Exile's Return (18 page)

He balled and unballed his hands, stretching his fingers as if trying to steady himself.

‘Despite being a prisoner, I had no complaint about my life. Pritchard's daughter Jennet and I formed an attachment of sorts.'

A flutter of disquiet stirred in Agnes's heart.

‘You were in love?' she asked through tight lips.

Daniel gave her a sharp glance and shook his head. ‘She loved me,' he said in a flat tone, ‘but my motives were not prompted by anything more than a liking for her. Pritchard dropped hints that were we to marry, my release could be secured, my future guaranteed as his son-in-law, so I agreed.'

The flutter grew to the full scale beating of a bird's wing and she acknowledged with shock that what she felt were the pangs of jealousy. She hadn't realised how much this man had come to mean to her in the past few weeks.

‘You married her?'

‘No. She died of yellow fever a week before our wedding.'

Agnes bit her lip as the jealousy died away as quickly as it had arisen. The death of Jennet Pritchard had been merely a marker on the journey that had brought him here.

‘Pritchard's grief was so great he had a seizure and became paralysed and unable to speak. Management of the plantation fell to me. Of course if I had married Jennet it would have been quite different. But with Pritchard ill, to all intents and purposes I was still a prisoner with no right to claim management, and the overseer of the prisoners, a man called Outhwaite, did not hesitate to remind me of my station.'

At the mention of the name, every muscle in his face contracted, stretching the skin tightly across the high cheekbones. His eyes became dark smudges, filled with an unimagined pain.

Agnes reached out and put her hand over his. A secret for a secret? Could she, would she dare, confide in him as she was asking him to confide in her? Maybe … but not yet.

‘He … ?' She swallowed. ‘Your back?'

He flexed his shoulders as if he still felt the fall of the metal-tipped scourge. ‘Among other atrocities he committed, and not just on me.'

‘Sometimes,' she said, her fingers tightening on his. ‘It helps to speak of what troubles you.'

He pulled his hand away and gave a harsh, humourless laugh. ‘You are always ready with advice, Agnes. Outhwaite is dead. Dead these four years past but he still haunts my nightmares. I came across a newssheet that reported that he and three of his men had been hanged in Holetown for murder – my murder and another's. When I read the news it filled me with anger that he had not died at my hands. Hanging was a merciful death.'

His mouth clamped shut, a hard, thin line, and Agnes knew that she would hear no more. Whatever had lain between Outhwaite and this man still ran too deep for the whole truth.

Wherever Outhwaite was, Agnes hoped he was rotting in Hell. She smoothed the paper against the sill of the window and lifted it up, squinting as she tried to make out the words, but they were illegible in the poor light of the moon. Only the heavy scrawled signature and the seal proved its authenticity.

She looked up at Daniel. ‘Was this the price demanded of Kit for turning coat?'

He drew a sharp audible breath. ‘What do you mean?'

‘He could surely not have obtained a Pardon for you unless … '

Daniel looked down at her. ‘Are you saying that he bought my freedom with his life and his conscience?'

‘Only he can tell you that, Daniel.'

He looked away. ‘I let him go without giving him the chance to explain.'

She folded the paper and handed it back to him. He took it, turning it over in his fingers.

‘Agnes, I owe you an apology for what I said.'

‘Yes, you do,' she replied. ‘I'm not a whore, Daniel. My reasons for becoming James Ashby's mistress are … my own.'

‘Is he the father of your child? Henry is your son, not your sister's, isn't he?'

She drew a deep breath. He knew. ‘We called it The Great Secret, Daniel. I am sworn to keep it.'

His gaze didn't move from her face. ‘Secrets are always dangerous, Agnes. Ashby's dead, what difference can it make now?'

She shook her head. ‘There is too much at stake.'

He could make whatever suppositions he liked. They both had their secrets.

They stood in silence once more, their hands on the windowsill. Daniel covered her left hand with his right, running his calloused thumb in a circle across the back of her hand.

