The Secret Rose (20 page)

“Good morning, Mr. Gibson,” she declared before she even saw him clearly. She did not blink an eye at the sight of his naked chest, wrinkled trousers, and bare feet. In the intervening hour, she had regained self-control and made up her mind how to handle the situation. She would behave as though nothing had occurred. If not for the hard thumping of her heart against her whalebone corset, she would have believed that his appearance did not affect her at all.

Thomas moved across the threshold with a lopsided grin on his face. “G’day, lass.”

“Come in and have a seat,” she replied in a formal manner. “Your tea is most likely cold, but I had no way of knowing when you would awaken. If you would prefer, I shall go below for more.”

“Won’t hear of it,” Thomas answered easily, but as his gaze moved quickly over her what he saw disappointed him. There was no smile of welcome on her face. Far from it. Her gaze was distant and her expression was as reserved as the tightly buttoned-up gown she wore. He thought he had taken care of that clamshell posture of hers forever. How did she manage to look as untouched as the day before?

Aisleen poured a cup of cold tea for him. “Sugar? Lemon?”

“Both,” Thomas answered readily as he sat down across from her. “They’re hard to come by in the bush.”

“Is that so?” she murmured in a manner that did not beg a reply. “I suppose it is difficult to obtain many things in the wilds,” she continued politely. “If you will provide me with a list I will provision you accordingly.”

Thomas gulped half the cup of tea, wondering where his plan had gone astray. He had meant to sweep his bride up in a long and thorough kiss that left no doubt in her mind of what was going on in his. Then back to bed for an hour or so. Afterward he would fetch the wagon for their journey to Parramatta, where Jack waited for them.

He set his cup down in its saucer too hard, and tea splashed over the rim. “Sorry,” he mumbled when he saw her flinch and then instantly wondered why he had apologized. If he had broken the cup, he would have paid for it. “About last night,” he began.

“Best forgotten and never mentioned,” she interjected.

“Forgotten?” A grin blossomed in the nettle of his new beard, “Lass, I would nae forget it were I to live a hundred years more.”

“I see,” she answered in a reluctant voice. “Very well, we shall speak of it. Once. What do you say in your defense?”

Thomas stared at her as understanding dawned. She was angry; how could he have missed the signs? Sitting there with her arms folded before her bosom…her nice, soft, rounded bosom—He reined in his wandering mind. “I do not know what ye’ll be expecting a man to say.”

Aisleen raised her eyes until she stared over his head. “I don’t suppose you will apologize. No court of law would demand it of you. After all, we are legally and morally wed, until death do us part.”

Thomas winced as she pronounced the last words, and unaccountably the cocked pistol came to mind; but he rejected the half-formed thought. “I did no more than any man would on his wedding night.”

“That is no recommendation to me.” Aisleen raised a hand to forestall his speech. Why, oh why must they discuss it at all?

He sat up straight. “Now, lass, a husband is entitled to certain rights.”

“I did not understand that to include violence.” The quiver in her voice betrayed the strong emotions she held in check.

Thomas looked down into his cup of tepid tea. Violence? Had he done her injury? Surely not. He remembered her cries as moans of joy. He had been drunk and he knew it. Suspicion trickled in slowly. Perhaps he had been too enthusiastic. He looked up sheepishly. “Did I hurt ye, lass?”

Aisleen lifted her torn gown from her lap and waved it like a captured banner. “Do you not remember? But, of course, you were drunk. So I will tell you. You ripped the gown from my back and treated me as callously as a whore!”

“Did I now?” Thomas whispered, his manner subdued at last. Harsher memories warred with pleasure in his jumbled thoughts. Yes, now that he thought of it, she had resisted him, had struck him with her fists and hurled abuse at him. She had fought and he had bested her. Yet he had thought her pleasured by his mastery. He had heard her pleasure, felt her passion. Or had he?

“Was there no pleasure for ye in me loving?”

