Surrender to Sin (21 page)

She gave him her hand. The instant he grasped it, she knew everything would be all right. She wasn’t going to die. Strength and warmth seemed to flow through his fingertips into hers.

“Good God, your hand is like ice,” he muttered, his face grim.

Having no leverage, he began to pull her up by the main strength in his arms. Abigail cried out as the ice broke around her shoulders. Cary squirmed forward and, catching her under the arms, tried to lift her out of the water. Abigail tried to pull her shoe out of the chink in the rock beneath the water, but couldn’t. She heard Cary cursing.

“Wait,” she cried. “My foot is caught.”

Just as she spoke, her shoe gave way, and her body sailed out of the water and landed painfully on the top step. Cary’s grip on her broke as he fell backwards. Unable to regain his balance, he rolled with a series of thuds and curses down to the fourth or fifth step. Abigail couldn’t see him. She screamed his name, but there was no reply, not even an echo.

Some time later, she felt warm. She could hear voices murmuring around her, humming like bees. She forced her eyes open, and Vera Nashe’s face swam before her. “She’s awake,” someone said, but it was a lie. Consciousness slipped away again.

Suddenly, a finger lifted one of her eyelids, and then the other. Just as suddenly, the finger disappeared, and darkness closed over her again. Her body careened restlessly. At times it seemed to be hurtling through space. At other times, she felt herself to be in bed. She became uncomfortably warm, then unbearably hot. She woke up, as if from a nightmare, by sitting upright and opening her eyes. Her skin was sticky with sweat, and her heart was pounding.

She was in her room at Tanglewood Manor; she recognized the Tudor roses painted on the ceiling. A fire was blazing on the hearth. For a moment, she was mesmerized by the dancing flames. She could not remember her dream, though she was sure it had been a nightmare. She could not understand why her head ached and why her body felt bruised all over. The palm of her left hand itched. Her hand was bandaged. Unwrapping the bandage, she found a nasty looking cut sealed with tiny silk stitches.

Vera Nashe quietly entered the room, and some of Abigail’s confusion lifted, though it was still very hard to think. It had not been a dream. She had cut her hand at the Cascades. She had nearly drowned in the river, and Cary had fallen in his attempt to rescue her. If he was dead, it was entirely her fault. Tears spilled from her eyes. “Mr. Wayborn?”

Vera smiled. “So you are awake, my dear. We’ve been so worried about you.”

Abigail could barely hear her; a sound like the roar of a waterfall was in her ears. The dryness of her mouth made it difficult to speak, but she managed to croak, “Is Cary all right?”

Vera seemed very far away, and Abigail was faintly surprised when the other woman took her hand; she had seemed much too far away to do that. “Yes, yes,” she said soothingly, wrapping a fresh bandage around Abigail’s palm. “Mr. Wayborn is expected to make a full recovery. I’m much more worried about you. You were in the water such a long time.”

“Was he badly injured? May I see him?”

She tried to swing her legs out of bed, but Vera was too strong for her. “You mustn’t get out of bed. Doctor’s orders. Don’t worry about Mr. Wayborn. He’s a few bumps and bruises, but he’s young and he’s strong. He’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, have had a bad fever.”

She turned up the lamp at the bedside and Abigail stared at it. Questions occurred to her, but then slipped away. It was difficult to focus. “Where is he?” she finally asked.

Vera smoothed Abigail’s hair back from her damp forehead. “He’s right next door, resting comfortably. I’ve just given him his medicine. Now I shall give you yours.” As she spoke, she took out a dropper filled with scarlet liquid and emptied it into a glass of water. The scarlet drops swirled through the clear liquid like dancing feathers. Vera held out the glass. “Laudanum,” she told her cheerfully. “It will take away the pain.”

“I’m not in pain,” Abigail whispered. The red drops looked revoltingly like blood.

“You will be, if you don’t take your medicine,” said Vera, smiling. “And if you don’t get better, you won’t be allowed to see Mr. Wayborn.”

Abigail took the glass. As a child she had once had a toothache, and Paggles had rubbed a little laudanum into her gums, but the effect had been nothing like this. A cloud of foggy pleasure seemed to press down on her, almost paralyzing her limbs.

