The Light in the Darkness (26 page)

“Good evening, Grey,” she said coolly, as though her husband exploded into her chamber with a deadly look of rage on his features every evening. She took a deep, calming breath and hoped desperately he could not see the fear she felt.

Grey stopped just inches from her and stared down at her wordlessly, his silver eyes icy with fury. Feeling herself to be at a disadvantage, she quickly stood, but he still towered over her. Staring at his satin-clad shoulder, she felt very small and very helpless.

“Do you need something?” she asked brightly, struggling to hide her cowardice. She had hoped against hope that Grey would not find out about the rumor she had started tonight, but all too evidently he had.

Grey glared at her a moment longer, then crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the dark blue coverlet on the mahogany bed. In a low voice which nonetheless shook with rage, he said, “I found myself to be the recipient of a great many peculiar looks this evening. Perhaps you can tell me why.”

Jennifer lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps our guests were curious as to why you chose to humiliate both your wife and your mistress publicly. I know
I
was.”

“It was an excessively dull rout.”

“And that justified embarrassing us in such a fashion?”

Grey jumped to his feet and advanced on her angrily. “How did you dare spread that groundless rumor about me?”

Jennifer suppressed the urge to back up against the wall. She stood her ground and said haughtily, “Melissa told me in the garden that she regretted ever becoming your mistress. We could only think of one way to extricate her from the situation.”

“And to humiliate me in the process!”

“I thought you did not care what your neighbors thought,” Jennifer snapped, “Or is it that you are concerned only with what your
female
neighbors think?”

Unexpectedly Grey’s taut features relaxed into a grin. With absolute confidence, he retorted, “Our female neighbors will not believe that absurd story.”

“Then you have nothing to be angry about, do you?”

Her dark eyes were glinting with humor now, and Grey stared at her in surprise. The little minx looked unbearably pleased with herself!

“Perhaps,” he admitted a little reluctantly, warmed more than he cared to admit by her amusement, “I did deserve to be publicly humiliated for my behavior.”

“You deserved to be publicly
flogged
,” Jennifer told him, but she was unable to entirely suppress her smile.

“Madam,” Grey said with mock severity, “have a care. The least you could do is accept my apology.”

“What apology?”

“I just said—” Grey paused and mentally reviewed their conversation. He grinned sheepishly. “Well, perhaps you’re right. I had intended to apologize, at any rate. But admitting that I should have been humiliated is as close as I can come to an apology. To be honest, I believe it’s been some time since I’ve apologized for my actions. To anyone.”

“No doubt,” Jennifer said dryly, “your behavior is ordinarily so far above reproach that you have fallen out of the habit.”

Grey suddenly burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he had to sit down on the bed. Jennifer wondered if he was perhaps having some sort of fit. She had never seen him laugh so heartily before.

“Jennifer,” he said at last, wiping his watering eyes, “have I told you lately how amazing you are?” He looked up to see her bewildered expression. “No, I imagine I’ve never told you such a thing at all. I’m a fool, Jennifer. To have humiliated you the way I did tonight—it’s a wonder you’ll speak to me at all. And I’ve just realized what a tragedy it would be if I didn’t have you to talk to sometimes.”

Jennifer realized that he had risen from the bed and was walking slowly toward her, like a wolf stalking its prey. This time, the expression in his eyes did cause her to take a step backward. “What—what are you doing?” she said in a gasp as she found herself against the wall, pinned there by two strong arms and a long, muscular body.

“Why, what do you think, Jennifer?” Grey’s response was little more than a whisper. “I’m apologizing to you, my dear.”

Before Jennifer had time to do more than take a desperate gulp of air, his lips had found hers. He kissed her, not with the flaring passion of their last encounter, but gently, as though she were something very rare and delicate. Dreamily she felt his arms slide around her waist, and her arms encircled his shoulders in an instinctive response. Her lips parted, her tongue sought his, and she felt in his response a shadow of the passion she knew he was capable of. Yearning to feel that passion directed at herself—not at Diana—she pressed her body against his. Even through the layers of fabric that separated them she could feel his violent reaction. And his kiss deepened, forcing her head backward as he drank his fill of her.

