My Only Love (33 page)

"Wait!"
Olivia called, and the old man looked around. Breathing hard, Olivia joined
him. "Where has my husband gone?"

"Out
there." Charles motioned toward the moor. "I'm goin' after him. He
shouldn't be alone in his frame of mind, lass."

Olivia
snatched the reins from his hand.

Charles
caught her arm. "I ain't seen him like this since his father died. Even
then he weren't so desperately grieved. I ain't certain ya should be alone
with him, darlin'. Ya know how his bloody temper can get the best of him."

"He's
my husband," she told him. "He wouldn't hurt me. Now give me a leg
up, Charles Fowles, or must I be forced to search out a step?"

Reluctantly,
Charles caught Olivia's bent leg and heaved her up into the saddle. The horse
pranced nervously. A moment later the mare surged forward and stretched her
arched neck out toward the moor.

Olivia
flew across the countryside, the wind roaring in her face and ears.

Instinct
led her to Margrave Bluff.

There
Alhabac grazed peacefully in the deep heath. Olivia dismounted, and not
bothering to tether her mare, made her way up the steep incline toward the
bluff. She found Miles standing at the ledge, his face to the wind and setting
sun.

"Miles,"
she said softly and urgently. "I fear you're standing too close. Come away
from there. Please!"

"How
did you know where to find me?" His voice sounded slurred.

Calmly,
she moved up beside him, and held out her hand. "There are safer places in
which to grieve," she said.

"Grieve?
What do I have to grieve for? Because Alyson is dead? I've wished her dead a
thousand times in my life. When her health deteriorated and I interned her in
Amersham, I fantasized her dying there as alone and as unhappy as she made
me."

"But
you loved her or you never would have experienced the intensity of those
emotions."

His
dark brows drew together.

"And
in the end," Olivia added, "you forgave her."

Miles
focused on some distant object, and for long minutes he was silent. How
incredibly approachable he seemed in that moment: a child suddenly orphaned and
desperately lost. She ached to press him to her breast, to soothe the confusion
and pain from his features. But dare she? To do so would risk everything—all
the secrets she had tried so desperately to conceal these last long months.

"It
wasn't time for her to die," he murmured thoughtfully. "We had only
grown to know one another. There were so many lost years ... My God, all the
years I damned her with my anger." He closed his eyes. "I want to
take it all back, and I can't."

"You
have! All the kindness and concern you've shown her the last months was your
way of making amends. She understood. Her peace came with knowing that you
forgave her."

He
shook his head, and in his inebriated state, lost his balance and stumbled.
Olivia's heart leapt to her throat as he appeared to totter for an instant on
the craggy precipice. Cautiously, she caught his arm and attempted to pull him
away from the ledge.

He
jerked his arm away. "Go away," he said, drunkenness slurring his
voice.

"I
think not. Not, at least, until you come away from this bluff."

His
eyes flashing, his lips curling under, Miles turned on her suddenly, sending
stones scattering over the edge of the cliff and causing Olivia to stagger backward
before catching herself. "Don't you understand?" he shouted, and the
sound echoed across the desolate dale. "I have no one. No family. Not a
solitary soul to call my own. I'm alone, goddammit, and I'm scared!"

"Alone?
Sir, I am your wife. You're hardly alone."

"Wife?
Do you want to know what my wife is to me? She's a signature on a worthless
piece of paper. She's an object behind a desk who spouts budgets and figures
and percentages, and no doubt croons debits and credits in her sleep. She's a
martyr who would devote her life to a father and sister who couldn't give a
damn if she lives or dies—yet she hasn't got the time of day for me." He
grabbed her arm with one hand, the other he buried along her scalp, destroying
the tightly coiled chignon so her hair spilled through his fingers and down her
back. Dragging her near—so near she could easily detect the strong scent of
liquor on his breath, he said, "She rejects me."

Olivia
touched his face with her fingers. His need gave her strength to confide what
was in her heart. "I dream of no other man," she replied firmly.
"Only you."

He
laughed sharply and his fingers twisted more fiercely in her hair.
"Liar," he snarled.

"You.
Only you. I swear. Are you so blind you can't see it? My every action these
last five months has been for you, to help you, to rally you, to champion you.
I love Miles Warwick. No other man has ever owned my heart."

He
shoved her away; his face looked frighteningly savage. "You mock
me."

Olivia
shook her head. "I would not mock you for the world."

"You
profess to have loved only me, yet there's Bryan. You refuse to speak of your
lover, or the pain of his abandonment. What sort of life can we share—what
sort of love can we share—when you keep such secrets? Why the hell can't you
understand that your past doesn't matter to me any longer, Olivia. All I care
about is honesty. Without that we can have no future."

Allowing
him a shaky smile, her heart racing in her breast, Olivia stepped up against
her husband and tentatively touched his rigid cheek. Pleasure surged through
her in a warm wave. She trembled.

"Love
and affection matter more than parentage. I am Bryan's mother because I chose
to be. And you have become a true father to Bryan as well. Bryan's father is a
man capable of great tenderness, passionate love, and intense anger. Every atom
of his being is as dear to me as my own son's." Rising up on her toes, she
lightly pressed her lips to his, and became breathless. "I.. . understood
the language of his mind and body, for we were of a kind, both desperately
yearning for a future, and a family in which we could belong."

Lightly,
she kissed him again, lingering, breathing softly against his mouth until she
felt him shudder in response to her touches. In his hazel eyes she saw anguish,
outrage, disbelief, and desire.

"In
my heart, there has never been another. As long as I am living, there never
will be. I love you."

"Oh,
sweet Jesus." He groaned as if in pain.

