Dark Torment (40 page)

She made her way along the hall to the blue bedroom. Before she
reached it, she heard voices and laughter through the door, which was ajar.
Sarah frowned, distinctly recognizing Dominic’s lilt. She would know that
voice in a dark cave in China. He sounded amused. Sarah’s eyes widened as
she thought she recognized the feminine voice talking to him. Surely it
couldn’t be . . .

She walked to the door and opened it, standing for a moment in the
aperture as her eyes took in the scene. Dominic, clad in one of her
father’s old nightshirts, was sitting propped up in bed, freshly shaved,
his hair black as midnight against the white pillows, his eyes, still with a
grin lurking in their depths as he looked up to see her standing there, as blue
as the lapis-lazuli brooch she owned that had once belonged to her mother. One
of his hands was clasped between both of Liza’s, as she perched on the
side of his bed.

“Sarah!” Liza looked around, too, following
Dominic’s eyes. As soon as she saw her sister scowling at her from the
doorway, she dropped Dominic’s hand as if it had suddenly turned red hot
and jumped to her feet. Her cream-colored dimity with its feminine flounces
around the neck and hem fluttered around her as she moved. Sarah’s scowl
deepened. She knew that, next to Liza’s soft prettiness, she must look
severe, unattractive—in a word, old-maidish.

“What are you doing in here, Liza?” Knowing that it
would be all too easy to snap at her young stepsister, Sarah carefully kept her
voice even.

“I came to see Dominic.” Liza’s reply was
truculent. Her lower lip thrust forward in a charming little pout, and her
brown spaniel eyes as they met her sister’s were challenging.

“Dominic?” Sarah echoed the name with raised brows,
questioning Liza’s use of it. On the surface, her objection was that it
was not done to call a convict by his given name. Underneath, however, she knew
that her objections were very different—and far more personal. Dominic
himself said not a word. A slight frown darkened his handsome face as he sat,
with arms crossed, listening to the girls’ exchange.

“Why shouldn’t I call him Dominic? You do.” Liza
was throwing down the gauntlet with a vengeance.

Sarah’s eyes widened and went swiftly, involuntarily to
Dominic, who returned her look blandly. Surely he could not have told Liza
about their relationship. . . .

“You know that it’s not proper for you to be in this
room,” Sarah said quietly, choosing not to reply directly to Liza’s
attack. She would be treading on very thin ice.

Liza snorted. “You’re a fine one to be preaching
propriety, sister. All these years you’ve set yourself up as such a
lady—Mother told me differently, but I didn’t believe her! But
I’m no longer as ignorant as I used to be—you like handsome men
every bit as well as I do! Your only problem is, unless they’re convicts
like Dominic here and have to, they won’t pay any attention to
you!”

“Liza!” Sarah was shocked.

“That’s enough out of you, young lady!” The
growl was Dominic’s. He had abandoned his lazy posture against the
pillows to sit bolt upright in the bed, fixing Liza with a fierce gleam in his
blue eyes.

Liza looked at him, and her chin quivered. “How dare you
talk to me like that, convict! Just because I flirted with you a little
doesn’t mean you can go beyond the line with
me!
I’m not
like my sister here. She’s an old maid, so it’s not surprising that
you can kiss her once and she’ll let you be as familiar as you please!
I’m a lady, and don’t you forget it!”

“Would this tantrum have anything to do with the fact that I
was just gently refusing to kiss
you?
” Dominic asked, very
polite.

Liza glared at him, crimsoning.

“Stay out of this, Dominic,” Sarah intervened hastily,
before Liza could go into screaming hysterics, as she gave every indication she
was about to do. “Liza, suppose you explain yourself.”

“Suppose you explain yourself, sister!” Liza retorted,
whirling again to face Sarah, hands clenched at her sides, face crimsoning.
“
You
just called him Dominic—is he your lover? Mother says
he is!”

“Liza!”

“Be silent!”

The exclamations came from Sarah and Dominic respectively, the
first shocked, the second furious. Liza glared at them both impartially.

“Why? You’ve kissed him at least. I know—I saw
you.”

Sarah fought to keep guilty color from creeping up her cheeks.
Undoubtedly this was just another form of Liza’s usual temper fit.