At last he pulled his mouth away from hers, but he did not release his hold on her. She was so damned beautiful, still clad in her gorgeous ball gown but with her dark gold hair tumbling in wanton abandon about her shoulders and down to her waist, that he wanted to hold her against him like this forever. She pressed her face into his shoulder as his arms tightened around her slender waist. “Christ!” he swore under his breath. “Jennifer, don’t you know you’re playing with fire?”

Jennifer lifted her head and looked deep into his stormy gray eyes. What she saw there made her want to weep with joy. She had affected this cold, angry man. She, and she alone, had made him respond. For the brief moments that he had held her in his arms and kissed her, there had been no ghosts and no other women standing between them. It was written clearly in his face. He wanted
her
, and only her.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered gently.

Greys arms dropped from her waist. “You should be,” he said coldly, and left the chamber. Jennifer stared after him as the door to her chamber slammed shut and the sound of his footsteps disappeared down the stairs.

He was going, she realized bleakly, to his study. To be with Diana.

J
ennifer awakened the next morning to the sound of hooves on the road outside. Jumping from the damask-draped bed, she ran to the window and peered through the wooden slats of the Venetian blinds just in time to see Grey’s bay stallion disappearing behind the trees. She frowned slightly. Grey did love to ride—it was really the only activity he had any enthusiasm for, except drinking—but rarely did he ride so early in the day, and generally he waited for her to join him.

Still frowning, Jennifer summoned the young black girl who served as her maid. Once hooked into a topaz-colored woolen gown, she ran from her chamber and down the stairs in a most unladlylike fashion.

Catherine was still eating breakfast in the dining chamber when Jennifer appeared. Seating herself at the table, Jennifer nodded good morning to her. “Has Grey gone somewhere?” she inquired, trying to sound casual, as though the answer was really of no interest to her whatsoever.

Catherine lifted her eyebrows in her characteristic gesture of surprise. “Didn’t he tell you? He’s gone to Williamsburg. He thought he’d be gone a few days.”

“Williamsburg?” Jennifer repeated. “I thought he rarely left Greyhaven.”

The older woman shrugged. “True. But he does go to Williamsburg sometimes, to—”

“To do what?”

“Never mind,” Catherine said faintly.

“Catherine” Jennifer said in annoyance. “What does he do when he is in Williamsburg?”

It was a measure of how far their relationship had progressed that Jennifer should dare to demand an explanation. When she had first arrived here she would not have dared to even ask. But she no longer felt herself to be Catherine’s inferior. They were friends. Catherine swallowed and looked across the table at her, clearly embarrassed.

“Grey usually says he’s, er, going to visit friends.”

“Oh,” Jennifer said in relief. “Is that all?”

“Jennifer …” Catherine sighed. “Grey doesn’t have any friends. Not in Williamsburg, at any rate.”

Jennifer looked at her blankly, then suddenly went scarlet. “Do you mean to tell me—”

“Grey goes to Williamsburg when he’s grown tired of his mistress,” Catherine clarified bluntly, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.

Thanks to her actions last night, Grey no longer had a mistress, and Jennifer had assumed that state of things would continue. But evidently Grey did not agree. The memory of Grey’s mouth against hers flashed into her mind, and she realized suddenly that he had not gone to Williamsburg because he was bored. He had run away. She knew as surely as she knew her own name that their kiss had affected him, despite the cold way he had left the chamber. That kiss had meant something to him. She
knew.

And she knew, too, that Grey’s first response to emotions of any kind was always to run away.

“Damnation,” she said out loud. “He is a fool.”

Catherine looked at her strangely. She had rarely heard Jennifer express disapproval of anyone before, let alone utter a curse. “I’ll admit,” she said slowly, wondering exactly why Grey’s departure should provoke such a strong response, “that he should have told you that he was leaving—”

“He should never have gone,” Jennifer said sharply.

The chestnut eyebrows lifted, then Catherine suddenly grinned. “I should think you’d be glad to be rid of his sulky presence for a few days.”

“Are you suggesting that I should be glad that my husband finds me so unsuitable that he seeks—
friendship
elsewhere?” Jennifer demanded icily.

