Come Near Me (31 page)

“Just what I was about to suggest,” Geoff
grumbled, as Sherry got to her feet, then bent down to kiss his
cheek. He gifted her with a wink. “Go on, sweetheart, go with your
husband. Seems like today is going to be rather glorious all
around, doesn’t it?”

Sherry took Adam’s hand when he stepped
forward to offer it and allowed herself to be guided out of the
room, up the stairs to his bedchamber. They didn’t speak. They
didn’t look at each other.

It was like the first time, Sherry decided as
Adam closed the doors to the bedchamber behind him. The very first
time they’d met. There was a charge in the air, an almost tangible
something that shot between them, drew them to each other, made
them comfortable with each other and yet nervous and excited and
nearly giddy.

“You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?” Adam asked
at last, as Sherry stood in front of the fireplace, looking down at
the flames. “For all my stupidity, my bullheadedness, for all of
the living hell I’ve put you through these past months, you’ve
forgiven me. Why?”

He loved her. Man to woman, he loved her. As
she loved him. The past disappeared. All the hurt, all the tears.
The future wasn’t clear, but they would face it together. Because
she was a woman now, no longer a silly, romantic child.

She spoke as a woman now, from her heart, as
Adam walked closer to her, as he took her hands in his, as he
lifted each of her hands to his mouth, kissed them. “Because I love
you,” she said, a new strength entering her, taking hold. “Because
I’ve always loved you, even when I hated you. Because I finally
know what real love is, and real love takes in the bad as well as
the good.”

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
“Because I think I’ve punished myself enough for allowing Dickie to
kiss me that one time. Because we’ve both suffered enough for our
stupidity, our sins. Because the sun is shining and Geoff is
walking and our baby is growing inside me and I want and need you
more than food or air. Is that enough, Adam? We’ll never have that
perfect dream again, I know. But is what we have now enough?
Perhaps even better, more real?”

“More than enough. More than I deserve. Most
definitely better,” Adam whispered quietly, pulling her completely
against him, so that she dissolved into tears as she laid her head
against his chest, all the anguish and pain and fear of the past
months dissolving as she felt his arms go around her in love.
Holding her. Cherishing her.

He kissed her through her tears, pressing
butterfly kisses against her hair, her eyes, the tip of her nose,
her mouth. Tentative, not teasing, kisses. Getting to know each
other better kisses. There was no sudden flame of desire between
them, no great passion flaring up to consume them. They simply
kissed. They simply held each other.

They simply loved. Made love. Created
love....

After...

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,

The Devil always builds a chapel there,

And ’twill be found upon examination,

The latter has the largest congregation.

— Daniel Defoe

“T
his is nice,”
Sherry said sleepily, snuggling closer against her husband in the
wide bed as they both slowly woke from their nap.

“Nice? Is that all you can say?” Adam teased,
kissing her hair. “I’d thought I’d been much better than
nice.
Did you dream about me?”

“I did,” she said, tilting back her head so
that she could look up at him. “That’s probably why I woke up,
don’t you think? Being awake and alive is so much better than
living in a dream.”

“And eminently better than existing in a
nightmare,” Adam said, “which is what we’ve been doing, haven’t we?
Sherry—”

She raised her hand, pressed her fingers
against his mouth. “No, not another word. Not another apology, all
right? It’s over now, Adam. Whatever mistakes we made, they’re in
the past. Nothing can hurt us more than we’ve hurt each other. Not
as long as we know we really love each other. Each other, Adam, not
just the dream of love.”

Adam longed to let it go, allow Sherry to
convince him that there was nothing to talk about, nothing to worry
about—nothing to fear. He longed to believe that now that they’d
found each other again, found their love again, nothing could hurt
them.

But she was wrong, and she also knew she was
wrong. Because it, whatever that
it
might be, was far from
over, as much as they both might wish all the ugliness away.

He had to tell her about Edmund, about
Dickie, about the game. Not that he’d tell her about Lady Jasper
and her horrible little book. And he most certainly wouldn’t say
anything about Lady J’s ridiculous assertion about Edmund being
Dickie and the two of them both being the Devil.

