The Runaway McBride (24 page)

She wasn’t going to look back. She wasn’t going to look ahead. Her mother had written much the same thing in her memoirs. All anyone could count on was the present moment.

Brave words, but she couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering as reaction to the nightmare tightened its grip on her once more. Then there was Robert Danvers. Would she ever forget the sight of his bleached complexion when the policeman held up his lantern so that she could identify the body? What if it had been James’s face she saw? How could she bear it?

As another shudder ran over her, she burrowed closer to his warmth. He groaned and pushed himself off the bed. She sat up and reached for him, but he took a step back and combed his fingers through his hair.

“Don’t you know anything about men, Faith?” he demanded harshly. “I can’t stay in bed with you like this. I’m desperate to make love with you.”

The intensity of his words made her heart begin to thud in slow, painful strokes. “You promised to stay with me.”

He muttered an oath. “You know what will happen if I stay.”

She realized with a shock that that was exactly what she wanted. The thought circled in her mind and sank into the deepest reaches of her psyche.

He was looking at her as though his life depended on her next words. A slow smile warmed her lips. Holding out her hand, she said, “Well, I can’t say I haven’t been warned.”

They dispensed with their clothes as though they were on fire, then rolled together on the bed. The words they spoke were hardly coherent, but they didn’t need words. They didn’t need gentleness or tenderness or a practiced finesse. They needed to feel the pulse of life quickening inside them. They needed to keep the shadows at bay. Their coming together was swift and fierce and profound. At the end, she felt a quick, tearing sensation, but she was too steeped in wonder to care. She cried out on a crest of shattering pleasure and slowly collapsed against him.

When James had recovered his breath, he rose on one elbow and looked down at Faith. “My God!” he said. “What was I thinking? Did I hurt you?” He answered himself testily, “Of course I hurt you. This was your first time.”

Faith was still trying to catch her breath. On a shaken laugh, she wheezed out, “Did you hurt me? I didn’t have time to think about it. You came at me like a rampaging bull.”

“And you came at me like a runaway train.”

The picture that formed in her mind pleased her enormously. It made her feel that she had left Miss McBride, schoolteacher, moping on the railway platform, while she had taken off, at full speed, on an adventurous journey.

“I
was
like a runaway train, wasn’t I? ”

She couldn’t hold the image. A blessed inertia was stealing over her, making rational thought impossible. With a little sigh, she closed her eyes and nestled closer to James.

He heard the smugness in her voice and heaved a sigh of relief. He’d never considered himself the world’s greatest lover, but he’d never sunk to the level of a callow youth since . . . well . . . since he was a callow youth. It had never occurred to him to go slow with her and initiate her with all the skill of which he was capable. He’d been gripped by a confusion of emotions that clouded his thinking. He’d felt helpless to keep her safe against an enemy he did not know, and he’d tried, in some obscurely primitive way, to convince himself that nothing could touch her without going through him first.

If only it could be that easy.

He felt the familiar fear tighten his throat. He was only a mortal man, and he might be no match for the forces he sensed were ranged against them. Where was the enemy? Who?

He was thinking clearly now, and as each thought turned in his mind, he examined it closely. He didn’t understand how Robert Danvers fitted into the puzzle, but all his instincts told him that Danvers was a key player. He thought of the thugs who had attacked Faith right after she was given her mother’s diary by Lady Cowdray. Alastair Dobbin also needed to be explained. Why had Faith gone off with him, on her own, in a darkened garden, when there had already been one attack on her? What was so important that she would take such a risk?

There were other things that were equally pressing, such as, where did Faith and he go from here? Now it was his turn to be smug. Faith wasn’t a high flyer. She wasn’t cut out for an affair or to be a man’s mistress. And she wouldn’t have given herself to him unless she was committed. They’d had their problems in the past, but compared to the danger they faced now, those problems seemed trivial.

