Since the Surrender (37 page)

“Thank you for arranging that. She isn’t a little old for the academy?

”

“Miss Endicott has made an exception for her. And if anyone can do something about Lucy, Miss Endicott can.”

They smiled together.

“Mr. Myrtleberry and MacGregor have disabled the museum wall so that it will no longer turn, and a proper painting hangs there now. No cows or angels in it, I might add. I’ve donated Colin’s gallows suit to the Montmorency and allowed MacGregor to take all the credit for the donation, which inspired the museum board to give him a great raise in pay, and there was a line out the door for the first time in the museum’s history to see it.”

“Aren’t you clever!”

He rewarded her wryness with a brisk nod. “Liam and Meggie are going to live in Pennyroyal Green. Seems there’s a job for Meggie at the Pig & Thistle, and Liam will be allowed to help out at the vicarage. I’ve brought them to London with me. Meggie wanted to fetch some things from their rooms, and Liam wanted to see my ship off.”

“And they all lived happily ever after.”

He tried to smile at that, but it didn’t quite happen. There followed a silence. Rosalind filled it by pouring a cup of tea. She made quite a ceremony of pouring a cup, in fact. Her hand didn’t shake at all, astonishingly. She offered it to him with politely raised eyebrows.

He gave a short, ironic shake of his head.

She didn’t want tea, either.

Absurdly, she settled it with a clink back into its saucer. Say something, she wanted to shout at him.

He wasn’t a man of words, however. He generally spoke with his body, whether he was using it in the service of love or war. She remembered how he’d told her precisely how he felt about her all those years ago, all without saying a word.

She ought to just say good-bye and have done with it, she thought. It would be easier; the result would be the same. A lingering farewell would make nothing better and give her no memories she wanted beyond the ones she already had of him. She stared at tired Captain Eversea, imagined his things all packed in a trunk in preparation for boarding The Courage.

She couldn’t imagine him growing older across the sea, away from her, where she wouldn’t witness it. It was unthinkable. To not see gray hair at his temples, to see more lines in his face, to see him. Doubtless he would go on being his stubborn, incomparable self, perhaps marry an exotic dark-skinned girl or at least take one for a mistress. They were wanton and free, those girls, she’d heard, at least the ones in the South Seas were, the ones the likes of Miles least the ones in the South Seas were, the ones the likes of Miles Redmond wrote about.

Suddenly she found herself reaching over to lay her hand against his cheek. She’d surprised herself. She felt a little foolish, like a blind woman attempting to get her bearings.

But all those years ago when she’d touched him just as tentatively, she’d known, sensed, the power of the longing and need thrumming beneath his formidable control, and had wanted to see if he was real, if he was vulnerable, if she could reach the man in there. He’d always seemed afraid of nothing at all. Though she now knew this wasn’t true. His need to do what was good and right had always given him courage, been stronger than fear. He was principled. He was astonishing.

And now, just as then, she marveled at the bristle of whisker over his cheek, the clean edge of his jaw, the warmth of his skin, the thump of his pulse.

I’m touching Charles Eversea.

He turned his face into her hand again.

She held him for a moment, then slowly took her hand away. And then she hesitated, feinted, and tentatively touched his eyebrow. He went perfectly still, surprised to have his eyebrow touched. She couldn’t blame him. She traced the arch of it, then followed the line of it to the bridge of his nose, then stopped and dropped her hand, along with her eyes, to her lap.

For God’s sake.

He made a small sound. Almost a laugh. Surprised. The truth was, she didn’t know which of his features she’d choose to touch if she could touch him just one last time. He should just leave and be done with it. Say good-bye politely. Quickly, cleanly, briskly, the way he did most things.

Stay, she sternly told her hands. They lay there quietly in her lap. Reacquainting themselves with the way life used to be before Chase reappeared. Before her hands had become so wanton and knowledgeable about the terrain of his body and gone about touching it freely.

She could speculate and feel later, much later. She wanted this over and done, now.

