Moonwitch (40 page)

The pain in his voice was soft and throbbing. Wanting to offer comfort, she reached up to give him her hand.

Yes, he thought, help me ease the hurt.

His fingers curled over hers, warm and pleading, like the dark message in his eyes. Without releasing his grasp, Kyle slowly sat beside her.

“Selena.” He said it like a caress. “My wise, understanding Selena.” And when she moved into his arms, he gathered her against him with a tenderness that stirred hope as well as desire and longing in her heart.

With a sigh, Selena pressed her cheek against the tightly curving muscles of his chest, where his dressing gown had parted. He was naked beneath, and she could feel her cool flesh warming against the satin of his bare skin. She wanted to ask him about Danielle, but she couldn’t bear to hear the answer and destroy this moment. Instead, she closed her eyes, listening to the vital rhythm of his heart mate with his breathing.

But Kyle’s heart wasn’t as tranquil as the steady tempo suggested. Indeed, it ached… for the loss he had sustained…for the woman in his arms. Selena was so very beautiful—her slender, white body bare except for the gauzy film of her nightdress, her pale hair kissed by moonlight. That image had burned itself in his memory weeks ago, indelible and strong. It was that image he remembered first whenever she was away from him. That was what had sustained him tonight during the long hours while he struggled with the bitterness of losing his son. Selena was right. He had to consider Clay’s best interests and not his own selfish needs. That knowledge had kept him from returning to town. Instead, he had gone to the fields, where he had tried to work out his frustration physically—to dull the grief that was tearing at his insides.

It hadn’t helped, nor had the hours of hard riding afterward. Yet it was only after he had returned home that he realized he was searching in the wrong direction for the wrong remedy. He had only to look close to home to find what he sought. Selena. She could assuage his pain. She could heal his aching heart. She could give him the solace he so badly needed.

He had been slow to realize it… unforgivably so. He had spoken in bitterness and anger, wounding her without meaning to. If he had driven her away, it was only what he deserved, Kyle told himself savagely.

Yet he didn’t mean that. He was quite certain that the despair he had felt over losing any chance to be a father to his son would never match the bleakness he’d feel if Selena turned away from him.

Disquieted by the sudden thought, Kyle drew back, searching her face, trying to measure the effect of his earlier ill-considered words. Her expression was expectant, waiting, and he was caught in the quiet, solemn depth of her calm blue eyes. You understood all along, didn’t you? he asked silently. You understood and cared.

“I didn’t mean what I said this afternoon,” he murmured. “About not wanting other children.”

Selena held her breath, watching him.

“And I don’t want to be free of you simply so I can claim Clay.” Still holding her gaze, Kyle carried her hand to his lips, brushing his mouth over each finger in turn. “I want you, Moonwitch. Very much.”

Not “I need you” or “I love you,” but “I want you,” Selena thought. But it would have to do.

When she tried to move into his embrace, once more, though, Kyle held her away. “Selena, it was true once,” he said urgently, wanting to explain. “I never wanted a wife. I only wanted the sea… the freedom and challenges it gave me.”

He saw something like sorrow flicker in her eyes before she quietly replied, “I know.”

“But I’ve since come to change my mind. You’ve made my life here bearable…no, much more than that. Happy. You’ve made this a home.” That also was true, he reflected. She had made his life far easier, more comfortable with her gentle touches and quiet, determined ways. He still missed the sea sometimes, but his yearning for freedom was fast fading…because he had found something even more fulfilling.

But he faltered when it came to explaining that to her, for he couldn’t find the right words, never having felt anything quite like what he was experiencing…this swelling in his heart, this burgeoning ache that was such a profound mixture of tenderness and desire.

But explanations weren’t what Selena wanted from Kyle anyway, nor praise for her domestic abilities. She wanted reassurance that she had no reason to be jealous of Danielle. And she wasn’t sure Kyle could give it.

“No, please,” she said, her voice low and hushed. “Don’t talk. Just hold me…kiss me.”