They had to talk, had to clear the air and put the pieces of the puzzle together. He was a seer, for God’s sake, and he’d been forewarned. That ought to count for something.

The room was warm, but her skin was cold to his touch. After pulling up the covers, he tried to wake her by shaking her gently.

“Faith?” he said. “We must talk.”

She came awake slowly. Her dark lashes fluttered then lifted, and she looked up at him. Her eyes warmed when they focused on his face, then she stretched like a languorous cat. “I’m listening,” she said.

He was captivated by the change in her. Her eyes were love-sleepy, and her skin glowed. The plait of hair at her back was beginning to come undone, making a soft halo around her face. There was more to her than beauty, though, in his eyes, she was more beautiful than any woman had a right to be. Everything about her surpassed anything he had ever found in another woman, not because she was extraordinary but because she was so right for him.

And she had thrown it all away.

The words that came out of his mouth were not the words he had intended to say. “My God, Faith! All these wasted years between us! I know I’m not a faithful letter writer, but I thought you understood.” His lips flattened, and he shook his head. “I promised myself I wouldn’t regurgitate ancient history, but I thought I knew you. I thought you knew me. I thought we trusted one another. And now, tonight, you went haring off with that... that freckle-faced fribble, the one you ran away with before. Were you trying to make me jealous of Dobbin? Is there something going on between you two?”

She levered herself up till they were eye to eye. His tone of voice, his expression, were not what she expected from a man who, not long before, had become her lover. Then the meaning of his words registered, and she bristled with indignation. “You hypocrite!” She stopped, expelled a breath, and went on in a more controlled tone, “You married Fiona, didn’t you? A rich man’s daughter? You always intended to marry her, even when you were seeing me! You needed her father’s money to bail you out of your troubles. Well, I did the honorable thing; I faded out of the picture to make things easy for you.”

He was bewildered. “I married Fiona because I couldn’t have you, and I didn’t care who I married. Yes, she was a rich man’s daughter. Yes, her father invested in my company, but that was long after you had run off with your pet donkey!”

“My pet donkey? That is despicable!”

When she flung out of bed, he threw up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I know well enough that there’s nothing between you and Dobbin, nor ever was. And do you know how I know, Faith? Because I know you.”

She had slipped into her dressing robe and was belting it tightly. “Is that supposed to be an apology? Because if it is, you can stuff it up your—” She stopped to loosen the belt, which was now digging into her.

“Yes?” he goaded.

“Nose!” she retorted.

“Spoken like a true lady!”

Teeth gritted, she got out, “Not only have you insulted me, you have also insulted Alastair.” Hands on hips, she raked him with her eyes. “Alastair is a gentleman to the tips of his fingers. I did not run off with him, as you put it. We traveled together on a train. When I reached my destination, he continued on to his parents’ home.”

“His parents’ home?” He frowned and hauled himself up to sit with his back propped against the pillows. “And where might that be? ”

“Scotland!”

She’d known it would come to this, ever since Alastair had told her that others knew about the train trip to Scotland. She was cursing herself now for keeping it a secret. Having once suppressed her foolish escapade, it seemed easier not to mention it at all. She no longer had a choice. If she did not tell James, he might hear of it from someone else. Better by far that he should hear of it from her.

“Scotland? ”

“Yes,” she said. “They live in Aberdeen. Alastair was to spend a few days with them before taking the boat to Orkney. There are ancient dwellings there that he wanted to explore.”

His eyes were fixed on hers and seemed to be puzzled rather than annoyed. “Where did you part company? ”

“In Edinburgh,” she said tightly. “I registered at a hotel close to the station and sent a note to you to say that—surprise, surprise—I had arrived in town.”

“I never received your note!”

“I know.” Her voice had developed a tremor, so she cleared her throat. “It was intercepted by Lady Fiona Shand. You remember Lady Fiona? She was the daughter of the business acquaintance you were staying with.”

