The Hawk and the Dove (36 page)

Instead of beating off the dogs, she brought her whip arm down to lash his thighs and legs, and she repeated the action over and over.

She screamed, “I am here to get my divorce. My name is Sara Bishop Hawkhurst!”

He was so shocked, he was speechless. He ordered the wolfhounds to heel, but Sabre urged them on to attack, and Neptune was lathering in a wild frenzy. With superhuman effort she and the dogs managed to prevent his access through the gates. He shot her a look that pierced her soul, then wheeled the black stallion and thundered off.

She was panting heavily from exertion and from emotion. In a daze she made her way back to the house and closed the door of her bedchamber to savor her victory. She knew something important had happened. She could feel the silk of her undergarments against her body until she felt she must scream. He was the handsomest man in
the world to her and finally, irrevocably, for the first time she admitted to herself that she loved him. She loved him with all her heart and soul. She ached in her belly for him to lie with her naked all night and make love to her. She knew everything about him, his identities, his treason, his spying, his helping Ireland, and none of it mattered. She had always loved him!

She allowed the deep passion she felt to wash over her. Then she threw the hated whip from her and flung herself down upon the bed to sob out her heart.

Suddenly, the door opened and closed with such a violent crash it almost came off its hinges. She cried out in alarm and arose to face Hawkhurst, angrier than she had ever seen him.

“Explain yourself!” he thundered, taking a menacing step toward her, and she shrank back in fear.

“I am your wife!” she cried out accusingly. “The bride you married by proxy. I was nothing to you … less than the dirt beneath your feet! You banished me here, to the back of beyond, while you went off whoremongering with the queen!” The tiny buttons on the black silk vest had burst open and her breasts thrust magnificently from its confines. Her burnished hair swirled about her like a cloak of fire and her temper flamed and crackled, filling the chamber with her injured pride and indignation. “I came to court with one purpose in mind—to get even with you. I was determined to become your mistress— and now I want my divorce!”

“Sabre, you have raised your hand to me, your knife to me, and today your whip to me. Up to now I have exercised great patience with you, but that’s it—you’ve used up every last ounce of patience I ever had. I am going to give you a long-overdue lesson in wifely obedience!”

“I’ve tasted your brutality before,” she flung at him.

“Brutality? I worshiped you! How dared you and Matthew go against my orders and come to court? The court stinks—it is no fit place for a wife of mine!”

“I don’t wish to be your wife any longer, I want my divorce!” she hissed.

His angry gaze licked over her and she saw the naked lust in it. “I want my rights,” he demanded.

“No!” She gasped. “Don’t touch me.”

“As my mistress you could refuse me your favors, as my wife you cannot!” He snatched her into his arms and his dark head dipped to burn a fiery trail of kisses across her breasts. His hands tightened on her savagely as he shook her. “All those fights you provoked because I was wed to Sara Bishop. You wicked little bitch, you provoke me more than any woman alive!” He groaned and pulled the velvet riding dress off her shoulders and pushed it down her hips. She kicked free of it and stood resisting him in her silken undergarments.

“How could you deceive me by being two different women?” he accused.

“How can you, of all people, say that? You are at least three different men!”

His mouth came down on hers in a heart-stopping kiss that lingered and lingered. Her defenses were crumbling. As he pulled her to him in an embrace, and as she felt the hard length of his body, she was lost, terribly lost.

“Sabre, I adore you,” he whispered, and she melted against him, needing to hear more.

“Shane, please,” she murmured.

“Say it again,” he demanded hoarsely. “I want to taste my name on your lips.”

“Shane, Shane, Shane.”

“I really am a bastard, my love. I deprived you of your wedding night…. We’ll have it now,” he promised, quickly removing his clothes.

“But it isn’t night … it’s morning,” she protested faintly.

He laughed deep in his throat. “I’ll keep you abed until night, never fear.”

