated that she was willing for the marriage to become a real one. He was the one who had held off. On that long and tedious ocean voyage, he was the one who had retreated behind a wall of glacial reserve.

  He had been almost blind with rage. That she would be a submissive, dutiful wife! That she would turn a blind eye to his infidelities! He wanted to murder her for her indifference. He would rather have her hatred than her complacency. Better to burn with unsated desire than accept her on those terms.

  Brave words! His anger was no longer riding him. He was coming to see how much his pride had cost him. For five long years he had held off from his wife, giving her time to mature. Those five years seemed like child’s play compared to this. For the first time ever, his wife was completely in his power. There was no guardian for her to run to. And now he knew what he had only suspected then, that behind that cool-as-a-cucumber air, Emily concealed a nature as sensual and as passionate as his own. He could hardly wait to get at it.

  Emily cocked her head as her gaze rested on her husband’s whimsical expression. Their eyes met and held. She knew what he was thinking without being told. He was remembering those two days and nights aboard his yacht.

  Smiling tenderly at her adorably guilty blushes, Leon said, “It’s the manner and modes prevailing in New York about which I wish to speak to you.”

  “Yes?” said Emily, ordering herself to look as unaffected as he.

  “In these parts, it’s not comme il faut for husbands and wives to go their separate ways.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “We Americans are more affectionate, more demonstrative, than our English cousins. If you were to treat me with the same reserve, the same i
ndifference, that is, as you did in England, speculation would be rife. Tongues would begin to wag. In no time at all, everyone would think the worst.”

  Emily smiled dulcetly. Completely forgetting her resolve not to make things difficult for her husband, she said, “No doubt they would think that you had taken a mistress and I had taken a lover.”

  Leon’s black eyes danced. “No,” he said.

  “No?”

  “They would never believe that you had taken a lover for the simple reason that they know I would not permit it. American husbands are not so complacent as English husbands, Emily. They don’t permit their wives to have suitors, and lovers, and so on.”

  Her charm began to fray a little at the edges. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me what I may expect?”

  Leon’s smile intensified. “For a start, you must remember that America is a republic.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said carefully.

  “We shall dispense with the titular ‘Lady,’ if you please. Here you will be known simply as ‘Mrs. Devereux.’”

  She might have told him that as the daughter of a marquess, she was born a lady and she would die a lady. “As you wish,” she said, and pressed her lips together.

  “In America, we are all equals. There is no protocol to be observed as there is in England. Nevertheless, there are certain forms which you would do well to follow. You may depend on me to keep you right.”

  It sounded boring. “If there is no protocol, then how can I go wrong?”

  “Knowing you, you’ll find a way.”

  He couldn’t help baiting her. It was exhilarating. And Emily brought it on herself. Her manners were so polished, her composure so unshakable. And her eyes, as of this moment, were the color of amethysts. When he made love to her, they would darken even more. The thought was an arousing one. It slipped under his guard before he had time to take evasive action. His body went hard with need. Emily didn’t notice.