A Woman of Passion (12 page)

Encouraged, Robert covered her face with kisses. He adored his beautiful wife with all his heart and soul and was suddenly filled with an overwhelming physical desire to love her with his body as well. For the very first time he stroked her breasts and pressed his lips worshipfully to her firm flesh. More excited than he had ever been in his life, he felt his arousal start. As it brushed against her soft thigh, Rob moaned from the wave of pure pleasure that washed over his entire body.

Dear God, at long last he was a man, and he was about to achieve his heart's desire of making a woman of the beautiful girl who was his wife. With trembling hands he lifted off her short bed shift and devoured her luscious young body with his eyes. “You are so lovely, you take my breath away—literally.”

Rob was panting heavily, and Bess knew a moment of alarm. Perhaps he wasn't strong enough to make love to her. She wondered wildly what she could do to help him. Would it be easier if she made love to him? She cursed her inexperience, wishing she had knowledge of the mysteries of sex. Then with the innate wisdom of women that had come down through the ages from Eve, she knew she could not wound his masculine pride by assuming the dominant role of aggressor. She would have to lie passive and compliant and let him do the taking. A man must slay the dragon outside his own cave, or he was not a man.

He pulled her against him, and she experienced the strange yet pleasant sensation of warm, naked flesh pressing against the length of her body. When she felt his manhood stirring against her, Bess opened her thighs in sweet invitation and was completely surprised by Rob's reaction. He violently rubbed himself against her mons, then cried out as he was overtaken by a spasm that made his entire body go rigid. With great gasps of what sounded like tormented pleasure, he spent himself, then collapsed, sprawling half upon the bed, half upon Bess.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry … I couldn't stop myself.”

“Rob, it's all right. It didn't hurt at all,” she assured him, but her words caused him to groan as if still in torment. Bess felt a wet stickiness on her thigh and wondered if this was the virgin blood people always whispered about. Yet how could there be blood without pain? This mating business was all very strange, she thought. Rumor had it that men were driven to it, thinking of little else. She decided that the sex act must have a greater impact on men than it did on women. Bess brushed the damp fair hair from Rob's brow and laid a tender hand upon his cheek.

“I love you, Bess; you are too kind and generous. I can't put into words the glory and the ecstasy you made me feel. Next time, sweetheart, I promise to do better.” He fell asleep within minutes, totally exhausted from his first sexual experience.

Bess lay in his arms for a long time, listening to Robert's contented breathing. Her maturing body vaguely yearned for something more. She didn't understand exactly what it was she wanted, but the sex act had somehow disappointed her. After years of whispers, innuendos, winks, and bawdy jests, Bess had expected something
earth-shattering and cataclysmic. Not the mild little encounter she had shared with her husband.

An hour later a hungry, demanding mouth took total possession of her. Even in her sleep she wondered how on earth her husband had grown so muscular and strong. She pressed against the hard, powerful body of the man who held her immobile, and reveled in the desire that was building steadily in her woman's core. Her arousal became so intense, she wanted to scream. His mouth was hard and she
loved
it, his arms were like steel bands, holding her imprisoned against him, and she
loved
it.

“When I'm done with you, you'll never be the same again,” a deep voice promised, and Bess longed with all her heart that it would be so! His mouth and his powerful hands aroused her to madness. When the dark figure rose above her, poised to pierce her with his fearsome weapon, she was actually writhing in need, begging him to take her. Her blood was on fire, her breasts tingling with anticipation, her belly taut with lust, her woman's center aching to be filled with her lover's manroot. His passion fueled her passion until it consumed them and a cry was torn from her throat. Yes! Yes! This is what making love was all about! Taking all; yielding all; enjoying the exquisite pleasure to its last drop.

Suddenly, Bess awoke, the dream still starkly vivid in every erotic detail. He was there in the bed with her. She could see him and feel him and taste him. The memory of Rogue Cavendish had overtaken her so completely it felt as if he had stolen into her bed during the night. She blushed scarlet as she recalled the wildfire his touch had aroused in her.
Damn you, Cavendish, damn you to hellfire!

