Rebel Enchantress (28 page)

Nathan caressed her breasts with the back of his hand, and it nearly set her on fire. Who would have believed the mere touch of his hand could turn her nipples hard? Delilah became embarrassed, certain he could feel her stiffening nipples through her dress. She was only too aware of how sensitive they were to the pressure of his chest.

Then she became conscious of another pressure, this time in her abdomen. She knew immediately what caused it. Her breath caught in her throat. It was almost as though he didn’t have any clothes on, as though nothing shielded from her the effect she was having on his body.

She told herself she should move away, escape before this powerful response destroyed her ability to think. But desire urged her to press herself to him, to strive to become one with him. The heat of his swelling manhood unleashed a response in her as basic, primitive, and powerful as his more obvious arousal. Instinctively she knew only Nathan could cool the heat in her loins.

Yet when his hand slipped into her dress and cupped her bosom, she was unable to stand any more. With a startled gasp, Delilah pushed him away. She darted away when he tried to recapture her.

“I think it’s best if you stay over there and I stay over here,” she said, fighting hard for breath and for control over her emotions, wanting on the one hand to save herself and on the other to throw herself back into his arms.

“Are you frightened of me?”

She nodded. “Of me, too.”

“You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Not intentionally, but neither one of us is in a state to decide what’s best right now.”

“I want you, Delilah. I want you so badly I can’t stand it.”

“I can tell you do,” she said, her eyes falling to the proof of his statement. Though amazed at her own brazenness, she was somehow unafraid. “I’m afraid I want you, too.”

Nathan started toward her, and she skipped out of his way once more.

“But that’s not what we ought to be thinking about.”

“Why?”

“There are consequences to everything a person does, and I don’t think you’d be too keen on some of the consequences of what you’ve got in mind just now.”

“I love you, Delilah.”

“You want me: that’s not the same.”

“I know the difference. I love you.”

“Maybe. At least the way you think of love. But I don’t know whether I love you, not the way I think of love.”

“What’s your way?”

“It starts with marriage and includes a home and babies. That’s not what you had in mind, is it?”

“What do you think I want, Delilah?”

“I’m not sure. I think you want someone to like you. I think you want someone you can talk to and enjoy being around. I also think you want someone you can bed as often as your body demands it.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Not if it doesn’t stop there. If I were to love you, I’d have to be willing to live with your aunt and cousin. I’d have to be ready to face the anger of the women who wanted you for themselves and the contempt of my friends who’d think I had sold myself for your riches. I’d also have to be willing to leave Massachusetts, to accustom myself to English society, to love your mother even though I’ve never met her.

“If you loved me, you’d have to be ready to take Reuben and Jane as deeply into your heart as they are in mine. You’d have to try to understand the anger of poor people caught between forces they can’t control and doing what they see as the only way to save their families. And you’d have to be willing to help them, even if it costs you dearly.”

“You don’t make it easy, do you?”

“It’s not my doing. If it were just you and me, it could be the way you want. There’d be nobody to consider, no consequences. But it can’t be like that for us. I don’t know if it can be like that for anyone.”

“Does that mean you won’t meet me again?”

“I’ll meet you as often as I can,” she said, gazing straight into his eyes.

“But it means you can’t give your body until we’re both ready to accept everything that gift implies. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And if I said I was ready now?”

“My heart would beat even faster than it’s beating,” Delilah said, “but I would tell you to think about it for a while. I would say you had to make certain you weren’t mistaken. I would say loving me may be the most difficult thing you’ve ever done.”

“And what would you say to yourself?”

“Pretty much the same thing. I’ve come to like and respect you, maybe even love you”—Nathan tried to sweep her up in his embrace, but she forestalled him—“still, it’s happened so fast I can’t be sure yet.”

“won’t let you go this easily,” Nathan said. “Uve waited too long for someone like you to let you get away because things are a little complicated”

Delilah couldn’t help but smile at this understatement of their situation.

