Captive of Sin (20 page)

Although he wouldn’t touch her. He’d never touch her again, now she was his wife in fact as well as law.

He didn’t say anything. There was a soft clink on the bedside cabinet. He shifted away, his footsteps deliberate but somehow defeated.

There was a click as he opened the door, then another as he closed it behind him.

She opened her eyes. The blazing fire still lit the room. The whole episode had probably taken less than half an hour.

Half an hour for her world to change.

She turned her head to see a blue-and-white china washbowl on the nightstand and a pile of towels. He’d seen to her comfort, then he’d left her in peace.

The tears she’d fought since he’d come to her bed overflowed.

Eventually Charis roused to go looking for her husband.

It wasn’t in her nature to avoid difficulties. Lying in the rumpled bed, surrounded by the unfamiliar smell of sex, she had time to gather her courage.

And time to start worrying about Gideon.

As shock and discomfort receded, she began to think
what price that joyless coupling had exacted from him. She needed to see him, to reassure herself he was all right. She needed to see him because the moment when she’d wished him to Hades had been brief indeed. Now only his nearness could soothe her aching sadness.

She rolled out of bed, the abrupt movement setting up a host of unfamiliar twinges. Reminder, should she need it, that nothing would ever be the same after what had just happened.

Wrapping a blanket around her trembling shoulders, she trudged across the floor. She pushed the door open and stepped through. The parlor was quiet and dark except for the low glow of the fire.

Had he gone out? After what they’d done, sleep would elude him. She ventured closer to the Stygian corner where he’d sat last night. Then she realized he sprawled in a massive wooden armchair in front of the hearth.

“Gideon?” She hitched the blanket up and stepped around the chair’s looming bulk to stand before him.

He didn’t look at her. Instead, he stared at the fire. Something told her he’d stared into the fire for a long time. His gloved hand curled around a half-filled glass that dangled on the verge of spilling. Brandy, she guessed.

“Go back to bed, Charis.”

The boneless curve of his long, lean body echoed the despair in his voice. His legs stretched toward the grate, and his shirt hung loose as it had in the bedroom. A frisson ran through her as she looked at his bare chest, gold in the flickering light.

A shiver, astonishingly, not of revulsion.

Charis beat back the cowardly urge to obey him and flee. Instead, she fixed an unwavering gaze upon him. “We need to talk.”

His face tightened. With a savagery that made her wince, he lifted the glass and pitched it into the fire. There was the sharp tinkle of shattering glass and a brief flare as the brandy caught.

“Christ, no.”

The eyes he focused on her glittered with anguish and a loathing that made her cringe.

“Do you hate me now, Gideon?” She didn’t recognize the shaking voice as hers. She’d tried so hard to make the act easy for him, but to her shame, she hadn’t succeeded in masking her discomfort.

His face contorted, and she stared aghast into naked torment. Only for a moment. He swiftly pulled the shutters over the turbulent depths.

“Of course I don’t hate you,” he said impatiently.

“But…”

“Go, Charis, now.” His voice fractured.

She couldn’t mistake his desperation to be alone. Although selfishly she wanted only to stay with him. The tumbled, lonely bed in the next room loomed like a gallows.

“Good night,” she whispered, her shoulders drooping.

He didn’t answer. Slowly, reluctantly, as if her feet were blocks of stone, she turned toward the door she’d left ajar.

One step. Two.

She didn’t want to leave him. She never wanted to leave him.

She was almost at the door when she heard a muffled sound behind her. An unfamiliar sound although she immediately identified what it was.

Stifling a horrified cry, she turned. He pressed gloved hands to his eyes, and his broad, straight shoulders heaved as he struggled for air.

Hands that itched to comfort him curled into fists at her sides. She longed to succor the man she loved with the warmth of her body. But that was impossible. Touching her body had driven him to this extreme.

She darted across to him, and, as she had last night, she knelt on the floor beside him. Unfamiliar discomfort stabbed her as she curled her legs under her.

In painful suspense, she waited for him to send her away. He was a proud man. He’d hate to know she witnessed this.

But he didn’t speak.

Perhaps he wasn’t even aware of her presence. It was torture to listen to him struggle against his weeping. He hardly made a sound. Only the thick, uneven rasp of breath betrayed his agony.

The iron control that had sustained him through Rangapindhi and beyond disintegrated. How blind she’d been not to realize the universe of pain he contained. She should have known. She wasn’t stupid. She claimed to love him. He’d told her about India. She’d seen what his ordeal cost his gallant spirit.

But only now did she truly understand the devastation that haunted him. His inhuman strength had delayed this moment too long. So when he finally broke, it was like a mountain cracked before her eyes.

