In the Wake of the Wind (40 page)

Raphael stroked the comer of his mouth with one finger, then dropped his hand to his side. “Aiden’s gone after his wife. I’m going home. Good day, Charlotte.”

He turned on his heel and strode out.

Charlotte plaited her trembling fingers together and stared down at them, her head spinning with shock. First Raphael had shattered her dreams of glory, and now Aiden had taken away the only thing left that she cared about, her control over Townsend.

This was all Serafina’s fault. All of it. There was only one thing left to be done.

As soon as the rain started pelting down
Serafina
took cover under the protective canopy of the oak tree. She’d gone up to feed the swans, who had learned to float over as soon as they saw her appear on the crest of the hill. She took comfort in their serene presence, their easy trust. Trust. There was little enough of that to be had in her life.

She huddled under the oak, her back pressed against its massive trunk, waiting for the storm to pass. Thunder rolled and cracked, lightning flashed across the distant sky. She might be utterly alone, but she took comfort from the primal raging of the elements, so pure, so powerful. Here there was no sin, no evil. Here was safety, all the safety she had left in the world.

“Hestia,” she prayed, looking up through the thick branches. “Goddess of hearth and home, protect me now, I beg you. Keep me safe from false accusations, from ill intent. Let Aiden know the truth, for I cannot bear him to think I betrayed him with another, even if he himself did the same.”

A drop of rain fell on her cheek and then another and another, and as she reached her hand up to wipe them away she realized they were warm, her own tears. She lowered her forehead onto her raised knees, letting the tears come as they would, pouring down her cheeks like a river of heartbreak.

Follow your heart and the truth will reveal
itself…

The words floated like a whisper through the howling of the wind, just as she had heard them once before in a time of despair. But she had followed her heart, she thought miserably. That was the trouble. She had followed it and it had only led her to disaster. Was that the truth the goddess had meant? That Aiden, whom she loved desperately despite herself, had taken another woman to his bed?
Know that I don’t intend to break my marriage vows,
he’d sworn under this very tree on their wedding day. But he had.

He had lied to her. He had betrayed her. He had believed his sister’s allegations against her. And yet she still loved him. To try to excise Aiden would be like trying to cut her heart out, an impossible task. He had made her his, and she couldn’t change that one unassailable fact. She just wasn’t sure how to go on loving him and survive.

“Serafina
…”

This voice was real, its deep pitch achingly familiar. Her head jerked up. Aiden stood only feet away, his face streaming with rain, his jacket plastered against his hard muscular form.

She jumped to her feet, staring at him as if he might be a specter. But he was all too solid, and the last person in the world she wanted to see. Her first impulse was to flee, but the only path before her would take her directly to him.

Instinct took over. She spun around and reached for the first low branches of the oak, using them to pull herself up. She climbed furiously, not even bothering to test her weight in a headlong rush to escape him.

“Serafina,
you idiot, what are you doing?” he cried, running toward the tree in long strides. “Are you mad? There’s lightning striking all around. Get down from there!”

“No,” she called over her shoulder. “Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.” She couldn’t reach the next set of branches, so she settled herself in the crook of a limb and pressed her cheek against the trunk, breathing hard.

“You may not want to talk to me, which I can well understand,” he said, peering up at her through the leaves. “But I want to talk to you, and I’m damned if I’m going to do it like this. Please, sweetheart, come down. It’s dangerous up there, it really is.” He sounded truly frightened.

“I won’t come down, and don’t call me sweetheart,” she said, anger replacing panic. “You don’t mean it, and I won’t be lied to.”

“I’m not lying to you,” he said, raking his hands through his wet hair, sending sprays of water flying. “I have nothing to lie to you about, for God’s sake! If anyone’s been lied to, it’s me—and not by you, by Charlotte.”

Serafina’s eyes widened. She shifted on the limb so that she could see him better. “You
know
she lied?” she asked, not sure she could possibly have heard correctly. “But she said—she said you believed her—that you never wanted to see me again.”

“I know what she said, or at least I assume I know, and right now I don’t give a damn about any of it. Please, come down out of this tree before I’m forced to come up after you?”

“But—but I don’t understand …”
Serafina
said, her head spinning. Charlotte had been so clear. Aiden hated her. Aiden thought she’d been unfaithful to him. He wanted her gone. But the way he was looking at her right now, his eyes filled with real concern, made a lie out of that too. And he’d just said that he hadn’t believed a word of what his sister had told him.

“I know you don’t understand,” Aiden said, his voice rough. “If you’ll just remove yourself from your perch, I’ll explain everything.” He flinched as a bolt of lightning struck on the other side of the pond. “Now!” he roared.

She swallowed hard. It was all well and fine that he’d dismissed Charlotte’s horrible charges against her, but he still had some equally horrible charges of his own to answer to. “What about Harriet Munro?” she demanded.

“What about the bloody woman?” he said, his eyes flashing with frustration. “She’s a silly, vain peahen and nothing but a thorn in my side. Is that what you want to know?”

Serafina
glared at him. “If she’s such a silly, vain peahen, then why did you sleep with her?”

Aiden threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “What the hell difference does it make? She was conveniently there. I was stupid. I don’t know! It’s water under the bridge, for the love of God.”

“She was ‘conveniently there’?”
Serafina
said furiously, appalled that he could be so callous, so dismissive of his wedding vows. “And just because you were angry with me for doing something I hadn’t, you decided it was well within your rights to go and do the same thing?”

Aiden stared up at her. “What? Oh, dear God …” He bent his head, his shoulders taut. And then he looked up again. “Is that what Charlotte told you? That I spent the night with Harriet when I didn’t come home?”

