A Season Beyond a Kiss (49 page)

Beau pondered this a moment, before looking up inquisitively. “But how’d we get in there?”

Jeff pressed a knuckle against his lips to subdue a chuckle as his brother looked at him with a pained expression. The elder Birmingham turned back to his wife and, clasping her hand, finally gave an answer. “Love put you and your sister there, son.”

“Love?” Beau asked, his voice imbued with an incredulous tone. “You mean the way Hatti loves fried chicken?”

A hoot of laughter came from Jeff, who threw his head back and guffawed to the ceiling. His amusement proved contagious, and soon the whole room was filled with sounds of hilarity.

  
  D
ARKNESS HAD SETTLED OVER THE LAND BY THE TIME
Jeff and Raelynn bade their farewells to the family and settled into the landau for the long ride to Charleston. Raelynn yearned for the trip to be shortened by an invitation to stay the night at Oakley, but it soon became apparent that her husband was not inclined to make such an offer.

Though at first she felt tense and nervous sitting beside Jeffrey, the day’s events had taken a decided toll upon her energy. Soon she was nodding off. She hadn’t donned her bonnet for fear of ruining the ribbons with a fresh flow of blood from her head, which left her bruised brow rather vulnerable when it brushed up against the interior wall of the carriage. She came awake with a jerk and, in deepening mortification, straightened herself upon the cushioned seat, well aware that her maddeningly stoic husband was watching her with unrelenting persistence through the moonlit gloom.

Only a few more miles had been traversed before Raelynn’s eyes were drooping closed again. She never knew exactly when Jeff lifted her onto his lap and nestled her brow against his throat, for she had ceased her struggle against an encroaching sleep. She was just as oblivious to the kiss he placed upon the top of her head.

Sometime later Raelynn became vaguely aware that she was being borne along through an area of darkness. She heard the sound of a door closing, and then muted voices seemed to drift upward from a deep well. A glowing lamp moved somewhere beyond her, casting elongated shafts of light and shadows across ceilings and corridors. A door’s hinges creaked as a portal was opened and then closed. When a moment later she was placed upon a bed, she recognized a familiar squeak. She tried to wake when she heard Tizzy’s sleepy voice, but much deeper tones banished the girl to her own room. Gentle hands plucked open buttons and other fasteners, and with a contented sigh Raelynn turned her face upon the pillow as her baby rolled within her womb. The movements seemed obscure and distant, as if she only dreamt them, much like the inviting warmth of a large hand resting upon her cool stomach. She felt a nightgown being drawn over her head and, at long last, a blanket being tucked in around her. Then a lantern at the end of a long tunnel was snuffed, and darkness closed in around her as she sank deeper into a dreamy vortex from which she had no desire to rise.

19

When her gaze lit upon her own husband, Raelynn was struck by an avalanche of impressions closely reminiscent of those that had been instrumental in leading her to accept his proposal of marriage less than an hour after their initial meeting. His manly good looks were just as stirring, his smile with twin depressions in his cheeks just as engaging, his green eyes just as luminous as they had always been. The only detectable difference was within herself. She couldn’t remember her heart beating as chaotically, even after he had scooped her out of the path of the onrushing coach, as it now did. Surely no fear could have stirred such giddiness. Neither could that emotion have warmed her cheeks to the extent that she could actually feel them glowing.

“We didn’t have a chance to talk when I brought you back from Harthaven,” he murmured, “and I’ve been wondering how you’ve been feeling. Is your head better? I see no sign of a scar.”

Jeff swept his gaze down the length of her as she moved around the end of the desk. Though she wore a charming, dark green and blue plaid frock that served to conceal her condition, it was obvious nevertheless that she was with child, but then, when he had stripped her for bed after carrying her up to her narrow room at Elizabeth’s house, he hadn’t been able to mistake her small, rounding belly. He had noticed small movements there, motivating him to lay a hand over the gentle roundness and to feel his child moving within her womb.

“No, as you can see, it’s just fine now,” Raelynn murmured, trying to curb her elation. “And I’m feeling remarkably well myself.” More than a month ago she had departed his house, but there had been times since then when it had seemed like a year. Through all of her past debates over his guilt or innocence, she hadn’t realized just how desperately she would come to miss her husband until a goading worry began to assail her, leaving her fearing that she might never see him again. That dread had taken deep root in her heart, and she had learned a harsh lesson about what it feels like to vainly pine for a man. If Nell had brooded over Jeffrey’s aloofness as much as she had done within the agonizing weeks of their separation, then Raelynn could definitely understand why the girl had felt driven at times to demand his recognition.

“None of the usual discomforts that accompanies pregnancy?” Jeff asked solicitously.

“Nothing of any significance, only a lethargy that still makes me want to sleep at odd and sundry times, but I can’t very well do that while I’m working here.”

“No, I don’t suppose you can.”

“How is Heather and the baby doing? I’ve been meaning to hire a livery and go out to see them, but we’ve had so many customers ordering spring wardrobes that the three of us have hardly had time to take a deep breath.”

“Heather and the baby are fine,” Jeff replied. “Suzanne has even managed to sleep from dusk to dawn several times, which of course delights her parents. Nursing a babe every four hours night after night can wear on a body after a while, I suppose. But then, that duty falls entirely to the mother, regardless of a husband’s efforts to help.”