From the first, she’d cherished a childish, flawless image of him. In this shadowy room, that image crumbled to dust. Gideon Trevithick wasn’t Galahad or Lancelot or Percival. He wasn’t an invincible guardian angel who appeared from nowhere to rescue her. He wasn’t indestructible and powerful and immune from weakness.

Helpless, hurting, guilty, she listened to the sound of his heart breaking. This man who battled so hard to dam his tears was all too human. He could shatter and fall and fail. He was fragile flesh and blood, and he’d suffered more than any mortal should.

Wrapping her arms around her raised knees, she stared sightlessly at the fire, the only light in the dark room. This wordless vigil was all she could offer. She was guiltily aware that what they’d done had initiated this excruciating outpouring. Her penance was listening to him struggle to smother his sorrow as if it were shameful or unwarranted. She wanted to beg him to stop resisting, to give in, to let the horrors of his Indian years finally receive their due.

He’d fought so long and so hard, and still he fought. His valiant heart wouldn’t surrender.

Slowly, the worst of his grief passed. Or at least the out
ward signs. His breath emerged more normally and not in broken, choked gasps.

After a long time, he spoke in a constricted voice. “This isn’t fair on you.”

She didn’t look at him but continued to rest her cheek on her upraised knees. Weariness and sorrow weighed endlessly on her. “I can bear it.”

They didn’t speak again. She thought after a while he might have slept, exhausted by his travails. She didn’t. Instead, she gazed dry-eyed at the dying fire.

Charis had loved Gideon Trevithick from the moment she’d first seen him. She’d loved his strength, his honor, his intelligence, his beauty. She still did.

But he’d been right to decry that love as a dazzled girl’s emotion. It was a hothouse plant, green and lush but unable to withstand cold winds from the real world.

The last hour had changed that forever. The last hour had changed
her
forever.

The love she felt for Gideon now was more durable than stone.

T
he afternoon wind off the sea was so icy, even Gideon noticed its biting power. Unusual for this time of year, according to the porter at the hotel, who wished him and Charis well when they left on their walk.

Gideon wasn’t sure appearing in public was a good idea. Someone might recognize him. After the last days, he couldn’t bear fending off another crowd as he had in Portsmouth. More, there was a small but significant risk of word reaching Felix and Hubert that he and Charis were on Jersey.

But Gideon couldn’t bear being confined in their rooms any longer. The acrid memories of last night’s pain and disappointment weighted the air. Worse, that clumsy bedding had left a brooding sensual awareness in its wake. Living in close quarters with Charis and knowing he couldn’t touch her, would never touch her again, was slowly driving him out of his mind.

As the day progressed, he’d watched his own strain increasingly reflected in his wife’s pale face. The tension
between them had stretched and stretched until it became intolerable. He’d heard her sigh of relief when he suggested going out.

Thankfully, it appeared the cold kept most people inside. The few hardy souls on the promenade paid Gideon and Charis no heed as they strolled along the seafront.

So far it had proven a mostly silent walk. As it had proven a mostly silent day.

Hell, what could he say after last night’s emotional storms? His gut clenched with humiliation at his behavior, both during and after their bleak coupling. How could he bear to revisit the black ocean of anguish? Or perhaps even more harrowing, how could he discuss his inept use of her body?

The silence was heavy as lead with what remained studiously unspoken.

Charis turned into the wind and paused to look across the gray rolling waves. The stiff breeze snatched at her bonnet, and she raised one gloved hand to hold it firm.

At least she was dressed suitably. He’d called in a modiste that morning and ordered a wardrobe for his bride. The charming yellow ensemble Charis wore had been hurriedly altered to fit. Other garments would arrive over the next week.

It was the only time Charis had smiled all day, when she saw the designs for her dresses.

Gideon came up beside her as she leaned on the stone parapet. Beneath the bonnet’s brim, her expression was pensive. Her lush, pink mouth drooped at the corners.

Ah, that soft mouth…

The continual low hum of desire made his head swim. Self-disgust followed fast.

Good God, he was a satyr of the vilest kind. After what he’d done last night, how could he think of touching her?

Turning, she caught his stare. From the color that invaded her pale cheeks, she guessed the heated direction of his thoughts.

She must despise him. She ought to despise him. He’d hurt her, then broken down and cried for the first time since his release from the Nawab’s dungeons.

Her eyes darkened to green with some emotion he couldn’t name. Although before last night’s debacle, he might have called it interest. Her lips parted on a soundless sigh.

He jerked back as if she reached for him. But her yellow-gloved hands remained safely on the seawall.