“Certainly not!” She tossed the gown aside and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. “When I agreed to marry you, I hoped our arrangement would spare me the sort of degradation to which you have subjected me. I know men to be brutes. My own mother—”

Aisleen glanced up, horrified that she had mentioned her mother. Her chin trembled slightly as she said, “I had hoped that you were different.”

Her golden eyes blazed as she stared at him. “But as I am wrong and the events of the night before make it impossible for us to change our arrangement, we must alter our contract since we cannot nullify it.”

The torrent of words left Thomas staring at her with a furrowed brow. Doubtful of his own memory, he could say nothing in his own defense. “I meant no dishonor of ye, lass.”

“No, of course not,” she answered. “You did not consider my feelings at all. I propose a period of separation that will give each of us a chance to think through the matter.”

This last gave Thomas something to say. “No, lass, I’ll not leave Sydney without ye. I cannot say with any truth what I did or did not do. When a man’s traded whiskey for blood in his veins, he’s not always as gentle as he might be.” His face was hard and set as
he looked at her. “I’m that sorry I frightened and hurt ye, but ye’re my wife and ye will come home with me.”

Aisleen stared angrily at him. He had every right to insist that she accompany him, and no authority would take her side against him. Yet there was something else pushing her to agree, something she could not yet face.

“Because I have sworn before God and man to be a helpmate and companion to
you, I will agree to this. But I will not submit myself to further abuse from you.”

Thomas held her gaze for a long moment. Only the day before he had thought her eyes were the rich, warm color of whiskey. Now they were as dull as stone. There was something more, something he had not seen there even on the morning she had chased the beggar child who had stolen her purse. It banked her expression. She feared him.

“Aye, that will do for now,” be said at last and rose from his chair.

The rapping of a fist on the door broke the tense moment as Thomas moved to open it. “Sally!” he declared in frank surprise.

“I must ’ave a word with ye, Tom,” Sally said softly. Her gaze went unerringly to where Aisleen sat. “In private.”

Aisleen stared at the pretty blond standing in the entrance, taking in at once her youth, low-cut gown, and most of all, her hostility. The conviction came swiftly and undoubted. This was her husband’s mistress!

Jealousy overrode anger as she rose to her feet. The bald arrogance of the pair! “Come in, Miss—?”

“Sally,” the girl offered, tucking her shawl more protectively about her as she edged inside the door. “G’day, ma’am. I come to speak to Tom.”

“So I heard,” Aisleen answered icily as her hard gaze moved to her husband.

“Sally, this is me bride, Miss—Mrs. Gibson. Sally’s an old friend,” Thomas offered as he closed the door.

“But not a forgotten one?” Aisleen suggested in knife-edged politeness. “Do come in and sit down, Sally.”

“No, ma’am. Thank ye.” Sally glanced repeatedly from Aisleen to Tom, unable to believe that he was wed to this poker-stiff woman in the frilled housecap.

“What did ye want, Sally, lass?” Thomas encouraged, aware of the instant enmity between the two women but at a loss to defuse it.

“I come to tell Tom that the bloke that was looking for him a while ago is back in town, on account ’e ’eard ye was to wed,” Sally said, her gaze never moving from Aisleen. “Thought ’e’d best know.”

Thomas nodded. “Thank ye, Sally, for coming with the news. Not to worry. We’re leaving today. Will ye be readying yerself for that?” he added with a look at Aisleen.

Aisleen nodded stiffly.

Thomas smiled in relief. “Well then, I’ll just be accompanying Sally below to the street.” He reached with one hand for Sally’s elbow as his other grasped the door latch and lifted it. “Come along, lass.”

“G’by, ma’am.” Sally gave Aisleen one last measuring look before succumbing to Thomas’s tugs on her arm.

When they were gone, Aisleen sighed as if all the breath would come out of her, and her shoulders drooped in defeat. Had they stayed a moment longer, she might have shamed herself with tears.

