Island Flame (40 page)

“Good morning, or should I say, good afternoon, Captain,” the woman said demurely, squeezing around him as he stood swaying, blocking the doorway with his big body. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain.…” Martha’s words trailed off as she disappeared down the hall.

Leaning back against the doorjamb to recover his strength, Jon realized that the cries had stopped. Looking around the room, his slightly unfocused gaze came to light on the small figure that was regarding him with some amusement from the depths of the big four-poster. Cathy! Jon’s eyes went over her appreciatively, feasting on the lovely picture she made. Her golden hair had been neatly brushed and swirled into a top-knot, high on the crown of her head, from which little curling tendrils escaped enticingly. Her eyes were as clear and blue and serene as a pool of water on a summer’s day. Her cheeks were flushed rosily, and her lips were turned up in the smallest of shy smiles. As his gaze lowered, he found the reason for her shyness. Cradled against her bare breast was the tiny form of his son, the small head turned away as the infant suckled greedily. Cathy blushed even more rosily as she realized where Jon’s eyes rested, but the look she turned on him was warmly welcoming.

“How do you feel?” Cathy asked solicitously after a moment’s silence, her smile broadening as her eyes ran over his unshaven face, pale beneath its sunbronze. He looked as if he, and not she, had just passed through some death-defying ordeal.

Her question took a moment to penetrate the whiskey haze that still clung to him. When it did, he permitted himself a small groan.

“Like somebody tried to split open my skull with an axe,” he admitted, the slash in his cheek deepening humorously. “But more to the point, how do you feel?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she assured him, her mouth curving in a tender smile as she glanced down at the infant at her breast. “Won’t you come over here and meet your son?”

Jon stared from her to the baby and back again. His wife. His son. The fierce possessiveness that accompanied the thought rocked him back on his heels.

“I—I need to clean up,” he stammered, thinking desperately that what he really needed was a breathing space. “I must reek of whiskey.”

“You do,” Cathy answered frankly, her eyes warm as they twinkled over him. “But never mind. Neither Cray nor I mind in the slightest.”

“Cray?” Jon questioned absently as he moved almost against his will toward the bed. The tenderness in her huge eyes drew him like a magnet. During all those terrible weeks in prison, even under the lash of the whip that she had ordered, he had dreamed of her looking at him like this. … Despising himself as a weak fool, he nevertheless came to stand beside the bed. Cathy looked so small and helpless as she smiled up at him, almost as small and helpless as the infant in her arms. He wanted to stand between her and the world, and cursed himself for letting the lingering effects of the whiskey cloud his judgment.

“I thought we would name him Jonathan Creighton Hale, junior—Cray, to keep things from getting confusing
around here as he grows older. Is that all right with you?”

Her eyes were caressing as they traveled over his lean face. Jon felt like he was being drawn helplessly into two deceptively limpid whirlpools. He didn’t have the strength at this moment to resist her blandishments. When she reached out and caught his long-fingered hand in her smaller one, tugging on it gently, he obediently sat on the edge of the bed beside her. Cathy and the child were so close he could feel the heat of their bodies, could hear the small sucking sounds that Cray made as he nursed. His eyes met Cathy’s, and he smiled at her against his will. She smiled back at him tenderly, and then his eyes traveled down to rest on the child at her breast. My son, he thought with amazement, and reached out a finger to wonderingly touch the tiny, perfect hand that kneaded Cathy’s breast. It closed over his finger with surprising strength. Jon stared at his son for a moment, then his eyes rose to meet Cathy’s. She laughed with a little catch in her voice at his astonished expression.

“Is Cray all right with you?” she repeated patiently, her eyes tender on his handsome face. Jon, dazzled by what he could have sworn was the genuine affection in her eyes, had to force himself with a strong effort of will to concentrate on what she was saying.

“Yes, of course,” he muttered, tearing his eyes away from hers before he drowned in them. He would have risen to his feet, but Cray still clutched his forefinger.

Jon stared at his son rather helplessly, not knowing how to free himself without hurting the child.

“He’s strong,” Jon said finally, unable to think of anything else to say. He was uncomfortably aware of her soft breast swelling warmly beneath the hand the baby held.

“Like his father.”

