For Her Love (21 page)

Grace blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

“That night we came back from the slave quarters. He couldn’t even count the money I brought him, he was so besotted.”

“‘Twas not habit. Father drinks when he is under pressure. Doubtless he was certain that I’d ruined his last chance at more heirs.”

Giles paused a moment before asking, “Did your mother never conceive any others besides you?”

“She may have,” Grace answered, avoiding his gaze. “I know not. If she did, I never saw any signs of it.” Mayhap ‘twas not a lie outright, but being purposely obscure did nothing to ease her conscience.

Giles regarded her gravely. “I wish I knew what it is that you will not tell me.”

“I know not what you mean,” Grace replied, but there was a small catch in her voice.

“Aye, you do. You can hardly speak of your mother without choking, like there are words caught in your throat.
Were
there other babies? Ones with defects?” he prompted. “Idiots? What terrible secret do you hide? What does Matu know that she may never speak of?”

“I think that you have secrets of your own,” she returned, fighting panic. “That’s why you see them in others where they do not exist.”

Well, mayhap he had not been entirely forthright about his upcoming voyage, but that was for her protection. He dismissed the tweak his conscience gave him and replied, “What information about myself have I ever held back from you?”

“You know far more about me than I about you.” She picked up the record boxes and placed them back on the shelves with careful precision, glad for the excuse to avoid looking at him.

“What do you wish to know?”

“What of
your
family? I know that you’ve three sisters and a mother living in London, but you seldom see them. What drove
you
apart? What are your family’s secrets?”

Giles sighed. Would he ever be able to scale the walls this woman had built, continued to build around her? Well, he could answer her questions, at least.

“I was nine when I signed on as cabin boy. I just didn’t see the rest of my family much after that.”

“You could ne’er find time to tarry in London now and again? Is your love for the sea so strong, then?”

“Nay. It’s been a matter of convenience mostly.” He dropped his body into his desk chair. “I like sailing fine, but ‘tis no passion.”

At the resignation in his voice, Grace paused from her labor of straightening up ledgers and bills. “Nay? I had always heard that the sea was every sailor’s mistress.”

“A romantic notion,” Giles conceded, “but not entirely accurate. For many, ‘tis but a living.”

“Then how came you to choose it?”

“Sometimes, I wonder if I really made a choice. My father was a shipbuilder, so when I needed a job so young, cabin boy was the likeliest chance. I met Geoff when we were still but lads. He had a sense of adventure and ever plunged forward, never stuck, as I often was, trying to decide. When he came by a position on a privateer ship and asked me to join him, it had seemed like a grand enterprise.”

“Wasn’t it?” Grace asked, genuinely intrigued and having forgotten all about her attempt to divert him from herself.

“In many ways. But there is always a price. There are things I’ve done that I’m not proud of.” Connections made that, however tenuous, were hard to sever. What cared he and Geoff what ill befell Henri Beauchamp? And yet, Geoff had gone to aid him, and Giles would follow.

“But now that’s over, and you are an honest merchant captain.”

“Because Geoff decided to be one.” He gave her a rueful grin. “You thought that you had married a leader of men, did you not? You’d no idea that he was more of an aimless follower.”

Grace moved to stand before him. With her fingertips she traced the jaw line that he had so meticulously shaved that morning, now rough with stubble. “You are a natural leader, you know. I wonder where
Geoff
would be without
you
. Think you that he would be this successful without you to bring some sense of order and reason into his life? And none of us entirely chooses our path. I hated Welbourne Plantation, but were it not for you, I would be there yet.”

“‘Twas not your wish to be born a planter’s daughter” Giles said, rising and enveloping her in his damp coat sleeves. “The suffering of the slaves there is none of your doing. ‘Tis not as though you chose to be white in a world where Blacks must suffer.”

Suddenly the musty, wet smell of the fabric was suffocating, and Grace pulled away. “Nay, ‘tis not as though I had a choice.”

“Besides, were you African, you would not be here with me now.”

“Were I African…”

“May we thank God neither of us is, those poor souls.” He shrugged. “We are what we are. Is there food in the apartment, or shall we go to the tavern down the street?”