“Sleep,” Vera commanded, and the word echoed in the room long after she had gone, growing louder instead of fainter, until Abigail could not bear it. The feeling of euphoria became almost suffocating, frightening, drowning her ability to think. Convinced that something was very wrong, Abigail tried to call out, but she could scarcely hear her own voice. Vera was gone, and Abigail was sure no one would come.

She got out of bed, but her legs trembled so violently that she was forced to her knees. She began to crawl across the planked floor to the door, but the room seemed to lengthen into an almost endless tunnel. She could barely see the door at the end of it, and when, after a herculean effort, she reached it, it was locked. Looking back the way she had come, she saw the room had changed. It was no longer a place of safety. Strange black and gold shapes darted in and out of the firelight, and the air was thick with smoke. A whispering wind seemed to blow in the room, agitating the curtains of the bed. “This is not real,” Abigail told herself firmly. “The fever has disturbed my mind.”

It was her last coherent thought. Her vision blurred, and feeling blind and dizzy, she groped her way to the nearest shelter—the wardrobe—and climbed inside, parting the dresses hung on the rod and secreting herself among them. The door banged shut, and Abigail was safe inside in the dark.

This particular wardrobe had a secret. She tried to remember who had told her that. She had a feeling it was someone very important. She pushed hard against the back of the wardrobe and the wall slid away. Abigail tumbled out into a different place.

“Ups-a-daisy,” said a familiar voice, as two strong arms seemed to pluck her out of thin air and set her on her feet. The wardrobe door banged shut, and she was suddenly standing in a room the exact mirror of her own. Two hands turned her around, and she found herself face to face with a flesh-and-blood Caravaggio.

Cary’s skin gleamed like copper in the firelight. He was completely naked. His skin was the same warm bronze all over and his male part was badly in need of a few fig leaves. Cary himself seemed completely unaware of his uncovered state, and Abigail felt decidedly guilty for imagining him like that. All the same, she couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” he murmured, folding her in his arms. The warmth of his naked body seemed to pass right through her skin, and all at once, he was kissing her and she was kissing him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It didn’t shock her at all to realize that she was naked, too. They might have been Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After all, it was a dream. In the dream her body fitted his exactly.

“Angel!” she murmured breathlessly, as his mouth wandered hungrily down her neck.

“Don’t worry about the dog. The dog is fine. You might worry about me, however,” he went on petulantly. “After all, I nearly died. Saving you, you ungrateful little baggage.”

“But I meant you,” she said fervently, clinging to him. “I meant you. It was always you. Cary, I was so afraid you were dead. You’re not, are you? You’re not a ghost?”

“Do I feel like a ghost?” he asked, taking her hand and guiding it to the center of his chest, where his heart beat reassuringly.

“No,” she admitted. “You feel alive.”

“If I were mere fallacy of vision, could I do this?”

Abigail had never thought of herself as a person endowed with a powerful imagination, but now she could imagine anything and everything. She could taste him as he kissed her. Honey and whisky. She could feel the muscles of his arms hardening around her like bands of iron. She could even imagine the way he smelled, like shavings of cedarwood left on a warm grate. She could hear every sweet word he murmured. He was invested to the hilt in each and every one of her senses. She could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch nothing else. It was as if she were possessed by him. Not content to melt her from without, he had moved in, under her skin, melting even her bones. The barest whisper, the tiniest flick of his tongue, had the power to permeate her entire body. There was nothing to do but cling to him, offer herself to him.

“If I were a ghost, could I do this?” Cary scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Abigail closed her eyes and fell into a cloud of feathers, landing softly in the warm nest, but when she opened her eyes he was still there. Grinning devilishly, he climbed onto the bed after her, his legs tangling with hers. “Look at me,” he said, slapping his hard, flat belly. “Did you ever see a more corporeal being in your life? Feel that. That’s all muscle, my girl.”

Abigail had never seen a naked man before, only statues, and the cold white marble sculptures of Canova had not prepared her for the splendor of this living man. As if compelled by a higher power, her small hands reached for him. Against his golden brown skin, they looked a travesty, small, pale, freckled. His torso was like carved marble covered in warm, brown velvet. He moved as unself-consciously as a satyr in the woodlands, and smiled at her indulgently as she stroked him tentatively.