He lunged forward suddenly. She gave a start and reared back. Which made him smile. It was a faint one. But recognizable as a smile, nevertheless. Careful, she thought. You’re doing it more and more easily these days, Captain Eversea.

He leaned back again, indecisively.

Oh, God. They were comical, the two of them.

A second later he shifted forward again, a trifle more gracefully, decisively. And this time he gently scooped her quiet hands from her lap, as though they were a delicate bowl, and raised them to his lips.

He placed a kiss—a soft, reverent kiss—in one palm, then gently folded her fingers over it. In her other palm, he placed another kiss

—this one was hot, lingering, and answered by echoes of longing in her body.

And then he slowly closed her fingers over that one, too. And then he slowly closed her fingers over that one, too. And he slipped his hands from hers. Leaving his kisses burning inside her closed fists.

Two different ways to remember him.

She would not cry.

She smiled the sort of smile one manages when fighting tears. A crooked one. She couldn’t tell if her heart was breaking or was simply so full her body could no longer comfortably contain it. Regardless, it hurt. Everything inside her seemed to hurt. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, providing the other half of her smile.

And then his expression drifted into thoughtfulness, and then resolve.

He inhaled deeply, exhaled extravagantly, and stood, stood, pushing himself to his feet with his walking stick.

She pretended not to see the hand he reached down to help her to her feet. She was unwilling to offer her just-kissed hands up to him yet; she was hoarding that last feel of his lips. She stood on her own.

Wordlessly, he turned to collect his hat and coat from the chair where they had sat for a mere five minutes. He turned back to her, framed in the window, his features washed in the mid-afternoon light, his eyes brilliant and burning.

“Good—”

She didn’t let him say it. She couldn’t help it. She slid her hands around his neck. Soft, soft hair, heartbreakingly soft, brushed the back of her hand. A man this hard had no business having hair so soft. They would say good-bye today the way they’d said good-bye during the war, with a kiss, though they hadn’t known then that it would farewell.

And just like that day five years ago, somehow, their lips met. He crushed her into his body, because of course their bodies scoffed at the very idea that their minds had any say over whether or not they touched each other for the last time. This time the kiss was sophisticated. It began gently, softly, just a bump of lips, but it had purpose, direction. As though they had all the time in the world, rather than a few hours more. They knew each other now. So slowly they kissed. Deliberately prolonging the moment when their tongues would meet.

And she moaned when they did.

She pulled his face closer to her, and his hands slid down to her arse and pulled her closer. And she freed her hands from behind his neck and slid them down instead to the buttons on his shirt. She wanted Captain Eversea nude in her parlor.

He shook out of his coat, and her fingers worked open his buttons, and his broad chest was bare to her touch.

“Here,” he said.

His coat and his hat went back on the settee. His shirt came off, and then his trousers were lowered, but not his boots because neither of them wanted to waste any time pulling them off, and Chase was standing in her parlor completely nude but for a pair of boots and his dropped trousers.

his dropped trousers.

Her shaking hands had difficulty with the laces of her new dress, and then his hands were there to rescue her. Her clothes went in a disgraceful heap on the floor of her parlor. She gave them a little kick to clear them out of the way.

He settled back into a chair that creaked a bit, and she was a trifle concerned because he was so large.

“Come here.”

She straddled his thighs, which were thick and hairy, one of them battered and scarred, and her hands slid over them, memorizing him. She pressed herself against his thick cock, not yet astride; his hands savored her breasts, thumbing the nipples into peaks. When she gasped, her eyes closing to slits, her breathing coming short

—his hands on her breasts made her simply wild—he tipped her back in the hard cradle of his arms so he could bend his head and suck.

Hot bliss fanned through her body where his lips met her nipples. His hands folded her to him closely, and she could watch the light play over his face, see the burning wonder in those eyes, then revel when he closed them, swallowing, the cords of his throat taut with pleasure. He raised her up, and she sank down on him until he filled her deeply.