As the summer months progressed, Robert often attempted to make love to her but always with the same unsatisfactory result. Bess dreamed more and more frequently
of Rogue Cavendish. Shame and anger always followed when she awoke, and she added this to the score she would one day settle with the hated seducer.

The first winds of autumn brought a racking cough to Robert. No matter how much Bess coddled him, his condition did not improve. By October, in fact, he was worse. Rob's energy was at low ebb, and Bess knew how ill he felt sometimes. He never complained; he suffered in silence and always had a smile for her.

Robert was content to sit with a book, his other passion besides his beautiful wife. While he read the classics and poetry, Bess stayed beside him, usually embroidering. One evening in early November, as they sat before the fire, he said, “We've been married almost a year, and I want you to know it's been the happiest year of my life.”

“Rob, what a lovely thing to say, thank you. This tapestry I'm working on will mark our anniversary.” She held it up to show him the fairy-tale castle.

“Is that me on the white horse?” he asked in disbelief.

“Yes, you are the prince and I am the princess. I just have to embroider our entwined initials above the date and it will be finished.”

“You are so clever, sweetheart.”

“Rubbish, you are the clever one. You read philosophy and poetry, and you even taught yourself French and Italian.”

Suddenly, Robert was gripped by a coughing spasm that wouldn't stop. Bess's eyes widened in alarm as he began to cough up blood. When it was over she bathed him and got him into bed, then she sat beside him and talked softly in an effort to calm him and calm herself.

“I'm going to start making Christmas presents. I thought I'd embroider a pair of cushions for your mother. I've been making sketches of Barlow Hall.”

Robert watched her with haunted eyes. “We won't have another year together, Bess.”

“Don't talk like that, please, Rob.”

But as December dawned, Bess acknowledged to herself that this time Robert's condition was serious. When she next visited her family and they invited her and Robert for the Christmas festivities, she told them she was extremely worried about her young husband's health and that perhaps they should stay quietly at home.

Christmas week was a busy, festive time in the country, with much visiting and socializing. When snow began to fall the day before Christmas Eve, the children were overjoyed. Robert's younger brothers and sisters dragged out the cutter from the barn and went off on a sleigh ride. With Robert's arms encircling Bess, they watched from their upstairs windows, vicariously enjoying the fun the young Barlows were having.

On Christmas Eve it was traditional for everyone in the nearby villages to congregate at the church for a communal supper, then at midnight the Reverend Rufus held a joyous carol service. In the early evening Mistress Barlow bid Robert and Bess a happy Christmas, then climbed into the cutter with her other children and headed to the Edensor church.

After they left, Bess found the big house unusually quiet. She gazed through the window at the thickening snowflakes and pushed away a sense of loneliness.

“You are pensive tonight, Bess,” Robert said quietly.

“No, no, of course I'm not,” Bess vigorously denied, poking at the fire until it blazed cheerfully.

“I'm sorry you have to miss all the fun, sweetheart.”

“Nonsense! We'll make our own fun. We can exchange our Christmas presents, and I have some malmsey I've been keeping for a special occasion.”

They retrieved the gifts they had hidden for each other, then Bess poured them wine. Robert opened his first. It was a book cover she had embroidered in brilliant Spanish silks with his name on it. In the bottom corner their initials were entwined.

“It is beautiful, like you, Bess. Everything you do is beautiful.”

She gave him a radiant smile and opened the gift he handed her. It was a silver letter opener wrought with a stag's head. “Oh, wherever did you get it, Rob?”

“It was my grandfather's. He left it to me.”

“But you must treasure it. Why are you giving it to me?”

He squeezed her hand. “Soon I won't need it; I want you to have it.”

“Don't talk like that, Rob. You're always worse in the wintertime. When spring comes we'll ride out again—”

His long fingers brushed her lips to silence her. “Bess, I need to speak of these things. You always stop me, thinking you are being kind, but, sweetheart, let me talk. I hold it inside and I have to let it out.”

She sat still and waited apprehensively. Robert indicated the tapestry of the fairy-tale castle hanging on the wall.

“I'll never ride over the hill with you again to look at Chatsworth, but, Bess, you must go. Never let your dreams die.”