“Sherry, darling,” he said as she moved her
fingers from his lips, drew them down over his chest, drew lazy
circles on his bare skin, “we have to talk, all right? Not
apologize—talk.”

Her hand stilled. Her body, that had been so
fluidly draped against his, stiffened perceptively. “Talk?” She
sighed, a long, deep, sad sigh. “Yes, I suppose we do. About
Dickie. I want to will him away, but I can’t.” She sat up, dragging
the sheet with her, covering her breasts. “You know he’s back,
don’t you?”

Adam saw the fear in her eyes and felt an
insane urge to leap out of the bed and go tearing through the
bowels of London until he found Richard Brimley, then rip the man’s
guts out and feed them to the bastard.

But that wouldn’t do them any good, and Adam
knew it. Tamping down his murderous urge, he left the bed and
pushed his arms into a dressing gown, then held Sherry’s out to
her. “Yes, love. Richard Brimley is back. As a matter of fact, I
believe he came to London from Daventry Court, and has been waiting
here for us, waiting for us to walk back into his game.”

“His game,” Sherry repeated, sitting down on
the rug in front of the hearth, staring into the flames. “That’s
all it is for him, isn’t it? Destroying people is a game to him. I
can still remember the day he asked me if I liked to
play.
How foolish I was, how naive. I said yes. I actually invited him
into our lives.”

She turned, looked at Adam. “Emma was part of
Dickie’s game, Adam. And Rimmon. I—I confronted him this morning,
and he took to his heels. I’m sorry now that I did that, for you
might have been able to batter him into telling us where Dickie is
hiding. Chollie says you’re quite good with your fists.”

Adam sat down beside Sherry, pulled her head
against his shoulder.

She sighed, relaxed against him. “Except that
now I don’t want you to find Dickie, Adam. I just want him to go
away, leave us alone. I don’t want to see him, don’t want to know
why he picked us to play his game on, don’t want you to beat him
into hinders. I just want him gone.”

Adam decided to test his wife’s knowledge of
what he believed they both knew. “And Edmund, darling? Do you want
him gone as well?”

She pulled away from him, looked up into his
face in surprise, shock. “You think so, too? I thought I must be
imagining things, looking too hard at anything that seemed even the
slightest bit suspicious. But you think so, too? You think Edmund
and Dickie are playing the game together now?”

“Well,” Adam said lightly, hoping his friend
would forgive him for putting Lady J’s insane words into his mouth,
“Chollie has a different theory. He believes Brimley and Burnell to
be one and the same person. The Devil, actually. The Devil, come to
carry our souls away.”

Sherry’s hands protectively covered her
abdomen. “That’s not funny, Adam. I told Edmund that if he told
Chollie he’s the Devil, Chollie would believe him. But that’s not
funny. I shouldn’t have thought it was funny when he tried to tell
me
he’s the Devil.”

Adam took hold of Sherry’s shoulders, holding
her away from him. “What are you talking about, Sherry? Are you
telling me that Burnell
told
you he’s the Devil? When?”

“When? When we took a drive outside the city,
I believe. Why? What does it matter? He was only teasing. He was
really quite funny. I mean, think about it, darling. The
Devil?”

Adam smiled. It wasn’t a natural smile, but
it was the best he could offer. “You’re right, darling. Devilish,
perhaps, but not the Devil. However, I’m quite convinced that
Burnell and Brimley are both playing the game. Brimley from the
shadows this time, Burnell out in the open. Very much in the open,
if he’s going about telling you he’s the Devil. In fact, he seems
almost reckless, as if he wants us to believe there’s something
more than human about him, now that I think of it.”

“This game, Adam,” Sherry said, frowning.
“It’s just what you thought it was back at Daventry Court, isn’t
it? Mean people being mean for the sake of their own meanness.
Pulling the wings off butterflies, placing blind mice in a
maze—seeing happiness and setting out to destroy it just for the
satisfaction meanness finds in making others as unhappy as they are
themselves. That’s our crime, you know, Adam. I’ve thought and
thought, and that’s our crime. We were happy. So very, very happy.
How Dickie must have hated seeing us so happy. That’s sad. Horribly
sad.”

