The Light in the Darkness (38 page)

When he had gone, Jennifer reached out and placed a trembling hand on her husband’s arm. “Grey,” she began.

Grey yanked his arm away as if she had burned him, sitting up. “So,” he said contemptuously. “You met Carey in the forest today, did you? When you invited me to your bed, did it somehow slip your mind that you’d already invited your lover?”

“He isn’t my lover!” Jennifer protested heatedly as she sat up, facing him.

“Oh, come now, my dear,” Grey said in a silky voice. The flame was gone, replaced by glacial ice. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe that your bed was empty last night. A woman with such a
passionate
nature could hardly be expected to sleep alone, could she? And it’s evident you’ve known Carey for a long time—and that you have been meeting him for trysts for all those years.”

Jennifer stared at him as though he were mad. “You know I was a virgin when we married!” she objected hotly.

“Indeed you were,” Grey agreed, “but there are other ways a woman can please a man. I would never settle for less than all of you—but I suspect that milksop might.”

He stared at her, seeing her face in shadow, surrounded by the moonlit halo of her hair. Her naked body was slim and shapely, and he thought that she looked like an angel—a fallen one, perhaps.

Even through his anger, he could feel his body responding, aching, his pulse leaping at the sight of her lithe figure, and he bit back a curse. She was a witch, not an angel. Only a witch could make his body ache like this. Only a witch could make him forget his fury in the power of a more elemental emotion.

His hand reached out to caress her cheek, stroking her high cheekbones. Unable to see his face in the shadows, Jennifer could not discern what was going through his mind. She was bewildered and frightened by his quicksilver changes in mood, but she resisted the urge to pull away.

It seemed to her that the world stood between them.
Only their passion bound them together. Perhaps, if she made love to him, if she demonstrated once again just how much he meant to her, he would listen to her explanations.

And then she gasped as he caught her in an embrace, and savagely covered her mouth with his own.

Jennifer’s soft whimper of protest was smothered by the crushing weight of his lips. This kiss was nothing like the ones they had shared earlier in the evening. It was bruising and punishing. In the long habit of years, Jennifer did nothing to protect herself despite her fear, only remained quiet and passive. But then she yanked herself away from him in sudden hurt and anger.

“What’s wrong,
Jenny
?” Grey jeered. She did not fail to notice the mocking use of her old name. “Don’t you like my kisses as well as you like O’Neill’s?”

Jennifer said nothing, only ground her teeth together in anger. She knew him well enough to hear the agonized hurt he was concealing beneath his hostile tone, and she did not want to hurt him further. He had every reason to be angry, she thought, for what conclusions could he have been expected to draw from Carey’s words? But if only he was not so easily hurt! He seemed so powerful, so strong, and yet he was so vulnerable.…

“Answer me,” Grey growled. “Does Carey kiss better than I do? You seemed to like my kisses earlier.”

“Earlier it was different,” Jennifer whispered, feeling horribly exposed as her nipples went rigid in the cool air. She knew the moonlight shimmered on every curve of her body, producing an effect more erotic than simple nudity could ever be. And she became terribly ashamed and horribly wounded.

“Ah, yes,” he murmured, “Because earlier I did not know of your affections for another man. I thought that you were what you pretended to be—a woman in love with her husband. The more fool I!”

“That is exactly what I am!” Jennifer retorted proudly, wishing that a cloud would cover the brilliant sphere of the moon to shield her from his hungry gaze. “A woman in love
with her husband.” And—” She hesitated, then finished quietly, “And I do love you, Edward.”

She could not see his eyes, for his eyelids were lowered as his gaze raked over her body. “Indeed,” he said mockingly, but she heard the pain in his voice. The raw anguish of it tore at her heart like broken glass. “You have a curious way of showing it, mistress. Bedding another man—”

“I did not share Carey O’Neill’s bed,” Jennifer interrupted, her voice rising in desperation. “And
he
kissed
me
!”

Grey broke from the bed and Jennifer abruptly. He had had enough. His heart was broken and he needed to escape.

