Blind Trust (16 page)

Now, some force within was unshackling those bonds she'd believed necessary to hold her together. When she reached for Tavish she reached for her own duty, her own virtue, and she left modesty behind forever.

He brought her up to stand next to him. He looked for a long time in her eyes, and then he put his arms around her and drew her to him, his face grave. He kissed her. It was a slow, gentle kiss, and she felt herself warming, fluttering underneath him like the wings of a bird. Her mouth opened, she leaned into him, and he groaned suddenly and drew her closer. She came up against the hardness of him.

Unexpectedly, she laughed.

Tavish pulled away and frowned down at her through hooded lids, half-amused. “Am I so ridiculous, my love?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, smiling. “It's me. It's just that—I didn't know. I didn't know about this.”

Awareness, then surprise, crossed his face. Then he grinned. “Good,” he growled, satisfied, and bent his head to kiss her again. “Good.”

“Good,” she murmured, her mouth opening for the warm taste of him again.

They kissed, standing, close up against each other, murmuring and laughing and running their hands over each other with a freedom she had never dreamed possible between a man and a woman. She was afraid, but she forced herself to go on, and soon, before she was aware, she was in bed and her clothes were on the floor next to her.

The air was warm and sultry from the fire blazing in the hearth. The bed was wide and warm, the sheets soft against her nakedness. She had a brief flash of contentment as she stretched luxuriously, but then he slid in beside her and she saw him naked. He seemed too big, his masculinity arching toward her insistently. Seeing her fear, Tavish touched her face gently.

“I love you,” he said.

“Good,''she said. “Because I'm rather frightened at the moment.”

He laughed and took her in his arms, and he was patient. He curbed his urgency. His touch was delicate, sure, as he roamed her body, and he brought her forward again and again to meet him with a slow deliberateness. His love held no room for shame, and he would not let her hide or retreat. Time and again he pushed the sheet back to uncover her or forced her to look in his eyes. She felt his love overtake her like a wave and spin her forward into the unknown, and then he was there, with her, in her, around her, and as suddenly as it had come, her fear went away.

“You can't go back,” he said.

“I must.”

He lay behind her, cradling her against him. Her luminous skin was tinged pink from the light of the setting sun. He traced the ridges of her spine with his fingertip. Steel, her spine was. Too stubborn by half, she was. He hugged her tight, closing his eyes and burying his face in her scented ebony hair. “I won't let you go.”

“But I must go back. You need me to go back, Tavish Finn, though you will not admit it. I got into Claude's private office once. I can do it again. And I know where he keeps the key to his cabinet now.”

Horrified, he sat up, dislodging her from his arms. “No. Darcy, promise me you won't attempt such a thing. Let me handle this. I can't let you put yourself in danger—”

“Danger?” She sat up next to him, holding the sheet against her. “But I'm in no danger. Claude is my husband. What can he do? I can find evidence for you of Claude's crimes. I can look at those Dargent letters again. If it's true what he's done, how can I not?”

He was already shaking his head. “Darcy, please leave it to me, love. Promise me. I'm very close. If I can find the woman who Dargent recruited, she can identify the man.”

“But she disappeared, you said.”

“Nobody can disappear completely. Believe me, I know. The past has a way of following you.”

Darcy shivered. “I suppose you're right. But, oh, I don't want that to be true.” She put her hand on his arm. “I don't want my past to follow me. That's why I must go back. I must be free of him, my family must be free of him, once and for all.”

“Your family?” Tavish twisted around to look her full in the face. “What haven't you told me?”

“I only meant that—”

He pinned her down with his keen glance. “Something about Edward.”

Darcy pressed back against the pillows. “No, I—”

“Here I've told you everything, and you're holding back something from me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You've told me everything?”

Tavish frowned. “There are things you shouldn't know, don't need to know. I'm trying to protect you, my love. But you cannot hold something back from me—it could be important. Has Claude actually threatened Edward?”

“Yes,” Darcy said reluctantly. “He is blackmailing him. I overheard them talking.”