“If you speak to your sister again with such a lack of
respect, I’ll paddle your backside until you can’t sit for a
month.” The threat was Dominic’s, and even if Liza didn’t
know him well enough to recognize her danger, Sarah did.

“Don’t you dare, Dominic!” she warned, sparing
him a chastening glance before focusing her attention on Liza again.
“Liza, I think you’d better go to your room and calm down.
I’ll send Mary to you with some fresh tea.”

“Don’t you take that patronizing tone with me, Sarah
Markham. I know better! I tell you I saw you kissing him in the stable the day
before he ran away.”

Sarah’s lips quivered with sudden memory. Of course, Dominic
had kissed her in the stable the morning after he had first made love to her. A
hard, brutal kiss it had been, too. . . . And Liza had seen. A sudden suspicion
had Sarah’s eyes focusing on Liza, narrowing.

“And who did you tell, Liza?” The words were soft,
deadly.

Liza met her eyes defiantly for a moment before her lids fell to
cover them. She looked suddenly very guilty.

“I—Mr. Percival,” she said, all the anger
draining out of her. “I was coming back from the stable just as he was
leaving the house with something he’d forgotten that morning. He could
see I was—upset. He asked me what was the matter and I told him. He got
really furious—said that he would have the filthy b—uh, convict
whipped. I told him Pa didn’t permit such things, and he said that he
didn’t mean to tell Pa, and I shouldn’t either, or he’d tell
that I’d been—doing something I shouldn’t. It’s none of
your business what.” Liza looked suddenly at Sarah, a trace of defiance
in her eyes again. “There’s no need for you to look at me like
that: No harm came of it. Dominic ran away before Mr. Percival could whip him.
If he hadn’t, if Mr. Percival had really started in on him, I would have
told Pa. Really I would have, Sarah.”

Liza looked very young suddenly, and very earnest. Sarah sighed,
shook her head, and felt her anger dissipate. No matter what havoc her actions
had wrought, Liza hadn’t meant to do her or Dominic any harm.

“I know you would have, love,” Sarah said, voice soft.

Liza smiled at her, shakily, then suddenly burst into tears and
ran from the room.

“She really didn’t mean any harm,” Sarah said to
Dominic, coming a couple of steps closer to where he sat propped against his
pillows once more. He looked absolutely dumbfounded. “She’s very
young.”

“A spoiled brat, is what you mean,” Dominic muttered
absently. He was silent for a moment, seeming intent on the pattern in the
woven bedspread. Then he looked up.

“Your father stopped in here for a moment last night. He was
surprisingly cordial, under what I thought were the circumstances. I was wary
at first, expecting at any moment for him to pull out a hidden pistol and shoot
me through the heart for a damned blackguard. But he merely thanked me for
looking out for you in the bush and bringing you home again when you were hurt.
He even apologized for what happened then—said if he’d known the
whole story he would never have been so harsh. I’ve been wondering about
it ever since—and now I begin to see. He doesn’t know about us,
does he?”

Sarah shook her head. “No. I asked him outright if he had
had you beaten, and he denied it. Whatever else he is, my father is not a
liar.”

“So it was your damned overseer, acting on his own. . . .
Now that I come to think about it, I never actually saw your father. Percival
just kept saying that he was acting on Mr. Markham’s orders.”

“That’s what I’ve decided, too.”

Dominic was silent again, his eyes straying back to the coverlet
as if fascinated by it.

“I owe you an apology,” he said suddenly, looking up
to meet her eyes.

“Yes, you do.” She hid a smile, looking severe as she
pronounced the words with a waiting air.

He scowled, then grinned reluctantly as he gave in to her air of
silent expectation. “All right, you shrew, I’m sorry. I should have
believed you when you told me you didn’t go running to your father. And
while I’m at it, I might as well apologize for the way I behaved
yesterday, too. To tell the truth, I was damned glad to see you—and even
gladder to get out of that hellhole.”

Sarah frowned, as if considering. Then she smiled and took another
step closer to the bed. “I shouldn’t, but I suppose I forgive you.
If you forgive me, that is.”