And slowly she rode him. Slowly, slowly. But they could not remain slow: they soon bucked against each other, and in the end it was an inelegant coupling, their bodies coming together swiftly and hard, rhythm beyond their control. He came with a thrash of his head and raw gasp of her name as Rosalind shuddered.

For a silent moment longer they held each other. His head tucked into the crook of her shoulder. His breath lulling against her sweatdampened skin. Tacitly, silently, they disentangled. And silently they got him dressed again, and she dressed herself from the heap of clothes on the carpet.

He looked down at her solemnly, impossible to read. She’d begun to suspect that Charles Eversea’s face revealed least when his mind was fullest.

He watched her, blue eyes glittering. His breath seemed to be held. She offered up a rueful ghost of a smile.

Chase went very still. He gave a short nod, a faint twist of a smile, and with a gentle, almost formal touch of his hat, he really did leave.

Well.

As usual, Chase seemed to take half the light and air of the room with him when he’d gone.

For some reason, she was careful to hold herself very still. She felt peculiarly hollow.

A few silent seconds later she realized it was because she was afraid to move.

Much like a person who has taken a great fall. And then she understood this was the moment of blessed numbness before the anguish set in. Before she understood just how injured she was. Just how complete and permanent the damage might be. Just how complete and permanent the damage might be. She felt oddly disconnected from her body, but some instinct made her raise her trembling arm up to her face: the smell of his skin was still on her skin.

She breathed in, and squeezed her eyes closed…ah, and here was the anguish. Along with the suffocating realization: it wasn’t Charles Eversea who was hard and unyielding. It wasn’t Chase who was afraid to be vulnerable.

She was.

She’d been the one unable to surrender to the possibility of love, and he’d known it. He protected himself from hurt even as he’d loved her in every way he knew how: with a patience with her that surely must have killed him, in his insight, in his protection, in his tenderness and passion, in his determination to see that she had what she wanted, that she was safe, that she was happy. And she’d been so terrified of surrendering to the enormity of how she felt, so afraid was she of losing him yet again, so afraid of loss itself that she’d held herself carefully away from him for so long, even as she made love to his body. Afraid of a heartbreak that would surely kill her, since it would of course be equal to the magnitude of how much she loved him.

Because, oh God, she loved him.

She’d likely loved him from the moment she laid eyes on him five years ago.

So afraid that, like an ass, she’d let him go.

And like an ass, he’d gone.

That, she decided, in a sudden fury, was taking the idea of ensuring that she had what she wanted too far.

He still wanted her, and he’d left anyway.

And as she was resourceful, and as this time she was determined to get what she wanted, she bolted for the door and flung it open. Only to run smack into the wall that was Chase Eversea’s chest.

“Rosalind.”

He looked very stern, very determined. He placed one not entirely gentle hand flat on her sternum to keep her from sending them both toppling down her steps. And then he eased her back into the house, his eyes never leaving hers.

Her heart was clanging like the bells of St. Mary Le Bow inside her chest, and surely he must have felt it through his palm. They stared at each. His eyes seemed particularly brilliant, which was when she noticed just how pale he was.

Captain Eversea was nervous.

He planted his feet apart in a stance that led her to believe he was about to give a speech.

She folded her hands in front of her and waited, biting her tongue. She had one of her own prepared, just in case.

“Rosalind…” his voice was quite steady. “I was wrong when I said what I do best is serving my country. I was wrong when I said it’s what I was made for. I wasn’t far wrong, of course, but I was wrong. What I was made for…” and here he stopped and took in a long, fortifying breath. And then he cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone husky. “What I’ve learned is that what I was made for is to love and protect. Specifically, I was made to love and protect you.”

He waited. She could not speak over the clanging of her heart, but something in her face must have encouraged him to continue.

“I know you wanted a chance to determine what you want. But what I want is this: I want to be wherever you are. Whatever that means. Wherever that might be. So if you want me, I will stay. For as long as you want me. However you want me. Because…” He sighed. “…I love you.”