There was no room for food in a stomach where guilt sat like a lump of cold lead, but she acquiesced anyway. “I’ll get my cloak.”

*

The common room of the inn was a busy place where serving-wenches bustled from table to table, refilling rum for men who’d already imbibed too much and setting trenchers filled to overflowing before hungry patrons. Giles gave a heated account of the day’s problems, and although Grace nodded at all the right times, she paid scant attention and picked at her food. She caught something about an errant crewman, and Giles mentioned something about sending her a guard in the morning. Even the commotion of the crowd dining and conversing around her failed to penetrate her turbulent thoughts very deeply.

Giles thought that she’d had no choice regarding her race and therefore her life, but he was so wrong. Matu was right, Grace had straddled the fence of her heritage long enough. It was time to get down and live life on the side that she
had
chosen. She would give Giles children, children so fair that they would never know that they, too, had a choice. She would begin by trying to conceive one tonight.
Oh please, God
, she prayed,
give me a child soon, in as few couplings as possible. And let it be white.

By the time they left the tavern, the drizzle had turned to a downpour, and a brisk breeze buffeted her skirts. They raced home down a street lit only by lights in windows. She had left an upstairs window open, and sure enough, the floor in front of it was soaked. Giles closed the shutters and offered to clean up the mess, his thorough occupation with the task giving her a modicum of privacy in which to wash and dress for bed. She changed into her lightest, sheerest silk nightdress and steeled herself against her rising doubts.

The gesture was not lost on Giles. Thus far, she had been retiring in garments of thick linen. He grinned a little. Until now, each night had been an exercise in frustration, but last night he had stumbled upon what he was sure would be the answer. He would put Grace in control, happily allowing his wary bride have her way with him at her own pace.

After cleaning away the day’s sweat and donning his nightshirt, Giles fell into bed. “By all that’s holy,” he complained, “it’s been a trying day.”

Again, she tamped down a shiver of dread. If he was still angry at the lazy sailor, would he take it out on her? But he made no move to touch her.

“Well, ‘tis over and done,” she said. “All’s well now, is it not?”

“Aye, all’s well, but I’m still in knots.”

“Oh.”

“You might ease that for me.”

She couldn’t speak. She could only give him a sideways, cautious look.

“The same way I did for you last night.”

She wrinkled her brow, puzzled, until he rolled over onto his stomach. Oh, that was all! She breathed a sigh of relief. Tentatively, she knelt next to him and brushed her fingers over his shoulders.

“You’ll need to use more strength than that. I’m a fair-sized man, Grace, you’ll not hurt me, I assure you.”

She brushed his hair to one side, taking just a second to feel of its silky texture. He had loosed it from its tight queue, and it lay dark against the white cotton of his shirt. Then, recalling his ministrations to her, she used her thumbs and fingers to apply firm but careful pressure to each knot imbedded in the muscles of his neck and back. The flesh beneath the fabric was warm and firm, and even in repose, it exuded strength. But each sinew was under her dominion, giving up its resistance to her kneading fingers.

She worked across his back, down to his waist, then stopped. The nightshirt fell to mid thigh, and from that point on there was nothing but powerful legs dusted with hair.

“Better?” she asked.

Giles shifted onto his back, once again folding his hands under his head. “Much.”

He let his gaze fall upon her lips, the message clear, and Grace leaned down to kiss him. They were becoming familiar now, his warm, soft lips and moist, silky tongue. This time, he kissed her back, possessing her mouth, tasting and exploring her, leaving liquid heat in his wake.

She pulled away to catch her breath, but she wanted more. This part of mating she could endure all night, she thought. Perhaps it would even be worth what followed.

“‘Tis even better if we’re touching more,” Giles whispered. “If our bodies are pressed together.”

She wanted to cry out that she wasn’t finished. She wasn’t ready to have him on top of her, crushing her, spoiling everything. Still, she lay down next to him and awaited his pleasure.

“Nay,” he said, tugging her hand. “You lie here, atop me.”

She sat up and looked at him. “I, on top?”

He chuckled softly. “I do not think you’ll crush me.”