“You’ve never been overly concerned by his ‘friendship’ with Melissa,” Catherine pointed out, her smile fading somewhat as she realized that Jennifer was genuinely, and uncharacteristically, angry. After the way Grey had humiliated her last night—and after Jennifer had humiliated him in return—she could not imagine why Jennifer was not happy to see him leave. At times even she herself was glad to see the back of her brother’s heels for a few days. Sisterly love had its limits, which Grey pushed all too frequently.

“That was—” Jennifer pushed the porcelain plate piled with ham and eggs away and stood up, stalking restlessly to the window. Staring out at the green expanse of lawn, she went on, “Oh, I don’t know. That seemed to be established somehow. And I don’t think Melissa will be a problem anymore, for we worked out our differences last night. And now, just as soon as I get rid of her, what does Grey do but—oh, I could just kill him!”

This outburst was so unlike placid, peaceful Jennifer that Catherine gaped at her for a few minutes before any words could emerge. “Jennifer! Are you saying that you want a
real
marriage with him?”

Jennifer glanced over her shoulder in annoyance, her green eyes dark with anger. “Why not? Is there something I should know? Does my husband have the French pox?”

“I certainly hope not! But—but Grey is hardly the most approachable—”

“Other women seem to find him approachable enough,” Jennifer said irritably. “I’m beginning to think that every woman in the colony has shared his bed. Every woman except me, that is. And I am getting bloody tired of it!”

Alarmed by her sister-in-law’s vehement tone, Catherine tried to calm her. “Jen,” she said evenly, “there’s nothing
you can do about it, so you may as well resign yourself to the facts. You know that all husbands seek out, well, companionship. Um, variety. Whatever it is that men want just can’t be fulfilled by one woman. A wife’s first duty is to provide heirs and secondly, to ignore any little—”

“Grey won’t let me fulfill the first duty,” Jennifer interrupted scathingly, “so I don’t see why I should have to fulfill the second. Why should I stand idly by and watch him—”

“I’m not suggesting that you watch him!” Catherine said, and unexpectedly her shoulders began to rock with laughter. “I’m sure whatever he plans to do in Williamsburg he plans to do in private.”

Jennifer turned to face her, and Catherine saw a faint smile appear on her lips. “You’re probably right,” she agreed. “Grey intends to have his fun privately. I doubt he’d enjoy an audience at all.”

Hearing the mischievous tone in the other’s voice, Catherine suddenly choked in horror. “Jennifer, I didn’t mean—oh, Jen, you wouldn’t!”

Jennifer’s smile widened, and she looked positively feline, like a cat about to catch a particularly tasty bird. “Grey would be furious if I were to follow him to Williamsburg,” she mused.

“He would be outraged,” Catherine agreed readily. “He would probably kill you.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Jennifer said sweetly. “He was very angry last night, and he didn’t kill me. In fact, he kissed me.”

Catherines gray eyes went wide. “He kissed you?”

Jennifer nodded.

“Grey kissed you? My brother? Your husband? The same Grey who sulks in the study all day, every day?
That
Grey kissed you?”

“It may be hard to believe, but it’s true. Grey kissed me. And I liked it. I would like to encourage more behavior of that sort in the future. But it’s a certainty that Grey won’t be kissing me if he’s already kissing someone else. Which leaves me with only one alternative—to make certain he doesn’t get involved with another woman.”

“But Jennifer—” Catherine paused, trying frantically to formulate some sort of objection. “He’ll most likely be frequenting his usual haunts, where the gentlemen play at dice and drink ale together. You can’t walk into a chamber full of men. You
can’t
It would be scandalous.”

“I have a plan.”

“But—” Catherine began again, then stopped at the stubborn look on her friend’s face. “Never mind,” she said with resignation. “If you’re that determined to go, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

Jennifer smiled. “Then let’s get packed.”

Catherine shot her a look of absolute horror and stood up. “Are you suggesting that I should go with you?”

“Of course,” Jennifer said reasonably. “I’d get lost if I were to go by myself. Besides, it would be dangerous to go alone.”

“No more dangerous than it would be for two women alone!”

“We’ll take slaves. Please, Catherine, I don’t want to go without you.”