“It happened quickly for me as well,” he went on, “but I’m not confused. And I know all about accepting relatives and friends, and about community disapproval. I won’t pretend to like it, but if I can’t have you any other way, I’ll do it.”

“It’s sweet of you to say that …”

“Sweet be damned,” Nathan exploded. “I mean it.”

“I know you do, now, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? This is not a matter of social acceptance or cold disapproval. The people of Springfield have just finished fighting one war, and they’re ready to fight another one. You’re in firing range of both sides. Marrying me would be just about the worst thing you could do for yourself.”

“I don’t care”

“Well, I do. I have a brother who wouldn’t understand. How do you think I’d feel if I had to choose between my family and my husband? I don’t think I could do it. We have to take a little time, make sure what we feel for each other is lasting. Then we have to decide whether we’re willing to pay the price.”

“I never thought I’d hear a woman preach caution in love,” Nathan said ruefully. “If anything, I’d have thought you’d be ready to tie the knot and worry about the consequences afterward.”

“Then I guess you don’t know me as well as you think. Maybe it’s a good idea if you take the time to better acquaint yourself with me.”

“Very well. I’ll make a deal with you. For one week we’ll go on as we always have”

“Two weeks.”

Nathan wanted to argue, but he gave in. “Okay, two weeks.”

“But?”

“But we’ll meet in the library every morning. We’ll tell Serena you’re advising me.”

“Won’t I be?”

“Yes, but that won’t be all.”

“I hope not. I want to learn everything there is to know about you. Will you tell me about yourself?”

“Yes.”

But his response was neither as quick nor as eager as it should have been. A chill swept through Delilah. Was Nathan hiding a secret? Did it have the power to destroy their love before that was fully born?

Chapter Sixteen

The next ten days were a beautiful, wonderful, happy time for Delilah. The few times Serena came downstairs she barely spoke to anyone but Priscilla and Nathan. Priscilla continued to act the bubble-headed fool around Nathan, but dropped the role with Delilah. This didn’t bring about any change in their relationship, but the change made Delilah more comfortable.

Nathan hired Tommy Perkins, the thirteen-year-old son of one of his debtors, to help in the kitchen. Mrs. Stebbens was no longer so tired, and Lester had someone to boss around. Now that she had some extra time, Mrs. Stebbens insisted that every piece of material from the attic be turned into a dress.

“You’ll be going home at Christmas. I know you won’t take a bolt of cloth, but you can take a few dresses.”

So every day Delilah and Mrs. Stebbens spent several hours working on the gowns. Delilah guessed she’d own at least half a dozen new outfits when she left. She didn’t know what Reuben and Jane would say about such a wardrobe. She’d half made up her mind to leave everything behind when she went home, but right now she didn’t know what to do.

The best thing about the last ten days was that Nathan hadn’t been away from home.

“He hasn’t missed a single meal,” Mrs. Stebbens said. Then she winked at Delilah. “Doesn’t seem like he can stand to take his eyes off you.”

“It’s a good thing you come into the kitchen every once in a while to fetch something to eat,” Lester observed caustically. “Otherwise he’d starve to death with food sitting right under his nose.”

“It’s not that bad,” Delilah said, but she didn’t mind having Nathan look at her as if she were the only woman in the world. It gave her a wonderful feeling, one she would never get enough of.

She looked forward to Nathan’s increasingly frequent invitations to join the family members in the drawing room, but she never accepted when guests were expected.

“My presence will make everybody uncomfortable,” she had explained.

Serena soon figured out what Delilah was doing, and she began to issue open-ended invitations to everyone she met.

Nathan quietly rescinded them.

The time Delilah spent with Nathan in the library became the focus of her day. There, behind the closed door, with a view of the gardens and the river, she could forget they were separated by so much, that people and forces were at work to keep them apart forever. She could almost believe no one else existed but Nathan and herself.

One thing hadn’t changed. She still couldn’t control her response to his tightly clad body. She had only to look at him and her nipples became hard. He had only to touch her and his body became stiff with desire. That meant a quick parting and a stem effort to return their attention to the long list of names.

