Elizabeth Grayson (37 page)

“Yes, he is.” He felt a tremor run through her, and he knew what she’d have to ask.

“Did you—” She looked into his eyes. “Did you kill him?”

“No.” Chase caught her more closely against him. “I didn’t want Boothe’s death on my conscience—or on yours. He destroyed himself by running away.”

Ann leaned into him. “I shouldn’t be glad he’s gone,” she confessed so softly that he could scarcely hear, “but I’m so relieved.”

He looked down at that bent head, at those tightly flexed shoulders and her vulnerable nape. Ann had endured so much cruelty at Boothe Rossiter’s hands, yet it had drained away none of her decency, none of her compassion.

“You’re only human to feel that way, Annie. Boothe brought what happened on himself. He was part of a conspiracy that dealt in guns. When he knew he was going to be arrested, he risked the lives of every person aboard that steamer to get away. What happened to Boothe had nothing at all to do with you.”

She nestled close enough that he could feel the imprint of her forehead and nose and chin against his chest. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for saying that.”

“It’s the truth.”

He wrapped her close, contented to have her in his arms, especially when he’d thought she and Christina were gone for good. He could have stood there forever holding her, but he’d been carrying a question around with him for weeks that only Ann could answer.

He turned her back toward that small grassy hollow at the edge of the bluff. “Why, Annie,” he finally asked, “why didn’t you tell me what Boothe did to you?”

Since that day she’d opened the door to her father’s study and seen him standing in the hall, Ann had known this moment was inevitable. She’d known she’d have to tell him everything. But then, hadn’t she sworn to do that anyway? Hadn’t she vowed to tell Chase the truth the morning she’d decided to stay on the
Andromeda
and make a life with him?

Ann looked up into her husband’s face, seeing the concern in his eyes, and a certain disappointment.

She drew in her breath. “I’m sorry. I meant to tell you. I would have told you before, but I was afraid—”

“Of what, Annie?” he asked, cupping her face between his hands. His palms were rough against her skin, yet warm and infinitely gentle. “Did you think I’d respect you less? Love you less?”

“Yes!” Her voice shredded on that single word. “I thought that everytime you looked at me you’d see not who I was, but how I came to be with you. That when you took Christina in your arms you’d see not her, but who her father was.”

He looked into her eyes, and Ann knew her faults and weaknesses lay cast in sharp relief: the shame she’d felt and her terrible fruitless anger, her trepidation about the future and her fears for her daughter.

“Oh, Annie,” he murmured, his voice was nearly as ragged as hers had been. “Don’t you know that you’re the most beautiful, wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me? Don’t you know how much I love you and Christina? Don’t you realize the two of you are more important to me than anything?”

Chase tightened his hold on her. “Oh, Annie,” he murmured, “I just wish I’d been there to protect you. That I could make this right for you.”

“You are making it right,” she insisted softly, “by holding me and accepting me and believing in me. You’re making it right by loving me—and by loving Christina.”

He wrapped her up safe in his arms.

Ann closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the solace he was offering. A tear breached the rim of her downcast lashes, and she swiped it away. Another scorched down her cheek. She blotted it against his shirtfront. Her tears came harder, faster. A sob pushed up her throat. Her chest knotted. Shudders took her and her knees gave way.

Chase folded up right there on the grass and gathered her into his lap. For a time, she could do no more than cling to him, weeping shivery and openmouthed, weeping as she had not wept since she was a child.

Chase crushed her closer. “You’re all right, love,” he whispered. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Annie girl. You’re safe with me.”

As she burrowed against him, his words became a murmured litany in her ears, a counterpoint to the low, muffled sound of her grief. He held her and rocked her and stroked her. He became her stalwart, her rock to cling to.
He became her husband in a way he’d never been before.

When the storm finally ebbed, Ann lay spent and sprawled against him. She wasn’t sure she could move and was even less sure she wanted to. Still, there were things she had to tell him, truths she needed to speak before she could rest.

“It started,” she began in a very small voice, “the very day I came home from Philadelphia.”

Though Chase didn’t move, she could feel his muscles tighten, turn to granite beneath her. “How? How did it start?”

