Patricia Potter (49 page)

“It was a stupid spur-of-the-moment thing I’d agreed to after I’d just met you,” he said. “We were accustomed to betting on everything. We decided to call it off almost immediately, but Clay went ahead with … with the dinner.”

Lauren felt a sense of relief. She hadn’t realized until now how much that bet still bothered her. The relief must have reflected in her face because he halted what she was going to say with a kiss so gentle, her heart sang with the promise of it.

“I didn’t realize,” he said very slowly afterward, as if he were explaining it to both of them, “that I was judging you for something I, too, was guilty of. I didn’t trust you enough to tell you what I suspected, to ask you why. I put it all on your head, and I almost lost you.”

Lauren started to protest, to say that everything was her fault, but he put his fingers to her lips and hushed her. “I haven’t known how to trust for a very long time, Lauren, but I’m learning. Be patient with me.”

Adrian’s voice was low and quiet and pleading in a way Lauren had never heard before. In so many ways, he had trusted her, she mused, so much more than she’d allowed herself to trust him.

Trust. Such a precious commodity. It shouldn’t be a fragile thing, but they had strengthened it today, and she vowed to herself there would never be secrets between them again.

Yet there was one more secret, she admitted silently, one more obstacle between them: Rhys Redding.

With that sensitivity he seemed to have about her, he knew what she was about to say, and how painful it would be. He stopped her words again. “If I’d had any doubts about what an ass I’d been, Redding made it painfully clear,” he said with a strange smile. “He told me about the wager … said of all the ladies he’d ever met, you were the only real one.”

Lauren’s eyes widened.

“He also said I didn’t deserve you, and speculated that his ‘gentle ways’ might eventually win you.” He said the words in a teasing voice, but there was a question in them nonetheless, an uncertainty that made her ache.

Her hands tightened on his, and she said the words he’d been waiting a very long time to hear: “I love you, Adrian. I love you so much I hurt with it …” Her voice trailed off, the truth of her words evident in the raw, ragged sound of them.

Adrian’s hand stroked her face, touching the comers of her eyes where tears were now hovering. Tears of so many emotions. Grief. Regret. Hope. Happiness. His heart, which piece by piece had been stolen by her, became completely Lauren’s.

“I tried to come after you in London,” he said, wanting her to know. “But you had left.”

She looked at him wonderingly. “I was told you had gone. I was coming after you. I was so afraid I had lost you … I had to explain … And then you weren’t here …”

“Redding and I had a … rather painful encounter,” Adrian continued, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “We both ended up somewhat the worse for it. I was unconscious for two days, and his arm was broken.” He grinned at Lauren’s startled, horrified expression.

“He took care of me, much to the surprise of both of us, I think, and when I finally regained my senses, I went after you only to find you gone. Rhys and I entered a … partnership of sorts … to find you.”

“Rhys?” Her shock was obvious.

“I gave him the ship I bought as partial payment for Ridgely, and in turn he gave me a free ride to Nassau.”

It was too much for Lauren to comprehend. She remembered Rhys lying on the street, the open antipathy of the two men, even at the dance. “Rhys is here?”

“He’s going to run the blockade … Most of my crew’s here, and I’m retiring, so he’ll have the best. He says he enjoys a good game. I
did
try to warn him,” Adrian added.

Lauren had to smile. He looked well satisfied with himself, like a boy who had talked an unwary friend into doing a despised chore by intriguing him with the joys of it.

“You didn’t,” she accused, but there was laughter in her eyes.

He only smiled. “Rhys Redding is entirely capable of taking care of himself,” he said. “Now you, on the other hand …”

She looked up at him, slightly insulted.

“… need a husband,” he continued smoothly.

Her eyes grew even larger, and her mouth pursed too irresistibly to ignore. His lips met hers perfectly, his tongue pleading his case quite well. When he completed his delightful task, he paused long enough for her answer.

“Must I be ‘m’lady’?” she asked cautiously.

“My lady,” he replied, nibbling her ear.

“And can I play cards and break people out of jail?”

“Perfectly normal behavior for a Cabot,” he said, grinning. “After all, you don’t have ah ill-mannered monkey.”

“I do now,” she said, her eyes shining as she gave her hand, her heart, and her soul to Adrian.

And so engrossed were they in each other that neither one was aware of a wise little face beaming from a tree.

EPILOGUE

“The war’s over.”

Clad in a sturdy cotton shirt and tight breeches, Adrian read the letter that had just arrived.

He had ridden in from the fields for his noon meal, and his shirt was plastered against his skin despite the coolness of May in England.

He hadn’t spared himself, and the fields were now showing the result of seemingly endless work. Ridgely had lost tenants during years of mismanagement. They were short-handed. Slowly over the past eighteen months, Adrian had lured good workers, and the estate was finally showing signs of prospering. Money remained tight; almost everything Adrian had earned had gone into the repurchase of his ancestral lands, and bankers did not yet trust the Cabot name again. But slowly they were producing order out of chaos, and every improvement was a major victory.

And they were doing it together.

He continued to read Sir Giles’s letter. “No news of Rhys,” he said, “but I think we would have heard if anything had happened to him. We know he got away from the Yanks. Damned if I know how—he didn’t have Lauren.”

Lauren giggled. “A wager with an unwary guard, perhaps.” She moved over on the bench in the garden where she had waited for him. She loved this place, with its profusion of roses.

The house was now bright, sunlight streaming through the curtains she herself had made with the help of one of the two servants who remained. And Socrates was a very contented monkey. There were enough trees to keep him in leaves and bark forever, and he had dozens of rooms to explore. The cantankerous side of his nature was well satisfied in making life miserable for Mary the housekeeper and Simon the butler.

Lauren felt the loving pressure of Adrian’s hand on hers, and the quiet joy his presence always brought her. Still, she couldn’t escape a certain melancholy. The war was over, but its impact would last for generations. She thought of Melissa and Randall; of Clay, who had finally been captured on one of the last runs into Wilmington; of the Confederate captain she had met in Virginia—was he still alive? Finally she thought of Mr. Phillips, whose manipulations would now come to an end.

The war was finally over for some—including Lauren, on whose behalf Jeremy had interceded with Mr. Phillips, who had agreed to drop all charges against her. It would never be over for others. Lauren thought again of Melissa, whose diary she had recently shared with Adrian. One day, she knew, she would send it to Melissa’s family. They should know the agony she had suffered because of her love for Randall.

She smiled as Adrian put his hand on her belly, his mouth creasing into satisfaction as he felt a mighty kick.

It had to be a boy, with that kind of power.

Adrian, however, said no one but a daughter of hers could have that determined a will.

She looked at his face, the strong bronzed face that she loved more than life itself, and watched the slow, lazy smile break the solemn line of his lips. His eyes shone with accomplishment, his laughter with happiness.

She loved him more each day.

She still thought of her dead twin. Adrian had already suggested that their child, if a son, be named for Larry. Her brother would like that, she knew. And he would understand. He had always understood love.

She looked up at the blue sky. Laurence, her father said, had been like the first bright glow of the morning sun, and Lauren like the gentle twilight of evening.

Lauren would always look for that first bright glow, but Adrian had filled her days with another kind of brilliance, one that allowed sweet memories along with tumultuous storms and the lightning that had raged between them from the beginning.

Adrian’s lips caught hers in understanding, and that lightning flashed anew. Lauren put her hand in his, and together they disappeared inside the manor, both forgetting the letter that had closed a chapter in their lives and allowed them to start a new one, unfettered by the past.