His heart thudded like a drum. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. To his surprise, she laughed softly. Surprise and chagrin.

That low musical sound slid along his veins like honey and made him want what he could never have. He should be inured to frustration, but somehow the damned torture never ended.

“You look almost bashful.” Her husky voice bubbled with warmth.

“Good God, Charis…” He struggled to express his shock. “You can’t find our predicament amusing.”

Her lips turned down. “I’d rather laugh than cry.” She turned away and gazed across the choppy water. “You can see what everyone thinks when they look at us. That waiter this morning leered.”

“We’re newlyweds,” he said somberly. “If your stepbrothers inquire, I want people to say we acted like any couple.”

“Then perhaps you should touch me,” she said softly but implacably. She still stared over the restless iron gray sea.

Silence fell. While the waves rolled and the gulls cried and traffic clattered along the street behind them.

“Charis…”

She turned and the humor had fled. “You touched me last night.”

He clenched his gloved hands by his sides. Clearly his sweet young wife was in the mood to torment him. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk about what happened,” he said in a tight voice. Christ, he didn’t.

“Why would you think that?”

Because I hurt you. Because I made a tragic mess of something that should be wondrous. Because I can’t stop thinking how it felt to be inside you.

“Because it’s done.”

An inadequate, cowardly answer. He knew it. So, blast her, did she.

“You’re crossing a line through the subject of our…marital relations, never to revisit it?” Color still marked her high cheekbones. She wasn’t as easy with this discussion as she wanted to appear.

“Don’t you think that’s best?”

She arched her elegant light brown eyebrows, a few shades darker than the bright glory of her hair under the neat chip bonnet. “No negotiation?”

He released a heavy sigh. “Revisiting last night should be as painful for you as it is for me.”

She straightened from the wall and sent him a direct look. “You…you did what you had to.”

“There was no joy.” If only someone would approach so she’d abandon this conversation. But the promenade around them remained empty.

“Practice makes perfect,” she said staunchly.

Every brave word gashed at him. “Not in this case.”

He longed to tell her he’d give up his hope of heaven to change desolate reality. He longed to tell her she was more beautiful than the dawn. He longed to tell her he died of desire for her.

What good was any of that when, if he touched her, he’d only hurt her?

Her jaw set in a stubborn line. “I don’t accept that.”

“You have to.” Why couldn’t she see there was no hope? After how he’d botched things last night, she should shrink from him as if he had the plague.

“The Westons are fighters, Gideon,” she said firmly. Her throat moved as she swallowed, another indication that beneath her determination, she was nervous. “I want a husband in my bed. I intend to do anything I can to achieve
that end. Anything. I know you want me. I’ll use it against you if I can.”

Oh, dear Lord in heaven. He supposed he should admire her honesty in admitting her strategy, but all he could think of was the lacerating misery awaiting both of them. “We made a bargain…”

She shook her head. “No, you set ultimatums.”

“You agreed.” He couldn’t keep a hint of temper from showing. It was difficult enough fighting for his own equilibrium without having to fight her as well.

“Yes, I did. Then.” When she looked down, gold-tipped lashes fanned the hectic pink of her cheeks.

Need, primitive, uncontrollable, gnawed at him. How much easier this would be if she wasn’t so beautiful.

Or would it?

He’d liked her from the start. His longing wasn’t rooted in her appearance, spectacular as that was. He wanted her because of her pure, unquenchable spirit.

His voice roughened with urgency. He admired her courage, but she was tragically mistaken in what she wanted. “Charis, I beg of you, don’t push this. I know what I ask seems cruel. But crueler by far to keep you clinging to futile hope. You’ll end up destroying us both.”

The fugitive color fled as quickly as it had arisen, and the eyes she raised were dull with misery. “It could save us too.”

Regretfully he shook his head. “This isn’t a fairy story, my wife.”

Her lips flattened in displeasure. “No, it’s a story where you consign me to another man’s bed. Is that what you want?”

The prospect of her sharing last night’s intimacies with another lover made him burn, like someone brushed his skin with naked flame. The idea of anyone but him touching her, hearing her sigh—God, pressing into that tight sheath—hurled him to the verge of murder.

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

She cast him a scornful look, turned, and marched back
toward the hotel, her boots clicking on the cobblestones. Helplessly Gideon stared after her. Unless he was very much mistaken, his wife had just declared war.

When he was younger, before Rangapindhi, he’d occasionally imagined taking a bride. The idea had seemed simple, inevitable, uncomplicated.

Hopelessly naïve.

He bit back a curse. He’d known when he came up with this plan to save her, it meant suffering. He’d known it required will and sacrifice.