Then he slowly and leisurely began to pleasure her. The first two hours were well spent in kissing. He kissed her ears, eyelids, her beauty spot, her throat, her temples, her fingertips. There was not one place upon her delectable body that did not receive his worshipful kiss. His hand slid down the warm, smooth curve of her back, pressing her closer, crushing her breasts tightly against him until Shane’s thoughts could not move beyond the awareness of her taut little nipples. He tantalizingly caressed her lips with his tongue, while he pressed her hips closer to his, letting her feel the throbbing pressure of his manhood.

They lay on their sides facing each other, their thighs entwined, their breath mingling into one as they exchanged slow, languid kisses. Shane gathered her into the curve of his body and sighed against her lips. “You have bewitched me, Sabre Wilde.” He cradled her tenderly in his arms, utterly enjoying the role of husband. “Do you realize how long it has been since we made love?” he whispered. “You add such spice to my life; without you I am like a man starved.”

Shane knew well that the torment of delay was a very sweet thing, and the longer the play and more unendurable the waiting, the greater and richer was the final joy of fulfillment. Sabre had been fully aroused for over an hour now, and her desire was so heightened, it threatened
to reach the edges of madness. Her tongue darted out to lick the corners of his mouth and he lost control. His open mouth plummeted down in a brutal kiss. His lips forced hers apart and his tongue thrust through with overwhelming savagery. His restrained desire broke through in a rush as he yielded fully to the heat of his lust.

She could not breathe, she could not form a sane thought. Her loins throbbed with the scalding heat of his arousal. She arched against him in surrender as he plunged into her, and his domination of her gave him such pleasure that he cried out, “You are my wife and I will take you whenever I desire, wherever I desire.”

Sabre slid her silken sheath from his shaft. “Will you, my lord?” she said dangerously.

He grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the bed. “Whenever! Wherever!
My lady!”

“And I will have my divorce if it’s the last thing I do!” she vowed.

They faced each other naked across the bed, both panting angrily, their blood up.

“I will never divorce you,” he said with finality.

“But I have the means to blackmail you. I still have Walsingham’s secret files on you!”

“You false bitch, you told me you burned them.”

She tossed back her hair. “What I tell you and what I do are two different things!”

His eyes burned into hers. “They must be in this room, close to your treacherous hand.” He tore the clothes from her wardrobe, tore open the drawers and flung their contents to the floor, then moved toward her trunks.

“No, Shane!” she cried out, realizing he would discover them immediately.

He flung up the lids of the trunks and dumped out their contents. “You’ll tell me if I have to choke it from you,” he threatened.

Sabre went white as her face drained suddenly of blood. The papers were not there! “My God, they’re gone! Someone has taken them,” she cried.

“What lying jade’s trick is this?” he demanded savagely.

“No trick, I swear on my life.” She threw open the door. “Meg! Meg, get in here.”

The maid came running, and Shane had to snatch up his breeches and struggle into them.

“Where are the papers I put in the very bottom of my trunk?”

The girl was blushing furiously at Sabre’s nakedness. “P-papers?” she stuttered. “There were no papers when I unpacked the trunk.” Sabre could tell the girl was too afraid to lie.

“Mason,” she said aloud. “Let’s hope he knows where they are.”

Shane looked at her very skeptically as she slipped on her bed gown. When Charles Mason arrived, he kept his face passive, pretending he had not heard the violent shouting match between these two.

“Charles, this is very important. When I packed my trunks at Thames View, I put some papers in the bottom of my trunk and now I can’t find them. They’ve disappeared! Meg says they weren’t in the trunk when she unpacked. Do you know anything about them at all?” she begged.

“Madam, I know nothing. I’ll go and fetch the driver and ask him.”

The Hawkhurst groom who had driven the coach was
duly summoned and looked blank when questioned about missing papers.

Shane’s disbelief was growing rapidly. That the file was “missing” he believed a lie. She knew damned well where it was!

The groom turned to Shane and shrugged. “Matthew carried the trunks down to the carriage and they weren’t touched again until I carried them up to this room.”

“Matthew?” shouted Shane.

“It couldn’t have been Matthew,” Sabre said faintly.

Shane said curtly to the servants, “Thank you … you may leave us alone now.”

