Patricia Potter (17 page)

A noted rake, according to gossip, who had saved her from rape or worse and then treated her with the utmost courtesy.

A murderer who took joy in the smallest of sea creatures.

And a man who seemed open and easy, but who, Lauren had slowly discovered, was just the opposite. He kept a great deal to himself, including his deepest feelings.

Or was it only because
she
was hiding so much that she imagined others capable of such deceit?

She looked out over the Caribbean sea, to the pure blues that contrasted to the now-murky darkness of her life. She didn’t like the comparison.

I won’t do it, she thought suddenly. I’ll tell Jeremy tonight that I won’t do it. And I’ll go home where I belong. Adrian will never know.

But Lauren knew
she
would know. That she would live with his smile the rest of her life.

Dear Lord, how much she wanted him! It was an ache in her body, in her very soul, that she somehow knew would never go away. She remembered his comment several days ago, when they were on the beach. He’d said she was an honest woman, and she’d asked whether that was so important. “Yes,” he’d answered so directly.

Honest. What would he think when he discovered she had lied to him from the very beginning, that she had lied to deliberately trap him?

“Forgive me, Larry,” she whispered in the soft sea breeze. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”

Terrence died the day after the canceled picnic. Except for some business he could not delegate, Adrian stayed with him. He ignored several urgent summonses from the governor.

The infection had spread, rapidly and virulently, running its course in even faster time than usual. The doctor could merely stand by and shake his head.

Much to the doctor’s distress, Adrian brought Socrates several times, but Terrence was one of the few crewmen who had truly liked the monkey. It was, Adrian commented, because Irishmen and Socrates had a lot in common, bad tempers not the least of it.

Terrence had forced a smile. “Treacherous Englishmen,” he claimed, “have caused such to be true.”

They talked about England and Ireland, trading joking insults, as the lines in Terrence’s face grew deeper, as the struggle to keep from crying out became more difficult. But still they pretended that nothing was wrong, that nothing was going to change—until Terrence lapsed into bouts of unconsciousness. And then Adrian was just there, not wanting Terrence to die alone. Just before the end, Terrence opened his eyes, and there was a clarity in his eyes that hadn’t been there the past few hours. “My family?”

“I’ll take care of them,” Adrian, whispered. “I swear.”

“An Irish oath?” There was a grimace meant to be a smile.

“Aye,” Adrian said, his hand holding Terrence’s, feeling his pain through the bone-crunching grip of the Irishman’s fingers. And then the fingers relaxed, and the man’s eyes closed.

Fighting an aching despair, Adrian made arrangements for Terrence’s burial, and then found himself walking along the docks toward the back of Jeremy’s store.

The sun was setting, an incandescent ball of fire falling into the sea, sending waves of blood-red color reflecting in the sea. The moon was already visible, looking so luminous he thought he could reach up and poke a finger through it. Any other time, he would have appreciated the contrast: the fiery departure of the sun and the cool perfection of the early evening moon.

But not now. He just saw the fire and blood.

And he needed something more. He needed peace. He needed something to touch, something real. Suddenly, it seemed everything in his life was elusive, mere wisps that he would grab and find slipping from his fingers.

He saw her then, in her uncle’s garden, standing under an old cotton tree, surrounded by bright blooms that gave her own subdued coloring a serenity he craved. Adrian had never understood his attraction to Lauren until now.

She
was real. Not merely a figment of young hot desires as Sylvia had been, but a flesh-and-blood woman who made him laugh and feel pleasure, who warmed a place that had been empty for a long time. As she did now, making some of the cold, hurting pain of Terrence’s death soften and become bearable.

He walked slowly toward the gate, wondering only slightly that she was there, as if waiting for him, as if knowing he needed someone, needed her.

Her face, the lovely composed face that was so expressive, that so easily reflected pleasure at Socrates’s antics, or anger the night she was attacked, or passion as she had those few electrifying moments in the store, now had a wistful look, the sad, grieving look that touched the core of his heart. For a moment, there was something else in her face and he was afraid she would flee, but then she moved toward him, and they met at the gate.

Almost unconsciously he opened the waist-high gate and entered, saying nothing, but holding out his arms in anguished need, and she, sensing it, walked into them.

Adrian held her tight, letting her soft, flowery scent wash away the stench of the hospital, the odor of death and decay, letting her touch soothe and heal in a way no one else’s ever had, not when he was a child, not when he was a man.

“He died, Lauren,” Adrian found himself saying. “Terrence died.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. He’d known he wouldn’t. Instead, he felt her arms tighten around him, felt the comfort and understanding in her embrace, and he lowered his head, his lips touching the soft skin of her face, moving, moving until they found her mouth, and felt the yielding of her lips.

There was desperation in the kiss, a mutual desperation that was explosive. Lips were almost frantic with the need to touch and feel and taste, to comfort and be comforted, to explore and be explored.

The need was burning straight through Adrian, like nothing else in his life. Not Ridgely. Not the pain of constant rejection. Nothing mattered but Lauren Bradley and the way she made him feel.

Her body melded to his as if made to do so, and her lips opened, allowing his tongue entrance as her hands went up around his neck, soothing, caressing, demanding things he suspected she wasn’t consciously aware of. He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to be swept away as if in the eye of a hurricane. Electric tension vibrated all around them, the now-familiar lightning vibrant in the air, glorious and brilliant and splendid.

Adrian didn’t want to let go. He never wanted to let go. His hands moved along her back, feeling the slender curves of her body through the curve of the dress, and a lock of honey-colored hair rubbed against his face like silken threads. He’d kissed a hundred girls or more, and bedded a number of them, and yet none had ever touched him as she did. Lauren had reached him and touched the deep private part of him he’d always kept locked tight against intrusion; now the fabric of that protection was ripped away, and he felt raw and naked.