“So at last he does the job himself,” Tavish murmured. When he saw Darcy looking at him quizzically, he said, “I suspected Claude had a hold over Edward. There was something in your father's eyes … What hold does Claude have over him? Saints above, does every man in New York have a sordid past?”

“Edward doesn't have a sordid past! It's something … I cannot tell you what it is, it isn't right for me to tell you, and it doesn't affect your investigation.”

Tavish hesitated, then sighed. “All right. But do you know how your—how Claude found out about whatever it is?”

“A parlormaid saw something she shouldn't, that's all.”

“No brothel involved?”

“Brothel?” Darcy looked at him curiously. “No. Why?”

“No reason, darlin'.”

“Mmmmm.” Darcy reached for her clothes. “I should be going. The sun is almost down.”

Tavish watched her for a moment as she untangled piles of underclothing. He enjoyed her feminine frown as she shook out her lace and grimaced at a tiny button he had torn off. He reveled in the intimacy of watching her in such a private ritual. Then he thought about where she was going, to whom she was going, and he felt as though he'd suffered a blow.

He stood up and strode across the room toward his trousers. He stepped into them, then sat on the end of the bed and ran his fingers through his hair.

Darcy held her clothes against her. “What is it, Tavish?”

“Don't you see,” he said woodenly. “Don't you see why I can't let you go back there? I can't think of it.”

Slowly, his meaning sank in, and she let out a long breath. Darcy knew she must be careful. To her, Claude had shrunk to nothing, he was no longer important. He had given up all rights to her loyalty through his cruelty to her and her father. But Tavish didn't—couldn't—see her husband as unimportant in that way. Not when she was returning to live with him.

She moved toward him. She pressed against his bare back and slipped her arms around him. “I have never been touched before today, Tavish,” she whispered. “I have never touched. I have never been kissed before today. I have never kissed. I have never been loved before today. And I have never loved. You have changed my life utterly, and nothing has meaning right now but you.”

With a groan, he turned to her and pressed her against the rumpled bed. He found her mouth again, and this time he took her with desperation. There was little of the tenderness of discovery that had existed before. Darcy understood the need, and matched it, for she wanted to possess him, too, and be possessed. And together as they moved and sighed and wound strong fingers around each other, not letting go, never letting go, they forgot the white marble mansion ten blocks south, splashed crimson in the rays of the setting sun.

Darcy was relieved to find that Claude had sent a message home that he'd be delayed, for she walked in the house a brazen woman. She even smiled at dour Tolliver, the butler, as she whirled past him toward her room. If Claude had been there, he would have known. He would have known she'd been with a man, for she knew how it showed.

Walking back down Fifth Avenue, she had looked at the houses and the streetcars and carriages, and she had marveled at the change. Now she knew that there had always been an undercurrent going on beneath the placid, sunlit surface of her world. It was sex; after today she could think of no euphemism. The undercurrent ran, steady and sure, tossing some, pulling others out of the main stream, drowning still more who tried to fight. The trick was, Darcy thought as she entered her room and removed her hat with trembling fingers, to swim with it. To keep your head above the waves.

She'd thought she'd known about marital relations, but she'd known nothing. Now she knew a strong pull of yearning that was no ladylike melancholy but a swift tide in her blood that ran with the moon. All those vague, puzzling feelings at the Van Cormandts' had coalesced into this. They were concrete, after all: they had an object. They had a home.

Tavish. Darcy stared at her glowing face in the mirror and touched her lips with her fingers. She saw the blush on her cheeks as she remembered the things she had allowed him to do, the things she had done herself, wanting to do them. To hold that masculinity inside her, to feel it arch against her, to arch against it and curl around it and welcome it with wetness and warmth. To gaze with eyes that were not veiled with false modesty but naked, hot with truth.

If this went on, if other people did these things—and Tavish had assured her, laughing, that they did—how did the world go on? How did people move, and speak, and work, when there was this to be explored?

