Dark Torment (44 page)

“Ahhh.” Sarah nodded, returning his grin.

Where once such an obvious reference to what went on between a
husband and wife would have shocked her to her toes, now she didn’t feel
so much as a quiver of unease. Probably because she was possessed by a similar
urge to get her new husband upstairs. . . . Her father pinched her chin again
and left the room. Sarah turned back to Dominic, who had poured himself another
glass of wine and stood staring out the window at the front lawn.

“That went rather well, considering,” she ventured,
speaking to his broad back.

He turned his head to regard her steadily over his shoulder.
“Yes, it did,
considering,
” he said, his lip curling.
“Considering that you disgraced yourself by marrying a convict, and your
father buried his prejudice and resentment and, out of love for you, offered me
the charity of his home, and . . .”

Sarah was staring at him, hurt and startled. It took her a moment
to gather her wits for a reply.

“Dominic, what is the matter with you? You’ve hardly
spoken to me for the past week.” The fear that had kept recurring but
that she had tried to hold at bay surfaced and had to be expressed. “Do
you—you do want children, don’t you? Or is it me? Did you not want
to get married after all?” Her voice faltered over this last. Despite her
best efforts, her eyes were very wide and vulnerable as they met his.

He laughed, harshly, setting aside his glass before coming to
catch her by the shoulders.

“Tell me something, Sarah: just when did you find out that
you were with child? Before or after you decided to sink yourself below
reproach by marrying me?”

Sarah blinked up at him as the import of his question sank in. He
suspected that she had married him, despite his convict status, only because of
the coming child.

“After, Dominic,” she said with quiet force.

He stared down at her, his blue eyes searching her face. She met
his gaze steadily, hoping to convince him by sheer force of will where words,
she knew, would not suffice.

“Sarah . . .” Whatever he had been going to say was
cut short by Liza, who was looking both confused and excited as she entered,
bringing with her a man who, despite his dusty traveling clothes, had the
precise look of a lawyer or other businessman.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Liza said
breathlessly, her eyes agog as they moved from Sarah to Dominic and back again.
“But this gentleman—he says he’s come all the way from
England, looking for the earl of Rule!”

It was the dead of winter. Sarah, clad in a longsleeved,
loose-waisted wool dress of unrelieved black, clutched her voluminous cape
closer about her as the wind nipped at her pinkened cheeks. The orchard was
bare now of fruit, the trees stripped of leaves. Sarah stood beneath the
interlocking gray branches, looking east at the distant blue haze of the
mountains, white capped now with snow. A single tear rolled from her eye to
trickle forlornly down her cheek. She wiped it away with an impatient finger.
No matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to shake the black depression
that had been her constant companion for weeks. And she did try. She very much
feared that such unrelenting misery was bad for her unborn child.

It had been more than four months since her wedding, and in that
time her world had changed so much that it was no longer recognizable. Dominic
had gone back to England with that man who had come to inform him that the earl
of Rule had died. As the earl’s legal if not natural son, Dominic had
inherited the title and entailed property. Which meant that, to Lydia’s
chagrin, Liza’s excitement, and her father’s thigh-slapping pride,
Sarah was now a countess. And, she thought bitterly, much good it did her.

She should have gone with Dominic, she acknowledged now. He had
asked her, just once, and she had refused. The thought of leaving Lowella, and
her father, to journey to a strange and frightening land with a man who was
scarcely more familiar had suddenly terrified her. Her child would be born on
alien soil, would never know the blistering heatwaves and frigid winters of New
South Wales, would never see Lowella. . . . And her father—how could she
leave her father, never to see him again? Because she didn’t fool herself
that they would one day return for a visit. And even if they did, she had had
the strangest certainty that her father would no longer be waiting. . . . She
had tried to explain all this to Dominic, but the words had tumbled out in a
confused jumble and he had gotten angry and stalked away. And the next day he
had gone. Though she had longed to, she had not asked him to stay. He had to
go; according to the man who had come to find him—a representative of the
old earl’s bank—there was considerable question as to whether John
Dominic Frame was alive. If so, he was heir to the title, but if he was dead, a
nephew of the old earl’s, who had been willed the unentailed property,
got everything, including the title and Fonderleigh. The nephew had already
filed a claim, and if Dominic did not appear in person the bank very much
feared that the nephew—a known spendthrift—would win. If it had
been only the title, Sarah thought, Dominic would not have cared, would not
have gone, but for Fonderleigh. . . .