She
kissed him fully, cutting off his words, burying her hands in his thick hair as
she had often imagined doing as she lay in her empty bed at night and wept
tears of longing for him. She kissed him until the world careened, and the sky
and clouds and dale became a kaleidoscope of colors that swirled around her and
dragged her down.

And
she pulled her husband with her, until his face and shoulders blocked out the
sky and his hands on her naked flesh—impatiently shoving aside her clothes—made
her body explode in a thousand directions, until she was little more than an
aching, straining sensation of long denied desire—of the desperate need to
forget the idiotic fears that had kept her from knowing her husband completely
these last months. How foolish those fears seemed in that moment, as his
fingers slid inside her and he kissed her with his whisky-sweet mouth. She
would have thrown caution to the wind even had he not been drunk and swept away
by his passion for her, and his grief for his mother; she wanted him that
badly.

"Make
love to me," she cried, unable to stand the waiting a moment
longer—ignoring the nagging forebodings that screamed out their warnings.
"Make love to me," she pleaded, gazing up into his face. His features
looked pained, yet there was a smile on his lips, and in his eyes, and there
was an urgent gentleness to his hands as they moved on her, and in her, doing
wonderful things that made her want to scream.

And
her body responded. A deep stirring of passion turned that aching place between
her legs soft and hot and fluid, and her fear of the unknown vanished with the
onslaught of desire. She barely noticed the brief pierce of pain as he drove
his body into hers, but instead, cried aloud at the glory of consummation.

Oh
God, at long last. ..

He
stretched her out in the flowing grass atop the bluff, the sky a blue bowl above
his head and his hair slightly mussed by the wind and the easy, flowing motion
of his body moving into and out of hers. How splendid he was. How handsome! She
loved every tiny crevice in his dark face. She worshiped the feel of his naked
skin upon hers— slippery flesh and coarse black hair, the muscles of his
buttocks flexing with each penetration. Suddenly, she was lost as she had never
been lost before, helpless to the fall, the overwhelming flood of wet fire that
sluiced through her lower body and drove the breath from her lungs.

She
returned his kisses feverishly, her mouth opening to receive his hot tongue
even as his hips rocked almost violently back and forth upon hers, bringing
with each deep thrust a frantic new feeling of delectation and pain, of
uncontrollability. Twisting her fingers into his hair, she rose up to meet each
movement of his swollen sex, loving him back with all the pent-up fervor she
could no longer contain.

Her
world became a pinpoint of immense, unfettered pleasure, and joy. His kiss laid
open her soul, and she succumbed in body and spirit until she felt overcome
with the heat of each little spasm, the apogee rendering her helpless, and free
at last.

"Jane, you look
blooming, and smiling, and pretty, truly

pretty this morning. Is
this my pale little elf? Is this my

mustard-seed? This
little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled

 cheek and rosy lips,-
the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the

radiant hazel
eyes?" (I had green eyes, reader, but you must

excuse the mistake,- for
him they were new-dyed, I suppose.)

"It is Jane Eyre,
sir."

— Charlotte Bronte

J
am Eyre

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Miles
awakened slowly, the morning sun through his window a white pulse behind his.
eyelids. His head pounded, and the previous day's memories tapped at his
throbbing skull in misty images.

Christ.
How long had he been drunk?

Raising
up in bed, he looked at the twisted covers beside him, and burying his fingers
in the pillow, he pulled it to his face, detecting the faint hint of violets.

He
rolled from the bed, pausing long enough to allow his spinning head to settle.
Naked, he assessed the discarded clothes strewn about the floor—boots there,
breeches here, shirt (cotton) lying in a heap by the chair. Stooping, he lifted
a feminine stocking with one fingertip and grinned.

"Bryan,
get down from that wall this minute," came Olivia's distant voice.

Miles
moved to the window and looked down in the rose garden just as Olivia swung her
son away from the garden wall. For a moment, they spun round and round in a
circle, mother and son laughing aloud in the brilliant morning sun.

He
dressed quickly, even though his head and body felt disassociated, and hurried
down the stairs. The servants tiptoed about, casting him cautious looks as he
strolled through the corridors. Seeing Sally peeping at him from behind a door,
he stopped and frowned. "Come here," he ordered her.

"Only
if ya promise ya won't be hurlin' nothin' at me again."

Raising
one eyebrow, he repeated, "Come here... please."

Reluctantly,
she moved down the hall, stopping a safe measure from him.

"I
would like some very strong black coffee. I'll have it in the morning room.'.'

She
looked at him funny. "Sir ... yer mother is laid out in the mornin'
room."

"My
... ah, God. Never mind then."

Miles
continued down the corridor to his office, exited through the door into the
garden where Olivia was gathering up her trowel and gloves, while Bryan
collected several stones he had discovered during his exploration of the dirt.
Moving up behind his wife, Miles wrapped his arm around her waist, making her
jump in surprise and spill her gloves.

"Good
morning," he whispered in her ear.

"Who's
that?" she demanded in a teasingly stern voice.

"Your
husband, of course."

"Oh,
is that all? I thought, perhaps, it was the groom from the next estate. We meet
here every morning at ten."

He
laughed and swept her unbound hair aside, exposing the pale curvature of her
neck. "I never realized that you wore violet water behind your ears."

'There
are a great many things you haven't noticed about me, sir."

He
turned her to face him. His eyes searched her features, his fuzzy mind slowly
registering the startling changes in the woman before him. Olivia's complexion
bloomed with color; her eyes sparkled like gems. Her flowing hair reflected the
morning sun like polished copper, and he wanted like hell to bury his hands in
it. But she smiled somewhat tentatively, and pulled away.