For Her Love (22 page)

Giles watched her rock. His pulse raced, and he felt like he had in battles, when his best friend’s life had been his responsibility. But he knew how to protect Geoff. All he had to do was keep the enemy from sneaking up behind him. Geoff could take care of the rest. Not so with Grace. She was huddled on the floor, surrounded by dragons he couldn’t see, a monster he couldn’t vanquish.

Rain
, Grace thought.
I smell rain.
But she remembered incense. She lifted her head from her knees, exhaustion having finally calmed her hysterical sobbing. The man who sat above her on the edge of the bed was not Jacques. He had his head in his hands, but still, she knew he wasn’t her uncle.

Giles. Her husband. She didn’t even remember what she had said to him while she had babbled in terror. Had she told him everything? Would he look at her in horrified revulsion?

He raised his head, every line of his face etched with worry and fear. No disgust. It nearly tore her heart from her chest. She had lied to him, disappointed him, behaved like a complete lunatic, and still he was concerned for her. She was so utterly unworthy.

“You must get an annulment,” she muttered, her throat raw.

He shook his head. “We shall set this right.”

She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “We cannot set this right. You deserve better, Giles.”

“I can think of no one better than you. You’ve tried so hard. Had I but known…”

“How could I have told you? I am so ashamed.”

“Grace, ‘twasn’t your fault. It matters not to me but that I would kill the man if I could. Not because he took first what was mine, but because he hurt you. And Matu, did he rape her, too?”

Grace dropped her head back to her knees. “He did not rape me.”

“He…?”

“My father stopped him ere he could finish the deed.”

“But he did enough. He did enough to scar you.”

“What he did to me was worse than rape. He took my whole life from me.”

“Nay, he did not,” Giles protested. “You have a new life, with me.”

“I am not what you think me.”

“You are brave and beautiful, the strongest person that e’re I have met. That is what I think you.”

“And you think me honest. You forgot that.”

“I understand why you did not tell me.”

“God damn you!” she shouted, rising unsteadily from the floor. “Stop it! Stop understanding! You do not know the half of what I have not told you. You do not know me, Giles Courtney, and you never will! Do you think that I could ever tell you everything? Do you think that I will ever place myself in a position where I must see all your understanding, all your kindness turn to disgust and hatred?”

“And do you hold me in such low esteem that you believe I would turn my back upon you?” he demanded. “Who did this to you, Grace? How did he manage to make you feel such self-loathing? What can I do? How can I make you whole again?”

“You cannot make me whole! How can you make me whole if there is a part of myself I can never share with you? This was a mistake from the beginning, and as God is my witness, I am so sorry. What I have done to you is so grossly unfair.”

“What was done to you was a heinous sin.”

“It is deeper than that. The thing that will ever lie between us has been there since I was born. It has little to do with him, the man who drew it all into the light. Go. Go find your friend, deliver your shipment. I’ll be gone ere you return.”

He couldn’t leave her; that much was clear. But neither could he leave Geoff when everything he knew about Geoff’s voyage seemed so suspicious.

“Give me time to think,” he said. “There must be some way of taking you with me.”

“I do not want to go. I cannot be with you, Giles. Can you not see that?”

Giles’s breath hissed through his teeth. “Then promise me one thing. Promise you will give it a few days; you’ll stay here, in our home, for three or four days ere you seek passage back to Welbourne. I will be at sea for over a week. You can still be gone long before I am back if that is what you choose.”

“What difference can it possibly…”

“Promise. Promise, or I’ll not leave at all. I’ll follow you to Welbourne, speak to your father…”

“Nay! You cannot speak to my father of any of this!”

“Then give me your word.”

She hesitated. “Three days?”

“Your word.”

“Upon my word.”

“Will you come to bed?”

She shook her head.

Well, he wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep this night. Giles rose and pulled his shirt and breeches from the wardrobe.

“I don’t mean to put you out,” Grace said.

“You’re not. I have to leave early, and there’s something I must do first.”

“I’ll not be here when you return.”

The cold fingers that had been squeezing his heart throughout the entire episode convulsed. “We’ll see,” he replied.

