Sweet Release (16 page)
“I see.” Cole shifted awkwardly. “I misunderstood.”
“You thought he was
my
child?”
The idea was amusing, if a bit embarrassing. Cassie smiled, and found that Cole, too, was smiling—a silly, sheepish sort of smile. Then it hit her. Fury replaced mirth. Before she realized what she was doing, she slapped Cole soundly across the face and stomped toward the door, swearing.
“Whoreson! Lecher!”
She hadn’t taken three steps when strong arms gripped her from behind and spun her around.
“Will you please explain yourself, mistress?” he demanded, glaring down at her, a bright red palm print on his left cheek.
“You thought me a fallen woman, and so ripe to your use! Admit it!” The toe of her shoe connected sharply with Cole’s shin.
“
Ouch!
Blast it, woman!”
As he bent to massage his shin, Cassie saw her chance and dashed toward the door. But he was quicker. He pinned her arms to her sides and drew her so closely against him she could barely move.
“If you would but calm yourself, and give a wounded man the chance to speak in his own defense . . . or shall I hold you thus?”
His voice became husky. His thumbs made tantalizing, slow circles on her flesh.
She felt the muscular length of his body pressed intimately against hers and ceased struggling. This was certainly not the position she wanted to find herself in.
He released her slowly.
“You are correct that I thought you no longer a virgin—”
“Then you confess, you bast—” Before she could say another word, he had pulled her against him again and had covered her mouth with his hand.
“—as a woman can hardly bear a child and remain so. But you imply that my attraction is based solely on my mistaken belief that you had been bedded before. You underestimate your beauty, sweet mistress. Had I wished for someone truly experienced, I would have lost all interest in you the first moment we kissed.”
Cassie began struggling furiously, her shouts muted behind his hand. How dared he insult her!
“My interest in you has little to do with the status of your maidenhead and everything to do with your charms, which, if I may say so, are sorely lacking at the moment.”
With this, he released her.
Carried forward by her own struggling, she pitched face-first into the straw. For a moment she lay facedown and motionless, too mortified to move. Then, slowly, she rose, brushing away straw that clung to her clothes and hair and smoothing her skirts. Her hair had come loose and hung in a disorderly mass. Her apron was soiled where her knees had pressed into the dirt, and her gown hung crookedly from her shoulders.
He had admitted to thinking her loose. He’d treated her roughly and had even criticized her kisses. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She turned to face him, adjusting her gown as best she could and hiding her trembling hands in her apron. “I came only to thank you, Mr. Braden. You may return to your work.” She lifted her chin and looked him directly in the eye.
“As you wish, mistress.”
Alec watched her walk away, cloaked with all the dignity she could muster, and fought the pricking of his conscience. She looked like she’d just been attacked. But, by God, she was the one who’d attacked him! He’d had to use strength to make her listen. It was her own damned fault. He wasn’t the one who’d suddenly gone insane. She’d slapped him, scratched him, kicked him. All he had done was to protect himself. Why should he feel so blasted guilty for that?
Then something else crossed his mind.
Miss Blakewell was a virgin, after all. Not that he cared. Unlike those men who found excitement in deflowering maids, he had carefully avoided them no matter how alluring they might have been, preferring widows and wayward wives, who were more mature, more experienced, and less likely to make demands on his already sparse time. No demands. No expectations. No bonds beyond sex.
But then he remembered the look in Cassie’s eyes when he’d bandaged her hand, the way her body had come alive when they’d kissed. To fan the flames of passion and awaken her desire might well be worth it.
But whom had she met in the forest this morning? What did it matter? He would be leaving this land before long. In truth, the sooner the better. He had obligations. There was work to be done—ending the sale of Kenleigh ships to slave traders, for one, something he’d vowed to do as soon as he returned. His life was waiting for him far from this place, far from Miss Blakewell’s charms—and her temper. God only knew what was happening back home. Had Philip bankrupted the firm yet? Had his family given him up for dead? He retrieved the curry comb from where he’d dropped it in the hay and immediately went back to brushing Aldebaran with a sense of urgency, determined to put Miss Blackwell from his mind.