But until his wife threatened to seduce him, he had no idea what hell awaited.

She was yards away, walking with a natural self-confidence that attracted more than one admiring glance from the few men braving the cold.

Impudent dogs.

Biting down his rage with her, with himself, with the whole damned world, he strode after her. His eyes never wavered from the saucy sway of her hips.

She didn’t look at him when he caught up. For the sake of appearances, he grabbed her arm. Even through his glove and her merino sleeve, he felt the tingling warmth of her skin. The ineffable life force that had set his desire afire when he held her last night.

He wanted that heat and vitality.

Devil take it, he wanted her.

Even as another sizzling bolt of need hit, the old urge to snatch away fought to the surface.

She glanced sideways. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he grated out, trying to control his inevitable shaking. He sucked in a breath and spoke with corrosive bitterness. “This is what you want? You’ve got bats in your belfry.”

She looked straight ahead. “I want you.”

Her voice was firm, sure, determined. And a little sad. Gideon had to remind himself she was a girl and couldn’t
know her own mind. After last night, the words rang hollow, false.

“Well, God help you,” he said grimly, and tightened his reluctant hold on her slender arm.

Charis sat up in the bed where last night she’d lost her maidenhead. Rain slammed against the windows, and wind rattled the glass. The wild weather was nothing compared to the confused storm of emotions in her heart.

She’d hated what Gideon had done to her last night. More, she hated that he’d hated it. She was vain enough to want her husband to find pleasure in her.

There had been no pleasure.

Actually, that wasn’t completely true. She’d felt pleasure when he touched her, even with him wearing those wretched gloves. When he’d stroked her bare flesh, a wanton heat had curled in her belly. Her breasts had ached for his caress, and her pulse had kicked into an unsteady race.

At last the body she’d longed to explore had been near enough to touch.

If he’d allowed her to touch him.

He’d been near enough for her to breathe his clean scent and feel the warmth radiating from his skin. She’d seen the hard planes of his chest, felt the brush of his hair against her neck.

All tantalizing hints of what they could find together, if only she could free him from Rangapindhi.

Her belly knotted as she recalled the unbearable intimacy of that moment when he pushed inside her. The pain had been overwhelming, but the act had bound her to him as nothing else could.

They were one flesh.

Only now did she understand what those words truly meant. Perhaps the anguish of the consummation made the
joining so irrevocable. Perhaps if they’d embarked on married life in lighthearted hope, she wouldn’t suffer this dark obsession with her husband.

She knew Gideon felt the connection too. For all he tried so staunchly to stay separate.

For the sake of that connection, she meant to take a huge risk. A risk not only for her and her bruised, longing heart. But also a risk for Gideon’s grimly retained sanity and health. Heaven forfend she was wrong. The consequences would be tragic.

In the long dark watches of the night, she’d felt at the crossroads between two futures. The future Gideon planned—cold, divided, lonely. A future where she didn’t resist his decision to give up on hope and love.

Or there was another future. A future where they grew together, confronted their challenges, created a family and a home.

Was there a chance she could make this second future reality?

Charis didn’t fool herself about the magnitude of the obstacles. But last night as she’d witnessed his pain, something in her screamed denial at abandoning him to suffering. She yearned to cherish him. She wanted to restore his trust in life. More, his trust in himself. She wanted to give him back his capacity for happiness.

All huge tasks.

Impossible?

No. She refused to give up. Whatever it cost her.

Half an hour ago she’d left him in the parlor. He’d been drinking brandy, and the bleakness in his eyes had made her want to weep. The desolation had always been there, but now she knew his past, it cut her to the bone.

He’d already decided his life was over.

Well, the woman he’d married meant to shatter that resolution. She loved him so much, she couldn’t lose.

Brave words. She wished she felt half as confident.

She looked up from her troubled thoughts to see Gideon
standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him arrive. He always moved like a cat, so that was hardly surprising. His hair was ruffled, and one gloved hand negligently encircled a glass. He’d removed his neckcloth, and his shirt was open, giving her shadowy glimpses of his hard chest.

His masculine beauty was a constant goad. Sometimes, like now, it stopped her heart.

Her belly clenched as his half-dressed state inevitably reminded her of last night. His remorse at what he’d done that stabbed her like a blade. His sorrow afterward that made her want to die.

He didn’t advance into the room. “I’ll say good night, Charis.”

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” The question emerged as a husky invitation.

She licked lips dry with nerves. His gaze fastened feverishly on the movement. His gloved hand tautened on his brandy. The warm air swirled with sudden sensual turbulence.