She didn’t think so either, but neither did she lie down entirely upon him. Pressed close against him, she lay on her side. Her upper leg rested lightly atop his thick thigh, partly covered by his shirt. With her arms free to twine about his neck, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him again. He was right. It was better. The heat from his body radiated to the very center of her. In this position, she could brace herself on one arm and let the other hand roam freely, touching him at will.

He tangled one hand gently in her hair, pulling her mouth closer still, but without force. Then he drew free of her curls and brushed his fingertips softly over her arm, down her back to where it curved and sloped outward to her bottom. She shivered, though not with cold, and pressed her pelvis to the side of his leg, seeking something, wanting to slake some need inside of her.

The storm outside gathered in intensity, wind whipping around the building, raindrops splattering against the shutters. The room filled with the scents of rain and desire, a potent mixture, and Grace felt as though time had slowed down. It seemed the whole world was moving languidly through sweet, thick nectar. Giles’s hand curved itself around her breast, his fingers gently squeezing her nipple and causing it to tighten in response and send a jolt of desire coursing through her. Then he moved on, skimming her hip, sliding up under her shift.

And Grace’s quest grew bolder, too. Her own fingers traced, through his shirt, the faint ripples that creased the muscles in his stomach. Her caress glided over his lean hip, trespassed beyond the boundary of his shirttail to feel of the bare flesh of his thigh. He took her hand in his and guided her back up, under the shirt, to touch the rigid evidence of his passion.

Grace’s first impulse was to pull away, but she forced herself to prevail. He had taken his hand away, so the decision was entirely hers. She wrapped her hand around him, caressed him, blindly gauging the length and thickness. She had expected him to be hideously swollen, so immense that he would rip into her and leave her bleeding and mutilated. But he wasn’t so enormous, and she had to wonder if perhaps her child’s memory of a man’s sex was somehow distorted. It was a bit intimidating, to be sure, and Grace had no doubt that it would not be comfortable to yield herself to him, but ‘twasn’t nearly as hopeless as she had expected.

Giles continued to stroke Grace’s skin, pushing aside her shift, his hand insinuating itself between their bodies. As he drew closer to his objective, she felt herself grow damp, and a throbbing ache suffused her nether regions. She kept him in her grasp, even as he slipped his finger between the folds of her flesh, stimulating a tiny, sensitive spot and drawing a gasp from her throat. Then, he slid his finger inside of her.

A gust of wind hit the shutter with brutal force, sending it open to hit against the outer wall with a resounding crack, and Grace screamed. Giles leapt from the bed to pull the window shut, and she screamed again. It was like a dam had burst. She was screaming, drawing tight, gasping breaths, then screaming again, unable to stop.

Giles pulled the bolt more securely into place with shaking fingers and ran back to the bed. “‘Tis all right, Grace. ‘Tis all right.” He went to wrap his arms around her and comfort her, but she rolled out of his reach and off of the bed. “Grace?”

She was scooting backwards, her eyes wide, green pools of sheer terror, looking at him but somehow seeming not to see him. “Nay, nay, nay!” she screamed.

He froze. Fear wrapped icy fingers around his heart and squeezed. He knew that he couldn’t touch her, but neither could he leave her there, cowering on the floor. “Come back, Grace. I’ll not touch you, I promise. Only come back up here.”

“Nay, nay, nay,” she chanted, and her teeth began to chatter. “This is how it happens! This is how it happens!”

“How what happens?
What happened?
”

“You make me touch you, and then you—you do that to me, and then Father comes. He throws the door open, and it hits the wall, and then he yells. He yells, and then the world comes apart. It comes apart! You think that you’re something, and then you’re not. You think that you are someone, but you are a splotch. A meaningless, black splotch!”

“Oh, God,” Giles croaked. He crossed his arms, gripping himself helplessly to keep from reaching for her and terrifying her further. “Grace, ‘tis all right. No one’s going to hurt you. I swear to God, no one will ever hurt you again.”

“Nay!” she shrieked. “It always hurts! It always hurts! It hurts me; it hurts Matu! Oh, Matu, Matu,” she keened. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Matu,” she sobbed, rocking back and forth. “I’m so sorry.”