And having tried, judged, and condemned her without another word, he gathered his clothes and strode from the chamber wordlessly, leaving Jennifer humiliated and angry and shockingly hurt.

She would have been less furious had she known that Grey, like herself, ached with unfulfilled passion. But she could not know that. All she knew as she sobbed into the pillow was that Grey did not believe that she loved him.

And he did not love her.

Grey lay sleepless in his oak-paneled chamber. He simply could not believe the depths of Jennifer’s perfidy. She had made love to him with all the passion and gentle affection a man could desire; she had made him happier than he had been in many long years; and then she had lain awake, waiting for her lover.

He remembered her soft voice whispering “I love you” in the darkness, and the memory struck him painfully, like a whip across his back. It was unbearable that the light in the darkness should be so suddenly extinguished. It was unbearable that the fragile bond that had formed between them, anchoring him to reality, should be snapped so suddenly, leaving him adrift on his dreams.

His dreams were simply not enough to sustain him anymore. He knew that now. Once upon a time they had been enough. He had been perversely content to live in misery;
he had even found his happiness in the reliving of his Sorrow—until Jennifer’s arrival. Damn her!

For a few moments he entertained the thought that if Jennifer had sought affection elsewhere, he might have borne at least part of the blame, morose and distant as he had been. But the thought that he himself was responsible for the intolerable situation he now found himself trapped in was too painful.

After a long, lonely night spent tossing and turning, when the first dim golden rays of sunshine drifted into his chamber, reminding him inevitably of her long silken hair, he admitted that sleep was going to elude him. Angrily he threw on clothing, utterly careless of his appearance, and stalked to the stables, where he demanded that the bay stallion be saddled. The dangerous expression on his face sent slaves hurrying to obey.

Moments later, he and the thoroughbred were galloping headlong through the woods. For the time being, he forgot about justice, forgot about going to Williamsburg. No, he wanted to ride merely so he could be alone. He could not bear to look at her face over the breakfast table. Even the memory of her beauty was acid eating into his heart.

More dreams, he thought bitterly, urging the great stallion to an even more reckless pace. But the memories of the previous night could not be left behind so easily.

“Where the hell is my wife?”

Catherine resisted the very strong urge to cringe before the fury in Grey’s voice. There was something in his face other than his usual bad temper that frightened her, something coldly vindictive and brutally savage. Only with difficulty did she keep her voice level.

“I believe she went out to sit by the river this morning,” she said evenly, adding, “She seemed—upset.”

Grey scowled so blackly at this comment that she added
hastily, “Did you need to see her? I can send one of the slaves down for her if you wish.”

Grey did want to see her, to ask her why she had not found him to be enough, to ask her why she had made love to him as if she cared for him … to beg her for explanations. After everything they had shared last night, why had he not been enough for her? But he shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said. “No, I have something else to do.” And turning he made his way up the staircase. In his wife’s chamber, he slammed the door behind him and walked slowly across to the desk.

His rage of the night before had blinded him to all logic. But this morning, as he rode, he had calmed down enough to think rationally. And something had been puzzling him. He knew that she had been a virgin when he had married her. Carey had implied they had kissed in the woods, but perhaps they had not shared any real intimacies.

Then again, for all he knew Carey had been coming to Williamsburg and meeting Jennifer somewhere on the grounds of the plantation. If that was the case, he must have written her notes, in order to arrange their trysts, and perhaps Jennifer had been foolish enough to save them. Slamming the door of her desk down, he began yanking letters from the pigeonholes.

Most of the letters were written in his own bold hand. Love letters of his youth, from himself to Diana. These he replaced carefully, with all the reverence he had felt for his dead wife. She had never disappointed him like this. A few were in Dianas graceful handwriting—unfinished letters to him.

Finally, after some minutes of searching, he found a letter written in a faltering, uneven hand. Jennifer’s writing, of course. And the blotchy, awkward shape of the letters suggested it had been written quite some time ago. The date at the top confirmed this suspicion. He seized it, certain that this was the clue he sought.