“He touched his tongue to my cheek when he kissed me hello,” she said with a shiver. “He watched every move I made through dinner. When we passed on the stairs, he brushed against me.”

Chase bowed his shoulders and raised his knees around her like a barricade.

“From that day on, when I looked up from my sewing or reading or correspondence, I found him watching me. I discovered things in my bedroom had been moved. He started leaving gifts: a dead rose, a butterfly pinned to my pillow, a nightdress he’d ripped to pieces.”

“Did you tell the commodore what he was doing?” She could hear the anger in his voice.

“Of course I did.”

“What did he do to stop it?”

Ann shook her head.

“Boothe opened the door to my bedroom one night while I was undressing, so I stole the housekeeper’s key and kept my bedroom locked. Still, I’d hear him try the latch at night. He’d rattle it just enough to wake me, just enough to let me know he was there.”

Chase swore under his breath.

“The commodore was away the night he kicked in the door.”

“Oh, Annie.”

She began to cry softly. “I tried to push him away. I fought so hard.” She raised her gaze to his. “I hit him, and I kicked him. I scratched him so deeply he must have scars. But no matter what I did he...”

The tears came in a flood, but Ann was angry now. She wept rigid and cursing, shivering with rage and revulsion.

“I’m sorry, Annie,” Chase whispered, rocking her. “I’m so goddamn sorry he hurt you.”

She ground her face into the soft, well-washed fabric of his shirt, breathed the smoky masculine scent she’d come to associate with safety. There wasn’t much more to tell, and she wanted to get it over with.

“When he was gone,” she whispered. “I burned what was left of my nightclothes and all the bedding. I scrubbed myself until I bled, but I could smell him on me for days after.

“I had bruises everywhere he touched me. Those bruises had hardly begun to fade when I realized he’d left something a good deal more permanent to remember him by.”

“Christina.”

“Oh, Chase,” she went on. “I look at her now and can hardly believe I didn’t want her, but I pretended she didn’t exist for as long as I could. I couldn’t stand the idea of Boothe’s seed growing inside me. I couldn’t bear that I was carrying his child.

“Then when she was born she looked like him, and I was sure everyone would see him in her and realize—”

“All I ever see when I look at her,” he told her softly, “is our Christina.”

Ann smiled at the tenderness in his voice, the stroke of his hand against her hair. Chase loved the baby every bit as much as she did.

“How is it that something as wonderful as Christina can come from what Boothe did to me?” she asked in wonder.

Chase shook his head as if he were as much at a loss to explain it as she was. “You’ve been such a fine mother to her, Annie. You could so easily have turned away, but you’ve embraced her, taken such good care of her.”

“It’s you who taught me.”

“To be a mother?”

“To love Christina for herself.”

“I did that?”

Ann warmed at the memory and smiled up at him. “The morning after Christina was born, I found you sitting out on deck. You were holding this tiny dab of a baby in your two hands and whispering how wonderful the world was going to be for her. I’d never seen anyone touch a child the way you touched her, with such assurance and such tenderness. I’d never seen such love in any man’s face, especially for a child that wasn’t his.”

“Christina’s mine in every way that matters, Annie,” Chase insisted, his voice resonating with conviction. “And so are you.”

She looked up at him, up into those fierce blue eyes. “I want so much to be a good wife to you.”

“You get better at that with every day that passes,” he said, teasing her gently. He bent his head and kissed her with vast and transcendent tenderness. “I love you, Annie,” he murmured. His words were a caress, his acceptance the wondrous gift he’d given her. “I’ll always love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He closed his eyes as if he needed to savor her words, to take them deep into himself. She’d waited too long to tell him how she felt, to tell him how deeply she cared for him.

“I love you,” she whispered again, then stretched up to kiss him back. As she did, she sought deeper access to his mouth, took pleasure in the way their lips lingered and clung, in the faintly nubbled texture of his tongue brushing hers.

