A Virtuous Lady (30 page)

"Hoyden!
Jade! Doxy!" he growled at her.

"That's a lie! And you know it!" she cried out, rallying. Her eyes flew to his face and met his hot, smoldering gaze and she was held by what she read in his brooding expression. For a long moment, she found the will to resist his silent, eloquent message.

"Oh
no. . .
not
here, Hugh! Please!" she said weakly, shaking her head in dawning comprehension.

He gave no sign that he had heard her entreaty, but like a man under some strange compulsion, he brought his hands up slowly to remove the pins from her unruly hair. A mane of blond silk fell across her face and shoulders. He pushed back some stray strands with a tender, sensuous motion. Briony cowered.

"Please Hugh, I want to go home," she mewed like a kitten.

"Do you refuse me, Briony?" he asked softly, implacably. "Have you concocted another excuse to avoid the inevitable?"

Some instinct for survival gave her courage. "I'm not afraid of you, Hugh Montgomery," she flung at him, and forced herself to look boldly into his face, scrupulously avoiding his eyes. A smile played about his lips. It gave her the confidence to continue in a more conciliating tone. "Hugh, I can explain everything. You won't like it, but it's not as bad as it seems."

"I don't doubt it!"

"Please, Hugh!"

"Afterward.
Tell me afterward," he murmured, his lips brushing her temples.

"After what?" she demanded, wrenching herself out of his grasp. "If you think for a minute that I'm going to let you take
me . . ."

She realized almost immediately that she had made a fatal mistake. The fury flared in his eyes at her sudden rejection. He reached for her and the impulse to flee overwhelmed her. Briony took to her heels.

In one quick stride he was at the door and had barred it. Briony changed direction and ran for the stepladder to the loft and scrambled up as quickly as the heavy skirt of her riding habit would allow. She heard his low, mocking laugh as he followed her at a leisurely pace.

It took a few moments for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. A pale shaft of moonlight lit the interior. She saw at once that there was nowhere to hide—no escape from him. She groaned when she observed the stack of straw pallets against the wall and on the rough floorboards. The fates, or Providence, had conspired against her.

She heard Ravensworth's step at her back and she whirled to face him. He made no move toward her, but stood immobile like some huge, menacing shadow of doom, filling her small world.

"Hugh . .
.
I'm
afraid," she whispered on a sob. He held out his arms and she threw herself into them, weeping uncontrollably against his shoulder.

"Hush now! You must know that I would never do anything to hurt you."

His arms cradled her until her incoherent outburst had spent itself and she wept softly against his chest. For a wild moment, she lost her bearings and half fancied that she was back in time, caught in the ferocious storm, and Ravensworth her only sanctuary.

But on this occasion, he was both sanctuary and storm. There was comfort in his arms but a terrible threat also. He acknowledged her fear, understood it even, but set it aside as being of no consequence.

"I was a fool to let you keep me at bay all these weeks," he said gently as he undressed her till she stood shivering in her shift. "I love you, Briony, and there is nothing to fear in the natural expression of the love that exists between a man and his wife."

He pulled her down to lie beside him on the soft pallet and she lay passive, trembling at the aura of masculine sensuality which threatened her. He quickly divested himself of his garments and turned back to lean over her, the broad shelter of his chest rising above her. She felt his hands warm against her flesh, deliberately brushing against her thighs and breasts as he slowly removed her shift, and Briony heard his breath choke in his throat as he gazed at her nakedness.

She felt vulnerable, totally defenseless, and she turned to him in a gesture of appeal, but he gently restrained her, his eyes heavy with passion as they drank in every feminine contour. His hands moved possessively over her in a slow, intimate exploration of her body, and Briony weakly protested.

"Briony!"
His voice was low and hoarse with longing. "Don't deny yourself to me."

His ragged breath against her lips was warm and tantalizing, coaxing her to open to the invasion of his tongue. Briony became aware of the soft mat of hair on his chest as it grazed her breasts. She gasped and he penetrated the softness of her mouth, thrusting his tongue deeply, and the last remnants of her resistance were swept away.

She gave herself up to his desire, accepting every new sensation which his gently caressing hands and mouth aroused, yielding herself trustingly to his ardent possession until her low moans of pleasure filled the small room. And then she wanted him, wanted to abandon herself to him, wanted him to guide her through the terrifying unknown until she was throbbing with the anticipation of it and fear was left behind.

She moved instinctively beneath him, arching herself against his hips, pressing her soft curves against his hard length, enticing him with her soft sighs until she heard him groan her name.

He moved over her and took her gently, schooling himself to control the rising tide of passion which her surrender to his lovemaking had unleashed. But the pain of his possession made her fearful and she tried desperately to recoil from him, sinking her teeth into his shoulder in a vain attempt to force him to release her. She heard his gasp of pain, but he refused to withdraw. He deepened the embrace, holding her close until she quieted. And then the pain was gone, and the fear of
it,
and only the experience of some wild, elemental force remained until Ravensworth released her from even that, and she lay shuddering in his arms.

When
Briony
received the intelligence, early the following morning, that Mr. Caldwell had made himself scarce and that neither hide nor hair of the delinquent gentleman was to be found from the bowels of the Oakdale cellars to the celestial heights of its attics, she did not bat an eye. Ravensworth had come striding into her chamber, a frown of irritation clouding his broad brow. He ran an abstracted hand through his crop of ebony hair, spilling his locks in careless profusion.