Bess swallowed past the lump in her throat. Tonight he didn't sound like a boy, he sounded old and wise beyond his years.

“You made my life so very happy, Bess; please have no
remorse that I will die. My only regret is that I couldn't give you a child. You will make a wonderful mother, Bess.”

Her throat ached so much she couldn't speak, but she shook her head in denial.

“
Yes!
You will go on without me! You have such a passion for life, you must marry again and have the children we didn't. Promise me!”

“Rob—” It came out on a sob.

“You have to live for both of us. It's all right, Bess. I feel quite euphoric most of the time. I don't suffer over-much.”

Bess didn't know what
euphoric
meant—she didn't read as much as Robert—but she put her arms about him and held him tightly. “Let me help you to bed,” she insisted, doubly determined to nurse him back to better health.

Robert reached into the drawer of the bedside table. “I have made a will, Bess. No, listen to me, this is very important. Poor Godfrey Boswell, your sister Jane's husband who bought my wardship, will lose all his investment of one hundred marks when I die, because my younger brother, George, is next in line.” Robert paused, gasping to catch his breath, and Bess tenderly stroked his back.

“At least the Court of Wards cannot touch your marriage portion. Darling Bess, it is so little reward for all you have given me. But the court will seize the other two thirds because George is a minor. In my will I have named Godfrey Boswell as trustee so George's wardship cannot be resold.”

“I understand, Rob.” Bess took the paper and kissed his brow. She watched him drink his malmsey and then drift off to sleep. Bess took her glass to the window and looked with unseeing eyes at the silent, snow-blanketed
landscape. She had to face the truth. In her heart she knew that Robert would not live many more months, no matter how devotedly she nursed him. Pity for her young husband welled up inside her and threatened to overwhelm her. She felt wretchedly guilty also. How many times had she stood at this window feeling trapped like a wild bird, madly beating its wings against its cage?

She didn't know how long she stood at the window, but eventually she began to shiver and went to build up the fire. It began to smoke, and she opened the flue in the chimney so the smoke wouldn't fill the room.

In the bed behind her, Robert awoke and began to cough. Blaming herself for causing his discomfort, she said, “I'm so sorry, I made the fire smoke. I'll get you a drink.”

The water made him choke, and the coughing spasm deepened. Bess knew what to expect, it had happened before. She ran for a clean linen towel and held it ready for the bloody sputum. But all of a sudden the towel she was holding became drenched in bright red blood, and to Bess's horror she realized that Robert was hemorrhaging.

Panic rose up in her. For a moment it seemed to stop, and Robert lay back, exhausted. She squeezed his hand and felt him squeeze back, but then the blood poured out again, and this time there was no stopping it.

Bess sat stunned, still holding Robert's hand. The bed looked like a slaughterhouse where the thin, pale body of her husband lay lifeless.

T
he moment Bess became a widow, all her pent-up energy surged to the fore in a great torrent. It was as if she had been living in a cage for over a year and suddenly the door had been opened. Only a week after Robert's funeral, Bess began to ride out over the countryside in spite of the bitter cold weather and Mistress Barlow's thin-lipped disapproval. Bess ignored her objections. Now that she was a widow, she had no one to answer to but herself. The wonderful feeling of freedom she experienced acted as a countervailing force to the sadness she felt at having lost Robert, whom she'd never truly viewed as her husband but had certainly considered her friend.

Because her husband had predeceased her, her marriage portion entitled her to one third of the Barlow farm. As the new year dawned, Bess felt like a different woman from the naive sixteen-year-old who had been coerced into marriage fourteen long months ago. On her next birthday she would be eighteen, but she felt a maturity far beyond her years.

Bess made a resolution that never again would she
allow herself to be victimized or to let others decide her fate. From now on, she vowed, she'd command her own destiny. She had no idea that her resolute determination would be put to the test almost immediately.

In February the Court of Wards swooped down on the Barlow property to take it in wardship for George Barlow. Bess was at home when the Court's representative paid them a visit with his sheaf of legal papers and his superior, paternalistic attitude.