Serafina
didn’t bother gracing his question with a reply. If there had been an acorn in easy reach she would have thrown it straight down onto his handsome face.

“I swear to you, sweetheart, all I did the other night was walk. I pounded the stinking streets of London, trying to escape from Charlotte’s accusations against you. I haven’t been with Harriet in four years.”

“You took Harriet to her carriage,”
Serafina
said accusingly.

“Yes,
and practically threw her headfirst into it. I was furious with her. I saw her talking to you and Charlotte, and I saw you remove yourself, obviously upset. So I decided to remove her from the premises altogether.”

“She chose my trousseau.”
Serafina
said flatly, only slightly mollified by this husbandly gesture of protection.

“She told you that, did she? Well, it’s true in part,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Tinkerby and I were floundering about. I’d already told Mme. Bernard what sort of styles and colors I thought would suit you best, but the details were beyond me, so Harriet, who happened to appear out of the blue, stepped in.
Serafina,
will you
please
return to earth before I find myself picking up a pile of cinders?”

“You didn’t make love to her?” she demanded, still not entirely sure he was telling her the truth.

“No!” he cried, slamming his palms against the trunk of the tree. “Damn, that hurt,” he said, shaking his hands furiously.

“Serves you right,” she muttered with satisfaction. “Why should I believe you?” she called down to him. “You’re a self-styled rogue and—and you’ve been behaving as if you don’t even care whether I live or die.”

“You think I don’t
care?”
he said incredulously. “Sweetheart, my problem is that
I
care too much—do you really think I’ve ever let anyone get under my skin the way you have? I’m driven to distraction with how much I care. Why the hell else do you think I’d come chasing after you at breakneck speed—not mention risking my life by standing under a tree in the middle of a lightning storm? And I wish you’d come down.”

“You honestly didn’t make love to Harriet?” she asked, chewing on her lip.

“Serafina,
why would I make love to anyone else when you’re the only woman I want and ever will? I love you!”

Serafina
stared down at him. “What?” she whispered. “What did you say?”

“I love you,” he roared. “Now come down!”

Serafina
couldn’t move fast enough. She felt like singing a song of joy as she put her hands behind her and shimmied forward, her feet reaching for the branch below. But in her haste her feet slipped and went out from under her. With a sharp yelp of alarm she found herself tumbling through thin air with nothing to give her purchase.

“Sarah! Oh God, Sarah!” The heart-wrenching cry tore from Aiden’s throat as she fell, only dimly heard in her short plunge to earth.

His arms caught her fast, breaking her fall, and they both landed on the ground in a heap, a whoosh of air exploding from Aiden’s lungs.

He raised himself onto his elbows, breathing hard, gazing down into her face. “Are you all right?”

She nodded faintly, her eyes huge with wonder.

“Thank God,” he said with a sigh of relief. “You scared the life out of me.” His expression suddenly changed from tenderness to one of unmitigated fury. “Don’t you ever, ever, do that to me again,” he said ferociously, abruptly standing, “or I’ll—I’ll horsewhip you. And get out from under this damned tree,” he added, hauling her to her feet. “You have no more sense than a child in leading strings.”

He stalked off to the edge of the spread of branches, his back turned to her, his hands shoved on his hips, his head bowed as his shoulders rose and fell rapidly.

“Aiden?” she said, the song in her heart rising to a blissful crescendo.
Thank you, goddess. Thank you,
it caroled.

He looked over his shoulder. “What?” he asked curtly, still looking shaken.

“What did you call me?” she asked, her face wreathed in an enormous smile. Blessed. She was truly blessed.

“A damned fool?” he replied dryly.

“No. When I was falling,” she said, her heart about to burst with happiness.

He frowned. “I called your name.”

Serafina
crowed with laughter and ran toward him like a bullet exploding from a gun. She threw her arms around him, and the force of her body hitting his before he had a chance to brace himself knocked him to the ground again.
Serafina
fell on top of him, laughing like a maniac.

“You did!” she crowed, covering his face with frantic little kisses. “I knew I heard it right—oh,
Aiden,
”
she said, throwing her head back in exaltation, “I knew it!”

Aiden lifted his head slightly, pinned down by her weight. “What did you know?” he said, looking baffled by her delight.

“That you really were destined to be my husband,” she said, knowing there was no way to explain. It didn’t matter. She rested her forehead against the base of his warm throat where his pulse beat steadily. Life. Aiden’s soul—Adam’s soul. One and the same. Here. Now. It all made sense, it all finally made sense. She hadn’t been fantasizing or even descending into madness for a single moment. The goddess had tried to tell her, and she simply hadn’t understood. Or believed hard enough. But she believed now. Oh, how she believed. All her dreams had come true.

Aiden was Adam and he loved her.

“I love you too,” she breathed, moving up to kiss his mouth, affirming the truth of her declaration.

Aiden’s arms came around her hard, holding her fast, returning her kiss in full measure, opening his mouth, possessing her fully as his tongue met hers, sending her into whirling spirals of desire. He deftly turned her onto her back, his thigh pressing between her legs as he pushed her back against the wet grass, his hands loosening the ribbon that restrained her hair.

He lifted his head, his fingers combing through her heavy locks as he gazed down at her, his sapphire eyes filled with longing.
“Serafina
—oh, Lord, my sweet, you’re so beautiful. How could you have thought for a moment that I would ever want another woman after being with you?”

She smiled up at him, her hands stroking his cheeks. “I was being foolish. I listened to Charlotte’s lies against you, and I should have known better.” She sighed with simple happiness. “All I want is you. Always.”