The Secret Rose (23 page)

Automatically, his hand went to the knife he carried, and he began hacking at her skirts. Little by little the sodden clothing slid past her hips, freeing them, and they surfaced.

Both gasping for breath, he caught her to him and struck out for the shore with his free arm. The current was swift, and her weight pulled at him until his shoulder muscles threatened to tear under the strain; but he did not pause to rest until they reached the bank and he had pulled her up with him.

Too winded to move farther, he turned her onto her stomach and patted her back as she choked and gasped, spewing water from nose and mouth.

Aisleen submitted helplessly to his pounding, caught between shame and relief as she struggled to regain her breath. After a moment she said, “Thank you.”

“Aye, a thank-you’s a proper thing to say to the man who’s saved yer life,” Thomas answered in amused relief as he turned her toward him and hugged her. “But what I’d like to know is why ye jumped in in the first place, being that ye cannae swim a lick.”

“But I can,” Aisleen answered. “The wind was knocked out of me before I fell in.”

Thomas continued to hold her, his patting reduced to long, slow strokes from shoulder to waist that were meant to soothe. “Is that why ye screamed?”

“I screamed because there was a beast—oh!”

Aisleen tried to sit up, but Thomas held her down beside him on the grass. “What sort of beast?”

“I—I didn’t see it clearly,” she admitted. All the same, she darted glances left and right. “We should go back to the others, before it returns.”

“For meself, I quite like where we are.” His hand curled down tight in the hollow of her waist as he bent forward to lay his lips softly against hers.

At once several things came clearly to Aisleen’s mind. She was alone with Thomas, her hips were pressed against the hard pressure of his loins, and she was very, very cold because her skirts had ridden scandalously high. Appalled, she reached down to lower them. Instead she found nothing but naked thigh. She jerked away from his kiss, and he loosened his grip to allow her to roll onto her back. “My skirts!”

“Cut them off ye,” he advised pleasantly. “They were drowning us.”

“Cut…them…off!” She tried to scramble away from him, but he threw a leg across her, pinning her.

“There they are!” a voice cried jubilantly.

Thomas and Aisleen looked up to find a lantern weaving its way toward them.

“We’re about to have company, lass,” Thomas grumbled.

“Oh, no!” Aisleen closed her eyes.

Aware that more practical measures were necessary to protect her modesty, Thomas raised up and pushed her under him to shield her nakedness with his trousered legs just as the lantern bearer and his companions reached them.

“Goodness gracious!” cried a female voice.

“Will you look at that!” declared a man

“Tom! That you?” asked another.

Thomas looked up from where he lay and smiled. “G’evening.”

After one clear look, one woman turned away, giggling as she fled back to the camp. The other stood her ground, a plucked chicken of a woman with stooped shoulders and defeated breasts. “We thought we heard cries for help.” Her gaze narrowed on Aisleen’s torn skirts. “I see now we misunderstood.” She turned away, but only after a whispered aside to her husband. “Coupling in the bush like savages. The poor girl is to be pitied!”

“If it’s not asking too much,” Thomas prompted with a lifted brow at the men who stood mute but vigilant.

“Aye. Should be getting back,” one of the men offered, but they all reluctantly withdrew their gaze from the tantalizing glimpse of Aisleen’s naked hip visible beneath her husband’s provocatively draped leg.

“Good night, Tom. Missus,” a man offered and then snickered. The snickering was picked up by others as the men disappeared into the bush.

“What’s he done with her skirts?” one of them questioned loudly.

“Damned if I know.”

“Tom weren’t a shearer for nothing!” said a third.

Hearty male laughter turned Aisleen’s face scarlet. “I’m ruined!” she whispered furiously.

“Ruined?” Thomas questioned, as amused as his mates by the situation. “’Tis not indecent for a man and wife to cuddle in private.”

“What privacy!” Aisleen cried, losing her last shred of dignity. “I’ve lost my—my, and you’ve mutilated my gown!”

“
Och
,
well, I was about to be asking that. Where’s yer knickers, lass?”

Aisleen stared up at his face in the darkness “Release me at once.”

Thomas did not move. She was very, very soft. His hand beneath her buttocks tightened its grasp. Her wet skin was dewy with moisture, but beneath the chilled flesh he could feet the hot warmth of muscles and blood. For all her propriety, she was a woman, his woman. He rolled farther onto her, pressing his roused loins against her bare thigh as he bent to kiss her a second time.

Aisleen stiffened at his kiss, refusing to part her lips to the persuasive stroke of his tongue. She felt the deepening possession of his caress with a fear very different from the fright that had been aroused in her by the predatory gleam in the dark. His touch was no random threat but one of which she knew the exact consequence. In another moment, she would feel again the melting desire that she could not think of without shame. It was so pleasant, would be so easy to yield to the tantalizing promise of his kiss.

“Please,” she begged against his mouth. He must not touch her, not when she was too vulnerable to resist.

Thomas did not answer. His hand moved from her buttock, curving up and forward over the top of her hip, chasing shivers across her belly as he paused to rub slow, deep circles into her flesh. “Ye feel so nice I cannae leave ye be,” he murmured into her ear. “I am yer husband. Ye must let me—”

“Force me again?” she spat, fear beating so hard in her blood that her ears hummed.

Thomas froze. He could not see her face well, but her voice had been full of loathing. She was repulsed by his lovemaking, abhorred his touch. He moved, rolled off her, and came to his feet in one continuous movement.

“Where are you going?” she cried as he turned and started to walk away.

“Where a man’s welcome!” he hurled back ever his shoulder as the night closed in behind him.

She sat up, too shaken by the last seconds to think of
anything. Only when the sound of his path through the bush faded away did she rise and begin searching for her drawers. She found, instead, Thomas’s jacket where he had left it lying before he dived in after her, and she picked it up.