Alec did not see her again that afternoon. It was a good thing, too, as he was in no mood to put up with another display of temper. He secured the stable doors for the night and began walking toward his cabin. The evening air was cool and carried the chirping and buzzing of insects, the smells of a dozen cookfires. Candlelight and the high-pitched giggle of a child spilled from the open windows of the cookhouse off to his right. It was not on his path, but he found himself walking toward the window anyway.
Inside, Cassie was giving a wriggling, splashing Jamie a bath. A fleet of wooden ships floated on the water before the boy, and, like an all-seeing lord high admiral, Jamie pitted them one against the other in a very wet and decisive battle. His sister finished rinsing lather from his hair, careful not to get the soapy water in his eyes, then sat back on her heels and listened with rapt attention to his accounts of mayhem and victory. She might be the child’s sister, but she made a wonderful mother.
“Time to come out and dry off, little one,” she said. “You’re turning into a fish, I’m afraid.”
“Can’t I play just a while longer?”
“Nay. Look. You’re growing scales.”
She lifted one of Jamie’s feet from the water and pointed to his wrinkled toes.
“Those aren’t scales!” He paused, looking uncertain. “Are they?”
“That’s what Takotah always told me.”
Despite Jamie’s protests, she drew him from the water, quickly dried him, and pulled a nightshirt over his head. The boy rubbed his eyes sleepily and, rescuing a toy ship from the water, climbed into Cassie’s lap, where she sat next to the hearth in a rough-hewn rocking chair.
“The drowsy Night her wings has spread, like sable curtains ‘bout each head and bom ye weary limbs to bed . . .” she sang as she rocked, her voice soft and sweet.
Something twisted in Alec’s gut. It was a common English lullaby.
Why should the sound of it make him feel so desolate? “And she her pretty Faeries bring, and in your fancy dance their ring...”
Perhaps he missed his nieces and nephew even more than he’d realized. Certainly he had never longed for children of his own. Being an uncle had always been enough for him. Owning a thriving concern meant a life consumed by work and political matters. He’d seen his mother suffer the inattention of her husband and did not want to marry and beget offspring, only to leave his wife and children alone for days and nights on end. Besides, he’d no desire to brave the scheming mothers of London and endure the guile of their daughters. They cared only for the size of a man’s estates.
As for true love, he gave no credence to such foolishness. His father and mother had rarely spoken, much less cared for each other. How they’d managed to have three children was something of a mystery to Alec, since his father had seemed to spend his seed solely on his mistresses. He would have thought the lot of them bastards had they not all resembled their father so closely. Elizabeth and Matthew were the only husband and wife Alec knew whose affection for each other seemed to grow each year rather than diminish.
He’d leave matters of marriage and children to them.
Zach gave Nan a big kiss on the lips, deftly sneaking a handful of tarts off the table and hiding them behind his back.
“Don’t think ye can charm me, Zachariah Bowers,” the cook said sternly, her round face flushing with color nonetheless. “I know well enough ‘tis my tarts ye favor and not me, so save yer kisses for someone who wants ‘em.”
“Ah, come, Nan. Don’t tell me ye don’t like it when a handsome man steals a kiss,” he said, stealthily handing the treats out the door to Jamie, who scampered away, giggling, Daniel in tow.
“A handsome man? Nay,” she teased. “But stealin’ a kiss is one thing. Stealin’ me tarts, that’s somethin’ else, mind. Ye might as well take one for yerself. Ye must be hungry after all that thievin’.” She pointed with plump flour-coated fingers toward the remaining tarts on the serving tray.
“Have you seen Elly?” he asked, sitting on a nearby stool and sinking his teeth into the tart’s strawberry sweetness.
“Aye, I have.” Nan nodded with her head toward the great house while her hands busily shaped dough. “She’s inside servin’ tarts and cider to young Master Crichton.”