He took her mouth, trying with the gentle play of his lips to express what he was feeling. And Selena responded in kind. When his kiss questioned, asking forgiveness, hers answered and gave it. When his tongue sought hers, stirring and soothing, she matched him with an abandoned intimacy. Yet when his kiss deepened, promising pleasure and lavish sensuality, hers did more; it vowed peace. Kyle accepted her unspoken pledge cautiously, his body trembling with the powerful sensations it engendered.

His vulnerable response restored some of her shaken confidence. With love for him welling inside her, she reached up to hold his face with her slender hands.

He could think of only one thing. Yes… Yes, touch me, Moonwitch, with your cool hands and quicksilver passion. Take me inside you, into your serene world of shadows and silver-bright light....

His breathing altered, and his lips moved to her hair as he drew off her nightdress. When he had shed his dressing gown, he joined her quickly, wanting and finding the fulfillment she’d promised; her mouth was welcoming, her body completely yielding to his as he possessed her.

And Selena quivered in turn as she dissolved into throbbing, impassioned need. He filled her completely, moving over her, within her, unraveling the hard knot of doubt and pain.

Later, as they lay entwined, their skin damp and clinging, their heartbeats gradually slowing, Kyle finally let his drifting mind focus on the turmoil that had raged inside him from the first time he’d met Selena.

He’d once thought it was his son he was fighting for. But he’d been fighting against himself, Kyle realized suddenly. Against the admission that he needed and wanted Selena.

Yet to be truthful, it had never been much of a battle. He’d lost it the moment he’d kissed her on the streets of St. John’s.

And having admitted that to himself, he could at last accept what he’d been too stubborn or too blind to see. His heart was irrevocably committed to Selena. He loved her.

Kyle’s mouth fashioned in a twisted smile as he finally recognized the powerful emotion he’d been unable, perhaps unwilling to name. He had never thought he would find love; he’d always expected it to be something tantalizing and elusive, like Selena herself. Instead, it was like a tempest at sea, and it frightened him… both the force of it and the power it held over him.

The trouble was, fear at sea could be deadly. He would have to face it, Kyle knew. But that he could handle. What scared the blazes out of him was the possibility that Selena didn’t return his feelings.

He tensed, his arms tightening around Selena as he remembered what she’d said about losing someone she loved.

“What was his name?” Kyle murmured suddenly in the silence.

Selena’s head moved on his shoulder as she lifted a puzzled glance. “Whose name?”

Feigning nonchalance, Kyle raised a lock of her silken hair to his lips. “The man you were betrothed to.”

“Edward.”

Kyle took a deep breath. “You said you loved him.”

“Yes,” she answered after a brief nod.

Kyle longed to ask how much she had loved this Edward, but he couldn’t frame the question. He wanted to know precisely how deep that love had been and how it compared to what she felt for him…if she felt anything at all. He wanted her to soothe the savage jealousy that was raging in his breast. But his own feelings were too new, too raw and tender to risk rejection.

And so instead of pressing her, he merely held her close in a wordless embrace.

“Why did you ask about Edward?”

Her tone was tentative, questioning, but he only murmured a disclaimer as he moved his lips gently against her hair. “I was curious.”

Yet even as he said it, Kyle made a vow to himself: he would make her forget, if he could, the man she had loved. And with that vow came the fragile hope that he might someday succeed in winning Selena’s love for himself. Until now it hadn’t really been a fair test. He had never attempted to woo Selena or to earn her regard. He had done nothing to prove himself worthy of her. Indeed, at the beginning of their brief marriage, he had virtually ignored her in his effort to keep his distance and maintain his sanity.

But all that would change.

He would pursue her with every skill he possessed, with every ounce of charm and gallantry he could muster. He would court Selena properly, the way she deserved....

Hearing her soft sigh, Kyle shifted his weight to gaze down at her, at her quicksilver eyes, which were searching his so intently. And as tenderly he brushed back the cloud of pale hair from her face, he renewed his vow. He would make Selena love him. And then he would ask her to share his bed, his children, his life.

July, the onset of full summer. How could such a short span of time make such a difference in one’s life? Selena wondered as she reread the letter from her friend Beth in Antigua.

Beth had written a lengthy epistle full of news from the island, including a postscript that said Selena’s stepmother, Edith, was expected to snare Avery Warner any day—a just reward, Beth declared, since they deserved each other. Yet only now, while Kyle was out in the fields and the girls had scattered to pursue their own amusements, had Selena found time to pen a reply.