Cathy’s soft voice was deliberately seducing him, he thought desperately, urging him to abandon his distrust and fall once again victim to her spell. Her breast burned against his hand. His breathing quickened, and he had to grit his teeth against the impulse.

“Jon …” Cathy began, and the blue depths of her eyes, as he lifted his own to meet them, were his undoing. He leaned forward, his eyes never leaving hers, until his mouth was just scant fractions of an inch away from her soft lips. Some remaining instinct of self-preservation made him hesitate, but she defeated him. Her lovely, rose-colored lips moved up to press against his, warm and unbearably sweet, drawing from him a ragged groan. His mouth slanted over hers with starved passion, his free hand coming up to cup the back of her neck so that she couldn’t move away. He kissed her hungrily, urgently, his tongue hotly exploring the willing hollow of her mouth. Long denied need flamed with searing heat in his loins. He wanted her with a greedy passion that threatened to consume him. No other woman would do, and he acknowledged the fact with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach.

Cathy’s hand came up to curve around the back of his neck, and she responded to his kisses with an ardor that matched his. Her fingers sensuously stroked his tense neck muscles, then curled wantonly into the cluster of black curls at the back of his collar. Jon realized with a fierce tightening of all his muscles that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. The trembling of her slight body made that plain.

Drawing a deep, ragged breath, he started to push her
back down into the bed, his desire for her so hard and furious that he was oblivious to everything but his need for satisfaction. An indignant squall halted him on the brink of a total, unconditional surrender. Shaking his head to clear it, he glanced down at his son, who was regarding him balefully. Apparently, the child did not take kindly to having his dinner interrupted. Thanking God fervently for Cray’s timely reminder, Jon determinedly drew back. Without his son’s intervention, Jon knew that the witch would have had him once again hopelessly in her thrall.

Cathy could only watch distressfully as Jon’s mouth hardened and his gray eyes iced over. She loved him so much, and had thought that he was beginning to soften toward her. But his eyes as they met hers were stony with hatred, his mouth cruel. Her own eyes filled with hurt tears as he stood up abruptly, almost jerking his hand free of Cray’s grip.

“You must really think me a fool,” he said softly, his eyes glittering maliciously down at her. “I may make a mistake once, but I’ll be damned if I do it twice. Beneath that sweet face you’re as hard-hearted and calculating as the worst of the waterfront whores. I’d sooner bed with a snake than you!”

Cathy gaped at him dumbly, tears overflowing her eyes to spill helplessly down her cheeks. With a savage curse Jon swung on his heel, striding furiously toward the door. Cathy collapsed with hurt sobs as he slammed out of the room. Cray’s frightened cries joined hers.

In the days and weeks following Cray’s birth, Cathy scarcely saw Jon. He was working harder than ever before at making Woodham a paying operation. In his mother’s time, free workmen had been hired to cultivate the fields,
but when his father had married Isobelle she had insisted that money would be saved by buying and using slaves. Marcus Hale had given in to her demands as always. Jon himself had always despised the institution of slavery, but the economy of the south was now built around it. A large percentage of his money had been sunk into the plantation, and if it did not turn a profit with this year’s cotton crop he would be hard put to support his family. Of course, he could always return to the sea. But he considered this a last resort. For Cray’s sake, and Cathy’s, too, if he was honest, he wanted to provide a secure, stable home. But on this, he was adamant: free workmen it was.

To save money, he refused to hire an overseer and directed the field workers himself. He worked from sunup to sundown, driving himself as hard as he drove the men. When he had finished for the day he was usually too tired to do more than eat his supper in silence and fall into his lonely bed. Sometimes he slept immediately, but more often he was haunted by images of Cathy. The remembered silken texture of her bright hair, the softness of her flesh, the feel of her warm body trembling with passion in his arms, dogged the hours between dusk and dawn. Many times he was tempted to go to her room, to ease his lust by taking what was after all his by right. But he was afraid that she would coax him into surrendering more than just his physical self. She would never be content until he was groveling at her feet, he mused savagely. And he was damned if he would give her that satisfaction!