"The young jackanapes must have taken
himself
off in the middle of the night. His bed has not been slept in. I must have put the fear of death into him. How could he even
think
I meant him harm?"

"What could possibly have given him
that
idea?" asked Briony pertly, throwing back the coverlet of the bridal bed she had shared with her husband. She stretched leisurely, a feeling of well-being spreading deliciously through every fiber of her being, and she cocked a lazy eye at her lover, a self-satisfied smile lingering around the corners of her lips.

"You look like a cat
who
just had a bowl of cream," he said lightly, caressingly, a soft smile curving his lips. The sight of her rumpled nightgown and one tantalizing half-exposed breast gave his thoughts a new direction.

She sighed languidly and grinned up at him. "A cat should be so fortunate!"

Ravensworth's smile broadened. "Bold words, madam wife, from a maid who—was it only yesterday?—ran from me like a terrified rabbit."

"And no wonder! Can you blame me?"

She swung herself unhurriedly out of the wildly disordered bed and slipped into a quilted dressing gown. "I thought you meant to do us murder. And Caldwell thought so too. But don't tease your mind about that resourceful young man. If I understand his scheme correctly, he will be safely on the high seas by now and on the first leg of his voyage home to America."

She was at her dressing table, brushing the tangles from her hair. Ravensworth came to stand behind her as she twisted the heavy strands into the coil which he preferred.

"The high seas?
America? What are you talking about, Briony?" He sounded puzzled.

Briony swiveled on the stool, turning to look innocently up at him. Her fingers were deftly clamping pins into her head. "He couldn't very well hang around here without papers with the county constable on the lookout for an escaped American. You needn't worry about him. I assure you, he knows what he is about. His escape had been planned down to the last detail by his Quaker friends." She dropped a pin and bent down to retrieve it. When she glanced back at Ravensworth, she was taken aback at his look of frozen incredulity. "I thought you knew," she faltered.

"No," he said evenly, "how should I? I know only what you told me. I thought that you might be concealing something, but I deduced that Caldwell and your brother were under the hatches and had come into Kent to outrun the duns. Was I wrong?"

Briony
hesitated.

"Well?" he demanded impatiently. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Briony felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. His eyes, which a moment before had been warm with remembered intimacy, were now coldly impersonal, their blue fading to an icy transparency. She began haltingly, and a little desperately, to explain the circumstances of Caldwell's predicament and how she had thought to aid him without involving her husband.

"I didn't
want
to
he
to you, you must see that," she finished lamely, "but at the time, knowing how you felt about the war with America, it seemed to be the only solution. How could I turn Caldwell away? You yourself once told me that the end justified the means. Under the circumstances, I felt compelled to set aside my scruples."

His look of withering contempt brought her to a faltering halt.

"What about your conscience, Briony?" he asked scathingly. "Did it give you leave, with impunity, to tell a
ferrago
of lies to your husband?"

"No, of course not!" she went on miserably, a guilty flush staining her cheeks, "but what else was I to do? This was an emergency."

"You could have told me the truth, taken me into your confidence, trusted me, for God's sake," he said accusingly. "I trusted
you
implicitly, and see how I have been rewarded! But I should have known how it would be when I took you to wife." He balled one hand into a fist and brought it ferociously down into his open palm. "Damn your feckless soul—mouthing glib platitudes about conscience and scruples—and damn me for swallowing your lies whole. I was prepared to overlook your farouche behavior. I had hoped that, in time, you would grow into the role of my consort, that I could tame some of your wilder excesses to fit you for your future rank as my duchess. But I was wrong. I should have married a woman of my own station as I always intended, a lady of refinement who knows how to conduct herself under any circumstances. But above all," he went on more fiercely, "a wife who would give her first loyalty to me—her husband. By God, what a fool I have been—to marry for love!"

He turned away as if the sight of her disgusted him and Briony sat in miserable silence, the truth of his bitter words tearing at her till she could bear it no longer.

"What can I say?" she said to his rigid back. "My conduct is inexcusable, I know it. But Hugh," she continued with a desperate note of appeal in her voice, "
can't
you find it in your heart to forgive me, to understand the dreadful dilemma that beset me? Can you not at least try to make allowances for my wretched state of mind?'

But Ravensworth was in no mood to be forgiving. He had placed Briony on a pedestal,
dammit
she had perched there herself without help from him, and she had stepped down and destroyed his most cherished illusions.

"Make allowances? When did you ever make allowances for me?" he demanded wrathfully, rounding on her. "When I think what I have been through this last month trying to
earn
your love and respect. Did you give a thought to
my
wretchedness when you spurned me? You made me feel like a worm. I've been a blind idiot—playing the part of the wise and
beneficient
lord of the manor—burying myself in this godforsaken backwater, keeping myself on a tight leash because I believed that you were too good for me! Too good for me! That's rich!" He threw back his head and unleashed a torrent of angry laughter.

Briony bit down on the fingers of one hand to stifle her rising panic. She was losing him, she knew it, and it was no more than she deserved. "Hugh, I'm s-sorry," was all she could manage in a fight, little voice.

"I thought you were different from other women," he went on heedlessly, "that your love was worth winning. But you played me for a fool."

"Hugh," she pleaded, her voice breaking, "
don't
say any more now. You're not yourself. When your anger has had time to cool a little, we'll discuss it further. This is just your pride speaking."

"You mistake if you think I am not myself," he retorted coldly. "I am more myself
now
than I have been this long age."