“You do seem real,” she whispered. Yet, she knew, he could not be. She was imagining this magical creature, as she had imagined the whispering wind on the other side of the wardrobe. Except that this was so much better than any dream she had ever before experienced.

Real or not, it was impossible not to touch him. Indeed she could not get enough of him. His muscles, finer than any carved in marble by human hands, leaped as she trailed her fingers over the contours of his torso. Surely, not even Cary, the man she adored, could be so perfect.

As if reading her thoughts, the hallucination said proudly, “Madam, you will search in vain for a soft spot on this body. Not an ounce of fat or weakness will you find anywhere. Hard riding and hard wenching have been the making of me,” he added, winking at her.

Obviously, her dream had modeled his fine body on those of the figures she had seen in sculpture gardens and museums, inventing for her the perfect man, a lover who could only live in her imagination. As she imagined, so he was. But why had she endowed him with that odd, truncheon-like object between his finely muscled legs? She’d never seen one of those on a statue. And why, oh, why did he have to talk like a conceited braggart? The real Cary, of course, probably
did
live a life of idle dissipation, wenching and drinking and gambling, but such realism had no place in her dream. The real Cary made her nervous. So nervous that, despite her intense attraction for him, she always felt an irresistible desire to run away from him.

“It’s not fair, you know,” she said wistfully. “You’re so beautiful. It turns me into a complete idiot. I wish I were beautiful like you. I wish I could make someone feel about me the way I feel about you. Not fair, Cary.”

He chuckled softly, and gently pushed the curls out of her eyes. “And I wish you could see what I see, my beautiful Smith. Dearest, loveliest Smith. If you were slathered in slippery honey, I vow I could swallow you whole. Where did you get such pretty peaches?”

“Don’t,” she begged. “Don’t make a joke of it. It makes me sad.”

Instantly, he became what she wanted, intense and serious. His eyes were warm. “What do you need from me?” he asked gently.

“Just love me,” she said helplessly, tears standing in her eyes.

Because this was a dream, he understood her perfectly, while the real Cary would have tormented her into hysterics. Instead, they communicated like two angels, by thought, by a touch that was scarcely physical it ran so deep. Because this was wholly imaginary, Abigail was neither shy nor awkward. The feelings that he aroused in her did not frighten her. They seemed natural, as if she had been making love to him a thousand years. Because he had made her body with his hands, she could not be ashamed of it. For the first time in her life, she felt beautiful, desirable, worthy. His dark, magical hands melted all barriers between them, caressing the soft peaks of her breasts, cupping her soft bottom as he drank the sweetness flowing from her like a river of honey. Her body melted slowly, like wax in the sun, while he supped like a cloud of lazy bees. At first everything was drowsy and golden. He drew her in, trapping her senses in a charm of easy pleasure, before together they began the slow, maddening ascent to a joy so cruel, so fleeting, and so intense that it sears as much as it pleases.

He was masterful, this man she had created. She imagined that he kissed and caressed her for hours, neglecting no part of her. The faintest touch, a kiss whispered behind her knee, the flick of his tongue, a chuckle, could magnify the pleasure she felt as his hand quietly and firmly caressed her between the legs. As though swimming through a tide, her body strained to meet his, and like wild water broken up by immortal rock, she moaned softly as she broke in his arms. He knew exactly how to give her the most pleasure. Time and again, he brought her up the scale, then back down, releasing her too soon, until she was writhing like a wounded thing. Each time, she thought she had reached the end of the world, but each time he would take her a little further, into some new, intoxicating realm, higher and higher, until finally, her body could bear the strain no longer. The last scrap of Abigail melted away and the scent of honey filled all the world. She drowned in it, weeping hysterically, exhausted. She could imagine nothing more. “Perfection,” she breathed, sinking almost into unconsciousness.

Cary chuckled softly, proud of himself. In the darkness, he crouched over her, his mouth swollen and red. Curiously, she touched it with her fingertips, feeling the words as they emerged from his lips. “That, my sweet, is only the beginning.”