“My erstwhile wife,” he muttered, “as you know very well.”

“Quite.” She paused to get command of her voice. “She lost no time in appearing at my door to put me right about the man I thought I was engaged to.”

She’d lived through that scene a thousand times, and it came back to her now with crushing effect. To cover the embarrassing tears that were stinging her eyes, she walked to one of the windows and looked out. There was nothing to see, but she could hear the rain running in rivulets from the roof and thought, absently, that the rain would clear the fog.

It wasn’t Lady Fiona’s beautiful form and features, or the elegance of her expensive garments that Faith remembered best. It was her undisguised amusement. She’d mistaken Faith for her own lady’s maid, or so she said, and from that moment on she adopted a patronizing air. By the time she had left, Faith’s confidence was shot to pieces. All she wanted was to leave Edinburgh before anyone knew what a fool she had made of herself.

“Fiona! I might have guessed. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She said that it was better if you never knew. And I had my pride. I agreed with her.”

She turned to face him. He had begun to dress and was stuffing his shirt into the waistband of his trousers. Cold rage had hardened his features to flint.

His voice was rough with the force of his fury. “And you believed that conniving bitch before you would believe me? Ask me about Fiona, and I’ll tell you what she was like.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“No. You’d rather believe the worst of me. There were others who had faith in me, but apparently not the woman who claims the name for her own.”

“You’re a fine one to talk of faith!” Her bitterness, held in check for so long, spilled over. “You never once mentioned her in the few terse notes you wrote to me. You were gone for three months, and all I ever received was your itinerary. It was like reading a railway timetable: ‘Tomorrow in Aberdeen, and Perth after that.’ I got more information from the gossip columns in the London papers. That’s where I first read of you and Lady Fiona.”

“So,” he said savagely, “you thought you’d surprise me in Edinburgh and—what, Faith? Catch me in flagrante delicto with Fiona?”

“Don’t be crude! I wanted to see you, judge for myself whether there was any truth to the rumors.”

“And you took Fiona’s word over mine? ”

“You married her,” she said vehemently.

“And came to regret it before the ink was dry on our marriage papers!” He took a step toward her, then another. “She wanted me, and I suppose I was flattered. After all, you had left me without a word of explanation. I looked for you for months, but it became patently clear that you did not want to be found.”

“I thought it was for the best.” She folded her arms across her breasts. Her voice was husky with the emotion she was trying to suppress. “I never wanted you to know about my trip to Scotland. That was why I arranged to meet Alastair on the terrace. I wanted to talk to him privately, to ask him not to mention that I had ever traveled to Edinburgh. But I was too late.”

She cleared her throat. “It was pride on my part, I suppose. I didn’t want anyone to pity me.”

She backed up a step when he closed the distance between them. He didn’t smile nearly often enough to suit her, but when he did, he had a lopsided grin that could melt the hardest heart. The grin he offered her was a travesty of the one she loved. It was painful to watch.

“What happened between us,” he said, “was in a different lifetime. Isn’t it time to put the past behind us and start over?”

“Start over?” Her eyes flicked uneasily to the bed then back to his face. “We’re different people now.”

“Faith,” he said, shaking his head, “if I could change the past, I would. But I can’t. This quarrel serves no purpose. We’ve got to work together to find out what happened to Danvers. Then there’s your mother’s diary. If we’re constantly at each other’s throats, we won’t get to the bottom of that mystery, either. Can’t we call a truce and go on from there?”

She didn’t know why she was fighting him. A short while ago, they’d become lovers. But James had resurrected the past and all the desolation she remembered from that other time had flooded back with a vengeance.

What had happened to her resolve to live for the moment? It came to her again, that awful nightmare and the emotion that crippled her when she’d thought James was lost to her forever.

He didn’t speak; he didn’t smile. He cupped her face in both hands and gave her a searching look. “It’s over,” he said. “I’m all right, and so are you.” Then he pressed his lips to hers.