Each Time We Love (10 page)

ADAM
MIGHT HAVE LAUGHED, ALBEIT IRONICALLY, AS HE drove away
from Betsey Asher, but his laughter faded immediately when he
considered all the snares that a woman with marriage on her mind could
devise to trap the unwary male. He'd been adroitly eluding them for
years, but it didn't mean that he underestimated the danger. Softly he
swore under his breath. Women were necessary, but Jesus! They could be
the very devil, too!

Returning to his home, he retreated to the quiet elegance of
the very masculine study at Belle Vista, but the persistent
restlessness that seemed to dog his every step these days returned with
a vengeance. By rights he should have been exhausted—he had been up
since dawn the previous day and it was now going on four o'clock in the
morning. He grinned. And he had just spent several, ah,
strenuous
hours in Betsey's arms! But seeking his bed did not appeal to him, and
pouring himself a liberal amount of brandy into a snifter, he wandered
about the mahogany paneled room with its blue-and-scarlet-hued Turkey
rug, sipping his brandy.

He supposed it was Betsey's angry remark about his being a
gypsy bastard that was at the root of his sleeplessness. Not that the
remark itself bothered him, but it brought to mind those ten years that
he and his half sister, Catherine Tremayne, had lived with the gypsies.
He had been five years old when they had been kidnapped from Mountacre,
his stepfather's estate in England,, and once he had stopped missing
their mother, Rachael, he had adapted quite well to the nomadic,
adventuresome life of the gypsies. He had grown up unfettered by
conventional demands—while other boys had been learning their letters,
Adam had been increasing his skill with the knife and discovering the
bounty that deft fingers could snatch from the unwary. His life had
been one of untrammeled freedom as they had constantly traveled
throughout the land. The stunning return to Mountacre when he had been
fifteen had been traumatic and had left Adam feeling lost in a world
that should have been his natural milieu.

Under any circumstances a young man raised like a wild wolf
cub as he had been would have had trouble adjusting to finding himself
suddenly plunged into the stiffly punctilious world of a wealthy lord
of the realm, but there had been an obvious dislike between Lord
Tremayne, the Earl of Mount, and his stepson and it had caused endless
friction and dissension. Upon his eighteenth birthday, Adam had been
thrilled when it was revealed that his real father, an American, had
willed him a rich inheritance near the city of Natchez in the
Mississippi area. The parting from his sister had been difficult—they
had shared so much together during those gypsy years— and while Adam
would miss his mother, she was in many ways a stranger to him and so he
had been able to leave England with only a little heartache.

Finding himself a rich young man in a land as wild and lawless
as the New World had been a heady experience at eighteen. With no
mentor to guide or restrain him, he'd found no dare too reckless, no
wager too high, no duel too dangerous, and in a relatively short time
he had gained the reputation of being a mercurial daredevil. And yet
those very attributes that might have been frowned upon elsewhere were
the very things that the wealthy planter society of Natchez
admired—hard drinking, hard riding, a quick temper, and a cool head and
a steady arm on the dueling field. Adam excelled at all of those
activities and he was rapturously absorbed into the aristocractic
society of Natchez,

The years had dociled him somewhat, however, and he supposed
that Catherine's fleeing from her very new husband, Jason Savage, and
arriving pregnant on his doorstep nearly twelve years ago had been the
beginning of his attempts to live a more conventional life. Catherine
and Jason had settled their differences and were now happily married,
but Adam was still plagued with restlessness and the wild recklessness
that burned within him sometimes lured him willy-nilly into situations
that were filled with peril and danger.

Like spying on the British during the past war for Jason, he
thought with a wry twist to his mobile mouth. Adam firmly believed that
Jason had made a point to come up with hazardous antics to keep him
diverted.