He looked at her questioningly. She took another step. She was
standing beside the bed now, so close that her skirt brushed the mattress. Her
hands were clasped nervously in front of her. Now that the time was at hand,
she felt very awkward. What if he had changed his mind and no longer wanted to
marry her? What if he had merely been carried away by the circumstances when he
had proposed, and, after recovering from his snit, had actually been relieved
when she had not accepted? Why should he want to marry her, after all? She was
plain. . . .

“For refusing to marry you,” she said, forcing the
words out through dry lips. Every instinct cried out for her to stop there, to
leave the rest to him if he would, but, having said so much, she was determined
to plunge ahead regardless of propriety. “Dominic, is—is the offer
still open?”

“What offer?” He was starting to smile. That dimple
that she had noticed before appeared suddenly to crease his right cheek, making
him look so handsome that she clenched her fists. Impossible to believe that
this beautiful man was really in love with her, really wanted to marry her. He
had been flattering her, or temporarily mad. . . .

“Never mind,” she muttered hastily, losing her nerve.
She started to turn away, embarrassed at having so nearly made a fool of
herself, not wanting to hear him try to be kind as he put her off.

Suddenly he yelped, lunging forward and stopping her with a yank
on her skirts. She yelped too as she felt herself tumbling backward to land in
an undignified sprawl across the bed, in his arms. A ripping sound was clearly
audible as she fell. Half-laughing, half-struggling as Dominic pinned her to
the bed, Sarah glanced down to find her plain white petticoat clearly visible
through a tear in her skirt that split it from the waist almost to the hem.

“My dress—look what you’ve done!”

He was looming over her, his eyes caressing. She could feel his
hard thighs against her back as she lay across his lap. The white linen of her
father’s nightshirt—he looked maddeningly attractive in the homely
garment, she thought—made his skin and hair look very dark and his eyes
very blue in contrast. Again she was conscious of a qualm—could he
really
love her?

“To hell with your dress—it’s little better than
a rag anyway. So are most of your clothes that I’ve seen. When
you’re my wife, you’ll dress to show off your beauty, not hide
it.”

“Oh, Dominic,” Sarah said, half-laughing. “Are
you sure that your eyes are working properly? I fear I’m rather
plain.”

“I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”
He looked suddenly fierce. “I don’t even want you to think it. Your
bitch of a stepmother and that spoiled little stepsister have turned your
thinking, Sarah. Sure, you don’t look like they do. You shouldn’t
want to! They’re pretty, Sarah, in a totally ordinary way. There are
hundreds of women across the world just like them. But you—you’re
unique. You’re beautiful, Sarah, if you weren’t so afraid to show
it. From now on, every morning when you get up, I want you to look in your
mirror and say, ‘Dominic says I’m beautiful.’ Do you hear
me?”

“I would think the whole house hears you.” Her eyes
were smiling at him. He smiled back, bending to drop a quick kiss on her nose
before reaching beneath her head to begin pulling pins from her hair.

“What are you doing?”

“Starting the transformation with your hair. You have
beautiful hair, Sarah. It’s a crime to screw it back in this ugly bun. I
won’t have it.”

“I’m not answerable to you, sir,” she mocked
him, smiling.

“Are you not, now? You will be—when you marry
me.” The words were smug.

Sarah looked up into the handsome face bent so closely over her
own, not quite daring to believe that this wonderful thing could be true, that
he could love her and want to marry her and that she could actually be planning
to go against every prejudice she’d ever been taught and marry him, the
most handsome, charming, wonderful man she had ever known—but a convict,
nonetheless. . . . Her father would hit the roof, Sarah knew. It was possible
that they would have to leave Lowella for good. But Sarah knew that if she was
forced to choose between Lowella and Dominic, there was no longer a contest.
She would choose Dominic every time, without regret.

“Will you marry me, Sarah?” The words, spoken in the
tenderest of voices, were a formal proposal.

Sarah smiled radiantly, unaware of how that smile transformed her,
making her golden eyes shine with happiness, parting her soft pink lips so that
her teeth showed white between them, lending rosy color to her cheeks. Her
hair, which he had loosened, framed her face like a tumbling golden mane. She
was, in that moment, gloriously beautiful as she smiled up at the man she
loved.

“Yes, Dominic,” she whispered, and caught her breath
as he lowered his head.