The Clergyman's Daughter (27 page)

He could see his former fiancée’s shoulders stiffen with outrage, and he thought she was about to whirl around to confront him. Instead, after a moment she relaxed, murmuring dully, “Thank you, Graham. That is most generous of you.” With an air of odd dignity she lifted her chin and walked out of the Earl of Raeburn’s dining room—and his life.

At the sound of the door closing behind Daphne, Jessica struggled impotently, expending all her strength in a futile attempt to escape him. “Let me go, Graham,” she cried again, moisture squeezing out from under her clenched eyelids and beading on her long lashes. “I can’t bear it!”

“Can’t bear what, Jess?” he demanded grimly. “Can’t bear for me to touch you? I know better than that, my girl!”

She shook her head in furious denial, making tears stream in gleaming but erratic rivulets down her bloodless cheeks. “Yes…no….” Her thrashing stilled, and she collapsed limply against his chest, the steady thud of his heart under her ear a soothing counterpoint to her own frenetic pulse. “Oh, dammit, Graham,” she sniffled, “don’t you understand? I can’t bear for you to look at me and hate me, knowing what I’ve done to you, the way I’ve—I’ve….” Her tongue stumbled over the words.

Raeburn said, “Open your eyes, Jess.” She trembled and burrowed her face deeper into the lapels of his coat. He repeated, “Open your eyes. Don’t be a coward.”

“But I am a coward,” she insisted. “I knew what Mason was going to say, and I—I just couldn’t stand the thought of your anger. I so wanted to be brave, to stand up to the truth the way poor Willa did….”

“Willa Brown is rather a remarkable young woman,” Raeburn observed drily. “I sincerely hope that someday some good man will see beyond the prejudice of
society
and recognize her many virtues.”

Gradually Jessica was becoming aware that his tone was soft, almost gentle, with only an underlying note of confusion roughening it. When his blunt fingertips stroked across her damp cheek and hooked lightly under her chin, tilting her face upward, she blinked rapidly as she peeked through tear-clumped lashes. “Why aren’t you angry with me?” she asked in puzzlement.

Raeburn said, “Maybe I will be…once I understand what’s going on. Tell me, Jess. Explain to me how in the name of God you came to be a satirical cartoonist.”

Her awkward position was straining her neck, so she pushed at his chest lightly, and he released her. She stepped away from him and faced him directly, sighing wryly. “It was an impulse, Graham, like—like almost everything I do. I’ve always drawn funny sketches of people, especially when I was angry or bored—if you could have seen what I did to the margins of my prayerbook during my father’s sermons!—but I’d never given any thought to the possibility that they might be worth money until after Willa and I reached Brighton.”

“Brighton,” Raeburn said thickly. “I thought—”

“Yes, I know what you thought,” Jessica said. “You thought some man was keeping me….” With a shrug she elaborated, “We stopped in Brighton because that was as far as we could go on the money from pawning my wedding ring. We were getting desperate. Funds were running short, and I was unwell—because of Lottie, you understand. One morning at Willa’s insistence I sent her to the apothecary for a potion that my mother used to take whenever she was increasing. I had written the ingredients on the back of an old scrap of paper, never noticing that on the other side was a drawing of a man we had spotted at an inn, some would-be Corinthian with shirt points so high he almost blinded himself whenever he turned his head…. When Willa came home, she told me that the chemist had been so taken with the sketch that he had accepted it as payment for my medicine; he said it was better than some of the cartoons he had seen in the print shops in London…. That gave me the idea. I knew it was a gamble, yet there seemed little alternative. I sent out samples of my work, and finally Haxton and Welles in Clerkenwell wrote back that they’d buy all the drawings I could produce.”

For a very long moment Raeburn regarded her silently, his wide brow furrowed. At last he asked heavily, “Did they tell you whom they wanted satirized?”

The question she had most dreaded, but the one she was now determined to answer honestly. “No, Graham,” she admitted throatily, “the subjects and treatments were all my ideas.”

“Even the one that likened me to a centaur?”

“Yes, Graham.”

“And that very elaborate one entitled ‘Cornelia Weeps’—the picture that depicted Prinny and me as nasty, spoiled children, with our mother, Britannia, shown as a Roman matron wailing that all her jewels had turned to dross? Was that also your idea?”

“I’m afraid so. But you must understand that I—I had been terribly hurt by you…or so I thought.”