“I’ll be gone. But I want you to know what a fine man you are. I am sorry, please believe that.”

He clenched his teeth in anger at her pathetic words. What a fine man! A fine man who was leaving his own wife just when she needed him most. And for what? For all he knew Geoff had everything in hand. He was, in essence, a follower. Skilled he was at guarding men’s backs, but of what use was he when the enemy was at the forefront?

So be it. He was no Geoffrey Hampton who charged into the fray and relied mostly upon his impulse. He was Giles Courtney who weighed every variable and knew well how to delegate. Aye, Giles Courtney recognized when another knew better than he the best course of action.

“I’ll see you when I get back,” he said. “Remember, you promised. You gave me your word. You’ll stay here three days. God willing, you’ll never leave.”

“Giles, you have lost your mind.”

“Mayhap I have lost my mind, but I have something better. I have Faith.” He smiled at her, a hopeful smile.

“I wish I did, too,” she replied, missing his meaning.

*

In the morning, Grace packed nearly all of her things away in her trunks. Matu would have a fit when she saw what a rumpled mess all her skirts were, but Grace couldn’t muster the slightest concern. This sense of scatteredness, disconnection, reminded her of the weeks after her uncle had left. ‘Twas just so bloody hard to concentrate on anything. She felt restless, like getting up and running as far and as fast as she could. She sensed that she was unraveling, and that soon, there would be nothing left of her.

The wardrobe still held enough clothes to see her through the next three days. She had been sorely tempted to renege on her promise. Then at dawn, one of Giles’s men had tapped on the office door and informed her that he had been sent to see to her safety. Dimly she recalled Giles saying that he would send someone. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, and not overly large, but he wore a cutlass and flintlock too comfortably. Having the strange man in the office below did not make her feel safer. It had only added to her anxiety.

Now, outside her window, a clock chimed ten. She had not gone to sleep all night, and the hours had passed strangely, marked by periods of oppressive weight and bouts of nervous jitters, all bound together by a cord of burning anger. She would think that she hated Giles, then realize ‘twas Jacques she despised, then wonder if it were not her father, really, who had earned her ire. Sometimes it seemed that she was entirely to blame for her own misery.

If only she could focus, understand what she felt. Then maybe she could manage it better.

A sharp rapping on the office door nearly sent her skittering right out of her skin. Fear bolted through her, hot and irrational. A customer, she told herself, vainly trying to steady her breathing. Someone who knew not that both Giles and Geoff were at sea. Suddenly she was glad to have Giles’s man with her.

She heard the door open and a woman’s voice asking her protector, “Is Grace upstairs?”

Faith Hampton. Could the woman not wait for an invitation?

Then realization dawned. Oh, aye, ‘twas Giles she was furious with after all.

“Aye,” the sailor replied, “she’s up there.”

“May I go up?” Faith asked.

“Aye, come up,” Grace called down.
Damn
, she thought.
Damn, damn, damn!

Faith approached the stairs, her pale brows furrowed with worry. Her tow-headed son sat at his accustomed place on her hip, and she used her free hand to raise her skirts so she could carefully ascend the steps.

“I hope I am not intruding.”

Ha! Grace was no fool. Giles had sent her to intrude. He had Faith, indeed! “I am a trifle busy,” Grace said. “Is there something you need?”

“I simply came to visit,” Faith replied, still climbing. Over her shoulder she said to the guard, “You may wait outside. She’s perfectly safe with me. My husband’s man is out there already.”

The sailor smiled and nodded, apparently eager to escape.

Faith swept past her and plopped the baby on the bed. Now, Grace could see that the boy had been obscuring a cloth satchel hanging over his mother’s shoulder. Faith pulled from it the wooden boat that had been on Geoff’s desk and handed it to the child. Little Jonathan stuck the stern into his mouth and began to drool contentedly.

“Giles would have a fit if he saw that,” Faith commented merrily, dropping the satchel next to her son. “Baby spit all over his immaculate bedding. Do you know, I’ve not been up here since Geoff and I lived here.” She looked around, inspecting Grace’s haphazard packing but saying nothing about it. “He kept the old furniture, I see, but added a few pieces.”