But to his surprise, the letter was addressed to himself.

“My dearest Edward,” it began:

“I wish I cud” (this had been scratched through and replaced with “cood”) “begin to tell you ov my lov. You canot begin to gess wot you mean to me, and I grately fear that if you did, you woud not care.”

Grey scowled, puzzled as he deciphered the appallingly bad handwriting. Why in the world had she addressed him as Edward in the letter? It had taken her many months to work up the courage merely to address him as Grey. Never had she called him by his given name until last night.

And had she really loved him so long ago? He remembered something she had said last night. “I’ve loved you longer than you would believe,” she had whispered in his ear. He had not thought she meant it so sincerely. How the hell could she have loved him, self-centered and surly bastard that he had been?

The ice in his heart began slowly to melt.

After a few more flattering inanities, the letter ended midsentence. Perhaps the writer had found her limited vocabulary inadequate to express her feelings. But in another pigeonhole he found a second letter, written in a hand which, if not precisely graceful, was at least legible. He read:

“Beloved Edward,

“It breaks my heart when you scowl at me as you did today. Sometimes, when your face is cold and shuttered, I feel I cannot bear to remain in your presence. Sometimes I wish I could run from Greyhaven and never look back. But oh, Edward, how I would miss you. Curious, isn’t it, how my love for you frightens me so?”

Grey read on, fascinated by the glimpse into her heart that her words provided. She had painted a portrait of him with her words, a portrait at once unflattering and tender. She spoke of his soul, the “true Edward” that she was in love with, and closed the note by writing sadly that she wished the sentiments enclosed in the desk had been directed at her rather than at Diana.

When he had read the note twice through, he leaned back and stared blankly into space. This at least explained
why Jennifer loved him—she had read his letters to Diana, and they had touched her somehow. It seemed that she had fallen in love with the man he had been eight years before. Moreover, she seemed to believe that man still existed.

Strangely, he felt flattered, rather than violated, by the knowledge that she had struggled, barely literate as she had been, to read the letters in the desk in an effort to know him better. But having read her note to him, it was difficult to believe that she had sought a lover elsewhere. Whatever else she was, she was no liar. She had told him she loved him, and she had meant it sincerely. Her letter was proof of that.

Could he have been wrong?

It occurred to him belatedly that Carey might have been in pursuit of her. Perhaps he had asked her to be his mistress and she had declined. Even if she had bedded Carey, as the scene in her chamber last night had convinced him, perhaps it was not entirely her fault. It could be that she had been so lonely that she had filled the void in her life as best she could, much as Grey himself had done. Perhaps the pain of unrequited love had driven her to seek comfort elsewhere.

Slowly he was coming to see her side of the situation, and he admitted unhappily that he had not been entirely fair.

There were other letters, scattered here and there throughout the pigeonholes, the hopeless letters of a woman in love with a man who had long ago ceased to be lovable. Reading through them, Grey felt his throat tighten in sympathy at her obvious pain and grief.

But still he found no letters from Carey. Puzzled, and more than half ready to concede she had never bedded anyone but himself, he sat back and wondered: where would she have hidden letters from a lover?

His eyes fell upon the burled walnut prospect door in the center of the desk.
Of course! Any
letters she wanted to hide would be concealed behind that door. After a brief search, he found the key on the twilight and opened the door.

What he found there stunned and lacerated him.

Jennifer found him there, half an hour later, sobbing.

“Edward,” she whispered, frightened by his desperate tears and at a loss to know what could have caused him such anguish. “What is wrong?”

Her husband lifted his head, and what she saw in his face frightened her more. He was not drunk. These were the tears of a sober man whose world has been ripped asunder.

“Tell me,” he grated, red-rimmed eyes staring into hers.

“Did you know?”

“Know what?” Jennifer began in honest puzzlement, and then she saw the open prospect door and the letters spread across the desk, and she understood. Grey had found the letters another man had written Diana. The letters that proved all too clearly that she had made love to another man. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “I knew I should have burned those letters. Edward, I’m so sorry.”