She ran her hands over him, delighting in the sinuous flow of his shoulders beneath her palms; the broad, graceful slope of his back; the solidity of him against her. That night aboard the
Andromeda,
Ann had discovered the wondrous rightness in the way their bodies wove together. She needed to feel that rightness again, to seal and celebrate this deepening bond between them.

At the thought of lying with him here in the grass, a deep and provocative yearning rose up in her. Something sultry and viscous, demanding yet almost unbearably sweet.

Chase seemed to sense what she was feeling, because as his mouth lingered over hers, he trailed his fingers down her cheek and throat. He gathered her breast in the palm of his hand and caressed her gently.

Ann moaned into his mouth as he sought the bud of her nipple through the folds of her clothes. He circled that tightening nub and Ann felt as if she were circling, too. Her head went light and desire unfurled in lush, slow curls at the base of her belly.

She wanted him.

Chase seemed to want her, too, because he sprawled back in the cool rustling grass and pulled her over him.

Ann followed, instinctively fitting her body to his, feeling the urgency of his need stir against her. Once she’d been afraid of his desire, but now she relished his heat and hardness, the proof of how much he wanted her.

The knowledge that he longed for her turned her soft inside. It made her melt; it made her ache with a need she knew she could trust Chase to meet and satisfy. She pressed her hips to him, inviting him to come to her, inviting him to be with her in a whole new way.

“Oh, Annie, love.” Chase’s eyes darkened. “Do you know how much I want to make love to you?”

“Do you know—” Ann felt the heat scorch her cheeks, but continued anyway, “—how much I want you to?”

Basking in the sultry warmth of that Indian summer afternoon, they slowly removed each other’s clothes. Here at what seemed like the top the world, they bared themselves and came together.

Once he was fully joined with her, Chase caressed her with trembling hands. He cupped the swell of her breasts, traced the curve of her back, clasped the flare of her hips and drew her more tightly down on him. He stroked the thick, downy hair at the apex of her legs, opened the bud of her femininity with the stroke of his thumbs, sought the very heart of her feminine pleasure.

As he did, Ann seemed to rise in a wondrous swirl of sensation. She threw back her head in delight, caught up in wanting him. She lifted her hips and took him even more deeply into herself. She spilled forward and over him, bracing herself on her arms.

They surged together, kissing with new and ravenous intensity, stoking each other’s needs and inciting new sensations.

Chase moaned, caught up in their mutual pleasure. Ann drew that vibration into her mouth, letting it resonate through her body. She was one with him, wholely and completely joined with him. Wholely and completely in love with him.

She looked down into his eyes as they began to move together. “Oh, Chase!” she whispered. “You’re the one who took my fear away; you showed me all the wonders a woman could feel.”

“I love you, Annie girl,” he whispered. His face was flushed. His mouth was bowed with anticipation. His blue eyes were aglow with his need for her.

“I love you, Chase. I’ll always love you.”

They moved in a slow, sinuous dance, took up the age-old rhythm of life, of creation, of people who loved each other and belonged together. And in that union they found glory and wonder and surcease, found joy and communion and resounding satisfaction. They found that no matter why they’d come together, the love they shared transcended everything. It united them as man and wife forever.

They lay curled together in the aftermath, languorous and replete, with only the warmth of the sun as their coverlet.

Ann sprawled against him, muzzy and sated, nuzzling the whiskery hollow at the turning of his jaw. “I love you,” she murmured lazily. “Now that I’ve discovered what a fine, virile husband you are, I’d marry you all over again.”

Chase shifted sideways and traced his thumb along the corner of her mouth.
“Will
you marry me all over again, Annie?”

With a laugh, Ann raised her head and looked at him. “Do you mean it?”

“So much has happened since we spoke our vows,” he said and she could hear his growing conviction, “it seems right to make new promises. We could do that, Annie. We could speak our vows, just the two of us, here, together.”

What he wanted seemed suddenly right to her. She was wholely a woman now, sound and complete in a way she hadn’t ever dreamed she’d be the day they’d stood up together in the town house parlor. The months aboard the
Andromeda
had changed both their lives, united them in a way she might never have believed was possible.

“It would be like starting again,” she whispered, her eyes misting with tears. “Only starting it right, this time.”