Other women were available and he was chagrined to admit that he didn’t want them. On his occasional trips to town he was the recipient of certain unmistakable signals
from some very lovely ladies, but he could not rouse himself to more than a mild interest in their charms. It was ironic to reflect that the one woman capable of exciting him to the point of frenzy was his legal wife, the mother of his son, and yet he was afraid to take her. If she was bent on revenge, she was exacting more than she knew! And fiercely he vowed to keep it that way.

A combination of fatigue, worry, and plain sexual frustration made his temper hair-trigger quick. Everyone from Petersham to the lowliest field worker felt the bite of his tongue at one time or another. Cathy was generally spared from these verbal attacks, but the glint in Jon’s eyes when he looked at her told her that she was the real target. She returned his flaying looks limpidly, and redoubled her efforts to attract him. As water eventually wears away rock, she felt that she was making slow but steady progress. One night soon he would abandon the struggle and come to her, and she would be ready. And from his bed it was a very small step to his heart.

Jon was at first cynically amused and then infuriated by her transparent attempts to seduction. Soon after Cray’s birth he had commissioned a fashionable Charleston seamstress to replenish her almost nonexistent wardrobe, and now he realized that he had made a tactical error. In the gossamer thin, low-cut, sleeveless gowns that were best suited to South Carolina’s climate, she was as tempting to him as Eve must once have been to Adam. Just the sight of her slender, curvaceous figure as she flitted about the house or gardens was enough to send him up in flames. The soft smiles and provocative looks she lavished on him were pure torture. He lusted after her with a fierceness that left him time for thoughts of little
else. Night after night he was reduced to taking moonlight swims in nearby Miller’s Creek in an effort to cool his ardor. It barely helped at all.

As the weeks passed and he realized that she had had sufficient time to recover completely from Cray’s birth, his control was strained almost to the bursting point. There was no physical reason why she shouldn’t assume the intimate duties of a wife. Grimly Jon clung to his sanity. The bitch had stolen his heart once, and then callously trampled it. He’d see her in hell before he would give her the chance again!

Word spread through Charleston’s plantation community that another generation of Hales had taken up residence at Woodham. Hardly an afternoon passed without a carriage rolling up the drive to disgorge two or three fashionably dressed ladies come to make the acquaintance of their new neighbors. Cathy, well-dressed and demure, served tea and macaroons and fielded probing questions diplomatically. When the ladies discovered that she actually possessed a title (Cathy suspected Martha of divulging this information), they fell over themselves in an attempt to make the new arrivals welcome. Mistress Gordon, the neighborhood matriarch, set the final seal of approval on them by revealing that she had been close friends with Jon’s mother, Virginia. After that, Cray was cooed over, Cathy pronounced “the sweetest thing,” and Jon described by the dazzled ladies as too romantic for words. Jon was cynical about this approbation, but directed Cathy to accept a few of the invitations that were showered upon them. If they were to make Woodham their home, it would not do to live like recluses.

Cathy selected a ball given by a young couple named
Ingrams for their social debut. Jon was unenthusiastic, but grudgingly consented to accompany her. Inwardly, he felt that it might do him good to be in the company of other beautiful women besides his wife. It was incredible that he, who had bedded scores of women over the years, had been reduced to wanting only one. Perhaps he needed to take a closer look at what else was available.

Cathy, for her part, looked forward to the ball the way a cat anticipates its Sunday bowl of cream. She would dress to kill, and flirt judiciously with all the handsome men present. Jealousy would bring Jon around if nothing else would, she thought smugly. She knew he wanted her, it was plain in his eyes, but he was too damned stubborn to give in. A slight smile tilted at the corners of her mouth. When he had begged sufficiently for her favors, she would very sweetly submit. In the flaming of his passion, she hoped to touch his heart.

Cathy’s mouth went dry when she thought of Jon’s lovemaking. It had been so long since he had possessed her—almost nine months. If she were honest, she would have to admit that she wanted him too. The lustful glances that had touched on her half-exposed bosom when he thought she wasn’t looking, the imperfectly concealed tremor in his limbs when she oh-so-accidentally brushed her body against his, excited her more than she had dreamed was possible. She had always thought that only men were subject to physical needs, but she was painfully learning her mistake. It would have been very easy just to go to his room one night and offer herself to him, but she wanted more than just sexual gratification. She wanted his love, and if he had to be driven to the point of madness
before he could recognize or admit it, then that was what she had to do.