Oh, now she understood husbands and wives, the satisfaction on some faces, the bitterness on others, the wide eyes of a newly married bride following her husband around the room, the pressed lips of the older settled women who watched her, some with jealousy in their hearts, others with recognition. She understood the women who went astray, and she understood her mother. She would never think of her as poor or sad again.

Something ticked inside her now. As she dressed for dinner that night, she looked at a new face, so rosy with hope she had to keep turning away from Solange to hide it. She went to a dinner at the Cornelius Vanderbilts', she sat through the nine courses—the oysters, the soup, the mousse de jambon, the terrapin, the asparagus, the canvasback, the sorbet, the salad, the cheese and fruit—in a dream. She went to the opera, she rode home in the carriage with Claude. She did it all, she followed every rule of her former life, but inside she knew that her heart had broken every rule, and she didn't care. Claude was silent, but that was usual; he didn't care for talk at the end of an evening. When they reached the house, she climbed out of the carriage and tilted her head back to look at the dark sky. Tomorrow, she would see Tavish again. They would meet at Columbine's.

Claude surprised her the next day by appearing in the downstairs salon where she sat in the mornings. Darcy put down the menu plan she was working on.

“Claude, I thought you'd left.”

“I decided to stay home today, my dear,” he said, walking over and pressing his lips against her forehead. “I went early to the office, as is my custom, but I brought work back with me.”

“I see. Are you feeling poorly?”

“No, of course not. Dr. Arbuthnot thought it would be better if I stayed close to home for a few days.”

Darcy sighed. Once this would have frightened her. Now she merely felt irritated, tired of the constant allusion to her delicate nerves. Before, there had been a nagging doubt in her mind that Claude was somehow right, that her melancholy arose from some defect in herself. But that doubt was gone forever. Tavish Finn had blown through her life like a sharp, fresh wind. She knew now that she wasn't delicate in the least.

“I suppose you will, despite any assurances I might make,” she said, picking up the menu plan again.

“Have you been taking the tonic?”

She'd completely forgotten about the tonic. “I've felt so much better since the doctor came that I—”

Claude was already ringing the bell. He directed the servant to fetch Solange. Then he began to pace. “You see why I need to stay close to you. You cannot follow the simplest of directions. I will surely inform Dr. Arbuthnot of this. And I think it would be best if you rested at home until he comes on Friday.”

“Claude, that's ridiculous. I will take the tonic, but I have calls to make, social obligations to meet. I cannot remain at home. The season is in full swing. Mrs. Astor called two days ago, and I must leave my card. And we dined at the Rhinelanders' last week. You know I must call on them as well.” She knew how important their social position was to Claude; reminders of duty would most likely change his mind.

“You can send round your cards, Darcy. That is enough.” He stood by her chair, his hand a steel claw on her shoulder. “I must insist, my dear.”

Solange entered, and Claude directed her for Darcy's tonic. It was her duty to remind her mistress from now on, he said, to bring her the tonic at the times indicated by Dr. Arbuthnot. They sat in silence, waiting for the maid's return, and Darcy dutifully swallowed the double dose Claude insisted upon as he stood over her. It tasted sweet, and it burned all the way down her throat. But it left a pleasant warmth behind.

Claude sat back down to frown over the correspondence he'd brought with him. After long minutes had passed, Darcy began to feel more cheerful, more relaxed. Surely he couldn't lock her up in the house. She'd find a way somehow to get out. He couldn't forbid her a drive in the park. Wasn't that what Dr. Arbuthnot himself had prescribed?

And then salvation came in the form of Adelle's card on a silver tray. She was there in person, waiting to be received.

Claude frowned. “This is not the day you're at home.”

“I know.” Darcy stood up. “But I must receive my cousin. Show her into the drawing room, Tolliver.”

“No. Show her in here,” Claude ordered.

So he would not even let her see Adelle alone. Darcy sat back down. Adelle rustled in a few minutes later. She greeted Claude, and then her eyes swept Darcy's morning gown.