But he didn’t care. For some reason, he trusted her as he hadn’t trusted before. His lips turned greedy as they plundered her mouth, as his tongue tentatively, and then more surely, probed and tickled and explored. And she responded each time, her own body a natural adjunct to his, bending and yielding; her hands explored his back much as he had hers.

Lauren felt mindless … like a puppet guided by feelings she couldn’t control. Of all the things she had done in her life, this was the most foolish, the most dangerous.

But she couldn’t move, couldn’t act independently of all the emotions she felt. Nothing in the world could have affected her as much as Adrian’s face when he’d entered the garden, the deep grief in it, the crooked smile that was no smile at all but only a futile attempt at one.

And he had come to her!

His hands were first rough with need, but then gentled just as she discovered that she wanted the roughness, wanted the implied need in it. Because she understood it. She wanted to clutch him with all her might, to keep him close and feel his warmth, ease his wounds.

An honest woman. Lauren knew that was what Adrian thought she was.

She suddenly jerked away, the taste of his mouth, of his tongue, now a part of her. She jerked away, the sweetness turning to bitter fruit, to the acid taste of betrayal.

“Lauren,” Adrian said in a low, confused voice.

She looked at him like a wounded fawn, her misted eyes like the green-gray of a storm-tossed ocean.

And then she gathered her skirts and ran inside before he could see the tears that were starting to run down her cheeks.

CHAPTER 9

She’d run away again.

Lauren sat on her bed and allowed the tears to flow. It was the first time she’d cried since she’d heard of Larry’s death.

Once again, she felt a terrible loss, made especially painful by the sense that this one was partly of her own making, caused by her own stubborn, headstrong actions. When she had taken on this task, she had not considered the human beings involved. Moreover, by being true to one part of herself, she was betraying another.

And she didn’t know how to make things right. So she’d run again, something she’d never done before meeting Adrian Cabot.

Lauren didn’t know how long she sat there before a soft knock came at the door, summoning her to supper. Again she felt like a traitor. This time to Jeremy Case, because some time tonight she must tell him she could no longer do what she’d promised.

Supper turned out to be a somber affair despite Corinne’s attempt to make it otherwise. Lauren felt Jeremy’s eyes on her; his scrutiny was knowing, not condemning but sad.

Lauren told the Cases that she’d seen Captain Cabot, that one of his crew had died and that was why he had not accompanied her on the picnic earlier.

Corinne looked at Lauren with compassion. “This war … I’ll be so glad when it ends.”

“Amen,” Jeremy said softly.

Lauren wanted to add her own plea, but how could she? She was failing them all. Suddenly she pushed back her chair and, her voice choked, asked to be excused.

She bolted for the door, for the garden, for air.

Lauren reached the cotton tree, where she had kissed Adrian, and stopped, hearing Jeremy’s voice behind her, calling softly. She turned around, and her eyes met his. “I can’t, Jeremy. I can’t go through with my part.”

His hand reached out to touch her arm. “You must, Lauren. We can’t let that cannon get through. Hundreds of Union lives lie in the balance.”

“No. I won’t. You should have seen him tonight. He was hurting.”

“We all hurt, Lauren. But I suspect your captain less than most.”

Lauren stiffened. “Jeremy,” she began to explain. “I thought … Mr. Phillips said … but he’s not like that. He saved my life, and … well, he cares about people.”

Jeremy hesitated, hating himself for what he was about to do. “Your brother?”

Lauren looked at him miserably, then looked away, guilt weighing on her again, guilt at betraying Larry … at betraying Adrian. She would have to betray one or the other.

But Adrian was alive, and Larry wasn’t.

“There’s something else,” Jeremy said quietly.

There was an edge in his voice, an inflection that made her stiffen. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to tell you this, Lauren, but he’s not the man you apparently think he is.”

Her hazel eyes met his clouded blue ones in question.

“I heard about it yesterday.” Jeremy hesitated. “I didn’t want to tell you, but your Captain Cabot and Clay Harding … they have a bet … on which one could …”

Lauren felt herself go icy cold, as if she had stepped out of herself and was looking at a statue. “Which one could … what?”

Jeremy looked at her steadily. “Bed you. The prize was dinner for their crews, loser to pay.”

“Crews?” she echoed in a hollow voice. A bet. A contest. Common knowledge. “No,” she whispered, as she remembered the past few days. Clay’s attention, Adrian’s annoyance at finding her with Clay. It fit. Everything fit, even the fact that she had never been courted this way before.

It wasn’t because she was suddenly a swan. She was the stakes in a wager. A wager between two arrogant men who were playing a game, just as they threw coins out windows for amusement. Just as carelessly, just as mindlessly, just as heartlessly.

Dear God, what a fool she had been.

Lauren closed her eyes, thinking of Adrian’s dark blue eyes that had seemed so full of grief hours ago. A trick. A bid for sympathy. Was that all it was? Hadn’t Phillips warned her?

She felt herself shiver in the warm air. But the coldness was in her brain, in her heart. A numbness that blotted out the pain she knew was there, that she knew she would soon feel in all its intensity.

And she had been worried about betraying
him.

Still, a part of her didn’t want to believe it. Jeremy wanted something too, needed something. Perhaps he was lying. He, too, wanted something from her.

But when his eyes met hers, and she saw his own guilt and compassion, she knew he was telling the truth.

She sank down on the bench in the garden, her gaze falling to the ground. She meant nothing to Adrian Cabot. She had no need to worry about betraying him. None at all. And she’d almost betrayed herself, and everything she believed in, for a mirage.