Taking an appreciative sip of the brandy, Adam continued to
wander idly about the study, recalling the first time he had met Jason
Savage. It had been at Jason's plantation, Terre du Coeur, when having
escorted Rachael upon her sudden arrival from England to Terre du
Coeur, Adam had discovered that not only was his beloved sister in the
hands of Jason's greatest enemy, Bias Davalos, but that Jason's father,
Guy Savage, was also
his
father! It had been a
stunning shock. Even when Guy and Rachael had painfully explained to
him and Jason the bare facts, Adam could hardly take in the enormity of
it all— how years before, Guy had gone to England to obtain a divorce
from Jason's mother, Antonia, and sincerely believing that he was a
free man while visiting in the country, he had met, fallen deeply in
love with and married Rachael. Rachael was already pregnant with Adam
when the horrifying truth was discovered— Antonia had changed her mind,
refusing to countenance the divorce. Legally, Guy was still married to
Antonia, his runaway marriage to Rachael invalid. Fearing the gossip
and scandal that would accompany the truth, Guy, after bestowing his
own mother's maiden name, St. Clair, on the unborn child and having
made the proper arrangements for the child's future, had been hurriedly
shipped back to America and a conveniently deceased husband had been
erected to be the father of Rachael's child.

No one had ever considered that, years later, Guy's legitimate
son, Jason, might come to England and fall in love with Catherine,
Rachael's daughter by the earl, thereby inadvertently setting into
motion the events that would force revelation of the truth. Even though
those shattering events had taken place over twelve years ago,
sometimes it all still amazed Adam. Guy and Rachael had been married
nearly ten years now and to no one's surprise, nine months from the day
of their wedding vows, Rachael had presented Guy with another child, a
daughter, Heather and barely a year after that had given birth to a
son, Benedict. The secret of Adam's birth, however, remained just
that—as far as the world knew, Adam was merely Guy's stepson.

Sighing, Adam stared moodily out of the long windows that
graced one of the outside walls of the room. Daylight was still a way
off, but already the darkness seemed less dense. Another day was upon
him and he wondered cynically how he was going to spend it. A competent
overseer and staff freed him from the day-to-day mechanics of running a
plantation the size of Belle Vista, and his well-trained house servants
and stablemen stood ready to receive his every command. It was a
lowering thought, but Adam was very aware that he had precious little
to do with the excellent management and wise business decisions that
characterized the running of Belle Vista and the continued growth of
his personal fortune. He had reached that point in life where, unless
he wanted to discharge his excellent overseer, lawyer and business
agent and take over the running of his vast holdings himself, his
presence was almost superfluous. Which left him with a hell of a lot of
time on his hands…

God! He was so bloody bored with the amusements to be found in
Natchez! Not for the first time Adam seriously considered leaving the
area for several months in search of
some
way to
banish his increasing restlessness.

He needed to clear his head of too many nights of heavy
drinking in smoke-filled gaming rooms; he needed new sights, needed the
satisfaction of a body exhausted from physical exertion and needed to
infuse his life with an eagerness to greet each day. There was only one
thing for it-—he would go to Terre du Coeur! A thoughtful expression on
his handsome face, he seriously began to consider the idea. There was
much, he conceded ruefully, to say for the plan. Jason's plantation was
in one of the wilder, less settled, little-explored sections of
northern Louisiana. There were few neighbors and social affairs were
certainly at a minimum, nor were there any haunts of vice nearby to
distract one in a weak moment from the primeval lure of the land.

Adam grinned, tossing down the remainder of his brandy. He
found the remoteness of Terre du Coeur utterly appealing. Something
about the sheer immensity of the ever-changing panorama, of the raw,
wildly flourishing landscape, called strongly to him.

Setting down his brandy snifter, he decided suddenly that a
trip to see Catherine and Jason was precisely what he needed. He would
leave today! This very morning! A hasty word with his overseer, a man
who knew how to keep his mouth shut should anyone, particularly Betsey
Asher, come asking about Adam's whereabouts, and a brief meeting with
his equally closemouthed butler would settle the matter.