‘You have such a tiny hand, Agnes,' he said in a low voice. ‘I fear I might crush it.' He lifted it, pressing her fingers to his lips. ‘If I could only take back those terrible things I said to you.'

Agnes swallowed. The touch of his lips on the tips of her finger was sending her stomach into a roiling mess, stealing the very breath from her lungs. ‘They were spoken in haste and anger,' she said, finding her voice. ‘I know they were not meant for me.'

His hand strayed to her hair, smoothing the disordered curls away from her face.

‘Don't go. Stay with me, Agnes,' he said, in a voice hoarse with emotion.

Her heart skipped a beat but she forced herself to step back and he dropped his hand.

‘Is this another pleasant invitation to lie on your bed and spread my legs?' she asked.

He flinched and caught her hand again, drawing her toward him, his gaze, even in the thin light of the moon, steady.

‘I'm not asking for anything more than companionship, Agnes. I just don't want to be alone … not tonight.'

Every nerve in her body tensed, her need for companionship, for human touch, every bit as great as his. She choked back the sob but it escaped unbidden and her body convulsed as he drew her into his arms, kissing her hair.

‘Please don't cry.' He raised his hand, smoothing the hair away from her face, wiping away her tears with his thumb. ‘Forget what I said and go back to your own bed.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't want to go back to my own bed.' She cupped his face in her hands, forcing his gaze to meet hers. ‘I'm crying because it is the first time in a very long time … ' she struggled to find the words ‘ … that I feel wanted for who I am.'

His fingers meshed in her hair as he pressed her to his hard, lean body. ‘Is that all we are to each other, Agnes? Two lonely people finding solace in the dark?'

‘Is that such a terrible thing?' she ventured.

‘I would like to think that maybe it is more than that,' he said.

She found her voice. ‘I would truly like to think we were friends, Daniel Lovell, despite what you might have said.'

The moon appeared from behind a cloud, lighting the ghostly smile that caught Daniel's mouth. ‘I would like to think of you as a friend, Agnes, however short our acquaintance. Probably my only friend.'

He slid his arms around her, drawing her in against him. She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him. He was not James Ashby. He was something quite different from James. Younger, leaner, harder. Tempered by suffering, scarred by war and worse.

Her pulse quickened and as their lips met she closed her eyes, succumbing to a hunger she had never known before, her body melting against his until it seemed they were just one being. Still entwined they fell onto the bed, fingers grappling at laces and buckles.

Agnes pushed away from him, searching his face, losing herself in those grey eyes, now hazy with desire.

‘I … I am not a virgin.' She pushed the hair from her face with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Stupid of me, you know that.'

A chuckle rumbled in his chest. ‘Neither am I, but I've never tumbled a girl who wasn't willing. Agnes …?'

All she had to do was say “no” and he would let her go. She would go back to her own bed and life, such as it was, would go on as it had before. But what sort of life did she have? Did either of them have?

They were both waiting for something to happen. Perhaps this would be part of it?

***

Daniel woke with a start from a nightmare in which he stood in a crowd watching as his brother was led to the gallows. He tried to call out but his words were lost in the noise of the crowd. At the last minute Kit turned and looked out over the baying mass, which grew silent as Kit raised a finger and pointed directly at Daniel.

He sat up, the sweat on his naked chest and forehead turning clammy in the cold pre-dawn. Beside him someone stirred and a small hand came up to rest on his arm.

‘Daniel?'

He looked down at the woman beside him, seeing only her shadow in the dark.

Agnes.

A wave of remorse flooded over him as he remembered how she had given herself to him completely and apparently unconditionally. He had used her to assuage his misery and his guilt with little thought or consideration for this woman.

He lay down on his side, propping himself on one elbow as he ran a finger down the line of her jaw, imagining her small earnest face with its smattering of freckles, aware that her gaze was fixed on his face.

‘Agnes, I'm sorry,' he said.

‘For what?'

For taking you, for using you, for giving you nothing in return when you have given me so much
.

‘I should never … ' he began, but she laid a finger on his lips.

