Samantha James (19 page)

The answer came from some corner deep inside.
Mayhap because you did not want to. Mayhap because you did not look
.

She gazed at him anew, but naught had changed. His eyes, ringed by a fringe of thick, black lashes, were a soft, clear blue flecked with tiny silver lights, a blue more pure than the sky on a cloudless summer day.

Her heart squeezed. Pain tore through her, a wrenching blade from throat to groin.

She began to cry.

Egan was stunned. “Glenda. Glenda, what’s wrong?”

His arms closed around her. Tender fingers brushed the dampness from her cheeks. She clung to him and he held her, aware of the sudden shift in her emotions, but not understanding.

Nor did she. She knew only that in that moment, something stirred inside her…a tumult that rocked her to the depths of her being.

She was suddenly terrified as never before.

Did she love him
?

Nay. She dared not. She
did
not.

Yet, alas, he was like a stone in her slipper. A thistle beneath her nail. Always he trespassed. In her thoughts. In her heart…

Ah, but her heart had already been taken for all eternity. Hadn’t it? Her mind screamed.
Hadn’t it
?

What she felt was vastly different than what she’d felt for Niall. Love had been like a lilting, wispy breeze to lift the spirit. But what she felt for Egan was…demanding. Consuming. A storm quested inside her whene’er he was near.

She had only to gaze at him and feel herself afire. To experience a jolt of hungry longing that sent her senses aflame and desire abrim through every part of her…to know a terrible fear that surpassed any other.

She tried not to think of it. She tried so very hard not to remember the husband and son she’d left behind, buried in the rocky hilltop that overlooked Dunthorpe. Oh, the rending ache in her heart had faded, yet the starkness of that memory was a tor
ment that would burn inside her forever.

She had loved Niall…but he had died. She had loved their child, longed for him to live with every fiber of her being…yet he had died too. She’d loved them both—and lost them both. Yet now there was Egan, creeping into every corner of her heart and soul…

She didn’t want to hurt like that again. She couldn’t
feel
that way again.

She was afraid to love him. Afraid to lose him.

Afraid of the pain known so keenly when Niall and their son had died.

Over and over she sought to convince herself she didn’t love him, to hold herself distant. If she didn’t love him, should she lose him, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

Yet just as there was a stirring in her heart, just as nature would follow its course and men would have their way, life had already stirred and caught hold deep in her womb.

And this, too, was different. Oh, aye, her breasts blossomed round and full and plump, her nipples plumbed large and dark and were on occasion tender—indeed, she told herself, it was no wonder, for her appetite had been so hearty of late. She did not sicken, her belly pitching and heaving when she woke. Nor did her waist and hips thicken. She was not so tired her lids drooped when it was scarcely noonday. She was still slender, but for that slight protuberance that began to burgeon ’neath her navel. With her first babe, she had begun to round almost from the first.

The harvest came in, as bountiful as all had prayed
for. The earl was paid his due and more—werthers of mutton, beef, and honey, and a bulging purse full of coin. The vaults in the storeroom were full.

Her courses had come but once in the spring, just after they wed. Three months passed. Four. Soon it would be five. Still Glenda did not speak of it. She dared not think of it, but fleetingly!—and then only so quickly it was as if she could not catch hold of the thought—like a fugitive, bent on escape.

To acknowledge that she carried a babe was to believe. And to believe was to hope…

And Glenda was desperately afraid to hope.

If Nessa knew, she said naught as well.

With the advent of the harvest, she rose early, often earlier than Egan. Today, however, he was gone when she arose. Quickly she bathed and dried herself. Moving to the cupboard, she reached inside, searching for a shift until she found it. Raising her arms high, it billowed high before sailing down over her body.

That was how Egan came upon her that morn. Busy before the cupboard, she didn’t hear the click of the door as it opened and closed behind him. In the instant between one and the next, he clearly saw the silhouette of her form—full, high breasts, delectably round. He smiled, his gaze continuing their journey down her body…

He froze.

A faint, choked sound wedged midway up his chest. He sucked in a breath. His heart soared. He thought…oh, a hundred things! It was inevitable. He marveled that he hadn’t guessed sooner. God knew he should have! Since the time she had first
gone to his chamber, she had lain with him nearly every night since…

His smile withered. His temples began to pound. His mind sped back.