Thomas had brought his mistress into her presence almost on their wedding day, and yet he expected her to do his bidding as a dutiful wife. She should be shocked, and yet she was not. She was angry and hurt and disappointed.

Aisleen dropped inelegantly into her chair. The interview had not gone at all as she had hoped. She had been afraid of so much: that he would not listen to her, that he would not agree to her wishes, and most of all, that he would throw in her face her shameless and wanton behavior. He had not. When she hurled her accusations at him, he had looked, well, ashamed. Hope for a compromise had blossomed…until the knock on the door.

Aisleen shook her head. She had read too much into the moment. He was a man, after all, and fully capable of parading his mistress before her eyes. His tenderness had worked to his advantage, for she had agreed to go with him.

“Fool!” she whispered to herself. Miss Burke was right. If she forgot herself, hoped for too much, then she would be lost. She must not lower her guard because of a kind look. For, more than him, she feared herself.

After the first rage of the morning had worn off, she had begun to realize the real source of her distress. Her husband had acted as any man might. That had not frightened her nearly as much as the truth she had gained about herself in
the darkest hours of the night. She had wanted his interest, his desire. She wanted to be desired.

As he had sat across from her she had been taken by the strangest urges. Her body had ached with unnamable sensations—guilty sweet pangs that made her want to run away.

“I am no better than a whore!” she murmured. Even now, made palsied by rage from the emotional backwash of her confrontation with his pretty little mistress, she felt the urge to run downstairs after them and shout that Thomas was her husband and that she had better keep away from him.

Was this the emotion of which her mother had hinted? Was this every man’s hold on the woman who desired him?

“I…can’t…desire…him,” Aisleen ground out, pounding her fists slowly on the table top. As a child, she had watched her father’s interest in her mother turn to indifference. The last years of his life he had lived openly in Dublin with his whore while her mother lived in shame and poverty in the famine-ravaged countryside.

She would not allow that to happen to her. Her only protection against desire was anger. He must never be allowed to persuade her through false charm and calculated kindness to care for him. She was too ripe for it, too needy, too fragile to withstand the daily assault of his embrace. In one short night, he had stripped from her the veneer of respectability that she had worked more than a dozen years to cultivate. Gone was her self-respect, her peace of mind, her protection against a harsh and unfeeling world.

Never again
,
Aisleen vowed to herself. Never again would she allow him to touch her, for in his caress lay a trap and her ultimate defeat. She would be no man’s slave.

* * *

“That’s the lot!” Thomas announced as he heaved the last bag into the back of the wagon.

Aisleen gazed with misgiving at the numerous sacks. The implication of so many provisions was not at all to her liking. “Is it necessary to carry so much with us? Surely we will return often to Sydney.”

Thomas shaded his eyes with a hand as he looked up at Aisleen. “We’ll not come to Sydney again for some time.”

“Why not?” she murmured in dismay.

“’Tis too far a journey to make more than once a year. My station’s well over four hundred miles from here.”

“Four…hundred…” Her throat closed over the statement. “Dear God!” she whispered.

Thomas watched her with sympathy. “Aye, ’tis a fair long way. But we’ll accomplish it, right enough.”

The thought of the journey did not daunt Aisleen as much as the realization that she would be so far away from Sydney. How odd, she reflected fleetingly, that this strange city in a strange land suddenly seemed a refuge compared with what lay before her. “I hadn’t thought we’d be so far away,” she said slowly. “I have left some of my belongings with the landlord pending my return.”

Thomas did not miss the reference to “her” return and did not like the fact that she was thinking of leaving him even before they had set out. He would give her no ready excuse. “There’s no room here. I’ll be sending another to collect them,” he answered evenly.

Aisleen stood a moment in indecision, debating whether or not simply to ask him to leave her behind, bags and all. She moistened her lips, but the words would not come.

“It could nae be that the lass who’s sailed a world away to Sydney is afraid of a wee journey through the bush?” he asked.