“He almost destroyed us, and you’re feeling
sorry
for him?” Adam shook his head, not able to believe his
own ears. “But I see we’re thinking along the same lines. Brimley
saw us together, probably in London during the Season, and decided
to destroy us, just to prove that he could. He came to Daventry
Court to destroy us. He’s here, in London again, to finish the job,
even enlisting Burnell and more of his friends to make sure he gets
the job done right this time. And you feel
sorry
for
him?”

But Sherry wasn’t listening. She had been,
Adam was sure, for awhile. Except that something he’d said must
have intrigued her mind, taken her off somewhere, to relive a
clearly unpleasant memory. “He said,” she began slowly, biting her
bottom lip. “That last day when I told him he was mad, insane—he
said something I’ve been trying to forget ever since. I thought I
had forgotten. But now I remember.”

She looked into Adam’s eyes, her own eyes
flat with fear. “He called me his little doll, Adam. How I hated
the way he said that. And then he said... and then he said that he
knew I thought he was mad, because otherwise it would be
over
now.”

She closed her eyes. “But it wasn’t over, he
said. He said it was just beginning. That he’d raised the stakes,
that now he wanted us both.” She opened her eyes once more, tipped
her head, looked at Adam searchingly. “He’d wanted to seduce me.
That’s what I finally realized that day in the barn. He wanted to
seduce me in order to hurt you. And it was all so strange. Much as
I wanted to turn away from him, run away from him, I couldn’t move.
It was as if I was drawn to him against my will. I—I let him kiss
me. I’ll never understand that, never forgive myself for that.”

Adam pulled her against his chest once more,
trying to soothe her. “That part
is
over now, darling. Over,
and forgotten.”

She pushed away from him, pressing her palms
against his chest in order to keep her distance. “But it isn’t,
Adam. If I had let him seduce me,
then
it would have been
over. Or at least that’s what Dickie believed when he began his
game. But he changed his mind. He wanted—
wants
us both. He
said as much. My God, Adam, do you think he wants us dead? Has he
gone that mad?”

“No, no,” Adam assured her quickly. His head
was pounding, it was so full of contradictory thoughts, impossible
explanations. “He’s still playing the same game as before, darling.
He just decided he was enjoying it, and wanted to drag it out. His
friends wanted to play as well. And Edmund is Richard Brimley’s
friend, Sherry. There’s no mistake in that, I’m sure. Which,” he
ended, sighing, “leaves us with the masquerade tonight.”

“We won’t go,” Sherry said shortly, her chin
coming up belligerently. “We will
not
play their game
anymore, Adam. And if we won’t play, they’ll eventually give up and
go away. Go pull the wings off some other unsuspecting
butterflies.”

Adam shook his head. “No, Sherry, you don’t
mean that. Think about it a moment. The party tonight is a
masquerade. A perfect place for Dickie to appear, without really
showing himself. If we don’t find him now, confront him now, we’ll
never be free of him. Do you really want to live the rest of our
lives looking at each new face we meet with suspicion... with
dread? I can’t live like that, darling. Neither can you. Brimley
wants us at the masquerade, but he doesn’t know we’re onto him at
last. That’s our trump card, darling. And I fully intend to play
it. If you’ll help me. Are you up to helping me? Helping us?”

“Play our trump card?” Sherry repeated,
shivering. “How? How do we play it? And of course I’ll go with you.
Did you really think I’d let you confront him alone? What must I
do?”

Adam’s smile was slow, seductive. She was his
Sherry. His dearest, sweetest, bravest Sherry. He loved her beyond
reason. But this was something they had to do. Taking into
consideration all that he believed, and mixing it generously with
all that Lady Jasper believed—they had to continue with the
game.

“First, I want you to promise me you won’t
accept anything Burnell or anyone else might offer you
tonight.”

“Offer me?”

“Offer you, yes. Most especially if anyone
offers you help. Say thank you very much, you’ll think about it,
but
don’t
accept it. All right?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,
Adam. Truly I don’t.”

“That’s all right, darling. Neither do I.
Now, secondly,” he said as he stroked her pale cheek, “we’re going
to have to pretend that the two of us are still very
unhappily
in love.”