Not once had she pleaded her woman’s time.
Not once
.

She hadn’t told him. Yet how could she not have known? This wasn’t the first time she’d carried a child.

A searing pain reamed his brain.

When Glenda turned, Egan stood directly before her. His gaze was riveted to her middle.

She blanched.
No
, she thought in horror.
Oh, no
. His features were drawn and tight, his mouth a thin, relentless line. A muscle jumped, there near his scar. Never had he been so ominous or forbidding.

“Have you something to tell me, sweet?”

Sweet
. The word was a brittle condemnation. Beneath his unyielding gaze, she cringed. Her arms started to move around herself, an instinctive, self-protective gesture. He didn’t allow it.

His hands captured her wrists like iron manacles. He held them fast to her sides.

“You knew.”

Uncertainty roiled within her like a churning sea. All she could do was nod.

“How long? How long have you known? Weeks? Months?”

Again that pitiful nod.

“Why did you not tell me?” he demanded.

Glenda drew a shuddering breath. Wincing, she glanced away, anywhere but at the scathing reproach she knew resided on his face.

“I should have.”

“Aye, you should have!” His voice was like a clap of thunder. “Does a man not have the right to know? Do
I
not have the right to know?”

Glenda floundered. What was she to say? “’Twas not that,” she said helplessly.

“What, then? Did you think I would not care?”

The fierceness of his glare discouraged any answer she might have made—and indeed, what defense had she? She could not plead innocence, for it was not true.

“Your silence these many weeks, both then and now. Ah, but it says so very much!”

Glenda could not speak for the hot tears that stung the back of her throat.

“Still she says nothing. Do I accuse when I should not, Glenda? Do I wrong you?”

Hot tears stung the back of her throat. She blinked them back. “You do not wrong me.” Her voice wobbled traitorously. “But you wound me.”

“I wound you…that you should know what it’s like to be wounded! How far gone are you?”

He gave her little chance to respond. A lean hand threw up the hem of her shift. She gasped and tried to push his hands aside, but he was insistently determined to assess. Imperious fingers splayed across the smoothness of her belly, the small, hard mound the size of a fist.

His hands left her, but not his icy glare. “How far, Glenda? Four months?”

She swallowed painfully. Her voice, when it came, was very low. “Nearer to five, I think.”

“Five!” It was a blistering curse. “Ah, I begin to see
why now—why you rise before me! Why you douse the candle before coming to bed! But it was you who came to me that first time,” he reminded her, “you who came to me!”

“’Tis a wife’s duty to—to lay with her husband.”

“Duty! Is that what brought you to my bed? I felt you come against my mouth. My lips. I felt you come while I lay deep inside you! Duty! Is duty what
kept
you in my bed?”

Nay
, she thought.
Nay
! Yet somehow no sound passed the constriction in her throat.

He’d gone white about the mouth. “I wanted you, aye!” he charged. “I wouldn’t have let you go, not after that first night! But never did I force you, Glenda, never!”

Glenda’s eyes widened. “I know that.” Wildly she shook her head. “You do not understand. At first I did not realize…I thought I would be barren. You know that with Niall I was barren those many years!”

“But in time you did conceive, Glenda. Or was your child not his?”

Glenda gave a little scream of rage. “Oh, but you are cruel to say such a thing! You know I loved Niall!”

His mouth twisted. “Ah, yes, I know! I well remember the night at the table when you told Niall you were most likely with child. You cared not who listened. You cared not who knew! Indeed, within the hour, everyone at Dunthorpe was aware of your condition.”

Ah, yes, her eyes had been shining, alight with pure joy. The remembrance battered him, for now her eyes were dark and shadowed—the news something
to be hidden away, even from him! Oh, aye, he decided blackly, but with him it was different. It was as if she were ashamed to carry his bairn, and everything within him cried out the depth of his fury and his pain. The hurt was excruciating…unending.

His grip merciless, he caught her chin between thumb and forefinger and prodded her face up to his. “Are you pleased about this babe?” he demanded.

Her gaze cleaved to his. She groped for an answer…an answer that eluded her.

His hand fell away from her, as if in disgust.

Glenda’s lungs were burning with the effort it took not to break down. “Egan. Egan, try to—”

He paid no heed, but lashed out in bitter anger. “Forgive my foolish question! How quickly I forget! You did not want my seed. ’Twas Niall’s child you wanted. Not mine. Never mine.”