Her thoughts, as they had countless times during the past week since the night Kyle had come to her bed, soon turned to Kyle and her marriage, to her happiness, which ran quiet and deep. Her days were filled with small pleasures—pleasures that were sharpest when shared with Kyle…a glance, a smile, a brushing of hands. Her nights were filled with ecstasy.

For long moments at a time she was even able to dismiss her misgivings about Danielle as mere imaginings. Indeed, it was only when Kyle was away from her that her doubts about their marriage returned to assail her. He wanted her physically, Selena was certain. He had proved that very thoroughly with his passionate lovemaking during all the wonderful nights he had visited her room. Yet she couldn’t dispel the haunting fear that Kyle’s feelings for her could never go beyond physical desire.

Accordingly, she had examined in minute detail, over and over again, every word Kyle had said that first night. He had declared he wanted her for his wife, admitting his appreciation for her domestic skills. She made his life bearable, he’d said, even happy. But he had also asked her about Edward. The question had puzzled Selena at the time, yet the longer she considered it, the more it disturbed her. Had Kyle perhaps been trying to tell her something? Had he mentioned her love for Edward to prepare the way for his own revelation? Had he meant to admit that he loved Danielle, but then lost the courage?

The possibility nearly drove her to distraction. She should never, Selena realized, have allowed Kyle to introduce such a disquieting subject and then suddenly drop it. She should have pressed him to explain. Even knowing he loved Danielle would be better than living with this dreadful uncertainty.

And yet she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question that would end it, for with the end of uncertainty might also come the end of hope.

She couldn’t forget, however, how easily Danielle Whitfield seemed to draw men’s love. That thought had been uppermost in Selena’s mind when she’d faced her duty and called at the mercantile to inquire how Danielle was faring. It concerned Selena to see her looking so pale. Danielle appeared subdued and saddened by her bereavement, yet she was facing her loss with a courage Selena couldn’t help but admire. So in spite of her jealous misgivings, Selena felt genuinely sorry when Danielle again refused any offer of help from her.

At least Danielle had Orrin Chandler’s support. Orrin’s affection for the beautiful widow was quite apparent, yet her behavior was always so circumspect that Selena couldn’t tell if Danielle returned his feelings. And she didn’t feel, under the circumstances, that she had the right to ask about it.

Orrin’s unhopeful pursuit of Danielle wasn’t the only relationship that concerned Selena, either. She had been worried that Lydia might somehow prevail on Tanner Parkington to elope, after all, and so she’d never relaxed her vigilance.

It seemed, however, that Parkington was too honorable and too intelligent to jeopardize his future by plunging them into a scandal, for he barely made time to speak to Lydia. Indeed, the young man was taking his responsibilities as factor so seriously that he was in grave danger of offending his love.

Selena had been in the hall outside the schoolroom when she overheard Felicity taunting Lydia about it.

“Well, that’s no reason to snap at me,” Felicity protested after she had just been called “a little beast” by her elder sister. “You’re just miffed because Tanner Parkington is paying more attention to our cotton fields than to you.”

“He is not!” Lydia retorted. “Tanner loves me.”

“I don’t know what you see in him, anyway. I think he’s boring.”

“No one asked your opinion.”

“Well, I’m never going to fall in love and allow some man to break
my
heart.”

“You needn’t be concerned that any man would be interested in breaking your heart. No doubt you’ll remain a spinster all your life.”

“Exactly! I don’t intend to marry,” Felicity announced airily. “I mean to manage my own plantation.”

“Girls can’t manage plantations.”

“They can so! Selena did. She told me.”

“Oh, why don’t you just go away, Felicity?”

Zoe spoke up then in her soft voice, reminding Felicity that she had lessons to finish, and so it wasn’t necessary for Selena to intervene in the dispute or even to mention that she had overheard it when she entered the schoolroom a few minutes later. Yet the knowledge that Lydia was discussing her affaire with Tanner openly and no longer keeping it a secret relieved Selena and gave her reason to hope that at least one problem at Montrose would eventually work itself out.