They filed out and he faced her furiously as he demanded, “Did Matthew know about Walsingham’s file?”

“No … yes … oh, my God, I was so angry with you, I told him I had the means to make you give me a divorce. He looked so blank when I spoke of a file on you that I realized he knew nothing and I changed the subject immediately. He offered to carry my trunks down to the carriage and I let him.”

“Do you know what you have done?” demanded Shane. “I’ve protected him from all knowledge of O’Neill since we were boys. It was all in the file, wasn’t it?”

She nodded numbly.

“Was there anything left out of the file?” he demanded. She whispered, “There was no mention of the Black Shadow.”

His lip curled at his own stupidity in exposing himself to this woman. Love had blinded him, aye, and addled his brains in the bargain. He must get to his brother Matthew and try to undo some of the damage done by the revelations of the secret report. “Get dressed. We’re going
back to London and it’s a long ride,” he instructed coldly.

“I will stay here,” she said.

“Madam, you will do as you are bidden!”

She dare not contradict him again. He looked capable of murder.

The two-hundred-mile ride was fraught with tension. He set a backbreaking pace and through stubborn pride she was determined to keep up with him. A hundred times she wanted to beg him to forgive her for not destroying the Walsingham file as she’d said she had, but she was burdened with guilt and Shane seemed coldly forbidding for the first time since she’d known him.

A hundred times he wanted to take her in his arms and close the chasm that had opened between them, but the suspicion that she had never really loved him and her demand for a divorce kept him coldly aloof.

She had left her servants and baggage to follow at a more sane pace, so as a result she had no change of clothing and few toilet articles to enhance her appearance, yet Shane had never been more aware of her haunting beauty. Sabre felt his eyes upon her again and again, but she kept her eyes averted from what she assumed were his accusing stares.

If he had been alone he would have continued riding, but he saw the fatigue in her face and stopped on the Salisbury Plain to make a little camp for the night and give her a few hours’ sleep. He opened his saddlebags and gave her wine, bread, and cheese. He also gave her a solitary blanket and took the horses off to the stream to feed and water them. When he returned, he found her sound asleep, despite the hard ground and the eerie loneliness of the place.

Though she had never spent a night outdoors in the wild before, Sabre was not in the least afraid. She realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was due to Shane’s presence. He was so sure and strong, he instilled confidence. She knew she was safe if he was beside her. She constantly thought of the child she was carrying and how very differently he would be treating her if he knew of it. She would not tell him, for that would be the coward’s way to obtain his forgiveness and a declaration of his love. She longed for his love, but for her own sake, not because of the child she carried.

She arrived at Thames View weary, travel-stained, and hungry, but before she had time to attend to any of her needs he demanded, “Write a note to summon Matthew here.”

Without protest she sat down and took up a quill. She addressed the note to Matthew Hawkhurst and said simply:

It had not been a good week for Matthew Hawkhurst. He writhed as if skewered on the point of a sword over his visit with Robert Cecil the week before. He wished with all his heart that he had never suggested the trap, and a hundred times a day prayed that Cecil would not act upon his suggestion.

He was keenly resentful of his brother and still coveted Sabre, yet the thought that he might have betrayed Shane caused him an agony of fear that grew daily. Then it happened! The rumor swept through the court that the Black Shadow had been taken at the Tower of London while trying to free political Irish prisoners. Matthew was stunned. The plan he had suggested had been carried out immediately and the quarry had already been trapped. Upon hearing the news Matthew actually entertained the idea of suicide. Then a clearer head prevailed as he realized he must do everything in his power to try to undo what he had done.

He was enormously relieved to learn that the identity of the Black Shadow was as much a mystery as it had ever been. No one could identify him, so Matt realized it was not Shane who had been taken. The man refused to speak and it was rumored that he was being racked to loosen his tongue.

Matthew was almost euphoric that it was not his brother in the Tower and he was able to sleep for the first time in about ten days. Nevertheless he wanted to confront Shane with the Walsingham files and then burn the papers as fast as he could. He was elated to receive
Sabre’s note. She had obviously changed her mind about Blackmoor and returned to Thames View.