Pierced to the quick, she raised shimmering eyes to his. “Must you mock me?”

“I do not mock you! I but state the truth!”

“The truth. The truth! You cannot begin to know what I feel, the tangle in my heart,” she choked out. “I was afraid to say a word to anyone…afraid to be glad, for what if I miscarried? Would you have me be filled with joy, only to feel the life gush from my body? I could not stand that. I-I thought ’twas better to feel nothing—to think not of this child at all! All those years of yearning…of watching other women cradle their babes against their breast…my arms were empty. My womb was empty! And then when it finally happened, I-I was delirious with pleasure—and now you would fault me for it. You would fault me for it!”

Though she longed to scream and rage, her voice emerged a tremulous, broken whisper…with heart-rending candor.

“It was all that filled my thoughts, my heart, night and day! A child lived inside me, the child I’d longed for for so long! My strength was his own. I wanted my babe so much, and then I—I lost him! I held his wee, limp body against me. He died in my arms, Egan. He died in my arms! You cannot know what it’s like to lose a child, a piece of my heart, a piece of my soul!” She gave a jagged sob. “I was afraid to risk again—I am still afraid! How can you not see? How can you not know?”

She looked at him then, her face so very pale, her lovely mouth tremulous, her eyes huge and glittering with tears. But Egan was blind to her anguish, deaf to her pleas, numbed by his own fury, his heart raw and bleeding.

How can you not see
, she had cried.

How could
she
not see that she sheared his very heart?

How can you not know
?

How could
she
not know that he loved her? That he’d loved her for so long now.

But it was a love that was blighted…blighted by a ghost.

The ghost of her husband.

He feared it would ever be so. Through all the days of his life.

But no. Niall was dead. That was what he’d wanted her to see all along. Niall was dead. And
he
was her husband now. He…Egan.

And by God, she would know it.

His hands closed about her arms, dragging her close, so close that his breath pelted her like angry blows.

“This is what I see. This is what I know, from your own lips! That was Niall’s babe. Not mine.
Not mine
! Indeed, I wonder that you’ve not tried to rid yourself of this child—my child!” He loomed over her. “Do not,” he warned, “for if any harm comes to this babe, I promise you’ll regret it.”

For one awful moment, their eyes collided—his were filled with a terrible light, his jaw clenched so tight she was certain it would snap.

He released her and spun around, slamming the portal shut with a force that resounded in her ears long after.

Her breath emerged in a rush. Shocked and stunned, Glenda made her way shakily to the bed. Her knees were aquiver, her legs so weak she feared they would no longer hold her. For the first time, she felt a flicker of fear of this man whose stony features were a mask she scarcely recognized.

God help her, she thought numbly, should anything happen to this babe.

He announced her condition to all at dinner. Immediately there was a collective gasp, and then all eyes fell upon her—including his.

Within glimmered a challenge. Did he think she would deny it? Glenda was not sure whether she was more angry or hurt.

“When did you say the child will arrive, sweet?”

She longed to screech that she had not! She raised her chin. “Sometime early in the year.”

Immediately there was a great crush around her. Somehow she managed to smile and say all the right things, aware that Egan watched—and listened—all the while. Finally, pleading tiredness, she escaped to her chamber.

It was Nessa, not Egan, who followed.

“Well, I daresay ’tis about time.” Nessa’s tone was cheerful as she bent to drape her mistress’s gown over the chair. She had interfered once before where this pair was concerned, and though she’d had to bite her tongue many a time, she’d decided that this time she’d let the two of them find their own way.

Ah, but this was a rocky and treacherous path the two of them chose! If they but joined forces, ’twas a journey she suspected would be made with far less trouble…and even a bit of happiness.

“He is angry that I did not tell him sooner.”

Nessa snorted. “He should have guessed far sooner!”

“How would he know? He has never before fathered a child.” Jealousy flared within her as she thought of the women he’d had at Dunthorpe—Patsy, Anna, Mary, Louise. “That I am aware of,” she added darkly. Yet not until it was out did Glenda realize she defended him! The lout! After all he’d dared say to her, she defended him! What the devil was wrong with her?

Hobbling to the bedside, Nessa stole a glance at her. “Nonetheless,” she added, “he appeared pleased.”