“He said he spent little time here,” Grace replied. Nervous restlessness set in again. She could
not
sit here and make small talk.

Faith leaned on the table, testing its strength. “‘Tis holding up. These things were falling apart until I fixed them,” she said with not a little pride. “They seemed hopeless, but when all you have is less than perfect, you do what you must to set it to rights.”

“And so that is why he sent you? To set me to rights like a table or a chair?”

Faith sighed. “Have you met Mister Abrams, the carpenter down the street?” Grace shook her head, and Faith continued. “Thank goodness he was there. He was the one who had the tools and lent them to me. I did all the work, but I couldn’t have done it without his tools.”

“I don’t think you have the tools I need.”

“I may not. I cannot pretend to know what you’re feeling…”

“Nay, you cannot.” Grace’s voice was glacial, but it did nothing to deter her guest.

“It must have been terrifying.”

“To be entirely frank, Mistress Hampton, I have never discussed this with anyone. Not even my nurse. I am hardly going to discuss it with you.”

Again, her protest fell on deaf ears.

“Giles thought that you might wish to speak with another woman.”

“The mere fact that you are female does not mean that you can help. You cannot possibly understand what it is like to have everything you ever believed about yourself crushed into dust by another’s cruelty.”

“I have never been the victim of such an attack, that is true. But for what it is worth, I do know what it is to lose my greatest refuge. You see, I was raised a Puritan, one of God’s Holy Elect. My home was supposed to be a New Jerusalem. My family, my neighbors, my church told me exactly what I must be and what I must think. I was taught that to be anything else was to incur God’s everlasting hatred. It is not the same, I will grant you, but when I was faced with the hypocrisy and corruption within our church, it shook the very foundation of my life.”

“So are you no longer one of God’s Holy Elect?” There was no trace of sympathy in Grace’s tone.

“Aye, I am. So are you. So are Geoff and Giles and your imperfect parents and the African maid you love so much. But that realization was a long time coming. The point is you need not be destroyed by what happened. What you do from here on is up to you. Giles is not the man who hurt you. You can have faith in him to protect you.”

“Well, there you have it.” Grace smirked. “Had I but known the answer was so simple! Giles is a good man and I can trust him, and that wipes away all the rest. There is little comparison between you and me, Faith. At no point was I ever under the slightest impression that my home was any New Jerusalem.”

“Then help me to understand. This goes beyond the rape?”

“As I told Giles, I was not raped.”

A bit of color stained Faith’s pale cheeks. “I will admit, I am unaccustomed to prying so personally, but I cannot stand by and do nothing while two good people who belong together are torn asunder. Therefore, you must forgive my bluntness. When Giles came to me in the middle of the night last night, he told me that you had been forced into some intimacy with someone. Perhaps you could clarify it.”

Anger bubbled up again inside of Grace. She was tired of it all. Tired of talking about it. Tired of thinking about it. Mayhap Mistress Lily White, God’s Holy Elect, should get exactly what she asked for! The thought of shocking Faith into silence yielded a vicious satisfaction.

Grace’s mouth contorted into a bitter sneer, and her voice was sharp with anger. “Very well, since you insist. When I was ten years old, my uncle molested me, not once, but repeatedly. He stuck his tongue down my throat and his fingers in my womb ere it had even bled its first cycle. He told me the ways of a man and a woman, of how increasing her suffering heightens his pleasure, how he must hurt her if he is to spill his seed. He elucidated in minute detail.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Faith whispered. “You poor child.”

“Nay, Mistress! My childhood was torn from me long ago. My father may have stopped Jacques from raping me, but he could not stop what followed. Do you know why my uncle believed that he could use me so with impunity? Would you like to hear about that, as well?”

Grace stopped. She felt as though she stood upon a precipice that plunged a hundred feet into jagged rocks and churning water. If she let any more of the anger out, she would be unable to halt it. It would come spewing from that place inside her where it had festered and oozed for over a decade, send her over the edge to plummet to her destruction. And the despair. The despair that waited at the bottom. It would close over her head like water, leave her desperate to breathe but without having the courtesy to kill her.