This morning started off no differently from the rest. Nathan engulfed her in a crushing embrace the minute the door was closed.

“Do you think Serena knows how you feel about me?” she asked when she came up for breath.

“She can’t,” Nathan responded, lightheartedly. “She hasn’t been carried off by a fit.”

He tried to kiss her again, but she held him at arm’s length. He pulled her onto his lap, but she didn’t feel any safer there. She was falling more and more in love with him, and he was becoming more and more necessary to her everyday existence. She couldn’t imagine how she could live without him.

The library door burst open and Serena rushed into the room, followed by Colonel Lucius Clarke. Serena stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Delilah sitting on Nathan’s lap.

Delilah leaped to her feet.

“Nathan Trent,” she exclaimed, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing”

“If you hadn’t burst in unannounced, you needn’t have seen it,” Nathan replied with brutal frankness.

“I don’t care if he wants to canoodle with the servants,” Lucius said, moving past Serena. “Have you seen this letter? It’s from Shays.”

As angry as she was with Serena, Delilah grew even more angry with herself for the guilty flush warming her cheeks. While she hadn’t been doing anything wrong, her mortification would make it seem that she had. Serena wouldn’t miss the blush. She was bound to think the worst.

“I haven’t heard of any letter from Shays,” Nathan said. “Well, read it, man,” Clarke said, then proceeded to read it aloud.

“And listen to this part,” he said after he’d covered several paragraphs. He grew more indignant with each word. “I told you that man intended to start a revolution. ‘Assemble your men together. See that they are well armed and equipped, and ready to turn out at a minute’s warning properly organized under officers.’ He wrote that to the selectmen of all the towns in Berkshire and Hampshire counties. They could have twenty-five thousand men ready to march within a month.”

“There aren’t twenty-five thousand muskets in the whole of Massachusetts,” Nathan pointed out. “It won’t do them any good to leave their own firesides.”

“Don’t you understand anything yet?” Lucius demanded. “This is a call to war”

“I don’t believe Captain Shays would do that,” Delilah said. “He never wanted war.”

Nathan looked at the paper again. “It’s got his signature at the bottom.”

“It could have been forged. He knows how everybody suffered in the last war.”

“It doesn’t matter what he wants any longer,” Lucius said. “Governor Bowdoin has called a special session of the General Court. They’ve already talked about suspending habeas corpus and confiscating property. We’re going to see if he’ll add a year’s imprisonment. At the very least we want public whippings.”

“Who’s
we?
” Nathan asked.

“Tom Oliver, Noah Hubbard, and myself. We’re going to Northampton to talk with the merchants and property owners there. It’s about time the legislature did something. I mean to see as many people as possible across the state start sending them the message. You willing to come with us?”

Nathan looked at Delilah and his aunt. Their expressions could hardly have been more different, more telling. Delilah looked horrified, shocked that her peaceful world threatened to explode and destroy them all. She was probably imagining Reuben jailed, beaten unmercifully, his small farm taken away. No matter what role Nathan took in the conflict, he feared that he and she would be forced farther and farther apart.

Serena’s face was wreathed in triumph. She’d been telling Nathan this would happen. Now she would be proven right, and he would have to listen to her advice in the future. Neither he nor men like Lucius Clarke could ignore her any longer. No one would ever laugh at her again.

Nathan saw himself as caught between two forces moving irrevocably toward conflict, a conflict that could cost him everything he wanted—Delilah and Maple Hill—unless he did something to keep the situation from exploding.

“When are you leaving?”

“This afternoon. We figure once the legislature sees Shays’s letter, they’ll move quickly. We want a chance to have our say before they decide what to do.”

Nathan looked at Delilah once more. She appeared frightened and confused. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knew even his embrace couldn’t provide the kind of reassurance she needed now.

“Serena, you’ll be in charge while I’m gone.”

Serena flashed Delilah a look of triumph too obvious for anyone to miss.