Sweet Savage Eden (41 page)

She shrugged, fingering the pendant that lay against her breast, his gift to her. It was a gold medallion, engraved with the Cameron crest and studded with precious jewels. “Do you not like the shirt?”

He studied her carefully. “I like it very much. Who made it?”

“I did.”

“I never saw you work upon it.”

“I meant for it to be a surprise. I worked when you were out of the house. Are you surprised?”

“Very. The cloth is rich, madame. You did not take it for yourself. If you do not take care, I will begin to imagine that you did not marry me entirely for my money. I thought that you craved the best of everything, my love.”

Jassy flushed, still fingering the precious golden medallion. He taunted her, but it was Christmas, and she did not care.

“I never craved the best of anything … material, milord. I did seek not to starve, I admit. And I did seek …”

“What?”

“Never mind,” she said, swiftly turning aside. He would not let her go. He stood, catching her arm, pulling her back to him. “You did seek what, milady? Tell me.”

“Jamie, it is Christmas. We have guests—”

“And may God bless them. Answer me. You did seek what?”

She lifted her head and met his demanding stare gravely. “I sought not to die, nor to live, like my mother. Please, could you be so good as to release me now?”

His hand fell away from her arm. She lowered her eyes quickly from his and hurried back to the fire. Tamsyn sat upon the hearth, playing a rousing melody upon a flute. Lenore and Robert were dancing to the curious tune, while Kathryn, the Hume girls, and Mrs. Lawton laughed and applauded. Breathless at last, Lenore fell into a chair before the blaze. “Alas, if only it were England!”

“Are you so homesick, then?” Elizabeth asked her.

“Sometimes,” Lenore admitted. “I should love just to see London this night! London, with her busy streets and carefree revelers and her churches, with the bells all pealing merrily. I should love to see Hampton Court; I
would cherish a visit to Oxford. I would even love to walk the streets among the people. I
am
homesick, I suppose. I should not like to see the palisade—I should like to see Westminster Abbey and the shops—” “Shops!” Robert groaned.

“Oh, come!” Lenore said, pouting. “I do not want to smoke meat and worry if we’ve enough candles and wood for the winter. Look at my hands! Alas, they are almost as bad as Jassy’s. I have stooped to the making of candles and soap!”

They all laughed. Jassy was startled by her husband’s touch when he picked up her small hand and smoothed his large fingers over it. The fire flickered, and it seemed that the room grew silent—even Tamsyn ceased to play—and Jamie studied her hand very carefully. “This is not a bad hand, as I see it, Lenore. It came to me rough and worn in the service of others, and now it stays rough and worn in the service of my dream. It is a fine hand. It holds great strength, yet it can touch with tenderness. I am quite fond of it, really. Tell me, Jassy, are you so homesick too? Do you still abhor the Carlyle Hundred?”

She could not snatch her hand away, nor could she understand the curious tone of voice with which he softly spoke, then so abruptly demanded. “I am here, milord, for you commanded it so. Remember?”

“Ah. You, too, would prefer London.”

“You forget yourself, Lord Cameron. Where you go, I am thither commanded. And you choose to be here.”

“Is it really so simple, then?”

“You have seen that it is so,” Jassy replied demurely. She was trembling, and she didn’t know why. She tugged lightly upon her hand and freed it at last. She looked about at their company and mumbled out some excuse about being exhausted. Then she fled them all, seeking the sanctuary of her room. Jamie would come soon enough, but he would not touch her. He would crawl into his side of the bed, keep his careful distance, and not disturb her.

Molly was not with her, and so she quickly disrobed alone and crawled into bed, shivering. She did not remove
her pendant but held it between her fingers.
Cameron
. It was her name. Jassy Cameron. She had never stopped to realize it before, and now it suddenly meant very much. Holding the pendant, she closed her eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep.

It was not, however, a restful sleep. Of all strange times, her nightmares returned. And soon she started to scream again. To scream, and scream, and scream …

“Jassy!”

She awoke drenched in sweat, shaking convulsively. She was not alone. Jamie was back, and he held her tightly against himself. “Jassy, shush, it’s over now. It’s a dream, it’s a nightmare. That’s all. It is nothing real, nothing that can hurt you!”

She stared into his eyes. Against the soft light of the fire they were very blue and gentle. He touched her cheek and smoothed away the tears that she had shed in her sleep. “Jassy!” he repeated.

She had been as taut as steel, she realized. She went limp in his arms. It had been a dream. No specters haunted their bedroom, no corpses.

“I’m … sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry that I disturbed you.”

“And that I am here, not Robert Maxwell?” he said sharply.

She stared quickly into his eyes again, wondering if he was angry. He did not appear to be so, but the question was still intense, and she felt herself shivering again.

“I am sorry,” she said softly, “that I disturbed you, milord, and nothing more.”

“There is nothing that can hurt you here, Jassy. You are safe with me. You are safe.” He smoothed back her hair and held her gently in his arms. “Are you all right?”

Her heart kept beating hard, but the pace was beginning to subside. The light of the fire had bathed the room in a soft glow, and she was leaving behind the shadowed world of her nightmarish terror. She nodded to him. He rose, shivering against the chill as he moved to the hearth to stoke the dying blaze with the poker. Then he returned to her, slipping beneath the covers and pulling
her against him. She rested with her cheek upon his naked chest. Her hand also rested upon it, and her fingers were teased by the crisp mat of dark hair beneath them. He lay with his arm crooked beneath his head, stroking her hair, staring up at the canopy of their bed.