“Fancy-Pants? Hell!”
Zach’s good humor vanished. He had no doubt Elly was doing her best to catch the fop’s eye. If she wasn’t careful she’d find herself on her backside playing the trollop for him while he took some rich planter’s daughter to wife. He’d use her, and when her belly started to grow big and round, he’d pretend he’d never seen her before. Zach had seen plenty of men like Geoffrey Crichton back; in England. None of them could be trusted.
“He’s been waitin’ here for Miss Cassie for an hour now.”
“An hour! Has Elly been in there with him the whole bloody time?” he bellowed, rising so abruptly he knocked over the stool. In an hour, Fancy-Pants could have shagged Elly four times over and still have time to spare. Zach fought the urge to barge into the house and drag her out, kicking and screaming if need be.
“Aye, Zachariah, but not alone. Calm yerself, lad. She might not know it yet, but ‘tis ye she loves, though what she sees in ye I don’t know.”
He snorted in disgust and paced across the room. They’d not been together since the night by the woodpile. She’d smiled at him, even said a few sweet things since then, but Zach knew she felt bad about how she’d treated him that night. He didn’t want her pity.
“Master Geoffrey has got a convict with ‘im, he has. A woman. And Sheriff Hollingsworth should be here with another any moment now.”
“Does Braden know?”
“Nay, he’s taken one of the horses out for a ride.”
“Where’s Miss Cassie?”
“Out to visit the master.”
At the sound of a closing door he looked up to see Elly walking, serving tray in hand, down the porch stairs and toward the cookhouse. Even from ten paces he could tell her cheeks wore an excited glow. If he’d been a free man and she no longer a bondsmaid, he would have knocked the tray from her hands, kissed her so hard she wouldn’t have been able to argue with him, and carried her off to the nearest church. There’d be no more of these Fancy-Pants shenanigans. But they were neither of them free to do as they pleased, so he stood in the doorway, watched her approach, and said nothing.
“If you were a gentleman, you’d offer to help me, Zachariah,” she chided.
If she expected him to tend to her like some lovesick puppy while she flirted with another man, she was daft.
“Aye. And if you were a gentlewoman, you’d not trifle with the first fop to sniff at your tail, Elly, my sweet.” Gratified by the stunned expression on her face, he walked back toward the sawyer’s shed, whistling.
Cassie rode along the river after bidding her father farewell for the day, stopping when she came to her favorite spot. She often came to this small, hidden cove when she needed to think. Giving Andromeda a chance to drink, she secured the mare to a nearby evergreen, slid off her shoes and stockings, and, holding up her skirts so as not to get them wet, stepped into the cold water. Though the day was hot and humid, the wind coming off the river was cool, and the chilly water licked at her calves, bringing at least some relief from the heat, bolstering her sinking spirits.
Her father had not improved. Not that she’d really expected to find that he had. More than two months had gone by since he’d recognized her, and she had to face the possibility that he would never be himself again. While it terrified her to know that sooner or later the truth would come out and life at Blakewell’s Neck would change forever, no fear or sorrow matched that of watching her father slowly fade away. The man who had been Abraham Blakewell was gone. What remained was merely his body. Battling a growing sense of gloom, she kicked up a spray of water, watching the drops fall. There was nothing she could do for her father now but pray.
On the other side of the inlet an enormous heron walked in the shallows on ridiculously long legs, hunting for anything unfortunate enough to move. It eyed her warily but did not hide or fly away. A small blue crab, scared up from the bottom by the motion of her feet, scuttled into deeper waters. Off to her left, a splash and an expanding ring of ripples told her that a fish, perhaps a young spot or a bass, had just leaped up to catch an insect. When she was a little girl Takotah had often brought her to this inlet on hot summer afternoons, and let her shed her clothes and swim in the water. The current was not strong except at the mouth of the cove, and the water teemed with life: fish, grass shrimp, crab, oysters, diving ducks, muskrat.