Sarah’s heart ached as that lean, dark face rose in her
mind’s eye as clearly as though he stood before her. Would she ever see
those Irish blue eyes again? Honesty forced her to admit that she probably
would not. Ireland was so far away, and by now she and their unborn child were
in all likelihood only dim memories, if he thought of them at all. After all,
as Lydia took some pains to point out, Dominic was an earl now. With his new
title, the wealth that had been entailed on him, and his dazzling looks, he
would be able to take his pick of women. Why should he remember a
sharp-tongued, bossy female whose looks could most charitably be described as
passable and who was well past the first blush of youth? Because of the child
she carried? As Lydia also gloried in reminding Sarah, a man could father a
passel of children by many different women. What did she think was so special
about hers? Every time Lydia said that, Sarah mentally hugged the unborn infant
who was as yet only a cumbersome bulge where she had once been so slim. Whether
or not Dominic, or Lydia, or anyone else thought so, this child
was
special,
to her at least. Boy or girl, she loved it. Its presence inside her had been
the one talisman that she had clung to during the past dark days.

Even if she could have, Sarah thought, staring sightlessly at a
soaring hawk as it winged into the distance, would she really have done any
different? If she had, she would not have been with her father when he died.

Her instincts concerning Edward had been right. He had been dying
for some time, of a wasting disease, and had known it and told no one. Even
when he heard that Dominic was returning to Ireland and thought that Sarah
might be going with him, he had held his peace. But Sarah wondered now if she
had not known even then, on some subconscious level. If that had not been part
of her reluctance to leave.

Two months ago, Edward had collapsed at the breeding pens. Two
aborigine workers had carried him home and put him to bed. He had never left
it. Sarah, Liza, and Lydia, to the woman’s credit, had nursed him
devotedly, making sure that one of them was always with him and that he was
never left alone. Though the doctor they summoned from Melbourne had told them
bluntly at the outset that he was going to die, they had all refused to believe
it until the very end. Only six weeks ago, when Edward had been scarcely more
than a flesh-covered skeleton with staring gray eyes, had Sarah accepted the
inevitable. And a week after that, Edward had breathed his last.

At the end, Sarah and Lydia had held his hands while Liza cried
copious tears in the background. It was near dawn, and they had sat that way
all through the night, the two women who were not friends sitting on either
side of the man who had played such a major role in their lives, a frail shadow
of himself. As crimson feelers of dawn crept past the horizon to bathe the
world in a pink glow, he pressed a kiss to his wife’s hand and smiled at
his daughter.

“I would have liked to have seen my grandchild,” he
whispered. And died.

Remembering, Sarah dashed more tears from her cheeks, and started
walking again, her movements purposefully vigorous as she took deep gulps of
air. Even in the winter chill, walking about outdoors—riding was
forbidden her for the duration of her pregnancy—was the highlight of her
day. It was the only way to escape the oppression of the house.

It was late afternoon when Sarah decided, reluctantly, that she
must go back inside. It would not do for her to make herself ill by exposing
herself to the elements for too long a period. She had to think of the child.
So, with dragging feet, she returned to the house. Entering through the
kitchen—Mrs. Abbott, who had shed a deal of weight in the past arduous
weeks, could always be counted on to try to cheer her with a smile—Sarah
found Tess hard at work peeling vegetables, while Mrs. Abbott poured juice over
roasting meat. Mary was nowhere in sight. Sarah guessed that she was busy
waiting on Lydia. Now that Lydia was part owner of Lowella, she had decided
that she needed the services of a personal maid, which, as she had never let
anyone forget in all the years she had lived on Lowella, she had enjoyed in
England. And Mary, as the more graceful and self-effacing of the maids, had
been selected. Which left Mrs. Abbott and Tess to do the work that had
previously been done by three. Sarah supposed that she should protest the new
arrangement. As Lowella’s co-owner according to the terms of her
father’s will, she had the authority to do so. But so far it hadn’t
seemed worth the inevitable quarrel.