Embarrassment warred with anxiousness as she stood irresolutely on the riverbank. She could not stay in the bush forever, and yet the thought of walking into the camp without decent covering kept her rooted to the spot. Even if she had had a gown to wear, how would she ever face them? They were Thomas’s friends. They had seen her lying half-naked on the ground. They must think her a depraved woman, a brazen harlot, to couple in the bushes with a man, even if that man was her husband.

“Mercy!” she whispered, her face stinging with shame.

The rustling of a nearby bush made her spin about. Heart pounding, she stared into the darkness, but whatever had disturbed the underbrush was as invisible as the wind. Without quite reasoning it out, she began backing away, and then she was running toward the clearing.

With heartfelt thanks, she saw their wagon parked at the edge of the bush. More surprising, her bag had been handed down and stood by the wheel nearest her. Had Thomas done that? The gesture of consideration was not what she had expected. After all, he was very angry, had left her alone with only an angry word.

Cautiously she searched the area for him, but he was nowhere in sight. Satisfied, she wrapped his jacket about her hips and tied the arms about her waist to clothe herself. After another look, she darted out from behind the protection of a bush, grabbed her bag, and pulled it back into the underbrush.

With dismay, she found that the bag contained her underclothes and nightgowns. “Drat!” she muttered. What was she to do? What else could she do?

She pulled out a nightgown and lay it across a nearby
bush. Eyes ranging back and forth between the bush and the camp, she quickly stripped off the bodice of what had once been a gown and then unlaced her corset. The night air was warm but she was damp where the clothing had held the moisture, and her teeth chattered as she hurriedly pulled the nightgown over her head.

“Are ye ready, then?”

She spun about to find Thomas walking toward her out of the densest part of the bush. She voiced indignantly, “Is there no end to your revolting habits?”

His eyes narrowed but he said pleasantly, “I was keeping watch for ye. Ye’re not accustomed to the bush, and being the skittish creature ye are, I did not wish to fish ye from the water a second time.”

Aisleen stared at him. She wanted to believe him, but she could not shake the lingering, shuddering memory of his hand on her skin. He had touched her, kissed her, made his lust known, and she could not forget it. “After what you have done, the help of a stranger would be preferable.”

“Aye, and that ye’d be having in abundance if I were not keeping watch,” he replied less civilly. “Ye’d be getting more than ye’d be wanting now that ye’ve paraded yerself before the lads in yer nakedness.”

The accusation stung. “That’s unfair! You cut my skirts away.”

“Aye, I did, and will do so again if ever ye burden yerself with so bloody many petticoats!”

“Don’t swear at me!”

“Then don’t act a bloody ass!” he roared.

Aisleen shrank away from his anger as he caught her by the arm just above the elbow. He bent and picked up his jacket. “Put this over yer gown. I’ll be escorting ye back to camp.” He thrust the jacket into her hands and picked up her bag. “Well?” he prompted when she did not move.

Aisleen wet her lips “I—I cannot face them.”

Thomas frowned, uncertain that he had heard her right, and then he understood. She was ashamed, good and truly ashamed of what the men and women of the camp thought of her. His hand gentled on her arm. “About what I said before, about the lads, I did nae mean it. They won’t do or say anything to insult ye.”

“How can you be certain?” she challenged.

He grinned. “There’s not a man alive who’s met Thomas Gibson and doesn’t know that he’d be answering for touching anything that’s mine.”

The speech was not calculated to appease in its implication, but she was too exhausted to argue. Her shoulders drooped in defeat. “It’s been a most vexing day.”

Thomas took the jacket from her hands and placed it about her shoulders, pleased that she did not pull away from him when he let his arm drop to her waist. “Poor wee
colleen
,
ye’ve had a fright.”

She
had
had a fright. Under the guidance of his arm, she allowed him to guide her back to the clearing. She did not look up from the ground as they crossed to his tent. Neither did she comment on the sleeping arrangements when he stretched out beside her on the bedding that had been laid out. Yet she sighed in thanks when he covered her with one blanket and unfolded a second for himself.

Curling up in a tight ball against the chill from the drenching, she listened to the sound of his easy breathing until her own matched his and she slept.

*

“Tom?”

Thomas sat up beside his sleeping wife. “Jack?”

“Aye.”

Thomas quickly and quietly slipped from the tent into the
darkness. Jack’s huge silhouette was visible several yards away.

“Ye’ve had news,” Thomas said when he reached the man.

“Aye.”

“O’Leary?”

“Aye.”

“Sodding bastard!” Thomas sucked in a quick breath. “O’Leary will have heard about me station, so we’ll not go there. Couldn’t sell the sheep. I’m thinking we’ll lift the mob over the Blue Mountains. Fresh meat will bring a good price in the gold fields north of Bathurst. Once we’re across, we’ll give O’Leary the slip.” His smile was a pearly shadow. “Folks are less curious about a man once he’s out in the bush.”

“Aye” The voice held a question in reserve

“The lass goes with us,” Thomas answered

This time there was no reply

When an immortal passion breathes in mortal clay,

Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited thorns…

—The Travail of Passion

W. B. Yeats

Chapter Ten

Aisleen held on tightly and gritted her teeth as one wagon wheel slammed into a rut and bounced out of it again. The man beside her gave only a low chuckle and flicked the whip over the backs of the horses.

They had not exchanged a single word in more than five hours. The driver was the camp cook; but as she sat beside the withered old man with enlarged knuckles and a missing thumb, she doubted she would be able to stomach anything he touched. Cellophane-thin flakes of skin peeled from his nose, cheeks, and brow. Even worse, she was certain she had seen vermin crawling along his cheekline where his grizzled beard thinned. Shuddering, she drew her skirts in against her legs.