Hesitantly Raelynn approached a subject that had been worrying her of late. “I understand from recent comments I’ve overheard in the shop that we’ve now become the prime interest of gossipmongers,” she ventured, tracing a finger along the arm of a small, French fashion mannequin which resided on her desk. She dared not meet his gaze as she probed, “I’ve even heard people saying that you’ve spoken to your lawyer and have initiated the termination of our marriage.”

A derisive snort attested to Jeff’s feelings about that particular bit of hearsay. “Don’t believe everything you hear, my dear, or, for that matter, only bits and parts of what you see. I’d never do that unless it became your desire.” He tilted his head thoughtfully aslant as her eyes slowly lifted to meet his. “Has it?”

“No, of course not,” Raelynn hastened to assure him with an uncomfortable little laugh. “I was just afraid it might be true, considering how vexed you were with me before I left Oakley.”

“Afraid?” Jeff repeated, wondering at her choice of words.

“Concerned, afraid, anxious, they all mean about the same thing,” she stated gloomily.

“I agree, Raelynn, but are you telling me that you were actually concerned enough to be afraid?”

A wavering sigh escaped her lips. Jerkily she nodded. “Yes.”

“Does this mean that you’re suffering some doubts about my guilt in Nell’s death?”

His blunt question brought tears to her eyes. Diffidently she met his searching gaze. “I haven’t been able to come to any definite conclusions about what happened that night, if that’s what you mean. At times, it seems utterly foolish to even suspect that you could have had anything to do with that kind of brutality, and then I wake up from a recurring nightmare in which your appearance changes before my eyes. The demon you become makes me quail in fright.”

Jeff certainly hadn’t been able to forget the night he had lain beside her at Red Pete’s cabin and had heard her tormented ravings. Rather than stir up past hurts, he considered it wiser by far to change the subject. “I came here, madam, to ask you to have dinner with me.”

“At Oakley?” Did he truly mean to break his self-possessed reticence and allow her to enter his home again? Hardly daring to breathe, she awaited his answer as if she were about to receive a sentence somewhere between life and death.

“At a restaurant here in the city,” he informed her and immediately wondered if the gentle radiance in her eyes had dimmed a slight degree or if it had only been a trick of his imagination. “If you’re at all acceptable to the idea, we can have dinner out, and then afterwards, I can escort you back to Elizabeth’s. I’ll hire a livery to take us there if you’re not up to walking. At the moment, I’m without the landau. I had to send Thaddeus back to Oakley to do some errands for me.”

Raelynn wished fervently she would have had enough foresight to have donned a more elegant gown earlier that morning. “I should tidy my appearance.”

“Nonsense, my dear, you look as ravishing as always.”

His magnanimous claim did much to buoy her mood. Even so, it evoked a dubious laugh. “Hardly that, Jeffrey.”

He glanced around. “Do you have a cloak? It seems unusually moist and breathless outside, which leads me to surmise that a fog may be rolling in before too long.”

Raelynn indicated the coat tree where she had left her woolen wrap. “The cloak is Elizabeth’s, the cape is mine.” From a nearby chest, she swept a pert cap that had been made on the order of a Scottish bonnet and went to stand before a tall, silvered glass where she proceeded to don it. Settling it upon her head at a cocky angle, she glanced at her husband again to reassure herself that he was still there and ready and willing to be seen with her in public. He was there all right, looking back at her as he lifted her cape from the hook. Suddenly asmile, she gave no heed to what she was doing as she thrust a long hatpin through the deep blue velvet. She promptly regretted having diverted her attention as she rammed the point of the pin into her forefinger. Her startled cry quickly brought Jeff back to her side, but by then, she had dislodged the stickpin and dropped it on the floor to clasp her bleeding finger in the palm of her hand before the tiny droplets could mar her gown.

“That was clumsy of me,” she fretted, grimacing in pain.

“Let me see what you’ve done this time,” Jeff urged, brightening her cheeks to a vivid hue. Mentally she groaned in discomfiture. Why, in heaven’s name did she have to be so inept when he was around?

Taking her hand within his, Jeff drew her to a nearby washstand, which had proven a necessity for Raelynn when she sketched in charcoal. There he poured a small amount of water into the bowl. After soaping and rinsing her hand, he withdrew a clean handkerchief from his coat and wiped the slender digits dry as he gently implored, “You should be more careful, Raelynn.”

Vividly aware of his tall, neatly garbed presence so close at hand, Raelynn pressed a trembling hand to her brow in an attempt to hide her flushed cheeks. Her clumsiness as well as her finger had been all but forgotten in the face of her heightening awareness of his all-too-manly presence. She was rather shocked to find that she was actually becoming physically stimulated. Her nipples tingled with a hungry yearning to be caressed again, not only by his hands and mouth, but by the slow, rhythmic strokes of his furred chest during the intimate rites of love. It was all she could do to ignore the throbbing urgency in her loins as she yearned to be joined with him and to soar once again to those lofty heights to which he had taken her so often, but, of course, that was nothing more than foolishness.
Best to cool your blood
, she rebuked herself.
If he had wanted you in that way, he’d have been around long before now
.