If there was a flutter in the household at Belle Vista when
his staff was informed of his precipitous plans, not by so much as a
lifted brow did they reveal it. Despite his sleepless night, by ten
o'clock in the morning Adam was on his way to Terre du Coeur. Since he
kept several changes of clothing and other personal effects he might
need at his sister's home, his requirements for the journey were few,
and with little more than a bedroll, weapons and some basic cooking
equipment, he rode off astride his favorite black stallion—an
impressive son out of the stallion which Jason had bought on that
fateful trip to England when a violet-eyed wench, Tamara—which was the
name the gypsies had given Adam's sister, Catherine—had caught his
fancy.

Adam was an expert woodsman—he had been tutored by Jason's
blood brother, the Cherokee brave Blood Drinker—and there was little
about taking care of himself in the wild that he hadn't learned. It was
with Blood Drinker at his side that Adam had learned to expertly "read"
the signs made by man and animal alike and to set effective deadly
snares comprised of a bit of vine. With nothing more than the clothes
on their backs and knives at their sides, he and Blood Drinker would
mysteriously disappear into the vast trackless wilderness for months at
a time, living each day as it came, hunting, fishing and exploring land
that had never known the footsteps of the white man. Blood Drinker had
taught him well, and consequently, when Adam finally arrived at Terre
du Coeur nearly three weeks later, he looked fit and vital, his worn
buckskins superbly fitting his muscled frame, his eyes bright and clear
and his face bronzed by the hot sun. He looked not at all like a man
who had spent the past weeks riding along through a feral wilderness,
sleeping on the ground and hunting for every morsel he ate.

He arrived around three o'clock in the afternoon in front of
the Spanish-style wood-and-brick house that Jason Savage called home. A
wide, bow-shaped staircase on the outside of the house formed a
graceful arch which led to the vine-draped upper story, and Adam had
barely dismounted before Jason strolled into view at the top of the
staircase.

"Mon Dieu
¹
."
his
half brother exclaimed in mock disgust, his emerald eyes glinting with
amusement. "Not you! Surely the fast ladies and gaming halls of Natchez
are enough to distract you so that I do not have to put up with your
less-than-restful presence!"

Adam grinned at him, his teeth gleaming whitely amidst the
heavy black stubble that covered his face, a lock of dark hair waving
impudently across his brow. "You
did
tell me that
I could come to visit whenever the mood struck me, didn't you?"

"Oui!
But I didn't think you would
actually
do
it!" Jason replied sardonically, his
words at variance with the warm smile that curved his mouth. Coming
swiftly down the staircase, he approached Adam and pulled the younger
man into a crushing embrace. "It is good to see you, little brother,"
he added.

There were some similarities between the two men, but their
resemblance to each other was not marked. Both had thick black hair and
both were tall, and while in his youth Adam had been an inch shorter
than Jason, now, at thirty-four to Jason's forty-two, he stood as tall
as his older brother. Their builds were dissimilar—Adam was a supple
rapier to Jason's broadsword. His body, though wide-shouldered, was
leaner than Jason's more formidable physique, yet like the lethal
rapier, Adam moved with the same deadly speed and purpose, as more than
one fool had learned. Jason had inherited his emerald eyes from his
Creole mother, whereas Adam's sapphire-blue eyes had come from Rachael,
but there was something about the chiseled perfection of their jaws and
chins and the faint arrogant flare to their handsome noses that had
come to both of them from their father, Guy.

Smiling wryly at Jason's words, Adam murmured, "Not quite so
little, I think."

Jason laughed. "Don't take umbrage so quickly, my young
firebrand! But enough of this—come, come inside and refresh yourself."

It suddenly dawned on Adam that something was missing—there
were not three or four children shouting and racing to meet him, nor
was there any sign of Catherine. Normally she would have appeared by
now and hurled herself into his arms, an endless stream of excited
greetings pouring from her lips.

A question in his eyes, Adam glanced at Jason. Correctly
reading his halfbrother's expression, Jason replied easily, "Don't
worry! There is nothing wrong. Catherine and the children are in New
Orleans at the moment—they have been visiting there for some months. As
a matter of fact, if you had arrived a day later, you wouldn't have
found me at home either. I leave tomorrow to escort them home."