‘Hush, it was my choice.'

He gripped her hand, holding the fingers against his lips, kissing each tip before releasing her and trailing his own fingers along the line of her jaw, the hollow of her throat, and the soft swell of her high, round breasts. She had a woman's body, curved, soft and warm to the touch.

Beneath his questing fingers, she tensed and let out a small gasp as he circled her nipple, her back arching as her eyes widened.

He stilled. ‘Agnes … ' He struggled to find the words. ‘Have you ever taken pleasure from laying with a man?'

‘I've only lain with one man. My mother and sister told me it was a woman's lot to bring comfort to a man, not to expect anything in return. I never asked or expected it to be different.'

‘Did James love you?' he asked.

She didn't answer at first. Her chest rose and fell in a silent sigh. ‘Love was not a consideration. James was kind to me, that was all I asked.'

‘He wouldn't marry you?'

She gave a huff of laughter. ‘Marry me? He couldn't. The Church forbids marriage between a man and his wife's sister, and James would never have gone against the teachings of the Church.'

Even when that woman was the mother of his son?
Daniel wondered, and the Great Secret suddenly became so much clearer. With the taint of illegitimacy, Henry could never inherit his father's estate, but if no one knew or suspected that the child's mother was not the Earl's wife … He wondered what circumstances surrounded Henry's birth and why she had borne the child. Maybe she would confide in him but not now … not here.

He turned the question. ‘Did you love James?'

This time she answered without hesitation. ‘Yes.'

James Ashby, God rot him
, Daniel thought. Had James realised what a treasure he had in this woman, or had she just been a convenience to be used like any one of his possessions?

But James Ashby was dead and he, Daniel Lovell, who should have been dead, was alive and Agnes lay in his arms as if she had always belonged there.

‘What about you, Daniel? Apart from Jennet, have you ever loved?'

He curled a tendril of soft, brown hair around his finger. Love was not something he had had much time for since his first calf love, the head groom's daughter. Jennet had loved him to the point of embarrassment but he had not reciprocated the emotion, only the intention. A marriage to Jennet had suited him. In his hopeless situation it had spelled not only freedom but a future. He had kissed her but there had never been anything more physical than that. He had certainly never told her that he loved her. Whatever else he may be, he was not a liar. When she died his grief had not been at her loss, but at what her loss had meant to him personally. The thought shamed him now. Jennet had deserved better.

But this conversation was not about him. He wanted to know about the woman in his arms, the woman who stirred something within himself that he did not recognise. He took a deep shuddering breath, knowing that in taking Agnes to bed he had stepped out onto treacherous, unfamiliar ground.

But even as he had that thought she jerked out of his embrace and lay beside him, staring up at the ceiling of the bed, her hands folded across the covers. The few inches between them now yawned like a gaping chasm.

‘Daniel, you need to understand. Love is a luxury a woman in my position cannot afford. I have to look to a man for my protection and the simple comfort of a roof over my head. All I have to give you in return is my gratitude and my friendship – don't ask for my love,' she said.

In a swift movement, Daniel swung himself over her, pinioning her between his knees and holding her forearms down against the mattress. In the greying light of dawn her eyes widened but she did not struggle.

‘Gratitude is not enough, Agnes. If nothing else, let me show you that a woman has a right to be pleasured.'

The last few years had not been without female companionship, and the willing girls of Fort Royal had taught him something about how to please a woman. He pulled back the covers exposing her to the grey light of the early dawn. She shivered in the cold air but did not protest as he let his fingers stray over the soft, silky smoothness of her inner thigh.

She braced beneath his touch, her breath exhaling in a gasp. ‘I … I've never been touched like that before.'

He silenced her with his lips and let his fingers coax and gentle the woman in his arms until her breath came in short gasps and she cried out, arching her back before falling back spent and shuddering. He slid his hand across the flat plane of her stomach, the skin beneath his touch contracting.

She lay supine in his arms, her chest rising and falling as if she had run a hard race.