He frowned. “Hurt or not, Jessica, that…that was not very kind.”

She winced. “I know,” she said in a tiny voice.

Silence stretched between them, as cold and taut as her nerves. Then suddenly, startlingly, like the west wind blasting life-giving warmth across the bleak and frozen countryside, Raeburn roared with laughter, “No, it may not have been kind, Jess—but, by God, it was funny!”

She stared in disbelief as his stern expression melted away under the onslaught of his humor; then with a sob she flung herself back into his arms. “Forgive me!” she begged, twining her arms around his neck and planting frantic kisses along the hard line of his jaw. “Please, Graham, tell me you forgive me!”

“Forgive you for what—being brilliant?” he echoed in disbelief. “Talent like yours isn’t something to forgive; it’s a gift to be cherished and nurtured! You idiot, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go on thinkin…?”

“I—I was afraid you would take Lottie from me and s-send me away,” she stammered helplessly. “You—you said….”

Raeburn’s arms tightened convulsively about Jessica, crashing the breath from her as he groaned into the inky luster of her hair, “Oh, God, Jess, couldn’t you tell that the only reason I ever uttered those threats was because I loved you so much and I was desperate for some excuse to make you come back to me, where you belonged? Do you truly think me capable of such despicable cruelty that I would separate a mother and her child?”

She shook her head, caught somewhere between her own laughter and tears, glorying in the braising stricture of his embrace. “N-no, of course not!” she insisted shakily. “It’s just—it’s just that I think I’ve been a little mad ever since Andrew died….”

Raeburn growled fiercely, “I’ve been mad longer than that, my girl; ever since that very first day by the roadside when I was insane enough to let you slip through my fingers. God, how blind can a man be? All this talk about looking for a ‘suitable’ bride, when it’s patently obvious that you and I are two of a kind…. It should have been I who swept you up onto my horse and carried you off to Scotland!”

Despite the seduction of his words, Jessica hesitated. She loved this man with all her heart, but there was something she had to make clear, something that had to be faced, no matter how much it might displease him. “Graham,” she said, her voice low and serious, “I did love Andrew.”

She felt the tremor of emotion that passed through him. Jealousy? she wondered. Regret?

The answer was not long in coming. With a wistful sigh that seemed incongruous issuing from someone of his great stature, Raeburn kissed Jessica lightly on the forehead and said, “Yes, sweetheart, I know you loved Andy, and I thank God you did. With my poor brother’s life doomed to be as brief as it was, it’s comforting to know that he had his taste of happiness, that his memory lives on in the child he left behind….”

His broad hands cupped Jessica’s face for a moment; then he reached down and caught her slim fingers in his own. He removed his carved sapphire signet ring and slipped it onto her wedding finger; it was far too large for her, and he had to curl her hand into a fist to keep it from falling off. Pressing his lips against her knuckles, he murmured, “The past is done, Jess, and now you are my wife. You know that, don’t you? In our hearts and minds we are already married, you and I, even if the snow and the holidays mean we must delay a few days before we find a bishop who can issue a special license to make our union a legal fact.”

Jessica stared down at the ring, her pale face glowing. When she made no demur, Raeburn lifted her chin again and grinned wickedly. “Well, wife,” he drawled in a voice weighted with sheer masculine satisfaction, “I do hope you aren’t planning to make your poor husband sleep alone until we can locate that bishop?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jessica said, her green eyes growing drowsy with anticipation.

Delighted that she was being so acquiescent, Raeburn pursued, “And, naturally, you will inform your publisher that the meteoric but short-lived career of Erinys is at an end, will you not? I do think it would be best for everyone if henceforth you devoted your talent for portraiture to paintings for the gallery here. I rather imagine that eventually you’ll be able to fill an entire wall with pictures of our children….” Jessica hesitated, thinking of her still-undisclosed bank account. No matter how much she loved this man, it seemed to her that a woman ought to retain a little independence…. “Whatever you say, Graham,” she answered with deceptive meekness, and standing on tiptoe she wove her fingers into his bright hair and drew his mouth down to hers.

For the River City Writers—Phyllis, Beth, Dolly, Kathryn, Wanda, Georgia, Nancy, and E. I.—for all their patience and support.

Julia Jeffries is the author of award-winning Regency and contemporary romances. She makes her home in Central California.

Copyright © 1983 by Lynda Ward

Originally published by Signet (ISBN 0451120094)

Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.