“Tell me about it. Tell me about the dream,” he said.

She tensed, wondering if she could do so. He must have felt the new fear within her, for he reached for her chin and tilted her head so that she could meet his eyes. “No demons lie in wait for you here, Jassy. Tell me what torments you, and perhaps you will be freed from it.”

She lowered her head against him again, rubbing her cheek against the sleek warmth of his chest. “It—it always starts with my mother,” she whispered.

“And she is ill?”

“She is dying. I can see her: She is lying on the pallet in Master John’s attic, and there is a sheet covering her, and I know what I will find, but I must go to her, anyway. I come closer and closer, and then I pull away the covers and she is there, but she is dead, and she has been dead for a very long time, for her eyes are nothing but dark, empty sockets, and it is as if the carrion and worms have preyed upon her. I stare at her and I stare at her and …”

“And, my love?”

“As I watch her, she becomes me, and I am in terror then that …”

“That what, Jassy?”

“I … do not want to die as she did,” Jassy mumbled against his flesh.

He was silent for several long seconds. “She died the night that we first met.”

“Yes.”

“And you were trying to buy her some medication, or the services of some physician?”

“Yes,” she barely whispered. The sound was a ragged breath of warmth that touched his flesh. Her fingers curled suddenly against him. “You must understand … Robert was very kind to me that day. She would not even
lie in a coffin had he not insisted on paying the cost of it.”

Jamie grunted. His voice took on a slight edge. “And that is it? The extent of the dream?”

She shuddered again, violently. “Sometimes … sometimes it is different.”

“And tonight?”

“Tonight it was worse. I watched her, and even as I stared at her, she became me. I saw myself lying there, and I knew that I was dead. I was dead … as my mother had been.”

“Was I there?”

She recalled the dream, Jamie staring down upon her, Hope sidling around him. She remembered holding the baby, the blue, pinched, stillborn baby.

“Yes, you were there.”

“And what was I doing?”

“You were watching me. Very gravely, very sadly.”

“Why?”

“Because … because the babe was laid upon me, and it was dead too.”

“Jassy! Jassy!” He set his hands upon her and sat up, sweeping her into his arms and cradling her within them. His chin rested atop her head, and he held her close. He took her hand and stretched out her fingers, then laid her hand against the swell of her stomach. “Feel him! He kicks even now. He is strong and you are strong, and both of you will survive. I will not let anything happen to you.”

She twisted against him, burying her face against his neck. He continued to hold her tight.

“Trust in me,” he told her. He threaded his fingers through hers and laced them together over the bulge of their child. “Trust in me; I will be beside you, and I will never let you starve or want for anything.”

Jassy had never known such a wondrous feeling of security.

Of being cherished …

She laid her head against him, savoring the sensation.

She yawned, exhausted again, certain that her dreams would no longer be haunted.

“Was there more to it?” he asked.

“What, milord?” she asked in sleepy contentment.

“The dream. Was there any more to it?”

“Oh … yes. Hope was beside you as you watched me.”

He laughed suddenly, and with good humor. “You are a jealous little minx.”

She started to stiffen against him. “Milord, I most certainly am not.”

“You are.”

“I am not …” She hesitated, for the baby was moving in great ripples against her stomach. “I … have grown so very large,” she murmured.

He chuckled softly, nuzzling her head with his chin. “It will not be long now, madame. Not long at all. The end of February, the beginning of March.”

“It will not be long,” she agreed. She trembled, for she could not quite shake the fear. He held her closer. “I will be with you,” he promised her. “I will be with you, and no harm will come to you.”

She believed him. She gazed up at him with a tender, dazzling smile, and then she closed her eyes, and in a matter of minutes she was sleeping again, softly and easily this time.

Jamie laid her down, smoothed the hair from her brow, and studied her features, gentle with sleep, a smile still curved about her lips. She grew more beautiful daily, he thought, and he grew evermore beneath the shadow of her spell. He felt like a lovesick boy at times, watching her movements, watching her laughter, watching her when she frowned, concentrating intently upon some task or another.

Regrets
… He
had none.

He had determined to have her, and he had determined to marry her, and he had known that she had the passion and the spirit to rival his, to meet and challenge this brave new land. He had known that he had the power to make her his wife, and he even had had the sure confidence to believe that he could awaken the
passion and sensuality that had lain behind the vehemence of her hatred and the volatility of her spirit. He had, in his arrogance known that he could claim her and awaken her, and command her here, to his side.

But he could not make her
love
him.

She was his wife. Soon they would have a child, and there was no reason that he should lose her.

No reason … except that he might well let her go. He could not love like this and keep silent. Nor could he lay his heart before her feet and lose his soul. She had wanted Robert. She dreamed of a man full of flattery and laughter. Someone gentle, easily led and maneuvered.

He clenched his jaw, hard and tight. He could not be a half-wit fool for her entertainment. If she could not love the man that he was, then he would have to let her go.

Misery clamped down upon him hard, and his muscles constricted, taut and painful. They would know soon enough, he thought. When the child came, there would be a time of reckoning. He would demand it.

And he would have it.

XVI