“Can I get you something to eat, lamb?” Mrs. Abbott
turned from what she was doing to look at Sarah with concern. Sarah knew that
her increasing thinness, apart from her swelling belly, worried the older
woman.

“Just a piece of bread and butter, I think.” Sarah
wasn’t hungry, but for the baby’s sake she forced herself to eat
regularly, “Don’t bother yourself, Mrs. Abbott, I’ll get
it.”

She loosened her cloak, hanging it on a peg inside the door, and
walked over to the table to cut herself a slice of just-baked bread. She
slathered the thick slab liberally with butter, poured herself a glass of milk,
and with a wave of her hand left the kitchen. Today she just didn’t feel
like company; she would take the bread and milk to her room and eat it there.

Lydia’s voice floated to her from the front parlor as she
passed its open door, stopping her in her tracks.

“I think crimson brocade, don’t you, dear? I’ve
ever liked crimson brocade window hangings. Be sure you get the measurements
right, girl.”

This last, said in an entirely different tone, was clearly
addressed to Mary, who, as Sarah saw as she came to stand in the door, was
stretching string the length and breadth of the wide windows overlooking the
front lawn. Lydia’s earlier remark had just as clearly been meant for
Liza.

Watching the two dark heads close together as mother and daughter
sat side by side on the somewhat shabby gold settee, pouring over a book with
illustrated furnishings, Sarah sighed. There was no getting around it. She
would have to acquaint Lydia with a few hard facts before she bankrupted them
all.

“I’ve told you before, there’s no money to redo
the house.”

Lydia and Liza looked up simultaneously. Both were dressed in the
same sober black as Sarah wore, and neither looked particularly well in it.
Their faintly olive complexions called for brighter colors.

“I believe I may spend my money as I please.”

Sarah barely managed to stifle one of Dominic’s more
descriptive oaths. Unlike its creator, it had stayed with her, although she
tried her best to banish it from her mind.

“Lydia, please try to understand. There
is
no
money. Not until after shearing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Lydia . . .”

“You’ve been crying again, haven’t you?”
Lydia changed the subject with a taunt. “Poor Sarah, you really do have
something to cry about: deserted by your husband, and you huge with child. But
you really shouldn’t, you know. It makes you look even worse than usual.
Sort of pink-eyed, like a rabbit.”

“Mother!” That was Liza, getting to her feet and
frowning down at Lydia in the first display of defiance against her
mother’s authority that Sarah had ever witnessed. “Why are you
always so unkind to Sarah? Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

“Liza!” After a moment’s stunned silence, Lydia
too rose to her feet as her voice swelled with outrage. “How dare you
speak to me in such a fashion! Let me remind you, young lady,
I am your mother.
”

“And Sarah is my sister!” Liza said determinedly.

Mother and daughter glared at each other. Sarah hurried to
intervene before a full-scale war could develop.

“Liza, dear, thank you very much for your championship, but
it really isn’t needed. I’m quite accustomed to your mother’s
ill humors. Lydia, if . . .”

Mary, who had gotten very busy indeed at the window as this
interchange developed, interrupted.

“Miss Sarah . . .”

“Hush, girl, haven’t you learned not to speak unless
you are addressed
yet?
” Lydia shook her head with disgust. Then
she added under her breath, “Really, these natives! There’s no
teaching them anything!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but, Miss Sarah . . .”
Mary was determined to speak, and this was so unlike her that Sarah stared at
her with amazement. Mary beckoned urgently. Intrigued, Sarah forgot what she
had been going to say and joined her at the window. Lydia and Liza, the former
with a petulant frown, followed.